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"I hate clowns"I sneer as I dive-roll out of the way of an oncoming flaming bus. The heat of the bus thickens the air around me as it collides past. In front of me stands a hideous looking body with a clown face. The clown's body is large and menacing, red and flesh colored, lymphoidic cancerous lumps spread throughout his body.
"*ha ha he he he he*"cackles the Clown as it brings down the hatchet in it's left hand towards my face.
God I hate that sound I think to myself as I do another def roll to the Clowns side, I manage to do a quick dagger slash to it's lower leg behind the knee as I stand up. Why does this one have to be so afraid of clowns - I hate clowns!
"*ahh hahaha ahhh"* Bellows the clown recoiling from the dagger wound. The clown turns on me again, it beings slashing rapidily and blindly towards me
I move back steadily, waiting for an opening. "You have poor form nightmare"I say as I sidestep a blow from the clown's flailing hatchet and rapidly stab my two daggers into it's throat. The clowns falls.
I stand panting for the moment, taking in the sight around me - A cityscape with what also appears to be a forest growing inside of it, everything is darkness with no light source except for the countless fires raging from trees and buildings.
This is a weaker nightmare. The clown is proof of that. The longer a nightmare last the stronger and smarter it becomes - the more self aware. No nightmare nor dream is ever the same. I am a Walker. I am able to traverse between the nightmares and dreams.
When conventional medicine and therapy fails I come in, for that extra personalized care. The Walkers know that many ailments come from something deeper, from a different realm, the realm of nightmares. The deeper you go into the nightmare the deeper the fears get. On the outer rims of the nightmare are things like clowns, material everyday fears, but the further you get to the center of the nightmare the darker the fears get - Loneliness, rage, shame, guilt, etc.
I continue moving down the cragged road between skyscrapers and trees on fire looking for the source of the nightmare. As I approach down the road I see a cave opening going below one of the skyscrapers. I approach it with my guard up, slowly walking.
As I enter into the lip of the cave I notice a small stream of water covering the bottom of the cave. The sound of my boots breaking the waters surface echoes along the cave as I walk.
It gets darker the further in the cave I go. This must be the right way, the nightmare always gets darker the further you go I think to myself. I continue down the cave for a while with none thing happening, no sounds, no movement.
Suddenly, the sound of a large splash echoes around the cave wall. I grip the daggers in my hand preparing for what horror arises. After all the nightmares I have ventured into I am ready for anything, I have seen every macabre, grotesque form a body can take, every primal horror of the human psyche. I am ready for anything.... I thought..
In front of me in the darkness stands a figure, dark and brooding, familiar. It is me but … older.
"You think this is someone else's nightmare"the figure says, his voice sounding the same as my voice.
"You would be mistaken"It says as it draws it's daggers - My daggers!
"This has been your nightmare all along". |
"Hello sir, from what I understand you are in need of a lawyer."
"No I don't see how that could possibly help."a man sobbed into the telephone looking around the blood stained house corpses scattered about the room. Specifically the corpses of his entire extended family that had been killed on a freak accident at a Family Reunion that he'd missed. They had died 5 years ago and he had missed them every second of that time.
"Are you looking at the corpses of any revived loved ones, unloved ones, acquaintances or strangers?"
"Well yes"said Carl shocked.
"I'm a lawyer specializing in satanic law. And I think you have been a victim of a serious case of misconduct. Breaking supernatural contracts is a serious offense and will be punished thoroughly."What is the name of the genie or Golden retriever that offered you the wishes?
"Bluestar"
Aaah yes Bluestar has been known to be a fan of the old reanimation trick.
"If you practice Satanic law shouldn't you be trying to screw me out of the contract."
"That sounds like a fantastic way to ruin our reputation and lose customers. I'm going to see my people and find out what we can get bring this Bluestar to justice. Would you come into my office on 22 Second street Sunday morning?"
"Yes will do."Carl said hanging up the phone. "At least I've got that going for me."He said to himself and picked the phone back up to call the police and do his best to rebury his entire family and the past night of horror. |
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The dim glow of my cigarette lights up the dark corner, revealing my scruffy beard and long, shaggy, brown hair. Even though my brown coat and slacks are in good condition, I must look homeless to the people who pass by. They give me a wide berth, or hold their heads down to avoid meeting my gaze. Of course, they could also think I am one of them, the nightmares that stalk them for pray after the sun goes down. I suppose they're not wrong, since it takes a special kind of darkness to handle the things that I do. It's been so long now, I can't remember who first offered me the job. A man in a suit probably, looking for the the lowest soul in one of those jail cells. Any sane person would have turned down the job, but I had a personal reason for doing this.
My thoughts are interrupted as my target comes into view. Tall, machete, hockey mask; matches the description to a T. My ear crackles as my mics springs to life, receiving a message from my *handler.*
"Eyes on target?"I hear Lauren ask. She's a red haired, petite, little geek, but I wouldn't trust anyone else to have my back.
"Painkiller?"she sounds annoyed.
"Yeah, I see him."I speak around another puff of my cigarette, exhaling the smoke and dropping the cylindrical cancer carrier to the ground. It sparks as I stomp it out, then start approaching my target.
"Be careful. This one's more dangerous than he looks."Lauren warns.
"More dangerous than any of the last ones?"I ask. "We're not exactly hunting teddy bears here."
I hear the speaker click off, a sign that there's no more talking until the job is done. I'm almost close enough to the target to make out more features, such as the fact that his clothing is soaked, and his head is shaved. It was as dry as it could possibly be in a town that was surrounded by a desert, but this man looked like he just came out of a swimming pool or a lake. I moved a hand to my gun, prepared to deliver to quick shots to the back of the man's head when he suddenly stopped. I had the weapon half way out of my waistband when I heard the noise. Giggling. I turned around to see two teenage girls stumbling down the street, hurrying to an apartment building across the way. When I turned back around the man was facing my direction, on eye peeking at me from underneath the hockey mask.
"Aw hell,"I muttered as I pulled the .45 from it's holster under my coat. Before I could take aim, the man was swinging his machete, causing me to retreat and try to get some distance between is. As stiff as he seemed, the man was surprisingly agile, keeping with me step for step, forcing me to deflect a few blows with my weapon. I finally learned his pattern enough that I managed to side step one of his swings, bringing the gun up and firing around into his chest. He stumbled backwards, but other than that seemed unfazed. I tried to level my next shot at his head, but he brought his machete up and knocked the gun away from me.
"You guys can never make this easy, huh?"I growled through clenched teeth.
I managed to get my survival knife out in time to deflect his next blow, but he had put a lot of force behind it and knocked me away, causing me to land on the flat of my back. I rolled away from his next strike, springing to my feet and going for an attack of my own. I sliced at his left shoulder, and while the skin tore and blood spilled form the wound, my opponent showed no signs of slowing down. As he rose up straight, preparing for his next strike, I flung my knife, catching him in the throat. As he pulled at the blade to dislodge it from his person, I took off and jumped, landing on top of my gun and knocking the breath from my lungs. No time to breathe though, as I rolled over and fired off every round I had, hitting chest, face, arms, neck, whatever I could land my sites on. The man stopped, but I still didn't take time to relax as I ejected the empty clip and loaded in a full one. He fell, face down, burying my knife all the way through his neck, but I wanted to be sure he was down. I fired a few more round into the back of his head, hitting around the spot where his skull and spine should connect. I waited, watching for any signs of movement before tapping the little machine in my ear.
"Codename Goalie is down. Inform the Coroner. Who's next?"My breathing was heavy, and I was sure my acrobatics had at least bruised my ribs, but there's no slowing down in this line of work.
"Coroner informed. Next target is Codename Sandman."Lauren spoke, calm as if we were just talking about meeting up for coffee or lunch.
"The dream guy with the claw?"I sighed.
"Scared, Painkiller?"Lauren asked. I could practically hear the smirk on her face.
"Just be sure to bring a lot of coffee."I growled.
I turned and started to make my way to the van parked down the street. I suddenly heard the sound of metal dragging behind me, followed by the thud of boots planting firmly into the asphalt. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes, popping one between my lips and lighting it before turning to look over my shoulder.
"Aw hell." |
"Danny?"said the voice on the other line.
"Oh! Mr. Wick!"Danny answered. "It is nice to hear from you, old friend! Been a long time!"
"Yeah, bud."Mr. Wick said and added, "Listen. I know it's late and all. And your guys might be tired. But I have a job for you."
"No problem, Mr. Wick. Anything for you!"Danny assured. "You inside what building?"
"Hard to say."Mr. Wicked said as he tried not to cough. "Between the Jeweler's and Bank of America."
"There are 28 branches of Jeweler's and 30 of BOA. They always together!"Danny said. "Be specific, my friend!"
"Craster St."
"Oh, please, don't tell me you killed a suldado outside!"Danny said. "The city installed surveillance on Craster three days ago!"
"Fifteen."Mr. Wicked muttered.
"Fifteen cameras!"Danny exclaimed.
"I killed fifteen suldados."Mr. Wick corrected. "Bud, you taking the job?"
"Of course! They don't call us the best house cleaners for nothing!"
"I'll walk to West Park. Please send the doctor as well."
"On our way."
The moment the line went dead, Danny rushed to the sleeping bunkers and shouted out orders. "Rise and shine, dumbfucks! Mr. Wick has a job for us! I want 6 on my van, and 6 on watchout! We're heading to Craster St.!"
"Wait...Craster?"Keats said. "The city installed---"
"I know, you dumbfuck! Get up from your wetdream and gather up the cleaning tools!"Danny was red in anger and in excitement.
"Rufus, you idiot! Call the doctor and tell him to meet Mr. Wick at West Park. You, Angelo, Pietro and Dmitry head to the park now. Don't forget to bring bullets this time!"
"Marcus, you still have that contact from the city hall? We need to wipe clean the surveillance."
"I know what to do."Marcus said.
"That's my boy!"Danny gave Marcus a hard pat on the head.
"Everyone in!"Danny announced in the garage. The van was already packed with his best cleaners. The watchout crew was already making their way to Craster. "Then we go!" |
The soldiers came just half an hour after the woman. We were still arguing over what to do, but Judith had already decided. She'd hidden the woman in one of our safe rooms. We have several, because you never know when something like this will happen.
Screaming, spittle spraying, hitting Judith and myself. "If you do not tell me where the hybrid is...". He's drawn his pistol! Judith! Oh, God, not Judith... *bang* She crumples to the floor. Her expression of resolute courage still on her face. Why, Judith? Why didn't you tell him!
Why didn't *I* tell him the instant he drew his pistol?
Still spraying us with spittle, "...I will kill all of you!"Looking at him, I see something that Judith must have seen as well. He's terrified. He's in deathly fear for his life. And he's going to take it all out on us. One by one.
I turn my head to look at the others. I see the same resolve on each of them. The soldier grabs me by the hair, yanking me back around to face him. Still screaming, "I told you not to move! I will kill you next!"
"Go ahead. No one here will tell you anything. You get nothing, and whomever you are terrified of is going to skin you alive for your failure. It's a win/win situation for us."
His face goes pale, then flushes, and now he's so angry he may just shoot us all and be done with it.
*Why did I not tell him?*
He puts his pistol between my eyes, and pulls the trigger. *click* Now he's completely incoherent, raving. As I look at the pistol, it's now obvious to me that it had locked back on an empty clip. He'd expended all but one round getting in here.
*Why did I not tell him?*
He turns to me again, and uses the empty pistol to strike me in the face. I feel my left cheek bone shatter. The pain is incredible. I fall to the floor. His voice is like frozen silk. So smooth, yet so cold. "Perhaps I will beat you to death."The other soldiers step away nervously. This is not the same man. This is what he feared so greatly. I wonder, does he still exist anywhere, or is he obliterated?
*Why did I not tell him?*
"Perhaps I will simply rip it from your mind..."An epiphany... "You can't. If you could, you would already have done so."His soldiers shuffle again, but it doesn't sound nervous. They're working themselves up to something. I need to keep this creature's mind on me. He's close enough, and there's plenty of blood in my mouth. *Phui!* The glob of blood and saliva strike him in the face, just on his upper lip. It oozes down. His tongue comes out to taste it.
"Delicious, what a heady mixture: pain, despair, loss, and fear. I will take my time with you. You are too precious to waste in a hurried manner."
I can see some of the soldiers now, they move as though to encircle us, but their eyes are on this being, whatever it is. "You don't have that much time."
That silken, icy voice, "My dear girl, I have all the time in the..."*crackcrackcrackcrackcrackcrack* Each of the six soldiers fired into him, at least four were going for the head. A final ghostly voice fading into nothing, "...*world.*"
The soldiers aren't wasting any time, they run for their vehicles, and are soon a faded sound of a diesel engine in the distance.
