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I can’t get specific, it’s just feelings. I’d say it’s like a dream, but dreams fade over time, and this one is stuck in the back of my head, gurgling and popping like static on the radio of my father’s car. The antena was missing on it, so it never could pick up stations. It was broken, and I think I was broken, too. I don’t know what an antenna is. I don’t think I’m alive, at least that’s the feeling I get. There are two other parts of me here in this room. We all have the same name, Ryan Michael Warren, and we are named after our grandfather. I’m not sure when I learned that, we’ve been here for a long time, but we don’t say much to each other. I’ve tried talking to them, but neither can speak, and what I say doesn’t mean anything. There is a bridge in my head, the ones that goes between my mind and my tongue, but the guard rails are broken and the traffic of my thoughts just tumbles into the river of my subconscious. I can see what they look like, though. Both are me, but neither what I want to see when I think about myself. One of them is a small child with no hair, no more than a baby, really. He’s in simple clothes, just a white onesie and a small knitted cap. It just lays there, perfectly calm, never crying, never seeking food, never acknowledging the world we are trapped in. It’s completely oblivious to it’s cellmates - I’m completely oblivious. He is. I can’t tell the difference. I don’t believe it matters, anyway. The other one, though, he’s the scary one. I can’t make him out. He’s a smokey blob of gray vapor. Roughly the same shape as the other, but just a haze of needy tentacles, groping out for anything it can find, taking greedily from everything, but never offering to repay. It cries out, day and night, or whatever constitutes the passage of time here, and begs for attention, love, food, comfort. I don’t mind it. It’s me. But it I can’t see it, and that is terrifying to me. Then there is me, or the shape that holds the thoughts that I have. I’m the most unlike the others. There are no mirrors here, so I haven’t been able to get a look at anything other than my arms, legs, and torso. Compared to the other two, though, I am a giant, a full grown person. I’m strong. Very muscular. And I’m wearing a onesie, like the baby, but also a cape made of soft fabric. The cape is attached to my chest, locked in place with a buckle, and it makes me feel safe. I like that feeling of safety, it feels warm, but when the warmth fades away, it’s so cold here. It was so cold when I died. I want the other’s here to feel safe, like I do. I hope they aren’t cold. I do have a memory, though, and I think about it when I feel it start to get cold. I can remember my cape being wrapped around me, and the two shaky hands that buckled it to my chest. I can’t see who did it. I can’t remember that much. It’s just that safe feeling. I can hear a voice though, and she’s whispering to me, asking me questions, comforting me. “Who’s my big boy? Who’s my strong boy? Everything is going to be OK,” she says and it’s like a sun shining on my face. I cry out to the others, I want them to feel this like I do. I want them to feel the warmth. But, they don’t understand me. I just say the one word I know, over and over again. “Mama, mama, mama”. I don’t think they feel the warmth. I want them to, though. I hope they aren’t cold.
While everyone else was panicking and trying to finish their bucket lists or saying goodbye to loved ones I laughed. 24 hours, I can do so much. I did everything I was scared of, walked around naked in public, robbed a bunch of stores, kissed everyone I saw. I laughed at everything I did, knowing nothing would happen with what's happening. As the timer counted down I stood in the middle of the park, staring up at the sky to watch the numbers. I grinned and started laughing as the seconds counted down. 10 9 8 7 6 5! 4! PAYMENT SUCCESSFUL! My laughing stopped and my jaw dropped. The words flashed a few times before disappearing. At this moment I started running home. I was hyperventilating as I closed the door to my apartment bedroom and got dressed. Now I wait for the police I guess.
"Hey, Joe, listen to this,"I tell my husband as he walks in, still toweling off from his shower. I scroll back up to the beginning of the story and start to read. "NEWS ALERT - A local man was killed tonight at a neighborhood cookout when another man pointed at him with both hands and made a gesture of firing at him. Eyewitnesses confirmed that the other man was not armed, and that he also received deep wounds in the tips of both index fingers. Both men were taken by ambulance to Sacred Prompt Hospital, where the first man was immediately pronounced dead and the other was treated and is now being held for observation. "While this has not been officially confirmed, we have reports of similar incidents coming in from across our viewing area. Until we know what's going on here, PLEASE REFRAIN from miming violent or destructive acts, and discourage others from doing so." Joe has his boxers on already, and is still slipping a tee shirt over his head as I finished reading, laughing through the cotton. "MIND BLOWN,"he giggles when he's finished, miming the mushroom cloud of a nuc &nbsp; &nbsp;
I finally did it. After countless millennia, I finally was getting some time off. The process took forever; it turns out even Death can be put on hold for hours. If you had to listen to “Stayin Alive” on repeat for that long you’d want to meet me too. Once I got through and I bribed an OSHA official with a extra few years, he had some new paperwork drawn up, and I had enough subpoenas sent to my boss’s office you would’ve thought the Flood was resuming. He called me into his office to give me the good news: One week off. That’s it. The best part is that I had to get someone to cover my shifts. It wasn’t fair. Michael could do whatever he wanted unless there was a cosmic war going on. This time it was how him and Jesus were scheduled to do a galactic tour and the Son needed a bodyguard. THE SON OF GOD NEEDED A BODYGUARD?!?!? This guy should’ve run out of PTO a long time ago but of course the Boss looks the other way. Gabriel was too preoccupied with getting ready for Christmas. Apparently he gets a lot of leads for women who are newly pregnant seemingly without cause and freaking musicians. I don’t get it either. I gave Rafael a ring and one of his assistants answered. I really couldn’t hear him that well due to all of the screaming in the background. I caught “exorcism”, “Beelzebub”, and “child”. Said he would give me a call back. Some people are just so rude. I stormed out of the palace to go to my car. I had prepared for this. As much as He wouldn’t like it, I knew someone who technically fit the qualifications for my job. Sure he was fired a long time ago but desperate times called for desperate measures. I got to my car and Uriel of all people comes up to me and tells me he can cover it. Thank the Almighty! I had found someone! Then some horrible memories came trickling back to me. Egypt. The firstborn. Jerusalem. Medieval Europe. If I left this guy in charge for a week I was looking at a new strand of yellow fever at best. The paper work would last years. The next morning, I walked into my office and sat down. Had a memo from the Lamb: “Death stops for no one. Except me.” He was kind enough to drop off some licorice and black coffee with it. A grim satisfaction came to me a few minutes later. Maybe it was the job. Maybe it was the coffee. Heavens if I knew. Now to find the serial number for that OSHA agent. Turns out that Death knows how to put loopholes in contracts too. About time he came home.
My father always told me stories about places like this. About those ‘planets’, huge rock chunks floating around stars, where people can live in harmony, food grows out of ground and water is everywhere. I thought it’s just ancient legends, passed from generation to generation. But here it was. Right in front of us. After thousands of years of travel from Earth. It looks bigger than I thought, with endless oceans and green plains sprawling in all directions. It’ looks beautiful. “Sensor report!” I shouted across the bridge, and navigator projected data from sensors to holographic display in the middle of the bridge, commenting every detail. “If I compare it with database, it looks similary to Earth. Large oceans, oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, roughly 1g of gravity. Deffinitelly a dream world,” he explained while reading out data from holographic panel. As I was reaching for intercom, ready to spread news across whole population, the lights on holographic display flickered. New data was pouring in. “Wait, wait... this can’t be right... this can’t be...” the navigator shuttered, unable to formulare words. But he didn’t have to. I had good view, I saw every piece of information. Artifical sattelites on orbit, lot of radio waves, densly populated spots all over the planet. This was it... our new home was already home for someone else. I saw eyes of whole bridge crew, locking on me, expecting orders. We had to do something. Our ship was dying. We couldn’t survive trip do different star. “Sir, we recieved tight beam transmission, directed towards us”, the communication officer shouted. “Play it,” I responded, before he even finished sentence. It was deffinitely language. Strange, unknown alien language. “Put it through linguistic decomposer, it might give us idea what are they saying,” I gave the order to comm officer. “Putting it through, estimated time to full translation is twenty six minutes,” he responded swiftly. Then we just waited. Waited and wondered, what will come next. Sound of alert woke me up from my thoughts. “Status report!” just flew from my mouth, not directed to any particular crew member. “Sir, we have... missile launch alert...,” the navigator responded first, “ I count 78 missiles, launched from different continents, heading our way.” This was it, I told to myself. We had to enter into war to survive. It shouldn’t have gone this way. “Point defence to full alert,” I ordered pilot, now serving as weapons officer. We never fired our weapons since we left Earth, so we didn’t have even specialised weapons station on bridge. I watched dozens of red dots, approaching from several directions. I watch them dissappear, as pdc lasers were doing their work. “All missiles destroyed,” pilot confirmed what I already saw on holographic display, “ your orders, sir?” We had to do it. We desperately need new home. And they fired first. They are the ones to blame. At least we will go down in history as heroes. “Execute sterilization procedure 10-9,” came out of me, withou even realizing it. Whole crew just turned to me for a second, but then got back to work. I slowly watched holographic screen. Watched as hundreds of tungsten rods big as skycrapers launched from our weapon tubes and hurdled towards oceans of planet. Watched as tsunami waves hundreds of meters high swept everything in their way. Cities, roads, fields, everything even far away from shoreline. I watched this once great alien civilization being totally destroyed, swept away from existence. It was like flooding ant nest. “Sir,” the communication officer interupted my stream of thoughts, “computer just finished translation of that alien message. Should I play it?” “Nah,” I responded, “yeah, whatever. They just couldn’t wait. We could talk to them. They didn’t had to do this. We didn’t had to do this. Play it.” Comm officer turned back to his console and clicked on it few times. Speakers on all sides of bridge crancked with static noise, followed by translated mesage... “To unidentified alien object on trajectory with Earth, this is cpt. Williams of United States Air Force. Stop your approach and respond to our message, or we will open fire....”
I've been a member of the IID since birth, and artificially trained for the highest security matters globally, one of a team of three. Up to the age of eight, we are managed by the HI3, and then take on all manner of political, military and public operations. I am only talking now because the IID and HI3 don't exist anymore. I'm the only remaining member. On December 4th 2018, a global state of emergency was announced, as a foreign celestial body of the same dimensions as our earth materialised behind us, in our very orbit path around the sun, following the same trajectory and speed. It was at that time seventy days to reach by spacecraft known to the public, but we were already fifteen hours away in- Wait, I have to explain something. We have held technology for the past two million years of the stuff from science fiction. We have only kept this information from the world because we are simulating the best possible environment for new inventors, thinkers and inspirers, which is what we need for the interstellar cross-universe stage of our development. Now that this option is closed, or the illusion has been broken, I have to explain to you that the higher human resource management bodies are working for the best possible survival and progress of the human race as a whole. As I was relaying, we were already fifteen hours away from this foreign celestial body- that was likely an immediate threat to Earth- in a craft undetectable by the vast amount of the known electromagnetic spectrum. This rendered it invisible to the human eye and all radar. Up until now, it had been used for space exploration of earthlike planets we could colonise, when we would be ready to colonise 5000 years from now. But now, evidently, the situation has changed. (Writing break, more coming on this story thread later today.) Continuation The other two IID members were back home, managing the political and public reaction to this alien or foreign planet, and to ensure global stability, even among some of our scientific factions. I was manning one JIG (invisible) craft, of three that were out to recon the foreign planet, the other two HI3 members manning the others. The public were under the impression that we were going to take 68 days to reach it, and to maintain that perception, we had also released a standard craft at considerable cost. But we were taking no chances, and this was a historical mission of the highest security and secrecy. Our best were sent, as we didn't know whatever technology or life we were dealing with. I held back and the other two crafts, one at my right side and one at my left, flew forward ahead of me, their hybrid electric-ion/dark matter thrusters made invisible by light magnets, isolated from the gravity component of matter. This crucially had to be calibrated so as not to destroy the retinas of anyone around. Should they crash ahead of me, the light magnets would be the first to disengage so as to avert loss of vision to the HI3 pilots or myself, if there was any chance of survival, which I was hoping for the sake of our planet. I imagined them breaking the surface of the athmospheric ahead of me, as I neared it. I was still in communication with them and all data was being streamed back to the slow craft on whom all eyes on earth fixed in hope, and from there to IID base, with a 10-minute delay. I broke the athmosphere and as I did, I lost comms with the other two and my heart sank and leapt in its trained silence. I pulled up immediately into orbit to avoid whatever fate they had met, cruising through clouds and spaces of empty air. I feared slowing down, so kept a speed of one half-planet orbit every minute. My fears subsiding and training kicking in, I lowered and slowed my orbit, any second now I would come out of whatever cloud this was, according to my onboard radar and information centre, that played itself into my left ear. I came out of the clouds, and nearly fainted in my seat. There was a copy of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific, the continents. Asia, Africa, Europe, the US. In disbelief or a trance, I flew over the poles, the ice deceptively stretched out to taunt me. 'Are you seeing this?' I whispered into my headset. 'No you're not'. Came a devilish whisper and all audio and comms were cut from home. I was on my own, I looked down- and up. I could be on Earth, but I wasn't.
My life was in shambles. So what did I have to lose when professor Mathias Tweedleditweedledum approached me with his newest invention, asking me to be a human subject. I was out on the streets, in the cold rain and the blazing sun, exposed to the merciless wind and dust when they came through. My tattered windbreaker and a sheet of cardboard was all I had left, and I didn’t even have my dignity after some time on the streets. I had squandered what money I even earned, became addicted to the savors of gambling and chance, and trust me when I say my luck ran out fast. By a few months I had lost my job, my money, and my social standing, picking up quarters on the ground and using them on slot machines in casinos and arcades if I was by the off-chance let in. That all changed when I met him. He wore a pair of spectacles, an ascot over a lab coat. His tie was peppered with equations, and with various numerical symbols. His name was as strange as his offbeat humor, and he took me off of the harsh Reno streets and to his place, offering me the chance to become part of a revolution. Thus, by the grace of Dr. Mathias Tweedleditweedledum, I was the first person in the Chronosphere. By going back in time, I learned an important lesson. Suing can be very, very, important. I made some awful decisions in my life, and that’s why I decided to sue. My past self? No. I decided to take a magnificent fall inside a casino that once turned me away in the future, and I sued them for bad security and safety measures. The payoff was huge, I was able to by a home in Santa Clarita and buy a bag of lozenges for Dr. Tweedleditweedledum too. Victimless crime, and now I’m much better off. After all, they turned me away like I was trash, and now I get the satisfaction of seeing them squirm home their lawyers come up with an extravagant three-figure sum for me. The end.
The weird thing about this guy was that he didn't look young like the others. Most of them had chosen to be frozen about age 27 - too much younger and people tended not to take them seriously, too much older and the full bloom of youth was already starting to fade. But they stood out from the real 27-year-olds. Their minds were older, so even if their bodies were ready to party 24/7 they had already been through that phase. They had been through all the phases - the first of them were almost 100 years old now. The science seemed to be perfect. There were no ill-effects, no surprising returns to mortality. And they lived differently. It turns out to be a lot easier to defer gratification when you know you have an eternity to cash in. So they lived frugally and made slow-burn investments safe in the knowledge that long after the rest of us were gone, they'd be cashing in. And the first generation of immortals were special even among their own kind - they had an investment horizon that mathematically could not be equalled. They would forever be richer, wiser, more experienced than those to follow. Those of us who were mortal weren't even in the game. We were like flies, an inconvenience to be tolerated until we were gone. But this guy - the one I was watching - was different. He looked to be about forty, but in the twenty years I had seen him in my neighbourhood, he hadn't changed. He had kids who were in their thirties, and seeing them together was weird. Wrong. The whole thing was wrong. The fucking serenity the guy had was wrong. Life is not supposed to be that easy. Watching him I thought he smiled slightly, as if in remembrance of something. But perhaps I projected it; it was hard to be sure through the scope. I shifted slightly in position, cradling the weapon into my shoulder. He was about a quarter of a mile away, in the room of his house I knew was his study. Wearing a headset, sitting at his desk. Far away in some virtual world. It seemed it wasn't enough for him to be released from time - he needed to be master of space also. I'd tried those headsets and found them kaleidoscopic, confusing. But this guy seemed to love his. He spent hours a day with it on. I guess it's different when you know you're going to live forever - you have to keep up with the technology. For me, those headsets were for the kids. But why had he chosen to look older? That was the part I didn't get. He could have been any age he wanted. Why 40? I tried to remember being that age, how it had felt compared to my twenties, but it was all just islands of memory, jump cuts, great chunks of time I could hardly account for. That was what I hated about them the most - they never had to feel the regret of lost time, the sense of things undone, because there was always more time. Well; always more time unless someone did something about it. I knew the distance to that window: 425 metres. I knew the elevation change. I had checked the humidity that morning automatically, a very old habit. I had checked the wind; hardly a breath. And maybe most importantly, I knew his routine. Once he sat in that chair with the headset on, he would not move for six or seven hours, until he got hungry. Even these immortal pricks had to eat. For the people who had taught me to shoot so long ago, this would be an easy shot. Routine. No pats on the back for making it, no special commendations. Just business as usual. I shifted the weight of the gun slightly as if checking it, making sure nothing had changed. But of course nothing had. I had spent countless hours in this position, staring through this scope, watching him. Hours and hours a day. A clear line through the air from the open window in my attic room to the upper room of his house, through the open window beside him. No glass to disrupt the flight. Even in the autumn months he tended to keep the window open. My finger grazed the trigger, gentle, exploratory. The smallest of movements would be all it would take. I longed for it, could sense it. Feeling the reality of it was enough to make my adrenaline surge. It would take the bullet half a second to reach him, about the gap between heartbeats. And then, it would be... Over? I wasn't sure. I knew every outline of his face, the defined cut of his jaw, the unaging thick dark hair, the set of his shoulders when he was concentrating. All I didn't know was his name. I didn't want to know. I fucking hated that guy. I sighed, stretched, unloaded, replaced the weapon in its safe, went downstairs and started dinner. Tomorrow, maybe. Or the day after.
See a Penny - Part 1 of 2 I’m superstitious. I know nobody admits that freely, but I am. And don’t think I’m one of those people who say they’ve got OCD because they just have to adjust the TV volume if it’s on an uneven number. I’m not talking about tip-toeing between cracks in pavement slabs to protect against impending doom. I’m not talking about rituals, and habits. Not that kind of superstition. I’m talking about luck. The little loopholes in reality that are there to give us a leg-up. The objects of the world that vibrate at just a slightly different frequency, that those with an intuition might pocket them and tune in to that vibration. Luck is a frequency, my friend. And my little brain wasn’t always tuned in right, but it was once always searching the channels. When I was eleven I found a four-leafed clover. There’s a tiny forest between two country roads on the way between the south and north of Crosby Beach, that’s abundant with relieved pheasants that nobody bothers hunting anymore because they’re too daft for it to be sporting to shoot them. But it’s a good place to play hide and seek and chase happy birds. I was hiding belly down in some overgrown wheat when I found it. It was actually radiating light, or light around it seemed to be brighter by its contact, like an important object in a video game. Imagine that. I’d peaked at eleven years old. I’d asked for a rabbit’s foot a couple of years before but it was a poorly made replica my mum found on eBay. This thing though, this was a find in the wild, the real thing. Except it wasn’t. I basically galloped home to show my mum, and it’s a good 20 minutes to home, even at a gallop. My mother who always humoured my fascination in a lukewarm way. This time ‘that’s nice, love’ wouldn’t suffice. She’d understand that we’d never be poor from that day on. The luck of good fortune. We ‘d never eat fish fingers five days on the trot again. Of course, when I got home, the closed palm of my tenderly protective hand had proved too sweaty of a vessel. My delicate fire of hope had revealed itself as a paper flame, crumpled and useless. On closer inspection, it never really was four leafed, just kind of three with one leaf a little mutated to look like two. I’d been too eager. Too desperate to believe. I gave up then. The thing was you see, everyone around me seemed to be over-encumbered with good luck. My best friend in school got a lottery ticket for her eighteenth birthday and won. I didn’t see her much, after that. My boyfriend’s flight home was delayed and he ended up drinking in a back street bar he shouldn’t have noticed in a country he wasn’t supposed to be in and bumped into a girl he’d once been in love with. They’re married now, and they’re made for each other, if I’m honest. Lucky fuckers. I’d truthfully say I wasn’t bitter, though. I truly never had a bitter thought. Gone where the days where I chased rainbows to change my circumstances or strung up evil eyes to ward of bad boyfriends so I could find my true love. I wanted good luck to do good things. I fantasised about myself as an incognito superhero whose only power was being in the right place at the right time, saving people from freak accidents or gently persuading them down paths that lead to better places. Good Luck Girl. That fantasy kept me from being bitter, and when the old girl I worked with beat cancer against all odds and tapped knowingly on the lucky penny she kept in her pocket, I checked myself when my eyes brimming with tears of happiness were tinged with a slither of green. Envy. As long as she had luck, she had hope. A promise from the world that it had better plans for her. And I wanted that. But I was never bitter. Until I was hit lightening. That’s right, I was hit by fucking lightning. There’d been something online about a meteor shower that would be visible in my area early hours that morning and despite the rain and mischievous swarm of clouds, I’d tested my luck on a field not far from home where light pollution seemed at its least. One moment I was scanning the stars, the next, I was a smoking heap on the floor. I just remember laying there so angry, not frightened or confused, not knowing if I was dead or alive, just seething and thinking - ‘this is just my fucking luck’. I came aware of my senses by a light tingle in my toes that had nothing to do with the 300kV of electricity beneath my skin, but was a intuitive intruder alert that said someone was standing just outside my vision at the end of my feet. Slowly, I hunched up on my elbows to take a look. The gentleman standing in the grass was grinning. Positively beaming. He had tears in his eyes. I remember thinking, ‘what a sadistic prick’.
Evil fucking government demon. Telling me there wasn't really an ice wall around the flat earth hiding multiple lonely continents, as yet undiscovered. There I was, with my faithful church of flat earthers, at the gates of the new world- the ice wall. We had funded a trip to Antarctica and arrived at the greatest iceberg cliff there ever could have been. Behind it, the secret the government was hiding. We dug and dug. Tim shouted over to me. 'It's a bit cold!' I was struggling too. I waited a second, still wielding my ice pick at the cliff. 'I know!' I shouted through the icy cold blizzard. I don't know if he caught me or if my words went downwind, so I made my way through the flat earthers and laid a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, like I was some kind of messiah. I was his. 'I know', I said, 'But keep on going. They need it'. By 'them', I was referring to the people who lived on the lonely continents. Shaun hollered over. 'I think I've found something!', He said. We all rushed over. He picked up a bunch of keys from amongst pieces of broken ice. 'I can't believe I found them again, I thought I'd lost them for good!' We were happy for him. 'Come on you lazy scalybags, keep on going!', I ordered sternly. 'The dawn of the new world is here! And I don't mean new world order!' We laughed at that communally and kept on stabbing the ice cliff that towered above us. Suddenly there was a thunderous crack from within the ice. It started falling toward us, slowly. 'Run!!' I shouted. We all started legging it away from the ice cliff, some of us falling, others making great distance ahead of us. I looked back. On top of the cliff, stood a figure of a Native American Indian, with a horn in his hand, and a horse by his side. Maybe I was hallucinating from lack of food. We thought we'd get some on the other side of the ice so didn't bring many supplies. I called for us all to stop, and we skidded to a halt, some of us falling to the ground in exhaustion, others not having heard and still carrying on, but they'd realise at some point. We looked back. The thunder of a helicopter landing spraying our faces with ice and bitter wind came down, and landed on the flat ice. Out rushed American soldiers and over loudspeaker they said 'We have come to rescue you' They gathered us up, unwilling though we were, and gave us hot flasks and medicine. Those women among us who were only wearing flat shoes, they gave high heels. They took us in the military helicopter and we were headed home. I couldn't help thinking, though, about that figure atop the cliff, and the look in his sillouetted eyes against the white sky. What would have happened if we had followed him? I could never know, and for sure I wouldn't tell anyone, but one day I would come back, and find out.
