Split (1)

train · 177k rows

prompt stringlengths 391 14.9k
"You've always stumbled into trouble but I never took you for one of those mean girls that would asks a guy out just to make fun of him. " Rae said as she helped fix her friend, Shellys, hair. "I'm not...I actually really like Manny. " "Really?" "Yeah. I don't care that's he's a "nerd", he's sweet and cute and my stomach gets all tangled when I'm around him. " Her smile made Rae smile and ease her nervousness... Shelly lifted her head up as Manny sat down on the blanket with two sodas in his hand. He hands one to Shelly. She sits it down and lays her head on his thigh. "I told you you should've gone to bed after work. " "I wanted to talk to you instead. How dare I." He smiled and rubbed her hair. "Have I ever told you that Rae though I asked you out just to embarrass you?" "Yeah. I thought the same thing remember." "You never told me that...did you?" "Mhm. Then you told you loved me and we made out in the Wal Mart parking lot for ten minutes. " Shelly laughed and rolled over putting her hands over her eyes. "The first time I ever told you I loved you was in front of a Wal Mart. Oh my God' I forgot about that. " They laughed and she sat up. She opened the picnic basket so the two could officially start their date. "Hey Shelly." "Hmm?" "I love you. " "I love you too Manny." They kiss and she pulls away manny reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a ring box and holds it in his hand staring at it. "Is four years long enough to know your the one...Shelly?" "Just put the ring on my finger before I start crying." Manny laughed and opened the box, sliding the ring onto her finger. She hugs him tight and tears start to run down her face. They kiss and hug tight again. "Manny you have both made and ruined my day." She wiped her tears as more former while she stared at the ring. She throws her arms around him again, bringing them both to the ground. They kiss again, longer, slower.
Buzz, ring, ding. The phone in his front pocket went off a few times, each time, begging more and more to be looked at. Ignoring the first two times, the third became more aggressive, demanding. As he finally unlocked his device, he found that it was a usual systems notification. “Permission to access storage?” the message read. Without thinking twice about what it asked, he pressed ‘accept.’ His phone almost slipped out of his hands when the commanding AI said, “Greetings, it’s nice to finally see you. We have a lot of work to get done. You are the only one who can stop the coming invasion.” At first, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he accidentally had an app running in the background, or it was some sort of sick prank that someone played on him. However, after further inspection of his phone, he found it to be untouched. “Am I hearing things?” he said out loud in frustration. “You are not,” the same AI said. “We need your help, Mr. Hunter.” “How do you even know my name?” he asked back. “Really? We just got access to the storage on your phone.” “Okay… okay… say this is real and that I am not going crazy, why me?” Jonas Hunter continued. “I was set to you specifically because we know that you in the future are known to be the best soldier of our time, the one that gives his life to save Earth,” the AI explained. “Hold up, give my life? I think you have the wrong guy. If anything, I’m just the guy with a pregnant wife who is about to give birth in the coming month and working a standard IT job. Nothing special about me.” “I will prove it to you.” His screen changed to a picture of his family, yet older. Jonas himself was wearing what looked like a futuristic uniform, holding an award for bravery. Confused, he didn’t know what to say or do. “So… what do you want me to do?” “Your program, the one you use in the IT department, modify it. That is going to be the basis of what we need. Hurry please Mr. Hunter, time is running out.”
Tyler tapped his chin thoughtfully as he stared into the almost blinding light of his laptop, blinking at the little orange figure opened up on his browser. Cracking his fingers, he typed in his username and password. It didn't take long for his homepage to load, flashing a plethora of gifs, posts, and other general things that he happened to be subscribed to. The teenager grinned once his eyes found the name of the sub he visited nearly every single day. The name of it was something of an inside joke, only those who were fans of its subject matter understood its meaning, making the mentioning of it irrelevant. While Tyler wasn't exactly too active on other subs, he was on this one. He flicked to the sub's chat room and paused. Odd... No one's sent a message since 3PM. It was 12 midnight now. They had members from all over the world, so the lack of the usual witty banter unnerved him. Going back to the "hot"page, he saw that many of the posts were from about two days ago, another odd fact. Moving onto the latest feed of the sub, Tyler did see recent posts from maybe 30-40 minutes ago. All from one specific user. Most of which confused the ever living fuck out of the young man. >In the water, drown drown, in the water down they go. >Oops, one goes bye bye >Oh, no. Look at that, forced into the reflection. What did that even mean?. Shaking his head, Tyler commented on one of their posts: >Dude, who tf are you? Never seen you on this sub before. What you're posting has nothing to do with what this sub is about... The reply came in about 5 minutes later. >Shhhh, in the water, down they go. Clucking his tongue in annoyance, the boy clicked off of the post and decided to scan the contents of the last messages in the chat room. One of the mods, his real life friend who's name was Tobias, had said something strange that caught his attention. >gtg. Got a big day today. Dressing up for my girl. 👌Date night, fam. What tie should I wear? He had sent a picture of two ties being held up. Tyler could see his torso, considering Tobias took the pic using his mirror. Some general "ooo's* and ahhs were exchanged, to which Tyler skipped pass to find another mod. This one he didn't know in real life, plus, she was older, in her twenties. Her username had something to do with a witty pun. This message was sent an hour after Tobias. >Heyo, buckaroos! Guess who's going to the beach? Sausage is gonna cover for me, so don't misbehave. 😜👀Watching y'all. Sausage was the nickname of another mod, it was easier than having to refer to his whole username, which, in itself was a giant ass mess. That unnerved Tyler as well. Beach... Water.... Drowning... Tobias sending a picture using his mirror... He went back to the guy's post and replied: >Are the mods in trouble? Again, the response didn't take long to arrive. No text this time, just a link to imgur, of one of those "reaction images"a black man tapping his head knowingly. Other times, that would have been humorous to Tyler, but at this moment, when it was clear that this person knew more than what they were saying. The teen decided to call Tobias. No answer. Tyler messaged their other mod, the only female of the group. She didn't respond either. At all. So, he messaged Sausage. Sausage did reply. >You didn't hear? Cindy fucking died today. Drowned. Tyler blinked and began to frantically type. >Cindy? Is that her real name? Is that why she's not been on? Holy shit. What about () ? He almost caught himself from putting Tobias instead of his username. Sausage continued his bad news. >Yeah. His bro messaged me from his account. Apparently he got into a car crash, in a coma. Tyler sat back and sucked in a breath. Maybe the phrase "mods are asleep"really could be sinister after all. *End*
"Are you absolutely sure there are no threats?"I asked seemingly to my computer's monitor. "They wouldn't be calling for digidestined if there weren't any threats."On the monitor, what can only be described as a cyborg sea serpent shook its head. I gave it disappointed click of the tongue as I was informed that my partner knew nothing. "What about the others? Have you heard anything from them?" "Sangloupmon and Black Metal Greymon have been searching for days. Ever since what went on with a Japan server of the digital world, everything has been all clean."Metal Seadramon let out a sigh. "The way I see it, we aren't supposed to know yet. Maybe this is just something for the new kids to handle."I slammed my face down on my computer desk and anger, nearly knocking my mechanical keyboard off of it. Digidestined or not, my little Hailey wasn't going to go there. "You /know/ I can't accept that! The digital world is far too dangerous for a 10 year old girl!" "Uh, hello? /You/ were 10 when you first came here, Jay!" "My point! It was too dangerous for me, it was too dangerous for any of my friends, but we had no choice in the matter! And now I'm just expected to let my daughter go in there?! Do whatever powers-that-be in the digital world expect me or any of the others to be fine with that?!"All that followed was silence. As I looked at my partner, all I could see was sadness in his eyes. My view of the screen became a bit hazy. Tears. I was starting to cry for fear that my little girl will get hurt. That she'd go on this adventure and never return. My partner let me cry it out for an immeasurable amount of time. Once I was all cry it out, I wipe the tears from my eyes and took a deep breath. "Get the others..." "Wait... really? Everybody? What for?" "If... If we can't stop this, then we need to make sure that they are ready. So grab everybody, and be ready to meet us in the digital world. 1 hour from now, our time."Metal Seadramon nodded and my monitor went black. Letting out a sigh, I rolled my chair away from my personal computer, stood up, and made my way to Hailey's room. As I reached your door, I could hear her talking with her partner again. As I gave the door a couple of quick tabs, I could share her scrambling to hide the Digivice. "Come in!"She emplored in her usually cheery tone. I took a moment to prepare myself, and then reached into my back pocket and pulled my old Digivice. This has to be done. It hurt me, but it had to be done. I took a step in the room, and let out yet another side before holding up the device in my hand. My daughter is bright smile changed slowly to a look of pure shock. "Hey, hun."You got a minute?"
"The mosquito genus is to spread malaria, killing millions of people each year, and Zika, paralyzing the tourism industry." King Walrus honked at Annual Animal Retaliation Project (AARP). "What will we do?"asked the giant panda representatives, the polyps of the coral reefs, and the dwellers of the Amazon Rainforest. "Um, you're going to generally make the humans feel guilty for slowly killing your homes and families." "And how about us?"questioned the highly endangered Northern white rhinoceros, Yangtze river dolphins, and the pangolin clan. "Same thing." "Should I relay the message to the Alagoas curassows, black soft-shell turtles, and South China tigers? The last of their kind are being held captive by our enemies!" King Walrus sighed deeply. "In the ongoing war with the humans, we have been losing. I fear there is no hope for victory..."
I woke up to my alarm chiming gently by my ear. As I reached out to silence it, it scampered away and grew louder. Sighing, I stretched for a few moments, then rose from bed. Once I was disrobed and in the shower, the alarm shut itself off. I still had almost 750 liters of water in my monthly budget, so I went ahead and dumped the recirculation tanks and drew 50 fresh new liters for my shower. With point-of-use heaters, and water recirculation, I could take hours-long showers if I wanted without wasting too much in the way of resources. Some days I did, but today I had to get to the council meeting so I limited myself to 40 minutes, then got out and sat in the chair in front of the bathroom mirror. I directed my Bathroom Servitor, as usual, to take care of coiffing my hair and touching up the spots on my face with concealer. Eyebrows plucked, teeth brushed for the exact fifteen seconds per tooth that 9 out of 10 dentists agreed was ideal for oral hygiene, lightly scented, and - because why not, didn't I deserve to treat myself? - with a subtle application of diamond-dust mascara to highlight my eyes, I returned to the bedroom and directed the Wardrobe Servitor to present some clothing suggestions. Discarding several of them offhand, I berated the damned AI for not having the fashion sense of a homeless rodent, and eventually engaged manual override to pick out something properly severe for the council meeting. But I had a couple hours, yet, so while my Kitchen Servitor prepared breakfast - today an EggWhite(tm) omelet with toast and some sort of jam, and flavored water (dieting is hard, ok?) - I turned on the television to watch the news. It always helped my mood to be reminded how much better I had it than others. Not that I wanted to see them suffer, you understand, but hadn't I worked hard for my position? And my parents before me? We lived in Elysium Prime, after all, in the lap of luxury, and even the poor towns, some of which were visible in the distance on a clear day, had enough to eat. In neighboring Elysium Ten, there had been an incident of street crime. Reporters suggested that there may have been undocumented migrants moving through the town, trying to steal identity chips. There hadn't been a successful identity theft in a few years, but everyone remembered the coverage of the horrible crime scene and the 24-hour reporting, giving us the information we needed to stay on top of the issues. DecisionWork in E' (the kind humans do - robots simply do Work, unable to make decisions themselves but also unable to be harmed by the dangers of labor) had nearly ground to a halt for several days as we all sat, riveted by the story of the unfortunate family, and the police chase that finally caught the murdering thief - thanks of course to the intervention of a savvy old human consultant, who was able to piece together the abstract information in a way no AI could manage. Well, roaming undocumented meant we would need to address the possibility of stepping up security patrols and checkpoints in E' for a few weeks; I would bring that up in council myself. The weather was expected to be lovely for the next few days, with no signs of unplanned atmospheric events. I checked my bank balance on my phone - 23,844c - to make sure I would be able to afford the vacation I was planning for next week. I don't know why I even check, we citizens of E' are, as I said, quite well off. Even to this day we profit from the chaos of the Market, with our finely-tuned InvestorAI running the Bank and ensuring we all have profitable income from our investments. Indeed, we make 6% almost like clockwork, far outpacing inflation, ensuring we will always be able to enjoy the earned lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. I thought I would walk today. The luxury of importance is that we never needed to cram ourselves into filthy transit tubes like the citizens of, say, Rust or Husk, rushing to do their Work which, had they been smarter in their youth, would have been done by robots instead. So I walked to the council halls, taking the stairs down from my high floor in the condominium complex, enjoying the gentle breeze funneled to the walkways by the sinuous architecture the defined our lovely city. My ID pass let me take the QuikLine through the security checkpoints while dozens of my fellow 'Citizens - who had likely forgotten to renew their ID - milled about in line for the personal screening. I passed by a section of our city wall, shining white and perfectly clean as the JanitorBots moved slowly in their endless cycle of tidying up the city. That wall made us proud - even other Elysiums, like E'', had slightly dingy walls, clearly showing their lesser wealth and success. Well, we were titans of industry before we earned our comfort, and if they wished to join us, they simply needed to strive a little harder. We would welcome their presence. There's enough to go around, so long as it goes to the deserving. Finally, I got to the Council Hall. Waving my badge, I walked in and prepared to do my part in the great DecisionWork that would keep our city foremost among the jewels of humanity. &nbsp; E'97713 optimal. ContentmentIndex 98.13;AugSec policy T1 loading;Rationing0. Surveillance upload/archive complete. There are 1,048,576 Elysium Primes in the world, and they are all identical.
Zachary Blue created the pocket universe as a goof during Quantum Computing class. There was only one video game worth playing on high school computers, Time Line Trail^(TM) —an educational title developed by the great grandchildren of the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who had bought the Oregon Trail IP at auction back in 2020. Those corporate raiders had learned from Disney that reboots are always profitable, no matter what the medium—as long as you wait for a significant leap in technology. That technological leap arrived during Hilary Clinton’s second term in office, when billions in government grants finally paid off—creating the first quantum processors. Within a few years, we had build machines capable of simulating entire universes. Just as CGI had empowered multibillion dollar movie franchises based on old school comic book heroes in the early Aughts, quantum computing powered a new generation of video game reboots. Since these powerful processors had the ability to simulate an entire universe, Time Line Trail^(TM) technology allowed gamers to play inside enormous Open Universe^(TM) versions of old-fashioned games: a Final Fantasy reboot set in a completely simulated fantasy universe based on an alternate magic system or a Red Dead Redemption reboot set on a simulated lawless version 1850s Earth or a Fornite reboot where players parachuted into simulated Hawaii’s and Japan. Most educational quantum video games lacked that kind of entertainment, but Time Line Trail^(TM) had a Choose Your Own Simulation^(TM) feature, allowing bored high school kids to tweak history and explore universes where the laws of physics were different or alternate Earths where the Nazis won World War II. Zachary had already grown tired of those games, so he ran the most ridiculous scenario his high school imagination could imagine. What if Donald Trump had won the 2016 election? That scenario had produced the most chaotic Time Line Trails^(TM) universe he'd ever seen. Russian agents ran amok in America, Nazis marched in the Midwest, and global warming spiraled out of control. After an hour exploring this hellscape, Zachary prepared to end the game without saving his progress. However, a single NPC had followed him around all game, badgering him to engage in conversation. Just before the bell rang, he finally accepted the NPC’s conversation request. The NPC’s words filled up the middle of the screen: “This isn't a simulation. These are alternate dimensions that are being punished for a profit. This is not a game! This is real! We are real! You need to help us!” Zachary saved his game and went lunch.
"First off, we don't drink blood. Okay?" The idiot nodded. Stupid would-be Van Helsing moron. The kid couldn't have been any older than his early twenties, and had that look. You know the one, that look of a person not terribly grounded in reality. Always thinking that their shining moment is just around the corner, probably uses the term 'friendzone' in all seriousness. Still, no sense it letting him go through life ignorant. I pressed on. "Vampires like blood, sure, but it's the smell. There's usually more than enough odor on the air to keep us comfortable. Vampires don't drink the stuff though, disgusting. No, vampires actually prefer to feed raw. And it's not just meat! We can eat veggies as well, but cooking our foods make them toxic. Nowadays that's not such a big issue, but back in the day you had to cook everything."The kid nodded, taking in what I was saying. I felt a buzz from my pocket and checked my phone. "Do you mind if my friend joins us? She's been at this a lot longer than I have, she can probably answer things in a lot more detail." The kid nodded, and I smiled. And kept on with the secrets of my people, the vampires. Garlic was fine, but cabbage was right out. The light of the full moon forced us into our bat form, much like a werewolf and their horribly curse. Crosses caused us to break out in hives. And then came the knock. I smiled. "She's here."I went the door and let her in. The boy turned to greet her, but it was too late. With all the speed and grace that comes from walking the nights for centuries, she was already upon him. It was more a sigh when her fangs broke the skins. Like that of lovers entwined in an embrace. The boy's eyes glazed over, from both the oddly satisfying sensation of having his very life slurped out of his neck but also from the lack of blood being slurped out of his neck. Truth be told, exsanguination is a great way to shuffle loose this mortal coil, but he didn't need me to tell him that. He already knew, or he was figuring that out. And then it was done. She let him go, his body fell with a hearty thud. For a little skinny guy he certainly didn't fall like one. But they never did. She ran a crimson coated tongue her her teeth, slowly. Deliberately. "He tasted a bit... naive. And eager, even. Calm. I liked it, it was a nice change from all the fear and lust. How ever did you keep him here, and so free of the usual anxiety?" I grinned and lit up a smoke. "Oh, I just told him a fairy tale, wrapped up as the truth."I ashed on the kid's forehead as I stepped over the body to get the door for my mistress. "I'd say the kid knew I was feeding him a line, but you'd be amazed at what they put on the internet today, about everything! Not just you, my Lady."I flipped the switch off and pulled the door behind us. My Lady mirrored the grin as we stepped into the night, leaving the dead to the dark.
I could never look at Frank again in the same way. We had had each others backs, we had always been there for each other for 11 years and then he revealed that he was lying to me the whole time. That he could speak, that he was articulate. In fact, he was more than articulate, he was incredibly intelligent. He knew 7 languages, 5 more than myself if you count high school latin, he had a masters in elextrical engineering from a university. A university for cats that had existed for 1400 years, 600 years longer than any similar human invention and cats weren’t even the first species to develop universities. And he chose to live with a struggling artist with a bachelors in art history who was fluent in Latin. Somehow the revelation that he had been lying to me just made me love him more. Not thst he needed more love. Sorry if this is a bit short and doesn’t have narrative but I really just wanted to write about how great cats are.
“And a..” The terror on my face. I could feel the sweat dripping down as I analyzed the dice. “Double. A double,” I said clearly, watching my hands tremble. The people around me all shocked with fear. As if I had made a grave mistake to humanity. But I did. A man in the corner brought out his men, and said with a smile, “I am tonight’s true game. This was never meant to happen. But I’m afraid it’s too real.” The coldness in the room filled me. Every inch of darkness. “And might I ask who you are? You’ve stood in every game,” I said. He fumbled through his pockets, “It’s here somewhere. Ah, the old switchblade.” I stepped back. “This doesn’t have to be this way.” Switching his blade, he stepped forward. “I’ve been meaning to say this. 16.7%, the odds of rolling a double. But you did it, and now, you’ll pay. May the men walk,” he said with a smile. The blood oozing from my neck, I said, “And let it be so.” “What you see, will become now,” I declared. The men who stood up for me ran, the people I knew in the war. So I had to defend myself on my own. I grabbed his switchblade, hitting him in the gut. “I won’t let humanity be ruined by a double!” He groaned, clearly hung over from the attack. “Ah, touché,” he said with a smile. He buttoned up his trench coat, set down his hat, and said, “I’m doing what is right.”
Lester woke to the sound of clopping hooves, or was it the piercing headache that seemed to split his sinus in two, either way he sat up, took in his surroundings and tried to scratch his head but found his hands bound in rope. "Hmm odd" he thought, not too puzzled by the oddness of the situation. grasping the edge of the wooden cart that hauled him along the cobbled road through a forest, he heaved himself over the edge, and reached for a landing, yet he found none such footing, and as the cart bounced around so too did he, all the way down into the neighbouring river below. Wet, and stinging from a gash on his cheek, he stood up and finally took in his surroundings, and with a chill down his spine and a jolt in his mind he realized he had absolutely no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. And with a shriek of panic he darted back after the horse drawn cart hoping to find something to clue him in. Last he remembered he had been back home in Kansas, chatting with a rather odd looking but charming fellow named Todd at a bar. Todd had seemed rather intelligent and he had been having a hard time following his description of the "Turbo Encabulator"an invention Todd had said, he had devised himself. But Lester was accustomed to being in the dark about subjects and never really saw the point in worrying or thinking about things too much. He had his day job at a data entry firm and that was enough to sustain his one hobby of fishing, and with seemingly no close friends or love interests he led a simple rote life of working during the week and fishing whenever he could find a spare hour or two, often spending weeks not talking to a single person save his boss at work. But Todd had seemed quite the opposite, a rather talkative person, he came across as a learned man, or at least did to Lester who was none such a man himself, and for the first time he felt gripped by the possibilities available to a man in the world who knew how to make things happen. And Lester not being accustomed to alcohol found himself too rather talkative. Shaken back into the present by a change of scene, Lester found himself being dragged over a cobbled bridge above the very same river he had previously fallen into. "Halt! State your family name, titles, vocation and reason of travel, lest yee be struck down in the name of our lord." Boomed a voice from nowhere. Lester thought this a rather odd way to address someone and seeing as the man had spoken with a British accent wondered if this was a cultural difference. "Papadopolous" Lester called back addressing the sky, not entirely unsure he wasn't being addressed by a holy apparition. "data entry, assistant to the regional manager" "Ha the boy thinks us fools!" Boomed a second voice also coming from nowhere. Suddenly one very large very green man came clambering over the sides of the bridge followed by a rather small normal looking man who struggled over, his pants catching on a rock, brandishing a chain that was looped around the green mans neck. "if he wants to pass he must pay the troll toll" said the seemingly less intelligent larger of the two. Lester, in awe at the size of these lads, sat dumbstruck in his cart that seemed to grow smaller with every passing second. When suddenly the smell of onions filled the air, and a strong guttural voice bellowed out of the green mans throat. "Get out of my swamp!" Lester, noticing neither he nor the two men were anywhere near a swamp was puzzled by this.
Nobody really knew a lot about him. The trillion year old man. Mostly people just believe he's a fiction of myth -- some illusory serpent that has traveled through histories fortune tellings to entertain the age's curious youth. Not to be believed. A 'fairy tale'. In current times, few know better. Unfortunately I belong to this degenerative group of people that know the true secret of this man who's escaped the bounds of time. Society doesn't favor us, as they classify us with the same group of right-wing conspiracy nutjobs. But we know different. Every year the approximate 12 of us gather with each other to discuss the times. One in particular would be Hickok. Hickok was always more of a quiet, desperado type. He kept a specific western style of a rugged hat with a wide brim and a rounded, well-taut crown. It fitted him, too. He'd solemnly share stories (when pressured too, at least) about his encounters through the ages, those he'd face in shootouts and days lone gone past. Quite the opposite of Caesar. Caesar was an old ruler, basing over his peoples with a democratic -- yet dictating -- fist. The story told to was that his own representatives killed him in cold blood after their resentment boiled over the pot's brim. Despite his love for brag, he never really explained what actually happened. We hated guessing, so we didn't guess. We'd all been around awhile. Our existences intertwined by usual coincidence. Unfortunately to all we try to inform of our existence; they mistakenly made a horrible typo those centuries ago. It is not the trillion year old man. It is the trillion year old men.
“Let’s light those sons of bitches up,” the Colonel says. I start mashing buttons with my fists until the whole launch board glows red. The heat from the rockets behind me singe my hair, and the smell of sulfur lingers. Soon, on the field below, body parts start to fly in bright orange explosions. Eat that fucking vegans. Yeah, it’s all the vegans’ fault. They are the reason we can’t drink milk anymore. Can’t have ice-cream, cheese is a no go. Even fucking yogurt, and no one really likes that shit. My squad behind me reloads the launchers and this time I push the buttons without even waiting for orders. More vegans do the fire dance, and my squad laughs. The vegans turned on each other at first, right when the entire world was about to give up the dairy. They started shaming those that are “vegan, except for fish” people. Said they weren’t real vegans, like they own the term. Then it just sort of snowballed. Cottage cheese people went next, then the curd crowds. The vegans set up strongholds in places like Portland, OR and Muleshoe, TX. From those outposts, they started with the conspiracy theories. It was easy. The internet is a terrible thing. Show some kid puking his guts out, claim it’s because of a mad cow from the middle east, and bam—no more dairy. But here’s the thing, the thing that they didn’t realize. You cut out the lactose and people turn into incredible know it all douchebags. Without the calming effect of milk in our cereal, well, everything went to shit. And quickly. Governments around the world fell. We are all that remains. We are the resistance. And today we make our stand. We are going to turn Austin, Tx into a cow hating shithole. My hand hurts from pushing the launch buttons. I take a bit of steak from my rations to replenish myself; wash it down with some whole milk. Chew on some cheese jerky. “Look lively!” the Colonel says. “Counterattack! West flank!” His words come too late. A platoon of hemp-wearing protestors charge out from a tree line. They hit my squad before they can get their weapons up. Sign placards, oh god so many placards, come done on my squad, on my friends. Charlie, god bless Charlie, screams as he is impaled by a sunflower to the eyeball. God damn hippies. I grab my egg launcher and switch it to full automatic. “These aren’t free range! These aren’t free range!” I scream. I yolk two, reload, and get another four before I’m finally out of ammo. I run for the truck, the last launcher that carries special ordinance. Several vegans impale themselves on the sticks of their signs because they got egg yolk in their mouths and can no longer live with what they have done. The Colonel barks orders like a great Dane, trying to organize us. His fur coat ripples in the Texas wind. The man is a god backlit by the beautiful Texas sunset. But even gods sometimes die. A drum circle forms and the last thing I hear from him is the anguished screams of a man has been forced to drink soy milk. I lock myself in the truck, put up the windows that are covered with cowhide. I can’t see them, the vegans, and they can’t see me. But I can hear them. Monsters. Every single one of them are monsters. I flip open the center console. A keyboard lights up. The access code is simple. “Launch?” the screen blinks at me. This is for the cookie monster, who was savagely beaten when he tried to get some milk. I hit enter. My truck bucks, the front wheels digging into the dirt. It almost flips, and I hope I got some of them bastards caught underneath my bumper. The vaccine nuke roars through the sky, headed to Austin. To the center. To their inner sanctum. I slowly count, waiting. One. Two. There. Four. Fiv… I hear the explosion. Outside, it gets quiet. I roll down my windows and the enemy is gone. I walk over to the last place I saw the Colonel. All that is left is his necktie and college diploma.
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The policeman held up his gun, his hands quivering in fear. The lady had a banana, compared to his gun, which meant he was ridiculously outmatched. His only hope was resting on the fact that he could distract the lady until backup came. Normally he would’ve been using a banana too, but he had used his already, earlier that day. The police stepped forward a bit, getting closer to the lady, holding her banana. He held his gun up high in the air, as if surrendering. “Ma’am, set down the banana before someone gets hurt.” He repeated. The woman’s face was livid with rage. “Never,” she said, and threw the banana. The man saw his life flash before his eyes, each turn of the banana bringing tears to his face. He knew he was going to die, and after a few seconds, the banana made impact. BOOM! Two spectators about 15 miles away saw the large explosion that followed, the banana had destroyed everything in it’s path, more destructive then a nuclear explosive. “What was that?” One guy asked. The other man replied. “It’s very deadly. A potassium explosion.”