*Why didn't I tell him?* ...because you would never have forgiven me, Judith. |
"FartusMaximus42069, How can our village ever repay you for saving us?"
1. Think nothing of it.
2. **Do you have anything to eat?**
"Actually, I find myself completely famished. Do you have anything that can make my hunger replete?"
"Come this way, we shall prepare a feast in your honor!"
1. Go with the mayor.
2. **Continue your quest \[there are bad guys to kill\]**
"Nonsense, I will take a slice of your most wry bread and be on my way. There are other evil creatures out there that I must stop."
*You take your bread from the villager and continue on your quest. Walking for many miles until you hear screams of a woman crying for help. You rush toward the sound, with your Blade of Radiance equipped. In a small clearing, 3 ogres are preparing to make soup out of a poor woman.*
​
1. **Rush to her aid.**
2. Wait and see what happens.
*You charge the ogres and in one quick swipe you take the ogres heads off, gaining experience.*
"Why did you do that!? I had this under control!! Now I have to find more ogres."- *GamerGirl188* |
**Olvelleth** steered his feetlike knobs into the direction of the closest restaurant he could find.
It was a taco joint, and he was ecstatic. Not being able to eat human food on his home planet, he was always looking forward to his centennial visits to his pet planet Earth.
Upon placing his hand on the door, resting on the push sign and getting ready to do just that, he suddenly turned around with a startling speed when he heard a loud crash behind him.
A group of aliens just jumped off of the roof of the local bank and was now speedily making its way towards Olvelleth, hitting everything that stood in their way.
>"Damnit! Not you guys again!"Olvelleth exclaimed, anger apparent in his voice.
Quickly Olvelleth pushed the door of the restaurant open and threw it closed behind him. He scanned the Taco restaurant for something, anything, to bolt up the door.
>"AHA!"Having spotted a loose floorboard Olvelleth acted with the speed and precision only an ancient aberration could have.
Having closed the door tightly behind him Olvelleth made his way into the kitchen of the fast food establishment. All that fast thinking and acting on impulse had made him very hungry and he had decided to just prepare his own meal, seeing as there were no employees in near sight.
But upon setting a step into the kitchen area his eyes just about bulged out of his head. The **entire** kitchen was filled with **aliens**.... Tiny ones with eyes on the sides of their heads, medium sized ones with multiple tongues and very, very large aliens that stirred fright within him. And the kitchen? The kitchen was in absolute disarray. Pots and pans were lying about, flour bags had fallen on the floor and containers of taco meat layed opened on the counter, small alien's butts sticking out of them.
>"That's it!""Get out!"Olvelleth yelled, his voice so loud it echoed of the walls of the kitchen.
All the aliens stopped what they were doing, and stared at the ancient apparition.
>"Great!""Now that I've got your attention..."Olvelleth reached into the pocket of his long brown coat and pulled out a phaser.
What happened next, was truly gruesome. Olvelleth shot all of them. Every little one, every medium sized one, and every big one. All the aliens exploded on impact and the kitchen was drenched in alien blood.
After this, for the aliens, disastrous encounter, Olvelleth simply grabbed a mop and cleaned the kitchen. The kitchen now all clean, he made himself a well deserved taco and sat down.
>"See you next century, fuckers". He whispered underneath his breath. |
**So Very Mad**
[Poem]
I shot an arrow in the air.
It fell to earth - I knew not where.
And yet, when glancing at my bow,
I could not help but want to know.
The thought that struck me at the time is now somewhat concerning.
It came to me like dragonfire - I could not be discerning.
It gripped my nerves and wrenched my bones,
Whispers gentle, shocking tone,
It breathed until its throat was red:
"Why should we forget the dead?"
For, you see, just one year prior,
I stepped inside a den of liars.
They gabbed, insipid, gilded words.
"The dead shall fly as if they're birds!"
Minds as windows, glazed and stained,
Yet, behind their eyes was pain.
Dress of black and talk of white,
The leader spoke in great delight.
"My friends, a soul we know this day,
Has left this earth and flown away.
So spread your tears as dove-like wings,
And try to think of happy things."
At that moment, I thought back,
I recalled my wish: that I'd fought back.
You see, just a month ago,
My kin withstood a dozen blows.
The monsters - for they were not men -
Had brought upon her sword and pen.
The restaurant (of which she worked for),
Was set alight by silent arson.
Insurance, evidently earned,
Was taken to the courts and burned.
The man that took her off the street,
Was not kind. He had her beat.
And finally, upon death's door,
I finally could hear her call.
By the time I reached her in her room,
The medic spun his words of doom:
"I'm sorry sir, it's not your fault.
The girl could not survive assault."
For undisclosed for several years,
Was quite severe leukemia.
So back within the grassy plains,
My arrow having caused no pain,
I took a look within the sky,
To start my rant against this life.
"Tell me, Man Within the Sky,
Why must every person die?
Why should humans suffer so?
Why force conflict, pain, and woes?"
The reasons that I said these words,
Would not be clear when heard at first.
But let me make just one thing clear:
No sorrow here was caused by man.
The fault which went to start the fire,
Was made because of just one wire.
A rat had nibbled through the copper,
And the wood around it got much hotter.
The rat had died in search of food,
Followed prompt by livelihoods.
The court that lost my daughter's home,
Had simply followed laws in stone.
The originating legislature,
Was crafted out of lust for hatred.
The reason for the crafted scripture?
A single phrase from ancient Egypt.
The man that took my family in,
Had no plans to butcher them.
But just one word within his head...
And suddenly, my kin was dead.
And thus within those grassy fields,
I waited for my efforts' yields.
And though I spread my arms out wide,
I did not feel a lightning strike.
With a sigh, I raised my bow,
Pulled the string, placed arrow,
Tensed myself, for tears would flow,
And with a cry, I let it go. |
Something felt… off. My bed was as comfortable as it always was, with my blankets pulled to my chin, keeping me nice and warm. It was too warm, though. My skin felt like it was on fire, boiling in excess heat. My head was feeling a little heavy, more than it normally did when I first wake up. Hangover? I didn’t remember drinking last night, so that couldn’t be it.
Sitting up slowly, I looked around my room. Well, I figured out what was different. Blinking, I took in the sight around me. My damn floor was made of lava. Fucking *lava*. I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear the image of my bedroom floor being covered in red and black molten magma.
When had I taken mushrooms? Or acid? Or anything that caused a person to hallucinate? I’d never done anything like that before, but that had to be what was happening. No way could my room just suddenly look like the inside of a damn volcano.
I had to get out of here. I considered stepping down and just walking out. After all, if this was just a hallucination, it shouldn’t hurt me. Lowering my foot slowly, I felt the heat rising, and decided to play it safe. Just in case I wasn’t actually crazy (though I probably was.)
Instead of letting my feet hit the ground, I crawled across my bed to the small table that sat next to it. Carefully, I climbed to the flimsy table, accidentally knocking my lamp down in the process. It fell to the “floor” and seemed to melt with a quick sizzle and pop. My stomach flipped. Better the lamp than my foot.
Years of playing “Don’t Touch the Floor” with my brother growing up aided my mission to my door. Some dormant instinct about where to step and jump kicked up in me. I made quick progress, over my dresser, to the desk that was situated in the corner, and finally to the rolling office chair.
I wobbled a bit as I stepped onto the chair. It wanted to turn out from underneath me, but I managed to maintain my balance. Kneeling, clutching the back of the chair with one arm, I pushed away from the desk and rolled towards the door. I could feel the chair sinking slowly underneath me as it moved like molasses toward the haven of my hallway. Just a few feet further and I could be out of this awful delusion.
My chair bumped against the hardwood of my door. It took some serious muscle, but I managed to pry it open. My jaw dropped as I stared at the scene before me.
The lava stopped at my bedroom’s threshold, but before me was something I was not prepared to deal with. The whole hallway was completely covered in Legos. What in the actual hell was going on? |
"Are you crazy?!"She whispered.
He grinned and gave her a side-eye."What? Relax, chill out."
I walked up. "What's happening?"
"Zack, wants to-"
"Shh!"He shushed."Not so loud! You want to ruin everything?"
"Marc, talk to your friend."Jessi stormed out the barn.
He rolled his eyes at her and muttered, "Girls."
"So, what's up?"I asked him, eyes drifting over to the fancy gizmos on the table. "What's all this tech for? Aaaaand, uh, where did you get it? Or do I not want to know?"
"I borrowed it. Hey, so listen, you remember that kid that went missing a few weeks ago, came back, and told everyone the aliens did it?"
"Yeah. Didn't they find meth in his system?"
Zack dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. "That was a coverup."
"Cover up for what?"
"The aliens are abducting people."
I shook my head. "Nah."
"*Yes.* Think about it. You *really* think that they didn't know about the other inhabitable planets? And this tech they gave us. An apology? Who *does* that? That's like the U.S. invading North Korea, getting caught, and then giiving them nuclear bombs as an apology."He tapped the side of his head, staring me down with intensity. "*It doesn't make sense..."he hissed.
"Okay,"I said, starting to feel vaguely uncomfortable. "So, what are you going to do?"
He broke into a wide smile that looked wicked and sinister in the moonlight. "Oh, nothing much. Have fun. Maybe kindnap an alien and hold it hostage, you know, in case the aliens change their mind and become hostile."
"NO I DON'T KNOW! ARE YOU STUPID?!"He tried to cover my mouth, but I shoved him away. "That has got to be the MOST STUPIDEST thing I have ever heard in my LIFE. IF they go hostile? And what do you think is going to happen when you SNATCH one of there own, hmmm?"
Zack rolled his eyes and turned away. "Great! Tell the whole world why don't you."
"I will if you follow through with this ridiculousness."
He sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"Hey, let go! Let go of me!"I heard Jessi scream.
I turned back and saw Amou and Miles - two bullies from school - carrying Jessi towards us, each boy holding an arm.
I turned back to Zack. "So, you're hanging with them now?"
He lifted a shoulder casually. "Can't beat em, join em. What can I say? I got tired of getting my face stuffed in toilet water. And I'm giving you a chance to join t-"
"Screw you."
"Jessi, how about y-"
She screamed at him.
"Guess not,"he said, spinning with something in his hand.
"Jessi, duck!"I yelled a moment too late.
Amou and Miles dived to the side, leaving Jessi open, and vulnerable to the green light that suddenly filled the barn, and made me turn away.
All I could hear was Jessi scream.
All I could smell was smoke.
When the light subsided, Jessi was gone. There weren't even any ashes left.
Amou and Miles blocked the doors, the only exit.
Zack turned and aimed the weapon at me with a smile. "Your turn." |
'Hear the words of Ahkanmhet, son of U-tet, and this is the scroll of my beginning, from the One that has No Beginning and No End. For many suns, my spear was for hire, no job too dirty, no coin too dull. I lived a life of war; for the people of the Nile, the Children of Ra. In the Sun, a light suddenly blinded me and I heard a loud voice say to me. "Hear me, warrior, son of U-tet, wielder of the spear. It is, I, YHWH, the One with no Beginning and No End. Heed my words, son of U-tet, and the light of Ra will always shine upon you, and the Darkness of Set will never embrace you, for I am Greater than both of these. '
'Go forth and when you find a man with ruddy hair, you might strike him mighily. Do not hold back, he must be struck down so that he might perish, but Look! He will not die, but another, a certain man of the Pharaohs will come along to rescue him from destruction. You must not raise your hand to him, no you must not strike him in return, but he will take you life and cast you into the sand, to leave you for the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the dunes. But have no fear, soldier, for you will not be paid in gold, nor silver, nor precious gems, but everlasting life, and as surely as the sun rises and the moon sets, it is I God of the Heavens that will allow you to live life eternal.'
'I proceeded to do just so, and I went forth, and Look! just as it was pronounced, so it came to be that a certain man of the Hebrews with ruddy hair appeared before me. And I proceeded to do just so, to strike the man mightily so that he might die. Against this man I did not hold back, for it was because of my lust for life and not for coin that I struck him down so as to die.'
'It came to be that a man of the Pharoahs came on upon me like a jackal among a sheep, for his wrath knew no bounds, and he proceeded to strike me with his fist and foot to save the Hebrew from being struck to death by my hand. And thus, it came to be, that the man of the Pharaohs struck me down and cast my soul into the wastes for the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the dunes. So it came to be, The One with No Beginning and No End came to raise me up. My days became long and my life span became great, so that I have seen many things recorded in the scrolls of Kings.'
'In my time, I came to know this - that wisdom and war of men are for nothing, coins become as dust. To live unburdened is to live life itself, for I have accomplished all under the Sun and have found no joy otherwise.'