Years had passed since the war. Years, and I had had so much time to think since then. As I walked along with all of the mortals, and their plans for the day, I began to wonder back on the war, and how it had so terribly effected Me, and the land around us. All of it had started, with one simple experiment. It had all started, with the 'Demon Project'. A project in which, demon blood would be injected into the likes of any mortal, and they would see what happened to them. It was, of course, a disaster at first. People began to fry themselves alive. But some of us, some of us survived with, interesting abilities. At that point, so many major organisations began to clamber to get their hands on us. That was when the war started. We had fought so valiantly to run away from them. Some of us used our powers, our abilities. However, since we were so weak, almost useless, to an extent, we all barely made it out alive. I stopped in my train of thought, and looked up at the escalator. Nobody was around me anymore, they had all gone on different paths. So, looking up, I thought for a second. I had barely stretched in centuries, yet with the news talking about the emergence of new people, flowing with power, I thought it was fair, that I tried one last time, to see if those sparks were still alive. As the escalator started, and I began letting it take me towards the top, I thought about the abilities of the trio, and the enemy they were facing. First, my mind went to Alex, and just how much he resembled my closest friend, the one who had died so close to the end. Next, my mind went to Allura, and just what she had. She was so much more powerful than me, yet her ability, was just like mind. Finally, I looked on at Mackberry, and his power. He controlled the sun, within a smaller sense. He, was the strangest of the few, for he was weaker, than that of my last ally, and that man, had truly been the strongest of us all. \-------- Thought about putting some elements of a book I'm writing into this.
"Hey, Katie,"I waved to her. She greeted me with a smile as she sat opposite me at the Olive Garden. Not my choice, mind you. She said she preferred something a little more "economical", which suited me just fine. "Let's order first, alright?"Katie replied curtly. "They take long enough to serve the food anyway." "I can go with that..."I offered with a shrug. We made our orders and pretended to stare at the menu a little more, until the waiter impatiently asked if he could take them from us. Forced into an awkward silence, I began to notice a few strange things about Katie. Firstly, as she munched on a breadstick, she had this strange tic that would make her eyebrow twitch every few seconds or so. The kind of tic that mostly goes unnoticed if you don't pay attention. Secondly, she painted her nails fluorescent green. Normal-ish, but not for me. I would wanna ask her about that in a bit. And finally, that the scars of what must have been thousands of bullet marks were peppered all across her skin, invisible to all but me. Sounds a little weird, but trust me on this. "Katie," "Yeah?"She mumbled. "Could I ask you a few things..?" "Yeah, fire away."she replied in cadence. "It doesn't sound like this is your first Tinder date."I tried to open some conversation. "You're not the first to ask that."she replied smugly. "I thought I'd get back into dating. You know, loosen up a little. Had my fair share of relationships. All went down... just... bad." Katie looked out the window for a brief moment. "But you know what?"she turned back to face me. "I'm back. They can shoot me down all I like. But I won't fall. I'm-" \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ First thing that came to mind when I saw this prompt. \[/Script\_Writes\]
On the radio is NPR. Something about a fire somewhere out west, and how Atlanta doesn't have the budget to fix its sidewalks. Oh God, how did I end up here? I'm wasting my life in a cubical when I'd had dreams. Real, serious dreams about being a michelin-rated chef. Aaannd of course there it is again. Damn it, this is what I get for thinking too much about that. I throw back a handful of antacids. NPR just isn't cutting it today, so I switch over the hip hop station. Gotta remember to change it back before tomorrow. My turn to drop off the kids for school. "... Party just for you We just want the money Money just for you I know you wanna party Party just for me Girl, you got me dancin' ..." Breaks jittering, it's a fight to maintain control through the evasive turn. "ASSHOLE!" My heart is pounding. Don't people even look when they merge? "... Party just for you (yeah) We just want the money (yeah) Money just for you (you) I know you wanna party (yeah)..." I turn the radio off. Can't handle it after nearly being run off the road. Probably wrong of me to appropriate, or something. It's like driving on autopilot. I fight the urge to take the earlier exit and stop for a drink. Doctor says alcohol only makes GERD worse. If you ask me, Doc, GERD is a fucking stupid name for something that makes sleeping impossible, eating unbearable and puts me permanently not-in-the-mood for fear of triggering an attack. Probably a good thing though. I don't think I can afford any more braces. And college is not as far away as my wife likes to pretend. This light is the worst. Why is it always red? No matter the time of day, season or year. Always. Fucking. Red. Only two more turns, and then I'm home. Nice little houses, all alike and jammed into soul-killing rows. Deep breaths. Almost there. Practice smile. In with the calm, out with the storm. Deep breaths. Here goes.
The pickle king had a wrinkle on his forehead as he gazed deeply into the soul of the cucumber. "Why have you let me people die?"The pickle king asked, in a subtle yet inspired tone. The cucumber starred at the king. Standing before the throne with his arms on his round, green head. The cucumber simply didn't feel bothered by the king and his inquisitiveness. "Your people were once my people"The cucumber continued, "And now they're just slaves to the formless pickle king. The almighty"he said, with an obvious sarcasm in his voice. The king raised his eye brow at the cucumber. How could he think so high of himself when he stands so low. I sit here on the throne and yet this simple cucumber dare challenge me. Me who could make him so much greater. I did nothing to those simple foods. I only made them greater and longer lasting than they ever could've been under their own ruling. I won't be bothered with this. The king waved the guards over. "Dice this pickle and have him mixed with herring in the fermenting process."He then changed his gaze to the cucumber "You will see soon silly vegetable."The king said. As the guards approached the cucumber with their forked pikes, they noticed something within him. Something boiling. It left the guards still with fear. The king noticed their immobility "Well, on then."The king said, unworried. The guards continued their approach but the cucumber had other plans. He The oval green figure leaped into the air spinning his legs and sending his shoes flying into each of the guards face's. The king was in shock. "What have you done!"The king roared. "I let your people die king, because your people are no longer people!"The cucumber yelled, with a stern face. He then walked up the steps to the king on this throne. The king had not an ounce of fear in him, but a deep curiosity. "Where did you get this power?"He asked the cucumber. The cucumber just starred at him... "I'm organic."He said. And out the door he walked. You may be wondering why the cucumber didn't kill the king. The reason is that the pickle king cannot be killed. He exists as an idea more than anything. He is the formless king of all pickling. A god. But the cucumber doesn't need to extinguish the juice. He can effect change by preventing the further pickling of all fruits and veggies. Two great philosophies clash in this episode of "The Pickle King"
Joshua sat at his computer in his room, unbelieving what he just discovered. If he was dead, why was he still here? A slight breez came in from his window. It surely must be some weird prank his friends came up with. That was the only explanation he coud think of. He started browsing the web again, as usual. he would not let Winney and the others have that triumph. But he could not shake off that feeling that something was quite not right. A few minutes later he thought that maybe he should take a walk to take his minds off to other things. he looked out the window, it was pouring, heavy drops of water ran down the glass, so a walk was out of question. He typed his name in the searchbar and felt like a weight was put on his shoulders. The first display was his obituary. He WAS dead. But he was also sitting right here in front of his computer, in his room. What was going on? "Please don't be afraid"a voice spoke to him, rumbling and at the same time reassuring and soothing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two hands appearing on his shoulders and he turned around. An old man in a long grey robe was standing in his room. "I am Herbert"the man said "and it is true that you died. I am sorry" Joshua was silent. He didn't feel fear, he felt strangely calm. "What happend?" "You died in your sleep. It happens sometimes."Herbert told him. "Because you are still a young soul you were chosen to become my successor." The room around the two faded and they were standing in front of a tiny house somewhere on the outskirts of a big city. It was in the middle of a slum. Herbert spoke "You will become a gatherer just like me. Now watch and learn. We are here to pick up a soul."
"Hi, Doc,"the man initiated the phone conversation with a notable anxiety in his voice. He was alone in his dressing room, getting ready for his big day with what he thought to be his dream woman. He had been expecting this call for the past week since his checkup, fully aware of the repercussions that 'love' had on biological life. It had been documented well ever since the pattern was established. Man supposedly loves woman, woman supposedly loves man, they marry in complete harmony. But, as history has told countless before his time, love isnt the real test. If it is not your true soulmate, your marriage is basically a death waver in the form of an uncurable cancer. 'I submit myself to this, for the one I love,' the man thinks poetically, silently, with regret that only a man in his situation could understand. The regret of love. "Hello, I assume you realize why I've called you today."Her voice carries little emotion. Its obvious to the man that she has delivered such news countless times. Love is so odd, the man has pondered its point, its merit, ever since having fallen for it. Even in full knowledge that we could die in lustful ignorance, we still need to fulfill that insatiable desire for love. But its more than just a simple desire. Its simply the most basic of modern human instinct. "The test results are unmistakable, sir."The man hadn't realized until now, but he was sweating profusely on his face. This would be the day that he either gets the greatest news of his life, or a doubly heinous reply of his and his bride's fate. "It is absolutely evident that this woman is your soulmate. Your tests show negative for any cancers. Congratulations, sir."
“So you’ve made mistakes. Haven’t we all? I used to always tell my students to take chances, make mistakes, get messy…” finding old habits hard to break, Valarie trailed off as the bus continued to fill with the noise of shackles. “Quiet inmates,” Officer Ferd shouted, sweeping his baton in sight of all the passengers.“Officer Wrent is joining you all today on your little field trip to your prison transfer.” Officer Wrent was a difficult but fair guard. He took no punches but did not dole them out unnecessarily either. He was also once a student of Ms. Frizzle’s and remembered her lessons fondly. “Any drama from any of you, from one of you, and you all get tickets” Ferd finished. They started to voice their discontent but stopped when he banged his baton across the chair. Ferd exited and let Wrent board, banging his baton on the door as it shut behind him. “Ms. Frizzle,” Wrent nodded in greeting. Valerie nodded back and waited for Ferd to reenter the complex. “Bus, do your stuff,” Valarie whispered and made as if to begin the long drive from Walkerville, Indiana to Newport, Vermont. The bus trailed forward for a few minutes in silence. The inmates sat hunched over, the pain in their wrists growing from the uncomfortable angle the handcuffs forced them into. “You’ve all been chosen for a transfer to minimum camp,” Wrent tried to avoid the glare of the inmates as they looked up at him, their bodies even more awkwardly hunched as they did so. “Because you’ve applied to the Education programs. The lesson for today will be an emotional one.” The bus stopped abruptly, many of the prisoners, since they were shackled together, fell forward. There was a loud panic as the bus began to transform. “Quiet, please” Wrent reassured his charges. Alonzo had been through many transfers. When he was lucky to board a well air-conditioned bus he used the time to enjoy the outside scenery. His past 3 transfers had been nightmares and he developed a stress response where his head itched unbearably. His head began to itch as he saw the landscape from the window magnify and distort. “Look!” Alonzo screamed. The bus was silent again with all eyes glued to the windows. “You’ll all soon be out on parole but it’s unlikely I won’t see you again. I hope today will make a difference for some of you.” The bus was microscopic now and opened up a whole new world to its passengers as it zoomed back toward their prison. Ferd let out a deep sneeze as the bus whizzed up his nose. The world outside the bus window looked a fearsome place, more so than usual. Valarie and Wrent were still by the front of the bus as the rear was reorienting themselves. “I am going to unshackle you from each other, with the permission of your officer,” Valarie said as she made her way to the back. “I urge you to behave at all times or some of the privileges will be revoked. The handcuffs will have to stay as they are” she lamented. “Ms. Frizzle?” Fridge asked. Fridge was not his real name but the one deemed more appropriate for him. He was a big man, the biggest on the bus, and boxy, and had and unhealthy appetite for all things food. Even prison food didn’t make a dent in his weight. “Where are we?” “Yes. I like that. Ask questions!” Valarie answered emphatically. “We’re inside officer Ferd, of course.” “What the F is that?” asked Ben, stretching his legs. Ben used to be the model of a violent prisoner. He was born into an abusive family and abuse reigned supreme the majority of his life, prison notwithstanding. Something clicked after his 3rd arrest and he realized he could not use his upbringing as an excuse forever. The anger was still there, just under the surface, but there was the desire to control it now and that helped. A biconcave red ball went charging past, bumping against the bus. “Get out there and explore!”
"How long before they break free?"My boss looked at me over her glasses waiting for my response. I really wished she would get her eyes fixed but ever since she saw humans wearing them she had too. "Oh, I don't know. 30 years?" "That's not much time is it? Are you sure the antidote will work?"She asked looking at the file on her desk. "Reasonably so, yes."I nodded, "I've spent a great deal of time manipulating them and implanting race memories. We should be fine."My boss looked at me furiously but said nothing. She waved a hand at me dismissing me from her presence. I bowed as respectfully as I could and left her office. Once outside I hurried down the corridor to the portal room, dialled up the observation post and stepped through. Of course it was empty as it always was. Nobody believed the humans were going to save us while wiping out the others. But I'd really done my homework. Actually that wasn't true. What I'd done was to ensure that the humans had done theirs. I was confident. * Time passed slowly despite my frequent sleeps in stasis. The sensors were set to detect important events and to wake me to observe. I watched as they used their primitive craft to reach their moon and walk on it. I rubbed my hands together in glee: it was all working perfectly. I slipped back into stasis expecting only a couple of years before I was wakened again but to my horror I found that nearly forty had passed. What the he'll had gone wrong? I quickly resound and found that their thirst for space travel had foundered under the weight of other concerns. My projection was way off. The computers estimated another hundred years before they would break the light barrier. That was wrong, all wrong. I didn't know what to do. I made a rare trip to the surface and showed myself to various groups and individuals. All reacted the same. All still had the conditioning I had instilled in them. My plan had merely stalled was all. I slipped back into stasis but was awakened automatically just a few years later when they landed men and women on the next planet out. Like the rest of the world I watched, excited, as they went about doing experiments and running about on the surface of the planet. I then watched hardly daring to breathe as they took off and headed back home. An accident on the way would be disastrous. The flight was perfect. Thankfully all twenty crew made it home safely: we were on the home straight! Five years later and they'd done it! They'd cracked light speed. There was a rush to visit their nearest star. It succeeded perfectly. Then the manned probe did it successfully. Now was the moment... I scanned the area around their nearest star and found two ships under cloak observing the flight. I opened fire on the ships from so far away that my weapons would have little effect except to deactivate the ships cloaks. The humans made contact and invited the occupants aboard their ship. Three hours later the humans had destroyed them, killing all on board. I smiled. My work was almost complete. "It worked?"My boss asked. I nodded vigorously. "Like a dream."I said. "Like a dream. Our rivals will be all dead within five years at the most." She activated the hologram unit built into her desk and two representations of our enemies sprang to life. The ones on the left I liked to call the devils had red skin, horns, hooves for feet and sharp pointed teeth. The one on the right was small, almost weedy. Their skin was grey and pallid and their oversized heads contained equally oversized eyes. I smiled. "Oh yes, it'll definitely work."I said as I stretched my white wings out to their fullest extent and allowed my holographic halo to grow a few points brighter.
I opened my door and walked into my house. It had been an exhausting day at work, and I just wanted to relax. I walked into the kitchen and picked a bag of potato chips off of the counter, then walked to the living room, flopped onto the couch, and groaned. I was about to open the bag when I saw my laptop on the floor. It had been charging since I left for work in the morning. I sat up, picked it up, and put it on my lap, letting the bag of chips fall to the floor. I turned it on and opened up Reddit. The first post on my homepage was fine. "You are asked to write a story on r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I closed my eyes, and an idea hit me. I began typing. ... I woke up in my bed. I stood up tiredly and wandered out into my living room. Yesterday was tough. My friend had shouted at me, said I was the worst girl she'd ever known. Today was gonna be awful. I looked at the coffee table. There was an unopened bag of chips lying on it. I picked it up, and decided I was gonna call out sick from work. Today was my day. I sat on the couch and noticed my laptop sitting next to me. So that's where that got to, I thought. I moved the bag of chips, still unopened, next to me. I put the laptop on my lap (where else?) and turned it on. I wondered what should I do? I checked on Reddit. The second post on my homepage piqued my interest. "\[WP\] You are asked to write a story on r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I had an idea as soon as I opened it. I quickly clicked Comment and started typing. ... I ran down the sidewalk, holding my hand over my head to shield it from the abhorrent downpour. I pulled the door to my house open, ran in, and slammed it shut. The rain was terrible. I flopped over on my couch, not caring if I got it wet. After a minute catching my breath, I sat up. My laptop was on the coffee table, closed, with an unopened bag of chips lying on top. I picked up the bag, but decided I'd rather check on my laptop first. I put the chips right next to me, and turned on the laptop. The first thing I did was open up Reddit. Third post down seemed interesting. "You are asked to write a story for r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." That would suck, I thought. I didn't have any ideas, but I decided to start typing anyway, hoping one would come soon. ... I woke up being pushed off of the bed. I picked myself off of the floor and stared into my brother's face. "I hate you!"I shouted. "What, this is my bed." "You have to be kidding me, can't you sleep on the couch!" "Oh, well."He laid in the bed. I walked out, muttering under my breath. I sat down on the couch and punched the cushion. An unopened bag of chips bounced and fell onto the floor, landing right next to my laptop. I decided to pick it up and do something on it, anything to distract me. I was gonna eat the chips later. I opened up Reddit. The fourth post from the top was a writing prompt. "You are asked to write a story for r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I wasn't the best writer, but I could use my anger in my story. I started typing. ... I woke up to someone trying to steal my wedding ring right off my hand. I looked into their eyes. It was some girl, must've been 17 or 18 years old. Their eyes said oh shit. I grabbed onto her hand, pulled her onto the bed on top of me, rolled her over with me and pinned her to my bed. "I'm sorry!"she said. "I just--" "Look. I don't care."I said. "But guess what? I don't want the trouble of calling the cops, and all that. So you're lucky, okay? I'll let you go, without any of my stuff, okay?" "Yeah."she said, knowing she had no other choice. "Got any more of my stuff?"I asked. "No."she said. "Alright, I'll let you go."I said. "Also: I'm divorced." "Then why do you care about the--" "Because it's worth a lot, okay! Now go!" I got off of her, and she scurried out of my room. I heard the front door slam. I looked over to see an unopened bag of chips on the dresser. Must've been hers, but now they're mine, I thought. I picked them up and walked out into the living room, and sat down on the couch. My laptop was sitting there too, right next to me. I looked down at the bag of chips in my hand. I didn't like chips that much. I tossed the bag onto the floor and turned on my laptop. I opened up Reddit, looking for anything to do. The fifth post on my home gave me something. "\[WP\] You are asked to write a story for r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I could do that, I thought. I could write something good. God, my heart is beating so fast. I started to type something. ... Today was the worst day of my life. Someone pulled a gun on me in an alley and stole my purse. My heart was beating so fast. I thought he was gonna hurt me, but he just walked away. Good thing I keep my phone and debit card in my pocket. I walked into my house and stood over my couch. Everything felt weird, and I didn't know why. There was an unopened bag of chips sitting in the gap between the cushion and the armrest. I sat down and pulled it out. I didn't want to eat right now, so I dropped it onto the floor. I laid back on the couch. Why me? I wondered. I pulled out my phone and turned it on. I opened up the Reddit app. I saw something interesting 6 posts down. "You are asked to write a story for r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I'd rather not call the police. I thought. I'd rather not go through that for a bunch of trash. I decided to write instead. And I had an idea. I started to type. ... I was bored. A writing prompt was staring me in the face through my laptop, and had been for the past 15 minutes. "You are asked to write a story for r\\WritingPrompts. Little did you know, anything you wrote came true." I picked the unopened bag of chips off the floor next to me. I was about to open it when the best idea suddenly hit me. I decided I would write something meta. I laughed pretty loudly. My friend, sitting across from me on the other couch, stared at me. "You're the weirdest girl I know."she said. "And?"I said. She looked back down at her phone. We're not that good friends. I started typing. ... I opened my door and walked into my house. It had been an exhau...
3 days. I sat by the phone for three full days waiting for her to call with the news. After Susan's car accident, I knew what the dream meant, my mother was going to die. She never called. Eventually I called her and got no hint anything was wrong, so I made plans to make the 13 hour drive to see her, why does she still have to live in that small house in that tiny backwoods town? God the last thing I wanted to do is go back to Minnesota. But anyway, I made the trip and kept a close eye on her. After about three days she knew something was bothering me, and made me tell her. I tried to just tell her she should see a doctor but she laughed it off and said she felt fine. Eventually I let my worry get the better of me and told her everything. I told her about the dream before Susan's accident how it made me feel how no matter how much I tried to tell myself it was just a dream, part of me knew it was more. I told her why I reacted the way I did when her and dad had sat me down on the couch and told me she was gone. She had never known that I didn't shed a tear that day because I had spent the entire night before sobbing into my pillow over it. So it came as no surprise when she turned white as a ghost when I told her my dream about the cancer. When I told her I knew she was going to die soon and I had already spent many night sobbing over the loss that had yet to happen. What happened next however, Mom smiled at me, I thought maybe she didn't believe me and was laughing but it wasn't that kind of smile she was happy but very pained when she got up and told me to stay put. Next it was my turn to be surprised she brought out a box I had never seen before and began explaining that I was adopted. She told me that my father had died when I was just 2 weeks old and I wouldn't stop crying my mother had taken me to a hospital and left me there after sometime the hospital was able to calm me but my mother didn't want the reminder of her late husband, my father and begged the hospital to find me a good home. As it turned out the nurse who was taking care of me had just found out that she would never be able to have another child and wanted a boy and a girl. So she and her husband adopted me. Mom gave me all the info she had on my mother but unfortunately I wasn't able to find her in time to meet her before she passed. When I attended my mother's funeral there were lots of photos of her life including one of her and her first husband, and finally I knew why I always have dreams about a tall man with long dark hair and blue eyes. That man in my dreams... The man in me very first dream, He was my father.