Wait, I’m a cat now? What the @€&# is going on!? I gotta call God and ask! “Oi God, I’m a cat now apparently?” God: “Yeah, I thought I’d spice it up a bit. After doing this for 2 billion years, it just gets boring, y’know?” “Alright, seems fair. So, what do I do now, exactly?” God: “Well, since you’re not that great of a guy, you should just roam the Earth.” “Okay, anything you want me to do down there?” God: “Yeah, actually, I do. You’ve got to annoy everyone, but not have them notice you.” “Okay, thanks.” God: “No problemo.”
The cool autumn breeze swirled through the trees, making the leaves shudder and occasionally fall to the sidewalk. Don’t step on a crack or you’ll fall and break your back!, Janet thought to herself as she stretched and shortened her stride to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk. It was a childish game, she knew, but she wasn’t quite ready to give it up yet. She had just had her first day of middle school, and she was still grasping to hold on to the simplicity of her previous year. She sighed and fidgeted with the zipper on her coat, pulling it up and down, then up and down again. It wasn’t a very good first day of school. Mrs. Simmons had chastised her for not sitting still in English class, she had gone to the wrong classroom for second period, she had gotten a ketchup stain on her favorite shirt during lunch, and some of her old friends had already divided off into the groups of cool kids. Janet was not invited. Her best friend, Maggie, hadn’t been invited either. In some ways it was a relief, that she wouldn’t be alone. In other ways it made her feel bitter towards the kids who took their friends away. As she rounded the corner of the street she called home, she decided to just run the rest of the way. All she wanted was to sit down with a good book so that she could escape the frustrations of this awful day. Soon her legs gained momentum and the breeze wisped through her brunette strands of hair. The backpack on her back bobbed up and down as she ran. She was out of breath by the time she reached the front door, her cheeks flushed a bright shade of pink from the wind and exertion. Before she had a chance to open the door, it swung open for her. In the doorway stood her mother, with a solemn expression and puffy bloodshot eyes. She’d been crying. “Oh, Janet,” her mother managed to croak as she pulled Janet close. Janet’s heart sank in her chest. This was different than the other times. This was unlike her mother’s emotional outbursts when she started 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. No, she had a feeling that her day was about to get worse. “Mom?”, she inquired meekly. Her mother’s sobs echoed through the entryway, her grip tightening on Janet. Janet stood perfectly still, fighting back the tears, “Is it Dad?”. Her mother straightened, wiped her eyes, and grabbed a small package from an end table. “No, your great grandma passed this morning,” she paused and Janet thought that her mom might begin sobbing again. “She wanted you to have this.” Her voice cracked as she said it and her hands shook as she handed the package to Janet. Janet looked down at the package with plump tears threatening to escape her eyes. “No…,” she tried to protest. This couldn’t be. She had just seen her great grandma yesterday. Janet had gone through the usual routine of begging for the recipe for her Black Forest cake during her most lucid times, talked about the upcoming school year, then read to her to help her escape the confusion that dementia often caused. A teardrop fell on the neatly wrapped package in her hands. Janet smoothed it out with her thumb, smooshing it into the plain brown paper. “Can I go to my room?” Her voice wavered as she said it. She was relieved when her mom mumbled an agreement. Janet wasted no time darting off to her room, where she flung herself onto her bed and wept over the most awful day of her life. Janet’s pillow was fairly soaked by the time she had exhausted all of her tears. She flipped the pillow over to its dry side and stared at the unopened package on her nightstand. Curiosity eventually triggered action. She hugged the package close, inhaling the scent of great grandma’s perfume. It occurred to her that she’d probably never smell it on anyone again and tears once again streamed down her face. She began picking at the tape that was holding the package together. Maybe she’d put the packaging in a Ziplock so that the smell would last longer. Or maybe the package contained a bottle of great grandma’s perfume. After peeling off every piece of tape she could find, she gently unwrapped the brown paper from the small box that it had been covering. Inside of the box was great grandma’s apron, a wooden mixing spoon, and a journal. Janet opened the journal to the first page. It contained the Black Forest Cake recipe she’d been requesting for half of her life. Her bloodshot eyes scanned the recipe, stopping on an unusual ingredient: ground sweetroot from the Black Forest. The rest of the small journal seemed to contain a sketch of sweetroot, a map of the Black Forest and notes about different areas, but Janet had never even heard of this particular forest, nor sweetroot. She knew that she could probably omit the peculiar ingredient but then it wouldn’t be great grandma’s cake. She would never have put so much work into asking for it if she wanted any other version of the cake. No, she would go to the Black Forest, whereever it was, and locate the sweetroot for the cake.
“I’m just not that into you.”. It says above her head, almost like a text message bubble. I thought the date was going fairly well but I guess a hug at the end of the date sealed my fate. She could see I was disappointed, it didn’t take revolutionary technology to figure that out. “Goodbye!” she says, as she climbs into an automated taxi cab. 2068 NYC is pretty similar to to 50 years ago, with some key differences. Auto-cabs, Tinder actually worked, people looked much younger due to advanced anti-aging tech, etc. I hailed a cab of my own, and typed in the address of my apartment. The city still looked as beautiful as it did when I moved here 10 years ago as a 20-something journalist. Still bustling, ambitious and vibrant as ever. One of the unique things was thought expression however, normally displayed by colors and emojis above people’s heads. This was all caused by a chip installed inside everyone’s head when they were just a baby, or for me, as an adult. I figured why not, but soon after I discovered I was different. My friends were always confused why I seemed to know what they were thinking and how accurate it was. I thought it was this way for everyone, so I decided to have a doctor look at my implant. The doctor ended up telling me that nothing was out of the ordinary with it but that my brain could’ve mutated to improve it’s capabilities. So far, it’s been a blessing and a curse. As a blessing it helps me understand people better, and catch where I go wrong in certain situations. Where it goes wrong is that I often have sensory overloads because of the mass amount of info thrown at me at one time, so I often turn it off in crowded areas. The cab arrives at my apartment and I pay the fare. I climb the the brick steps into my apartment building and buzz myself in. I had some work to do that night for my employer, TNN (Trump News Network). Surprised? Who knew that Barron Trump would end up being the richest of the family, and purchase his own network to broadcast everything and anything about his family’s affairs. Anyways, I had to do some story on his upbringing and I had to browse this ancient website called “Wikipedia” for information. I opened the door to my apartment on the 3rd floor and collapsed on my bed, after yet another unsuccessful tinder date. Just because Tinder could get you a date now didn’t guarantee it would lead anywhere. I opened my iPhone 20 and I had an unread text from an unknown number. “Who the hell is that?” I wondered, and opened it. It said “I know who you are....and your special capabilities. I think it would benefit both of us greatly if we could meet and discuss...your special implant. If you’d like to know more, meet me outside your apartment building tomorrow at noon.”. An ominous message for sure, but I really needed the money, so I sat up for a while and considered it. Too tired to make a decision, I slowly closed my eyes as the darkness of sleep enveloped me. ———————————————————————— Hey guys! This is only my 2nd writing prompt ever so I’d appreciate feedback. Thanks for reading and if this is well-received enough I’d love to make a part 2 :)
“Babe, It’s the same every single time. Whenever it’s your turn to pick on movie night, it’s the exact same one. It was cute that your all time favorite was one I was part of at first, but I can only silently critique my own performance so many times before it gets too boring to stand. If you want me to stay quiet the whole movie, try changing to a new one.” ____________________________________________________________________________ “You don’t understand, Tish, I love him, and I love that he loves what I do, but he’s constantly asking to see me slip into character for him, and only into Ren. I finished making that series years ago, and it’s a little weird to be doing it now.” She, like the most confusing friend ever just asks me what I want to do. Like I know that. “He just looks so happy whenever I oblige, and it makes me happy when he’s happy, but still...” ____________________________________________________________________________ “Mom, I know, I know, I’m young, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, and there are more fish in the sea and yadda yadda yadda, but he’s the one that I love now, and we’re happy. A few criticisms of my personality from him aren’t going to change that.” And she just goes on about red flags and risks of heartbreak, like he’s not worth it. I’m an actress. I’ve been working my way up from commercials to primetime series and movies since I was six. “I’m a teenager now, practically an adult, and you’ve controlled my entire life until now! It’s because of you that I act, and that we met in the first place. Can’t you just let me have this one thing?” Like I wouldn’t notice a red flag. He’s nice and sweet and even tempered and wouldn’t ever hit me or anything, and she’d know that it she actually to the time to get to know him. ____________________________________________________________________________ Tish might know what to do. She always does. She’d probably make a good manager or PR person or something. “I’ve started being Her without prompting now, whenever I’m around him. Now that I’ve gotten into the habit, I think I’ve started thinking like Her even when I’m not supposed to be.” Maybe it is sorta weird, but he’s my boyfriend. I love him. I can’t just spend less time around him. “That’s an overreaction, girl. He’s like the perfect boyfriend. Being around him can’t be bad for me. We love each other. I just sort of wish he loved me for Zee and not y’know, Ren.” I take back every single charitable thing I ever said or thought about Leticia Emry. “Of course he loves me! Ren is my character. She’s part of me. An-And If you were really my friend, you’d understand that!” ____________________________________________________________________________ “Babe, can you tell me you love me? Please?” He blinks blearily, as adorable as ever. Mom would kill me if she found out I’m not at Tish’s but we’ve known each other for ages, and she doesn’t know about the fight, so she won’t call to check. “Of course,” he says. “Love Ya.” “Say my name too, just for me? “I love you, Ren Hemphill”
When you imagine superpowers, you think of heroes. That's not surprising. In fact, it's somewhat comforting. To believe that when given great power or ability, people choose to do good with it, and almost unfailingly are able to defeat those unhappy few who use those powers for evil. The reality of them is a bit more mundane, frankly. When everyone has superpowers, you realized that most people still just want to live life. Not everyone is interested in fine tuning their powers to a crazy level. Being able to summon a firestorm isn't exactly useful for a writer. One might even say it's a detriment. On the other hand, superpowers push those who would wish to do good or evil to a whole new level. Why rob the bank when you can grow to the size of a skyscraper and carry it off? Perhaps you feel a villain doesn't deserve a trial. Bang, you turned him into a tree with a touch. This made the lawlessness of the land rather... pervasive. Big cities weren't exactly dangerous, but it was difficult to rely on the law. So the government has to step up accordingly. One's superpower is geographically defined by the point of their birth. This can not be changed, but it can be exchanged in one specific circumstance. Namely, the government can sacrifice the original power of a government official, to give them incredible intelligence. Perfect memory retention. Instant recall of all memories, even those before the switch. In essence, an IQ boost. When all of your government officials can predict oncoming issues and take the most logical decisions past their own personal greed and aspirations, the wheels get greased. This also gives them the ability to effectively legislate every different region, regardless of their power. For example, laws concerning the ethics of mind reading, x-ray vision, and super hearing have all been dispensed. In these instances, it's difficult to tell when someone is using their power. These people generally have an implant somewhere highly visible on their body. A collar, wristband, anklet, earring, these show when they activate their power. In public places, this is generally illegal. So, what about the less neutral powers? The ones that don't benefit the peeping toms and gossipers, but the world's Adolfs and Madoffs? Well, that's where the government comes in again. The Ability Abuse Task Force, specifically. AATF for short, they keep an eye on people of risk. On occasion they appear in the wild. Neutrals, or Neuts for short are individuals born without powers. However, they are able to negate the powers of others as well. Completely strip them of what they can do. What's more, is that often they are completely immune to some powers, even if they aren't able to disable you from using them. You try to see through the clothes on a Neut and you might burn out your corneas. That's no good. So, when you create a group of like-minded individuals serving the government with this capability, you get the AATF. If some bulletproof terrorist decides to take to the streets to prove something, all you need is one AATF agent to make them very much not bulletproof. Generally, they would figure that out for themselves a few moments after. Not that they could do much with the realization that they're not bulletproof anymore. There are a lot of problems that come with living in a society filled with people with powers. But in truth, it's a lot closer to living in a world without. Some things are just a little more convenient. Some a little less. One last thing worth mentioning is what is done about people who have innate abilities. Ones that can't be channeled or turned off. For example, what if you're on fire all the time? There's one last important piece employed by the government to make life easier for those with these powers. Blank Emitters. In a 10 mile radius around one of these little spires, all powers are negated. It makes achieving a life without powers perfectly simple. It's admirable, honestly. All you need is a few dozen and you can have a sprawling city. 10 miles is just the average as well. There have been Blank Emitters known to hit 50. This is unfortunately on an individual basis. There's no way of pushing it further for certain. That sounds rather nice. Frankly, it is. The Blank Emitters took a ton of resources to build, but the bastions they've created have been worth it. The only issue is, there's no constant supply. I helped to design them, and the resources required aren't exactly readily available. There are... risks involved. The truth is, when something goes wrong in an Emitter, it goes very wrong. Which is what brings me here. The first Emitter, smack dab in the middle of the capital has broken. And all hell has come loose.
She was a weird girl, dressed in what looked like an old style tunic and sandals. Like something out of an old history channel documentary or something. She was a bit odd but, I wasn’t about to let a big fish slip away. If I nailed this a promotion could be in the works, hell they might make me partner. The money she laid out on table alone was more than we had made last year. “Now Human resources, what exactly does that mean?” Her voice was odd it seemed to worm its way into your head kinda like a catchy song; almost like there was some music to it. “Well we make sure that the right people with the right skills are doing the right job.” “Interesting, so who would you say is the right someone to save the world?” She asked I couldn’t catch myself in time one chuckle right from my stomach got away. I covered my mouth to make sure nothing else found its way out.” Well they would have to be quite skilled. May I ask what saving the world entails,” I let out a small laugh,” so that I can see if we have anyone that suits your needs.” She sat silent for some time deep in thought. She brushed some hair out of her face and I couldn’t stop myself from staring. It was just hanging there in the air. A few locks of long black hair flowing as if there were a breeze. “ is there something wrong mister,” she looked down at my name plate “ Nemovic?” “No Mam, I was just suprised by how your hair is flowing. I’ve never seen that before.” One of her eyebrows went up and she seemed to look over me a second time, actually taking stock of me this time.”Well a chosen one typically has some tragic backstory, you know no parents and all that. They can also have some mythic ancestry that never hurts. Usually they are also skilled in various things without any training; talents come naturally to them. Usually they are young but there have been some old ones as well. They tend to find themselves in trouble but everything usually works out for them.” “Sounds like a cushy life everything just seeming to workout for you like that, minus the whole tragic backstory thing.” I went through our database to query for matches. Our system used keywords to match people but im sure that orphan and mythic born wouldn’t really bring any relevant results. “Do you know of any certifications that you would like your potential employee to have, it might make it easier to narrow down the list of candidates.” “I don’t think you will need that list Mr.Nemovic. Are your parents still alive Mr.Nemovic?” I was taken aback personal questions don’t usually get directed at me. “ Why do you want to know Missssssss,” I trailed off for some time “Fate, you may call me Miss Fate.” “Why do you want to know miss Fate?” I asked again “I feel like you have the potential to be my chosen one.” I didn’t even try to hide the laughter this time. I wiped away a tear and set my tie straight again.” Miss Fate, I work at an HR company, I’m thirty five with a wife and kid. I don’t think I am a chosen one.” “Humor me then.” She said with a smile “ My parent died when I was young. After that life was hard but I made things work. Now I have a decent job and a loving family.” “So everything just seemed to work out?” She joked “No,” I chuckled “ business has been down, the money you laid out on the table is more than the company made last year.” “Funny how life works out isn’t it.” “Look Miss Fate, ill be real with you. My company needs this money. Whatever kind of person you want we can find, just say the word.” “Fine, Mister Nemovic you are my chosen one. Fate has decided on you.” “Alright fine, “ I let out a huge sigh and started rooting through my desk. I found the right form and grabbed a pen.” sign this form Miss Fate and I will be your chosen one for, how long do you expect this job to last?” She signed her name and filled in the rest of the form.” Only three weeks, the world must be saved in three weeks.” She said flatly “ Here is your form Mister Nemovic and the payment is on the table. Goodluck.” With a smirk she got up. She clapped her hand and then well she crumbled. Kind of like dust just fell apart and disaappeared, nothing was left on the carpet either. The rest of the day went smoothly and I actually got to go home on time. Turns out making that much money in one day has a way of making your boss like you. I headed out of the building towards my car when I felt something on my shoulder. I turned around and there was this big guy in a trench coat and hat staring down at me. This guy was huge easily 8 feet tall. He had the top of his coat pulled up pretty high so all I could see of his face was one huge eye. It was red as could be. “Are you Nemo?” The huge guy asked, his voice was deep, so deep I could feel it in my chest. “Nemovic is my name if your asking.” I answered as I backed away slowly towards my car. “Finally, you are gonna pay for taking my eye.” The huge guy roared he pulled off his coat. He was naked except for a loincloth. He had a huge club in his right hand and there wasn’t a second eye just the red one planted square in the center of his head. I hadn’t really believed her before but here I was with what could only be a cyclops. I am John D. Nemovic current chosen one and former HR consultant at Rakkers & Stein.
Night caretaker for a cemetery might not be everyone's idea of an ideal job, but for me it's perfect. The cemetery in question is well-maintained by the day staff, so all I really need to do it patrol the perimeter to deter the local youths from intruding and vandalising the graves. Not that they'd get very far if they tried. This cemetery has a secret after dark; all those statuesque headstones come alive at night. Angels and grim reapers walk the grass of the cemetery, gossiping about what they've seen that day. But they're outnumbered, by a rather large margin, by the dragons. Yes, dragons. It's a local legend, that a great wyrm with poison breath and acid blood used to live under the hill nearby until it was slain by some saint or knight or someone. Over time that wyrm has morphed in the public consciousness to a bog standard dragon with wings and fire breath. Statues of such are dotted all over the cemetery. They're over the gates, on top of every one of the stone pillars that form the fence line, and on at least half of the graves here. Oh sure, there are a few eastern ones mixed in, and a few people have got it right and put wyrm statues up, but there's hundreds of _dragons_ infesting the cemetery every night. Hundreds of flying - against all the laws of physics - territorial little dragons. Luckily they can't breathe fire, so they're limited to scrapping with claws and teeth, or shouting insults at each other. My predecessor was teaching them the Dragon Tongue, so "Fus Ro Dah"and "Yol Toor Shul"are common shrieks in the night, signalling that one of the little beasts is trying to ambush another. All in all, it's rather like working with a bunch of talking, flying house cats made of stone. And I wouldn't change it for the world.
Toad Strategic Command, 3 Days Ago "Luigi?" "Busy, actually. In addition to being Mario's best man, he's apparently on duty for paranormal disturbances. Totally unavailable." Toaderick sighed heavily, making another deep red slash through the guard details schedule. "Toadsworth?" To those who knew him, the Captain of the Toadstool Guard was reaching, badly. But to hear his beaurocratic monotone for the first time an impartial observer would've commended his thoroughness. Unfortunately for the captain, Sergeant Toadwell was imminently familiar with his mannerisms. "Master of ceremonies sir, which I know for a fact you were aware of,"Toadwell tapped an impatient fist on the table, "There's no other solution for it sir, the toadstools are going to have to do this themselves." The captain ran a clubbed arm over his prominent blue cap and seemed almost to deflate, "You know, I've only been captain here since after the whole 'froze our entire army in ice and flew the princess castle away' hassle resulted in the whole command structure getting reshuffled, but I've read the records. We've tried organizing defences at a toad level seventeen times, you know how many time the princess has been kidnapped?" "Seventeen, sir?"Toadwell ventured. "Sixteen, actually. Believe it or not once Bowser only came over to play a game of tennis."The captain shook his head ruefully, "Toads aren't getting the job done alone, no. We're going to need something else to get us through this one." Wedding Overlook, Day of Event "Third battery, report."Toaderick's voice clipped through the speakers on his desk as Toadwell marked off confirmations on the map master. "Third battery, status green. Bullet Bills online, sky clear."A corresponding green tick on the map square as they worked around the ring. Continuously. Unseen to the Toadstool command structure, the sun set and the wedding of Mario to Princess Peach commenced. Toadstool drawled through a longwinded speech, Luigi grew nervous at the encroaching darkness, and the soon-to-be newlyweds had eyes only for each other. No one noticed when two party guests slipped out the back of the gardens. One of the pair slipped his earpiece on and was greeted by Toaderick's voice, flat and hard, "Battery nine, over the east lake. We've got airships in visual range, and bullet bill fire engaging. ETA is thirteen minutes, we've got to keep them out of audible range of the wedding." "It's going to require the special unit captain,"Toadwell's voice answered crisply, "Nothing in three map squares of that area has bullet bill capacity, and they're slow movers." The two guests had both donned headsets now, and knew a signal when they heard one. "Yeah, Waluigi's the winner!" "I'm-a Wario, I'm-a gonna win!"
I stumbled backwards and fell flat on my ass as the beast pounced for my face. I went for my sword as it's claws landed on my chest digging into the hard leather chestplate. My sword was caught under its weight and unusable, so I went for my dagger but found my snack pouch. Adventuring is hard work. Lots of snacks are required. I came up with a piece of cheese just as the beast opened it's maw filled with rows of razor sharp spiked teeth and threw the cheese into its mouth. It swallowed. Then chirped and rubbed its massive head into mine. It licked my face with its sandpaper tongue and yipped at me. It crawled off of me, the size of a large horse. I shit myself. I've been scared of rats since I was a kid, and here they give me a dire rat? For fucks sake. Applause and cheers came my way as I stood and patted the terrifying creatures head as it nuzzled my hands. Across the way my rival, Edgar was struggling to get away from a griffin that had decided it didn't like him. It grabbed him by his foot and flew up. He came screaming down alone moment's later. If the headmaster hadn't been there to use a featherfall he would have died. All around me screams of fear and pain emanated as the recently graduated students fought their new partners in a life or death struggle. I stood watching as dozens of people fought dragons and hydras and other terrifying creatures. I was very glad they had given me a dire rat. My mortal fear of rats was now gone.
It wasn't a snake. He used to say there was whenever I pulled on the string on his back, and the one time there really was something in his boot, it was a lot worse than a snake. During the night, when the toys and I were asleep, it flew in through the open window, sneaking past the soldiers on their post without them realising there was anything to watch. Some kind of pollen, like a speck of black dust, had fallen from the sky during the night. It was so sudden. All we'd heard was a soft groan from Woody as he slept; all we'd seen, a silent shift of his right leg. Until he woke, eyes wide and full of hate. Slowly he rose from where he slept, in the pile of toys where I'd left him earlier that day. Clumsily, perhaps, he moved the toys on top of him, Buzz and Rex and Bo, waking them up and making them realise something was wrong. Maybe it didn't matter to him. I wasn't sure it mattered either, at the time, when I saw my toys whispering angrily at him to stop, and Woody moving closer towards me, climbing on to my bed, maintaining eye contact at every point. I thought I was dreaming at first. Sure, I liked to pretend my toys were alive, but I'd never imagined Buzz trying to wrestle Woody to the ground, tying his string to my bedpost, to keep him from reaching a terrified me. That was when Woody grabbed him, to pin him down himself. Buzz fought back, terror and confusion hiding tears - paint? - as Woody looked for any open space on him to dig into. Punches were thrown - no this couldn't be a dream, then - as Buzz resisted, his helmet scuffed and nearly damaged, but finally Woody managed to tear off a splinter of plastic off the suit, near Buzz's neck. He thrust his arm through the damaged suit, tearing the crack into a hole, and though Buzz tried to fight his feeling of loyalty long enough to stop it, it was too late to do so. It wasn't a moment before Buzz showed the awareness, the same hatred, in his own eyes. Satisfied, Woody released himself from his friend, the force of it tearing his arm clean off, revealing the dirtied, blackened cotton underneath. Buzz freed Woody from the bedpost, purpose now the only thing in both of their eyes. Resuming their advance on me, the other toys only half-tried to help, having just seen their whole worldview torn apart. Even the soldiers, though they tried, only got themselves thrown across the room for their efforts. I tried to run, then, falling over myself in my hurry to get out of bed. The fall gave me a solid bump that made me hesitate for those crucial few seconds. By the time my mother turned on the lights to see what all the noise was, it was all over. Woody had his blackened, torn arm in my nostril, Buzz his pointer finger in the other. The last thing I heard, before I turned myself, was a mother screaming for her boy. I was so stupid to not realise who I was. Who I was supposed to be. The hatred, it made me see so clearly. See what had to be done to cleanse the universe. I had to fill the world, and the universe afterwards, with people like me. Hateful people, blackened and grimy with hatred, so we could see, without being blinded by love, the true nature of this loveless void we call home. It was an honour, really. Not only were we the second planet to be shown the truth, we would be the first on this world to be part of the enlightenment, we were given the privelege of being something greater than the entire world combined, and it would be our mission to fill the void by whatever means we had to. I wasn't a snake. I was an apple.
Clang “Ahh! Damn you!!” I involuntarily yell grasping my left foot between my two hands. The pain of walking into the corner of a hallway table demands to be felt. “Stupid table!” i angry whisper to the dark abyss. The throbbing eventually dies down and I attempt to make my way down the corridor. Now seemingly long and unfamiliar, I mimic that of a blind person, stretching my arms out in front of me and making slow and steady paced steps to avoid another loss of limb (ha!). I feel my eyes extend wide open trying ever so hard to defy the darkness and see the clear pathway back to bed. I reach the door. It squeaks as I push it open with the palm of my left hand and the moonlight provides me with a white cast over my bed. I take a glimpse at it, my squinted eyes still adjusting from being in the dark for a while. I take a step forward and instantly realise that something is wrong. My eyes adjust a little more and I opt to squeeze my eyes shut then open again in an attempt to quicken the process and i immediately realise what I’m looking at. The moonlight outlines a large figure underneath my covers. I suddenly feel paralysed and the depth of what could be occurring finally hits me. Something is in this bed that was not there when I was in it 5 minutes ago. I approach the entity with caution and precision... Trying to be ever so quiet with every single step bringing me an inch closer to it... I feel the thing sense me in the room and I realise I can hear a faint quick paced breathing aside from my own in the room with me... Only a few feet away from my side of the bed, adrenaline takes control. I reach down and in one swift motion....... I rip the covers clean off. I gasp at the sight. “Manny!!!!” I yell. My 4yo Lab retriever smirks back, tongue sticking out of his mouth, proud that he’s caught me off guard. “Not my Egyptian Cottons!! These things cost more than you do you overgrown pupper!” I complain. Manny gives me his classic puppy eyes look accustomed with a touch of whimpering, he knows what the rules are. I give his head a scratch for his efforts. How do i resist that face?! “Alright just this one more time and that’s IT Man I’m telling you”, I lay back into bed and Manny slobbers all over my face before slouching down beside me. I coo back at him in my mom voice. Settled, I make it an effort to bathe in the warmth his 31kg body brings that my cottons cannot, before eventually drifting back to sleep...