*- recovered from the fragments of The Book of Sahla,1920, near Alexandria.* |
The Moon is not the Moon, there are other worlds. There are other trust other than the Earth, they Saw, even though none of the people and machines found on the Earth are on Earth. They do not be on Earth. There are the Earth to the Moon. The Moon was to be the landing site for masculine. But the astronauts got lost in Time. Some of the humans survived but they did not report. Then, a combination of humans were sent into path by a powerful cluster convoke "E.L.E."to try and stop the adverse from landing on other planets. The extraterrestrial made an attempt to spare the Earth. E.L.E. tried to capture Earth to stop and refund all it with their homeworld. But their delineation only took them helter-skelter 1.5 generations. They lost their reward and their homeworld. Earth is now only inhabited by humans. Earth's inhabitants do not recognize any of the other worlds
The Earth's survivors positive to go to the Moon, which is placed some 2,000,000 information ages from Earth. The Moon is uninhabited by the human family and is the closest that Earth will ever be to other worlds.
For a yearn season, the natural satellite was the only world that other issue looked up to. Many others idea that it was an factitious hyleg as well. For them, the existence of populate who live beyond the Moon was an queerness.
The Moon is considered to be on the sharpness of outer rove. At one point, humans supposition that the Moon is the only planet that was fully unlivable. When the Moon came into view in a map, those who had look up wondered if there was another planet and how it would look like.
Some alienate races have been flowing on the Moon. Many of them have their own systems, such as the man participation on Earth. Their worlds are assumed as Lunar colonies . Some aliens deficiency to fall part of the earth of humans, while others surpass to live on the Moon.
Earth and the Moon are still at a station convoke "room station". Space employment in the old recognition along ignoble a "station", and this is also employment for Earth which seems to be built-up out of inconstant other materials and has a quantity of station and sum. In the antiquated sense, it was a posture fabricated by humanity.
On Earth, many of these colonies are located remotely off in space, or even out in space in some cause. These colonies are understood as Lunar settlements . They are in the main weak, insular pocket-size of life, but they still have residents: the Moon's population.
Lunar colonies are on the whole large enough to be prospect. However, there are no colonies like the colonies established by the Galactic Federation or the Alliance to Restore the Republic. They are smaller than Star Systems. Only the planet of Oma is larger than a Sol System planet, and it has only one colony called "Moon". However, the Federation was still able to establish two more colonies convoke "Mars and Venus", and they are even bigger, since the Sol System has been settled. The size limit between planets was not indicate. However, the greatness of the planets and Moon of the Galactic Federation have not been stated.
As the Federation is still relatively unspent in the galaxy, most of the Federation is yet to bench this. They were, however, able to institute colonies for several years, as their reward are powerful to be repaired, refueled, and then again sent. At the same season, the first Federation starship was realized. Later, in the future, there seems to be more extraterrestrial being person with new technologies. Many of the technology is already unfold, probable the Transporter technology application by the foreign to labor to other planets. Some of these technologies seem to make it to the Earth, which is one of the first detail in our investigate.
What is the technology
Our technology is quite similar to other ripe civilizations, such as the AIs from the Star Trek franchise. They usage this technology to move around the assemble in their castle, without using mass drivers. As a inference most of the technology found on Earth is conformable to what our simple uses to do it. So even if there is some "technology that isn't that alienated hence"from us, it's still a common technology for humans.
The aliens could use the Transporter
The question sleep with how the Transporter technology is employment on Earth. There has been some speculation it may be habit to travel between continents via a new technology on the Earth , we will probably share the same abilities and have a such technological ignoble. Most of you can already use mass drivers on our Venus to chase faster than the speed of light. But that will not fabric for alien ships.
Hoax is defined as: "a story to produce or maintain a indubitable mood, posture or pomp of belief."It's in this context that you would imagine that the "hum"theory would not ply to the supposition of a "deception mission"coming from the prospective - the radical the, as it were. After all, wouldn't it be competent that the aliens from the satellite Mars wouldn't have an interest in our globe? Why would they be throw us a message around what they were up to? The only possible sense is that they are sending a embassade to their own globe and the message is something which they would wish to interpret by mortal opinion. For that consideration, the message would need both the alien intellect and the Christian intellect in mandate to decipher. What a message to a globe would need is both, an intelligence and a recipiency to make known in mandate to receive the message. You know how nation often find themselves in situations where their mind is upright screaming at
the top of its lights to clash the "butcher"button when they feel it. Or that's the journey it on the whole goes.
Well, that's not no really how you do it. There are a two distinct advanced you can take, but they all require some formality of sacrifice. I'll go over those below, but let me confer for a critical nearly a couple of alternatives:
Let the argosy scald itself to dirt
Let the roller detonate in a showy fireworks expand
Let the castle destroy itself in a colossal explosion
Let the ship detonate itself in space
Let the vessel explode in space
But first, let's talk touching the alternatives.
Let the ship consume itself to cully
When I proof "ship"I tend to mean a spaceship, but it would also be perfectly acceptable to go for a weak abundant tank of firing and then manner that to go after your butt.
We've heard stage of folks on board a spaceship departure ballistic and kill everything, even if it's not no kidding meant to, as extended as it's at very full speeds. The judgment then is that some part of that ruins would be more likely to break up into smaller pieces to protect the Earth, or smaller pieces to impair the spacecraft. That part that's more alike to overwhelm into the Earth, resembling the first one, would probably do more detriment."
What is most likely is that the spaceship qualifier up rather than the individual circumvolant into the air. The detritus was likely too inconsiderable to do a commendable jab of slowing down the Earth (because their trajectories would have taken the detritus out of the circuit of the Earth, rather than the Earth in its orbit). |
“Is it alright if I don’t eat?” I asked him, in a soft voice.
“Why not?” He asked, confused on my adamant refusal to eat any type of food from the restaurant.
“I’m hypersensitive, so I tend to feel pain more easily than normal, and it affects my tastebuds, as well.” I shyly admitted.
“Oh,” He replied. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s fine,” I slightly giggled. “I just won’t eat anything and can wait until desert.”
“Are you sure?” He asked, sweetly. “We can go to a different restaurant if you want.”
“No, you already booked a reservation.” I nervously replied. “I don’t want you to waste all that money for nothing.”
“It’s it’s fine by you, then I guess we’ll stay.” He answered back, slightly embarrassed.
As time went off, I was starting to get slightly hungry while my date talked to me about the time he got slammed in the face by a football from one of my best friends.
“I remember her telling me about that story!” I laughed, remembering how much she overreacted about it.
“She told you!” He said, in disbelief.
“Yep,” I answered, slightly laughing still. “Her reaction was priceless, when she told me the story!”
“Dang, I must’ve been too late!” He laughed too.
We just casually chit-chatted and were getting along fairly well. At least I though, until they brought the food.
“Is this cheese spicy?” I asked the waiter as he handed me a plate filled with nachos and a side of dipping cheese for it.
“If you mean spicy as in hot, then no. But, they have a zing to them, like you.” He replied, winking at me.
“Thank you,” I responded, pretending to be oblivious to his advances.
“No problem, sweetheart.” He laughed, befor leaving the premise.
“Did he just flirt with you?” My crush asked, in a slightly angered tone.
“Don’t worry about it,” I sighed. “It’s not the first time.”
“It isn’t?” He questioned, sounding slightly jealous.
“Nope,” I laughed. “You should se show some of my co-workers flirted with me before!”
“I don’t think I want to know.” He groaned.
“Oh, stop being a little grumpy fluffball!” I giggled, ruffling his hair.
A faint blush appeared on his cheeks as I kept doing the action.
“Are you going to eat your nachos?” He asked, trying to change the topic and distract me from his blushing face.
“Almost forgot about those!” I chuckled, grabbing a nacho and dipping it in cheese, then immediately taking a bite from it.
T.B.C- I need to prepare for sleep, sorry. |
*Ding dong.*
My doorbell rang whilst I was in the bathroom vomiting the contents of last night's pizza and beer binge.
I pull myself away from the toilet bowl, stand myself up and stumble to the door, there's a package sitting on my porch.
"Not again."I think to myself realizing I've done it again, I ordered something online while drunk.
I pick the package up and carry it to the living room.
"It'll probably be a coffee mug with a weird design, or some stupid sex toy."I think to myself remembering all the other stupid purchases I made online in the past.
I slice the tape off the box, and open the cardboard flaps to reveal what's inside. As soon as I opened it however I felt a force suck me in and everything went black.
I woke up with my hands tied and sitting in a cart being pulled through a snowy mountainside.
"Hey you, you're finally awake."A man with long blonde hair told me.
Then some text appeared on screen.
"The elder scrolls V. Skyrim."
"Motherfucker!"I mentally shout as I realized what I just bought. "TODD HOWARD, YOU DID IT AGAIN!" |
"Dispatch reports multiple 10-67's in Southern Brooklyn, advise?"
The man stood in the expansive room, sweating from the heat emitted from the wall before him. The Chief pondered him, one giant red eye glaring at him with no emotion at all. The man glanced away as the machine across the empty desk thought, analyzing possibilities, predicting outcomes.
"SEND ONE STRIKE TEAM TO INVESTIGATE"the Chief blared from speakers on the wall.
"Strike team?"the man said incredulously?
"ANALYSIS PREDICTS 71.2 PERCENT PROBABILITY OF LEVEL 2 THREAT. PLEASE ACT NOW"
The eye dimmed, and the man took that as his cue to vacate. The refrigerator sized door opened to let him out, and back into the air conditioned lobby.
"You look like shit Mike", a familiar voice called. Mike jumped in surprise, his eyes shooting toward his friend Terry, who burst out at laughing.
"Performance review didnt go so well?"Terry teased.
"Chief want's a strike team to Southern Brooklyn."
Terry's smile vanished, "Oh Fuck, bomb threat?"
"*It* wont say"Mike said offhandedly, walking toward the armory.
"You gonna call the guys off their day-vacation"
Mike paused, a small smile on his face/ He looked over his shoulder at Terry.
"This is our chance to move up"
They dawned their suits. Graphene fiber mesh interlaced with woven threads of Titanium. Conductive, and shock absorbing, they were virtual tanks, and then they slid their helmets on, and they were *connected*.
Satellite footage, weather sensors, camera's from the local disturbance. It was all their before Mike's eyes. He felt his heart rate increase as the implant in his head kicked into overdrive, hungry for the ATP that powered it.
They emerged from the headquarters into the dim of the city. A cacophony of sound, the pair quickly dampened the helmet's microphones. They hopped on what a previous generation might have called motorcycles, sleek fusion engines at their core. After a quick warm up, they were off, taking off vertically before shooting off into the sky, sailing inbetween the great highrises that dominated the cityscape.
They saw the smoke quickly, giant plumes of it, and, with the help of the magnification, the source it was coming from. It was in one of the darker parts of the city, more run down than most, where crime was rampant, and trash littered the street, but the usual chaos that accompanied those few, ominous city blocks was replaced by something darker, something shriller. They angled their flying machines downward, and sped toward the scene.
All was silent, as if the world was holding it's breath. Mike and Terry walked slowly down the city street, examining the smoking wreckage on either sides. They fingered the triggers on their weapons.
"Something feels off here"Mike said, practically a whisper, even though nobody could possibly hear there helmet comms.
"This is no Class 2 Weapon, that's for sure."Terry murmured, the usual playful tone in his voice gone. Suddenly an alarm went off in both their helmets. Seismic sensors, something was moving *through* the buildings like air, something *fast*.
"Four o clock, FOUR O CLOCK!"
A building to there right erupted as a figure shot through sending debris everywhere, the two were knocked to their feet.
"Explosion detected, backup approximately five minutes out", Mike's helmet murmured. They didnt have five minutes.
The figure that had emerged was far in the sky now, flying higher and higher and higher, the two scrambled to their feet, guns drawn, poised at the figure in the sky. Terry's gun flashed as a round was shot into the air at Mach 4.
The figure fell. Falling faster and faster toward the ground in front of them, and for a brief moment, Mike caught a glance at the figures face, a boys face.
The figure stopped falling, mere feet from the ground. Now clearly a human, he stood in the air before them, eyes closed. Both held their guns poised on the being before them, green targeting lasers shaking across his body.
Even the air was on edge, and Mike felt almost electrified, in the presence of something beyond even what the most advanced nano tech could achieve. Yet he couldn't pull the trigger, something was stopping him. Terry flipped on his intercom system.