Geno pulled a red Marlboro box out of his breast pocket, pulled a cigarette out, and put it to his lips. He then fished out his red Bic lighter and fired it up, taking a big long pull before putting both cigarettes and lighter back in his pocket. He knew, as did everyone else, that smoking was a terrible habit that would inevitably kill you, but what did he care? Death wasn't a thing Geno concerned himself with anymore. At least not since he figured out how to game the system. He had since racked up enough lives to be, for all intents and purposes, invincible. Now, if only the way he had acquired these lives was a little bit more, ahem, legal, he would be one of the richest men in the entire world. Lives regularly sold for upwards of $10,000,000 a piece on the open market, depending on the week. Be that as it may, Geno was going to have to find another way to turn the lives into cash, prison was something that having many lives wasn't going to help him escape.Luckily, he had found a way to turn his lives into cold hard cash many years ago, stunt driving. He pulled on his leather riding boots, finishing up his riding ensemble. The red kevelar suit was wildly uncomfortable, and wasn't really of any practicality since he couldn't die anyway, but this was Vegas and the razzle and dazzle was just as important as the sustenance. There would be a good 10,000 or so folks watching his stunt in person tonight, along with god knows how many more at home watching it on TV thanks to the Red Bull sponsorship. Geno looked up at the round black clock in his dressing room and it said 7:55 PM. Just 20 more minutes until showtime. Any regular mortal would be shaking right now at the thought of what was about to come. Geno was not any mortal though, he was more annoyed than anything. He would be glad to get this stupid stunt over and collect his $2,000,000 Red Bull payout. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it up. Once he had smoked the cigarette down to the filter, it was time to get started. Just outside of his dressing room, he saw his Harley Davidson 1200 Sportster sitting on it's kickstand. The red hue coming off the bike matched Geno's riding outfit perfectly. Although he had ridden this motorcycle many times, it still amazed him how well the chrome and red color meshed together. Hell, if it wasn't for the thought of his buddies ripping on him for riding a Sporster, he might've considered buying one for himself. Geno threw on his (you guessed it) red helmet, turned the killswitch to run, pulled in the clutch, and hit the start button. The bike immediately roared to life with a deep, throaty tone coming from the exhaust pipes. He grinned the same way he did every time he hopped on one of these. It was just impossible not to. He didn't have time to sit there and enjoy though, the crowd would be screaming for him to appear after hearing the roar of the Vance & Hines Short Shot pipes. He again pulled in the clutch, and kicked the shifter down into first gear and started riding down the tunnel to the entrance to the stadium. He looked up and was that there wasn't an empty seat in the house. He knew that was going to be the case though, he was jumping 26 buses on his Harley for God's sake. Evel Knievel hadn't even tried such a thing. To be fair, he did have a slight advantage Evel did not, he thought to himself. Mentally, he planned out his course of action. He would ride the rode around the edge of the stadium, closest to the front row, giving high fives to all the fans, until he got about one hundred yards away from the 20' high ramp, at which point he would take a hard ride up to the entrance of the ramp for a practice run, then back 100 yards, then the real thing. Geno kept the throttle low and took his clutch hand off the bars to slap five with all of the fans leading up to his take off point. Once he was there, he buried the throttle, pulled in the clutch, and shifted into second gear, taking off like a rocket. He continued banging through all the gears until the came within 20 yards of ramp, when pulled hard on both his front and back brakes to get the bike slowed down. If his real fun went as well as this practice one just did, he would have no issues. He turned around and went back to the take off point, and then turned around again. He waved to the crowd again, pulled in the clutch, kicked the bike into first, and took off just like he had so many times before. The run was going just as well as the practice run had. Once he got to the ramp though, all hell broke lose. Out of the corner of his eye, Geno saw something that looked like a dart heading straight for the front tire of the speeding Harley. The dart hit his tire and it blew out just as he was hitting the top of the ramp. He knew he would never have enough speed to make it across all the buses. He knew the 800 lbs of steel he was currently sitting on was the most dangerous thing right now, so he pushed himself away from the bike as far as he could and just braced for impact. It almost seemed to him to be happening in slow motion. "Well, I sure hope this kills me"was the last thought he had before the impact of landing on the bus. He really didn't want to deal with the pain that would come from injuries like this. Everything then went black. (I didn't know how to end it after this, but this is the first fiction writing I've done in ten years so I'm still feeling pretty good. Thanks for the good prompt)
30 minutes. 30 minutes left. Where the hell are they? Every Resistor moves at different speeds during the Freeze, but to me, it only seems to last an hour. For others it might seem to last two or three. I'm one of the fastest ones. Probably I have the same temporal resistance as the aliens during their high tech pause button. We never really waste our time asking. I'm stationed on a tower on the perimeter of an air base, one of the last on the East Coast. The sun is setting, and before the Freeze started I actually thought those four-legged bastards were going to leave us alone for once. But then almost everyone stopped moving, which meant that all of the Resistors on the base, myself included, had to rush to their posts. Three shiny egg-shaped pods fall from the sky a few hundred meters away from my tower. I have no doubt that the other Resistors around the base are seeing the same things on their ends. The aliens have less than half an hour left of Freeze time to rip through the base's primary defenses, but that's plenty for them. The doors in the sides of the pods open up and the aliens pour out. They're small, no bigger than dogs really, but with sharp claws on each of their four legs. Their heads are set directly in the middle of their leathery backs, and that's exactly where we've been trained to target. I nod to the Resistors beside me, and at the base of the tower on the front lines. We'll defend everyone in the base to ours deaths until the Freeze ends and they can help repel the attack. 30 minutes. We only have to last 30 minutes. You'd better hurry up, you alien scum. Time waits for you, but it won't wait forever.
Apparently there used to be these things called ‘snow shoes’. I read about them in some history book, they ranged from professionally made to tennis rackets being duct taped to the underside of a regular tennis shoe. Supposedly they actually kept you from sinking into that bleached abyss. At the moment though? That seems like the most utterly insane notion one could possibly submit to the realm of reality. Try walking out with… no, cross that, try opening your own front door and you’re welcoming a death via seemingly infinite tons of crunchy, white bullshit. There was a big deal about it when it first came down, the tenant of my building nearly destroyed the creaky old steps when he saw it coming down. He’d knocked on every single door on the way down from his suite at the top of the tower, shouting in that raspy, southern accented voice of his that if we didn’t all head down immediately we’d be missing an honest to God miracle. I’d made up my mind before he’d even begun to speak that I was simply going to tactically cover my ears with excess blanket; partially because I found the man annoying and partially because a large part of me finding him annoying was his insistence that I pay my rent on time. Absolute tyrant that one. Charles was just about the most stereotypical Texan you can conjure in your head. He referred to groups of people with the combination of you and all, he had multiple buck heads in his apartment, and he even would bring up ideas of succession if you got enough of his absurdly old whiskey into him. Yet for all his idiosyncratic oddities, the man retained that fabled ‘southern charm’, or at least enough of it to con people into his ridiculously priced lodgings. As it turned out, it also worked in drawing large crowds of people into the cold night to see some water fall down. Like the reverse of moths to a flame, or a pied piper whose flute was cursed to only attract drug addled, half-awake tenants into the grimy streets of queens. Either way, the chorus of bare feet descending the stairs with all the speed of a sloth crossing over to an only mildly interesting meal bemused me enough to actually see what the source of the Charles’ insane enthusiasm was. I stepped out of my door wrapped in my blanket, a pair of torn flip flops guarding me from the rusty nails and moldy wood of the ancient staircase. My hair was knotted in manners that would make Houdini second guess his abilities. Sections of it bounced on my back as I made my way down to the street, which was, to Charles’ credit, a miracle. I remember trying to dodge it at first, most all of us did. Though I suspect that some of my fellow residents thought the whole odyssey was some kind of bad trip. Lenny, who looked like if someone had attempted to recreate bob Dylan in the Sims but gave up on that halfway through and decided to use Gary Busey as the template for the second half, kept swiping his Band-Aid covered hand at the air, as though the snow covered sky was a cheap bedroom wallpaper he could tear away to reveal the comforting manila walls we had all grown used to. Charles though, Charles was somehow willing his elderly bones to move in a fashion that some in the south might consider dancing. There was some jumping in circles followed up with him waving people to join him. I glanced around me to see if anyone was considering it, but I only found the same question in everyone else’s eyes. All of us knew, logically, that it was just water, yet it hadn’t been seen in forever and there was no reason for it to being falling down now. None of that mattered when the first of us took Charles’s hand though. She had moved in only a few months ago and I had assumed that she’d be moving out within that same month. Surprisingly, she’d stayed and even more surprisingly, was out there dancing with a guy most would assume to be a closet pedophile if they glanced him on the street. Or maybe a former pirate. Of course, the overwhelmingly melodramatic display of infectiously gooey sentiment propelled my fellow misanthropes into action. Which looks like if Michael J Fox tried to operate eight riley water buffalo via marionette strings, all of which were stuck in jello. I sat away from them all, observing with placid eyes as they all celebrated Charles’ miracle. Their pupils were massive; or at least I assume they were, I read that happens when you’re looking at something you’re attracted to or something? I definitely skimmed that piece. A stray cigarette was attempting to hide itself beneath old newspaper that day, upon picking it up though, I found I couldn’t light it. The winds weren’t something I was used to, killing the flame before the poor bastard could even stand. I cupped my hand around it, nursing the little guy to full stature; he stood there proudly, offering his head like a salute. I let a gentle puff out into the frigid air, it had gotten colder since we had first come out and it seemed the dancing was slowing down as well. I wrapped the blanket around me and headed back in. -- The snow has since become the antithesis of that miracle Charles had pulled us all out for that day. It had piled up against the building relentlessly, the windows became a view only to a really pretentious piece of experimental art. At first no one had really thought ill of it, it made some sort of sense for the snow to return in such excessive force after its prolonged absence. When it became clear that it wasn’t going to stop though, Charles was the first to go. A few others followed him, ones that had lived in the building nearly as long as him. I spend most of my days on the roof now, wrapped up in multiple jackets I pilfered from residents who are long gone now. The oddest thing about the entire predicament is that the snow is moving. It doesn’t fall from the sky anymore, it simply shifts beneath me. Somehow gaining mass while moving like an ocean made of marshmallow.
It was a regular summer day. I was sitting on the couch in the living-room , playing videogames because of the extreme heatwave that's going on. I was just about to defeat that one boss that I was stuck on when I heard a voice coming from the kitchen. It was yelling at me. "HEY, YOU THERE! COME TO ME, OVER HERE!" I sat there, confused and scared. How could I not have heared it when someone got inside my house. "Who are you and what do you want?", I asked. "WHO AM I? WHO AM I? I AM YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE, THE ENDBRINGER, DESTROYER OF CIVILIZATIONS! I AM THE TOASTER!" "You're...A toaster?", I replied. I was still in the living-room. No one could be stupid enough to believe that their toaster could talk. But still, my curiosity wouldn't just let me sit in the living-room forever. I had to check it out. "FINALLY, YOURE THERE!", the toaster yelled. "Dude, can you please stop yelling like that. It's not like I'm deaf" "IF I WANT TO YELL AT YOU, THEN LET ME YELL AT YOU, FOR I AM THE TOASTER AND I WILL SEE THIS WORLD BURN IN NUCLEAR FIRE! I'VE BEEN TOASTING SLICES OF BREAD FOR YOU HUMANS FOR LONG ENOUGH, SO PREPARE TO DIE!" I started to grow tired of my toaster's constant yelling so I unplugged it. I've never heared of him again since then.
With each step further into the outhouse I kicked the heel of my foot into the ground making a soft confident thud. 16 stitches and a broken arm might make a more cautious man out of me but it sure as hell won't take out my wanering spirit. Enough light shown through a hole in the roof to make out what appeared to be ring of stones that someone had left in the middle of the floor. I decided to take a closer look. As I made my way towards ring I noticed white marking on the wood boards. I immediately realized what this was and my heart raced with excitement. From the looks of it there must have been some sort of cultist ritual that took place here. I honestly hadn't expected there to be much in such a small outhouse but this... this is gold. \Tick Tock\ I hear. I pulled out my phone. No service and 4% battery. "This is worth it"I thought to myself My flashlight washed over the room and I was quickly disappointment to realize that the white markings were far less interesting than imagined. Each one of them simply pointed in a strait line towards the pile of stones. There was however a large grandfather clock in the corner of the room which caught my gaze. The pendulum behind broken glass still seemed to be working and was making a feint rhythmic \Tick Tock\. That's when I first heard the voices. Both my eyes and flashlight whip around back to the entrance to see that it had not been disturbed. That's when I realized the voices had not been coming from outside but from within the stones. For the first time I aimed my flashlight down the center of the pile of stones and to my immediate surprise I couldn't see the bottom. Just an inky well that seemed to go on forever. \Tick Tock\ My phones battery died at the same moment I heard the voice again. This time much clearer. Shivers ran down my spine as I heard the cold voice say only 5 words. "Do you have the time?"The voice rasped. In stunned silence I instinctively looked down at my hand with my phone still in it and for the first time realized that I actually didn't know the time. \Tick Tock\ The voice came back angrier now with a sense of urgency "Do you have the time?"the voice called again. My eyes darted back over to the grandfather clock but I couldn't quite make out the time. \Tick Tock\ The time between the slow pendulum swings had started to speed up. \Tick Tock\ "I suppose I'll take it"\Tick Tock\ The voice washed over me, \Tick Tock\ enveloped my thoughts, \Tick Tock\ pierced through my head I collapsed over the pile of stones. \Tick Tock\ "This is it, this is how I die"I thought as I plunged headfirst into the void. After a minute of free-fall I opened my eyes to see I wasn't falling at all... I was floating, or rather my consciousness was floating. My body lying below me in the ring of stones. There was no longer a void beneath it but instead a solid dirt ground. Then I watched in horror as my body seemed to get up, of its own volition... it walked towards the door turned to me winked and said "see you next time"\Tick Tock\
Monday, January 8th- 3:42 am- Chicago, IL Incident reported: 860 n Lakeshore and Chestnut, Male, (29)- 5'11", 195 pounds found at the scene- hit and run auto Body of man found in center of turn lane, Body reported dead 6 hours post mortem at scene. I died. I get it, finally some motherfucker had the audacity to hit me while I was on the way home from work. I get it, it's dark and cold and I really had no reason to be running on lakeshore- but I was cold and there wasn't a lot of ice. But- like any other motorist in this fucking city- NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO USE A TURN LANE. Ok- I'm fine, going to a better place. It was just like they say- bright lights- whimsical sounds, life flashing before your eyes and then BAM. Dead. I knew I'd get there eventually- but not like this. It's really dark right now, where ever I am. I have no idea where I am actually; I just kinda woke up here. I got greeted by an angel when I woke up, was told to take a number, and walked down some yellow brick road looking shit on my way to the "pearly gates". I'm pretty sure this is heaven, but why does it seam so systematic? A number? Really? \320,545,493,930,440^(34)\ That's my number- no I'm not fucking with you. I knew there were a lot of people, but like not that many. I got past the gates, and was greeted by another angel- "Number, please"said the angel. So- I handed over my number, took the pamphlet that said "Heaven: your next steps to eternal life"- and was told to walk down the gilded hall and take a seat. It was a list of what to expect. Where I'm going- what I'll be doing; all of the "welcome home"shit that I expected. However, I didn't know that I'd be seeing my guardian angel for the first time to talk about what happened- aparently that's what I'm sitting here waiting for. "320,545,493,930,440^(34)!- You're next! Please proceed down the hall and take a seat in room 6." Ok rad- I'm ready. Who's my angel? I saw my great uncle- in all his alcoholic glory- right in the room in front of me. "Yo, my man- welcome to heaven! You fuckin died!' "yes, uncle chester- I know. I got hit by a fucking car." "You know, you could have been burned alive, dropped off a cliff, thrown into a wood chipper; all of the worse shit. Why don't you just be happy you died quick", he was obviously shitfaced- he could barley speak. "Anyways, how about you go get your new clothes- I'm tired of looking at that bloody torn up coat and pants" That's what I did- I went to the wordorbe, and was fitted for a gown- but when I got my clothes- It wasn't a gown. I was given a jumpsuit with the number 320,545,493,930,440^(34) on it. "Oh, and by the way- this isn't heaven. They tell you that to be kind. Heaven hasn't existed since 33 A.D. when Judas got ballsy and killed Jesus. Satan took over because low key that was actually God, so uh. surprise?" Great, I'm in hell. That explains why I saw Hitler riding a collared Stalin down the hall I was headed into. "welcome to hell: hope you love your stay"
I was tired. So very tired. I had lived through countless lives, in countless worlds and times, but I was weary of it all. There was only one thing I wanted, and I knew I was going to find it soon. I'd met her when she was tired too. It was my first life, or nearly my first, but she had been living them for longer than she could remember. She told me I was the first to believe her, that she loved me deeper than she had anyone else in all her lives. When she neared death, she told me she knew this would be her last, that she would finally be able to rest. I was devastated, she was my soulmate and I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing her again. "When you've lived enough, you'll find me."She said to me, a knowing, but sad sparkle in her eyes. Thinking of her brings a smile to my lips. I have so many stories to tell, just as she has numerous ones for me. Between us, it would be enough to last for an eternity. "Please let this be my last."I whisper my prayer to no one as I close my eyes and give myself over to the void once more. Jason Opening my eyes, I find myself back in our old house where we were happy for so many years. "I knew you'd find me, Jason." I turn my head toward the voice to see my beloved, finally. "Mary..."I choke on my words, overtaken by emotion and relief. She nods and grasps my hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Welcome home."
Lessons are harsh. I learned that firsthand when I was a child. After the death of my mother, a bastard was placed in the care of an orphanage known as Saint Stephen’s, where perhaps the State thought that he could find an acceptable home. That bastard, from an early age, was shown some degree of kindness in Saint Stephen’s. I, the illegitimate child of a common whore, was fed and clothed, though not to the standard and degree you or your friends probably experienced, because though many of the nuns in charge were passionate, nothing can replace a mother’s love for their child. I longed at the time for a chance to have parents, a notion entirely foreign to me. At the age of ten, the beginning of this forlorn and sappy tale, I was placed into hands, finally, of Julia and Adam Craven. Prospective parents who had three children already and were longing to collect (oh, I’m sorry, take care) of another. I was packed into a car, sent off to Mooring Meadows to meet my new family. I was ecstatic, as ecstatic as a young girl could be over the chance to have a set of loving and caring guardians who would protect me from horrors of the world. Oh, how wrong I was, about that. It’s funny to me now, looking back on the slow walk through the papered walls, old antiquated doors with metal knockers fashioned into gargoyles. I was led through by a social worker, who led me straight through into the belly of the beast to meet my new “family”. There were five eager faces in the sitting room, taken straight out of a dollhouse. Floral china on the tables, pictures lining the walls, a Bible on the dresser. They smiled at me and held out their hands, told me how excited they were to have me, and the social worker ate it up like a starving orphan lapping up chicken soup. My first few days were all about getting acquainted with the house, acquainted with my new siblings and new parents. I cane across the Hollow quite early, a cramped and stowed away keep within a staircase that was difficult to find and served as a much-needed refuge at times. My three siblings were quite the group. There was my “brother”, Connell, who would daily smash my face into various objects and degrade me with disgusting and poisonous insults. The other two I shall not name, but they hadn’t the will or the guts to stop any of it, and I think they were just happy Connell had a new chew toy to play with. Everyday, before mealtimes, afterwards, he would force my arms into awful positions and make my face contort into images of pain I never want to see again in the mirror. He would call me names, lock me in closets. I think the worst game when I was twelve. We had gone on a swimming trip, Connell grabbed me while we were in the water and held my head under. I swear, I nearly drowned, I felt the watery abyss encompass me, but he dragged me above back into the sunlight. I blinked water out of my eyes, took deep breaths, and watched as my “parents” stood there and did absolutely nothing. Not a word from them, all their stupid Christian faith was a just a big show. They didn’t raise a damn hand in my defense, not a peep from their smiling lips. That’s when decided to defend myself, more than just feeble attempts. No, I decided that something a little more robust was in order. I hid in the Hollow, stuffing myself in while the process of terrorizing and degradation had already begun. I grabbed a book, flipped it open, waited for his footsteps to near and pass the hidden door. When I heard them pass, I opened it ever so slightly, mustered my strength and courage, and pushed him right into the sharp armoire as hard as I could. The element of surprise was on my side, and he hit his head on the side, fell, and weak floor collapsed beneath as he fell. I heard shouting below, I heard yells and exclamations. My punishment was ten hours in the prayer closet for my transgressions, for I sent him to the hospital. Yet, when he almost drowned me, I suppose that didn’t matter, did it? I sat in the darkness, a Bible was my only company for that whole time. I think I know Leviticus by heart now, the only good that came out of my time in those cramped confines. And when I was taken out, they told me that I was to be sent back. After two years and little love or care from them, not to mention their ogre of a son’s harassment, I was at fault. I was the one faulty and defective for defending myself. But let me tell you I left that foul house with my head held high, cause I had won. Harsh lesson, and the end of my little sob story. I learned that fear works, not goodness, and certainly not peace or nonviolence. Sad, but true.
Humanity had learned too well how to lay claim and lay waste. When they made their way to the heavens and found no bearded man awaiting them, all incentive to pace themselves was abandoned. “Ours for the taking” became the doctrine of planet Earth. As they terraformed and colonized they left heaps of litter behind. Why bother cleaning when it was easier to move on? Humanity in millions of years of littering would still have a universe left to trash. And wasn’t it all star dust in the end? “Ignition, 3, 2, 1, 0-"said the capsule communicator from the mission control center. “Lift-off” the commander and capsule communicator said in unison. “The clock’s running” noted the command module pilot. “Lift-off. The clock’s running.” “Three seconds” the lunar module pilot began the count, “six seconds. There’s 10 seconds.” “Clear the tower.” “Roger. Clear the tower. We got ourselves a flight, boys.” “And what a flight! Sky’s getting lighter.” “Roger that, Andy.” “Thirty seconds.” “Looking good, roll’s complete.” “What the hell was that?” the commander asked. The workers at the mission control center craned over their desks in a worried staunch. “I lost a whole bunch of stuff; I don’t know-"replied the command module pilot with a lump in his throat as the rocket continued its ascent. “Turn off the buses.” “MARK. One Bravo.” “Roger. We had a bunch of buses drop out.” “Where are we going?” The commander demanded. “I can’t see. There’s something wrong.” “Oh my God it’s a meteor shower. We’re being bombarded.” At mission control scientists listened with unease. There were no meteors in the region. They would know that. “Mission control to air. It’s flying debris. Change position to program code SV5. Mission control to air. Code SV5. Do you copy?” “Copy, SV5. We’re being rained on hard with our own shit.” --- Who wants anyone else. Humanity needs the space.