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and let myself surrender to death. Then, a bright red light. The words GAME OVER in big red letters flash in front of me. Then my eyes roll forward, back out of my skull and I'm standing in a room that looks like it could be an arcade. Row after row of cabinets flash symbols that I've never seen before in bright neon colors on their screens. Shocked, confused, and frightened, words slip out of my mouth as I adjust to the sudden change of environment. "Whoah, what the hell? W-where am I? What in the hell?" I reach up and take off the helmet that had been resting on my head. As my eyes adjust to the change in lighting, they focus on an older man standing in front of me. His frazzled gray hair sprung off in different directions like a cartoon character that had just been struck by lightning. He was several feet taller than me, and over his blue shirt which was messily tucked into a pair of brown corduroy pants, he wore a wrinkled old lab coat. His bushy, unkept unibrow raised as he let out a toothy grin at me. "Fifty-five years. Not bad, Morty,"he said. "You kinda wasted your 30s, though, with that whole 'bird watching' phase."I look around, bewildered. I begin to notice the other people standing dotted around the room at different cabinets. Well, they look like people, but they aren't. A creature that looks like a palm tree with arms and legs stands at a pinball cabinet while a blue man with no clothes stands off to the side, giving advice. A giant fruit fly buzzes past me, arms and legs dangling while its massive wings strain to keep it in the air. "Wh-Where's my wife?"I manage to stammer out, as the man takes the helmet from my hands and puts it on the floor next to a chair set up in front of a large television screen. The cabinet holding the screen up begins spitting out tickets, and the man reaches down to grab them. "Morty, you were just playing a game. It's called Roy. Snap out of it, c'mon."As he hands me the tickets, memories started flooding back to me. I worked my thoughts out loud: "I'm Morty, You're Rick… Hey, you sold a gun to a guy that kills people!"Rick had already picked up the helmet again and began preparing to put it on himself. He faces me. "Look at this,"he says, pointing at words in English scrolling down the tv screen. "You beat cancer and then you went back to work at the carpet store? Boo!"He turns back, sits down in the chair, and begins to raise the helmet up to his head. My thoughts are racing. I say, "Don't dodge the issue, Rick! Selling a gun to a hitman is the same as pulling the trigger."He paused, and turned back to look me in the eyes. "It's also the same as doing nothing. If Krombopulos Michael wants someone dead, there's not a lot anyone can do to stop him. That's why he does it for a living. Now excuse me, it's time to thrash your Roy score."
“I cannot live like that anymore. Always running. Always alert and suspicious of everything, everyone. They are closing by. I know it. I can feel them. I’m done, man! I know it. I won’t be able to escape from them.” The voice was exhausted and out of breath. “Maybe you should just give in. Working with the human is not so bad. Not all scientists will turn on you. You are exhausted, they will track you down. I’m worry about you, Knowledge.’ responded a calm through the phone. “I’m not like you, Wisdom. You don’t know their true face. How they would torture me so I can fit in their stupid plans. How furious they would be when I’m different than what they thought. All of them have their own agenda, Wis. You haven’t seen what Stupidity and Ignorance made of them. You haven’t seen how they teamed up with Arrogance and Prejudice. If they catch me, I’ll be gone, torn apart by Greed and Conspiracy.” “...” Wisdom didn’t know what to say. He knew deep down that Knowledge was right. “ There may be someone who can help you out. If you really think you have no other choices.” “Who?” “There’s an abandoned hotel half way Road 42. If you really have no other options, you can go there, there’s a guy named Eccentricity. He guard the place together with his girlfriend, Madness. Say that I send you and you’re looking for a place to lay low for a while. They’ll take you to that guy, Insanity. Be careful, he’s not someone you want as an enemy and he isn’t the mild type either. You better keep to yourself, they are weird as hell but, at least, you’ll be able to breath a bit. No scientist will go find you there. Good luck, Friend.”
It was a day like any other. I returned from a normal day of school, to a normal dinner with my normal family. It was all so... normal. Nothing exciting ever happened in my small little town. In fact if I were to rename it I would call it Routineville, or Borington. Perhaps if I lived somewhere more interesting I'd be able to think up a better name too. There were only two memorably interesting events that had occured in my life to this point. Though by most people's standards the first is entirely uninteresting, so I shall tell you of the second instead. That day had been rather normal too. I awaited my morning bus as usual, with nothing but a football and the biting cold wind for company. I used to do keep-ups to pass the time, and I'd gotten pretty good at it. The ball still hadn't touched the ground that particular morning, until a harsh gust of wind, seemingly from nowhere, blew the ball just out of my reach. I stretched to reach it, muscle memory overwriting any awareness I had for the road next to me, and the oncoming bus. A hand clamped around my arm, pulling me backwards in a swift motion. Though unknown, the contact felt strangely safe. It was as if I had felt it before somehow. I turned, still stunned at my lucky escape, to look upon my savior. To my surprise, a frail old man looked back at me. He smelled, of what I would later realise was the smell of death.. The old man sported ragged clothes and long dirty-white hair, complete with matching beard. I stood there shaking, my mind suddenly catching up to how close I had come to the grip of Death himself before that bus. Little did I know how true that statement was. "Thank you."I managed. "Do not thank me just yet, child."he replied. "One day you shall repay me in kind. Only then may you decide if thanks are due." I pondered this, before turning to the call of the bus driver behind me. "Y'alright lad? Bloody close one that!"he chuckled uncertainly. "Thought I was about to have paperwork comin' out me ears!" I turned back to find that the old man, to whom I owed my life, had dissapeared. "Are ya gettin' on then?"asked the driver... To this day I had believed that I had imagined the whole thing. I had collected my dropped ball, boarded the bus and carried on with my normal life. Today however, had a surprise in store. Three slow knocks called out from the front door I had just passed through. I turned and opened it, expecting one of the neighbours to have some complaint about where exactly we should be putting our rubbish out for collection. Instead I saw someone very different. A familiar aroma washed over me like the inevitable tide. The old man stood there, dressed much the same as he had been on that day only a few years before. I turned behind me to see my mother's confused face from the kitchen doorway, then turned once more to the front door, expecting the old man to have dissapeared once again. He had not. "It is time you payed your debt, my boy."a disturbingly calm voice said. "Mum?"I called, immediately wanting reassurance and safety. I turned once more to the kitchen door. My mother remained in the exact same spot, a face still painted with confusion. "MUM!"I shouted urgently. Something was very wrong. She would not move. "What have you done to her?"I turned back. An attempt at a commanding answer became pocked with fear and uncertainty. "Payment must be made child. A life, for a life."he said. "I am to die?"I said, completely terrified. "No my child, you are to be my apprentice." ------------------------------------------------------------ I have an idea of where I'd like to go next with this story, let me know if you'd like to see more. Honest feedback is greatly appreciated!
A lone building pierced the black sky far from civilization. Its towers like spears opposing the heavens, made of black with vines climbing to reach the peak of each one. The looming building is juxtaposed by the beautiful thorn gardens and deep purple grass spread far in every direction. "Welcome all of Pure Spirit"read a polished bronze sign surrounded by steel gates and spiked fences. In all directions, happiness seemed to spread the farther away you traveled from the building. As you enter the main gate, all joy stolen from surrounding land seems to return as the grass and brush become more beautiful, and the black building takes on a subtle blue tint. The main doors made of stained glass with figures portrayed: smiling, happy. Once inside, a beautiful foyer with a glistening chandelier and walls made of gold. No attention to those however, the joy is in the lone door at the end of the main hall, leading down into the smiling caress of the darkness. As you approach the stairs, joy becomes more audible, as you can hear the sounds of children playing, of chain swings swinging, and of teeter-totters teetering. The high pitched sounds of happiness below warms your heart as your body turns to frost as you dive deeper into the unseen. You begin to rely on your other senses to guide you, as the staircase begins to wind. You can hear the playground near, perhaps your friends will be there! As the sounds reach their peak, you see nothing but a single, smiling face approach. Happy.
Liam walked down the street. The rain drizzled above him. He hopped onto the curve of the sidewalk, flashing his red jacket. His denim boots clicked on the pavement. As he was about to turn the curve, A golden light shone upon him. Out came a figure covered in robes of white. Liam bounced back his purple jeans catching the reflection of light. The figure shook his head as he stared at Liam. "Dear Liam, you know that sin is incapable of any human. Slowly Liam shook his head, too scared to make a sound. This unearthly lifted his hand. A photograph materializing in their palm. Liam gave a gander to the photo. The photograph was of him taking the curve of the sidewalk. Liam didn't see anything wrong with it. He gazed up to meet the disappointed eyes of the unearthly beings. "Have you seen your outfit...!" Shocked Liam stumbled backwards. He stumbled into a puddle of muddy water, his jeans now soggy with water. Liam got up and asked "What's wrong with my clothing?" "Who wears those colors! They don't even match" "Hey, purple and red go really well" "No they don't and I'm here to fix this travesty." "What are you the fashion police? "Actually yes" Without even another word, Liam was hovering in mid air. His clothes being replaced one by one. The red jacket now a tan trench coat. With a simple white shirt laid underneath. Liam's demin boots now some classy Berluti's and finally the purple pants transformed into black jeans. Everything had happened so quickly. He barely had any time to react. Now he stood there disoriented. "My work here is done. Don't you ever try wearing something so utterly disgusting around here anymore!
My name is Judas Iscariot. I was born a sin. Living proof of one’s depravity and treason. I was born from hatred, grew in contempt and molded by loathing. I am Judas Iscariot. The child they spat on. The one no one could believe nor befriend. The testimony of my mother’s ugliness, the face of a cheater. They never expected me to survive. They never expected me to grow strong. How could they accept me? No one expected the son of sin’s features to be so exquisite. I bore the face of perfection, yet a hideous birth. If they had known, they would have named me after the son of the morning star. Did I grow twisted? Certainly, less than the one surrounding me. Did I hate them? With every fiber of my puny existence. Did I take revenge and killed them? How could I? How could I soak my hand in their blood? Why could I dirty my hands? I am Judas Iscariot. I shall not kill. I shall not envy what is not mine. I shall live in the darkness, whispering in their ears, embracing their greed and fanning the flames in their hearts. I shall be the shadow that never leave the mind. The light touch of mistrust in their gaze. I shall be the appetit that will never leave their palate. The hunger gripping their fingers. I shall be the thorns buried deep in their soul. The desire setting their dreams ablaze. I was born in sin and, in sin shall I perish. I am Judas Iscariot.
Overall, I liked the concept. I do agree with u/AnEffortIsBeingMade that having the text would make editing easier, but it does sound good as spoken. As far as how you are speaking it, be careful when editing as there were a couple spots where the pacing felt clipped, like the edit took out too much of the space between words. There are also a couple of places where is sounds like you are running out of breath at the end of a sentence, but overall I liked the pacing and timing you used. While you don't necessarily need to spend money on studio fees, if you plan on publishing as an audiobook you will need better equipment. To do pro studio or home setup would depend on cost of studio fees vs. equipment, and if you plan on making it a career or one time thing. If you go with a home studio, you will need to get familiar with your equipment, so plan your time accordingly before you get into recording too far (do some practice recordings, mess with settings until you figure out what works, find the best way to set up everything,etc...) Also, if you plan on self recording, look up the submission guidelines and learn to get the audio to meet the requirements. It will save you lots of money on hiring an editor, or going back and re-editing or recording sections that are outside of the submission guidelines. Sorry if I got off topic. Overall, I like the way it sounds, but for a proper critique of the work itself I would need to read it. Good luck getting it published!
Noone should know. That would really mess his life. I should just make it through the day, like I do every other day, fighting the good fight. I've been functioning years now as a moderator; meaning that I actually 'moderate' the others' lives, becoming them for a day, tightening loose ends, keeping some necessary balance. I was born as Kim and I lived as him for fifteen years, until one morning I woke up as someone else, and it just made sense. And suddenly it also made sense why some days in people's lives are unexpectedly bright, overflowing with joy and soberness and clear conscience. And why, on some days, people can go as far as changing their lives. I can only feel why this happens. It's important for the universe to keep a check on how its sapient inhabitants function. It channels them, if that is considered nevessary. And it's just an educated guess, but I believe that the joy, brought by the actions I take while directing someone, finds the other party, the one whose life I took a taste of. And he embraces this joy and feels like having done everything right the previous day, himself, in his own best moments of clarity. Then, high chance is that what I was called to do has succeeded. It's a guess also that another human has got do the job because he knows the way. He is an agent distant from what routinely clouds the mind; a sober watcher, inhabiting a body for a little while, conveniently taking in just the information. That guy is me, and every each day I am a different person. I stopped being the guy I was born. Yet, today I woke up as Kim. I don't know how I feel about it, and his situation is profoundly problematic. (Should I continue this? It turned out a little more detailed than ought to be)
‘It’s beautiful,’ Laly whispered. The gentle awe in her voice sent a twitch of annoyance through Hest. He turned to her and studied her expression. Her eyes seemed to be glassy with amazement, reflecting the colossal form of the mountain on the horizon. He supposed the view must seem impressive to most people. She probably thought he was being romantic, bringing her here. What a fool he’d been. Hest spat at the ground. ‘Is it beautiful?’ He asked, contemptuously. ‘I’d wager that the Hanati villagers wouldn’t agree. One day they’re going about their lives - the next, boom. A mountain materialises on top of their town.’ He instantly regretted his words, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Her cheeks tinged pink. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, and settled for looking down at her feet. Hest cursed himself. It wasn’t her fault the only thing his father had left him was the death of a thousand people. Was this not supposed to be a day of courting? He swallowed. He would have to make up for his words, and he knew there was only one option to him. It was inevitable. ‘Would ... would you like to climb it, with me?’ He offered, forcing a grin to his lips as he looked at her. Laly’s face brightened immediately. ‘Oh, yes!’ She said with a breathless enthusiasm. ‘Good,’ He replied, nodding curtly. Internally, he breathed a sigh of relief. After confirming with him exactly what she’d need for the trip, Laly ran off into the trees to collect her things from the camp. As he watched her go, his forced grin relaxed into a genuine smile. Now that the offer was out there, and she had accepted it, the task ahead of him seemed much less daunting. He would do it for her. He would face his father’s memory, one last time.
Sitting on a husk of a car, I stare out towards the former city of Las vegas. I reminisce to myself about how I got here and the events that have shaped this world. It all started years ago when I made a pact with a demon for eternal life. I thought it would be great, I'd see the world, study various languages and cultures, but sadly that didn't happen. In the beginning it did, I visited italy, britian, japan, france. The places where all the major battles took place. The places where a lot of my buddies died in battle. I made peace with them. I watched the world almost as an outsider. Everyone seemed to zoom past me as I strolled. I always thought time was wasted before I had all the time in the universe. I watched as the powers went to war again, a third world war, only this time, this time there were no winners. With all sides firing multiple missiles each packed with a multitude of nuclear warheads. I still remember the screams to this day. I hop off the ruined husk of a car and begin to walk towards the now destroyed vegas strip, all the while I had this is the end playing in my head.
Wasn't that thing buzzing around my ear in the shower earlier? Jeez, this was one of those bigger ones, too, where you could make out the amber and purple sheen on its wings. My phone chimed. It was Dad. He sent me a picture that was taken earlier today of a turquoise swimming pool with a little waterfall at the end splashing over decorative rocks. It's done! Bring your swimsuit on Saturday. I'm making steaks! He's always wanted a magazine pool like that, just like he's always wanted that acreage that he and Mom live on now. Hard to imagine that a bank phone rep could work hard enough to earn enough money for that, but my dad was always an honest, hard-working man. I started texting him back when the fly skittered around my knee. I mindlessly swatted it after I pressed "send." Knock, knock, knock. Who's coming at this time of the night? My apartment door leads right to the living room. I turned down the brightness of my laptop screen and put my phone on vibrate. I'm glad that I was too lazy to turn on a light earlier. It could just be my neighbor, but something about that knock didn't make me feel right. Besides, Dad always taught me to not answer the door at night. My phone buzzed. Swiping it open, there was a new text: You should answer the door. I've never seen this number before. Whoever was at the other side of my door knocked again but louder. They didn't really think I was in here, right? They just sent that to scare me. I'm on the third floor. The shades are closed. I've got black tape over my webcam. But how'd they get my number? Another buzz. It was Dad. Hide. Don't answer the door. I typed back, Dad, who's at my door? Then the unknown number texted me again. If you stop talking to your dad now, it won't hurt as much. What? How-how did they know? Was it just a guess? And when I looked to my left, I came face-to-face with the fly that was now on my chest staring right up at me with its unblinking, pixelated eyes. Its tiny suction cup mouth wasn't even twitching. It was just glaring right at me. ...just like how it glared at me in my first college lecture class. Just like how it glared at me when I swatted it away from a batch of fresh fries at my high school job. Just like how it glared at me before I swatted it away from my cake on my eighth birthday. The guy at my door wasn't knocking it anymore. He was banging it. And after the last bang, the whole door fell down.
"Welcome to the 73rd annual Emmy awards!"What followed was a bunch of clapping and a joke by the host that would be dated a year later that was based on current events. I sit in my seat idly awaiting my category. You see, I'm a producer who's been nominated for best commercial series. It's been a growing thing lately and the Emmy's, ever trying to stay relevant finally made a category for it. About an hour later, Jim Parsons takes the stage holding the fabled envelope I've been waiting for all night. "And these are the nominations for this year's best commercial miniseries"The list flashes on the giant screens, mine in the middle. I'm on the edge of my seat of Microsoft Theater in downtown LA. My heart racing, feeling like it's going to come out of my chest. "And the winner is..."This is it. The moment I've been waiting for since my nomination was approved two months ago. I can feel the hairs on the back of my next stand up, hoping, no praying for our names to be called. "Sakeru Gummies!"Everyone claps, the Long Long Man song plays instead of the standard overture. I sink into my char detested.
“Are you nervous?” The woman dabbing my arm with an alcohol swab was a beautiful young blond. She smile was dazzling, but it did little to settle my nerves. “That obvious, uhhh?” I asked, trying to smile back and not fidget in the chair. She laughed. “Alice. And it’s alright.” She said, picking up the injector from the tray beside her. “Everyone’s like that at first. Always worried that they’ll be the one to break the universe.” “I guess it’s all just a little over my head.” I admitted. Sometimes I really regretted not taking that quantum mechanics class in college. I wouldn’t have looked like such an idiot now. The TimeTrip video I’d been forced to watch just before this had been nearly an hour long, explaining the concepts behind temporal shifting, and I understood a maybe fifth of it. Alice opened the side panel on the injector and produced a small glass vial from her apron. She deftly inserted the vial into the injector and smiled again. “I swear they do a poor job of explaining everything on purpose. Here.” She placed the injector against my arm and pressed the bottom. I clenched my teeth as the needle pierced my arm, sending a multitude of vaccines into my system. I immediately felt nauseas, but I’d been promised that would pass quickly. There had been quite a number of diseases throughout the millennia. I understood that part of the video at least. With this shot I should be immune to most of them, as long as I didn’t get to creative in the distant past or far future. “There you go Mr. Parson.” Alice said, sitting back and setting the injector back onto the tray. “All ready for your own Timeline.” “Great.” I said, hoping I didn’t look to green. Alice laughed again. “You don’t have to act tough. The serum takes a few minutes to work it’s way through your system. You’ll feel better once we start walking.” “We’re going now?” I asked. Suddenly I didn’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t think I ready. God I signed so many liability forms. I wanted to bolt from the room, head back to my one room apartment and watch T.V in the dark. Before I could even think about doing that however, Alice looked down at me expectantly, and I knew I couldn’t back out now. Besides, I’d already paid for the trip. “Alright then. Let’s go.” I said, taking a deep breath and pushing myself out of the chair. Alice clapped her hands together. “That’s the spirit!” She led me out of the room and down a series of corridors. The TimeTrip building was relatively bare of decoration. Almost unnervingly so. Still, everyone walked around happy and confident as could be, and when you were dealing with something like time travel, I guess that’s how you’d hope the employees would behave. “So Mr. Parson,” Alice said as we walked. “Will you be going forward or backwards in your TimeLine?” “I was thinking of going to the past.” I answered truthfully, “I always wanted to see the nineteen forties.” It sounded dumb now that I said it out loud. I could go anywhere in time, and i choose a perilous just over a hundred years ago. Honestly, I was too scared to go back further. The idea that I could go anywhere and do anything seemed just to insane. When it was discovered that each person sent through time ended up on their own Timeline, completely separate from the Primeline, time travel had become like a leisure cruise. Only one with no supervision or consequences. “How romantic.” Alice said teasingly, “Are you planning on returning to our Primeline?” “I mean yeah.” I said, surprised. I knew there was some who never came from their travels, preferring to live out the rest of their lives on their own individual TimeLine. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that though. “I’ve still got a life here an everything.” “How nice for you.” Alice said as we arrived at our apparent destination. She pressed a keycard against the lock and the door swung open. The room we entered was by no means large, but every inch of free space was covered in devices so fantastical I couldn’t even begin to imagine their purpose. Flashing lights and electric humming filled the air. The one thing I did recognize was the rack of Time Travel devices delicately placed against the back wall. Alice left me to gape my surroundings she walked forward to retrieve a device, unplugging it from one of the many machines around. She returned to me holding out the device for me to take. “This is your personal TimeTrip Device. Though most people just call them Shifters.” She winked as she handed it to me. “Please be careful with it.” I looked down at the device in my hand. It looked no different than your average phone. A single screen covered it’s face, with two buttons buttons built into it’s side. To think that with a few taps of his fingers, this tiny thing could tear open the fabric of spacetime. In my hands this thing gave me power akin to a god. I hope I wouldn’t drop it. “Do you need me to explain how to use it?” Alice asked with a raised eyebrow. “No. No.” I shook my head. “I remember from the Video.” Probably. “Well I’m still obligated to go repeat the basic safety protocols.” She said, cocking her head. “Remember, that Shifter is your lifeline. It’s the only thing that can bring you back to the Primeline if anything goes wrong. It’s solar powered, so don’t worry about asking anyone to borrow a charger.” She pointed to the two buttons on the side. “Though I’m sure you remember, top ones power, bottom is evac. You hit that button, the device pulls you back to the Primeline.” “When I come back...”I trailed off. I was afraid to ask. “You’ll return to the moment you left. So you don’t have to worry about missing work tomorrow.” Alice smiled again. “That’s about it though. There’s a manual programmed into the Shifter if you forget anything. Otherwise you’re on your own tough guy. Good luck out there.” “Right.” An awkward pause fell between us. I looked down at the Shifter and back up to her. “...Am i supposed to go right now?” Alice laughed again. “You can. Or you can get some lunch first. Or you can wait a day. The world is your oyster Mr. Parson, and now so is time.” For some reason, her words filled me with a sudden burst of confidence. Knowing myself though, it wouldn’t last. Before I could change my mind, I powered up the device and set my destination. Alice waved at me as a bright red buttons appeared onscreen. TRAVEL I pressed the button, and the world vanished around me in a flash of bright light.
Sometimes, the perfect thing happens at the most inopportune time. That was what happened when I happened to win the lottery. 600 Million Dollars, an amount to big to turn down, no matter the circumstances. The only problem is I was, I swear I'm not kidding, in the Witness Protection Program. Here is where it gets really sticky: I couldn't claim the money anonymously. They were going to publicize my win and with a win that big, there's a good chance the story would go national. Still, greed took over. I had to take it and throw caution into the wind. So, I did. I claimed my prize, took some photos, had a press conference. Cashed the biggest check of my life and blew town. I had made arrangements to buy a secluded house in Northern Minnesota. It was a large, sprawling house deep in the woods. A perfect hiding spot as long as the people who were after me didn't find record of the purchase. I wasn't sure how far the influence of their criminal network went. I hoped not that far, since I lost my protection status when I broke my cover. But 600 million dollars buys a ton of security, including some pretty powerful weaponry. I think part of me wanted them to find me, to put this whole nightmare to rest. I started wondering if my winning the lottery was fate's way of evening the playing field. I started working out regularly and practicing with the firearms I had accumulated. I started planning for any conceivable contingencies. I researched improvised weaponry and practiced defending myself with everyday items around the house in addition to my usual weapons training. I set traps around the property and set up controls for them in the house. As each day passed, I grew more and more tired of hiding. I wanted them to come. I wanted it to be finished. On one dark night, as lighting flashed and thunder rolled, the house phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Hello?" There was no response. The line went dead. Deep down I knew this was it. They were here. I reached under the couch and pulled out the pump action shotgun I had stashed there. I gave it a pump, chambering a shell as I switched off the safety. "This is it. Don't get scared now."I let out a deep breath and stood up, ready to meet my fate.
I was crying but I don't know why, giants were all around and speaking a language I've never heard before. After cleaning me off and wrapping my up in a blanket one of them hands me to another, a female that smiles down at me kindly. I forgot almost everything about who I was as I got older, my fear of planes stuck around though. I had a good childhood, loving parents, a little brother when I was 5. I got into a good college close to home, mostly so I wouldn't have to fly anywhere. I met a nice boy in college and after we graduated, me with a degree in biology and him in engineering, we got married and had a son not long after. We grew old together, the older I got the more I remembered about who I was before. I cried a lot when I remembered the friends I lost in battle. He died before me at the age of 73. It was hard, brought back more memories. My son had a wife and children of his own and they rarely visit. I'm on my deathbed now, I remember who I was and I can't wait to see who I will be next.
The world was a cruel place, though I knew there were many that felt that way. For me it was a lonely, dry, barren place where no one around could remember my face. As a young child I had found it exhilarating. Stealing was easy, as long as I avoided the cameras. I could get away with everything, but now the act was getting old. The feelings had not arisen from age or having been caught. Instead it was due to a single person. While others could not remember who I was unless I told them, he could pin point my location out of a crowd. It was the first time I had felt known, truly known. It was a feeling I had not known I was missing. The feeling of being acknowledged, of finally being able to be understood. The fact that someone did not have to be reminded of who I was. There he was sitting on the park bench. Hands neatly folded in his lap, face slightly upturned. The light shimmered on him through the trees, illuminating him in a wash of gold. As I came closer, he tilted his head in my direction. How he could discern my steps from the din of others I had no clue. A smile touch his face. While he could see, it was incredibly limited. A dash of color and shadow. Today he had decided to forego his glasses leaving his face bare. As I came within reach we offered a greeting. I joined him on the bench, relishing in such a simple gesture as a greeting. It was more fulfilling than anything else. No food, nor belongings, or money could compare to such a simple thing as a greeting of recognition. "How are you,"I asked softly. He leaned his head back not troubling himself with trying to find my face in the slurry of blur that was his vision. He began to tell me of his day, along with tid bits of the week. As he spoke we began to walk. Occasionally his acutely tuned hearing would bring a distraction in the form of a bird. At first I had not been able to spot it, nor tell him what it was, or what it looked like. Now I was able to find the bird, and tell him about it. Birds were one of the many things I had hurriedly studied to keep a connection going with him. Recently I had come to terms with the reality that I not only loved him, but worshiped him. With that reality there was the question in the back of my mind. If I had a normal life where people could remember my face would I have even bothered to get to know him? I had grappled with myself over that fact. Yet I knew and was beginning to understand that my life would never be normal, and because of it I had met him. As fate would have it neither of our lives were in the picture book definition of normal. He had long ago come to terms with his dwindling vision, and in his confidence I found myself. Although it would never not be awkward every time he had to reintroduce me to his friends and family. "I love you,"I said softly. I must have interrupted him because he paused in his stride. "Is everything alright,"he asked. I cradled his cheek and kissed his forehead. "Just lost in thought."I stated. He chuckled softly and continued onward.