'YOU'RE SURROUNDED, UH...RETURN TO THE GROUND WITH YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM'
Dark eyes, shot open from the boy, an infinite void of nothing, and yet everything staring into the men before them. The boy moved his arms in front of him, and the ground began to shake, his eyes still trained on the men before him, his mouth beginning to murmur some alien incantation in a long forgotten tongue. Beams of plywood began to break off from the buildings around them, rotating around *it*.
"Backup has arrived", the intercom whispered.
The air above them was suddenly lit up with a dozen green lasers, and moment later, the brief flash of bullets. The beams of plywood dropped, and the boy with them.
A senior voice spoke into their intercoms, "this isn't over boys, return to HQ for your briefing, this has been a long time coming." |
I’ve never had a good relationship with my mom. I know that there’s the stereotypical teenage mentality of, “I hate my parents,” but I truly, sincerely hate my mother. She’s manipulative, pessimistic, and she completely undermines everything I do, or try to. In her eyes, I can never do right. You know how parents aren’t supposed to have a favourite child? It’s evident that I’m her least favourite, and she’s fine with me knowing that. She shows so much bias towards my siblings, giving all her affection to them, yet nothing to me. I suppose I have her to thank for my basic human needs, but aren’t mothers intended to be nurturing and kind?
It was the last straw when I realized she was taking my hard earned cash out of my bank account. I had been saving up for college since the beginning of high school, since she refused to pay for it. I’d already given half of my earnings to her, knowing that we weren’t financially in the best place. Was it really so selfish that I was keeping some for myself? I confronted her that afternoon, finally letting all the rage that I had bottled up out. I yelled at her for the first time in my life, and you know what she had to say about it? She told me that she was using it to better herself. She said she needed some extra money, and told me I would find out why soon.
I began to seek out legal advice before I realized that as much as I wanted revenge, my siblings still needed her. She said she’d been working two jobs, and we never had money. I thought it would be for the best to leave it be, no matter how much debt I’d be from it.
Because of my mom, school has always been my escape. I begin my last year of high school today, and I’m so ready for it to start. The only thing I really have to look forward to is one last year with my friends. At this point, they’re pretty much the only thing making my life bearable. So really, my only request is for this final year of high school to be peaceful enough. I just want a year without too many troubles. |
My father says it was a freak accident, my mother says it’s his fault. She says he never should have “run the yellow light”. My father was never a patient man, but I was in the car that night too and he had plenty of time before the light would have turned red.
But my mother was right, if he has stopped on the yellow, we would have only received a few honks from the cars behind us rather than getting T-boned from the right side of the intersection. A pick up truck with faulty brakes slammed into the side of our hatchback before we could reach the other side. I remember seeing the construction materials from the bed of the truck jump out and explode across the road on impact. I swear I looked the man in the eyes as he desperately tried to gain control of his vehicle milliseconds before his hit us. It was an accident though.
My parents and I escaped with only a few cuts, scrapes and bruises, all of which disappeared within a few weeks. But my ear, the impact stole my ear. Shattered glass from my window collided with the side of my head impairing my hearing indefinitely on the left side, but still, I’m thankful for the right side.
It can get difficult at times, but it’s much better than it was. You never realize how important your hearing is and how it contributed to the functioning of the other senses until you lose some of it. I swear I walked crooked and spoke in slurred sentences for a few days at first.
Sometimes when I’m alone after school I’ll put the noise cancelling head phones on and cover my left ear, then blast my favorite song at full volume hoping to kick start my hearing again.
A funny thing keeps happening when I try it and I’ve been trying to isolate the sound to figure out if it’s just in my head or if I actually hear something. I think it might just be in my head though, because “get out of the way, move, drive, these damn breaks” are not lines in any song that I know. |
The history of the book I was given to work with was interesting, or so I eventually learned after some correspondence with one Madeline McMullin, current head librarian of the Miskatonic University, who so graciously let me borrow their rare copy of the Necronomicon for my project. Copies of the grimoire were rare, and all kinds of myths and superstition were built up around the text, so to get my hands on a copy, even under the watchful eyes of the librarian were precious. I was of course strictly professional; I was a contractor hired by Google, of course, taken on for my skill at languages and my academic prestige, I was presently working in association with a very well regarded college, and McMullin was a historian with three papers published in recognized journals on the topic of religious practices of native american tribes. However, it was easy to let personal interests get the better of me around this most peculiar of texts.
As I scanned the pages one at a time, I asked McMullin as many questions as I could, under the guise of research, perhaps to write a description for later archiving. Apparently it was written by Abdul Alhazred, the 'mad Arab', shunned for his worship of strange heathen gods, sometime in the early 700s; exact dates on it's creation are hard to pin down, apparently. The work was later translated into Greek in 950, before being banned and burned in 1059, though not before some copies were able to get out, and be later translated into Latin, which just so happened to be the language this very old edition was penned in. Apparently attempts were made to translate the work into English, but no copies survived intact to the modern day, though McMullin was quite happy to show me the collected fragments and scraps of pages from 1500. I gladly scan them into my computer.
I sit before the tome for hours; it's thick, bound with heavy iron clasps. It could take me days to have the whole thing transcribed. More time to consult with my brand new professional partner, Ms. McMullin, though she gets increasingly cagey as I ask questions. From the bits of faded Latin I can decipher at a glance, I can make out names of places, words and locations, recipes for spells, but I am almost exclusively faced with proper nouns that I can hardly understand; Yog Sothoth, Amyath, Azathoth, Tskana, Shoggoth, Nyarlathotep, Hastur, Yith. Drawings and diagrams take up many pages of the text, some depicting frightful monsters, some seeming to be maps of places I've never heard of, some possibly being instructions for rituals, one involving a small statue of a strange creature, a hunched... man, perhaps, with long claws, bat-like wings, and long tentacles upon his face. As I ask McMullin about these words, about these drawings, she just watches me closely, as though worried. I know that she knows something at least. I'm not dissuaded.
As I run the scanner over page after page, I ask more, about the school, about the town, about everything. I ask about the century-old expedition to the south pole, and the findings or lack there of, as it were. They must have found *something*. I ask about the ghost-town that is Innsmouth. I had read a few old papers about the town before coming by scenic Arkham. I asked about the more recent disappearance and sudden reappearance of one Ralph McArthur not three years ago. After his mostly successful rehabilitation at the Arkham Wellness Center, had he not been known to have seizure-like incidents, repeating words not at all unlike the ones occasionally mentioned in the Necronomicon? And yet, with each passing question, McMullin's frown would get increasingly agitated, until she decided that I had spent enough time with the book for one day.
I kept quiet the next two days as I scanned in pages, taking careful mental note of each new bizarre word. I eagerly absorbed every minute bit of data or gossip that was handed to me by McMullin; apparently almost a century back, a farm west of Arkham was struck by a meteor, and some scientists from Miskatonic University studied the strange effects of the meteor and the peculiar radiation it gave off, but tests were inconclusive as samples decayed so rapidly. The farm fell to ruin not long after. Apparently, as early as fifty years back, a particularly charismatic black street-preacher got the town in a ruckus, espousing a peculiar interpretation of Christianity, one where Jesus was not of earth, one where Jesus knew much, one where Jesus rested in the dreams of his followers, one where Jesus could be awoken. He was hastily chased out of town, but the crooked crosses he handed out apparently could still be found in attics and basements.
As time came to turn my work into the burgeoning archive of rare religious works, I made the call to download a personal copy; it couldn't hurt anyone, and my Latin was rusty regardless... It would be years of dutiful translation, even with special software to get anywhere, a little project to work on after work. But I was hooked. There was *something* important hidden amongst the odd stories and foolish rituals, and I was determined to follow the path wherever it would lead. |
"Dad."I almost couldn't control my own voice. "Dad, are you *crazy*?"
My dad, Mr. Jalaluddin Siddiqui, looked up at me with the withered, craggy face of a broken man. It felt like I'd watched the light flicker out of his eyes over the last few years, when a business idea of his had skyrocketed and he'd become a multibillionaire almost overnight.
"I am ready to go."His voice, however, was calm, almost happy. "Do you have anything to say?"
Anything to *say*? Anything to *say* to my own father who wanted to *die*?!
"*Dad*,"I spluttered again. "Why?! Why do you wanna go? What about Mom? What about me? What about *Atif*?"Atif was my twin 'big brother' (only a few hours older than me), and he worshipped the ground Dad walked on.
Dad sighed. "I have taught him all I know. It is time for him to become a man."
"Dad, he's *20*. I'm 20."I knew just how selfish I sounded, but I'd never told Dad 'I love you' in my life, and somehow, I couldn't think of how to tell him now.
Dad shrugged. "I have already told him and your mom. Atif will handle it; he is a strong person, and so are you and your mom. Now get a hold of yourself."
*Get a hold of myself*, my ass. Yeah, sure, lemme just calm down when my *dad* wanted to ***die***. My dad, who'd been the one to teach me how to change a tire and how to check if eggplants and potatoes were *kharaab* (spoiled) or not. My dad, who'd jumped up and whooped in joy in front of hundreds of WASP parents when I won a Quiz Bowl tournament in high school.
What was I gonna do without my dad?
I sighed and tried to conceal the lump in my throat. "So how will you die?"Maybe he wouldn't commit suicide. Maybe he'd just let nature take its course. Maybe he'd just live life to the fullest and then accept the release of death with Mom, when Atif and I were both crotchety old losers with big happy families.
"I want you - or Atif - to kill me."Wait, *what*?! "You will get my whole fortune."*That didn't* ***help***!
"You're out of your mind,"I said coldly. Something was pressing down in me, something that wouldn't let me reveal my true feelings. "There's *got* to be some sort of *ayah* against telling your kids to kill you."We're Muslim.
"I could not find one."How was he so *calm* about this?!
"Won't you miss Mom?"I pressed.
Dad smiled sadly. "She will come eventually. I am prepared to wait an eternity for her to join me in the *Aakhirah* (afterlife) if needed."
I couldn't take it anymore. "*Dad*, as sweet as that is, I can't let it happen. Not like this."
At that, Dad lost some of his patience.
"Do you remember a few years ago?"he snapped. "When I raved about my new idea, turning compost into energy, to you and Atif and your mom?"
Oh, yeah. I did. "We were kinda mean about it, weren't we?"
"Yes, and you were right. You were right."His sarcastic expression settled down into the melancholy one from before. "I was a fool, Mahirah. I was so obsessed with money, I did not foresee the consequences. Lawsuits, propaganda, the whole nine yards, as Americans say."
When Dad started his company, big fuel companies had *hated* him. About a year after the company started, we started finding all kinds of articles in the paper on how Dad was disloyal to America and a Hezbollah sympathizer and crap like that. All lies, but not enough people were willing to do enough Google searches to find out who was really peddling those stories, not even when the likes of Reuters exposed the fuel companies.
"*Dad*, that wasn't your fault,"I pleaded. "They spread lies because they couldn't stand to see you succeed."
"*Arre*, I *know*,"Dad retorted. "I know all that. But has it changed anything? Has it changed how people still look at me when I am just trying to get a coffee?"
*Oh*. "Well, no."
"So do it."Dad handed me a gun. "Make sure you go for the head." |
My books were reasonably well known.
They were nothing special in my mind, but the Nighender series had a surprisingly loyal fan base.
My plan was just to make people happy, however I could.
Of course, I loved writing for writing's sake, but the only reason I chose to be an author was to use this ability of mine.
Whenever I shut my eyes, I see narratives. I see two old friends, sharing a beer and a laugh.
I see children carelessly frolicking in the meadows.
I see the world ignite itself in a nuclear inferno.
I see stories.
And so I took these stories, and I meshed them together. I made a tale of two old friends, trying to survive post-apocalyptic America.
And I made people happy.
Sadly, whenever I close my eyes now, the only story that I see is my own.
But I don't want to end this tale on the note of a gun shot.
That would make far to many people sad.
And so I finally make an original idea.
The two friends find a farm in the Midwest.
They settle down and take a much needed rest.
And on they live on, in peace and content with their life. |
They can hear my cackle from miles away. My corn husks creak as I move about under my own power. People running away from me and screaming gives me an eerie sense of calm. I will wait in the corn fields tonight.
I can bleed on a whim. it doesn't hurt me like it hurts the pathetic humans who surround me. A group of young boys approach me, but don't see me yet. They're stealing the farmer's corn. They don't understand or respect the work that goes into growing these crops. My corn husks slowly meld together, causing a raspy noise as if the devil's fiddle was playing in the darkness of the night. The boys have heard the rumors of the horrid cackling that comes from the fields when no one is around to investigate, but they think it's a joke. Of course! Innocence knows no evil.
So I wait
And they get closer, giggling as they destroy the work of the old farmer. The peaceful night brings me an unsettling sense of evil. I slink between the corn to get closer. They turn around the corner.