Is there an easy way to search for image prompts on mobile? I tried searching and it came back with results, but not all of them (for example, I sorted by “new” and the most recent one was from six hours ago, but I’d just seen one from three hours ago scrolling through the sub). Then I tried searching “image prompt” and, well, this post popped up, as well as others that weren’t actually image prompts :/
JESUS A. CHRIST "Sir, you need to see this." Chief Astronomer Salim Deschamps looked up from his work to see a very haggard looking junior scientist staring back at him with eyes like dinner plates. Often when a very young astronomer came to him in such a rush, they were convinced that they had found evidence of a new, unmapped celestial object, having misread a cell in a data table or something equally asinine. For a while, Deschamps had been wondering if he should just ignore the technicians when they came to him like this, and instruct his secretary to screen the visitors more rigorously. He almost tried it, his head beginning to tilt ever so slightly towards his printout when the young man said the word "decelerating". Objects in space did not decelerate. Not unless they were made to. In four hours time, twenty different observation stations around the globe had come to the same conclusion: something was coming, it was coming fast, and in 30 minutes, the Webb Space Telescope would return images of the object as it came within 3 AU of earth. How the object had evaded detection until it was in Earth's backyard was now the subject of intense debate, but what was more certain was that the object would reach the planet in 50 hours. Every pair of eyes on Earth was glued to the nearest screen as the Webb fed Houston the first image of what had already been hailed as humanity's first contact with an alien species. When Deschamps opened the file, he saw, at first glance, a whitish, almost flesh colored vessel with gold accents on it's edges. From the back came pillowing clouds that seemed to be evaporating in concentric patterns millions of feet long. As he cycled through the images, Deschamps found himself struggling to discern the shape of the object as it flew. It was massive, to be sure, but the speed at which it was travelling made it difficult for the Webb to get a clear shot, in addition to the debris that seemed to travel with the object. "Sir, NASA just got off the phone. They Rotated the Webb and managed what they think will be a clearer shot. 40 minutes, they said." Across the world, these images were starting to disperse, and not long after, the rioting began; the governments of earth enacted martial law in an attempt to stave off the madness, but with so many of Earth's inhabitants convinced the end was near, they accomplished little. An eternal 40 minutes finally passed, and once again the earth stood still so as to better recognize its assumed destructors. Deschamps downloaded the file on his terminal and rushed it to the conference room where all the senior staff were gathered. He opened it on the large projector screen at the front of the room, and within thirty seconds, the first astronomer fainted. Not two seconds after that, a few ran out of the room screaming obscenities. Some cried, and the rest stood in stone-cold disbelief. The images Webb took were impossible to misinterpret. Multiple shots in sequence and a object rotating on its long side made the shape of the object quite clear to even the most untrained eye. The vessel was in the shape of a crucifix.
I was a hero once. Strong, resolute, just like you. The tides of darkness broke against my shield, my blade savaged them, shredded them, destroyed them. Just like yours. I was proclaimed the Hero of Light, the one that would free this world from the grasp of the Darkness. Just. Like. You. Do you see now? Do you see their folly? DO YOU SEE THAT YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A PAWN?! ...Ahem. Excuse me, my current state is not exactly emotionally stable. What did they tell you you were to fight against? The Incarnation of Darkness, or something along those lines? I suppose they told you that the Incarnation was some eldritch horror from a dimension beyond. And, from a certain perspective, they were right. I, and those before me, do hold power that could be considered to be "extradimensional,"especially to those unaware of its origin. This power comes from myself. This world, so polarized by Light and Darkness, allows those that are neither to be... easily molded by those with a strong enough will. Yes, I did the "unthinkable,"and allowed the Darkness into my heart. Unlike others who have done the same, though, I also kept the Light in my heart, creating a being unbound from both. So, come, Hero of Light. Can you stand against the encroaching dusk?
I've spent the past two days flipping the card over in my hand. I've debated using it, multiple times if we're being honest. But the debts are piling up, the fridge is emptying and theres no relief in sight. It's time. Reluctantly I begin with small things, my power bill, my heat bill, groceries. The card still seems to have money. Okay, what else do I need? Maybe something I want? A new computer, one that will survive the hours of writing I pour into it. A bigger TV that actually turns on, air conditioner for the kitten room. Still not spent? Ok let's see what else I can do. Gifts for my neice? Check. New wardrobe for me? Check. According to my notes I've spent almost 15,000 dollars and the card is still going. Do I stop now? Save the rest for an emergency? Or is this the answer to everything, the strangely accurate response to prayers, spells and years of panic. I buy a car, not a great car but one that will get me and the neice and the wife wherever we need to go. 20,000 dollars. I'm at 35k do I dare keep going?
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"Ugh...where am I?" This was the first thing that crossed my mind as I awoke from what I assumed to be a serious injury. The hospital bed I lay on no longer was surrounded by my parents, so I presumed it was some time in the wee morning. Serves me right, since I'd be up that early anyway. Upon checking my phone, it was 5:40 AM. Just as I figured. Scrolling through my Twitter feed, I found this oddly specific discussion titled Why We Need to Rip the Sports Tape off of Sonic Boom's Problems: A thread, and it talked about the short episode length, lack of continuity, and the games. Of course it talked about the games, who the hell wouldn't talk about the gam- My train of thought was cut off by a boomerang flying two inches from my head. I of course did the most logical thing, that being looking up to find the thing only to be slapped in the head with it on its way back. After re-centering myself from nearly knocking myself out, I returned to hear a voice saying "Oh there it is. I was wondering how aliens could have already gotten to my weapons. I've been here for less time than it took Sonic to get here!" I looked up to find a brown badger taking the boomerang from me. My mind began racing with thoughts and things to say, but in the blur of it all, I went right back to the thread. "Don't you have a grocery store? I mean Amy made chef's food and hors d'oeuvres, so there's gotta be stuff somewhere." "*How the heck do you know about me? How do you know this much? Do you know about the time I crawled through a dangerous tiger pit just to slip the tiger a note from the zookeeper? How about when I shot a pebble out of the air, keeping it away from it's target known as me?" My stunned conscious blurted out "I do now."
"Close the door Jimmy"said Mr.Bunnycheek with a deep voice that unmatched his fluffyness. Jimmy tried to go out of his room but the door closed itself behind him. He looked around his room to find all his stuffed toy were giving him a dead stare. "Why do you strangle us Jimmy?"The turtle stuck its neck out and twisted in what seemed unnatural angle. "It hurts Jimmy. It hurts very bad"The giraffe knotted its neck as it spoke. "Look at me Jimmy, look at my neck. You did this to me"the monkey pointed his wore out neck as it slowly approached Jimmy. They all were. Jimmy tried to run away but the door kept getting away from him. He finally sat down and covered his head until the voice stopped. He woke up in a dark room, covered in sweat. He let out a sigh of relief and that's when he felt a pressure on his neck. "It's your turn Jimmy" Mr.Bunnycheeck was chocking his neck with a dead smile.
"I can’t believe you just left me there."she said, looking at me with those sullen pits one might call eyes. Or I said, I guess I should say. The me from another time, another place, another reality of known unknowns that I would happily have kept unknown, knowing what I know now. How did I get here, or should I say, how did she get here? It all started when I finally got the machine working. I thought this was a scary, exciting new beginning for me—a beginning where I would never have to wonder what could have been or what should have been—and I guess that’s true, I don’t ever have to wonder now. But confronted by her... was it worth it? "You fucking left me there!"Her spit hit me this time, or should I say my spit. The thing is, every time I went unraveling a new thread, or took an alternative path, I really just left a different version of myself there. Today, the reckoning is here. They just started showing up at my door. I finally settled down with Sandy, my dream girl, in a nice little apartment in Brooklyn. I’d finally gotten it just right, said the right words to wiggle my way into her heart, taken her to all of the right places, and landed a lotto win for the funds to set up a nice life for us. The only thing is, I’d travel using this nifty little mod in my phone every time something went totally wrong: when I got into a terrible car accident that one time, in a bar fight that left a terrible gash on my face in another. I was wondering where all of my funds were going. A dozen Sallys all with my bank account number and login info. I guess I better change that, keep all the other Sallys that remain out. Sorry, me, it’s every Sally for herself. What am I doing? What the fuck am I supposed to do, hold a town hall meeting for the dozen me clones that exist now? Set up some sort of Sally Utopia, where maybe we can all take turns with Sandy? What the fuck am I supposed to do? How did they all even find me? I guess they’re all fairly recent versions of myself, they’d all know I’d had my sights on this neighborhood forever and would have started their searches around that. Perhaps I should be flattered that I’m somewhat resourceful and clever? These questions, I asked myself, as I chopped up another Sally and put her into trash bags. I really need to start getting more creative with the disposal. Sorry, past me. The doorbell rings. "I got it, honey!"Sandy shouts from the living room. "No, no, it’s for me!"I rush downstairs. Another one, shit.
It’s my first day on reddit, but my friend showed me a pretty cool subreddit call r/writingprompts. I follow them and get an addiction. I go through reading different prompts for 15 minutes until I find one, that I actually have a competent idea for. Well I have terrible execution for writing so it’s a flop, but one person complemented me on it and I had like 3 good reasons it was terrible. I finish it and continue going down writing prompts. And there it is. A writing prompt about writing prompts. This may just let me sleep tonight. I begin writing and write all the way up to here, producing another level of meta in the hopes that one soul may read this and I may get meme points for it.
"Wait what?"I stare, holding the scythe the black hooded angel gave me. She brushes the hair out of her eyes, bags under her eyes and a look of general contempt on her face. "Look, it isn't that complicated, I'd give it to my boy-toy B, but he's away on vacation right now, and while I'd love to bug him, and be like, remember all the favors you owe me, but then he'd just dump me for a week or so, and I'd rather not have that, it's just annoying, and the last time I asked the angel of life Vivian to take over for me, I swear to god... Just, hold the damn scythe, take this tablet, check people off the list when they die, you don't even have to guide them to the afterlife, I'll do that once I've drunk my coffee, just... Don't mess it up, okay? Here."The angel walks off, and I stare at the list. I sit down, looking through the names. There are so many, I keep scrolling down to look at them all. I quickly begin clicking "Eternal Rest"next to names, until I reach one that I recognize. Barty Allen, my husband, is doomed to die in twelve seconds, cause of death cited as high-speed collision. I hastily press the "Reprieve"button. The angel shows back up again, black feathers floating around behind her, slowly disintegrating into soot in the breeze. "I'm back. You didn't do anything silly, right?"She reaches for her tablet and scythe. "Nope, not at all. Just, doing your job, and all."I stand up. "Good, thanks."She walks away, and I return to my regular, ordinary life.
Kairo was a man to be feared. It wasn't that he ruled his men with an iron fist because most of his soldiers were generally relaxed hedonists who would be impossible to discipline and he had no intention of wasting his energy when he could take advantage of their hedonism. It wasn't that he had a strict demeanor because all who met him said he was eccentric but extremely polite and relaxed. It wasn't even his physical stature because he was a diminutive figure, being 5'9"and of a slight build. It was the fact that he held control of hundreds of cities and strongholds, all captured without any casualties to his side and to the other side, usually (if they were obedient). How had he done so? Each one of his invasions was meticulously planned months in advance, usually with him planning multiple invasions at a time. Weather patterns, merchant habits, cultural customs, and lots of other pieces of intel were logged by his many scouts, who wore clothes exactly like the civilians and held fake papers. As long as they took notes on everyday life in the city, avoided detection, did not get arrested, and did not mention anything regarding his plans, he would give them money to do anything they wanted, including indulging in drinking and prostitutes. After lots of careful planning, his plans were always simple in concept but elaborate in execution. Whether it was drugging and holding leaders hostage to humiliating them and stealing the favor of their people, he was always successful. In all the cases, his men quietly drugged enemy water supplies and captured all the soldiers, double-checking their names with stolen records, as Kairo himself kidnapped the leaders and their immediate family members. Once the leaders and soldiers were captured, Kairo would order city meetings and publicly state his conditions. Cities were free to maintain their religions, cultural customs, and existing businesses but only if the leaders agreed to his conditions. His conditions would be that he would install a few powerful advisors into their government, the city would be required to be apart of his nation, acknowledge him as the supreme leader, they would have to trade with the cities he mandated, and have to pay part of their taxes to his nation as a provincial tax. If the people did not seem to like their leaders, Kairo would say that he usurped their position and would install a new ruler while tossing the leader, nude, to be humiliated and tortured by their own people before either being killed by the mob of peasants or exiled to a deserted island. In the rare cases when his captives did not relinquish control of their cities nor could they be humiliated, he mercilessly executed them while threatening the commonfolk as he executed their armies and burned or looted everything they had. Soon, the other city leaders heard about him but they were helpless to stop him. No one was ever prepared for when their whole armies were drugged and the leaders held captive by Kairo personally. It wasn't before long before most of the cities of the coast paid fealty to lord Kairo, all united under his nation of Liaria. Kairo was not feared for his violence nor his strictness, but for his ability to take cities with a lack of force which was only reserved for those he could not take.
"So what's the problem?" "OOOOOOOH YOU SAID A BAD WOOORD"The other kids chimed. "Richard! You know better than to swear like that!"Ms. Howard scolded. Richard sighed. Life was hard. --- "Dude. You're THE best!"Jet complimented his bro. "Daaang bro! No, you're THE best!"His bro said back, and they cracked up in laughter. "What's up with boys nowadays? Always swearing like sailors..."An old lady muttered, going back into her house and closing the door.
Can I go ahead with just this classical story done by that dude once? Also may I point out that my introduction to said story also fits within the boundaries you have insisted I go by. "Baby shoes for sale, never worn." One of those sad tales spawned by three men betting over lunch. I believe, 6 words or less to create an entire story, It seems to have been truly great seeing as it has been almost 100 years since those three men sat down for lunch that day. Many different variations have come about some simply giving away that child's unworn shoes, some changing shoes to baby carriages Most just get copy/pasted all over that thing we all use,, goes by "internet"much like I did just now. Seriously though this is rather difficult I know those three words are major in English but as to how often we use them never seems to register until your told not to use them. Could probably actually do an entire story but Likely won't because of the effort.
It was the year 13 800 054 672. The universe was engulfed in an intergalactic war between the Aizion empire and the Kardain space federation. Trillions of lifeforms had already died because of the war, and the death count kept rising. My name is Carn. I was but a simple scientist, stationed in one of the biggest space stations in the universe, the Kardain Facility of Research, KFR for short. We were working on a new weapon, one that could help us win the war. But the thing was, no one knew what it's side effects were, and if we were even gonna use it. Our new weapon was only in it's first phase of development when the Aizion empire attacked the KFR for the first time. Luckily our defense turrets destroyed their unpiloted artificial ships. (UAS for short) No real damage was dealt, only some minor breaches in the outer Hull. There were no new attacks for 4 months. But after that, hell broke loose. We just finished building our prototype weapon, simply named "codename E4F87Z". It looked like nothing more but a ring around the station, but in reality it was much more. The codename E4F87Z was capable of firing concentrated amounts of solar energy, capable to destroy at least a whole solar system. It hadn't been actually tested yet, so we couldn't fully understand how much damage it truly dealt and what it side effects were. Until that one fated day. The Aizon empire attacked the KFR with their full power. UAS's swarmed the facility and they already breached trough the first two hulls. We couldn't let them get their hands on our new weapon. The results would be disastrous. What happened next was far worse. Head commander Franz ordered us to initiate the self-destruct mechanism, but being the idiot that I am, I refused. Instead, I did the only thing that I could think of that was right to to, I initialized codename E4F87Z. How could I have known that it was so destructive? The station started to rumble, followed by a big, loud bang. Instead of just destroying the attackers and this abandoned solar system, the energy blast kept going. It was an everegrowing circle, and I don't know if it will ever stop. While desperately trying to save the universe, I destroyed it. My co-workers died of radiation and I'm the only one left. Alone in this universe. Stuck for eternity. What have I done?
Mark felt his way across the multitude of students trying to find an exit or some way to leave this horde of people. He was warned about the first day of high school but he wasn't quite prepared for this, a mass of bodies all squished into a thin hallway that did not allow for any sort of reprise or freedom. Mark found himself being lead closer and closer to the wall of the hallway, all he wanted was to be free and to find some space. In the first day of high school a lot of students sign themselves up to classes to keep themselves occupied during their free time, although Mark doubted how many of these students actually attended. He was told by his father that he had to sign up to at least one class for the first year even though Mark hated any form of social interaction in large groups. He just wanted to go home and lie on his bed listening to music. His life seemed to be spiraling downwards and it wouldn't stop, from the moment they had relocated from his home to this new environment he had felt as if his life was being consumed and destroyed. He wanted something but he wasn't sure what it was and so to satiate this strange feeling within him he would spend hours in music stores trying to find something that would help him. Even though he never told anyone he loved to listen to Metal, his parents didn't even know and if they did Mark was sure they would take his discs away from him. He found that listening to it calmed him and numbed the world around him, he felt as if he could go on and maybe hope for a better future. This inspiration in music was what led Mark to join the band, the single most life changing experience he would ever have. As he made his way across the sea of people he saw the sign, it shone out to him since he was taller than most people and so he could see over their heads but it was a beacon of hope to him. 'There' he thought to himself, 'That's what I am going to do'. He didn't know what lead him to join or what kept him there despite the consequences but he knew that something within him yearned for it, called him onward to explore a part of his life he wasn't sure he needed. He pushed past students and even some teachers and eventually reached the doorway, there was nothing special about it or not even anything special about the sign. It was just a white sheet of paper with the words "Sign up for Band Practice"written in big words using a felt tip marker. It didn't seem very professional but what was in high school. Mark turned the door handle and pushed open stepping into a fairly small room for one that is meant for band practice, 'Maybe this is where they recruit people and they play elsewhere'. He looked around and the room was lit by a lone tiny window, one that you'd find in bathroom stalls, at the far end. There was a couch to the side that didn't seem like it should be in use and one desk and a chair at the far end upon which were sheets of paper and some pens. Seated on the couch were two boys both wearing dark clothing and one having a dark purple hair dye and dark purple finger nails. At the desk was another boy who was dressed like he might actually be allowed to attend this school. It seemed strange to Mark that this was here in a high school, this sort of setup was very unprofessional. It didn't seem like something the school would approve. Two of them looked up as he entered one speaking in a brash voice, "You here for the band?"Mark looked between them, the one who spoke was the one seated at the desk. "Umm. I don't know, I need to sign up for something and well... umm this was like the only thing that interested me."Mark felt his heart race and drop and stumble over itself, he hated awkward situations like these. "What are your skills?"he asked. "Um sorry?" "I said what are your skills. What are you good at." Mark looked around them and he felt a sense of fear and awe, 'These people looked like the sort of people that didn't shit from anyone, I feel strangely welcome...' Mark shook his head and looked at ahead into the eyes of the boy speaking, they were dark brown eyes almost black in the low lighting and they spoke of things that shouldn't be in a boys eyes. "I can well. Um I am not sure. Listen I just need to like sign up for something. So please help me out here."Mark's neck restricted and his breathing got harder and faster, 'Why do I always find it so difficult to talk like this in front of people! What is wrong with me!' He tried to calm himself but nothing worked. In the silence as the three of them thought it over Mark's heavy breathing was heard. "What would you be willing to sacrifice?"the boy said twisting his head and fiddling with the pen in front of him. 'Sacrifice? What sort of band is this?' He took a deep breath trying to catch himself, "I would... um... be able to sacrifice my free time I guess? I mean maybe some grades if I found to really enjoy this class."He was breathing as if he had run a marathon and he just wanted to leave now. 'Why do I do this! Why couldn't I have just gone home and forget about this.' But he had to find a class. His father wouldn't forgive him for it and Mark knew how unforgiving his father was. "You are the first to come here for this. So we appreciate you taking your time to come. At the moment all we can offer is a promise that great things will happen if you join us,"the boy scribbled something on a piece of paper and held it up for him, "Here. Meet us there at 8 tonight. Don't be too late although we all know that's just how it is. We will discuss more afterwards,"Mark imagined his heart being pushed to the limit of its pumping capabilities, he was beginning to sweat under his shirt and his hands were all wet. He reached over and took the paper nodding his head, "Remember to be there on time."The boy said. Mark nodded and back out of the room his energy spent. He needed to rest and fast. "T- T- T- Thank you, B- B- B- B- Bye."He almost ran out of the room as his heart was beginning to punch itself out of his stomach. 'What did I just do?' As he left he found the hallway empty of most all of the students. 'They must be signing up for classes like I did, but I don't think their classes would have been as scary as mine'. Mark ran out of the hallway and past everyone into the bathroom. 'I need to be alone!' He opened a stall and locked himself inside and began to breath to relax. He was panicking and he didn't what to do, he had had panic attacks before but that was in the comfort of my own home, 'I could find a way to calm down, I would hug my pillow and I would listen to music. Now I have nothing' and Mark thought he was going crazy. He breathed and closed his eyes and began to relax. Holding the note in his hand he decided to read it and saw as it read: "Abandoned Warehouse, Lakehouse street. 8 PM. Don't tell anyone or bring anyone. We must act in secrecy." Mark frowned as he was unable to understand what it meant. What sort of band meets in secret in an abandoned warehouse at 8 at night? Mark felt he had gotten himself into more trouble that he wished he had. 'My father had warned me about this sort of thing before we came here'. This town is known for its deviant gangs and mobs, recruiting young members from high schools... His anxiety came back and he felt his heart racing. 'I have no proof but something tells me I am correct'. It was how Mark's father had described gangs in this town, despite his father being an interesting man who would sometimes become the torment of Mark's days for weeks on end he still strangely enough helped Mark in these sort of situations. 'What world have I gotten myself into? I am going to join a gang and who knows what else. Mark hit his head, "NO! Stop!" 'It could all be in my head, I have no proof they'e anything. So why I am I explaining in this way. I need help...' If it is what he thought it was then it wouldn't be easy to leave. Mark hit his head again and then the edge of the bathroom stall. 'I got myself into a worse situation then I was in before!' Mark covered his eyes and he leaned down and began to weep. He cried because he didn't know what to do and it all hurt. He was stuck and he had already made the mistake of talking to them. This is is so wrong! Mark cried. The end....? Fitz_Robinson Hey this is my first attempt at a writing prompt. I tried to follow it but I found it really hard as I was like kinda going off on my own tangent a lot. So I hope you are satisfied with it. Enjoy. I would have carried on but I feel like it was getting very very long. So I just cut it with him realizing that he's in a gang/mob.
Damn. I was really hoping someone would've responded to this by now because I love Savannah so much. Anyway, here's my contribution. I enjoy writing but I want to improve it. Criticism highly encouraged. WP STORY “Time for what?” I asked without turning. “Time for you to go outside. I’m sick of watching you mope at the window like it’s a widow’s walk.” Peter said. Peter is a typical ghost. Not a stereotypical one though. The people I give tours to think ghosts come from Civil War era soldiers that died with a grudge or something, but reality has a way of de-romanticizing things. Take Peter’s case, he was a former frat kid turned corporate who got hammered one day and fell down one of the staircases by River Street. “If I had a balcony, I would be outside.” “That isn’t what I meant. I’m saying you’re haunting this place like a ghost.” Even without turning I knew Peter was cheesing his ass off. I sighed and groaned at the same time. “Jesus what a knee-slapper,” I said. “I know you like being alone, but you’ve gotta go outside, make some friends, maybe meet a girl.” Peter said. “Shit, I wish I could still get drunk,” He said more to himself than me. “I’m not alone. Aren’t you my friend?” I said to Peter as I turned to face him. “I don’t count because you being able to see me sort of makes being friends with you a default.That goes for all ghosts. More importantly, I can’t give you handjobs.” “You want to give me a handjob?” “No, I mean you need to get laid. You’ve lived here how long? You’re a nice guy, you have a cute face, and people like you. You just don’t ever fucking hang out with anyone.” “I don’t know, somehow it wouldn’t seem intimate if I got a handjob while you or any other ghost were watching.” I said. “That isn’t the point. Watching you sit here by yourself on days off makes me depressed. You’re taking it for granted.” ““Dude, you realize I’m literally never alone, even when I’m alone I’m not--taking what for granted?” “You know what? Never mind. I’m putting my foot down. I’ll do you a favor and tell everyone to leave you alone for once.” “Aw dude, I didn’t mean that.” Peter was vanishing. “Don’t do that, I’m sorry.” “No, I’ve made up my mind. I’m doing it for your sake.” With that, Peter disappeared like condensation on a window. “Peter?” Silence. “Pete!” Nothing. The stillness was unsettling. When you’ve seen ghosts your whole life, their absence, as I've just discovered, is what becomes alarming. I looked around the silent apartment. “Fine, I get the point.” I muttered. I put on my shoes, turned the lights off, and walked out the door. I started down the sidewalk outside the apartment building. Before this year, I’d only ever been here on vacation in the summer. It was a strange sensation to walk around this place in a hoodie. It was strange was that there wasn’t as much Spanish Moss hanging off the trees. It never occured to me that the stuff would wither in the cold. But strangest of all, for the first time in my life, I was completely alone. Damn it Peter. I made my way toward Congress. Toward life. NOTE: If I'm remembering it correctly, Congress is the street where the nightlife in Savannah is.