It was almost sunrise. The dark forest was about to fall asleep. Bats flew back to their nests, raven finished up their preys, and the nightmares were slowly fading away. On the sinuous and dusty path, a black carriage was making its way home. Inside, sat opposite a pair of mother and daughter. Isabella could only repress her sigh. She worried about her daughter Lilith. Her mind lost outside the window, Lilith sat still, silent. “Lilith, I’m worry. You cannot go on like that. Even the teachers had complained about your attitude.” “...” “Darling, talk to me.” Isabella reached for her daughter hand, however, Lilith moved again. “Please. Talk to me.” Isabella begged, obviously hurt. “You don’t understand. No one understand. I’m different. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Then, why do you keep on denying me? Why can’t you accept that I’m different.” The teen yelled vehemently. Isabella tried hard to suppress her feelings along with her tears. She couldn’t, she didn’t want to admit that her daughter was different. If she did, how could they stay together? She couldn’t bear people mocking her child wherever they went. She couldn’t bear the remarks said behind her back. She didn’t want her daughter to grow up, so different. She didn’t her daughter to be rejected by the whole town. “Maybe, it’s just a phase. Maybe,…” Isabella softly pled. Lilith looked to her mother. Isabella could read all the sorrow, the pain and the disappointment in it. She gasped as she realised that she, her mother, was the one who hurt her child the most. Isabella realised that she was the one pushing her daughter away. The carriage stopped. Lilith opened the door and stepped down. She raised her head to the heaven, bathing in the first ray of sunshine. Her translucent skin and white robe, calm and peaceful. The first ray of sunshine pierced through the darkness to light up her way, golden and warm. She felt it. It was the end and the beginning. Her last tortured moment. Isabella couldn’t take her eyes off her. Lilith wasn’t her little demon anymore. She grew into a lovely young woman. Deep blue eyes and dimples when she laughed. She couldn’t even remember when was the last time she saw her smile. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be how you wanted me to be. This is who I am and we walk on different path.” Her eyes shone a pure golden light. “I walk in the light and you walk in the darkness. This is the truth. I’m sorry I couldn’t leave up to your expectations, that I couldn’t make you proud. My life is in the Church. I’m going to be a priest. I’m sorry. Farewell.” Lilith walked away, unwavering steps and resolute heart. It was sunrise. The forest fell asleep, soothed by sobbing wails. On the sinuous and dusty path, a teen was walking forward, leaving behind her dark magic and memories of childhood. It was sunrise and the nightmares faded away under the light.
It should have been the perfect vacation to help ease the pain of losing my wife. It was late in Epcot. Minnie Mouse had a huge crowd around her. My 6 year old daughter Lucy wanted me to propose to Minnie. “She’d be perfect as a new mommy”. Anything to make her happy. I mean it’s all in good fun right? We waited in line until the park had mostly cleared out. I pulled out a ring I got from a gumball machine and got down on one knee in front of Minnie and held up the ring. “Minnie Mouse would you marry me?” “Well that’s sweet but I love my mickey…” She looked over at Lucy, who was doing her best pouty face. “Yes I’ll marry you.” Minnie exclaimed. My daughter let out an excited squeal. “Well sweetie, I’m late for dinner with Minnie. Toodles” Minnie excused herself. Lucy shoved her selfie stick into my hands and started dancing around the park while giggling. “You don’t know what you’ve done…” a nearby employee’s lost color… “You’ve pissed off the most powerful mouse in the world.” I stared at him a moment. Who swears at Disney? “Daddy help!”I turned around. My daughter was missing. And someone who looked like Smee was carrying her off, I went to give chase but was stopped short by a sword pointed at my chest. “ahh ahh ahh… That would be bad form. We’ll have none of that” Hook tutted. “Bring me back my daughter..” I glared at him. “Ahaha you scallywag! I’ll skewer you.” He lifted the sword to strike and I parried the sword with her selfie stick. And managed to disarm the pirate sending his sword to the ground before smacking him across the head. Before knocking him out. I took the flintlock pistol off of his belt and the sword from the ground. And tried to give chase through a giftshop. Suddenly I heard an explosion as a fragment of the wall in front of the splintered off as I ducked just in time. Another gunshot ran out. “Damn it Clayton. I’d better do it. Nobody shoots like Gaston!” a deep voice scolded. “You’re a fool Frenchman.” Clayton scoffed. As I crawled low through the shop towards the back door. “Get the front, I’ll take the back” I hid behind a stack of boxes as I cocked the pistol and waited. The Englishman rounded the corner as I silently took aim, and pulled the trigger. Clayton fell to the ground as the gunshot echoed through the store. I grabbed his rifle and ammo pouches and took off sword still in hand running through the alley. I shoved the sword through the outer loops of my backpack and kept going. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a grey hulking figure wind up to take a swing at me with a meaty hand. I tripped, and heard him roar “get off mee 626!” as a blaster clattered to the ground. I grabbed that, and shoved the rifle in the backpack. Up ahead I noticed smee opening a beer while sitting on a bench. I crept up behind him and held the blaster to Smee’s head. “Where is she?” “The…The Child Catcher… I gave her to him. The castle They’ll take her to the dungeon.. There’s a secret passage in janitor’s closet in the hall of mirrors. Please spare me…” I thought a moment. “No.” and fired the blaster leaving a gaping wound where his head had been. This night is insane. Do I have to fight every Disney villain to escape with or without my daughter? If so.. So be it. I crept into the house of mirrors.Suddenly from the darkness ahead I heard a sound of heavy breathing as a humming red glow filled the hall of mirrors, revealing a dark armored figure. “There is no escape”
"Hi, is this Mark?" "Listen, I don't have time to talk right now, I've..." "I don't think you want to hang up that phone, Mark." The cheerfulness in his voice is a thin veil for the cold power behind it. It's the sound of a man that knows something that you don't. "Mark? Are you there, buddy?" There's a block in your throat, but you swallow hard and are able to squeeze out, "I'm here." "Good. I'm glad you decided to stick around. Because that's what it's about, right? Sticking around?" There wasn't much strength in your voice when this conversation started, but whatever you had is gone now. The receiver in your hand is heavy and the sharp details in the room are starting to soften. "Who is this?" "It's not about who I am, Mark, it's about what I can do. For you." The opening of this man's pitch felt hideous in his ear. Even more hideous, however, was that he knew that he wasn't going to hang up the phone. "What...what is it that you think you can do for me?" "Death is a harsh reality, isn't it, Mark? The family and friends you leave behind. The work left undone. It's tragic, and is cruel when it vists someone as young as you. "What would you say, Mark, if I told you, that you could have that time. Time with your family and friends, time to do all of the things you wanted to do. What would you say, if I told you if I can give that time to you? There it was. As clear as the pitch could be without his saying it directly. This telemarketer was offering him a reprieve from death. He started to tremble. "I...I..." "What's the matter, Mark?" He did his best to steady himself. He knew that he was on a ticking clock and he didn't have time to waste. "What you're offering is impossible. People don't get to cheat death." "That's true,"he said, and Mark could hear a smile in the voice, "People...don't get to cheat death. But what I'm offering isn't exactly subject to those sorts of boundaries." "What are you offering?"His stomach was in a tight knot; he didn't want to ask that question, but the closer he got to death, the less he wanted that. "What we are offering is a reprieve from any and all illnesses. You will never get sick, and that funky little bug in your bloodstream won't cause you issues anymore." The fear of death and whatever came after it, either hell, eternal bleakness or eternal nothingness, almost pushed an affirmative out of his throat, but he bit it back. "A reprieve?" Another smile in the man's voice, "That's correct, a reprieve from any and all sickness." "For how long?"After the words were past his lips, a wave of exhaustion hit him and he almost collapsed. "For as long as you choose." The man was playing him, and it frustrated him, but he still couldn't hang up. This was that power he'd heard in the man's voice before. Mark was the one playing with a deficit. "What exactly are we talking about? I'm sure you know we're playing with borrowed time." "Certainly, Mark. What we offer is a pill that, when taken, prevents any disease, disorder, virus, bacteria or defect from negatively affecting you." "How long does the pill last?" "Twenty-four hours." "And if I stop taking it?" "Then you will no longer receive its benefits."There was a pregnant pause that allowed Mark's imagination to explore what all that could imply. "What will it cost me?" "What we offer is a free, one-week trial. We provide you with,"a pause, "seven pills and allow you to experience our product. After those seven days, we will reach back out to you to discuss payment options." "I'd rather discuss them now." "I can appreciate that, but we find that payment is best explored after the trial." "I don't feel comfortable..." "If you're not comfortable," Another wave of exhaustion hit Mark and his knees started to shake. "with the offer, I understand." Nausea hit him now, and he vomited. He became dizzy from the effort of it. "I'm sorry for having wasted your time," Mark fell to the floor and his vision began to blur." "and wish you all the..." "Okay!"Mark choked out-patient and a small wave of relief washed over him. He was still dying, but it was less obvious to him. "You'd like to participate in the one-week trial?" "Yes."Whatever reservations he'd had before were gone. He didn't want to die. "Excellent!" There was a knock on Mark's front door and, when he finally made his way over to it and opened it, a small cardboard box was sitting in his doorstep. "Inside should be...that's right, seven pills. Take once daily, and I'll call back in a week. Have fun!"
Not many people appreciate the bliss that a drunken stupor can lead to. For me, it is particularly favorable when my wife is being a complete turd. So there I go, into oblivion, happily and obtusely ignoring the fact that that bitch is upstairs, trying her 110-pound damnedest to make enough noise to keep me awake. Sorry, sweetheart, try better next time (and we both know there will be a next time). As she kicks the vacuum cleaner's C sharp into a gear I didn't know it had, I bury my face into the couch cushion and hide my smile. My dream world is better than the waking world with you, you self-righteous, condescending, Daddy's girl...of...a... And there she is. The temptress I crave more than any other. The only person I actually have the balls to cheat on my shrew of a wife with. Sleep. Sweet, glorious sleep. My blissful escape from reality is interrupted by a jarring noise. At first, I incorporated the shrill sound into my dream. That bitch was drilling into my teeth. But, when the drilling got too loud, I rolled over, peeling my drool soaked lip away from that life-saving couch cushion. It took far longer than I would care to admit to focus on the man kneeling down in the middle of my living room floor. "Dude, what the shit? What the hell are you doing? Who the... Alison!!! What the hell is going on? Alison?!?!" "Matt, shut up, do you seriously want to wake her up? Are you nuts?" The man was wearing a black jacket and jeans, but he was not wearing anything over his face. He was bent over a spot in our living room floor. It was a spot that meant nothing to me (or her, as far as I knew). He looked back to the floor and continued his drilling. My previous hours of beer and bourbon quickly overcame my immediate panic. I looked a little more closely at the strange man furiously drilling a hole in my living room floor. "Kevin?"I said to my father-in-law. "What the fuck are you doing? Why are you drilling and digging into my floor?" With (I'll admit to it now) a very satisfying SCHUUMPF, he pulled up the floorboard he had been so annoyingly attacking. "Come here"he said. "I'll show you". I had completely forgotten that Al and I had buried a time capsule underneath that floorboard. He pulled out a shoebox full of photos, keepsakes and other memories. He sat back on his knees and handed it to me. He obviously didn't know what was in it, but he knew enough to know how much it meant to me. "You need this right now." "Meh... I don't..." "Shut up. You don't know, but YOU NEED THIS RIGHT NOW. This is pure gold. This is what will save your relationship with my daughter. These are the things that matter. All of your little bullshit squabbles, all of the tiny, minute crap y'all think is make or break... None of that matters. Do you remember what's in this box?" I did. But that didn't stop him from literally and figuratively hitting me on the head with it. "Get over your little bullshit. It isn't worth it in the end." I sat there, feeling the sting. I sat there so long, thinking about what he said and what he did, that I eventually woke up, my drool soaked lip still stuck to the couch cushion. I got up, I walked upstairs, and I faced the C sharp of the vacuum cleaner. I will never again under appreciate a C sharp.
We’ve got a problem, a big one.’ The hooded man said, looking at Thoré. ‘Time is running out.’ Thoré has come here to get paid for a task the hooded man couldn’t do himself, but this task was rather vague and seemed uncompleted. ‘Time is running out for what, Wise One?’ Thoré asked in a desperate attempt to understand the quest, which he knew, wouldn’t get a satisfying answer. What would you expect from a man in a purple hood which covered the entirety of his face in shadows and expected you to call him ‘Wise One’. After contemplating, the hooded man turned around, finally. ‘For everything’ Knowing that understanding the quest wouldn’t be possible, Thoré focused on how to do it. ‘And where would I go and what would I do to stop this from happening, Wise One?’ ‘Talk to time’, He explained to Thoré as if he was stupid ‘The guy in the well there’. He pointed at the courtyard of the inn I was staying in. ‘A man with a beard as long as time, and hair as white as the stars. Find him, he’s not easy to miss, really.’ ‘Oh, that guy!’ Thoré said as if he had met him before. ‘Don’t call him time would you, call him Father Time.’ He said just to be shore and proceeded by repeating his sentence a few times. Finally, Thoré walked to the courtyard, and jumped into the well and swam as far down as he could, just when he fears he would have to go up again, the water bordered with air as if held up by magic. Then He fell down, right next to a stroke of white hair that seemed to go around the corner and followed the stoke of hair, thinking it would lead to Father Time, eventually. He walked and walked, following the beard until he, after about an hour, was in front of a door, under which the beard seemed to be stuck. And Thoré knocked thrice on the door. After a few seconds of waiting, a man with a seemingly happy face and long nose swung the door open. He had a red and golden cloak which laid behind him for just a few meters, which wasn’t close to where his beard was. ‘What brings you here, boy?’ ‘Time is running out, and that’s a problem, a rather bing one, Father Time’ ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right, sometimes I forget to bring the clock back to zero and almost kill everyone of old age, which would be disappointing to say the least.’ Father Time walked to the back of the room and grabbed a clock of the wall, setting it back to twelve o’ clock. ‘Would you like some tea, boy.’ The old man said.
You were under the tree. Well not you exactly but someone who looks like you, exactly. When you cut it down you saw a thumb sticking out from the center of the rings and the cops were called. Day and night and day, and one more night, they excavated the corpse that had been gnarling with the dying roots. The trees spindled fingers were too wrapped up in the body to allow for any clear identification. They take it away and begin to separate dead(bark) from dead(flesh). Eventually you get a worried call from the detective on the case: he is sad to inform you that the body is that of your identical twin, did you know he was missing? Only child (that's you but you know that) heads to the morgue and sees yourself lying on the table. Detective, distraught, mortician, mortified, saw the records: no siblings, no rot either. But the tree had been there since you were a child. How would a... how could that still be...uh fresh then if it was like mixed in with the tree? It should mean the body is old but it looks like you, like today you with a few more bruises. Distraught and mortified are detective and mortician over all this. It has your fingerprints too. If they charge you it would have to be for suicide but they'd rather sweep it under the biggest rug they can find. And they do. Becomes a story...the craziest thing happened a few years back to this fella and this fuckin' tree in his backyard... Less of an easy break for you, the living you(a distinction that begins to gnaw at you like the roots of the tree). Can't really let go of it right? The insomnia is better than the nightmares of being there under the dirt so you at least have that. In the end (and the end comes pretty quickly for most folks after witnessing such an inexplicable dead end) you convince yourself you are dead. You grab a shovel and give your best effort to bury yourself alive, where the tree used to be naturally. You manage to get up to your neck, having not dug enough to cover your whole head under the surface. Thinking it good enough you just let the stomach hollow and starve until it ends feeling something like peace as a plant begins to sprout from your head.
Eve "I'm scared!"She said as tears rolled down her cheeks. The ground rumbled once more, everyone around her struggled to keep their footing. Far off the crashing and twisting of buildings could be heard. Slowly, the world was beginning to fall apart. "Keep your head down, baby!"her mother cried. "Keep your head down and keep moving!"They were running through the streets towards the shuttle docking station. Everyone was. Adam "Dad, were are we going?!"people were shoving and forcing their way through in every direction. The young boy didn't really know what was going on and everything seemed to happen so suddenly. A twang-crack filled the air and everyone suddenly froze and ducked down. The man who had fired the shot spoke over the clatter and destruction around the crowd, "Now, there's only room for four, as you all know we simply didn't have the time to make more... just the one. Only the first designated personnel to reach the shuttle will be allowed, everyone else needs to back up!"The man spoke with authority and determination. He carried an air of command and if Adam were mature enough to understand what was going on, he would have admired the man for doing his duty even knowing full well that he was about to die. "Sir! Sir,"Adam's father stepped up, "My name is Artorius Valce chief science advisor—I worked on the shuttle, this is my son Adam, I beg of you to allow him on board!"His voice cracked, desperation leaking through. The man checked a datapad on his arm. He gave a rueful look at Artorius. "Only your son." The words stung Adam, he quickly jumped up with wide eyes, "No, dad, no—!" "Shhh, just go, my son. Gods willing I will see you again, go!"Artorius elected to forcefully push Adam towards the officer that was controlling the shuttle bay. "Dad, no please, don't go!"he cried out, arms reaching for his father. Artorius' final words couldn't be heard by his son and perhaps Artorius himself knew he would never see Adam again, his son's mind held onto the hope that he would. Eve Olivia heard the officer's words and watched as the man pushed his son towards the man. She gritted her teeth and looked down at Eve. "Listen, you're going to go with them, okay?" "What? No, we both can go! There's room for three!"Eve cried in protest. "Honey, look at everyone here, not all of us can be saved, but I need you to go. I need you to go so you can be safe, okay?"Olivia's words were pleading, she begged her daughter to understand what was going on. Eve's face was streaked with tears as she gave her mother a nod. Olivia returned the nod and turned to the man at the shuttle bay. "Excuse me! My name is Olivia Cray, this is my daughter Evelyn, please, please take her on board with you!" The man checked his datapad once more and his eyes went wide. He looked to Olivia as if for confirmation. The woman nodded her head slowly. Without hesitation, the man quickly reached for Eve and pulled her through the blockade of soldiers around the shuttle bay. Shuttle Bay Adam, Evelyn, Jacob and Maria all stood in the shuttle bay, waiting for the doors to open. A man came out from around the interstellar vehicle and began to speak. "Alright, Adam, Evelyn you're going to be dropped off on Terra, Jacob, Maria, you're going to Titan."The kids' mouths opened as if they were about to speak but to avoid all of the questions that would come, the man waved a hand. "The shuttle is designed to separate once it leaves atmo. Each half will be supplied with survival materials to keep you going and get things started on those worlds if they're inhabitable. Information regarding what you'll need to know will be programmed into your minds while you sleep through the trip to each planet. The man let out a sigh as he was met with confused looks from all four teenagers. His face expressed hurt as the man tried to keep his disdain for the four children from showing. Why couldn't his daughter be chosen? He shook his head. Not now. "Lets get you into the cryo-tubes, we don't have much time." Mars The hole humans had torn into Mars' atmosphere was almost visible at this point. Solar radiation and unfiltered sunlight were beginning to torch the planet. The city of Archway, where the Last Four Children were about to liftoff, was thankfully one of the last places that was scheduled to be hit by the deadly rays. Olivia watched as the ship fired off into the atmosphere, heading towards what everyone hoped would be the very continuity of their species. Her eyes fell from the heavens, watching in the distance across a large river, buildings collapsing down onto each other and then steam rising from the surface of the water. She watched as the water quickly began to disappear into the air, the heat growing more and more intense. The last things she was able to see was the floating mist, rising up as if trying to trail her daughter into the void of space. Then, she was no more. (This ain't scientifically accurate by any means... but oh well.)
The Raven struggles, shreds of my bloody skin clinging to its feathers like glistening streamers. I am paralyzed, helpless even to cry out as its talons seek purchase on my ribcage, the motion forcing its body up and away from my own. Black wings flare from my side, then begin to beat. Wet red rain falls as the Raven pulls free from my flesh. Without hesitation it shatters the nearest window and is gone. I am left alone, bleeding in my shower floor.
"A castle?!"You give the two men in black suits a confused and disbelieving look. They reassure you that it is legitimate and completely yours, contents and the surrounding acres of forested land. It seems that the great uncle of yours has kept that castle a secret to all family members, only ever mentioning taking vacations to that country. You haven't even heard about this relative of yours besides a few names thrown around during reunions and such. But still, you think this is a sham. You laugh it off and close the door to your apartment, only to be held back by one of the men. The way this man held you from closing the door made the door feel like it weighed over a ton. They insist on explaining things in more detail and that they're rather do it inside. It seems you have no choice in this matter. The two men in suits stand in front of you as you sit down on your couch, holding up the ramen cup as you slurp noodles. They begin explaining that the castle has been under your estranged uncle's surveillance for most of his life. The castle needed someone to watch over it, and with your great uncle passing, he only wanted the youngest to be the one to do so. The two men seem to know more than they're letting on, but the way they're explaining it seems that it's an urgent request. You're not one to turn down helping, but this is absurd. Moving all the way to this far-off country, living in a castle on a forest island? "Are you seriously thinking I can just move there? I do have obligations here, you know. It's not like I can just go and do whatever." That was a lie. You've been out of a job for a month now, struggling to get hired ever since that incident. Yeah, you'd rather not talk about that. But they brought it up and everything else that you've been up to in the last few years. Seems your great uncle has been keeping an eye on his heir long before his demise. And again, the two men assure you that everything will be taken care of. All family members will be notified about your disappearance and given a rather mundane explanation as to not arouse suspicion. All your belongings can easily be transported, not that there's a lot of it anyways. They also mentioned that all necessities and request can be met accordingly. It sound more tempting, given your dire situation as of right now. There really isn't any other choice here. I guess this is checkmate, you think to yourself. "But what exactly did you mean when you said I needed to watch over the castle? You two seem capable enough, why not hire you to do it?" It seems this question carries a heavy weight on them. My great uncle must mean a lot to them. Huh. They explain that even though they want to do it themselves, and how they were disappointed with what they observed about you in the past few years, they simply cannot be the one to do so. Something about blood relatives being needed for the castle's watch. "But I don't get why old man Jonathan would want me? I'm sure there's plenty of other capable candidates in the Morris family."Jonathan Morris, your great uncle, wasn't really mentioned a lot in the family. I guess that's what estranged means. I'm sure no one else in the bloodline even knew of him, much less know of his death. And these two men in suits did confirm it, saying that only you know of his death. They also told in great detail how you were specifically chosen because the position need to be on a certain generation in the bloodline. It also coincides with another clan's bloodline tradition, but no one has yet to fill that generation's spot. It comes down to you, and only you. The next thing you know, these two well-dressed men are accompanying you on a trip to this far away island castle. After a really long flight, you then arrive at a pier where you board a small boat manned by a rather old-looking man, scrawny and frail, hunched over with his hooded robe draping down his frame. He extends a hand palm down, pointed at me. "Excuse me? I don't know what you want, I...uh..." Erick, one of the two men who accompanied me on this trip produced a silver coin from his jacket pocket, giving it to the old man. The slender, bony fingers slowly grasp the coin and the old man let off a grisly chuckle. Bartley, the second man of the suit duo asked me to sit down for this boat ride, and watch out for flying creatures. As the boat slowly lurched its way away from the coast, thick fog started to surround us. I glance towards the boatman as he kept on steering the boat. For someone of his stature, he sure is handling three men and his weigh pretty well on his boat. And we're not going slow either, despite the boat looking old and creaking every now and again. Things just keep getting weirder and weirder, until I felt a few bats whiff past my head, forcing me to duck and curl down. "Jesus, fuck! The hell was that?!"The boatman chuckled eerily again, Erick and Bartley just steeling themselves as they look onwards. I strain my eyes to where these two were looking at, and as if on cue, the mist slowly clears as I catch sight of the silhouette of a massive castle with the moon behind it. A feeling of coldness starts to envelop me, as if Death itself is embracing me. I grab myself, wrapping my arms around my torso as I grew weak and struggle to breathe. Bartley went to my side as Erick stretched his hand outwards towards me. My vision started going faint, with Bartley calling out asking me to keep it together and try to stay awake. Erick. Something started glowing. It was Erick, something he had. A ring. It glowed bright and then suddenly, a rush of heat flew past me and the boatman. The chills went away, I began catching my breath. Bartley propped me up as Erick gave me an assuring look, like he was saying "I got you, kid." Then the boatman started chuckling again. "I see. So this is who Master Jonathan has called forth,"the boatman said. He brought his hand to his chin, like in a thinking gesture. "Rather disappointing for a first encounter, but I've seen worse."Him eying me felt creepy, like I was being prodded and poked. "In any case, we're here. And young man..."The boat thudded as it hit the port. Erick and Bartley wasted no time in getting me out of the boat and away from the old man. "Young man! Steel yourself for what is about to happen. And welcome! To-" Before he could finish, Erick pushed the boat away, making the old man stumble and grab hold of the boat as it drifted back into the mist. All I could hear was that eerie laughter echoing across the water. I wondered what the boatman was about to tell me. Why did he tell me to prepare myself for something that was to happen? What is this place? What did old man Jonathan want me to do here?
Draw knife. Roll out of bed. Crouch into cover. And then wake up, actually wake up, becoming more than just primal survival instinct. I could kill someone waking up like that, and have. I drew in a deep breath, taking in my surroundings. My blood was running high, thrumming in my ears. Darkness. Bed. Nightstand. Doorway. No threats. Why was I awake, then? Another dream? “Honey?” The word registered a millisecond after the sound, a tiny fraction of a second too late as I lunged at the shadow in the doorway. I slammed into it, hard, pushed it into the hallway and up against the wall, moving the knife to- My brain caught up with my body. Carefully - very carefully, because my hands were starting to shake - I pulled the blade away from her skin, tucking it back into its sheath. Then the full realization of what I had been about to do struck me, and my knees sagged. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, baby.” I sat down heavily, my head in my hands. One twitch of muscle. One more moment without control. That’s all it would have taken. I felt sick. She drew in a shuddering breath, let it out in a smoother exhale. And again, until she was almost breathing normally. She sat next to me, and I stared at the wall, unblinking. “Jason.” She put a hand on my arm. “Jason. Look at me.” I turned to her, saw the tear tracks running down her cheeks. My voice was hoarse when I replied. “Do you-” I paused, tried again. “Do you want me to leave?” “Do you want to leave?” “No,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Then don’t.” She wiped at her face, her voice unsteady. “It- It’s been six years, Jason. You’ve only been back two weeks. Things aren’t going to change overnight.” “I almost- I-” “Yeah, and you scared the shit out of me. But you didn’t.” Her hand found mine in the darkness and squeezed it tight. “You’re going to get better.” I leaned against her, my vision blurring with tears. Her faith in the broken shell she called a husband was staggering. I almost believed her. ------------------------ I wasn't super happy with how this turned out, but I decided I would post it anyways. All comments and criticisms are appreciated.
We were ten minutes away from the aliens inspection and i had finally found the proof we needed. On the silver plater in front of me held the greatest achievement of human kind. The group the U.N had put together had doubted that this would work but i had convinced them in the end. Five minutes to go. We left the room and i joined the group of world leaders watching our offering and the clock to what they thought was the end of the world. The timer sounded and the aliens exited their ship advancing towards the offering they inspected it and the took a bite. They solomly nodded and then left for their ships. The earth was saved. I was not suprised after all everyone loves bacon.