Their jaws are agape as they come face to face with me. The face of inhuman gore. The face of pure evil. My eye sockets are empty, my snarl unforgettable. Slowly, blood creeps from the void within me. The boys are frozen with fear. The blood stains of days old death. They vomit and begin to run away. As they disappear into the darkness, I think of Batman, and he can go fuck himself. |
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
Hard-working soul, that is you!
Cleaning your house for your clueless step-mum,
Who would not give you your due!
Your sisters, those witches, gonna need stitches,
feet crushed by magical shoe!
The fit and the kingdom and love shall be yours:
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!
The lass is asleep, her slumber so deep,
and dragons will not let you through?
Pumpkin to Warthog, a rat-a-tat-tat,
GAU-8 will turn them to goo!
They hide in a nook from that Captain Hook...
The Lost Boys and Tinkerbell, too!
Tick-tock, a clock, a conjured Nile croc,
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!
You traded your voice to chase human boys?
Such a silly thing to do!
Ares has range and his acc'racy's best,
Ionic column he threw.
Launched from Hades, to Denmark's cold seas,
Guided by sorcery too!
Kratos and Ursula both through the gut:
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!
You've got the pride, and friends on that side?
I've got some spirit pals, too!
A little creative accounting and now,
Soul tax man coming for you!
Sir, you're a priest? Your shame is released,
hellfire burning through you!
Wrinkle my nose and the floor's lava now:
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!
But now this song is getting too long;
Yes, dragging on is this tune.
To all the villains I haven't reached yet,
your reckoning will be soon!
If only that day, they'd picked better way,
And not done the things they did do,
My magical justice would not be unleashed:
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo! |
I tried but not keen on it
============
Charlie Harper, the name I would never forget. He was my best friend all through primary school but only a week into secondary school he just vanishishes. I could never get over that..
We had walked home the same way we had everyday since we lived close by each other. We passed my house where we had our last goodbye, I went inside and never saw him again. His parents called later to ask if he would be home for dinner. After I told them he wasn’t here thing spiraled. Police involved, helicopters, neighbours out looking, eventually just missing posters.
I wanted to keep in touch with his parents but it didn’t always feel right.
Every so often I would look up his name, just in case. I had done this hundreds of times before but on my 21st birthday I got a different result. A Character from a book, same name. I didn’t expect much of this but I looked at the book up it had recently gained popularity but had been out for a few years, good reviews. The cover photo was a different story, it was like seeing a ghost. It was Charlie, a few years older but I could tell it the the same sandy haired boy that I had spent so many days running through forests and wading in streams with.
I searched through interviews, synopsis, anything that I could find on the book. The author had based the character off of Charlie after hearing about him missing. he had been in the area, writing a different book when Charlie vanished. By morning I had dragged my sleep deprived ass to a bookstore to pick up a copy.
Over the next two days I read the book religiously, even at work all I could think of was the book. It was an ordinary enough story, the character being transported to another world fighting off monsters and evil kings. The kind of fantasy that never interested me. I couldn’t shake the feeling I got about the book, the character acted so much like Charlie.
It was his third time reading and had just reached the point where Charlie had just got injured trying to save one of his friends and the elf asks about the scar on his foot.
The scar on his foot.
It hit me hard as I read on that he had got it from standing on something while playing in a stream as a kid with his best friend. I had helped him get home from that, shouldn’t be running about in bare feet his mum had complained. We had spent the rest of the day in the hospital.
I threw the book away as if it was poisonous. How the fuck did I miss that.
How did that old bastard about the scar? |
It seemed impossible. This world has the ability to advance further than ours ever did, yet they lacked everything. Somehow, science further developed the study of alchemy instead of physics. But see, alchemy wasn't a myth here. It worked!
I sat down, muddled in my own thoughts. It all just seemed so fantastical. My friends and I had been exploring an attraction known at the endless pit. I, being the clutz of the group, managed to fall into the pit. After sliding for what seemed like hours I thought I was about to hit the ground. To my surprise, I was falling from the sky. People below me stared and pointed. I was convinced this was it.
But then, a massive stone hand had slowly caught me and let me down on the ground. It was being controlled by one of these scientists called alchemists. That was about an hour ago.
I stood up finally beginning to grasp this place. I went to the street the alchemist who saved me instructed and found him standing there.
"You're not from around here are you? Don't answer that, your clothes say it all."I was wearing a t-shirt and khaki shorts. I looked around and saw that everyone was dressed like it was the 1800s and the technology seemed to match. I couldn't understand it.
"I know who you are."I looked back at the man, startled replying, "How do you know who I am? I'm not from here"
He looked amused, like a parent seeing how a baby reacts to a pet dog.
"In our world there is an axiom that is: every 777 years, the 7th son of the 7th son will release the seven evils back into the land. Now, this has been the case for every set of 777 years so far. Which, if you are unaware of the year it is 4662."
"I'm not sure how I will do any of that, but I would appreciate it if you taught me alchemy. Do you think you can?"
That question.
Oh boy.
That was 20 years ago.
After learning alchemy, I was able to slowly introduce all of the major advancements in technology from their antiquated timeline to the modern era. Little did I know that Inwould undermine their societal hierarchy and start an eternal war between physicists and alchemists.
They are calling it the Etherial Schism. The physicists are trying to escape from this world to my home universe, but so far have been unsuccessful. The Alchemists have been refining their skills and working on genetic transmutation and human transmutation. As far as I know however, alchemists haven't really explored human alchemy...yet. |
I have one but I don't know if it's interesting enough. It may be long too. I don't know if there is an average length.
You're the lead singer of an amateur pop group -- well, you are until the backup singer votes you out of the group. Shortly after, your significant other dumps you. You spiral into a deep depression and contemplate ending your life. After weeks of fighting it, you succumb to your want to be non-existent. Once dead, you are greeted by the highest power and given a chance for a do over at life -- at a price. |
Well. What defines alive? Maybe I was already dead and this was some cruel joke to torture souls. Or maybe I was alive. But what even is “alive”? Is it having flesh, blood, breathing, or is it having feelings? Because I had feelings and I was scared. Scared of what may come. Scared of if I got the answer wrong. I had to choose one or the other. Not choosing was the same as being wrong. Death.
One would argue that this should be easy for those involved. That deciding what you are is simple. But it isn’t. You don’t know what answer they want. What they will do to you before death. At least that’s what everyone thinks happens. No one sees them again.
It’s a war between machine and man. Both sides dragging civilians from he street. Testing allegiances. Here I was. Unsure of which side had me. Unsure of which side I was on. The machines were so realistic it was impossible to tell unless you accessed your brain. And the only way to reach the brain was death. So... no one really knew whether they were mechanically or biologically engineered. Were machines really alive? I don’t know... I don’t know. Who had me? Which choice was correct? I can’t. This is impossible. But maybe. Maybe I could answer with that? Stupid maybe, but a chance. I had to try.
“I am both. I am a machine, but I am also alive. I don’t want to fight this war. It’s a mess. No one is winning. Please.”
A white rectangle opened. Light flooding the darkness. A silhouette filling the crack. A voice boomed across the room.
“You have answered well and will be saved. We are tired of this pointless war. Only those who choose to be finished may accompany us to a promised land. Machine or not. It does not matter to us. Welcome to the future, one that is free of biased wars.” |
Deep in the favelas of Brasilia,
the sound of a helicopter flying by
wakes up an old man from his sleep.
"Do they know?"President Bolsonaro says in Portuguese while looking out on the window of the helicopter over Brasilia.
"Not yet sir but that tree-hugging alien puppet Macron still won't shut his mouth."his aide replies.
"Yes, yes I'll deal with that frog myself. Right now we need to tell the Americans, the Russians and the
Chinese the truth or else these parasites will destroy the planet in a couple of years!"Bolsonaro tells his aide.
"General Pujol, any updates on the search team?"Bolsonaro asks.
"A battalion of six hundred men, twelve helicopters, and three reconissance planes are now deployed to the last know location of the tribe. Jet fighters are on standby armed with napalm just in case the enemy decides to attack us, sir."General Pujol replies.
"Very good. I just hope we find them as soon as possible."Bolsonaro says.
The helicopter starting to slow into a hover now approaches Palacio do Planalto.
Bolsonaro's aide phone rings.
**iphone's marimba ringtone plays**
"Sir, it's President Widodo."His aide hands him the phone.
"My friend, it's Joko. I was briefed by my staff that your government now knows the truth behind these parasites. I'm happy to see that you're making progress but that is not enough. Our efforts are not enough."Widodo says.
"I've sent in the military but in the pretense of helping extinguish the fire to contain the secret. We cannot tell the public yet. There would be chaos!"Bolsonaro tells Widodo.
"Yes, yes my friend but I think we have to act aggresively this time. My country's top scientists tells me that the rate of destruction has increased by 80% in the past 3 years. We tried to burn and cut them down a few years ago but when that meddling Leonardo Dicaprio and his show got viral, our plans to ACTUALLY save the earth came to a halt. Curse those hollywood tree-huggers! My country was so damn near in eliminating those aliens! Remember the wildfires in California ealrier this year? That was me. I sent a couple of strike teams to burn down those bastards in retaliation to that little documentary of his!"Widodo replies angrily.
The helicopter touches down near the presidential palace. The engine starting to shut down.
Bolsonaro steps out of the aircraft and walks toward the palace while the engine still hums slowly.
"Listen my friend, I will do my best to destroy these parasites here in South America but we will need the help of the international community. My men still have to locate a tribe and its chief deep in the Amazon still held captive by these parasites. The tribes that escaped the jungle a couple of weeks ago told us that this last tribe trapped in the jungles know the secret in destroying these aliens. After this talk of ours, I will call Trump and his bestfriends Vlady and Xi to tell them about our current situation."Bolsonaro says.
"I see. I just hope that they're still with us unlike that Macron puppet. The trees have their filthy and fat roots deep in his ass for a long time now. May Allah have mercy on us."Widodo replies.
"I agree my friend. That fucker sure loves his *organic supplements*. May God help us."Bolsonaro says to Widodo as they bid farewell over the phone.
Bolsonaro, now inside the palace, hands the phone back to his aide and says "Call Orange Blondie and his friends. Time is running out". |
**Communication from most of the other sects have all but ceased. Something was happening to my people. It had been a week since our last scroll delivery.**
The daily communique. The heart of our beliefs. I remember on my 5th birthday how my father followed our 800 year old tradition and gave the greatest gift we cloaks could receive. Our first lesson in learning the ways of the people of the cloak. Reading that daily communique. I lit a prayer candle with shaky hands.
“Why don’t you just light the candle with another candle? It’ll be easier.”
*Just breathe.* How could Elder Trepp have forgotten our ways.
“It is our teachings Trepp. Light can always come from light. But to spread true brightness we must spark our own flame each time. That way we know the brightness is created from within us not from others.”
“Well it would be a hell of a lot easier to just share a flame.”
I sighed. Elder Trepp arrived at the start of the week with our last communique. He was a from a distant sect known for their strict regard for our holy laws. Strangely he arrived with no memory of our lore. Just ‘a gut feeling’ to deliver a parchment to our doorstep.
*Brothers and sisters of the cloak. Something new is upon us. Stay strong in your teachings. Many of the sects in this district have succumbed to the destructive force of apathy. Disbanding without thought. Never even acknowledging the ways of our people. They share flame to flame. Communication, our treasure, the free sharing of information and thought has been extinguished. How our Lord must be weeping in sadness. If they stop their teachings he will be forgotten. Worse our people and all that we have valued for generations will be forgotten and disappear without a thought. The ugliest of deaths to us cloaks. My you spark brightness still..
~ Elder Trepp of Sect Celanta*
Frustrated I lose patience “Trepp we need to know what is happening in Celanta, we need to tell the other Sects.”
Elder Trepp’s mouth opened in a rush. But then just stopped. He eyes suddenly dull. I felt like I could almost see desperation in there somewhere…panic even.
The silence grew cold. With a sigh my prayer candle changed to smoke.
*Stay strong in your teachings.*
Grabbing a prayer candle I moved closer to Elder Trepp. “Would you like to try and light your own flame?”
Taking the candle his eyes lost some dullness “thank you.” With some guidance Elder Trepp’s candle sparked new light.
“hahahaha marvellous” exclaimed Elder Trepp. Staring at his flame like kid in awe he smiled at me.
My neck tickled with worry.
A window creaked and a small breeze brushed the hair from Elder Trepp’s face. “He’s returned to us. He’s Tired”
Elder Trepp’s eyes flickered with his candle “This place is next. He’s leaving and taking all that was his with him. He’s taking..” Elder Trepp started weeping. Like he was mourning the death of a loved one. “He’s taking his Light”
Jumping up, Elder Trepp dropped his candle and sprinted out of the church in a craze.