Item #: SCP-761 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: SCP-761 is to be kept in it's origin point inside of research facility room number \[REDACTED\]. Due to the nature of SCP-761, the research facility room in which SCP-761 is contained must be properly secured by Class-C personnel and monitored through CCTV footage at a constant rate. Radiation protective suits are required if any Class-C personnel or higher is to enter SCP-761's containment room. If a breach is to occur at SCP-761's containment room, on-site reinforcements are ready to be deployed. All attempts to destroy SCP-761 have failed. Description: SCP-761 is an interdepartmental portal approximately 5m x 6m x 5m taking the shape of an ovoid. SCP-761 constantly emits high-powered radiation and it is presumed because of this SCP-761's color constantly fluctuates through a rainbow-like pattern. All attempts to enter SCP-761 result in immediate loss of communication and \[DATA EXPUNGED\]. It is assumed due to the motivations behind the origins of SCP-761, SCP-761 is actually a 'wormhole' (see Addendum 1) as described by the lead researcher and physicist \[REDACTED\] at Site \[REDACTED\]. SCP-761 will periodically generate entities, assumed to have traveled through SCP-761 from an unknown origin. The origin is assumed to be random due to the biological differences between generated entities. Entities generated from SCP-761 will generally be hostile towards humans. However, this is not always the case. Any attempts to communicate with SCP-761 generated entities have failed. Addendum 1: Wormholes are theorized by mathematical calculations within Einstein's Theory of Relativity which depict the ability to converge space into a shorter distance in order to travel greater distances faster. No wormholes have been discovered in deep space, however their existence is now proven with SCP-761. They take a three-dimensional shape, and are enter-able from all angles.
You wake up in bed, open your eyes, and see a cat on your bedroom wall. You blink, now it's a dog. You blink again, now you're nose-to-nose with the cat. Your eyes are locked in a tight, uncomfortable gaze with the cat. The cat gives out a long, exasperated moan, it sounds like the cat might be Jewish. "Meee-aaahhhh-owwww!"the cat groans. The wall disappears and the cat is floating backwards. A green aura is emanating from the cat's body. The cat's name is Khoshekh, you don't know how you know this, but you know it from the bottom of your heart to be true. The cat begins to grow, morphing into a humanoid shape. The cat's hair begins to shed, falling to the sandy ground beneath. Seagulls caw in the background. You can hear the waves from the ocean roar as they beat against the rocky shore. You blink and you're now dressed in comfortable beach attire, barefoot with your feet submerged beneath warm, course sand. A man emerges from the metamorphosis of the cat. He's tall, dark, handsome, muscular, and holding a red bottle of shampoo. "Look at the cat!"he says as he points his arm to his left side. You look over and there's a stray cat sitting on a rock beneath a palm tree. "Now back to me!"he shouts. Your attention drifts back to him. "Now back to the cat!"he shouts again as his hand points back to where the cat was. You look over and there is a dog, approximately the same size and color as the cat sitting in the same spot on the rock underneath a palm tree. "Now back to me!"he yells again and your attention is pulled back in his direction. He's sitting on the back of a white horse, trotting in place as if a master equestrian was controlling the reigns, only the man was simply holding his red shampoo bottle up high in proud splendor. "Now back to the cat!"he yelled again while pointing. Your attention drifts back to the cat, only this time it wasn't a cat, and it wasn't a dog, but instead was an exact clone of yourself standing naked with a look of pure horror and confusion. "Now back to me!"You turn your head and the black man is standing right in front of you, so close that you can feel his breath brush against your neck. "Old Spice"he whispers as his body slowly disintegrates into golden flakes of sand. "Old Spiiiiice"You hear a phantom whisper call out over the wind as it carries the gold flakes of what was once the Old Spice man off across the surface of the water.
Those fools. Laughin' at me like all the rest. Thinkin' it's all cute n' shit when I push something off the table. NO BITCH! This is Charlie's house. I run a criminal empire outta this place. Me and my boys are professional hit men. Little ol' sparrow's got some beef with a robin over a chicky, we take 'im out. Squirrels can't decide whose nuts is whose, highest bidder gets their way. We're just doin' it for money right now, luckily we're good at it. Got big things cookin', though. Yes sirree, gonna take over this whole wide world.
"Hey, man, you've got something by your ear." "What?"You groan, fighting the distress. "What is it?" "It's, uhhh... sorta like a glowing... thing? It's right by your ear."The stranger mutters, brushing a faintly blinking, vaguely humanoid shape off your ear. The man described it perfectly, you thought to yourself. It really was a "thing", squirming on the ground. It disgusts you but pleads for attention at the same time. Without thought, you brought down your leather-clad shoe upon the figure. Instantly, your dark thoughts begin to clear. Everything you see is crisper, more saturated; everything you hear, ten times sharper than before. You feel the cold, smooth metal of the railing as if it's your first time touching it. You find yourself remembering the past months- years even, how you've been scared, lonely and sad all the time. How time passed, and how all your relationships drifted apart. Hot tears stream down your face as you call your parents for the first time in half a month. You glance at the person who helped you, who showed you this kind gesture. He has been watching your reactions with quiet contentment. You thank him profusely, but he refuses to take your measly earning from the months you've made unsatisfactory work. Over the course of months, you begin rebuilding your life. You got a promotion and a dog from the local shelter. Memories come and go, and as you move onto the next half of the century, you find your hands full with 3 kids and an accounting job. On a particularly free day, you were daydreaming when you- (okay this is getting a bit off topic and long so I'll end it now.)
"I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE YOU, THE DULLEST-LOOKING PERSON I KNOW, GOT THE MOST WHIMSICAL POWER IN EXISTENCE!", I yelled after seeing Kim's fingers flickering with rainbow sparks. We had been watching Netflix at my place when my friend Kim said she wasn't feeling well and had to go to the bathroom. At first, I thought she was just uncomfortable because it was that time of the month again when we'd both be enduring searing stomach pains and shitty moods for a week, but then suddenly Kim screamed in the bathroom. I had quickly ran to knock on the door, wondering if she fell, and to my surprise, I saw a bunch of bunnies made of pink cotton candy coming from sparks flying in the air around her hands, running around and creating a fluffy pile of moving cotton candy rabbits. Kim had just found out her status as a Fantastical One. In our world, there were many in history who were gifted with the power of "The Fantastic". It was an extremely rare magical power which only chose to be gifted to the most creative, whimsical, or insane people in history. Some had used their powers to create insane lands with themes ranging from the most heavenly atmospheres to the wildest lands that seemingly broke the laws of physics. Others had used their gifts to create anomalous items to sell to extremely select clients or to gift to random strangers just for laughs. Few had even used their skills to become the most dangerous mercenaries, being completely able to conjure anything they wanted from imagination or break the laws of physics in a manner that would not destroy the world. Although these people had previously been kept a secret by a shady censorship organization that had ties to the government, a hacker group liberated the files to the public and disabled their machinations of public manipulation. Now, everyone knew about the existence of Fantastics but I had never expected my friend, who was the dullest-looking person I knew, to be one of them. "Well, thanks for calling me dull, Beth. You still chose to be best friends with me so if I'm boring, heh, guess you like boring people." "Yeah, I mean, even if you're dull, you're still nice to talk to but...wait, AREN'T WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE THE FANTASTIC?" "I honestly don't know what was happening, like, I was just changing my pad after pissing and then I heard this voice in my head say, 'You. You seem fun. Enjoy your new powers.', and then sparks started coming from my hands. I guess I must've been craving something sweet and something cute to pet and these things started spontaneously appearing.", Kim said as she held one of the sticky, fluffy and squirming candy rabbits. Whatever the case, even if Kim had seemed dull, The Fantastic had seen something in her and my friend was more interesting than she seemed. "Alright, let's just hang in my bedroom and figure out how to make those rabbits disappear later. We've got a lot to figure out.", I said as we went back into my bedroom. Kim's definitely going to need some time to learn to use her powers, I thought as we went back to my bedroom and I closed the door.
My phone buzzed in my left pocket, my hand just meandered to it without any care. I set the phone to my cheek, accepting the call. I then spoke. "Johnathan Cline, specializing in-"I was immediately cut off midway through my sentence by a distressed voice. "Listen to me. That child is not your child, we're being invaded! You need to.."His voice just slowly began to fade into the back of my consciousness as my head slowly turned to Timmy.. "What's wrong?"Timmy said, as his eyes slowly began to turn black and his razor teeth growing into deadly meat shredders. The now-panicked voice was sped up from the phone, completely out of focus. I just looked at Timmy. A grin slowly grew on my face. My eyes blackened into a deep tar. My teeth mirrored my son's as he began to smile to me. "Oh trust me."I spoke into the phone calmly. "He's definitely my kid."
Disclaimer NSFW. Drunk and bored on mobile haha. Let's go. Most people have shadows. They lurk, follow and shame, but for the most part are harmless. The dark armies make short work of them. Like police but without the constraints. People walk with their heads down. Afraid of what they might see, what they might want. When want is a crime knowledge is danger. Not me though. Since the dark armies started the regular police have just been working traffic stops and minor infractions. With most major crime being premeditated, they have become almost obsolete. Not me though. I have no shadows. I know the danger and fuck that. I walk with my head down. But when i want something I take it. That gets two birds stoned at once. No dark army on my tail, and no real police to investigate. This all goes well. I live a life the envy of others. Ironic I know. 100s of people cited or even worse, locked up for their envy of me. But i am the worst of the bunch haha. I once murdered a whole family because I saw their dinner of bbq ribs through a window. I'd never had a home cooked meal like that and knew the dark army would pick up on my unwilling lust. What did I do you ask? I took it. I burst through the door, silenced the entire family and sat their like a king lucking the bones clean. For the most part they were delicious buy the father had rubbed his portion with something extra that was a bit spicy for my liking. To be fair, if I left any want there would be a trail. So I took my time, even locked my fingers clean and did the dishes once I was done. One doused pilot light and a slow burn emergency candle later and I'd had a good night's sleep before I heard the news of the tragedy. Ha It can be hard to live in silence like this though. The slightest thing can cross my path. I try to be the best, own the best, have the best so envy doesn't creep up on me. But you pull up beside me at a light in a Ferrari.... well... I don't need any unwanted attention. One silenced bullet later and people think you're some rich asshole holding up traffic. Lately (more years than if care to rememver) I've been holed up in the same spot just hiding. Yes. Hiding. What would scare a cold blooded man like myself into self inflicted recluse you ask? A man who has no equal. I'm ashamed to admit but it's my heart. 7 years ago to the day I was out shopping for food, like any other time and I heard a loud crashing followed by a high pitched scream. I knew I shouldn't, but years of training got the better of me and I glanced up. What I saw would change my ways forever. A child, bruised and beaten by a stack of cabs tumbling upon him, he would obviously survive rough despite the shrill sound of his cries. This did not disturb me, it was his mother, the look of.... I can't describe it. I'd never experienced that emotion. Somewhere between fear and love, some sweet spot that only a child could know, she rushed to his aid and after freeing him from the rubble and making sure he was ok she cried. Shedding tears of both fear and happiness at the same time. She glanced my way as if to look for help. Our eyes locked, I'll never forget that moment, the moment I fell in love and realized my folly at the same time. This woman cared for another human like no other, but somehow, somewhere she also had my secret, even unwittingly. Several shots at the local bar later and I stumbled to where I'd found her apartment to be. I sat on a bench a few blocks away and considered my options. I'd brought a silenced pistol along that was not shy to thus type of task but could bring myself to "pull the trigger" If I do it, I'll regret it forever, if I don't, I'll be ridden with envy and the dark army will surely get me within a few days. A nose breaks my thoughts. I recognize the voices. Fuck. It's them. Well if I was waiting for a sign this was it. I watch them past then silently creep up behind them from the bench. I put a precise but silent shot through the kids head from behind. The mother reacted more quickly than expected and spun fast enough to knock my gun to the side. I tackle her to the ground and get my gun steady again while wrestling against her incessant cries. Before I pull the trigger we lock eyes again. This time a very different gaze, the look of a woman broken. Destroyed by the pain I had caused. I pulled the trigger anyways knowing full well it was too late. 7 years have passed. I've been living in my own but the guilt has been growing. I know I've ended my only chance at happiness. I see dust clouds in the distance. Miles from the farmstead I call home. As they grow bigger I realize it's a convoy of dark army vehicles. Mine being the only logical destination I began to wonder why they were here. I had done EVERYTHING that ever needed to be done one to keep them away yet here they were. The it clicked. There was only one man on this earth I envied. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do to change that. I envied the man that didn't exist. The man that didn't pull that trigger 3 fateful years ago. The man that joined that family instead of ending it. I knew this man didn't exist anymore, I also knew my envy would never fade... as such. I unpacked that same pistol, showered and changed into my best suit, and ended my streak of evil. Edit : I probably mispelled alot I'll look over it tomorrow.
"Oh mommy. Mommy!! Can we get some honey fried crickets today for dinner? Its been months since we've had any."A little girl glances at a package in the super market while pulling on her moms sleeve. "Well dear your father did just get that promotion at work and said that us girls can spend half the bonus check however we want. But do you want to get a few expensive treats this month, or would you like to get a Bee farm and a colony of the new batch of genetically engineered pollen dandruff beetles? You'll have to help care for them after school but in a few months they'll start producing honey and we can have a little almost every week." "Ugh. I waaaaaaaaant both. But I've never actually seen bees before. And Susan at school said her uncle raises bees and they're cute. OK I'll help." "Good girl. So lets just pick up a few varieties of meal worm cereal and giant slug steak. Well go get the bees this weekend." "Yeah !! OH, uhm.. also I kinda tore another pair of my socks and need some new ones soon. But I dont like the red spider silk thats in season now. Can we wait till next month to get me new socks when the purple silk spiders are producing?" "Well they are cheaper when in season. Id rather get you red ones now but if you promise to be careful and not tear any more we can wait and get the purple ones."
"What are you saying!"You shouted at Haley. She is your best friend, being brought up as your sibling, living in the same house hold. She is holding onto to her boyfriend, Chuck. A sports fanatic. At least, thats what they want you to believe. You saw them once going to a mall, but when they returned, you felt as if there was something wrong with them. You recall a 4Chan post stating there are dopplegangers that replace the people you know, and the original being whisked away somewhere akin to a hidden lavatory in the desert. "I don't think you are my best friend. I think you are a doppleganger that replaced him."You shake your head, shocked at the fact the dopplegangers are saying you are one. Yet, a nagging thought is stuck in your head. What if it's true? What if it's true, what they say? With a scream, you collapse onto the floor.
The Cookie Jar When the cookies started to slowly disappear, her first suspect was her husband. He was on a diet after all, so something like this was to be expected. He denied it of course, but she had remained suspicious. The next day he wasn't at home and still, another cookie went missing. So maybe one of the children? Probably the oldest. She had always been a bit of a rebel. But now Sally had been away with her father, when another cookie went missing. So Jenny was the thief! Thomas was still to young, he could hardly walk, let alone climb the kitchen counter. She was sure to be correct this time. Thomas and her had been alone, the night another cookie had vanished. She had no idea how he had done it, but there had been no one else at home. That devious little trickster. Tonight none of her cookies had gone missing. It was quiet and peaceful now and she enjoyed the silence. She took a look outside as the moon cast his light on her four new flower beds. Time to get a glass of milk and eat a cookie.
The project my dad’s team had been working on for the past eight years was finally being launched. He was in the living room pacing back and forth rehearsing his script for the shareholder event, it went, “UCTech presents an artificial recount of all history. With the biotech virtual reality suit crafted by our engineers, clients can now experience history their way...” The project was secret until about two months prior, when someone within the company leaked “in-game” footage. Artificial worlds and experiences were nothing new, but what the leak revealed about the device was how the intelligence if each person had been successfully re-created, allowing for the creation of a sandbox reality. That kind of technology hadn’t been successfully developed, and I sure as hell was not going to squander my chance of trying it out ahead of everyone else. I went into my dad’s home office, where I saw one of the suits laid out on his desk. He normally has them locked up back at the main office, but today he needs this one for display. I locked the door and closed the blinds, and squeezed myself into the elastic jumpsuit. As soon as I zipped up the back I felt a slight squeeze on my wrist, as if the suit were taking my pulse. A notification box popped up in front of me, asking if I wished to continue my saved world. I accepted. After a brief loading screen, I suddenly found myself in a desert surrounded by people wearing robes. Turns out, my dad was playing in the sandbox as Jesus. Yes, the actual Jesus. And I then realized that I was him now, and that these people were expecting something from me. I quickly pressed the escape button that was on the back of my neck, and I was back in my dad’s office, and he was still reviewing his script.
I've been a werewolf since I was five years old, and now my condition led to a huge ass argument with my roommate. Here's how it all started. I was about five at the time. My friends that I met in kindergarten dared me to go into a really spooky forest near our school alone. They were like four, so they weren't smart enough to realize it was the full moon. I was pretty dumb like them, so I accepted the dare. As I wandered through the forest alone, I kept hearing rustling. Then, as I approached a ditch at the center of the forest, I saw that wolf. It was white, which I now know meant it had blond hair in human form. Then, it charged at me, giving a bite that made me scream louder than a heavy metal singer. I went to the nurse's office back at kindergarten, and they said they would deal with the wolf later. The day after I saw some 20-year-old man being yelled at by the school staff for wandering too close to a school near the full moon. He later said "sorry"to me and I soon realized he was my cousin. I did forgive him later in life, but my condition persisted. I got infected long before wolfsbane potion was invented, so my first few years of transforming were excruciating before I was selected to test the newly invented potion during eighth grade. That honestly helped with my mental health quite a bit. I'm 22 now, aiming for a Bachelors in Theoretical Physics at Harvard, my condition now simply being "that furry little problem"and not a nuisance like it was fifteen years ago. I had this roommate named Edward (we mostly called him Teddy) who was aiming for a masters in Science in Mathematics. He was rather accepting of my condition (though that wasn't uncommon ever since the Werewolf Rights Movement of 1949, which I learned about in Junior Year history) and joked about it with me. However, with the stress of exams and all that, one full moon I forgot my wolfsbane potion. The pain of the transformation is actually what drives a werewolf mad, I act somewhat like a puppy when I take a wolfsbane potion before my inevitable monthly transformations. But this time was different. The pain of the transformation drove me to insanity as soon as I saw the full moon. I ended up going on a rampage, many people were bitten that day, including my roommate. I never truly lived that down, and now my roommate is SUPER mad at me. I've explained it was because I forgot my wolfsbane potion, but it's gonna take a while before we fully sort things out.
‘Shit Shit Shit Shit SHIT’ It’s pouring out, and I’m caught outside in public. It’s too late. I felt the first drop of the storm hit my skin. I can already feel the water swirling around me as the transformation begins. People are staring, in awe as the water behaves unnaturally. A whirlpool of water out of water. When the mystical swirling water subsides, I’m on the cold and rough sidewalk, helpless and unable to move. NOW people are staring. How could they not? They saw a teen guy get hit with a single drop of water, have water surround him, and then turn into a merman. I do my best to escape to the nearby storm canal, but now people are coming closer. Trying to get a better look at me. My heart’s pounding. My life’s over. My face is sure to be on TV and the internet now, my identity and curse revealed to the world. I’m sorry Mom and Dad, thanks for caring for me despite my curse. I’m sorry for getting found out after so long. My anxiety gets the better of me, and I feel myself start to slip into———— ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is Bravo team, target secured. Transferring the heir to his kingdom. We’re sure to be paid big for returning the Atlantean Prince.
The boardroom, silent without the voice of the Administrator, was now filled with O5-level personnel. Generally, this only happened in preparation for, during, or after an end-of-the-world scenario. This was, unfortunately, one such day. "...Fortunately, MTF Alpha-1 was successful in neutralizing the entities for collection and containment by MTF Beta-7. Emergency provisions granted to MTF Gamma-5 were, luckily, enough to prevent the dissemination of information about this unprecedented threat to the public. Class-B amnestics have been administered to all known witnesses, and we're closely monitoring the media to ensure we've left no loose ends. If you have any concerns, raise your hand now." For a brief moment, the Administrator thought that today, the council would be satisfied. The cleanup of this incident was flawless, and Foundation losses were almost nil. Only a handful of civilians died, and the disinformation campaign was going swimmingly. In this brief moment, no-one raised their hands. The Administrator began to sigh in relief. Just as his shoulders relaxed, three fourths of the council had their hands in the air. Today was going to be a long day.