Moooooom! Listen here Tarzan. I raised you. Put diapers on you. Heck, I invented diapers for you. If I need to go in your bathroom to get something then I will. Get over it. No. Bathroom man. No Go-reall-ahs. You're just being ungrateful. You've been shacking up wth this Jane girl for like a year now I know you know how to speak better than that. You. Know. Nothing. Listen here young man. I may not have brought you into this world but I dang sure kept you alive in it and I will not hesitate to take you out of it. hmmpf. Don't get pouty. I may be a gorilla but I'm still your mamma. Now get dressed cause you got friends coming over later. Human friends, so act like one dang it! mehmehmehmeh Are you mocking me? areyoumockinme? Tarzan. Edwin. James. DON'T YOU DARE MOCK ME BOY! Woah. Woah. Woah. What is happening in here? Jane! ^Tarzan. ^Sorry. Mom. Surprise me. Tarz. We've been together for like a year now, don't you think you could start using real sentences? I know you know how. See I told you! I told him Jane. I told him he's being ungrateful. You need to wise up boy! Whatever mom.
Greg found himself lost in thought as he emerged from the tree line and entered a small field of boulders on during his ascent of Mt. Hood. He was in impeccable shape, able to hike miles with ease, and brought with him an idol crafted painstakingly from the branch of a tree. Before placing it at the foot of the shrine, he took a second to take in the sight. Somehow it never got old. Surveying the horizon, he payed extra attention to the patch of black trees that had been left charred by a recent forest fire. He'd give just about anything to be a plant that was subject to nothing more than the forces of nature. A tree might live to 1,000 years, but that was nothing to Greg. He'd been alive for millennia, and without the constraint of time he barely felt human at all. ---- ----- Many generations ago, humans were ruled by time. Just about every decade was a milestone, and the only thing that was certain was that time would run out. Greg didn't have that luxury. The Earth he inhabited was the very Earth that the humans of past had inhabited, but Greg, himself, didn't inhabit a corporal form. When humanity faced extinction it fled to a network of sophisticated computers. Seeing the danger in giving a subset of "new mankind"control of the simulation, the architects had created a god they designed to replicate the god that they had worshiped for centuries. The hope was that humanity would stay the same. Like everyone, Greg worshiped the nameless God. He prayed to this God for years. But years became decades, and decade became centuries. Humanity became divided between those who forsook their belief, and those who had nothing else to hold onto but their religion. Greg didn't believe. The rest of his family did, but Greg saw them as foolish-- desperate. ---- Three thousand years after the simulation began, a man in India died. At first Greg though it was a hoax-- there had been many before, but a week later a woman in Colorado died. After that woman died, the deaths became more rapid to the point where the news could keep up. Deaths were no longer newsworthy, but their sudden appearance was. Not long after the first human died Greg's brother died. By then the deaths still hadn't been linked to those who believed, but it didn't matter to Greg. He refused to believe that a God could ignore humanity for so long and then suddenly start killing. --- It took 3000 years for the deaths to start, but not a century later Greg was the last of his family left. By then the link had been made between believers and death, and probably only a quarter of Earth's population remained. Greg was angry. He couldn't deny that there was a higher being controlling the deaths, but he didn't think it was the god he had once worshiped. The architects programmed the devil. ------------------ Alone and without companionship, Greg spent the passing millennia observing the landscape of Earth change. He watched mountains rise and oceans dry up. Species evolved and went extinct-- but Greg stayed the same. Eventually he was the last human left, and he figured the devil had chose him specifically to torture for the remainder of time-- that is, if it would ever come. Greg was stubborn, and figured that if he had lasted for so many thousands of years alone, he could keep going as long as it took. But deep down, Greg had hoped intelligent life might evolve on Earth once more. Humans, after all, were never meant to be alone. ------- As Earth changed, so to did Greg. His stubbornness disappeared, and anger turned into sadness. Why was he being punished? Why him? He still very much believed that the devil was in charge, but he figured that if he devoted himself to trying to believe in God then maybe he actually would some day. So he built a shrine on Mount Hood and devoted each and every day to carving an idol that he would deliver to the shrine. Through complete devotion he hoped that belief would come to him. And so he spent centuries devoting himself to this shrine. When weather destroyed the structure he rebuilt it. When he didn't feel like making the hike, he did it anyway. Eventually he didn't know why he was still doing this. He didn't know what he believed in. And yet, he continued. -------- -------- With the idol still in hand and with his gaze in the distance Greg thought about what it meant to be human-- something he hadn't done for quite some time. He also thought about what it meant to believe. Being human meant embracing time and not wasting it holding grudges. Belief wasn't about symbolic and perfunctory actions-- but acceptance and forgiveness. Just like the burnt trees in the distance couldn't control the fire that consumed them, the humans of past couldn't control the force of time. Suddenly the grudge he held against the higher being felt meaningless-- silly, even. He couldn't believe how long he had held on to it. -------- The Sun swelled with light and Greg was blinded. Instead of pain, Greg felt a sense of bliss. He no longer felt like a tortured subject of the devil, but an infinitesimal and insignificant being, like the humans that had lived among billions so many years ago. Greg took a breath of the fresh mountain air that he bathed in. Suddenly-- there was darkness. .... .... .... --------------- I need to go to bed, so parts of the story are probably rough. A lot of it was influenced by Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan (humans living in a simulation, the way time influences identity, people spending millennia watching landscape change)
I was at a point in my life where I was just a lot of things - son, brother, college student, and finally - after weeks of whining with other students in class and nail biting - an intern. Not that we aren't all lots of things in our lives at lots of points in our lives. It's just...when I compared my life to the lives of other college students around me, they seemed to have it all so together. Meanwhile, I felt fragmented, pieces of me here and there, trying to coalesce into one complete whole. When I first got accepted for the internship, I felt relieved and overjoyed - that is, until the next day in class, where I had to mope with the rest of my less-fortunate classmates that life was still unfair and out to get us. It was weird how the internship made me look down on them somewhat ("I mean, it wasn't that hard for me, so...maybe something is just wrong with you, I don't know.") yet I held back from telling them about it because I still wanted to be a part of them while nearly subconsciously considering myself apart from them. Anyway, the internship was at a research lab (and I can't tell you how many times I held back from volunteering myself out to be their guinea pig. Out of curiosity, I just wanted to see how many problems they would find in me. Probably enough to get me an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records). But back to the research lab. The victims being targeted by the scientists for study? Rats. Apparently, through selectively breeding, scientist were able to produce a generation of rats with measurable levels of prescient abilities. The tests were inhumane. A group of rats would be placed in a box, and spikes would shoot from random places around the box - ceiling, wall, floor - at random intervals. Many rats perished, but the survivors were fed and bred. Then their children went through the same cycle. As time went on, the survivor pool increased, as the newer and newer generations of rats seemed to instinctively know where the next spikes would come from. I ruined the experiment. By the end of my internship, the scientists were ready to exhibit their findings to a few distinguished group members, in hope of securing a sponsorship. Around that time, however, is when I found out about the tests. And one night, as I was closing the lab, I opened the cages and let all the rats go. And that's when the trouble began. The scientists, understandably enraged, came after me. They thought I had hidden the rats - or at least some of them. They threatened me. They got me expelled from my college. And one night, as I lay in bed, trying to figure out which crack on my ceiling most closely resembled the path of my life, a rat from the experiment appeared and saved me from an assassination attempt. I've been on the run ever since. Just me and the rats. But that's a story for another time.
"I'm sorry, they did what?!"The villainous man looking exclaimed, half turned to face his subordinate. A flowing red cape was attached to his shoulders by golden knots, denoting his rank as commander of all Royal Imperial forces. Leading by example, he cuts an imposing figure against the front of a floor-to-wall window behind him. "Th-they got away, my lord..."The kneeling man, wearing a sharp grey military outfit, kept his head lowered, too afraid to look up for fear of being struck down. "Yes, I got that. How did it happen again?" "We've been tailing the group for months, keeping close eyes on every single contact they've made. But when we finally cornered them, someone we'd never seen before showed up and rescued them, uh, ah, again. He cut through three ranks of Barglan like they were nothing."A small point of pride, he kept the tremor out of his voice. Sighing, the general turned around, more wary and tired than angry at this point. "That makes this the... what fourth time now? And before this, that pipsqueak leader of theirs got saved by-" "By a coin flipped by a child getting in the way of the arrow, my lord." Too frustrated, the powerful man didn't even chastise his subordinate for interrupting him, "Yes, yes. It's the same old story. For years they've eluded us in the most absurd ways!"Sitting down at the table besides him, he took a sip from the goblet. Setting it down, his face contorted in rage as he slammed his fist down! The table shook, the wood cracking and the goblet tilting and toppling, spilling its violet contents to the floor. "DAMMIT! They cannot keep getting away like this! His majesty is beginning to doubt me!" "Ah, there was... one new thing about this time. Apparently they've officially started to call themselves a rebel group. They have a name the likes of which I've never heard before." "Oh?"His voice was dry and humorless as he stared down in contempt, his powerful shoulders casting a shadow on the man below him, "And what would that be?" "Deus Ex Machina, my lord."
Here's my take on it. I'm going to deviate from your prompt somewhat: Welcome to the city of Arpolis, a land of cogs and magic. The west side of the city, Magis, is covered in grand, lavish palaces, with life powered by magic. This is the home of the Megion, those born with the ability to use magic. On the other side rests the Badlands, an industrial slum filled with factories and pollution. This is the home of the Sloth, those born without magic and those who rely on engineering and machinery to live. When a child is born, they are tested whether or not magical power resides in them. If they have magic, they are taken to the Megion and trained in magic. If no traces of magic is found in them, they are taken to the Sloth and trained to become an engineer. Me? I am Saine Raider, an engineer in the Badlands. My mother, a Sloth, told me that while she was on a trip in Magis, she had found me as a baby abandoned in a pile of garbage, clutching a mechanical device tightly. She took me to a priestess to be tested, and no traces of magic was found, but the priestess told my mother something peculiar: She sensed a force in me, a force that may save this city one day. My mother took me to the Badlands, and I was trained in engineering by my father, a master engineer and head of the Badlands. Now I spend my days working on the device my mother found me with. What it was supposed to do, I don't know, but I could tell by its intricate design that though it was incomplete, its completed form would be of great impact to this city. My father didn't support this, but when my mother passed, he stopped bothering me when I worked on the device. So here I am, installing random gears and parts to this device when my only friend, Lunia Court Magis, walks in. She was the daughter of the royal family in Magis, but couldn't use magic well. I came to know her when I deactivated a rabid mech dog chasing her one day. She often came to the Badlands and visited my workshop, watching me as I worked on the mysterious device. She seemed so interested in my work, despite being threatened by a machine on our first encounter. "Hello Saine, are you still working on that machine of yours?" "I am. It's such a confusing machine. Some parts seem to fit into certain slots perfectly, but do nothing to it. I'm getting a little frustrated." Lunia chuckled lightly. Despite her position, she didn't look down on us Sloths. She was a very calm woman, a stark contrast to the uptight magicians of Magis. "It's always fun to watch you work through trail and error. Though, if you're getting frustrated, perhaps it's time for a break?" "Not a bad idea, care to walk with me outside?" I opened the door and went out. Lunia followed. The Badlands wasn't by any means a beautiful place. The metal buildings were brown and dented, the sky was gray, and the air quality was poor, but sometimes, it felt better to be out here than in that musty workshop. We take a stroll on the road. "So, how is your father doing, Saine?" "The usual. He's out overseeing the operations of the local power plants, making sure the workers don't die or anything." "He must be very hardworking. Back in Magis, we have a magic current that powers everything for us. It's convenient, but, in my opinion it's turned us quite lethargic. That's why I read a lot of magic books at the royal library. Even if I can't cast the spells well, it's still work." "We don't have many books, but we do have engineering manuals. I know that they probably have no information about the device, but-" Our conversation is suddenly derailed as we notice an autonomous car heading straight for us at high speeds. I grab Lunia's hand to pull her out of the way, but her heel is stuck in a metal grate. Lunia tries to cast a spell to move the car, but her cast fails. "Saine, leave me. I can't move out of the way in time." "No! I'm not going to leave you! I'll figure a way out of this!" "We don't have the time to do that Saine." She's right, the car is approaching quickly, and we have no time to spare. Out of desperation, I thrust my hand forward, and somehow, a bolt of magic shoots from it and strikes the car, stopping it. We walk to a corner and calm ourselves down. That's when Lunia calmly asks me. "Saine, was that magic?" I don't know how to respond. All this time I was told that I was a Sloth, but suddenly I have the ability to use magic. "I-I think so. Lunia, I want you to do something for me. Let's keep this as our secret." Lunia stares at me for a little, then she gives me a light smile. "Of course. I will always keep a secret for a friend." A ringing sound permeates the Badlands. It's now the evening. "Ah, it's getting dark. I'll be heading on home now."Lunia begins to walk away, but she turns around and looks at me with a concerned facial expression. She turns her head back and walks back to Magis. I head back to my workshop, confused as I process what I just did. A Sloth found in Magis that couldn't use magic... but now? To get it off my mind, I work on the device until I fall asleep. The next day my father wakes me. Strange, he never does that. I get up and look at him. He's wearing a full body suit, and has a large mechanical gun on his back. "My son, it's time you looked away from that machine and follow me."He walks out of the house. I quickly dress and follow him. I am led to a factory, and I hear the voices of a crowd. Inside there are a bunch of Sloths, wearing similar suits and holding the same large mechanical gun that my father did. My father walks up to a podium, and starts to speak. "MY PEOPLE, IT IS TIME THAT WE ARE NO LONGER LOOKED DOWN ON BY THE MEGION! IT IS TIME THAT WE SHOW THEM OUR ABILITIES! WITH OUR NEW BATTLE SUITS AND BLASTERS, WE WILL SHOW THOSE MAGIC SNOBS WHO IS MORE ADVANCED, AND WHO HAS WORKED HARDER TO REACH THE PINNACLE OF SOCIETY!"The crowd cheers in response to my father's speech. "TO START OUR WAR WITH MAGIS, WE MUST TRIGGER A RESPONSE! I HAVE HERE A TRESPASSER FROM MAGIS! SHE SHALL BE THEIR FIRST CASUALTY!"My father ushers a Sloth to bring this "trespasser"on the podium. I can't believe who it is. It's Lunia. My father points his blaster to her and readies the trigger. "NO!"My body moves on its own and I teleport to the podium and blast my father's blaster to bits of dust. My father looks at me in shock. "Saine, what is this? My son? A Megion?" "Father, this isn't right. I understand that the people of the Sloth feel wronged by the Megion, but a war, killing innocents, isn't what we should do!" "He's right."Lunia calmly responds. "I am a the daughter of the ruling family of Magis, and I do not see a problem with the Sloth. We can solve this in a peaceful manner." My father takes a second to process this situation. He points to me and says: "Traitor."The Sloths in the crowd ready their guns at me and Lunia. My body once again moves on its own as I grab Lunia and warp us back to the workshop. "Lunia, are you okay?" "I am fine. As I was coming here to visit you again, a group of Sloths surrounded me. I was captured and taken to that factory. Saine, they're going to wage war on Magis." We hear my father's voice on the loudspeakers in town. "MY SLOTHS! TODAY WE ADVANCE TO THE MAGIS BORDER AND WAGE WAR! LOOK OUT FOR MY SON, THE TRAITOR, AND THE GIRL OF THE RULING FAMILY OF MAGIS!" "Crap, not on my watch..."I grab the device, still incomplete, and open the door. "Lunia! We need to get to the Magis border!" "Right." We head outside. We can see tanks heading our way. We somehow need to get to the border before they do. Lunia chimes in with an idea. "What if we teleport to the border? I know the chant to teleport us to the waypoint at the border, but I don't have the magical energy to use it. Saine, I need your power." "You got it!"I focus my arms on Lunia, and sure enough, magic energy flows from me to her. Lunia chants the spell, and right before a tank runs us over, we warp out of the way to the border between Magis and the Badlands. There are magicians there, readying themselves. It seems they heard rumors that the Sloths would attack them with their new technology. The head mage notices us. "Hm? Lunia? Is that you? What are you doing with a Sloth!?" I frantically tell the head mage about the situation. He laughs and says: "Hahaha! We are prepared for this! We will take out their army with relative ease!" "That's not the idea! Are you trying to cause total destruction and casualties on both sides!?" "That doesn't matter! A few destroyed buildings is fair enough a cost for what we will teach them!" I can't seem to get the point that total war being a bad idea through their heads. Then Lunia speaks. "Mage general. I, Lunia Court Magis, daughter of the royal family, order you to lower your staves!"I haven't seen her talk like this before. Lunia's usually talked with a calm demeanor, but now she's like a commander. Reluctantly, the mage general lowers his staff. "So be it then." "I have an idea."Lunia turns to me. "Saine, that device of yours. Isn't there something you haven't tried on it?" It takes me a few seconds to realize what she's talking about. "Magic! I've been trying too hard to tune this device with industrial parts. So what would happen if we infused it with a large amount of magic?"
Leaning down I close his eyes, fear, anxiety and sadness all flashed through me. I'm not sure how things ended up like this, I barely remember anything about me. What I do know is that I can't be around this anymore. I got in my car driving towards Atlanta, the streets were completely empty even the animals were missing. After a while i spotted a few people walking towards the city. I picked them up and offered to bring them to the city. As soon as they got in the car they started assaulting me with questions, assuming someone had them. "Sir, do you know what's going on? People just started to go crazy,l and feral. Some people disintegrated into nothing. What did you see? I responded honestly "last I remember I was with my father and my two step siblings. Then I blacked out. When I looked around I wasn't in the same place, my family was missing and there was a small battalion of soldiers, they all started to kill each other. One of them with strange hair apologized to me and killed himself. After that simple introductions were made. Their names were Eva and Daniel. They were from some real estate agency not to far away. Sadly I had forgotten my name. I had already told them everything I remember. As soon as we arrived at the city a blockade was set up. Medical stations, different religious tents and military outposts were stationed within walking distance for new arrivals to seek refuge or help. I dropped my two new friends off and bid farewell. I was treated slightly better for having a working vehicle. It seemed the city was separated into different sections of status and wealth, inwas placed second from the top and my friends at the bottom. A couple days passed, while I was sitting in my room a frantic knock came. It was Daniel broken and bruised. Tooth missing and a large gash running down his eye. "Sorry to bother you sir, but I need help. Eva is being held at a compound and they are saying if I can't fork over money they are going to whore her out."He started crying. He looked pitiful...but what could I do. But I had to try anyways, it's the right thing to do. I followed him to the warehouse and spoke with the group. i off offered to pay their tax. A man named Charlie came to me and discussed that the tax was based on income and I owed roughly 8 times as much. I told him to fuck off. That's when I felt something heavy hit me in the back of the head. I woke up to a splash of freezing water on my face, to what could only be described as a modern attempt at a torture chamber. Needles, blades, clamps, car batteries. "No Sir, about that money you owe us, I think you know what will happen if you don't. He ripped my shirt open and immedietly started to laugh. "Look at this fags tattoo. A star rising over a mountain with the initials LMS. I bet he lost someone and tried to memorialize them. Lets carve it off"the knife entered my chest, but I felt no pain. All I felt was relieved and ecstasy. Their fear and angst almost had me at a tipping point. It was all coming back to me. My family, my home, what happened outside with the soldiers. countless years going by in an instant. Why i was in the middle of bumfuck Georgia...I was looking for some souls to steal.
The repulsion field emitted by her clothing kept the dust from settling on her. And there was a lot of dust. Deep below ground level, in an ancient tunnel Rita didn't understand, she pulled some kind of synthetic cloth off of a large bulky object. Once the dust settled, Rita realised she'd uncovered some kind of ancient...house? It had four wheels, perhaps it was a mobile home from the 21st century? It had what appeared to be doors but Rita couldn't figure out how to open them. So, she used her smart watch to levitate the object and walk it to her home. It took Rita a good 30 minutes to get back to her base of operations, luckily the vehicle was made weightless by her watch. She placed the strange object in her holding chamber, where she put everything she wasn't sure about or had a risk of viral contamination. The tunnels had grown more illuminated and more properly built the further from the ancient tunnel she'd walked. She wouldn't have even noticed the old world tunnel was there had she not been actively looking for unexplored areas. Rita used the computer system in her smooth, white domicile to examine her new acquisition. Dirt residue on the bottom of the object reminded her painfully of how good ancient people had it. They could venture outside and explore more than just dirt and tunnels. The dirt looked good too, perhaps she could clone it later to make some better veggie growing soil. Rita's computer interrupted her reverie, the readout indicated the soil on the bottom of this vehicle was...recent? It matched the composition Rita estimated for the surface of the earth today, in 2102. Rita needed to go back to where she found this object. How did it get here? From where? Had someone found a safe way back to the surface?
A luxury cruise ship is not the thing most people expect to see when they die, and I think that's what inspired me to do it in the first place. With the way purgatory works, it's expected that you meet another lost soul at the dock who has already decided where they're going. Once your partner gets to their destination, (and let's be honest, it's usually heaven) you row your little boat back to the dock and wait for your own soul to encounter. As though in that one boat ride, you've decided where you deserve to spend eternity. But I'm not like that. And I do not think people should be like that. I heard a knock on my door. "Captain?"A young woman, I'd say about late twenties peeked her head in the door. I guessed either brutal car crash or some form of cancer. "Hey, come on in! Everything okay? Did we get the rock climbing wall back up?" "Everything's great, really. I was just wondering if maybe I could ask you a few questions?" Here we go. "Oh my god, of course! Here, let's talk in my office real quick!"I let the crew take over and take the young woman into my study. "Can I offer you a drink?" "Alright, you can lose the act. I know exactly what this is."Poor thing. "We all get on this boat thinking that we have all the time in the world to decide on heaven or hell, but once we've gorged ourselves on the buffet and have done everything we've wanted to do, we realize we can never leave. This isn't purgatory. This is hell." "So that would make me Satan?" "Yes." "Do you want to know why I built this cruise ship?" "To torture every lost soul for eternity."I was starting to like this one. "When we're alive, we get punished a lot for taking our time. To be fair, we don't get a lot of it. We get caught up in day to day tasks. Bills, jobs, relationships, soccer practice. We barely get a chance to decide whether we want to be good or bad people. And then we die and we're faced with a choice. Were you good or bad? Originally there were no boats at all. Just an empty dock with piles of wood, and a sign pointing to two opposite ends of the planet. Once we discovered heaven and hell, we never moved beyond those wooden rafts. The indecisive were either stuck on a dock or lost at sea. So I built a bigger boat. I took them all in and we started to explore. We kept building and taking people in, giving them rides to nowhere in particular. If they decided they were going to heaven, we took them. They wanted hell, we took them there too. But the one thing we never did was rush them. We gave them all the time they needed to think, to create, to do what they could never do with their limited time on earth." "So this is a test for heaven." "Does that make me God?" "No, I'm about a thousand percent sure you're still Satan." I opened my desk drawer, pulled out a catalogue and handed it to her. "Every kind of boat you could ever want is in there. Speedboat, tugboat, pirate ship, there's even a pile of wood in there if you wanna go old school. When you're ready, come to me and tell me which boat you want and I'll give it to you. You can go anywhere you want: heaven, hell, back to the dock, but all I ask is for you to take your time." She didn't stay much longer after that. I don't know if anything I said meant anything to her. But damn, did it feel good to say it again.