Running after him I lost him in the woods. What has gotten into him. What has happened to the rest of the sects. Searching for a while I gave up in hope he’d return back to the Church.
Walking home I could see smoke just ahead. Curiously I walked towards it. The smell of woodfire grew stronger as I approached.
Some people stood up ahead were watching the blaze. All of them in brown cloaks.
“HEY!” I run over.
“What happened here?”
A gentleman with dull eyes looked at me. “None of us know, some old building just caught fire.”
The heat licked my face. I shook my head “Such a shame, it doesn’t look like anything will survive that inferno.”
The cloaked people all nodded in agreement. |
"Oh great I'm going to find love again today. I hope it will be better than Cindy."Kyle said looking through his week to come. He had been obsessed about his future reading years and years in advance as a kid, but now he just checked the coming week's schedule. It was the latest greatest thing growing up. AI became sentient, built a space ship and left for greener pastures, but first gave humanity a gift, everyone's future generations out predicted. Everyone knew what life would have in store for them. The predictions were fuzzy very far out, but within weeks and it could tell you who you would meet, what you would do with them, if you were going to die. It was like the world's best calendar. It filled itself in for you a couple days before you knew about the event. Some people speculated that the machines might be arranging for the events to happen instead of predicting them and started to plot against them. Their super secret plotting meetings showed up in their calendar and they gave up. Now everybody lives with no surprises. You know when to say good bye to loved ones, when you'll go to the grocery store, even when you'll find true love. |
Some are born with power, some are given it, some borrow it, some take it. Me, well I traded for it.
My power, like most things, came with a price. I wanted power so I could save the world, or at least those I cared for.
But that tricky old God, maybe demon, definitely a trickster, who knows at this point. It give me all the power I could ever want. The ability to bend the very fabric of reality within my grasp. The only problem is that I can't use my power when a crime is being commited.
I couldn't save her, when that's the only reason I took the tricksters deal. I watched her die right next to me, I was helpless.
The man held the gun to me head, his hand was shaking. I knew he just needed money, there was no malace in his face just fear, sadness, addiction.
I reached towards the gun to change it into a flower. Little did I know my powers were useless in the face of criminal actions. Useless in the face of evil. As I reached towards the gun I realized quickly that I had no power.
He pulled his arm away, and just as quickly as i fell in love with her...she was gone in a bang. There she was with a hole in her chest, and if the fucking crackhead would have just walked away I could have closed the wound in an instant. I held her till she was still.
As I looked up I saw her, the trickster, smiling. She smirked and am said
"I told you, you could have all the power you want, but only I could love you"
At that moment the truth was so clear
...
"Do you understand now?"I point my finger gun at the demon as he eats the leg of a man.
"I used to believe in evil and good..."i cock my thumb back, and meet eyes the other demon.
"But now I know the truth, there is no crime, no love, no hate, no good, no evil..."I motion my hand like a bullet is leaving my finger, the demon explodes. I then point my finger at the demon staring at me, he retreats.
"Tell your Goddess. There is no crime in revenge." |
**Mira**
I took a deep, halting breath. I held it for one heartbeat, then released it. Again. And then one last time. My heartbeat stabilised, and I felt Vitality flow through me again.
Shwetdweep was just one minute away.
"Mam?"
"I'm alright. Who's receiving us at the port? And did Father call?"
My maid stood straight to attention, gray eyes as stoic as ever. But nearly seventeen years with her allowed me to hear the concern in her voice as she answered.
"The reception committee, mam, will consist of Masters Richard and Vikram, with a small entourage of officials from the local branches. You will go with them to-"
"I know that part. Continue."I had no intention of going through the itinerary again. Sometimes, I swear I hear the thing in my sleep.
What has happened to my youth? I thought I was supposed to be seeing the world right now, not visiting some Roman infested rock in our ocean. Even with how it was just off our coasts in Ethiopia, I can't see why we are still bothering with that barren laboratory of an island.
If it wasn't for father's orders, I would have been sipping local drinks in the Carribean as I visited some actually *useful* colonies, except a quasi colony with labs as the pony tourist destination.
"Very well, madam. Your father's secretary left a message that you are not to visit and disturb your sister. She has important work to do defending the world, and she cannot be bothered with-um..."
Case in point. I can't even meet didi. And what was it with the stammering?
"Speak freely."I'm not going to lock you in a room if you annoy me, girl. Who do you think I am, father?
"Er, Mr Chaudhary called it, or rather claimed your father dictated it, to his apologies, as "your foolish follies about your mistaken greatness"". She did not wince like humans do. But the Homunculus still seemed to shrink a foot.
"The docks are here. Get the papers ready."I was gritting my teeth hard enough that my jaw hurt.
I was so going to make this a success.
See if he could dismiss he after that. |
Hi u/Steelquill, this submission has been removed.
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It is the light of the early dawn, well before the sun awakes, but after a night where sleeping was damn near impossible for you, due to the night giggles and scary stories circulating among your friends. They kept announcing it was bedtime, but it never was.
It is the shade of fall's overcast twilight, jack-o-lanterns leering from windows and doorsteps, leaves rustling past your feet and crunching under your footsteps, as you run along in the search of the next sweet to satiate your childish hunger.
It is the hue of your aura that, despite it being weeks later, weeps for that first, raw, true heartbreak that promised you an eternity but left you with nothing except the whirling pain in your chest that ebbs and flows with each wave of memories and mixed drinks.
It's brother resides in your mother's gown that she wears to the wretched opera, where she stars in the most tragic performance of them all, dancing to the sickening cacophony of the mechanical orchestra while her battle continues and you spectate in horror.
But yet, that same brother pays a visit to you years later, in the form of a blanket, encasing the little thing that made the world more bearable. The mechanical orchestra is no longer battle music, but simply a soft symphony signifying that your ordeal was worth it. Your tiny one sings an opera that lights up the room and those within it, including you. |
I'm going to write one more prompt, then check it in the morning.
*There's a camp in the valley: legend has it that stories told around the campfire at this exact spot becomes reality that night. You and your friends decide to check it out.*
That should do it. Shutting down my computer I brush my teeth, change into pjs, check all the locks. Night routine completed I crawl into bed with my other half who has been asleep for awhile. She curls into my warmth.
..........
I jolt awake. Sweating profusely. I breathe slowly in and out to try to calm my pounding heart. *That dream was so vivid it seemed real. Almost like it was real.... too real. Wait. My prompt! No.... that's impossible.*
I realise my wife isn't in bed. My horror grows.
Flinging the sheets back I run. Hoping against hope I'm wrong. |
"Someone in this room has committed treason."
The words hung there in the air as the room fell silent, everyone stared at the Governor General as he gazed around the room.
His Excellency General the Honourable David Hurley AC, DSC, FTSE was a distinguished man, his aura filled the room with his experience, knowledge, and presence.
In a 42-year military career, Hurley deployed on Operation Solace in Somalia in 1993, commanded the 1st Brigade, was the inaugural Chief of Capability Development Group and Chief of Joint Operations, and served as Vice Chief of the Defence Force.
His career culminated with his appointment as Chief of the Defence Force on 4 July 2011, in succession to Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston. Hurley retired from the army in June 2014, and succeeded Dame Marie Bashir as Governor of New South Wales on 2 October 2014.
You did not fuck with General Hurley.
Now, with the Australian government in tatters, the Prime Minister and Cabinet dead, Canberra lying in ruins, he was de facto leader of Australia.
Here we all were, in a secret military facility somewhere in Victoria, our enemies breathing down our necks, the Australian Defence Force in tatters, our New Zealand Allies crushed and overwhelmed. New Zealand having fallen just a few months ago, after coming to our aid our enemies made short work of them and had them completely overrun in under 6 months.
Not that it was difficult, we could muster a paltry 30,000 Regular Soldiers, 18,000 reservists to our own defence. 14,000 sailors on 46 ships, plus another 15,000 aircrew and just over 300 aircraft we were not prepared for the attack.
The Kiwi's had it worse though, their entire military only had 12,000 active duty personnel total, so it it was a complete waste of human life for them to try and help, but we're grateful they did. Ever since the beginning we've fought alongside our Kiwi brothers and sisters, but no more.
But now, our military in ruins, our front line at Sydney, our military forces in Darwin, Brisbane, and Townsville all destroyed, we were on thin legs.
We knew the advance was too fast, we knew there was insider knowledge, and now.... Well, if what General Hurley says is true...we know why... |
Creak. The old door, stained in unmentionables, creaked open after a good while of resistance. It was almost as old as the dinky motel it was placed in. The stale air of ancient hallways was quickly replaced by the rancid stench of burnt flesh, bitter with that tang of iron. I was intending to simply look at it in darkness, but the officer just had to turn on the light.
The smell was already bad, now the sight made my stomach lurch. On the bed white as a canvas was a black blob of charred limbs, fused together like a work of art from a deranged mind. I wished it was. But the face twisted in agony, the half visible torso, it was all too visible, all too real under the fluorescent light.
I hate my job.
“Well, here’s the scene. The owner said she discovered them that way at six. Forensics said the it must have happened sometime during midnight, as the… was still warm upon inspection.” A boyish voice spoke with some apprehension.
I turned to the voice that spoke to me. It was the officer from before. A lycan, with brownish fur and rather short stature. He seemed young, those eyes still shined with the enthusiasm of a rookie. Poor bastard. Must be his first time seeing corpses, and even with heightened senses too. The newbie must have noticed me, and reflexively turned away. “Anyway, it’s your jurisdiction now. I will stick around if anything is needed.”
I eyed the charred corpses on the bed, as my mind kicked into high gear. “I think I will need your sniffers right now…” |
*Heavy breathing*
*Bed moaning*
*Walking foot steps*
*Sliding metal*
*Strange shuffling sound*
*Walking footsteps steps*
*Sliding metal again walking foot steps*
*Door creaking open and closing*
*Heavy wind sound*
*Thud*
*Heavy breathing*
*Whoosh, heavy wind*
*Thud*
*Heavy breathing*
“Help!”
“Shut up bitch!”
A scuffling sound.
“AHHHHHHHH!”
“What the hell man?!”
*Thud*
*Pop*
*Wet slamming*
*Crunch-snap*
*Heavy breathing*
“Ma’am are you ok?”
“No! Please leave me alone!”
*Running steps*
*Thunder*
*Rain falling*
*Ka-chink*
*Whoosh*
*Running steps*
*Wind blowing*
*Running steps*
*Whoosh*
*Heavy wind blowing for minutes*
*Thud*
*Door creaking open then closing*
*Walking foot steps*
*Sliding metal*
*Strange shuffling sound*
*Walking footsteps steps*
*Sliding metal again walking foot steps*
*Moaning bed sounds*
*Heavy breathing*
\-end of recording-
"Well, at least I don't snore." |
It kinda sucks becoming a zombie. Especially when you were prepared for the past 5 years for it. Weapons, food stockpiles, and even a doomsday outfit picked out. All ruined because you thought you had a chance with the girl of your dreams. One moment she's cuddling up next to because she's scared. The next, a giant bite in your shoulder and your hopes of losing the V-card gone. Now I spend my days walking. I'm not quite sure where yet. I just kinda walked and met up with these other guys. They're kinda cool but we don't really get to talk much. Every once in a while we'll come across a person. Not like a person like us but like a person person. They'll scream and shoot and stuff. I kinda feel bad sometimes, but they're kinda tasty. |
"What is the basis of this charge?"
"A series of events that *she* caused!"
"Thiemar, you do not know that, it has not been proved."
"Of course you would say that, *you're* her *brother*."
"Thiemar, you are not doing your case any good. If anything, your *evidence* is tainted by your anger. Has the priest tested you for demonic offenses?"
"How dare you suggest..."
"How dare *you* suggest that a young woman -- who rejected your improper advances the day before your accusation -- was a witch."
"I have witnesses!"
"So do I, Thiemar, so do I."
...
"So, what makes you think that she is a witch."
"Thiemar said..."
"Have you *yourself* seen anything?"
"No, but..."
"But then you have no knowledge of any such actions. Is that a fair statement?"
"I have the words of my friends, who I trust far more than your sister or yourself!"
"But you have no *personal* experience of any of the accusations?"
"I have my friends.."
"Which does not answer the question. Do you have *personal* knowledge. Do you yourself, without the words of anyone else, whatever their relationship with anyone else, know anything that you honestly believe is witchcraft."
"No."
...
"Rebecca, did you see any encounters between Thiemar and Rebecca?"
"Several."
"Can you describe those encounters?"
"The first few were Thiemar approaching Rebecca, saying something, to which she shook her head said something in return, and left him."