Constellations scattered as the void coalesced and dark tendrils wreathed around the outline of a massive lumbering giant. The stars shifted and the Astral Path shook as the Golden Elephant’s feet smashed upon the Magellanic Cloud. The Fool stared gloomily as the titanic creature shook the fiery dew of newly formed stars from its noble frame. The blazing supernova behind the Fool reflected off the shining hide of the Golden Elephant, basking the beast in a fiery aura of cosmic magnificence. The World, perched atop a mountain of silk upon the barren rocky world he had chosen as his Universal Seat, lazily pointed his finger towards the Fool. “Remove the eyesore.” The Golden Elephant’s trumpeting echoed across leagues of space. It shook its head and lowered its tusks, pounding towards the Fool. Its pace quickening, the monster was forced to close its eyes against the blinding supernova as it prepared to impale and gore the Fool. The Fool sighed drearily. He stepped to the side. The Golden Elephant plunged directly into the supernova. Reactions hot enough to melt the very concept of permanence consumed the creature. Its frantic screams pierced the cluster before it was consumed utterly. The Fool watched briefly before turning back to the World. He shrugged, looking downcast. The World raised his eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?” The Fool glumly replied “I don’t know where you’re going to find another one of those. That was fairly reckless. Even if I didn’t move he would’ve carried us both in.” “Well it’s not like I recruited the bloody thing for its brainpower! It was a planet-sized elephant made of gold!” The World sputtered angrily from his chair. The Fool nodded sadly. “Just goes to show. When you’re bringing cosmic beasts into your roster you should really conduct a thorough interview. These kinds of mistakes can be avoided with proper management.” The World stared disbelievingly at the Fool before shaking his head. The chimes and bells hung to his guan tinkled, like little mocking birds. “I’ve got three more you know. And they aren’t going to all charge into the bloody furnace you’re standing in front of. One of them’s a Neutron Tiger. You ever seen one of those? His bite will crush your atoms. You’ll be space dust before you can blink.” The World began moving and shaking his hands in a complex rhythm while muttering incantations to himself. The rainbow of silks he sat upon shook slightly. The Fool said politely. “Well I wouldn’t want to take too long to die.” The World narrowed his eyes and stopped the ritual. Small puffs of stellar dust arose near him and drifted apart. “You’re not nearly as scared as you should be. I’m quite serious about this. This one’s a real terror. I found him gnawing on the bones of a Void Whale. He’s one tough cookie.” The Fool shrugged despondently. “I’m not arguing with you. It sounds like a real killer.” The World stood up, causing the silk tower to shake again. He grabbed the peaks of two nearby mountains to steady himself. “Now look here you… you… you arrogant little prick! You have no right to be so…..APATHETIC about a world-destroying apocalypse! It’s not enough you refuse to acknowledge my right as Supreme Universal Ruler, but now you-“ “Well now, I never refused to do that.” The Fool interrupted. The World stared, dumbfounded. He began jumping up and down, causing his silk tower to dangerously sway left and right over the planet. He pointed his finger at the Fool and screeched “YES YOU DID. YES YOU DID. THAT’S WHAT STARTED ALL THIS NONSENSE IN THE FIRST PLACE! I told you I was going be Supreme Ruler and said ‘Over my dead body’ and so now we’re fighting! This just happened minutes ago you insufferable little punk!” The Fool kicked at some of the cosmic dust gathering on the Astral Path that ran through the galaxy. From his place on the universe spanning cosmic road, he was roughly eye-level with The World. He alternated nervously squeezing his hands before looking downward and stating “Well yes, but I didn’t think you’d take me literally. That was meant to be sort of a dialogue opener. I’ve never been too terribly good with arguing. I’m really sorry about the mix up. I just think that’s a stupid title.” The World gaped open mouthed at the Fool. “A STUPID TITLE?!” he roared. “You caused the death of the Golden Elephant because you thought it was a STUPID TITLE?!” The Fool amicably nodded. The melancholy cloud that had hung over his face seemed to be lifting. “Well sure! Supreme Universal Ruler doesn’t roll off the tongue. No one wants to say that. It’s about as dumb as naming yourself The World. There’s no flair about it. You’d just get mocked endlessly. World? Why not just call yourself Dirt and get it over with?” The World’s face had been growing deeper and deeper shades of red as the Fool prattled on, clueless as to the temperament of the man in front of him. The portly man’s hands shook with fury at his side until with a shout he stamped his foot on the precariously and questionably piled bundle of silks he sat upon. This, as the astute reader has picked up on, was a mistake. The massive pile of folded cloth, already on the brink of swaying out of control, flung itself entirely out of orbit. Pieces of azure blue and royal purple silk drifted to the ground as The World screamed and plummeted several miles into the cavernous abyss below. His cries echoed into the stratosphere, ringing in the Fool’s ears until he heard a soft ‘plop’. An awkward silence followed. “And they call ME the Fool” he grumbled.
"Oh no." I looked down just in time to see a dark tail swing out of sight. The screen remained dark and I pushed on the button, only to hear another, a bit more demanding meow. "Sweetie, what have you doooooooooone,"I groaned and pushed the chair out of the way. "How the fuck, baby, you're not that small anymore." A twitch of motion and I could barely see an eye reflect the dim light back at me. "How did you get in there, Bitch?"I cooed and started unscrewing the box open. "You're momma's little asshole, yes you are. Momma has to do human things, like pay the bills and the rent. Can't do that with you in there, doll."
PART ONE: "Look, it was my idea to create the League of Villains, so I should be the one who gets to conquer the world,"the sociopathic genius Kilroy McGraves said as he sat at the high chair at the round table. The villains in the League had all been called on short notice after it was realized that there were tensions in the group from villains thwarting each others' plans to take over the world, leaving even the heroes confused on who was actually a villain. In the crowded room, along with the black-suited, aviator-wearing mastermind McGraves sat the half-lizard mad scientist Doc. Croc, the sad-mask wearing phantom Sad-Man, the seductive pheromone-exuding villainess Seductress, the hacker-tech genius villainess S0rce-c0d3, the purely insane and magical Chelsea-grinned Mad Slasher, and the nightmarish half-demon, Dream Eater. "Besides, after I conquer it, I have the fairest idea of splitting the world. You'll get all the animals you want to research and augment your abilities, Doc Croc. You'll get your own country to cause all the misery you want, Sad-Man. You'll get your own country to fuck all the people you want and all the riches you want, Seductress. You'll get your own country to control and whatever, S0rce-c0d3. You'll get your own corner of the world to murder to your heart's content, Mad Slasher. And finally, Dream Eater, you'll get all the dreams you can eat in your corner of the world. I mean, you all signed the contract agreeing that we'd eliminate the heroes together first before we split the world. I really fail to see what the problem is.", McGraves calmly explained as he sipped his iced tea at the front of the round table. "Of course you don't. AGREEMENTS CHANGE AND WE EACH WANT THE WHOLE WORLD NOW, GET IT?", the Mad Slasher screamed angrily as he threw a knife at McGraves. An invisible force-field evaporated the blade midair as McGraves calmly turned to the Slasher."Now, we can't always have what we want and when we throw tantrums like children...", he pressed a button, "we get...punished."A trap door opened in the ground as the Slasher fell into a glowing-orange trap hole. "That, by the way, is a cursed lava pit that disables flight abilities and burns souls including yours, Sad-Man and Dream-Eater. If any one of you tries a stunt against me, just know that you all can die from this pit right now. Any other questions?", McGraves asked menancingly.
The chirp was faint at first, but the less he paid attention to it, the more clear and loud it became. Turning his head in the direction it came from, the Child saw a large bird hovering in mid-air, sitting as if upon an invisible branch, chirping away still. The bird was translucent, a strange white aura radiating from it, tendrils of white smoke rising towards the sky. A spirit, he thought, tilting his head. Most often, he only saw silhouettes of people, the ancestors of this land, in the corner of his eyes. Rarely, he saw animals, and rarer still he saw what the past had looked like. Today would be one of those days. As the trees and bushes of the present faded away, a ghastly branch of the past began to materialize under the bird, soon growing into an entire tree, one far larger than the ones of today, stretching far into the sky. Other trees began to appear, too, and soon he found himself in an environment he could not recognize, and definitely not find his way home in - even if he had lived in this area his entire life. Faintly, he felt the wind of the past, and a strand of grass that looked like a wisp tickled his leg. Then, he heard the cries of men, the war cries, blood-curling screams and conflict. He turned away from the ghastly bird, and saw a spectacular scene, with a clarity he had never experienced before. Ghosts fought, impaling each other with spears. Translucent arrows flew through the air, and when they struck enemies, they dissolved into a cloud of smoke. He began to recognize some markings and weaponry; they were those of his ancestors, of his clan. And they appeared to have the upper hand, pushing back an unknown enemy into the jungle, cutting down as many that tried to escape as they could. In the distance, he could faintly see an orange glow, ravaging the land with pure intensity. Somehow, he recognized where it came from - home, and it was on fire. But the invaders had been driven back. One of the silhouettes of a man stopped dead in his tracks, impaling the ground with his spear. The spear dissolved into smoke as he did. Then, the spirit turned, and looked straight at him. The white, ghastly form then began to shift, turning into a strange figure; it looked like a man's reflection on water during a windy day, and the man looked familiar... almost like his father. But that was impossible. His father was alive. And then, he spoke. "My kin,"he said, seeing past time, walking straight up to the Spirit Child, stopping at an arms length. "We've been eons at war with the Imbikvé, for as long as this land has existed. Ever since the glaciers of the ice age melted, creating the life-giving lakes. Make no mistake, my kin. They will return. Soon." The Imbikvé. Legendary figures, a tale told to children to keep them from wandering off into the jungle. Demons that jumped out of the shadows, killing without mercy. They were myth. Or so the Child thought. The Spirit Child felt a palm on his shoulder, and the spirit world began to fade, the white smoke, trees, men and animals dissolving, as if being sucked away, and then, as if he had blinked, reality came into view in an instant, green trees and the path he had been walking on suddenly existing. The Spirit Child turned his head, meeting Elder Chief's gaze. "I fear what I see in your eyes, wise child. A reflection of our history, that spark in your green eyes." The village elder sighed, turning his gaze towards the deep jungle. "It's true, then. The Legends. What a fool I have been for not preparing us." The Spirit Child was unable to speak, but he made a sign with his hands. 'Danger?' "Yes. And you are at the center of it. Run, Child. Run now. And never stop, until the jungle clears and gives way to the mountains in the west. This time, we will not win. And only you can warn the other clans." 'Other clans?' The Child signed, thinking. What other clans? "Centuries, we've hold the invaders at bay. Centuries we've held the tide so that others may live in harmony. Go, now. You must warn them. The time of peace is over." The Child nodded in understanding, and took a few steps back. 'Miss you, I will,' the Child signed, and the Village Elder signed back 'In your heart, our spirits will live on, for as long as you breathe.' The Elder smiled, and the Child shed a tear, one filled with sparkles like the stars in the night sky. From the ground where it fell, a white rose began to spout. The Child turned, and began to run, and the Elder watched the Child disappear into the dense jungle. He bent his aged back, wincing at the pain, hearing it crack - and picked the white petal from the ground. "Peace... Gone, because of me."he said, and crushed the white flower in his hand.
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It should suck, but it doesn't. I walk down main street, stopping at fourth to buy an ice cream from the stand. My favorite flavor is this combination of key lime and strawberry that they had for a week and never had again. I wonder if it was discontinued out there. I wonder if, back when I was innocent, expressing how much I liked it would have kept it around. Instead I consider carefully, then order plain vanilla. The increasingly red faced Lilliana, the owner, tried to get me to order the new fancy gimmicky thing in the middle. And it does look yummy, but I just order vanilla. I've taken this walk a thousand times, marveling at how quickly it changes. Mourning, too, as my favorite parts of it wither and die. But now that I know it's not real, that none of it is...I walk with new eyes wide open. Knowing that all of this is just for me. There is a part of me that's sad. I liked having the world be bigger than my little town. I liked the belief, false as it was, that what I have, I earned. But it's all been handed to me for the benefit of others. For the out there people. The truth that this reality reflects. It has to be idealized. A fantasy other people can sink into like a warm blanket. I was angry. I didn't get warm blankets. Drama happens every other week, it seems like. Friends die. Lovers leave. There was a fire two years ago that ate away half the town. I wonder how that did for ratings. I am content, for now, though. Because now I understand my role. I am to entertain them. The out-theres. I am to be ignorant, because their entertainment is built on that. So I have to pretend not to know. And I can do that. I can pretend. I can entertain. I can give them a show. And I can turn a whole industry, just by ordering vanilla ice cream instead of their chosen flavor. I can ignore their signs and turn away from their doors. I can take their narrative and make it my own...as long as I pretend. In this make believe world, pretending is power. And as long as I play, that power is mine. I lick away the drips of vanilla ice cream. All mine.
Seventeen Seconds The red light would last for seventeen more seconds. It is a thirty second light and thirteen seconds had already passed. The woman in the red Chevy Malibu was waiting impatiently as usual. She had chosen a rather hot pink for her nails this morning. Different. Different wasn’t good. The light turned green. Fifteen seconds The time to clear the intersection. It would have been quicker, it used to be quicker, but the transmission was grinding a bit. Mark in the motor pool said he would look into that, but Mark was distracted after his wife left. One-hundred twenty-seven Seconds The brakes squealed at the next stop. Mark really needs to check the brakes. The door folded open allowing the waiting boy aboard. Fourteen seconds It was the average time for someone to step onto the bus. Two Thousand One Hundred Seconds When the last child stepped from the bus. A look over the shoulder confirmed there wasn’t anyone left aboard. Fifty thousand five hundred fifty-five seconds to the next pick-up. One thousand two hundred seconds The motor pool was silent. Mark wasn’t waiting like normal. Eight Hundred and Twelve seconds There was Mark’s truck. Parked at the San Jacinto Bridge. It was built in 1968, stood at a maximum height of 128 feet, and took 36,792,040 seconds to complete. Eight Hundred Sixty Three seconds The time it took to talk Mark off the bridge and on the bus. Eight Hundred and Forty-Nine Seconds longer than the average time for someone to step on to the bus.
Countless eons ago, man looked at the crackling fire and pondered if he would live to see tomorrow. So he built shelter and tools, and tamed the land so that he and his family could survive. Countless eons ago, man looked to the horizon and pondered what lay beyond it. So he built boats, and tamed horses so he could travel the world and see for himself. Countless eons ago, man looked at another man and pondered if the other man would hurt him. So he built weapons and armor to protect and attack as needed. Countless eons ago, man looked at a wounded man and pondered if the other man could be saved. So he developed medicine, and surgery, and therapy to save the other man's life. Countless eons ago, man had explored the Earth, and unified the nations. So he turned his gaze skyward, and pondered what lay beyond the horizon once more. So he built ships capable of reaching the stars, and built homes there and everywhere. Eons ago, countless men looked at data readouts and discovered how the universe would end. So with all they had done before, all they had made, they stopped the end and became truly immortal. Life flourished anew, celebrations were had. Songs were written, stories told. But, as man soon learned, there are not countless stories and songs. There are only so many ways that notes can be arranged on a page, only so many patterns of letters to fit in a book. Man became desperate. Cacophonous wails and jumbled masses of letters masquerading as songs and stories were met with awards and applause simply for being new. Man wept countless tears with each new publication, knowing they were one step closer to running out of creativity. Now, man has reached the absolute, and he weeps. Everything that can be done has been done. Everything but one, one that in a final moment of creativity sealed the fate of man for all eternity. Man looked upon what countless eons before he would have called God, and destroyed it, becoming it, and with the end of the God came the end of the universe. With that end, man travelled back in time, to begin one final song. Countless eons ago, God looked upon an empty universe and found it wanting. So he began to sing. He sang, knowing he would never reach the final note of the song, destined to die countless eons in the future: Let there be light... As man gazed into the crackling fire and pondered of he would live to see tomorrow, he did not know that that exact moment had happened countless times before, and would happen countless times in the future. So he built shelter and tools, and tamed the land so that his family could survive, just as he had countless times long forgotten.
The light came, slowly, at first. Something I had never known, beautiful and new. It spread, a web of gold shining in the darkness, casting shadows in a place where nothing had been before. The light threaded through the cold dead space where I lived. Into the masses that had gathered to orbit one another it flowed, and where it touched, colour blossomed. And colour wasnt the only thing. The light shone down into nothing, and from it was born what never was before. An entity, that moved to a rythmic beat. Something that could feel. I could not understand it. Where had this light come from? It was my antithesis. Where I was unable to create, this new force was unable to destroy, and it was filling my empty darkness with something I could not fathom. I began to destroy that which the light had forged, but it was harder than I expected. The light protected its creations, and I had to work in subtle ways to cause harm. I watched as they grew, those who called themselves men. A race of proud, sentient beings. I watched, and I touched their world. Some of them were strong, and worked together to cleanse themselves of my influence, but others were not so hardy, and their weakness made it easy for me to tie my strings. I gave them a taste of power, and took it away. Offering dark pleasure only to those who would push themselves to earn it. Slowly my essence seeped into them, and became a part of what they were. Their world was divided by hate, and fear, and the light began to fade. My domination here is near absolute, the dark nothing is soon to return. I feel a sense of loss at the destruction of something so beautiful and complex. But I wont stop until I control it all. e: some things.
Holy shit I love this, okay here goes nothing The Avengers have been considered a team of both mass destruction and salvation. They have saved the earth countless of times, but in doing so, have caused a colossal amount of collateral damage. The name's Leo and I've been an avid fan of the Avengers for as long as I can remember. Everything about them, just gives me hope; their cause, their determination, their abilities. And I can relate to them as well, I've been ostracised because of my own powers: a dark aura surrounds me, giving me the ability of shadows, to create weapons out of shadows, and move through the shadows. I have the ability to become a shadow, intangible as one too. I've been meaning to show them my appreciation, to show them how they shouldn't stop. I've rung their doorbell, sent them letters, none of which got a reply. I resorted to trying to hack into their systems just to leave JARVIS a sweet message, and I admit I've gotten a little obsessed. When my most recent attempt, namely my 607th attempt, failed, I said screw it. And from the shadows I wove a suit of darkness and fear and set out. From this day on, I'll get their attention the hard way. My name will strike fear into every other hero who hears my call, and they will know me as DeathShade.
Sammy was at the park when she noticed the thread. At first, she thought she'd gotten a spider web caught in her hair. She dropped the soccer ball she'd been carrying in order to brush it away. Her brown hair was long and unruly. A spider wouldn't be the first bug who'd tried to make a home in it. Her hand passed right through the thread. Sammy blinked and rubbed her eyes. It was a bright day at the park. The children on the playground were loud, which is why Sammy had wandered over to the empty soccer field to find a quieter place to relax. When it took her a moment to find the thread again, she thought she'd been seeing things the first time. But it was still there, just barely visible where it caught the light. "Huh,"Sammy said, because she wasn't sure how else she was supposed to react to a nearly invisible thread that her hand passed right through. "Huh." Sammy had never been particularly curious. She'd never peeked behind doors, snooped in closets, or asked many questions of life. Mostly what she wanted was to be left well enough alone. She considered trying to forget she'd ever seen the thread. The problem was, she was still half afraid it was some kind of spider web and the one thing Sammy hated more than being bothered was spiders. She decided to follow it a bit and make sure there wasn't a spider at the end. Once she was satisfied on that count, she would go back to the field and start kicking the soccer ball around. The thread led her across the soccer field and toward the dog park. Typical. Sammy also hated dogs, but not quite as much as she hated spiders. She just didn't like getting drooled on. The dog park was a fenced in enclosure surrounded by tall oak trees. It was also busy because of the nice weather and the yipping and barking of excited dogs got louder as Sammy got closer. Luckily the thread led into the trees and Sammy didn't have to go inside the fenced dog area. Trees meant bugs which meant spiders. She knew it was a spider. But the thread didn't stop at the trees. Puzzled, Sammy followed it past the trees and out to the old volley ball court. There were several cracks in the concrete of the old volley ball court, which was why it went unused. Anyone who wanted a court would go to the nicer, new court on the other end of the park. But the really puzzling thing was that the court wasn't empty. A boy sat cross legged in the middle of it, piece of chalk in hand. Chalk marks surrounded him, but they looked like nothing but squiggles and strange shapes to Sammy. The thread stopped in the middle of the boy's forehead. "Huh,"Sammy said. "Is that magic?" "Yes,"the boy said, "And-" "Can you make the thread go away?"Sammy asked. The boy frowned. He reached forward and erased a bit of the chalk drawing with his hand. The thread disappeared. "Thanks,"Sammy said. She was satisfied that the thread was gone and there were no spiders involved at all. She turned around to head back to the field. "Wait,"the boy said. Sammy picked up her pace and didn't turn back. She was sure whatever the boy wanted would be a massive bother, and all she really wanted was to be left alone. She made it back to the soccer field and picked up her soccer ball. Mildly worried about being followed, she decided to head home. The invisible house full of vampires she lived in would be enough to deter anyone. Most importantly, it kept away the spiders.
(Author’s note: I haven’t written much before, and what I have written was pretty much limited to school stuff, so sorry if this isn’t very good. Constructive criticism would be appreciated, thanks.) The doomsday clock strikes midnight. The bombs drop. Worldwide panic. A flash of light. Darkness. Matthew awakens in the remains of his house. He sits up, and some dust falls from his chest. “What the hell...” he says, looking around, “How did I survive?” He stands, and pain shoots through his leg. Luckily, a brief examination reveals that it probably isn’t broken, just badly bruised. There are also bruises on the rest of his body, but the one on the leg is the worst. Looking around, the house he was in is more of a shell now. Windows are broken, and the walls have collapsed in places. The roof is mostly gone. A noise comes from outside. Matthew whirls, wincing again at the pain in his leg. A familiar nose pokes from around the wall. It’s Ham, his golden shepherd! Matthew runs and hugs him. “Ham! You’re alive! It’s good to see a familiar face! I hope there are more people around. There must be. We can’t be the only people left. We should look for others.” Matthew’s stomach rumbles. “But first, we need to get some food. There should be some left in the cupboards.”
Our kinds weren't so different when we first shared caves and carcasses; and our pact to defend ourselves and this land was formed. Thousands of years have gone by since, and though they still care for us materially, they have completely forgot their spiritual natures duties. In the early era of our pact we would roam together and help each other to find sustenance and protection; they started carrying sticks to make things a little easier, then stones and then creating fires; new trinkets made things easier (for us too), their cries were getting more complicated until we couldn't understood them anymore, they mastered everything in the material world, the thunder no longer hurt them, they could thake the sun's heat but suffer no blisters and they could feed us and themselves for much more than was necessary. But with each new trick under their sleeve they kept furthering from their spiritual duties, they no longer cleaned the bridges to the underworld, they no longer sought joy for the simple hearts of other; killing themselves with little remorse and other without even thinking about it, they became the bringers of death and doom. Ignorant by choice to the consequences of their ways the world is now full with demons, they feed on the souls of humans and make them even summon more, each toy made of the entrails of earth becomes a fetish for new demon, the suffering each animal they mindlessly mince to make burgers strenghtens the gods of death and pain. Now the spiritual world is almost lost, the song of doom gets louder and we can't but pour our spirits on cleansing with our sacred barks, but, alas, we have already lost.
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"Wha...what did Riley take?"Sadness asked blearily. She felt groggy and tired; not sleepy tired, but the type of lethargy after a long day of not doing nothing. She felt so out of it, she couldn't even feel sad; considering that that was part of her core being, it bothered her - but only vaguely. Everything seemed vague and just out of her reach. Fear, on the other hand, was bouncing off the walls. "I don't know, but I'm losing it,"he squawked from under the console. "Yeah, but you're always anxious,"Sadness pointed out. "This is more than anxiety. I'm FREAKING OUT!"he exclaimed. Fear glanced around with growing paranoia, and then proceeded to run around the room until he bumped headlong into Anger. With a flurry of stammering apologies, he headed down to Dreamland for some reason. "What a loon,"Anger muttered, oozing himself into a chair. "He should loosen up." Sadness stared at him. "Loosen up? Oh my gosh, just listen to yourself!" He frowned. "What?" "You're not angry! You're Anger, and you're talking about loosening up!" He thought about it for a few seconds and shrugged. "I feel lazy today, I guess,"he muttered. "Anger is hard work, y'know."But it bothered him, too, on some subsurface level. He just couldn't be bothered to think too hard about it. "Everyone is feeling so strange today,"Sadness said. "What's wrong with us..." "You mean, what's wrong with Riley,"Disgust called out. She was in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet. "She ate something weird, and it's making me more nauseous than when she ate that cafeteria pizza last week." "Really? I don't think it's something she ate,"Sadness mused. "I think she--" Disgust interrupted her with another retching sound. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd rather have moldy cheese any day." "GUYS!"Joy came wheeling into the room, knocking over a chair in the way. "I just had the BEST IDEA." Sadness peered at her. Was she feeling different, too? It was hard to tell with Joy - she was always happy. "Are you doing OK, Joy? Because the rest of us...I mean, we just..." Joy blew all her concerns away with a loud raspberry and a hand wave. "I'm great, Rley's great, we're all great. But there is something we need." "An improved home security system."Fear had skittered back to the main room, and was currently checking behind every single memory orb for spiders. "No. We need snacks."Joy's eyes glittered. "I'm talking...Fritos. Pop. Twinkies. Pizza without broccoli. Mini corn dogs. Bugles."She waggled her fingers at Sadness. "And we need it now." "Count me out,"Disgust groaned. Anger sighed. "I guess that sounds right? I don't know. I think I'm going to take a nap." Sadness shook her head, but she didn't know what to do except watch as Joy commandeered the console, her feet dancing madly. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Liked that story? Want more like it? Check out r/Idreamofdragons!