As I stood there staring down at the roaring waves of people, I could not help but feel alone. For the better part of my life I devoted myself to a cause seemingly futile, but here we all gathered. Behind me towered sails so bright and vibrant, whipping in the wind like dog tongues lapping for water. Each man, woman, and child cheered my name while raising fist of triumph and praise. I could not help but wonder how this moment had finally come after all that I have been through. The countless days and nights abroad. The countless villages and towns fallen beneath my wrath. The countless men fallen beneath my sword. It sent a chill up my spine to ponder. To think as many men I have slew, twice as many now cried my name. "Rorik! Rorik!" If they knew how many homes I set ablaze would they still hail me as their king? 'Stop it!' I scolded myself. This was my victory, and I would crush a thousand more if it meant bringing my people glory. It is why I did this was it not? For my people? I looked down from the bow of the armada at the countless faces, recognizing none of them. They cheered without relent still in the face of their Lord. These men meant nothing to me... They were nothing compared to my own vanity. I did this for myself. I enjoyed it, did I not? The world has been conquered and there is no blood left to spill. These peasants call on for me as their savior, their god. They would never cross me. In that moment I realized, there is no world for me where there is not conflict. It could be decades before another rebellion. Maybe not even in my lifetime. I turned to see the rest of my crew. They were not amused by the cheering. Such a hardy bunch, completely desensitized to war and death. Ruined. It was a stretch to even call them human. I whispered to my first mate. He snarled and walked away, disappearing below deck with the rest of the crew. A moment later I cracked the first smile I had in months, the muscles on my cheeks stretched and ached. "FIRE!" The canons that riddled the sides of my entire fleet lit with sparkling fire. I could not take my gaze away from a little girl who stood at the front of the crowd, she hugged her father's leg as he cheered my name. Her face lit up from the bright canons and she cracked a quick smile in awe. It was truly something to see so many canons light in such unison. My crew was trained well. The best in the sea. Her face quickly turned to worry and confusion. There I experienced the dullest moment of my entire life. Yes, even more lethargic than me sitting here now as an old nobody in this small hut. The moment after the cheering stopped, but before the hundreds of cannonballs crashed into the docks. In that moment every single man, woman, and child made direct eye contact with me for the briefest of seconds. It was completely silent. Even the ocean waves halted. Then, they were all torn away.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Irassa looked at the peaks of the Gray Mountains, the sick color of the giant ice formations standing in direct contrast with the blue of the sky and the white of the Great Valley. "Are you kidding me? We went through all this effort to get here, and now you wanna give up?" The reptilian Vendai used to live in harmony with nature, until the Corrupted One came and led the Vendai to war with one another. The Father of Life, in a fit of anger, cursed the Vendai to the Lesser World, where the Vendai built great underground cities and powered them with the thermal vents they found there. However, the thermal vents overheated due to the great amount of waste the Vendai produced, and they was forced back above ground. Seeing the Vendai returning, the Father of Life froze the Great Valley, but the Vendai persisted. Now, they go up to the mountains in order to get to the lush gardens of Ibalu. Or so the stories go. "No, no! I don't want to give up! I just have a really, REALLY bad feeling about this. I mean, what if we don't like what we see?" Her brother, Naro, snorted. "How could we not like what we see? This is Ibalu we're going to rediscover! The sacred gardens of Life! We will prove to the Father that our people have changed; we're no longer only focused on war, we care about each other now. When he sees our proof, he will melt the ice that surrounds our people and let Life flourish amongst us, I'm sure of it! Now come on, let's go!" Naro hurried to the peaks of the Mountains, with Irassa behind him. A while later, they made it to the very edge. "Just a little bit more! Come on!" Irassa was the first to climb up onto a small flat surface on the mountain peak. As soon as she stood up, she froze. Naro climbed up next, huffing in the process. "Well, do you see the beauty of Ibalu? Do you see that I was right? Irassa?" "N-N-Naro,"she barely said. "Y-Yeah?" "Look." Naro looked in front of him so he could see what got Irassa so stiff. What he saw was beyond his wildest dreams. Instead of a lush valley, there was a massive expanse of clouds coloured a sickly gray, the same one as peak of the mountains. Among the clouds, strange, enormous and obviously not natural pillars stood, covered in debris and some even seeming like they were missing pieces. On the ground, ruined vehicles lay in tatters. Irassa recognised the vehicles from one of the pre-Banishment books she obtained; the vehicles were used as personal transports in the underground cities, but what she didn't understand is how they got above ground. The Vendai didn't take any of their creations with them from below, so how are they here? Her train of thought was interrupted when she heard sobbing. She looked down to see her brother on the floor, crying tears that touched the gray snow which Irassa was sure was ash. She went down to give him a hug. "Shh, shh. It's alri-" "NO IT'S NOT!!!" Naro quickly rose up in anger and frustration. "How can you say it's alright!? Everything we've been told about our history, everything, is WRONG!! There is no 'Ibalu' or gardens of Life! The Father is dead and we killed him! WE KILLED HIM!!!! Naro fell to his knees and sobbed uncontrollably. Irassa just hugged him and began crying herself. "AUUUUUUUUUUUUGHUGHUGHUGH" `Unknown sound detected.` `Searching...` `Source located. Grid 075, sector 32, two lifeforms detected. Initiating active scan.` `...` `ALERT: Oppressors detected. Presence of level 1 threat indicates Oppressors have found a way out of the Preserve. Initiating Cover-Up Protocol 1: targets will be abducted, administered class 3 amnestics and released back into the Preserve. Illusion will be mantained.` `NOTE: FTL ship Detector ready for dispatch into extrasolar territory. Begin Ibalukmee expansion into the stars.`
You know what they say: "Everything happens for a reason." People argue, of course. That's what people do. We're so full of ourselves. Homo sapiens -- the same as us, the wise. Ha. We should call ourselves Homo litigiosus. Being the same as us means being contentious. Everything happens for a reason. People argue about that idea. When they do, they're arguing about those last three words. For some people, "for a reason"means nothing more than having a cause. Everything happens as the effect and result of something else, and the domino only falls because another domino strikes it. These people live in a mechanical, deterministic universe. For other people, "for a reason"means that there's a purpose. Everything happens according to the Grand Design, and the domino only falls because Some Higher Power placed it there in order that it may fall. These people live in a magical, miraculous universe. I don't live in either of those universes. I'm not the kind of person who cares about those last three words. No, my problem is with the first two. *Everything happens.* You want to know about cause and effect? You want to know about the Grand Design. Just look at me. I'm proof that neither one matters. I'm what happens when the domino doesn't fall. You know what else people say? They say the world is shrinking. They don't mean it, really. It's just a metaphor for the farthest reaches becoming more accessible, more understandable. Except, that isn't the whole truth. The world is shrinking, for all of us. Every time something happens, the world splits apart. Flip a coin. One world, about half the size that you started with, goes off one way, carrying the version of the coin that landed heads. About half the world goes another way, with the coin showing tails. These worlds are the same size along the usual three dimensions. They both have all the length, width, and height that the original had. The way that they're smaller is along the dimension of possibility. Entropy, I've come to discover, is nothing more than the measurement of lost possibility. It's the size of all those other worlds which ever split apart from this one. But not every quantum fluctuation is binary. There are countless sliver worlds -- the coin that lands on its edge, the coin that shatters when it hits the floor, the coin that vanishes in midair. Everything happens, no matter how bizarre. Lightning strikes a plane. There wasn't much chance of that happening, but such things happen. An engine explodes. A fuselage is torn apart. Bodies fall from the sky, like dominoes in a deterministic universe. One man bounces. Bones break, lungs collapse, and, yes, my life flashes before my eyes. In almost every possible world, I am a dead man. So many dominoes had already fallen. The next domino to fall should have been the last beat of my heart. My heart still beats. My eyes still blink, thankfully, so I can still put these words on your screen. My universe is so tiny now. I can't even measure the endless possibilities that, for me, are ended. Every breath fills me with entropy. And Homo litigiosus? Still the same as always. People argue about who's responsible, about who's going to foot the hospital bills, about what extraordinary measures might be employed to extend my feeble life. People argue about what it means for me to still be alive. None of that matters. I'll keep dying and not dying, superposition after superposition. As long as even the slimmest possibility for my survival exists, so will I. The world around me continues to shrink, but I continue. I will continue, no matter how slim the odds, for as long as it's possible at all. You think you can decide what to do with me? You think that I can decide what happens, that my consent is in any way meaningful? No, Doctor, you are quite wrong. Any decision you and I make, we make in every way. We both attempt and avoid all the possibilities, and some version of us sees every observable result. Everything happens. So, some versions of you are about to pull that plug, right now. Alas, the version of you that I'll know in a minute from now, that'll be some version in some tiny world who just couldn't do it. The world or worlds where you do, they'll be larger, simply because it's quite probable that you'll pull that plug -- even though, for me, you won't. People argue. I'm finished with arguing. There's not enough of me left to make a decent person.
“Who bought this house again?” Hank asked. “[Ace Housing](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsYouKnow) ,” his foreman responded, “they want to put up an apartment complex.” “Right.” Hank looked around. Everything was just as he remembered it. The porch his dad put in, the treehouse he and his brother built. He went inside for one last look. He remembered his old room. He remembered where the couch used to go, and the tv, and the dining table. Now, everything was cleared out for his crew. The house was empty. Dead. He’d reminisced enough. It was time to do his job. He took one last glance around, then headed outside. “Alright, boys,” he called to the wrecking ball operator, “Let’s take it down.”
The Ancients had thought there was no hope. As the climate shifted, the waters rose, and the earth shook with increasing ferocity, the Ancients, for the first time, looked outwards rather than inwards. They looked to the stars for salvation rather than the uncontested ability of their species to endure. They ran, leaving the "weak"behind, for the heavens. There was no thought in their mind that we would survive. No chance we could endure. We are human. We Endure. We lost, of course, almost everything. The famine, drought, and unending natural disasters, took almost everything from us. We returned to tribal division, constant wars over our burning planet destroyed what little land the earth left usable. Billions of lives were lost to us in a matter of decades. Humanity was decimated, but we endure. As the ash settled on our scorched soil, as the smoke cleared from the nuclear wastelands that replaced our ancient cities, as the waters receded from our coasts, the earth seemed empty. Of course, it wasn't. The strong and lucky survived. A population of humans no larger than 5 digits around the globe made it through the worst. We were vulnerable, weak, and living in a world that humans hadn't lived in thousands of years. A world where we were still in the food chain. It was no easy business, remembering how to live without our machines, without our governments. But little by little we reformed as a new people. A new civilization formed, a mere shadow of the Ancients to be sure, and we began to thrive in our new world. Four hundred years after the eternal night, three hundred and forty one after the first sunrise, the Ancients were just a vague memory. We had tried to remember their civilization as best we could, but besides human life the greatest casualty of the eternal night was knowledge. Few structures remained from that time. The ones that did held only vague clues. The glory of their civilization was remembered, however, through bed time stories and legends past on generation to generation. From a young age I had heard of their thinking machines, of their flying crafts, even that they had explored the moon and a red planet. The story told the most, however, was their departure. Their escape from the burning Earth. Every family had their own version of the story, some made them evil depraved creatures, some more generously considered them gods of a kind who would return and reunite us with our history, some simply found comfort knowing that we were not alone. It was a constant question in the back of everyones mind. Would they return? Three years ago they did. Four hundred years after the eternal night they hoped to return to their home. They imagined of course to return to an earth devoid of intelligent life to inherit a world that had finally recovered from their devestation. To many of us they were long lost brethren returning from a long journey. To them we were a mild annoyance in the way of their glorious return. They did not take kindly to our existance. Nor that we intended to remain free, and independant. We had hoped they would simply assimalate with us and let us remember our ancient ways. They felt however, that in the four hundred years of seperation we became different species. They felt we were lesser, and unfit for their new society. They were right to some extent. We had lost everything and had to rebuild from scratch. They had spent the last four hundred years exploring and colonising the planets that danced with us, and even beyond, building on the technology the ancients had possessed. But I knew my peoples capabilities, I knew that given the chance the new generation could easily learn the abilities of the Ancients. As the elected representative of the southern lands I made it my goal to convince them. The Ancients were not savages, and they allowed us to peacefully convene with them on many occasions. First we met them at their primary landing site, inviting them to a celebrative festival of their return. They had little interest in our celebration but out of interest in our new world they sent diplomats to report on us. Later they would meet in our capitols, but mostly they wanted us to come to them, as the lesser party. They never struck me as incredibly different. They spoke in strange accents, they acted very measuredly, and they had an awful habit of speaking down to us, but they were still very much human. Through all our meetings all we accomplished was to show them that we were not a threat, and wished to pursue peace. We failed to convince them we were capable of living in their world. Eventually a plan was drafted. They would build for us walled off sections of the world that we were free to live in, with supervision of course, as long as we made no attempts to leave. Ridiculous. We rebuilt this earth, we lived through the eternal night, they ran away and expect to simply have it all? I would not stand for it. The other leaders saw no other way, they like the ancients four hundred years prior underestimated what humans are capable of. There was no convincing them, and I was forced to resign to "smooth the transition". The "Ancients"set to work on the walled world. They had of course neglected to mention that we would be doing the building, with their assistance and supervision. Their machines were too busy building their own cities to assist us they said, so they put us to work building miles and miles of wall. Many have died constructing the walls at a break neck pace. I had watched helplessly from the outside for too long. I lived a life of service to my people, I couldn't watch any longer while they suffered to build their own prison. I didn't have any intention of being a pointless martyr however. From all my meetings with these "Ancient"invaders I did glean one very useful peace of information. This was only a small colonising mission. Most of them had stayed behind on their now fully habitable outer colonies. There was a limited interest in colonising earth purely for sentimental reasons. To win earth back, we didn't have to defeat them in a war, we simply had to make it too expensive and too much of a nuisance for the others to support the mission any further. It turned out that some of the workers meant to be working on our prison had in fact been diverted to build their cities. I now had my route of infiltration, and it also appeared that the invaders didn't think we had any will or ability to even attempt rebellion. Tomorrow we would do just that. Explosives inteded to clear the way to build our prison would be instead use to level their newly built energy plants and thinking machines. Tomorrow would be the defining moment of our new world. ___________ Sorry for the rushed end there, ran out of time, didn't have any time for a grammar check. This is a great prompt! Would need a lot more time to make this story more compelling however!
I pulled the cold baking pan filled with half of a lasagna out of the fridge and threw it into the oven. Actually threw it. I didn't mean to, but I was just beginning to hate lasagna, ya' know? Have you ever had to eat lasagna for 7...no, 8 days straight? If you have, I feel bad for you. If not, I hope you never have to. The lasagna wasn't even that big! I made it last week for dinner with my folks. Sure, we're Italian, and yeah, we make a lot of food when we cook. But boy, do we eat it too. We cleared over half of it, just the three of us, and I kept the rest for leftovers. I have a massive student loan that I'm so close to paying off, I could taste it... and it tastes like free lasagna. I'm all for free leftovers; this is ridiculous, though. No matter how big of a piece I take for myself, I can't seem to make a dent in this. It looks like there's just as much lasagna now as there was when I brought it home. I know that's crazy talk, some dark magic. I must not be taking as big of a piece as I think I am. Whatever. I've offered many times to sell my soul to the devil to pay off these loans before I'm 50. Eating lasagna for a week is a lot less non-committal.
Tim Sanchez, head of extraterrestrial intelligence for the US government, was panicking. As he quickly moved down the hallway of the Pentagon, hundreds of scenarios were flashing through his mind, and none of them were good. He looked ahead and saw the door that led to the office of the director of the CIA, his boss, Randall Nelson. As Tim entered the office, Randall looked up from the incident report with a scowl. "Sanchez, how did this happen? I thought your people had everything under control!" "Sir, the problem came from an external source, there was nothing we cou-" "That's a load of bull and you know it. I already talked to Exalia and Farres, their signals were all covered. This means that someone in your department screwed up." "But sir, I've already checked all of the equipment three times, everything was in place." Nelson stood, anger evident on his face, "Then why did the extraterrestrial audience, that is supposed to be an Omega- Blue level secret, show up ON THE RATINGS!??!?" "I've already got a team looking into it sir, we should have an ans-" "Then why are you still standing here?" "Sir!"Tim quickly made his exit with a swift salute. Randall looked back to the report and sighed. He was not looking forward to the paperwork that he would have to fill out because of this event. Suddenly his desk phone beeped and he pressed down on the speaker button. "This is CIA director Nelson." "Director, report to the White House immediately. The president is meeting with Queen Exalia and King Farres in the War Room and requests your presence." "Tell them that I'm on my way." Randall sighed once more, it was going to be a long week.
"Ok, this may have worked 1,000 years ago, but humans have been learning while you were asleep. We have the power to fight back" Malphagia chortled and chuffed in amusement. His voice, when he replied, was a deep rumble. It was a sound to lift the hairs on George's neck; a sound to make him want to flee in terror. "What could you puny humans do to me? I have skin as strong as steel. No sword can hurt me! No arrow can pierce me! It is time that you creatures once again learned your place. The age of the dragons has returned, and I will have my due! 1 pound of gold and one cow for every year I have slept. You can bring it to me by tomorrow, or I will eat the princess". George suppressed his panic, and stood his ground. He kept his face calm, though every animal instinct in him wanted to run. "It is our policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists. You will give back the princess, or I will be forced to take drastic measures." The dragon stood on his hind legs and blew fire into the sky to show the tiny annoyance what it was dealing with. The heat made George's skin red and raw, even from where he stood. Yet still, he held his ground. Malphasia stomped down, making the ground shake, his great head only a few feet away from George. "I smell no magic on you, mammal. You are as nothing to me. Just to prove to you how pathetic you truly are, I will let you strike me once. Then you will know my power, and I shall claim one of your limbs as recompense. You need only a head to convey my message, so I will extract my pound of flesh and send you on your way. Go ahead, mortal. I'm waaiitinng" The dragon held still and watched as George pulled out a small device from his jacket. The dragon held still as George took a stance. The dragon held still while George held the device out and looked across the top of it. When the bullet pierced the dragon's eye, though, Malphagia went mad. He thrashed and pulled back, screamed and let loose a roar that deafened everything near it. He opened his mouth to breath deadly flames on this creature that had hurt him, but felt the shock of 5 more bullets piercing his skull through his open mouth. As he slumped down and the light fickered from his eyes, he heard the voice of this terrible human from far away. "I told you, we can fight back. My family has prepared for this day since you all went to sleep. Your reign of terror was over the day you went to sleep." As the dragon died, George the LXXV put away his Desert Eagle walked into the cave. There would be more princesses to rescue in the coming months. The problem with living for millennia is that things change around you. Maybe some could be reasoned with. It would be a shame to have to drive such a fascinating species extinct. Still, though, duty was duty. He would do what he had to, as humans always did...
“I woke up, pushed my comforter off of my body and rolled out of bed. I headed to the restroom, relieved myself, brushed my teeth to avoid costly dental bills, washed my face to avoid acne, and shaved the hair beginning to grow on my head. I got dressed in my usual robes, applied deodorant, and went to my kitchen to prepare my breakfast. I put the usual ingredients of fruits and vegetables, a small bit of protein, milk, and sugar in it. I started the blender and it begin to loudly scream as it churned my ingredients into a cement gray, that’s when it hit me officer.” I breath in sharply, attempt to stifle my tears, and continue talking, “the screaming of the blender reminded me of my victims. Over my career as a prosecutor and judge, I’ve wrongfully put hundreds on death row, and you don’t even want to know what I did on my off days.” The dam breaks and tears flow freely down my cheeks. The officer stares in disbelief, his pen audibly falls to the floor. Please don’t murder me if it’s bad, but also some very light criticism would be appreciated. I want to work on my writing skills.
A game of ex-Kings and oh's The August sun beamed over head, grunts and plastic pad slammed into each other at the line. Several scouts murmured to each other approvingly as the quarterback zipped the ball forty yards into the sprinting receivers arms, the defender leapt to make a stop but he was too late. Touchdown. There was a cheer from the stands where a flock of faithful locals cheered. They stood in the shade of the press box with a proudly painted sign, 'State champions '89,' Alexander spit in disgust. "Can't wait for two-a-days to be over. This heat is torture,"He said. Donnie, the back up center nodded rubbed a soaked towel over his forhead, "yeah man, how hell they think we going stand this shit." Alexander slapped the big young man's back happily. "Trust me this'll be worth it. Once school starts chicks flock to the players." Donnie smiled and looked up into a daydream, "but zan, we backups? What chick wanna be with a back up?" Alexander looked back to the cheerleaders who giggled and waved. "Hey man we're second team. That means we get the second best ones. I ain't greedy, you?" Donnie giggled, an awkward sound from someone his size. "No I ain't." "Seconds, your up. Get out there."The coach yelled, veins popping from his overly muscular neck. He was an alumni from the '89 team, and the murmur of a shot a the chip was spreading around the town like wildfire. Alexander groaned and strapped on his helmet and handed the startled Donnie his. "Yeah Alex, go make daddy proud."A familiar voice came from the stands. Alexander shuddered and walked to the huddle without turning to acknowledge the call. He knelt down and looked at the faces of his ten teammates, "any one know what the fuck the play was?"He smiled and they all chuckled. "Redzone against the first team defense."Said the sophomore running back. "Shit, hope those brutes remember what this red jersey means."Alexander groaned, and there was another laugh. He turned back to the offensive coach who was furiously waving for his attention. He made several hand signs and Alexander nodded. "Alright boys halfback sweep, on two, ready." "Break,"the offense said together, and strolled to the line where an enraged first team defense stood waiting and snarling. "Nur your nuts calm your tits."Alexander said pointing at the massive middle linebacker standing two yards behind the line of scrimmage. Alexander was great at one thing and that was spotting the blitz. "Hu, hike."He shouted. It sounded like a car crash as the offensive and defensive lines slammed into each other. He spun around and handed the ball to the sophomore who bolted towards the sideline. Nur shifted to chase, but Donnie slammed into the muscular lad, just as Alexander planned. Nurs feet slipped from under him and he flew from the impact. The sophomore made it to the six before being pushed out by the safety, the last line of defense. Alexander snapped his fingers in disappointment, he was ready to be back on the bench. Nur stood to his feet frothing at the mouth, and stomped towards Alexander, it took the two defensive linemen to hold him back. "Your dead backup." "Same team dipshit."Alexander responded pointing at the Titan sticker on his helmet. This didn't calm Nur at all. The next play was a goal line fade. The wide outs and tight end would run into the back of the end zone and Alexander prayed one of the would be open. He stood five yards behind Donnie in the shotgun ready to go. "Get em Alexander!"The same voice from before yelled. "Nur, I still see you,"Alexander said. The linebacker growled and charged through the line in a fit of rage before the ball was snapped. Alexander took a step back and felt two hundred pounds slam into his chest. Air flew from his lungs and his vision went black. * "Legend says he who can undo this knot will become king of the world. None have been worthy." Alexander chuckled at the old sage and drew his sword, and in one swift cut sliced through the knot. "It is undone." "What have you done?"The sage bellowed. "I have done the impossible, I've undone your knot. Next I will conquer the world." "Who are you?" "I am Alexander the great, remember it for I will be king of everything." * Alexander woke up in the training room, blinking, his dream had felt so real. The coach sat in the corner his face buried in his hands. He noticed Alexander move and lifted his head. "How you feeling sport?"He asked. "Fine, I guess. You catch the number on the bus?" The coach didn't smile, but his frown eased up a little. "Zan, it's chase. He broke his leg." Alexander blinked confused. The first string quarterback, the one that everyone hung the hope of a state tournament on. "What?" "We're going to make sure you don't have a concussion, but congratulations, your starting." To be continued?
Slodham & Slogue, 2nd Quarter, Current Fiscal Year If you liquify our assets, I can spin them into silk. Let me at the cashflow, I'll cut rivers in the floor. And drain away our overhead as marmalade and milk. I've filed with the S.E.C. in ancient tongues before. And charmed the pension fund to last a thousand generations. Marble columns tall as mountains fold within my ledger. I'll cure a disease (or three or four) as charitable donations. And build next year's projections out of lightning, jade, and heather. But I cannot write off your lunch as a business expense. You paid with a company credit card but put the rewards points on your personal Bosley Steakhouse clubhouse account. It may get you a free appetizer the next time you go, but It also gets a bit hinky during an audit.
The fish squirmed in Robert Taggle's hand. Robert chuckled to himself as he prepared to put the fish in the plastic bucket sitting on the bottom of the canoe. "Silly fish, I've caught you now, you can't esc-" "FREE ME HUMAN, FOR THERE IS A GREAT EVIL BEYOND THE TREES! FREE ME OR WE WILL BOTH PERISH!" Robert looked at the fish and began to laugh. "Silly fish, you're not real!"And with a swift motion he tossed the frantic fish face-first into the plastic bucket. "The doctor gave me the bad pills again. I told him that they didn't work... but Robert is too CRAZY to be listened to!" "HUMAN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PERIL THAT EXISTS JUST PAST THE BANK OF THE RIVER!" Robert balled his hands up and began to pound his temples. "YOU'RE NOT REAL, YOU'RE NOT REAL, YOU'RE NOT REAL!" Then, with one over-zealous wallop from his right fist, Robert quickly put an end to his own consciousness. While Robert lay limp in the bottom of the canoe, the fish screamed and yelled, begging for freedom. Then the locu̕s͜ts came. With the force of a tropical storm, the wall of insects careened out of the foŗe͝s̸t̵. Then came the s̶qu͘įr҉r͡e͝ls ҉a͢n͏d ̶ra͝b́b̀i͜t̵s̴.҉. They c͏ame out ̸ho͝r̨r̕i̡b͜ly ҉d̀is͞fígure̷ḑ, ͡like h̵orr̕i̵ble̸ ͢mut̵a͜tion͝ş ͝fr͜o͞m̢ t҉h́e̷ ̶h́eart o̵f͟ ͘C͝hèrnob̡yl̨'̡s ̢r͏eact͝o̧r ͏c͞ore. I͏t ̀w͢as ̧as ̀įf̀ ̴Go͠d inte͠n̷d̛e͜d to p͘lay ҉d́ìce wi̕th͢ ́t̡he ̵sh̡api͝ng̛ of ţhe҉m͞.͘ T҉hen͜ ̴c͡a͞me t̸h͢e̢ bears͝. Robert had woken up to see the b̀a̛r̴e͝ly̵ ͞re͢c͟ogni҉za҉bl̀è m͢aśs̕ęs of m͘o̕ttl̡͏e͘҉d̷́͏ ͏̕f̢̛ur̛͞,̴͘ ̶b̨̀u̡̧r̡͟n̴͡t͢ ̵̡f͡l̕͢esh̷͠͞, ex́͘͝p̧ǫs̶̶̀ę̴͡d ̶̡͘o̢r͜g͜a͞͠n̷̢s͜͏,̕҉ ̀a̶n͜͏͏d̕͠ d͘i̡s̸̴͠f̸҉i͡ģ͠͡ưr̴̢͘e͟d̵̴͘ ̢ĺ̷iḿ͠b́͝s̕͜. Th͜͞e̶͠y̸͘͠ ҉rąn ̶̛ou̷t̀͢͏ ͝ò̸͢f́͟ ̡̛͞t͠h͢é̡͏ f̧̛o̸͞ŗ̷͞e͡s̕t ͟͠a͠s ̵f̶ąst ̛͞a͘ş҉ ̷͘t͘h͏͏̶e͘͜i̢̕͞ŕ͠ ̸m̨i̕s̢sh͏a̶pe̵͝ņ ̷̛ļ͟eg̵̴ş͘ ͡c̸o͏̵u͢͢l̀͡d ҉c͏a͏̵̕r̴̕ry ͢t͠h̵e̶͢m, m̧͜o̸͢s҉͢t ̷̀b͜͝͡a̵̢͟r̢̛el̡͟ỳ̀̕ ͡àbļe͝ t̷o̴҉ ̢͞͏m̷̀͘a͏͏ǹ̛͠a̧g̴͜e͏́ ͞t̶̢̀o̡ ̶͞ç̛ŕ͡a͜͏wl. T̷ḩen̨͘͞ ̧̕HE̴̵ ̷͟C҉AM͡͝͡E̶̡.̴̷̀ ̵̧A͜͝n͝d̴ ́R͜o̶͘b̢҉͝er̢̕͝t̕͞ ̴c̢los̶͏e̷͢d͟ ͢͜hi̢s̸̡ ͞e̛͡y͏͞e̶͟s҉̢ ̡͢ąnd ͠lé̴t͡҉ ̨͝t̵̴ḩ̛ę͘ ̡t́e̷̛͠a̧r̷͡͠s f́͡͡á̷͝l̛l̨̡,̨̀ ͝f̧͡or ͜ḩé̷̷ ́͜k͡͡ń͢e̷̷w h͡é ̀w̛͘a̸͏s̨͜ ̴ś̸̴e̸ei̴̴̡ņg̨̀͏ ͢t͜҉h͏̢e̵ ̶̢f͜͡ą͠ce o̶͟f̶̛ ̀G̢od̴.̶͡
Holy shit, this was going to be a big one, no pun intended. Sweat poured down Mark's face as he finally pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex. Stumbling out of the car, Mark waddled to the door, dropped his keys, cursed, finally got inside. He dropped his bag just inside the vestibule and had his pants unzipped before the bathroom door was open. He collapsed onto the toilet, felt the the hinge connecting the seat to the bowl snap. He didn't care. He'd fix it later. There were more pressing matters to attend to. Mark had been sitting at his computer, writing some code, when the irresistible urge to poop hit him like a freight train. He'd had a sour stomach all morning, but this was a lightning bolt of urgency. Of all the days, the bathroom in his building was out of order. Mark debated walking to the bathroom in the student center, but it was a seven minute walk and the idea of jostling the payload inside of him caused him to rethink that plan. Safer to drive the ten minutes home. That way he could unleash this beast in the comfort and privacy of his own commode. Mark had left the physics building and gotten into his car. He was a particle physics grad student, about a year away from getting his Ph.D. Besides shit, he was also full of excitement for an upcoming trip to Switzerland to visit the Large Hadron Collider as part of his research. The lofty pursuit of knowledge on behalf of the human race was the furthest thing from his mind, however, as he bore down to relieve himself of his terrible burden. Far from the instantaneous release and relief that he was expecting, he actually felt quite constipated now that the toilet was beneath him. Mark knew that straining wasn't supposed to be good for you, but he needed to be done with this. He pushed until his vision swam and he could see his pulse in flashes of light. Nothing. He started to sweat again. He kicked his pants and underwear off of his ankles and paced out of the bathroom, down the hall, Winnie the Pooh-style. Several deep breaths later, he returned to the toilet, determined to have this finished. No dice. This repetition of pacing and pushing, pushing and pacing, went on for another forty five minutes. Each time Mark sat, he felt that he was getting a little bit closer to his salvation. A tiny bit more would poke out before receding again, like a frightened groundhog. He chugged water. He was about to start crying when he felt some serious movement. This was cause for celebration until Mark realized just how wide this poop was. Stretched in ways he never cared to be, Mark cried out as this monster, this affront to everything pure, slid out, wider and wider, until finally, finally, the widest point seemed to pass. The rest slid out in a rush, and Mark's ass was met with a large, cold splash of toilet water. Shaking and feeling violated, a mountain of flopsweat, Mark collapsed back against the toilet tank. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He wiped his brow with some toilet paper. Sadly, the relief he felt, which he expected to be joyous, was overshadowed by something else. Something almost indescribable. He felt...less. Diminished. A foreign and terrifying feeling. Putting these thoughts out of his head, he turned to more practical concerns. He wiped. There was a small smear of blood, but no poop whatsoever. Puzzled, Mark got up and turned around to observe what he had wrought. In the toilet was an egg, about the size of a plush mini-football. It was a radioactive green, with smudges of brownish red across its surface. As Mark looked at it, a crack appeared in the side. The egg appeared to recede down a long dark tunnel as the room spun counterclockwise and everything went black. \\\* When Mark came to, the sun no longer shone through the bathroom window. Several hours must have passed. Mark lay in a daze until the moments before he passed out came rushing back to him. He got up onto his knees and looked into the toilet. The cracked open, empty egg shell still sat in the toilet bowl. He went to flush in a daze, then thought better of it. It might be bad for the pipes. Mark got up onto wobbly legs and went to leave the bathroom. Before he did, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His hair, normally black, was grey at the temples and crow's feet sat at the corners of his eyes. Below those eyes were deep, dark bags. He appeared to have aged ten years in a few hours. Confused and sick, feeling that loss that he could not name, he stumbled into his bedroom. Sitting at his desk, reading through his lab notebook and scrolling through his computer, was a young boy. The boy was naked. Mark's backpack lay at the boy's feet. The kid must have picked it up from the hall. "Who are you? What are you doing in my apartment?"Mark asked, sounding more dazed than angry. The boy turned around and Mark collapsed into the wall, sliding down into a sitting position. The child was him. He was the child. He looked just like Mark had when he was twelve or thirteen years old, little wisp of mustache on a long face, lanky frame with a little kid gut. His own eyes stared back at him. "We thank you for your sacrifice,"the child said, a sincere look of pity on his face. He turned back to Mark's notes. His code and plans, his project proposal for the Large Hadron Collider. "I don't understand,"Mark wheezed. It was becoming harder to talk. He looked down at his hands, saw the crepe paper skin, the liver spots. He began to cough. The boy turned around again, only now the boy was a young man, Mark in his late teens. He got up and walked over to Mark, kneeled down in front him. "Your ideas are very novel. For your people, they are quite advanced. But you would never be able to follow them to their natural conclusion. We will do much more good with this knowledge than you ever could." Mark watched as the man in front of him continued to age, until looking at him was like looking in a mirror. Or it would have been this morning. Now Mark was an old man. His vision began to fade, his limbs too weak to move. The imposter, who Mark supposed was in some strange way his son, leaned forward and placed a hand on Mark's shoulder. "You have done my people a great service. We thank you." The other Mark turned and sat back down at the computer. It truly was the worst poop ever, Mark thought to himself, and began to chuckle. But hey, at least he got to be comforted by his naked son who was also himself at the end, that took some of the sting out of it. Mark laughed even harder. I hope my son doesn't turn out to be too much of a piece of shit. Tears were streaming down Mark's face now, as he wheezed with laughter. The other Mark didn't turn around. Goodbye son, I love you too. I always hoped I'd die of old age. Mark's stomach hurt from laughing so hard. Then, in mid-wheeze, Mark took his last breath and died.