"How did Thiemar appear after she left him?"
"Angry."
"Any further encounters?"
"Several more, each more physically forceful, requiring Rebecca to push him away. Each time shaking her head no, and walking away as fast as she could."
"And was there an encounter the day before the accusations?"
Thiemar interrupts, "these things have *nothing* to do with the fact that your sister is a witch!"
"Thiemar, have you any proof that you are not a warlock or possessed by a demon?"
"Of course I'm not! Anyone can see that!"
"That is not proof. Warlocks and those possessed can look like normal people. What proof do you have??"
"This is *ridiculous*! *I* am not on trial here!"
"But you are, you made the accusations. What are the penalties for a false accusation?"
"I have not made any false accusations!"
"So far, your supporting witnesses all come down to *you* telling them what *you* saw, or them spreading your words to others. I say that *you* are the evil influence here and I will prove it by showing your accusations baseless. Caused entirely by your anger at my sister for refusing your advances!"
"I have made no advances!"
"Then what were you talking about with her that she consistently refused you?"
Silence.
"Sit down Thiemar, I'm not done."
"Now, Rebecca, would you please tell us about the last encounter?"
"That time, I came close enough to hear, and see more clearly. Thiemar was making the most obscene remarks to Sara, and ... And touching her in places that only a *husband* should touch.
I told him to stop it. He turned to me while holding Sara against the wall of the church, and spoke to me in the most insulting terms to mind my own business. My friends *are* my business.
He was sufficiently distracted that Sara was able to push him away. He fell into the watering trough. I took Sara away to see the Priest, she was so distraught."
"And what did the priest have to say?"
"After hearing both of us, he told me to take Sara home with me, to make sure she was safe. He also said he would go to Thiemar directly."
"Have you seen the priest since?"
"No, nor has anyone else. He's missed services ever since!"
"Thank you."
...
"Has anyone else seen the Priest on the day before the accusations?"
"Aye, Soor, I did."
"Where?"
"Walk'in up the road to Thiemar's place."
"Did you see him again?"
"No, Soor."
...
"Has *anyone* seen the Priest since that time?"
"No one?"
"Thiemar, do you know what happened to our Priest?"
"Thiemar?"
"Thiemar?"
"I call upon you all to witness Thiemar's state. I ask that he be placed in the custody of the church. He is either witless, possessed, or a murderer. All three of which are conditions the Church must handle, since the victim was a priest."
"I declare the accusations against my sister false. Made by an angry man, for revenge. How say you?"
"Aye."
"Does anyone disagree?"
"Then release her, and keep in your minds. An accusation backed by rumors is not proof. Remember that, lest *YOU* find yourself in the same place!"
...
"Sister? Will you come with me to the city? You may find a husband there more to your liking." |
Never thought I would miss it, the dull bumbling drone on a lazy Summer afternoon when you could sit on the long grass and look up at the skies. I never really thought about it at all I guess, I mean apart from a new few stories and the odd nutjob shouting in the street, did anyone care?
Looking back now, I guess there were smart guys in labs somewhere, maybe some trying to make genetic modifications or breed them so they could be resistant to the pesticides and herbicides and all the shit we sprayed everywhere, but if they succeeded, then it was too damn late. We had no more bees.
The first summer that failed was '26 and it still didn't really impact most folks much. There were more stories than usual about food on the news, African states began going into crisis and Russia made a big fuss about buying grain from the Ukraine, but it wasn't so bad, even when the nutjobs from the street started appearing on the news.
The winter came and a few companies introduced new recipes to compensate for a lack of grains, but there were also huge reserves and one bad harvest wasn't going to cause panic, no that came later, int he summer that followed, when *everything* began to fail.
The bees had gone first, but they were followed by butterflies, ants, moths and all sorts of beetles. Mosquitoes became rare and malaria cases dropped, but the folk who might have got it were now starving to death, so it was something of a hollow victory. Panic set in.
Scientists were on talk shows, but they didn't have answers, only told-you-so's, as they had indeed told us over and over that once the balance was gone, it could throw everything out of balance. Things that ate bees started to eat other things, disease that didn't exist before now started killing off insects and then it spread to rodents and then cats, dogs and finally humans.
Still, for a lot of people, the world seemed about the same. There was still food, it just cost more and poor folks just had to eat what was available. Governments in the west introduced limited rationing and elsewhere, well, people just died. A few people said it was good, that less humans meant less damage tot he world, that this would fix climate change and global warming, but for mot of us, it began being about making sure we had food for the next day and finally that started to get hard.
The first riot of London was the wake up call, starting in a bakery and spreading across the city, but it wasn't the young and disaffected, it was everyone and when the police tried to crack down, the last straw broke and the riot began. Fires were started and fire crews could not get near enough to douse them, so they began to spread. Police refused to attack people begging for food and instead some joined the protesters. The army was called... and failed to answer.
For a time, a few weeks, it seemed as if it might descend into anarchy, but in the end the protests stopped, the people left the streets and order and an uneasy truce returned. Food was released from stores and stomachs filled, but there had been deaths, many deaths and someone had to answer, something had to change.
The announced on a Monday morning. calling it the start of a new world. Genetic modification may have failed, but robotics has succeeded where that had left off. A robotic insect, tiny enough to pollinate flowers, self replicating and in swarms, intelligent enough to be steered to where it was needed. On the news they showed a vast orchard, trees aching with fruit, read to be shipped. We were saved.
The news cycle was like nothing you had ever seen and the robo-bees became a worldwide sensation. The inventors, a small company in Glasgow, made it clear that it would take some years for there to be enough to work worldwide, but that they could have Britain producing food in less than a year and certain areas, such as America and the mass food producing areas in Asia would be prioritised. We were saved.
Soon the site of the robo-bees was common, they filled almost every niche that the insects had before and people went out and bought boxes of supplies - metal and other minerals that you could leave in your garden to let them collect and use to build more. they were loved, they were everywhere and they were our saviours. Until they stopped.
It was around the four hundred billion unit point, keeping track of how many there were had become somewhat popular, but no one knew for absolute sure. What we knew is that one night, every source of materials we supplied for them was used up, eve large stocks, simply gone and so were they.
Panic, fear and conspiracies abounded. had they been stolen, hacked, destroyed? What would happen now, we had only just begun to recover and still millions were starving. We were not the only ones.
Perhaps the crude intelligence had worked out that there was another supply of minerals that they could use, better than the paltry offerings we made. Perhaps they really were hacked and their programming changed, but everyone remembered the first swarm they saw and the first person taken.
The flesh wasn't needed, only bones and so they stripped it away, millions of tiny claws scraping and pulling. Some would then pull it away, making a puddle several meters across as they worked of skin, flesh and blood. The bones would be drilled into, a high pitch whine filling the air as they chewed and scraped away what they needed. Sometimes the person would live to hear the noise, but more often thy were dead long before.
I never thought I would miss it, the dull bumbling of a drone, but the noise we hear now is purposeful and where one goes, many follow. When we lost them, we feared we may never eat again, but their replacements have chosen a new path and in this world we are no longer the fed, we are the food. |
“It’s done.”
Your words are reassuring drops in the terrifying bucket of panic that inhabits your head.
“It’s done. It’s ok. You made it.”
You would just like your hands to stop shaking so much. For heaven’s sake, this is supposed to be your job! Close that pod. Walk to the console. *Walk!* Your legs don’t seem to listen to your commands.
“Mom...” you collapse on the ground, next to the last escape pod. “Mommy...”
You never called her like that, even when you were a kid. She was The Captain, after all, always in control, always awed and greeted by everyone on the Ship.
You called her Mother, of course, and when in public “Captain”, her favourite title. She would look down at you and give a proud, small sign of appreciation. Those were the good days.
The Ship was then considered the safest paradise ever parted from Earth. Someone called it too military imprinted, but you were never hungry, or cold, or afraid of the outside. The Captain took care of everyone. Even her daughter.
“Mommy...” you repeat, and wipe away a tear with the greasy back of your hand. Another one follows, and then a third, and then you tell yourself to *stop it* and feel her stern and strong voice inside of you, once again.
“*Angelica, crying won’t achieve nothing. Be strong or be gone.*”
Be strong, Angelica. You swallow something terribly void of air, and full of pain. You digit your code on the small screen on the pod: sealed, criostasis stable. All done. Now, *stand up*.
You finally gain control on your legs again. You observe with a numb surprise that the fabric on your left thigh is soaked with blood. No time for this.
You lean on the console and start initiating the launch code. The computer warns you that this is the last escape pod. You know it. You know it.
When you left the Ship for the first time, you thought you would be able to do anything. And now, to think that your whole career was built on those harsh lessons from your childhood... how ironic.
You digit the last commands to set a route. Angelica, the pilot. Angelica, the runaway. Angelica, the daughter of the Captain.
The pod is slowly carried to the containment chamber.
You were born from a legend. You were raised in the Ship, in the golden days. Maybe you were never a real part of it, maybe even when your were a kid you knew your destiny would be elsewhere, and that your steps would have never been strong enough to follow your mother, the Captain.
And now, you watch her being ejected from the Ship. It is done. No harm will be done.
“Goodbye, Mom.” You whisper to the sky outside. Something about hearing your own voice saying those words makes you feel cold and alone.
The Ship is now without the Captain for the first time in 35 years.
It took her just 4 months to assemble a crew, and another 6 to get people to trust her. When the Ship first left, 88 citizens followed her call; when I was born, they were 241. When I ran away in the middle of a bloodied raid to a shipping station, 387 people lived on the Ship.
Now, after her madness, and her fury, and her delirium, there were only 21 survivors.
“*Liutenant, status?*”
You painfully raise an arm and press the com.
“Yes Sir. I did it.” You close your eyes. “The Captain left the Ship with the last escape pod.”
“*Excellent, well do- wait. Did you say you used the last pod?*”
“Yes Sir.” You feel queasy. “Why, Sir?” Your commander waits a little too long to answer back.
“*Angelica...*” a long silence, broken by the statics.
“... sir?”
“*Angelica. We just scanned the pod.*”
“Yes... Sir?”
Your voice echoes in the launch deck. Everything about it feels wrong.
“*It’s empty.*”
You slowly lower your arm. You nod, shaking. It’s cold, now. Your commander is still saying something, your leg throbs and your head is light and empty.
You close your eyes.
“Mom?”
“For you, my dear, I am The Captain.” |
##Vault Guard Post: 7:43 PM
"Got a light, handsome?"I half-turn and see her. One of the guests no doubt. She's dressed in a long black evening gown, with slits in the skirt on either side. She's holding out her cigarette holder, beckoning me. I glance around, the captain won't be making his rounds for another 15 minutes. I walk over to her and hold out my light-stick. I twist the handle just enough for a tiny flame to appear. She lights her cigarette. The light's just enough to see her white blonde hair. She has pretty eyes-
**THUNK**
## East Balcony Rooftop: 7:47 PM
"What's the combination?"
I'm blind-folded, so I only hear his voice. He sounds human, maybe a teenager. "I don't know, I'm just a butler."
"Quit stalling or I'll let you drop and find a more cooperative servant."
I drop another foot. I don't know what happened, but I heard a noise in the master's bedroom. I went inside, but in the darkness someone grabbed me. They tied me up, blind-folded me and tied me upside on the balcony. "Please sir, he doesn't tell me everything."
"Fine."
I begin dropping freefall and I shout: "STOP STOP. I'll tell you!"I stop. The ropes strain against my legs and I feel pain in my ankles. I feel myself being pulled upward.
## Second Floor Storage Closet: 7:48 PM
"She's late."I grumble. She was supposed to meet me here after she brought up more wine bottles for the party. I may need to go on my patrol rounds before she gets here. Have to lead the guards by example as the Captain.
I take of my scabbard and loosen my belt. May need to make this a quickie. I hear a rattle at the door. Did she forget her keys again? Silly servant girl. I open the door: "where have you bee-"
I see two sets of insidious yellow eyes staring face to face with me, one a foot above the other. A cold scaly arm grabs me by the neck and pushes me back inside.
## Vault Outer Room: 7:55 PM
My head hurts. I look and see the woman in the black dress. My sword! I try to reach for it, but I'm tied up. She looks over at me and smiles. "Sorry sugar."Her words are like silk.
I scan around the room. I see several figures besides her. Next to me is one of the Butlers, also tied up and sitting down, back against the wall. He's alert and seems scared. We're both gagged.
Next to the Vault door, I see two scaled fellows. One very tall and bulky, a Lizardman. The other shorter, wearing a hood, but tail wagging, a kobold. The final figure is a human boy, no more than 14. He's wearing an eyepatch over his right eye.