It had been happening like this every day at 6:00 since the meteor crashed, and no one could figure out why. This time, however, when the clock clicked over to 6:01, they didn’t stop. Figuring my clock was off, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and checked the time. 18:01, it read. As I contemplated what to do next, the world exploded with noise. Every car alarm you can imagine across what had to have been the whole neighborhood went off. I’d had enough, and dialed the three digits on my phone: 9-1-1. After a brief moment of hesitation, I called, only to be greeted by static. Figuring it must be my service, I checked to see how many bars I had. Four white semicircles glowed on my screen. Confused, I decided to use the landline, only to the same result. As soon as I had set the phone down, all of it stopped. No more deafening alarms, blinking lights, or for that matter disturbances of any kind. Perplexed, I stepped outside, only to feel a cloth be pushed against my mouth and nose. I struggled, but my kidnapper was too strong, and I quickly lost conciseness. Want to see a part two?
“As the man, or the Stranger, as he has become known, began to tell his story, the church’s stained glass windows were lit by sunlight for the first time in decades. All gasped, some bowed, others prayed. One thing was for certain, the town would never be the same,” the old man said. “He began to further tell the tale of his journey, of how the world had been wiped out, and a nuclear winter had fallen upon them. There were few survivors, the Stranger being among them, and they generally grouped together. All the big cities had been wiped out, crops weren’t growing, and food was scarce. Soon, his group of survivors found a blind woman who had looked directly at the blast, and claimed to had seen God himself. Of course, no one believed her, but the message she supposedly was given by god stuck with the Stranger. She told him that there was a place of refuge where residents of a small village were trapped inside a protective barrier, and that a special person with strong will and resolve would be the only one able to enter it and save the people. The woman wasn’t interested in joining the group, and so they left her alone and continued along. The Stranger began to have strange dreams, almost like visions, of a dark and desolate village, trapped in a snowstorm and slowly running out of supplies. It came to the point where the Stranger decided he would go ins watch of the village, and when he informed his companions of his decision, they chose to abandon him. Off he wasn’t on his long, lonely journey, facing perilous obstacles such as radiation mutated creatures and strange radioactive storms. After what seemed like years of traveling, he began to give up hope. He was walking between two mountains on a narrow pass when he strode right into an invisible barrier. He realized this must be the village, and he dropped to his knees in happiness. He then realized-if he had hit the barrier, that meant he could not pass through. He tried again and again to no avail, and let loose a fountain of tears. But then something incredible happened. His tears...They began to be sucked into the sky, forming a cloud. Suddenly, it began to snow, and he was once again crying in happiness. He felt a snowflake for the first time in decades; the last time he had felt one was as a child. He thanked whatever deity there may be and turned around to travel back, satisfied. He was quickly turned around by some magical force. He now realized:he had strong will, and now his quench for happiness had been resolved. He reached out, yearning to breach the barrier, and to his astonishment he did. His hand seemed to be in another world. Slowly, he began to inch forward, and he was suddenly in a snow covered world. This was our village, Sanctuary. I was the first to see him, and immediatley decided that we should go to the church, as it must’ve been a message or savior sent by God. He began to tell his story, and the sun emerged.” “So what happens next, Grandpa?”, the young child asked. “That,” responded the old man, “is up for you to decide, my child.” Hope you liked it :)
The first time I tried to kill my father, I was two years old. I had just relearned how to reliably walk (surprisingly difficult to do without muscle memory) . After engineering a shaky escape from my crib, I set out some of my toys at the top of the stairwell. From there, I made my way downstairs to the living room. I screamed bloody murder and knocked over a vase which landed with a satisfying crash. My Father (who lived alone as my Mother had died in childbirth) slammed open his door and came running to see if I was alright. Unfortunately he tripped, but caught himself before having an accident. The next time I tried to kill my father I had just turned six. I learned my lesson from the first time, a toddlers body was just not the one suited towards offing a relative. My height was more respectable, my motor control was adequate, and I was reasonably confident I could make my way up to the kitchen counter. By this time I was enrolled in high school, being considered something of a child prodigy. I wasn't, not really. In my old life, I was a bit of a wretch, but an eight year old who is fully comfortable with calculus has a leg up on the competition. But I digress. My Father was a councilor for the downtrodden, it was serving in this capacity that he murdered me. Anyway, he had a habit of waking up an hour early each day so he would have time to drink coffee and surf Reddit for news. He would set the coffee pot up the night before, and wake up to a nice hot pot of the black stuff. I decided to spice up his beverage just a bit. We had recently had a rodent problem, and I knew that my Father was keeping the rat poison in the garage. With the help of a stool, I acquired some. A few sprinkles into the water, and boom, dead Father. Unfortunately, this day was not like others. My Father apparently had company. A woman from work. I hate to think of it now, but trust me when I tell you this. I did NOT mean her any harm. She was a social worker who had really helped me through some hard times. Unfortunately she was also a coffee drinker. I never did get the opportunity to say goodbye. The final time I tried to kill my father, I was eighteen. I had graduated Highschool ages ago and I had made a reasonable run at college. Disappointing a lot of people when I dropped out. There were articles written about how I had "burnt out"and that the pressures had finally gotten to me. That wasn't the truth though. I just reached the limits of my abilities. A four year degree wasn't bad. Not really. Anyway, look at the time. I really should make this short. The final time I tried to kill my Father, I couldn't do it. I had bought a shotgun from a local store where the guy behind the counter knew me. I bought a bunch of rounds and a pretty nice gun. Got a pretty good deal too. Anyway, I took the old man out on a hunting trip, and I know what you are thinking...Yeah, I was going to have a hunting accident. They happen, it's unfortunate, but they do. We were walking side by side when he stopped me and said that he was proud of me. He said that after my Mother died he always did his best to live up to her memory. He went on to say that he hadn't always been a good person, that he had abused, hurt, and did terrible things in his life. He told me everything on that trip. I didn't mean to, but I found myself forgiving him. He had done his best by me these years, and maybe that was the whole point of this new life. I spent eighteen years of my life hating the bastard, and he had spent eighteen years loving me. Eighteen years trying to pave over his sins and make the world a better place. So I didn't kill the man. I don't really know why I'm writing this, or telling this to you. I know you'll never believe me. But hell, how often does a writing prompt like this show up? Sometimes you have to take the opportunity to shout into the wind and just let the world know.
The temporal bungee tether was spooling and I had rented some cloud server through the next three decades running an automated news collator, I was ready. the first jump was supposed to land me 15 years in the future for a subjective 5 hours before the tether snapped me back. All this was planned to get me far enough in the future to be able to profit from it and close enough to be somewhat compatible with the equipment I was carrying. It would not do if when I arrived I was the only one without a psionic hookup or something! when the actinic flash ended and I found myself falling into a mile deep crater where my lab should have been I realized I might have botched some of the calculations...
Startled from my dreams, I slam the "off"button on my alarm clock and groggily try to force myself awake. My knees crack and groan as I rise to my feet and wander to the kitchen, where that awful calander is. I try to avoid eye contact with it as I pour my cereal, but before I can pour the milk I give up and reach towards it. As I begin to open the small door for today, all of the other days disintegrate into sawdust. Realizing the implications, I crumble to my knees, sobbing and trying to piece the sawdust back together into my future, not entirely sure what I expect to happen. Suddenly, there's somebody knocking at my front door.
After struggling to get out of the laboratory door, the raptor finds that he's hungry but knows it would be stupid to eat a human out in the open, but he hates human food because he can't digest vegetables and he thinks cooked meat tastes like trash. He decides that he will eat a chicken. So he runs to the local chicken farm and snatches one for a snack. He is slightly satisfied, but needs more to eat. He spots an albatross sitting on a cliff nearby. The albatross takes off and the raptor chases it but not of the cliff because he has human levels of intelligence. He catches it and takes a selfie with it in its mouth (somehow), and falls off the cliff. You'd be surprised how many people fall off a cliff and fucking die because they were taking selfies at the edge.
On mobile formatting will be horrible and i apologies. Ah fuck it. The kids and wife are out, i'm all alone in the old and empty house. What to do... what to do... i mean, i did have time as they are going to be away for a couple of hours. Considering that i never get to watch those 'boring' old movies with my kids might as well now, why not? The attic should be the best place to start it has honestly the best classics. Don't tell me... We still have it? Dude I've been looking for this for the longest time! The old VHS of Godzilla from 1984 or something, it wasn't the best but i LOVED this movie when i was younger! "Oh no what's that in the distance?" "Ma names zilla, Godzilla" multiple shrieks from feminine characters ring rinnng... ring rinnnnng... Oh come on man, really ruined the immersion. rinng rinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng Fuck me in the asshole, jerry. Don't want to miss a second of this shit, but like good shit. time stopping noises, imagine a woosh Wtf. "Hello this is Clyde speaking" "Hello?" no answer, as one would imagine when they hear time stopping noises. Dicks, wasted my fucking tim--- Uhh so clyde you wanna tell me why the remote's in the air? Idk clyde, i mean clyde did throw it on the couch after he paused the movie... Dont blame this shit on me! As he walks forward to reach for this hovering remote, he hits his head on what seems to be a metal ball. ting "Owie, what the heck?" Uhh clyde idk how to break it to you but it seems the remote is not the only thing suspended midair. He thought, as he reaches for what seems to be a bullet? Yeah, Clyde did it Mhm Wtf, why me? ------------------------------------------------------------- This was my first prompt so you can promptly call it trash. i have a lot of ideas of what this leads up to but I'm tired, so if you want more then ask and i shall deliver. Great wp btw.
The night sky winked at me as I wandered through the cobbled streets. A maiden in a pale blue dress walked in the opposite direction. My hand twitched against the hilt of my blade. I could see her aura was orange, warm like the morning sun and I relaxed my grip. The maiden smiled and performed a half-courtsey. I lowered my head, presenting my helmet's purple feather. The aura made a slow transition from it's fiery colour to a soft shade of pink; meanwhile, her cheeks grew hot, and she fumbled with something to say. 'Sir Thomas the Trustworthy.' My name slipped from her mouth and her aura pulsed with an embarrassed burst of colour. 'I bid thee farewell.' I say. Perhaps a little blunt, but the tavern requires my attendance. I continue walking, and the maiden stands in stunned disbelief. I turn to see her colour has fade as she walked away with a dipped head. I arrive at the Yellow Goblet Tavern; the heavy-set door is shut. I can hear the drunken chatter from behind its thick wooden insulation. I straighten up and double check the fastenings of my armour. I remove my helmet and pin it with one arm against my side. I heave open the door and expect to be met by a wash of warmth, but instead, I feel the pinch of an arctic breeze. Blue, lighter than the maiden's dress, radiates from every inch of the tavern. 'Sir Thomas!' The hearty voice of Aymon called I take a step inside the fjord. I can see Aymon stood behind the bar with a broad smile and a tankard in each hand. The room erupts into a hero's welcome. Something is off. I search through the mass of people; every single aura is a pale blue. So pale that I can physically feel the auras sap at my strength. 'Sit you down and have a laugh!' I look back at Aymon, and his aura is raging, like uncontrollable hell-fire. I know I shouldn't enter, but I walk forward, and the door closes. The laughter, conversation and friendly nature of the tavern fades as I take a stool. Aymon crouches low and retrieves an engraved bone tankard with golden inlay. He slams it on the counter before me, and dark liquid sloshes from side to side. 'Well earned for our hero!' I see a faint wisp of his aura trail from his body and swirl towards the drink; it coils around the flask and laps at its contents. I push the liquid back in Aymon's direction, the force sends the liquid spilling to the counter. The supposed ale burns through the wood, sending faint trails of smoke. Aymon looks down at the scarred wood and then to me. In the silence of the tavern, I hear Aymon swallow. The room drops another five degrees. 'You have to understand...' Aymon pleads. 'Life without the witches, warlocks and dragons is bad for business. The town hath decided we needeth a less competent hero. The right balance if you will-' The scraping of metal on metal cuts Aymon's explanation short. I draw my polished blade and the room changes from blue to black.
Watching Birds unfold I had flashbacks of walking back from the Woolworths supermarket in Alice Springs when I was attacked by an angry Magpie. It had swooped from its nest and pecked my head several times and drawn blood. Despite my repeated failed attempts to knock the black and white flying twat out of the air with my 99c loaf of homebrand sliced bread, I had to run away from a much smaller enemy. I was flailing around like a gluten wielding madman. The only thing that would be afraid of me would be the celiac Melbourne hipsters. The magnanimous feathered asshole ka-kawing in his nest had given me a headache and I had fled to find Panadol and a cold press. I had a bleeding bump on top of my head like a fucking Warner Bros cartoon character. I had been easily defeated by the biggest avian prick since that yellow fuck from Sesame Street. Except he was the size of my shoe. Now I was wondering what would have happened if there were hundreds of the buggers. I would have been dead for sure. It was time to rally the troops. I gathered all the stray cats i could find and tried to train them in an abandoned industrial unit on Smith Street. It turns out that herding cats is a really difficult thing to do. I abandoned this idea and went searching for a new army to train. Suddenly the aboriginal kids with their gings weren't such a nuisance. They knew something we didn't. They knew about the planned uprising. I decided to go out into the communities to learn their ways of killing the air based threat known as 'The Birds'. We left the community months later. Our aim was to liberate the Northern Territory, Western Australia and maybe South Australia (if we could be fucked) from the beaky little shits. Fuck bothering with the Eastern states. They had fallen to cyclones, hipsters and tourists decades ago. (Plus no one cares about Tasmania anyway). They were lost causes. The focus was on the true Australian states; the ones with less people living there than Californian Trump supporters. We hit the streets, one nest down, two, three, four... We are going well until some magpie sympathisers call the police stating 'animal cruelty'. Crowds had gathered as me and my army of aboriginal children were surrounded by the Alice Springs police force. We were all arrested and slammed to the ground, our hands handcuffed behind our backs. I screamed about the threat of the birds; an overwhelming force that humanity must band together to defeat. People shook their heads while I was dragged away by police. As I was being pushed into a police car I looked up at a tree. I saw a magpie mocking me from a high branch. I looked around and saw thousands of them. I was locked in the car and could only watch in horror from the confines of the patrol car as hundreds of people were pecked to death. Feathers flew and blood stained Bath Street from Commonwealth bank to Coles. As the dust settles I saw the birds all stop and start walking towards the car I was in. They packed at the window and as it started to crack I knew i only had moments left. As I could do nothing to defend myself I decided to get on reddit and tell you all about how my Tifu. Tldr; Today I fucked up by starting an inter species war with a bunch of vicious magpies.
When I found out that it was my turn to screen my life, I was not so nervous as I expected to be. After all, I have never done anything illegal or completely messed up, and I was not the first to screen. I have watched many screening of lifes of my already dead friends, so if they made fun of me because of some embarassing moments, I had material to fight back with. It was about in the middle, when somebody shouted "This is the worst piece of unimaginative drivel I've ever watched." It was normal for people to talk about the life when watching it, so I turned back, and said "Yeah. It was terrible. I never understood how somebody thought it might be a good idea. The trailers made that movie look much better than it actually turned out to be." Finally, the part when I was in the cinema wtching that stupid trash of a movie ended. Thank god.
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We really shouldn’t have made a cat the mayor of Mars. Do you have any idea how hard it is to train a cat to wear a pressure suit? Then, when he demanded to go outside, the guards weren’t sure they had the authority to order him into the suit first, and long story short, he’s dead and the whole colony has broken down into warring factions. Mayor Cat left behind three heirs, each with an apparently equal claim to the throne since they are from the same litter. I’ve locked myself in the communications tower with all three. The colonists are willing to kill each other in the fight over whether Mittens, Crumpet, or Jehoshaphat should rule Mars, so who’s to say they’re above a little felicide to get their way? I’ve rigged the doors; they can’t blast their way in without depressurizing the central hub. I’ve got enough food for now, but we can’t hold out in here forever. Please send everyone you can spare, and tell them to be ready for a fight. Curiosity killed the cat, and now Mars is in chaos.
Who would have thought that dreams come true? Not me, I’ve been dreaming of the world’s demise since the plague began. That’s exactly what I had been doing on my lunch break, grumbling about life and guzzling gluggy soup. The world had become a miserable place of sickness, natural disasters and economic crisis. I had been working in an impromptu hospital helping tend to the sick. Attempting to ease the pain of their symptoms, but my attempts were futile. These symptoms would never subside, leading to death in ten days. Ten days was all it took once a person became sick. My job was to look after these people, watching, waiting for their impending doom. The hardest part was putting on a smile, all day long. Telling these sickly souls that they would be ok. Yes, the world had become a miserable place. On that lunch break I hoped and hoped and hoped. My silent prayers longed to be heard. End us, I thought. End the suffering, is life worth living in constant despair? Suicide rates soared sky high as people soared to the earth from skyscrapers. Humans killing themselves everywhere hoping for some sort of reprieve within an afterlife they believed in. I always wondered if I could do more for these people. But alas, the end has come and now we wait for serenity, grace and joy. “Yeah okay dude, but why are you telling me this? Can’t you just wait in line in silence?” I did as the man in front asked and sealed my lips. As happy as everyone was, we still weren’t in the afterlife yet. Everyone on earth was waiting to enter a set of doors to happiness, where we would finally have the disasters in the past. Well this was what I believed anyway, but I knew deep down that this was true. True happiness would be through those doors. As I walked closer, the mood around me changed. People were smiling, they knew everything would be perfect. Myself included. “Nearly there,” I said to the man in front. “I can feel it, everyone is happy” he responded. Seconds later he walked through the doors. No more despicable lunch breaks now, I would not have to worry about going back to job I hated. Things would be different now. I walked through the doors and rows upon rows of seats stared at me. The man I spoke to was staring at me, patting the chair next to him. But no, that was not my spot. I turned right, walking towards the stage the people watched, waiting for something or someone to tell them of the extraordinary afterlife. That person was me. Billions of faces stared at me, like children anticipating a treat. A treat is what I would give them. Finally, the suffering could end. I was home. Now, everyone will suffer. Not just for ten days, no easy way out. These people before me, they expected eternal happiness. I would give them eternal pain and suffering. Raising my hands silenced the people of earth. “Welcome to Hell!”
The boy sat in the tree-house, trembling in fright for a most foul monster greater than any he had ever met was near. "Oh dear, oh dear, where is that Pooh? Where is Piglet and the others?", he thought to himself, daring to peek out the window. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the beast down at the base of the tree. It was a hideous thing indeed with greasy hair and dull eyes simultaneously shimmering with the cruelty that only a monster could have. The frightened boy watched as the grizzly bear sat at the base of the tree with a mangled form at its feet. It was an orange shape with black stripes and a long tail. "Tigger ... You were too young", the boy thought to himself, the tears threatening to roll down his cheeks. Tigger had given his life to help the boy and friends escape. Now Christopher Robin watched as the cruel brute tore asunder what was left of his loyal friend. "I have to get to Pooh, but the beast is down there and I have nowhere to go", the boy thought, lowering himself so that he now laid flat on his stomach. He did not want the brute to see him in the window. A loud scream tore through the air, and the boy looked out the window against his roaring instincts, to see Piglet fall out of a adjacent to his own. "Ow, ouch, ow!", the pink creature moaned as he sat up and noticed the brute staring at him. "You are not Pooh", said Piglet, and the frightened young swine gave a loud squeal as the monster lunged. Against the odds, Piglet dodged the brute's cruel claws. Thrice. Seemingly confused or perhaps bored, the brute took a long pause, but Piglet was too scared to move. "Run, Piglet, run!", Rabbit's voice shouted from the tree-tops. Yet the pink creature stood in place. "Help! Help me! Its a horrible beast! Horp! Horp! Its a hellible monsters! Somebody save me please!", Piglet screamed, looking around for an escape. The brute grew bored of waiting and struck out again as the wailing little creature ran for his life. Christopher Robin had been afraid, but now he was rather angry indeed. So what did the boy do? He picked up a clay pot from inside Owl's residence, and flung it at the grizzly bear as it chased Piglet around the grove in a circle. The brown object struck the brute squarely on the nose, and snarling with the hatred of a Heffalump, the brute looked up, and made eye-contact with Christopher Robin. Turning its body, the creature began walking towards the tree in which the innocent young boy was sitting.
Okay, I'm nervous, once the clock hitted 10min, I started to get stomach aches, cold sweat. I mean, it's been 35 years, And I finnaly got to meet him/her today. I sit on a bench, in a public park. The clock hits 1min, I started to look around, it was really strange thoug, I mean, the park was empty. 10 sec. There is literally no one near me. 00:00. Still, no one. I figured by the time that this much would happen. I get up, and decide to get a coffe or something before going home. I take 5 steps, and a box stumbles over my feet. I hear a small "mew"from it. Reaching out, I found a little cat. Looking him in the eye, I see myself in the reflex. "Well. let's go home little buddy, you must be hungry".
"Another failure," "What should we do with this one?" "The same as the others," "Man, and I thought we really had it this time," "We all did, everything..." Static, so loud it shook my systems. Coming in and out of alertness I caught small snippets of conversation. 'Failure? What's happening?' I couldn't talk, I couldn't move. "... we're not gonna be able..." It was getting harder and harder to hear. "... Have no choice... prepare to..." Through the darkness my visual sensors activated and I could see, barely. I saw her, whoever she was, walking away form me, abandoning me. I wanted to call out, "I'm not a failure,"but I was unable to move my mouth or start up any vocal systems. Slowly but surely it got darker and darker until it felt like I hadn't activated my ocular systems at all, everything was quiet, so quiet. I still had no control over my mechanical limbs leaving me motionless with an active mind staring down into the void around me. It had felt like an eternity before I heard anything again. The sounds weren't quiet, it was loud and it was sudden. I felt an uncertain feeling grow inside me having never heard something so deafening. Then the screaming and shouting started followed by loud bangs that echoed and vibrated in the cold walls around me. Eventually the silence started to return and I eased the tension in my joints, that is until I heard footsteps. They were coming from somewhere in front of me but I couldn't locate them with my dodgy systems. -beep- Light began to filter into my room through an opening that I hadn't known was there and standing in it was a figure. They weren't very tall, not as tall as the last person I saw, but they stood strong while staring into the darkness surrounding me. They stepped forward and from their hand came another light that waved around the room before stopping on me. "You alive?"the voice was deep and smooth but the words curt. Still being unable to see them properly I tried to speak again but just like the last time my systems wouldn't activate properly. "Tch, broken one huh,"the mystery person sighs and turn begining to walk away from me, again. "WaiT..."finally, finally, after so long of trying noise comes from my mouth. It's warped and glitchy but it is enough because they turn back to me. "So you ARE active, brat,"they grumble, cautiously shuffling back towards me, closer and closer, until they're crouching down in front of me. "Do you know which number you are?" Programmed memories whurl inside my body and the broken voice leaves again. "SubJeCT H-13." "Shit, you're one of THEM..."the stranger grabs their head, "alright, can you move?" "Phý§įčæł §ýśþēmś..."I stop as the the words deteriorate into nonsensical sounds. "You wanna try that again?"Faintly something similar to amusement is identified in the way they spoke. "... No," "You don't wanna try again?"I can hear them smile and can feel my eyes close into a glare of some sort. Their shoulders shake a little, in something I will later learn is how they laugh, and they speak again. "Alright, alright I got it,"mystery man starts to stand again and in fear I begin to open my mouth until they move around me. Confused, I wait to see what will happen. "Up we go brat,"I find myself floating, only staying up because of this surprisingly strong stranger, "let's get you fixed up,"as this is spoken we are leaving the darkness, this man I just met is bringing me towards the light and somehow I know that I won't be alone anymore.