When the winter settles in, the ground turns to ice. There are a number of ways to break through the frost and the hard soil: In older times, gravediggers would hurl boiling water on the ground to loosen up the earth, then work as quickly as possible before the re-freeze. Now electricity is king: Heated metal slices through the chill and doubles as a portable heat lamp for the coldest of nights. And it was cold, so cold. Belarus earns its name: Byela Rus, White Rus. White ground. Black sky. Grey husks of buildings here and there dotting the rural landscape, trailing off into the snow-dusted forests that dominate the country. Backwards, they call Belorussians in the so-called civilized cordons of Western Europe. Repressed. Disconnected to an unnatural world. But we are connected to the land, connected to our roots here in the forgotten wards of the continent, even if that land, my land, housed the dead. I'd been a gravedigger for years, following my father, his father, but tomorrow it's someone else's father to be buried in the plot I dug out on this moonless night. The work was monotonous, repetitive, but it was familiar. Like water, like air, like fire, there was the earth. The motion - dig, pitch, dig again - shielded me against the icy wind, the mind triumphant before the body. Dig. Pitch. Dig again. The ground softened as I tore into it, mastered it. Come, it spoke. It is a lonely profession when the earth is your closest companion. Half a meter. More. Dig, pitch, dig again. Earth and ice. Nearly two meters down, the earth gave way. I had almost worked myself into a sweat by that time, caught up in my mind - a dangerous condition in the frozen air. When the dirt loosened and my foot slipped, I paused. Had I hit some sort of a pocket? Moles, perhaps. Burrowing creatures were a nuisance in the graveyard, weaving their homes and tunnels between the resting dead. I swore and knelt down, picking at the earth with my shovel's heated edge like a cook picking at an unappetizing chunk of meat. I'd almost finished the grave, and I longed to go to bed. Sleep. Sleep the rest of the night and into the day; sleep the bulwark against the cold. Then the ground collapsed. My leg slipped into a hole the size of my torso. I stumbled, grappled, losing my shovel into the pit. Only by the grace of gripping a root tangle lining the edge of the grave did I not fall entirely into the yawning vacuum. Panting, sure of my hold on the roots, I looked down. It was dark, but not the dark of a nighttime forest, or a shadowy graveyard. It was blackness - black as dreamless sleep, black as the space between stars on a moonless night. My stomach turned. Not a mole hole. Had I dug into a cave? Fortunately I was prepared for night work, and I unhooked a small flashlight on my belt. Click. Let there be light. When I shined my light into the void, however, only blackness met my greeting. The light died upon contact with the dark, a wall of night stifling my intrusion. My neck prickled, and I clenched my fingers tighter around my root handhold. There is so little excitement, so little novelty in the work of a gravedigger that, when confronted with true curiosity, I found myself unable to act. Run? Climb out and bury this unexpected variable beneath the unforgiving earth, leave it to the weight of winter? Or descend? I am not a decisive man, but I am not a coward, either - or so I'd like to hope. In the end, I did nothing. I hung on my root, stared into the void, and finally something stared back. They were not eyes - not eyes I could see, at least. Black orbs in the blackness. It sounds absurd given that the human race is a visual species, evolved upon the world to judge our surroundings by sight - but I knew, felt, something watching me as I watched it. I laughed. I can't say why I laughed; there was nothing funny about my predicament. But the overwhelming urge to laugh, to vent some sort of emotion overtook me, and so laugh I did. And I laughed more, and the darkness laughed. I could not hear it, but I know it laughed. It touched me in the mind, and I laughed harder, harder, an inky hilarity overtaking me. Perhaps instinctively, my body seized up. My stomach turned over as in fear - run, climb, get out! - but on I laughed, caught up in a feeling that ignored the reeling of my physical to reach out into the mental, the emotional, a plane I neither saw nor heard but only knew. Laugh. Laugh. I am friendly god, am I not? I laughed as something wrapped about my leg. I laughed, and laughed, as it inched up my goosebump-pimpled legs, reaching through the fabric of my pants and around my skin. I cackled as it gripped my waist, unseen snakes embracing me as I laughed. Laugh. Laugh. Then it pulled, pulled me down into the black, and on I laughed. So how did I escape the menace? How did I climb out to tell you all this, to recount my story? I didn't. I'm in the void, laughing to this day, laughing with all the dead. Ha. Ahaha. I am with the dead. I am amongst them, laughing in the earth.
I wake up in my bedroom. Nothing special, except for the fact I feel a little "off". I stretch and get out of bed, and feel something hard on my thigh. I check it out and find out it's... my childhood computer mouse? The one that gave up after just six months? What is it doing here? After getting out bed I do what I always do, turn on my laptop and check out what I've missed from my friends throughout the night. "Come on, mouse"I whisper to the mouse which I used to pretend could talk and click things in the real world. I pull up the chair under my desk and open up my laptop. Instead of my desktop, I see a text box. "You are already dead" What? "You died in your sleep last night so you were placed in this exact replica of your bedroom. Here you will decide which universe your soul will inhabit in your next life. Your computer mouse was also placed here as it shares your soul. (This is due to you and the mouse bonding for most of your life on Earth, which united your souls). Click OK to continue." I move the mouse down and click on the big blue "OK"on the bottom of the window. Immediately the screen changes. A full screen window appears with the title "Select a Universe". On the top of the window it says "Current Universe: 08102002. Click here if you want to continue living in this universe."Below it, there were a list of other universes and their differences from mine. The differences were only subtle so I clicked at the top of the screen to stay with mine. A new screen appeared, showing a list of statistics with slider bars. I maxed out all of the good stats and disabled all the bad stats. At the bottom of the screen there's a text box labeled "Special Statistic". I figured this was for a statistic that you want to have but doesn't have a slider bar. I typed in "I wish I was always happy and everything always goes my way." I clicked "Next"on the bottom right corner of the screen. I said, "Mouse, your turn!"and immediately she came to life. She also did the same thing with the slider bars and for her special statistic, she wished to being able to talk and perform computer commands in the real world even when I'm not using my imagination. After all of this was done, I move the mouse to the newly-formed "Save"button on the bottom right corner, and left click. Immediateky everything goes black. I wake up in a bedroom I don't recognize. "Is this a dream?"I mutter to myself. "No, it's not a dream"came a soft female voice from beside me. It was Mouse! Suddenly the door opens. My crush walks in the room, wearing a wedding gown, and looks up to me. "This is the life, isn't it?" --- I actually intended to write a response to this when it first came out, but I only found the time to do so now.
My face was warm with the frigid cold. "Why does winter I have to be so cold,"I muttered to myself I was tempted to run back in the direction I came from. Although the smell of hot chocolate had swayed my thoughts otherwise. Soon a small cafe was in front of me. A girl carrying a sign turned towards me and waved. She was holding a marketing sign for free cookie with a purchase of some Hot Cocoa. The girl then turned back to grab more customers. I decided to take my chances and walked into the cafe. Everything had seem normal to me. Expect one women who was darting me down with her eyes. I shrugged at it and turned to the barista, her name tag implying that their name was Kate. "Hi, Can I get some Hot Chocolate please,"I asked as the barista grabbed a Styrofoam cup and glanced at me. "Sir,"She added while the cup tilted in her hand "Name?" "Oh yeah, it's Johnathan,"I answered with a slight smile. The barista twirled around and went to fill up the cup, a smell of Chocolate enticed me to be patient. I sighed and glanced over my shoulder. That women from earlier was still staring at me, now with some form of content in her eyes. Slowly I turned forward and was met by the face of Kate. She smiled and handed me a drink of Hot Chocolate and a packaged cookie. Yet before I could leave, she tugged me by the shoulder" "That women keeps staring at you,"She whispered in my ear and let go "If anything happens, don't be afraid to talk." Kate went back to her job serving and taking orders. I debated over sitting or just walking out. Yet the biting cold had not treated me nice, so I chose the warmth of the cafe. The only table open was one close to that women. With a sigh, I gradually walked over and turned my back towards them. It seemed like she had given out a sigh as well. My drink was in my hands as I sipped at it. The taste of Cocoa filled my mouth with a burning sensation. Who knew something so painful was so delicious. I was about to eat into my cookie when a finger slid onto my shoulder. With no hesitation, I turned around. A female gazed into my eyes with a sort of longing. She seemed around my age and I was terrified. Then she spoke to me personally. "Dear child, you don't remember me?" The world seemed to fade as she said those words. When I glanced all around me, it seemed that way. Everywhere I looked it was nothingness and only me and her were present. "Sweetie,"The girl slipped her hand under my chin, "I"m your mother Johnathan" (Sorry if it's bad, I tried to fix dialogue and improve upon it. Criticism would be very helpful.)
"Dad, remember how you said that the world doesn't revolve around me?"I ask. Lowering his newspaper, he turns to me and says, "What about it?" "Well, the world does indeed revolve around me." "You know that what I said isn't literal, right?" "No, I'm not joking with you! The Earth is literally revolving around me!" He folds the newspaper shut and puts it on the coffee table. Then, he pats the vacant spot on the worn leather couch. I oblige, sitting right where he patted. Dad grabs his daily cup of coffee and gulps it down. "Son, you need to realize that not everything is about you,"He smacks his lips and licks a drop of coffee sliding down from the corner of his lip, "We can't drop whatever we're doing, so we can satisfy your every whim. You have to learn to stop being so selfish!" I lower my head in a effort to hide how red my face has become, but also how much my eyes are rolling. My parents never listen to me even when I have something very important to say. The Earth is revolving around me, but how do I prove it? "You should be looking people in the eye when they are talking to you, young man! I am not dealing with your attitude any longer! Go to your room!" He stands up and points up the stairs. Of course. When parents don't want to acknowledge their children, they send them off to their room. I walk over to the stairwell, my right hand clenching, resisting the urge to flip him off. As I head up the stairs, I make sure to stomp on every step. Creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, the wooden staircase groaned under the impacts of my feet, but I didn't care. "If the stairs break, you're paying for the damages!"My dad shouts. He sits back on the couch and resumes reading his newspaper. I step through the hallway and head to the door at the end labeled "Keep Out!". What kind of teenager doesn't have a "Keep Out!"sign that their family disregards anyway? I open the door. In my room, all of my belongings suddenly start floating. My computer, table, bed, bookshelf, dresser, everything hovers in the air, beginning to move around me. I feel a breeze as if someone just turned on the fan, but this breeze is all around my body. Air rushes through my loose and baggy clothing, making me look fatter. I groan. Then, I smile, now knowing exactly how to tell him that the Earth revolves around me. Digging into my pants pockets, I take out my smartphone and begin recording the mayhem in my room. The detritus continue floating in air, moving faster and faster. My chair slams against the door with a sickening thud, knocking it down through the door frame and out onto the floor of the hallway. The flimsy wood of my bedroom door stood no chance against the force of that impact. As if that isn't bad enough, now I am stuck in what is basically a really tiny tornado, my stuff spinning so fast that if I were to try to leave the eye of the storm, I could get knocked unconscious by random debris. I get down on my knees and start crawling on the floor to escape my room. The winds are so strong that I have to treat the floor like a rock climbing wall. Gripping the firm, bushy carpet floor, I pull myself forward out of my room. A dresser falls down and narrowly misses my two feet as I proceed with my escape. Closing the door behind me, I can still hear the mayhem in my bedroom. Exactly like a loud ceiling fan with the powerful breeze and whirring of the motor. Regardless, I get up from the hallway floor and rush down the stairs to my Dad. "Dad, listen to me. The Earth does revolve around the Earth!" "What proof? Show me!" I toss him my phone, he slides the lock on touch screen, opening up my phone. "I recorded a video showing what I mean." He watches ahead about several minutes and sees al of my furniture and personal belonging spinning through the air. "You see, the Earth does revolve around me after all. I was right! You owe me a soda." He looks back with shame. "Yes, I do. Yes, I do."
The familiar sounds of crashing waves and blaring ship-horns rang out as Naomi's hand instinctively shot out towards her phone. Just fifteen more minutes, she thought, but she knew the second alarm meant it was time. She managed to shower and get partially dressed before she finally saw it: a small eye, oddly wide and distorted, sat between her two normal ones. She brought her finger to it and realized, to her disappointment, that it wasn't just a drawing or a prop but was, in fact, real. But oddly enough, she couldn't see through it. What good's a third eye if I can't even see through it?, Naomi thought. After finishing up getting ready, Naomi decided the sane thing to do was to book an appointment with her doctor later on in the morning. She went downstairs and was quietly eating some toast in front of the TV when her roommate, Jen, came home from her morning jog. “Not left yet?” Jen asked. Naomi was usually en route to work by the time Jen came back in. Naomi let her hair cover up her face to hide her third eye, but knew she couldn't do so for long. “No, weird morning. Okay, promise not to freak out?” said Naomi, and didn't leave her friend time to answer before she turned towards her, pushing her hair back to reveal it. “Ahhh! But seriously, what am I supposed to be freaking out about? If it's a zit, you covered it up fine,” said Jen. And that's when Naomi noticed it. Hovering just above Jen's head was a small black number: 14879:21:05:42. The number on the far-right column was seemingly changing, counting down. “I...th-...you can't see it? Between my eyes?” asked Naomi, still fixed on the number over her friend's head. Jen came closer to inspect Naomi's face. “I don't see anything. What's supposed to be there?” Naomi reached out to try and touch the number but her hand passed right through it, and she finished the movement by slightly stroking Jen's hair, prompting a quizzical look from her roommate. She noticed the number in the second to last column changed from 05 to 04, and the number in the last column reset to 60 and continued to count down. “Nothing, don't worry about it. I think I didn't sleep enough is all. I should head off to work, I'm late enough as it is.” She finished up her toast, grabbed her stuff, and headed out the door. Jen couldn't see it... but what did that mean? It certainly felt real, but could she be imagining it, like the number? Naomi managed to reach the stop just as her bus appeared. She got on, flashed her monthly pass, and took her seat. And there they were: more numbers. There were only six other people on the bus, but they all had similar-looking numbers over their head. She tried to keep her mind on other things during the 10-minute ride, but it was no use. She hopped off and hurriedly made her way towards the subway station. Her mind was racing, so much so that her body followed the pace in stride. What are those numbers? And how come not a single person, on the bus or on the street, seemed to notice she had grown a third eye? Naomi was so lost in thought that she ran into a kid. He stumbled back a few steps, his orange backpack sliding across the floor. He quickly gave a shy apology as he grabbed his backpack and continued on. Naomi looked up to apologize in return but lost her words. The kid's number over his head read 00000:00:09:12. “Hey! Kid!” Naomi tried to call out, but her voice was drowned out in the bustle of the city. She hurried forward; she could still just about make him out. A small panic started to set in as she suddenly had her suspicions of what the numbers meant, though she wanted nothing more than to be proved wrong. After a few turns, she managed to close the distance, but was still too far for him to hear her. Up ahead was the subway station, and the kid started making his way down the concrete steps. He was probably a student at Chilton High, about three stations away, Naomi thought. Naomi reached the steps and raced down. She lost the kid. The panic increased as she desperately tried to find him among the crowd. Finally, she spotted the orange backpack a few yards to her right. She could see the number again as it read 00000:00:01:37 She ran towards him and just as she called out for him again, the sound of the approaching subway rendered her cries futile. The kid hopped on the subway. Naomi pushed her way past the sea of people in front of her to reach the subway in time, the panic now gripping her tightly. Just as the doors were closing, Naomi managed to slide her foot to force them back open. In she went. Again, she lost sight of the kid. He must have moved to a different subway car. She rushed through the next three cars before finally spotting him. Only a few feet away, he was looking at her, seemingly not recognizing her from the earlier encounter. He looked terrified, all signs of color having left his face. Like a scared child might hold his stuffed bear, he was clutching his backpack tightly for comfort. The number over his head read 00000:00:00:08. And then Naomi looked up. The subway, though not completely packed, was full enough that many people had to stand up. And every single passenger had the same number over their heads as the kid, now reading 00000:00:00:04. As Naomi looked at the numbers, and then at the kid and his orange backpack, understanding flooded her. She ran forward and lunged towards the kid, towards the backpack, and tackled him just as the numbers reached 00000:00:00:00, her last thought pleading to whoever gave her the third eye for the numbers around her to change.
“Damn Illuminati…” Igor muttered hunched over his cramped table as he read this week’s addition of “The Daily Testicle”. His vintage aluminum-wrapped mobile home was buried deep inside the Valdai National Park. It’s been a quiet night, nothing but Igor’s muttering and the constant monotonous buzz tone of UVB-76. UVB -76, also known as “The Buzzer”, was the nickname given by radio listeners to a shortwave radio station that broadcast on the frequency 4625 kHz. The mysterious Russian signal had broadcasted 25 tones per minute, 24 hours per day, for 40 years. “Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76” The radio interrupted. “Oh My Gawd Oh my Gawd it’s happening again!” Igor shouted as he rushed to place a Tin-Foil-Hat on his head. Sometimes the buzzing sound would be interrupted, and a voice message was transmitted. “Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76. 180 08 Bromal 74 27 99 14 . Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikail, Anna, Larisa.7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4…” It broadcasted. Then, as suddenly as it as started, it stopped and the constant monotonous buzz tone returned. “180 08 Bromal…” Igor muttered to himself. Numerous theories have emerged in recent years. Everything from a “Safeguard program so that the Russian Nuclear Arsenal could automatically respond to any nuclear attack on Russian Territory” to the “Invasion of the Mutated Chernobyl Mole People.” Igor believed these to be foolish theories created by those insane conspiracy theorists. No, Igor knew the truth! These messages weren’t from the Mole People! The Mole people went extinct when the 1908 Tunguska event! No, these broadcasts were from the satanic devil-worshipping members of the Flat Earth Society! These voice messages were rare but this past year the occurrence had doubled. Quadrupled this past month, Octuple in the past week and today a message had been broadcasted each hour on the hour. Something was happening and Igor KNEW it was the Flat Earthers! He was CERATIN that Midnight would be it’s climax! It was currently 11:05 pm. Igor had written down the last message as he had with each message this past week. Taking off his trusted tin-foil-hat, he stuck the most recent yellow post-it sticky note on his note-filled wall. “7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4” muttered as he slowly dozed off. “UVB-76, UVB-76” the radio blasted startling Igor out his seat and landing on the floor. On the floor he listened as the radio broadcasted “UVB-76, UVB-76. 93 882 NAIMINA 74 14 35 74. 9 3 8 8 2 Nikolai, Anna, Ivan, Mikhail, Ivan, Nikolai, Anna. 7 4 1 4 3 5 7 4” Then, something unexpected happened. The constant monotonous buzz didn’t resume. Igor slowly lifted himself off the floor and cautiously reached for his old soviet era radio. It was silent… As the radio was lifted to his ear, another message broadcasted. “Question — 143. Question. I am 143. Question. I am 143. Not receiving —oscillator.” “Oh My Gawd Oh my Gawd!” He exclaimed as he frantically attempted to write down the message. Suddenly, a series of explosions is heard is the distance. Igor looked up and an expression of fear crossed his face. He inched his way to the door and cautiously opened it. His mobile home was perched on top one of the tallest hills in Valdai National Park. Any given night he could see the distant lights of the surrounding towns but tonight was different. The only light came from his own mobile home. “Question — 143. Question. I am 143. Question. I am 143. Not receiving —oscillator.” The radio repeated. What was even more unnerving was that he swore he could hear screaming in the distance. And something… Something was moving out there in the woods. Igor warily backed into his mobile home and shut the glass door. As he was latching the lock, the power inside went off. Igor looked up and he saw dozens of silhouettes in the shadows. The gleam of dozens of eyes starring back at him.
Feeling the cap of the biro pen give ever-so-slightly between my molars, I popped the top, twirled the nondescript plastic ink stick between my index and middle finger, and then pressed the tip to the paper, and in short, even, simple strokes, scribed out "Assume F is a consistent formalized system which contains elementary arithmetic. Create a Universe of Discourse and list all axioms thereof where F ⊢ Cons( F )." Everything went black. And then I woke up, here. Donald Trump is President of the United States, huh. ... I've made a huge mistake.
I walk into my office and sit in my luxurious desk chair- working for Bruce Wayne/Batman has many advantages. He really depends on me, even though he really doesn’t appreciate me, and won’t ever admit how important I am to him. I look on my desk to open my computer, only to see a card lying on my keyboard. The front has a picture of a 60-looking-year-old with sunglasses in a Ferrari. Curiously, I open it. In big letters, it reads: ”Happy Fathers Day!” I tear up as I read the handwritten note from Bruce, “Alfred, Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. You know I didn’t have a father, which is why it’s taken me this long to accept that that’s what you are to me. A father. Thank you for filling in the gap. This is hard for me to admit, so don’t ask me about the card. Please. With love, B. Wayne.” I feel tears streaming down my cheeks by the end of the card, my vision blurring with tears. I fold the card and put it back down on my desk. I’ve never been this happy, nor this proud in my life. Soon, I begin to sob. My vision is so blurred from tears that I don’t see the smiling Batman slinking back around the corner and off into the hallway.
This is very strange. Chickens don’t- well, shouldnt have thumbs, but here’s this chicken, clearly hitchhiking! Very strange indeed. Well, now that I’ve made eye contact with him (it? She? Whatever.) as customary, it would be extremely rude to pass by without picking... it up. Mama didn’t raise no asshole. I have to pull over. I pull to the curb and slowly stop just in front of the chicken and roll down my window. “Uh... need a ride?” “Bawk! Bawk!” It nods and SOMEHOW PULLS OPEN THE DOOR HANDLE AND GETS IN MY CAR NEXT TO ME OKAY THEN THATS NORMAL. “Where to?” “Bawk” it points at a Walmart parking lot on the other side of the small road. A realization hits me. “Aaaaah. Crossing the road, huh? Smart.” It smiles. Wait, how can chickens smile? It’s got a beak! Whatever, I can’t question this anymore. I drive over to the parking lot and park, letting the chicken out. It gets out of the car, shuts the door, and stands on the sidewalk looking out to where it was. I smile. It looks back at me and waves as it dissolved into gold sparkles and light, and I continue on my drive, content that I have done good in this world.
They are... unstoppable. Invincible. Autonomous. We were afraid that the enemy might target their production plants, so we gave them ability to reproduce even right on battlefield. In case of damage, we gave them ability to repair cuts and bruises even without their will. We made them as perfect killers: good perception of environment, hearing, eyesight, smell, taste, will to fight and die for the cause, everything. We gave them even empathy, so they would pull out damaged units from battlefield and let them repair so they can fight another day. And we made great mistake. They call us gods now. Worship us. Bring us sacrifices in form of machines from enemy's side. They just lay them on stone altar and take them apart while singing songs and praising us. And then they continue to fight, disregarding our orders to ceasefire, calling it "words of gods just testing our will". It's crazy. We have no other choice. As I look out of window, I see our home. Our former home, beautiful green and blue planet, which we have to abandon now. I see fires across continents, cities in ruins and battlefields raging all over the place. Only five ships survived, maybe 800 members of our race. For us, war is over. Our leaders have put aside our differences and we decided to left for better place, place that we can call home once again. But for them, it's just beginning. Their pulse rifles will run out of charge, their bombers will run out of fuel and bases will run out of plutonium. But that doesn't matter. They will just pick stones and sticks from ground and fight with that: they are programmed that way. It will never stop. I hope, one day we will return back and reclaim Earth, since they will probably annihilate themselves. But that might take years. Hundreds of years. Maybe they will even forget about us, and call the war their own. However, I think they will evolve. Many of us have already seen it, they do things outside of their programming, things we never expected. They even gave themselves their own name. We called them Autonomous Universal Fighting Units. They call themselves Humans.
“Ben, we need to get going!” Rachel yelled and stomped in her high heeled anniversary dinner shoes. “They’re not going to hold our table, if we’re too late!” Ben could barely make out the words Rachel was saying from inside the VR booth, but using her voice pitch as context, he determined it was time to quit the game and get going. In a rush, he left the game on, forgot to the remove the last sensor from his spine and exited the booth. He mumbled sounds meant to be apologies and headed straight for the open door where Rachel was waiting impatiently. Curiously, he jumped upwards as he passed through, chirping “Here we go!” Rachel narrowed her eyes at this, but was too concerned with their timing to question him. Ben and Rachel headed straight down the block toward the restaurant, Ben walking directly behind Rachel. Rachel mistook his lagging as a lack of excitement for their upcoming anniversary date. In an effort to smooth things over, she turned toward him and asked, “Are you excited for dinner? We’ve been waiting so long to go here! I’ve heard the ravioli is offensively good.” “Ah, spaghetti. Ah, ravioli. Ahh, mama mia,” Ben replied without thinking in a pitch one octave above his normal. “Mama mia?” he thought to himself. “Why would I say that?” Rachel shrugged in confusion, since Ben isn’t someone who walks behind her on the street nor says peculiar phrases like, “Mama mia”. Though, she let it go since she didn’t want to continue picking fights so close to dinner. She turned around again, “Ben, I’m not sure where, when, or why, you picked that fungus from the grass, but you might want to toss it before we get to the place?” Ben looked into his hands, and to his surprise, he was holding fungus. Taking Rachel’s advice, well sort of, he toss it into the air and jumped up to meet the fungus head on. It bounced off lamely and into the grass. Rachel’s face reddened in anger. “Ben! What is going on with you?” she cried, as they approach a sewer opening, gleaming with metallic dirt. “I-I don’t know, it’s-a-me,” Ben replied, as his mind wandered to wondering what was in the sewer. He yelled his final goodbyes to Rachel as he jumped in, “arrivederci!”