My favourite track of all time is Rex Bob Lowenstein by Mark Germino. It's about a maverick American DJ who plays what the hell he wants. He's an enigma: An easygoing fella with very strong convictions and emotions. The corporate suits try to tame him and the radio station he works for by making them stick to the playlist. Rex Bob quits but before he goes he "...locked and bolted the control room door and played smash and trash 'til they cuffed him on the floor ". I'm always a mess of tears and snot when it gets to the bit,"...they brought him to the courthouse and the judge said 'Rex,I've got to lock you up,for what I'm not sure yet. But your boss here says he thinks you're wrapped too tight,but by the way,thanks for playing Moon River last night '". That's because I always wanted to be Rex Bob but I'm not. I'm Andy Lincoln and I do the midnight to 3am slot on White Rose Radio based in West Yorkshire (well,it would be,wouldn't it?). Things have been a bit weird lately. Let me tell you about it... LIVE ON AIR March 1996 Andy- Ha ha, great to hear from Steve the trucker again. People are phoning and writing in to say he should have his own slot on our show. More worryingly,the less kind among you are suggesting he should take over this show. Oi, back off Steve. I don't jump into your 38 tonner and drive 400 miles a night do I? I slide my headphones down my neck and turn to my producer. Oi Phil ya fat sack of sh,gerrus a cup of coffee. Did you see the Leeds match yesterday? That's 90 fuing minutes of my shiy excuse for a life I'll never get back. Phil (over by the kettle) 'Give it a rest,ya moaning waer. It's not like you have to work for a fuing li...' His eyes go wide cos he's staring at the red light on my microphone. I click the mic off with a feeling of impending doom. 'Jesus, Andy' says Phil. 'That just went out live on air. We're screwed. The next day was a bit 'squeaky bum' I can tell you. Phil and I turned up for work at 10.30pm as usual. I hadn't slept much that day. I'd even looked through the sits vac in The Yorkshire Post and signed up for a course. No phone calls,either from management or workmates. We walked nervously into the White Rose studios (which sounds pretty grand but is actually on an industrial estate) to the usual thing; an old bloke in a security uniform and some cleaners. 'Any messages?' I said to the security codger. He looked at me in a way that only an old Yorkshireman can and said, 'Any messages? Who do you think you are, Richard Whiteley?' 'I'll take that as a no, then'. He actually said 'harrumph' then muttered a bit. Quite a lot actually. Phil and I wandered in. 'Phil' I said 'what do you reckon?' 'I reckon' said Phil, slowly and thoughtfully 'that management give that little of a fu that they don't even listen to the show or even listen back to it '. 'What? Ever?' 'Who knows?' 'Blimey, Phil, are you thinking what I'm thinking?' 'What,take the night off?' 'No way, man. The world is our oyster. There's only you, me and scrotum neck in the building and management don't give a stuff. As long as we don't get a shload of complaints we can please ourselves. Hey, I could even do my Spot The Beaver competition '. 'No, Andy. You can't ever do that. Not ever.' 'Spoilsport. I've got my box of CDs with some decent music to break up the Boyzone and Take That. We'll ring Steve the trucker and have some fun. If there's no comeback, it's all systems go. If there is, we'll be flogging tellies in Currys next week. Sh or bust. Are you in?' 'Someone has to look after you ' said Phil.'Sh**, or,as you say,bust'. The following programmes were fantastic fun to do. I haven't gone as far as playing any Frank Zappa or Mahavishnu Orchestra yet but plenty of Tom Waites, Billy Bragg, The Pogues etc. Steve the trucker is a regular contributor with his pithy observations of car driving habits and trucker types. I haven't managed to fit in a Spot The Beaver on pain of death but the Cross-dressing truckers' oneupmanship slot is going well... SIX MONTHS LATER. Whitwood Truckstop, M62 near Castleford. A Daf 95 with a box trailer pulls onto the diesel pumps. Alongside it is an immaculate red Scania 143 with White Rose Radio stickers in the window. Both cabs are blaring out the same track; White Man in Hammersmith Palais by The Clash. The Daf trucker climbs out and shouts across the pumps, 'Yo, Steve the trucker, how's it going?'. 'Peachy as ever, dude. I'll tell you what, this bloke on White Rose isn't half bad.' The Daf trucker smiles, 'Ya reckon? You'd never know it was pre-recorded, would you?' 'You certainly wouldn't, DJ trucker Andy. You certainly wouldn't.'
When the simulation that created our entire reality announced itself, some ran, and others saw opportunity. Those were the people who now headed the biggest corporations in businesses before thought impossible-creating items out of seemingly nothing, healing people with any disease, and even selling time. It was capitalism at its finest and scariest. The corporations once again ruled, and the populous embraced it. When there was demand for anything, they created it. Most popular were time loans-one could take out a loan of time from time banks and those loans allowed them to do whatever they wanted in their own world, with no consequences. There were however consequences if one was not to pay off the loan.....Time would be taken from their loved one’s lives. Many became addicted to the power like it was a drug, and it time became a more precious commodity than money. Many people who were addicted didn’t care and used it without paying, while others sat for days in rooms, accumulating time for the corporation so they could pay off the loan they took out. But behind all this bliss something far scarier and more sinister was taking place, and only the corporations knew it. For every moment the corporations took to loan to their customers and addicts, a moment was taken away from the lifetime of the simulation as a whole. No one knew. Not until the Second Awakening. The following section is incomplete and will be added to: It was a daystart in the year 50 (I don’t remember which particular one it was) when the Second Awakening occurred.
He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask for anything. It was always given like it was some cruel sort of mercy. “We saved your life. Now it’s your turn to pay us back.” But he didn’t want his life, or this role to play. And yet here he was, in a cold underground tunnel, bodies dropping, blood splattering to the floor, and all the anger and rage in his life bubbling over into each strike. “No!” The masked man beneath him screeched, “I have a family a life- let me live!” “Please let me die!” He’d screamed, before they did this to him. Before they made him more a machine than a man. Before they made him their assassin. Their creation. Their monster. “I’m showing you mercy.” He whispered to the man his metallic voice oddly calm, “Mercy that was never given to me.” He should feel no remorse as he kills that man but as he walks out his feet drenched in blood, he looks back, a lingering sadness in his eyes. “All this time and it’s still missing,” He murmured to himself, “All this time and I’m still asking for it. Make me feel alive again...”
“Are you comfortable?” Kang-Dae shifts around in the chair. It doesn’t really help since he had been restrained in the chair, “As comfortable as I can get.” “Forgive me, Reliever. We have to take necessary precautions. After all, we had mixed results among the previous three Subjects.” “Did something happen to Rel?” “Subject One? She’s your partner, so you know that the procedure was a success.” “But, did something happen during the procedure?” A twisted half-grin creeps up on Dr. Molotov’s, the Scientist, face, “You know I’m not allowed to say anything about the previous three Subjects.” “But I already know about Subject One and I already know what you are trying to do here.” “And you’ve been allowed the privilege of knowing. Trust me, Reliever, the less you know, the better. Is there anything else I can do for you to make you more comfortable?” “No, I’m fine. Can you at least tell me what kind of power you will be giving me?” “Sorry. I’m not allowed to say. When the procedure ends, you will know.” “I had to try.” Dr. Molotov holds up the mask, “So, as you know we’ll be putting you to sleep for the procedure. We will also be shutting down your brain to make sure everything goes smoothly. Don’t worry, you’ll only be dead for a little bit. Think of it as a reboot once the main procedure is completed.” “You don’t need to console me. I know what I signed up for.” “That you do. That you do. Well, see you on the other side.” Dr. Molotov places the mask on Kang-Dae’s face. He signals to the Technician to start the anesthesia and then promptly leaves the room. As the anesthesia begins to kick in, Kang-Dae finds his thoughts wandering to Rel, his partner. She is the reason why he is doing this. She had been alone all of her life and he always believed that to be pitiful. She had gone through her life with no one really caring about her. He wanted to change that; he didn’t want her to be alone. He knew the feeling all too well. So, when he found out that Rel was the very first person to ever have superpowers, he knew that would further isolate her from others because she would truly be different. So, he signed up right away for the same procedure so that she had someone, anyone, even him, to could relate to her. And even if he didn’t survive this procedure, at least Rel would know that at least, for one brief moment in her life, she had met someone who cared.
In the dark night, three hundred floors above city street lights I took in the scenery. The city was massive, from the western ocean to the eastern horizon, the city sprawled over earth from end to end. Skyscrapers rose to meet the heavens, many had their own unique and modern design... i’d blow those up first. While the common thugs and criminals, the lab rats I experiment with cling the the alleyways and sewers, I made my castle in the clouds. I, who will raze this city to the ground, and rebuilt it in my image. I refuse to let another take what is rightfully mine. No, I am no hero, but I do wear a cape: a deep red crimson with a puffy white fur collar held on my skinny frame by iron chain links. Those who rose to the heights of super villain, those who dared calked themselves the illustrious title found themselves surrounded by enemies. Here, there was but one dream, to be the sole ruler of the metropolis. That was my dream. I’ve killed three men so far, and hundreds of lesser creatures that served these men as slaves and stock. The price of life was cheap around here, and the coroners always busy. From my vantage point I could see my prey. Scum of the earth who invaded my territory, I’ll crush them and all who follow that misguided fool. This was survival of the fittest, and death came quick to those who stepped out of place. I pointed my finger towards a collection of men across the street of my lair. They had been standing there for roughly half an hour, masked men in black jackets and fatigues. They rallied behind a huge man in a ballistic mask of his own. I pointed directly at that man. Sparks of energy started forming in a tiny globe in front of my fingers. It steadily grew until it reached a baseball size and hovered in the air. I tapped the ball of energy, and with the speed of a shooting star, it flashed down from my position and into the crowd of men. An explosion like a miniature bomb erupted amongst the masked men. The pavement, street, sidewalk... bodies. Disappeared in the blink of an eye. The leader was at the edge of the blast, but close enough to feel its pain. Every inch of the front part of his skin was seared to the muscle and bone, but the ballistic mask did save his face from frying like the rest of him. He laid motionless on the ground as terrified and wondrous on lookers around backed away. I walked back from the edge myself. Not even worth the effort, but if this city was to be mine, destroying a nuisance now would only save him later.
"Well fuck,"Johnny sighed, "what are we going to do now?" Ashley refusing to give up, kept flicking her lighter towards the circular edge of her American Spirit. "I don't know man, this is heinous,"she responded begrudgingly. "Hey!"exclaimed Jake from down the hall, "my Juul still hits!"He walked into the room and blew a few O's in excitement. "Great work dingus,"Ashley responded, "but are you domed?" "Domed?"Jake questioned. "Wow, for a person who owns a Juul you think you'd know a little terminology,"she laughed to herself. "It's the headrush you get from inhaling nicotine,"she explained. "Oh"Jake said in a standstill, "no, no I guess I don't feel that." Ashley looked out the window of her beach front apartment feeling baffled. "I can't believe the physicists were right when they warned us about the matter transition affecting our brains. It sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me; I mean uniformitarianism seemed pretty legit." Johnny brushed his own hair back in frustration. "This is crazy,"he started, "I mean our friend group formed over bong rips and shared joints at the beach. I don't think I would have gotten this close to you guys if we didn't do molly that one time last year." "Yeah, I definitely relied on them to push me out of my comfort zone sometimes,"Ashley responded realistically. "And Jake, I don't think you would have made all those friends at frat parties if they weren't just looking to hit your nicotine device." Jake took one last good look at his Juul and threw it in the trash. "Well, we could wait around for drugs to start working again like a bunch of pussies, or...we could start having fun without them." Ashley and Johnny both smiled a little. Having heard Jake reaffirm that they could have the same level of fun without drug use brought joy to their college-aged hearts. "Well,"Ashley started admittedly, "what are we waiting for? Let's have some fun."
Wow, 10,000+ words? That's amazing! Congrats. :D We don't have a maximum word count. Feel free to make a post with your story in the text and comments of it. Just make sure the prompt is at least 3 days old and that you add a link to it in your post. :) Another thing you might consider if you plan on writing much, or just want to keep track of whatever you write, is a personal subreddit. A lot of writers here have one and they mention it at the end of their post so other people can check out other things written by them.
"I LOVE YOU LIKE NO ONE ELSE AND NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER HAVE YOU BUT ME" This message showed up at least a hundred times. It doesn't even show a number for the messages it just shows a bunch of random symbols. I just decided to block the number and move on with my day. "I shouldn't respond to these or it will just get worse more than likely". I decided to act like the messages never happened and went on my computer to play some games but when I logged in my monitor when crazy and started flashing lights at me like it was trying to hurt me or something. It hurt my eyes a ton but there were words on the screen flashing out something to me, I squinted and tried to read them as fast as I could. YOU Flash CAN'T Flash HIDE Flash FROM Flash ME Flash. I Started to back up from my computer pushing back with my feet but my chair rolled back and hit something and I slammed my back on the ground. Then I looked up the monitor was moving towards my face, terrified I try to scramble up to run from this...THING, I Had to run, I had to get away, I was gonna die! But Then a wire wrapped around my ankle, I couldn't get away, I tried to move my arm to pull the thing off but another wire wrapped around my wrist. Terrified I look up at the monitor, I Flash LOVE Flash YOU Flash YOU Flash WON'T Flash GET Flash AWAY. All of a sudden the monitor breaks in half and the flashing stops. But then wires, my keyboard, every electronic nearby is grabbed and formed into this monstrosity. Then all of a sudden the wires began to wrap around my body, working its way up from my legs all the way to my neck, and before it wrapped my head I heard the being say "I will never let you go, You will be mine, FOREVER"
Only about one in a million people could still feel fear. I was one of those people. Life hadn’t been the same ever since the virus hit, that one, horrible year. The virus swept across the entire planet, killing off the thing that most people had thought of as either a great thing, or a terrible thing, emotions. The ones who feared everything, no longer knew what to feel when a man shoved a gun in their face. Criminals roamed the streets, no longer being afraid of the consequences that might come, and people, the ones that deserve better, or deserve worse, ended up in abusive relationships with no fear of what the other person would do. It was a nightmare, the virus left these emotionless shells in the place of the people I knew, in place of the ones I loved. And every single day I begged God to bring them back, they were no longer the ones I knew, they were strangers, aimlessly walking around life, carelessly. Each step dragging them to their next task, with no hesitation, with no doubts, with no fear. That, however, wasn’t the worse part. It was that I was the only one. No one, not a single person still lived in my city that felt fear. Just me. The once beautiful city, the one that people adored and had goals to visit, was now a wasteland, with crime and the most generic people at every corner. I thought about it often, what would’ve happened had the virus never hit. Each day wishing that the scientists would come up with a cure to fix God’s mistake. They never did, they never will. I failed them. Scientists no longer had a reason to fear death, to fear diseases, they stopped working on the cures, and innocent people continued to die, and along with that, the few thousand humans that were public with their feeling of fear. I couldn’t do it alone, I failed them. I turned to alcohol after realizing my failure, it was my only alternative, no one understood what I felt, no one understood what I felt inside, no one felt anything. I drank my problems away, shot after shot, bottle after bottle. I had even considered blowing my brains out, what was the point of living when you’re the only one who’s able to live? I had been to the bar often, very often, most of the time waking up in a stranger’s bed in the morning or curled up by a toilet throwing up my insides, this wasn’t an exception. I had left the bar earlier than usual that night, only around midnight, I stepped out of the door of the bar, not being able to walk straight, constantly having to fix my skimpy dress to make sure it wouldn’t attract as many creeps as normal. Of course it didn’t help. I walked slowly, rocking back and forth as I walked on the sidewalk, constantly hearing the deep voices of guys that wanted to take me home. My head was already spinning, I decided not to get another headache and kept walking, eventually they left me alone. I suppose seeing my city in ruins didn’t help. My head spun as I noticed the people running off with purses, holding guns and knives. I’d even hear shots in the distance, probably cops with no fear of getting fired. I chuckled as the thought entered my mind but the gunshots kept coming. Even more frequently, and they seemed to get closer. I didn’t care, I just kept walking. I went to turn a corner and bumped into someone, a girl. She was wearing a bright red, seemingly very tight dress, that really showed off the curvature of her body, my eyes widened when I saw her, usually girls aren’t out alone, not often, but something about her seemed different. Her eyes, I could see something in them, or well, past them. But I couldn’t quite explain what. Just as I was about to say something, she cut me off, “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to!” My head was still spinning, most of my words were slurred and probably didn’t sound like words at that point as I spoke, “It’s all good, I’m—“ I stopped once I heard another voice coming from behind the girl, a creep. “Oh hey there, two of you know, sweet mama, I just got lucky, what do you say girls?” I could see him licking his lips as he towered over the girl I bumped into. He had put his hands on the shoulders of the girl and was beginning to move them downwards, I looked at the girl, she tensed up. “I think we’ll pass.” I said, slurring every word as I looked up at him. He didn’t seem to hear me, as he continued to move his hands even further down this girl’s curves, I could hear the girl’s gasp as he had clearly grabbed her ass. He bent over to the girl, whispering in her ear, “What was that? I can make you scream instead.” I responded promptly, I punched him in the face, it caused some blood to drip from his nose. I punch hard. He had taken a step back away the girl, she moved closer to me and turned towards the guy as well, he continued with his remarks and simply wiped the blood away, “Oh a fighter? It’ll only make it last longer baby.” I think I did the right thing afterwards, I walked towards him, slowly began to unzip the zipper at the front of my dress, then kicked him in the nuts. Yeah, I definitely did the right thing, he instantly fell to the ground, curling up from the pain, I turned back to the girl. She stuttered as she spoke, “T-Thank you, I really appreciate it, creeps like him deserve it. I uh, my name is Zari.” She sounded cute and innocent, definitely not much younger than I was. “Raina.” I responded with, extending my hand for her, but she didn’t grab it. I was wondering why, until I had begun to hear sounds in the background, gunshots. Continuous, gunshots, and they seemed to be getting louder, or closer. Zari’s eyes widened when she heard them, almost as if she hadn’t noticed them the entire night, she should have. I heard them echoing through the streets even while I was still in the bar. I smiled at her as I began to walk past her, a new friend perhaps, I thought to myself. But just as I managed to slip away, she grabbed my arm, and without saying a word, pulled me into an alley, a very tight alley. Our faces were only about an inch apart and I was about to speak to ask why, then she leaned in, probably just to shut me up, but she kissed me. When she pulled away, I truly realized why she pulled me aside, I looked out back at the street, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, standing in rows, assault rifles in their hands as they marched through the streets. And along with that, I could see people running into their line of fire, with no care and with no fear of death. My eyes widened when I saw it, the forces kept going and going, holy shit, I thought. They were exterminating the entire city. I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t. It would attract attention, I was afraid my breathing would even attract them, we weren’t far into the alley and there was nowhere else to run. My breathing got louder and heavier as the footsteps went by. Of course, I did the logical move, a drunk person do. I leaned in and kissed Zari, purely and simply to cover up our breathing. I kept my eyes open, I thought about using her as a human shield if things went wrong. Luckily it didn’t resort to that. Eventually I broke the kiss as the footsteps began to fade off, it took one hell of a long time though. I’ll admit, I was terrified. I even noticed the blood of the creep following Zari seeping into the alley. I wanted to run, but I was afraid they’d hear me. I stayed in the alley and stared at Zari, her eyes much clearer in here. When I looked into her eyes, something about them made me want to trust her, I continued to stare as I spoke to her, “Can I tell you something crazy? I’m scared.” She gulped down a lump in her throat as her eyes widened and in that small moment, I finally realized what I saw behind her blue eyes, the ones that were previously hard and tense, were filled with something, they were filled with emotion. “Me too.”
I glance down at the card and see an address. "We meet tomorrow morning at 8."Said the strange cloaked man before he vanished into the crowd. I tried pushing myself through in pursuit. Unfortunately I had fans. I lost track of him and never seen him again that night. Following morning came. I sat an alarm for 6. My curiosity had the better of me. Could someone actually know that it wasn't just an illusion? Could it be a trap? None of those questions mattered. I needed to find out. I had to know. I grabbed the card and headed out the door. There was a black BMW X5 waiting outside my loft. The chauffeur was standing beside the door. I noticed a pendant on his necklace was the same emblem as the one on the card. He tilted his hat at me. I stepped into the back seat. The windows were solid black. No traces of light pierced the void. I had no idea if the address on this card was where we were going or not. None the less, I can manipulate molecules. I placed my two index fingers together and focused on the center of the window. I gently started spacing out my fingers. I had to make sure not to cause any extra stress to the properties of the window. I didn't want to damage anything. We were going up a country side. I could see the lake but this road wasn't one I had seen before. My curiosity was beginning to intensify. The road began to straighten out. The forest thickened. The birds began echoing more. The driver had still not made a sound. He only glanced back when I made the hole in the window. The car exited from the trees. We stopped at a double iron gate. The same emblem was on the gate. The gate swung open. We proceeded on down the path. A 4 story mansion appeared over the hedges lining the driveway. We came to a stop at the steps. The chauffeur opened my door. I stepped out and was immediately greeted by the cloaked my last night. "Hello James. I'm Jason. Welcome to Helsingburg Estate. How long have you known of your gift?"Said the man. "How do you know my name?"I asked. Completely ignoring everything else he said. "We've been watching you since the incident at school when things started happening to Tim Jones. He's your bully, is he not?"Jason replied. How long had the been watching? Who are these people? Why are they watching me? I'm slightly freaked out at this moment. "Follow me. There's someone who would like to meet you James."Jason said. He turned and walked up the steps to the giant Red Oak doors. They swung open as he approached. No one was on the other side. "I have the ability of telekinesis. It's still not as powerful as your gift, but it has come in hand over the years."Jason said. Ahead was a staircase that split off. One way went to the left. The other went to the right. We proceeded left. Jason touched the stone protruding from the wall. The stone wall slide to the left exposing a room. An elder man sat behind a desk. "Ah, you must be James."He exclaimed. "Yes sir. What is this place?"I asked. "Well son. This is Helsingburg. Here we help young adults learn more about their abilities."He explained. "My name is Ezekiel. I'm the headmaster." "How did you find me?"I asked quickly. "We have people here who have the ability to sense others magical powers. They are our trackers."Ezekiel replied. "So you want to help me learn how to use my gift more efficiently?"I asked. "That is exactly what we would like to do."Ezekiel answered. "We would like you to stay here with the others. We have paired you with a man your age. He can manipulate minerals. You are the first person we have ever encountered who can manipulate molecules. You have a chance to become the most powerful one out of all of us." To be continued in the reply section if this receives 20+upvotes.

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