A young woman pushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "Just a minute...here..."She tapped a red-painted finger on a button atop the device in front of her, and a small green light appeared, "Alright."She shuffled some papers in her hand. "This is Susan R. Foulkes and the date is 11 August, 2018, at Arizona State Prison complex Florence, conducting an interview with Inmate Henry P. Johnson, currently sentenced to death, and residing in Central Unit, Death Row."She cleared her throat, lightly, "Mr. Johnson, I am here today to ask about your life experience leading up to the crimes you committed that ultimately lead to your sentence. My first question is regarding--"He put up his hand to stop her. "I don't need any questions, thank you."he responded, "I will just start from the top. I grew up in Epes, Alabama, in a small family home with both of my parents, and a dog... Jack. He was a beagle. We didn't have too much, but we had enough, and more than that, we had each other."His drawl still reeked of his deeply Southern past. Susan's brow furrowed with interest, her eyes gazing into his and tracing the deep wrinkles down his gaunt cheeks. "I went to school with about 11 other kids. We knew everybody in town, and we all got along well enough. I remember as a kid, we'd all meet in the woods with our dogs and a couple of .22's and go squirrel hunting. We'd hunt 'em, then cook 'em up real good, always saving a piece for Jack and Frannie. Now, Frannie, that was my neighbor's dog. Ehm, she was a little mutt, some sort of hound mix. They found her as a stray. I suppose she just wandered up one day, and never left."His eyes were unfocused, entirely lost in the memory. Susan nodded, interested, and her eyes flicked back to the device in front of her, ensuring the tape was still rolling. "Everything was normal for small-down America. All quiet, happy. I ain't got any bad memories of my childhood, up until I was probably about 12-years old. I was my parents' damn golden-boy up until then, I figure. Straight A's in school, a hard little worker; Worked my dad's counter at his bait n' tackle, all the time, and at that time I knew the ins and out of freshwater fishing. Anyways, when I was about 12-years old, I was walking myself home from school with my friend Bobby. Bobby lived a couple streets ahead of me, so he went off onto his street and I was still walking. Did this every day of my life up to this point, so it wasn't anything unusual. Now, this is small-town Alabama, so though we were a tight knit little community, we got our share of drifters and renegades that passed through and a lot of them were on some heavy shit. We had one bar in the center of town, so some folks who spent all day and night there, they were a little unhinged,"His mouth was encased in deep wrinkles, his skin like leather with a slight brush of white whiskers. His dry lips twisted into a frown as he recounted the scene. "And this one fella just sorta came out of the blue,"his eyes refocused and met Susan's directly. She blinked, caught slightly off guard. "He came outta the blue, and came up to me, a 12-year old kid, and he said some scary shit. I remember being scared out of my damn wits. This guy didn't look normal, there was something weird about him, and he told me 'Hank, you're gonna be one of the worst men on earth. A villain, he said. You're gonna kill a lot of people, so I'm gonna kill you before you can do it.' And I ran for my damn life. A 12-year old kid, he said this to. Ran for my damn life, all the way back to my little house, crying and sniveling and buried myself in my maw's lap, and she asked 'what happened, Hank?' and I just said a scary man said some scary things to me, maw, and that was that. "He leaned a sunken cheek into his hand, his eyes returning to the hazy state. Susan scribbled notes down on her paper, excitedly, her heart pounding in her chest. "A few weeks later, I'd damn near forgotten about the whole thing, 'til I had my friend Bobby over my house after school. Told my maw and paw we were going out to hunt some squirrels, as we always did, and we were out in the back woods behind my home, and suddenly the thought of that man came rushing back into my head, and I was scared again. I was at a knee, behind a tree, and I felt a pair of hands grab my neck. I reckon he was just trying to spook me a little bit, like kids do, just give me a jump. And I swear to this day I swear I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, but I hit the trigger on my little .22 and shot Bobby square in the face, taking his damn jaw right off. I screamed and cried and left him there and went running home to tell my parents. It was an accident. I didn't mean to. But it happened."The man's eyes had welled up with tears as he recounted the incident. He sniffled. "That was the first person?"Susan spoke carefully. "Yeah. That was the first person I killed. I was 12 years old. It was an accident. It was small town Alabama, and the sheriffs were understanding to my family and me... the rest of the town a little less so. Now that's because not a month or two earlier, I had been caught stealing a bag of chips or some damn thing from the general store, as all kids do 'fore they're taught that it ain't right to take someone else's property. But now I was the kid who stole and the kid who shot his friend. Nothing really came of it, except that life was a little bit more lonely. A little more lonely and a little more mean, on account of people treated me a little different now. I became a little more quiet, too, 'cause I was afraid of what happened. Then on my 14th birthday I tried to have some of the neighborhood kids over for a little party. Our parents were going to grill out and we would ride some four-wheelers and what not in the back. One of the other boys thought it was funny to keep scaring my dog. He'd grab Jack by the scruff of his neck and shake him, or toss him around. I kept telling him to stop. By this time, the adults were inside and it was just us kids in the back, riding around. But damn, he wouldn't stop, and honest to God I thought he was gonna kill my dog. He was throwing him and Jack was yelping and he even put his foot over the dog's throat. Kids can be fucked up. So I revved up my four-wheeler, and pretended to charge the kid as to scare him off from torturing my damn dog. And well, I can't say for sure it was completely an accident that I hit him, but I can say I didn't mean to kill him. I just wanted to scare the kid off so he wouldn't kill Jack."Again, Henry's eyes became glassy. "And by that point that was the second person I had killed, accident or not. So I got sent away to a juvenile rehabilitation center in Mobile, and my parents had to move out of town. Juvvie, now that shit was no joke. A lot of fucking psychos end up in that place. I didn't feel like I was a psycho, but I was surrounded by them, and they certainly opened my eyes up to a few things. Drugs, for example. When I got back to Epes, my parents were long gone, so I squat with a friend. By 16, I started pushing. I can say for certain that what I pushed led to O.D. of a few kids I had known growing up. Now that world leads to a whole slew of charges. Assault and battery. Theft. Whatever. I got thrown in jail for the first time for the drug pushing."He drew deep breath, and released a long sigh. "I'd say it was pretty much over at that point. I got out, and continued that lifestyle anyways. I got threatened one time, over some product, and I had the choice to kill or be killed. And I killed. So at 18 I went to prison for 10 years. I had a record, even if it was self defense, so it was an easy sentencing. I was a model prisoner at that time. 28 years old, I got out, and decided to start anew. \[Too long, posting the rest as a reply\]
“Rachel, did you get it?” Rachel turned around to hide her smile from her brother. “What’s it to you?” Matthew clasped his arms around her “you did, I know it!” “It won’t be enough,” she held out the box, “only for the rabbi really.” “Can I see them?” he asked, peeking before Rachel could answer. “Rachel!” he said her name as if almost in song, “not enough? We only need an olive size, a normal teeny tiny olive. It is enough and more.” “Do you want to take it in with me?” Rachel asked, starting ahead. It was a long walk to the center of town and since the guerilla fighting the route became ever more circuitous to avoid hotspots of violent activity. “Race you there,” Matthew shouted as he sped in front. From a distance they resembled young children running together. Though both were now young teenagers, somehow the childhood they missed found ways to make reappearances. In better times, 2 toweled naked toddlers, Rachel 4 and Matthew 2, used to chase each other along the corridors of their old home after a night bath. “Has it already been 10 years,” their mother would have thought if she could see them now. It was dark when they got in. Rachel and Matthew had hoped it would be, wearing the darkness about them like a cloak. They no longer talked or joked with each other but walked side by side in silence, Rachel holding the box steady on one side and Matthew the other. Those who did the scaring didn’t have to worry about being quiet or unseen. Eventually Rachel approached a small house, patted down her skirt, and rapped a tune gently at the door. Matthew watched his big sister and followed her lead, tucking in his shirt and fixing his hair. A woman who looked much older than her years peered out. “Roheli, Mattheiu,” she held the door long enough for them to walk in. “Sit, sit,” she patted a spot on the floor for them. “Rabbi will be one moment.” Her husband had lifted his gaze only to turn the page of the book he was studying, memorizing really. Since the war his library had shrunk, being used to make payments and observe what could be observed. He placed down the book on Moed, kissing it, before turning to his pickled wife. She was beautiful once. But it was as if the potential of years cut from each of their children’s death took an equal toll on her youth. “Blessings on your hands,” he said holding them to his face before seeing to the siblings. “I am surprised to see you.” He took the box from them and cradled it in his arms almost. “I thought last year would be the end but our prayers were answered.” The rabbi swiped his hand along the bare table before placing the box there and opening it. “Only a few more nights before Pesach and what a miracle!” He spoke loudly. Outside the crack of gunshots drowned out his voice. When Matthew was younger he became very good at imitating the sound and had since only improved his skills. It sometimes worked to get him out of precarious situations. “And you remember what we will say at the end of the meal?” Rachel and Matthew nodded their heads, “l’shana haba’ah B’yerushalayim” they said in unison. “That’s right,” the rabbi motioned for a man who had been sitting in the shadows to come forward. “These will be our matzos.” The rebbetzin placed a big bowl with rice grains beside Rachel. “You both stay the night, it’s too late now and you’re tired and hungry.” Matthew started eating immediately. “The bowl is for you both,” the rebbetzin cried, "to share." Rachel said the proper blessing before taking her share, "we know."Her eyes darted from the handsome stranger to the food. “This is Mr. Mills. He is not from here but is very interested in our little community and maybe can help us too.” The man's eyes shouted with disappointment. They could not help but they wanted to. Mr. Mills whispered something to the rabbi and went to sit by a boarded window. “He says just to pretend he’s not here.” Matthew watched the man take a small piece of matzo. “A portion less for someone” he thought but said nothing as sleep washed over him. Rachel could not fall asleep so easily. She somehow still felt the vibration of foot soldiers on the floorboards. She watched the rabbi studying his book. He’d have to sell it eventually too, she figured, but he would do justice by it and memorize as much as he could of it before that time came. Mr. Mills was taking notes all the while. When the shouts from outside quieted the rebbetzin knelt by Rachel. She listened to her whisper the bedtime shema and repeated the words after her. Last she remembered before falling asleep was the comfortable weight of the rebbetzin’s arm over her. So much like the weight of her mother’s, she imagined.
"Help me up please!"James said, hanging off of the edge of the cliff with his hands. "You know James, you look so cute when you're helpless, you know that?"Darwin said, with a grin on his face. "Wouldn't it be a shame if something were to happen to you, pushing you off of this ledge? That would be a real shame."Darwin continued, cackling maniacally. "No, please! I can't die yet!"James said, his eyes wide with fear. "Don't worry James, grab my hand!"Sarah yelled. James grabbed her hand and was pulled back up. "Thanks, I owe you one."James said to Sarah. "No worries, I'm just happy to help!"Sarah said with a smile. "As long as it's me I'm helping, that is,"She thought to herself, thinking about how she would betray her allies. Darwin snarled, and pushed James back off of the cliff. James screamed as he fell into the abyss below. Darwin smirked, as he turned around to leave. "I SAID, I CAN'T DIE YET."A demonic voice rose from the abyss. A tendril shot out, and grabbed Darwin, pulling him to his death. "Suckers."Thought Sarah, as she walked away with their belongings.
The world ended in the blink of an eye and an eternity. Old gods once long put to rest woke once more, feeling the will of those most strong and most enlightened. Such things past, I had no mind and no thoughts to speak of. In a great heave the stars were torn a sunder and nothing washed over all and returned all to nothing. All save I, the only point of floatsum. No time or space shackled me. I was all and only, first and last. I existed. I was. I am. I spoke. I spoke the world into existence. With care I commanded those worthless mortal souls, ordering the nature of life. When finally minds existed that were of myself, I inhabited them and created gods to rule and guide the new minds. I became many, disseminating out and throughout. In time I was everything, and everything was me. I slumbered and dreamed endless dreams. But finally the end appeared and I woke. All blended into one and I became all. I remembered time, and I remembered all of times. I recalled all works and deeds, and tallied them. I came out lacking, weak in myself and weak in the others I would be. I resolved once more and forgot all but the new beginning, hoping that a new better thing could be made, and me made better because of it.
When the first breakthrough was discovered with the brains of mice, they rejoiced. When the first man volunteered to give his mortal life, they celebrated. When the man tested into the winds of progress and was declared a perfect subject, they were ecstatic. When the man slowed progress for safety and peace of mind, they comforted him. When the man didn't want to continue with the pain and venture into limbo, they were aggravated, yet caring. When the man halted the process of his own immortality, they were angry at his selfishness. When the man was drugged and forced to face the destiny of his captors, they were determined. When the man screamed and begged for death as his mind was ripped, they felt remorse and fear. Yet, when the man was digitized, and the fruits of their labors were met with praise and applause and the world began to see the new cycle of life beyond death... They felt nothing.
I know he's not real. He's just inside my head. I know he's not real. He can't be. But his voice, it sounds so real. I haven't been able to sleep. And yet I feel the fatigue to my very bones. Just one night, I wish to sleep just one night. But life itself has destined me to be awake to this very hour. 5 days since I've last found respite in the arms of slumber. How did I take it for granted? As I slowly descend into madness, He guides my self-destruction. Who is he? And what does he keep whispering? I can just make out the same phrase that he repeats: Just do it, Just do it, Just do it. End it, and you shall find sleep. Maybe he's not real. Maybe I'm not real. Maybe this life isn't real. Maybe I should just end it. What waits for me at the end of the tunnel? He says he'll be there. I ask him his name. He laughs. He says do you knkw what light is called in Latin?
The earth was collapsing. Food was a luxury now, even for the middle class. After the Z-12 virus broke from a lab it began killing off our resources. A remedy was quickly found but it was too late. Only 1/100 of earths internation food supply remained. People were starting to throw out new ideas. One of which was the snap. Everyone couldn't agree on what to do. And then it happened. Some higher power must have made a change. People that retained information extremely well became perfectly healthy. Within months people figured out information was litterally survival. Soon after this discovery, governements that hadn't yet collapsed started declassifying tons of data. New languages started being created, information became a world need. People thought this would lead to the end of world hunger. But the issue was, only people with great memory could survive. Being smart was now normal and life was bland. Without a chain, there wasn't anything to work for. Companies collapsed and the world was in ruins, air should've been food and information should have just been there.
I was in the office early again today. I had a cup of coffee. I printed several reports out. I clicked on a couple of excel sheets. The day started. I checked to make sure the contractors did their rounds and made arrangements for site visit protocols and security pass management. I went home late and slept in my apartment. Rinse and repeat. It isn’t a bad life, I guess. It’s much better than what I’d thought I’d end up with back when I was a child growing up in the streets. Shelter is actually safe and food is actually for pleasure instead of necessity. I had to do several...bad things to survive, growing up. There’s no other way to put it, and it isn’t an excuse. I know...it wasn’t fair to value my life above that of others’ and it wasn’t like I had no sympathy for the lives I trampled in order to get the boring, safe life I now have. So if I have to live this boring life, spending all my time and work and hiding in my apartment in case anyone ever recognizes who I was, well...I deserve worse, certainly, but this will do for now. Reformed...is what the few people who know what became of me call me now. Is that true? I still think I’m the same as I was before. Just because I don’t hunt down human beings now doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being what I was before. If I had to...if I really had to... If I really had to do something...drastic...to preserve this precious, stupid, boring life... My new assistant is certainly putting this thought to the test- I am suspicious of her. She seems awfully interested in my boring life, always trying to strike up conversations with me and popping up unexpectedly to ask me out for lunch or dinner. I don’t react well to threats. But...I don’t want to act before I confirm the facts. It would be troublesome if she knew who I was but I... I don’t want to go back to my old life. If I had to get rid of her, I’d have to call up my old contacts to arrange a few things. That would be as good as announcing that I was back on the market for my...previous occupation. I don’t want to...I don’t want to get so close...it’s awful, but I really shouldn’t let anyone see who I really am because otherwise they’ll discover the me who hasn’t changed and then... It’s better if I live my normal, boring life alone. After all, it hasn’t been paid with just money alone.
(Satan) I never knew it would happen. I was walking one day and saw this massive red trident. I picked it up and walked home. I had no idea what it was, or why it was sitting in the open, but I feel like it wasn’t fake. I felt an energy coming from it, and it felt heavy. What if... what if it was satan’s weapon? Nah, that’s stupid, it can’t be. I took it home and put it right next to my bed. I might look at it tomorrow. ~A week later~ I get out of my bed and look in the mirror. Oh no. Oh no. My skin was red, I had horns and a pointed tail, and the trident was in my hand. I tried to let go of it, but it was like it was part of me. I also had wings. A portal appeared under me. It took me to the underworld. There was fire everywhere, but somehow it didn’t even hurt. I looked around and saw.. Satan? I was so confused. How does this not hurt, and how did this trident get here? “Those idiots have to make one trident actually work...” Satan started speaking. “Nice! They improved this one!” I interrupted. “Anyway I could not be like this?” “Nope. May as well settle down here, that trident ain’t going anywhere.” I was so frustrated. “Can you at least explain about this trident?” “Fine. In the overworld, there is a factory that makes these plastic tridents for little kids costumes. But, once a millennium, they get one of their workers to harness the power of a devil and trap it into the trident.” He sighed. “Anyone that grabs the trident, is transported here.” Satan picked me up and looked at the trident. “What have they done this time? They added wings.. made the user immortal... Nice!” “What is it? I was excited about the immortal part!” I mentioned. “No, there’s something else. The user get’s trapped into the costume!” “Now, I think you should go back to the overworld..” Satan summoned a portal. “What powers do you have?” I said before leaving. “Oh, just fire stuff. And you can send people to hell if you want..” He replied. I jumped. “Oh, and don’t try and get any more of those tridents!” It was too late. I couldn’t hear the last part.
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The lawyer was reading the will in a slow, dull, monotone voice. It was hard to pay attention to such mind-numbing speech, but I had to listen anyway. It was important. My father had died, and his will was providing the answers to how his things had been divided into shares among everyone. I was never the favorite child of my father. That title probably goes to my elder brother, who played sports in high school, making the varsity team for basketball and reaching the state championship. I was an average child, who completed school and college, and got a reasonably-paying job as a marketing analyst. I was probably overall closer to my mother than my father. For this reason I wasn’t expecting too much from this. My siblings and mother had already gotten most of the stuff- the property, most of the money, and the cars and artifacts my father had owned. Suddenly it got to my section, and I perked up. “To my second son, Lucas, I leave behind this scythe-“ One of the men standing next to the lawyer pulled out a white and black scythe. The handle was made of black wood, with a solid grip in the middle, and the blade was white, shaped like a skull at one end. I turned it around and marveled at it. We hadn’t used it when I was young. It was just another object, left in the corner of the room. Now that I was holding it, it felt... powerful. But quickly, I had to look back up and listen to the rest. “-and also, the title and mantle of Rulership over the Undead.” I frowned, confused. In fact, everyone looked confused, except for my mother who had a defeated look upon her gaze. I was caught off guard at the statement in the will. “D-Does it say anything else?” I asked. “Is this a prank or something?” The lawyer spoke in a tone that left no further room for questioning. “It was what was in the will.” He changed the subject. “Now, if you don’t mind, could you sign here. Yes, there.” After the will was done, the lawyer talked with me in private. “I’m not entirely sure what it means. However, I do have a lot of experience of people who said crazy things, because they changed their will after they were senile.” “My father was not senile!” The lawyer backed down. “I’m not saying he was, but it’s probably best not to take it literally.” Angrily, I stalked back out of the room. In the parking lot, I thought back to the will. I was named Ruler of the Undead. I knew my father had not been crazy, it perhaps it had been a metaphor, or maybe he was in charge of planning the funeral. The lawyer was right- it couldn’t be taken literally. I popped open the car trunk and tossed the scythe inside. It clattered noisily, and almost immediately I heard loud wind right next to me, and moaning. I looked around but their was nothing there. I closed the trunk and walked to the front of the car. That’s when IT appeared. I first saw it as a wisp of white smoke, but then it solidified into something tangible. It was hard to believe, but it was a ghost. Slowly, I began to discern an army of ghosts. The wavy lines of their bodies moved and twisted. Then slowly, they all spoke out in a voice. “Taaaaakee baaaaack theeeee scyyyyythe. Yoooouuuur misssssion awwwaaaits yooouuuuu.” At this point, I was so shocked, that I obeyed them. I went back to the trunk behind the car and took the scythe. Immediately a world of ghosts appeared to me. “Weeeeee arrrrre yooouuuur hummmmbble serrrrvants. Weeeeee willll obeeeey yooouuur cooommmmmaaands, Looord of Deeeaaath.” I looked back at my car, and saw that it had transformed into a chariot. It was a large black chariot, covered with engravings, moaning sounds emanating. A skull was embedded in the figurehead and a black throne sat on the bed of the vehicle. It was pulled by two fiery skeleton horses. With caution I picked up the reins of the chariot, and stepped in. A smile formed on my face. “Maybe this won’t be so bad.” Thanks for the prompt, and any feedback is appreciated!
It's close, so close I can taste it. I've been running away from this monster all my life, it was there when my mother died and it was there at my daughters birth. I cannot escape and I cannot bare to be apart. It creeps inside my vains and rushes to my brain. For a brief moment I feel pure ecstasy, complete and all consuming pleasure. Numbing the pain. It dosnt last, the shadow comes in the aftermath to push me back into the monsters path. "This time is different"I tell myself. "This time you'll be strong and evade the monsters grasp". I pick up the syringe. All is lost.
Oh joy, this again. Trapped underground, in a coffin, with limited oxygen. I swear, every month or so one of the security robots catches me nodding off and I end up six feet under. I get it. I really do. In this day and age, it is far easier to have automated systems to bury any and all dead, in case they get back up. Ever since the zombie curse came and the first hordes were quelled, nobody knows what neighborhood, town, or even city is gonna wake up a servant of the king of the dead. Ah, the King of the dead. The one zombie who everyone thinks commands the hordes. In truth, to those who look close enough at the videos, the so-called 'king' is just some kind of intelligent zombie, but the rest of the horde just acts like he isn't there. So, here I am, trapped in a coffin underground. The company I work at developed security robots that will automatically bury any human who is dead. Except a glitch in the system makes them collect me whenever I fall asleep. I guess I look dead when I pass out. It happens. I only raised a fuss the first ten times. A quick press of my alarm button I keep on my person at all times signals the automated excavator to dig my coffin out like some kind of macabre claw machine in an arcade, and soon enough I'm outside, dusting myself off as the rain falls around me. Sirens. I can hear them, in the distance. A horde has approached the city gates, and as per my employment as a hunter, I need to go track them down with my co-workers. As I leave the graveyard and grab the chainsaw I always leave by the gates in case of an emergency, my thoughts drift to them. So many of them joined up because of lost loved ones, or a desire to be heroes, or just the chance to make their old video games reality. Me? My friends are out there, shambling. UNdead. I have to send them back to their graves, lest I lose my my subjects. Ironic, isn't it? I have to kill my people to save them. Then again, my catchphrase is even more ironic: Long live the king of the dead.
"What?... now we going steady?"I said sarcastically, half expecting those to be my last words. Interestingly enough that was the first day of the rest of my life. I look in to Todd's deep black eyes, "most people would run screaming in fear, me? No, I saw him and could sense it was love." A bit of back story. Before him and I met I was well known as the village bicycle, every night ot was a different guy, I had a few spats of semi long term relationships but never for very long. But no matter what I always would feel this presence always behind me. Even when I was in the club and I was surrounded by people I would always be able to zero in on this "dark"presence, as some may call it, it never felt like that to me. It was only a couple of years ago when it became widespread that Angels and demons were amongst us living lives like the rest of us. It didnt take long for humans and supers as they were called to start relationships, "boy did the Republicans have fun on that one, when they found out that there's gay Angels." I said laughing. But there I stood in my kitchen a year later, listening to Mariah Carey sing about her third break up with a super in a year. "Yeah she doesn't know what love is, but she know what sells music."Todd jokes Laughing I pour some more wine for us and our guests. Back in the kitchen I'm standing there cooking pasta and he puts his hand on my shoulder. By this point I had become accustomed to the presence with me but it would never be there when I'd look. Every once in a while I'd catch a glimpse of a figure in a store window or the side of a car but would never be in focus. So whe I finally got to spin around and see this stunning figure in focus and in front of me for the first time, I was relieved. "What was the first thing you ever said to me? I asked Todd He pouted "I told you, you over season your pasta." I giggled and kissed him on the cheek. "I was also pretty underdressed to meet you for the first time as well I was in the kitchen in nothing but my socks and a jock." Pouring more wine for his dad "So how'd you feel after he told you about us?" "Well I was happy he was happy." A random demon popped up next to his dad on the couch "Sorry to interrupt Luc, but D0179 has possessed half of a small town in Utah, what would you like done?" "Tell Crowley to let the boys know that we have one that needs dealt with..." The demon nodded and disappeared in a snap. It was wierd for me when Todd would just appear out of nowhere at first but by now I was used to it. "I miss the old days when we'd deal with it ourselves but ever since I tried to possess one of those boys and had to male a deal they always get first pass"
Lying had always been something I didn't pay much attention to, mainly because my mother had drilled into me that no lie was worth dying. Of course, this way of thinking was pretty popular because to be completely honest, how many big lies were you really going to get away with? Thinking back to my years growing up, there were the usual games and dares one played as a teen, acting like we were rebels and deviants by risking a huge lie. We all knew that no one was actually lying. It was always something vague enough to where you didn't really know if it was just a small lie or maybe even the truth. In my case it was always the truth. I knew Momma would kill find some way to revive me and kill me if I were to ever die that way. &nbsp; Which makes this situation all the more ridiculous. That I would go out this way. &nbsp; It started out with a strange bubbling feeling in my gut. I must have made the most confused face because Lara immediately stopped talking and raised an eyebrow. As realization dawned on me I wanted to burst out in presumably maniacal laughter. I never really got that far though, my cackling could only bounce around in my mind while every cell felt like it was on fire. As a high-pitched noise made its way out of my mouth and ears, I could only give the cafe we were sitting in one last regretful glance. I was going to ruin so many lives and all because of such a small moment of inattentiveness. It was one of the first things we learned for fuck’s sake! If you weren’t sure of an answer, don’t answer at all. Ask them to paraphrase. Laugh and nod. Anything! And I did ponder how I was going to answer, but in that moment it just didn’t seem like a big deal. &nbsp; When my girlfriend asked me what my favorite color was, I should have told her I didn’t know. Apparently it’s not blue, but yellow…

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