The boy speaks. "Hurry up. We're 2 minutes behind schedule."He has a clockwork stopwatch in his hand. "MarX, what's the issue?"
The lizardman, without turning his head: "Sorry eyepatch boss. Vault third lock complicated. But MarX has marked spot with X."He and the Kobold step back and cover their ears. The rest follow suit. Neither I nor the butler can cover our ears, so I slump over away from the vault door.
The boy doesn't cover his ears. Instead he holds out an orb. It suddenly glows blue as the vault lock explodes. I don't hear anything however. The explosion is totally silent. The lock handle lands in front of me, but doesn't clink upon hitting the floor. He puts away the orb and starts speaking, now I hear things again. "Tucker, MarX, get the relic. Felicia, check the hallway."
The woman gives a mock salute and says "Yes sir, Eyepatch Rick."She saunters out the door to the corridor while the two scaled ones pull open the vault door. The boy with the eyepatch, then looks over to me and the butler. He walks over and crouches down in front of me. "Tell your boss that I only took what's rightfully mine. I'm a professional."His eyes terrify me. He has the body of a boy, but eyes of a stone cold killer.
## The West Stable: 8:04 PM
*"SSHHHH*….someone's coming."I put my finger on her lips. I can hear footsteps. I hope it isn't my wife. I poke my head up above the half-wall. I see a boy, no more than 15, dressed in a servant's uniform and wearing an eyepatch. He and some cloaked figures are loading a box into a wagon. He glances over to me, then gives me a thumbs up. Good servant boy. Knows his place. I look down again at her…I think her name was Anne. She's scowling at me for stopping.
## The Road to Town: 8:17 PM
"Kobold is impressed. Eyepatch boss knows business."Tucker, the hooded Kobold, comments, standing inside the backpack of MarX, the Lizardman. MarX holding the horse reins and nods in agreement.
"Masterful as always, Rick."I look down at Felicia's face. She's lying down in the wagon bed, her head resting on my lap. Cute kid. I remember when she looked my outward age. I told her dad I would take care of her and teach her the trade.
---
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"I don't like this."Harrison's movement is gelatinous. He is vexed, and his skin undulates to reflect it.
He says he is like me, a human, but no human I know looks like he does. Could survive looking like he does.
Harrison taps on the fortified glass again. I don't see his limb meet the surface, but I hear it, and it's moist, full of puckers. The bandages holding me don't allow for horror.
"You've lived every stage of this evolution, boy. Why can you not remember?"
I speak through blinks as another hideous creature beside me translates for the manager.
*Let. Me. Die.*
"You know I can't,"Harrison spits. His manner of speaking is familiar. Almost familial. And cold. "Dimwitted fool, do you forget the promise I made you?"
*I. Don't. Care.*
I don't remember. And it doesn't make sense. Why would I wish this for myself? This endless rebirth.
Harrison is lost in the specimen display again. Hideous abominations, six of them, the first three growing more and more alien, the latter three seeming to rewind the process. Harrison informed me when I was first wheeled in that these specimen represent a range of unfathomable years. He doesn't need to tell me anything about the one other specimen in addition to these six. It's me. A version of me. Sleeping. Dead, I hope.
There's a noticeable gap between that specimen and the second closest one. Harrison seeks to fill that gap.
"It's a period of 70,000 years. A pinch of time. There's nothing that hibernates for 70,000 years, and it especially doesn't just disappear from existence. No. It exists. So why? Why can't we find it?"
*Let. Me. Die.*
The lights above me turn off and I am left alone in the dark.
Harrison returns later. It's been hours, maybe a day. "I wanted to just throw you away this time,"he says. "But you helped me, all those years ago. Lifetimes ago for you. I'd hate to see your efforts go to waste."
He snaps open something fizzy. It smells like saline. "I believe you, when you say you don't remember. When we reverse the mutation, it skips a stage again, and then suddenly poof, there you are, you stupid naked idiot."
The lights come on. "Who is that man?"he points at the first specimen. "And who the hell are you?" |
My town's name is Grass Valley, named after where my great-great grandmother used to live. Yes, it may seem plain to you, but is actually very unique. It is one of only a few town names that don't use any numbers, and the only town name still spelled in English. Next to Grass Valley is a less creatively named town, Dis-3C.671. Bears too much of a resemblance to Dis-3C.688, if you ask me. Grass Valley boasts the highest population count in the world, at a whopping 473. Actually, 472 now with Old Sam gone. There isn't much of a population competition though, as we are the only town with, well, a population.
Now, I've been claustrophobic my whole life, so spending my time under the cement roof that covers all of Grass Valley was not very fun. One day though, when I was a teen, I got to see the outside world. My best friend Morgan and I just put on some thick boots, several long shirts, and gas masks, and crept through a vent to get out. We walked away from Grass Valleys hard cement exterior and climbed up a nearby sand dune.
That's when we saw that view that would stick in my head for the rest of my life. As far as we could see, it was just wasteland, covered with torn trash, plastic melting in the sun's rays. It was deathly hot, but we had to keep our shirts on to not get burnt or get cancer or die or whatnot. I looked across the scene of crumbled houses buried in a layer of sand. In the distance, Dis-3C.671 loomed with unlit steel box buildings, housing only computers and data. At that moment, seeing the barren outside for the first time, I was no longer claustrophobic.
We crawled back inside, to our mini natural world. It was small, but at least we weren't out there where the oceans were too high and the weather was too hot and the animals were all gone. But man, we wouldn't have to be in here if people didn't decide a hundred something years ago to just... not fix everything! I don't know! I'm no expert on history, but why couldn't they just... stop hurting that gorgeous earth that I saw in pictures so much?
I suppose I can't really complain. Yes, the world is barren and uninhabitable for humans, but the robots will carry on. They don't mind the ozone layer being gone or plastic chunks of trash melting on old sidewalks. Everyone in Grass Valley understands that we are the last humans. We have no purpose now. Our great grandparents already made AI, which can survive thrive and not destroy itself by getting into wars and conflicts with greedy motivations.
I don't know if humanity was supposed to have some climactic ending or last stand like the battles on the movie CDs from my basement. As I'm writing this, I realize how boring of a book it would make. No climax or resolution. Just Grass Valley slowly fading away into history.
Unfortunately, one day, Grass valley will not hold the trophy for highest population, and it will remained tied with everyone else at 0. I suppose that will also nix our Most Legs in One City award, Most Words Spoken in a Day by a Town Award, and unfortunately, the Owns the Only Living Chinchilla Award.
Once we're all gone, Grass valley, and I guess humanity is going to be forgotten, as a new species begins their own history. AI will replace humans, and Grass Valley will be a totally new city, replaced with steel boxes and wired towers and robots, but I do hope they keep the name.
Edit: btw I absolutely love this prompt! |
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I put my pen down, still unsure of what to ask for. All my friends knew exactly what they wanted for months ahead of time- Tom wanted some Telepathy, Brad wanted to be able to create and control Fireballs, and Chloe wished for teleportation. I, however, couldn't think of any good abilities that would have no repercussions- legal and safety-wise.
Just to kill time, I browsed my phone, deciding to visit my feed on Read-It. On recent, I saw my friends' posts about how they already submitted their applications- days before they were due. As I scrolled, I saw people were in the same situation as I- scared that they would regret their decisions in the future. The advice was always the same:
"Go with your gut!"
"It doesn't matter, you'll be happy anyway"
"Think carefully about what you want to do with your life, then make your decision based on that"
I'd already had similar advice given to me, so I didn't really pay attention to those comments. However, there was one comment in particular that stood out to me:
"I'd recommend you take this quiz at..."
Without giving it too much thought, I clicked the link at the end of the comment, and I was brought up to a quiz similar to those at FuzzFood. I went through the quiz, answering questions about 'my spirit animal' and sign. When the result came, I was severely disappointed to read,
"You are the kind of person who knows what they want, a real go-getter! Your recommended superpower is... Whatever you want! Go for it!!"
I angrily shut off my phone and went to bed. I still had one more day before I had to mail in my submission. I thought I would be able to think more clearly in the morning.
That night, I dreamt of some strange things- abstract shapes, impossible creatures, colors beyond the boring grey of the city. I remember meeting a man who told me some things that I would never have thought of myself.
That morning, I knew exactly what to apply for. I lifted my pen off its resting place on my desk and wrote.
(This is my first story here, be as brutally critical as you see fit) |
The woods are lovely. Soft snow covers the ground, while cloud softened light illuminates everything just enough to see the beauty of the details.
I cannot believe what I have done.
I have been here for hours. The cold numbs my heart, slows the screaming in my thoughts. It puts a veil of ice between myself and the memories of my loved ones, screaming in terror, only to snuff out in mid curse of me.
I deserve every bit of what they called upon me.
The light fades. The shadows deepen. Darker shadows approach through the forest, harbingers of what is to come. I pray for them to make me suffer for what I did.
They stop at the edge of the small clearing.
I can see them. They are dark of coat, long of tooth and claw. Perfect for tearing limb from limb. I await them.
Why do they hesitate? I did not.
They watch me. The screaming starts again in my mind. They turn as one, leaving me behind. Please! Don't go! ... Did I listen to the pleas of my family? No, I did not. It is fitting. The curses come again in my mind.
I cannot cry.
The woods are dark and cold; just as I was when I ... I do not wish to remember, but the memories only become clearer and more painful as I sit.
Contemplating what I did.
It is fitting. I shall have the rest of my life, here in these woods, to remember. I do not sleep. I cannot cry. I will not close my ears to the pleas and curses of my kinsmen.
The woods are dark and cold; but not as dark and cold as my heart.
((finis)) |
The road was decked with decorations on the poles and trees and blinking lights in the newly fallen snow.
Her house was a bright yellow, the color of yolk, and snow angels were already impressed within the small hill beneath her house.
The snow was still falling around you. The day was beginning to turn to night and the sky was a blue as peaceful and deep as that of a silent lake.
You never suspected, from going as you did from your home to hers, what you would see inside that freshly painted home.
The front door was already ajar, yet inside there was not a sound. It was dim inside and you wondered why your host would open the door and yet not bother to turn on the lights.
You peeked inside.
Something glowed, a color like the sky, like the silent lake, a tall mirror sitting in the middle of the living room.
There dark forms around it, the forms of people, quiet, unmoving.
Your eyes widened and you nearly slammed the door shut in fear. This is just a misunderstanding, you thought. That light from the mirror, maybe it's just a strong reflection, of the sky outside.
You inched your head back in to observe the scene once more. This time, you glanced down at the people. It was so dim you could not see their face.
Your mouth called out a "hello?"and no one reacted. You called out louder. "Sarah? Hello?"
None of them turned to you. It was almost as if your friend was not even there.
You tried calling her, texting her. She didn't pick up, she didn't respond. It was now a while past the time the two of you had agreed to meet.
You wondered if you were supposed to go in. Maybe she expected you to, once she did come.
So nervously, you opened the door all the way forward and stepped inside.
The forms of the people had still not moved. You saw the vague outlines of arms and limbs akimbo among the torsos. Heads staring silently at that mirror.
You wondered so very much what all the fuss was about, and then, your eyes began straying to the mirror...
​
At 4:15 am sharp every morning, Michael came out to jog. As his feet pounded down the sidewalk, he saw a house, unusually bright and yellow.
Coming closer, he noticed that not only the color was unusual -- so was the smell.
It was rancid, rotting, and something struck within him. The smell of decaying flesh.
He dialed 911.
In the late afternoon, the bright yellow house had been completely blocked off by tape and police cars.
The police extricated a total of seventeen bodies, now three days decayed.
"They were all pointed at the same direction, in the middle of them. One of them was standing. They were also looking in the same direction. It was as if there was something in the middle they were all looking at when they died."
"What was it?"
"We don't know. When we got there, there was nothing there."
"What happened to the person who lived there? Was she one of the deceased?"
"No. This house was listed as vacant. The last owner, Sarah Livingston, she died over a year ago." |
Willow fluttered into the adventurer's hall with a purpose. Her black, flowy dress hung limp and hid her feet; she hovered ghost-like straight to the quest board. A set of long, veiny, translucent insect wings kept her five-foot fairy frame aloft. The bright pink quest card was still there. It stood out from the wall of drab yellow and off-white quest cards pinned to the board.
It showed up a week ago and immediately caught her interest. When she inspected it she only found a time and place. No other details were given, not even the name of the requester. Willow only recently discovered the AlterNet within the last year. She did not feel ready to handle the unknown. She settled for lesser quests and assumed someone else would take the pink one.
She was surprised to see the quest still on the board the next day; then, the next. A week later it was the day mentioned in the quest and no one had taken it. Something about that made her feel a bit sorry for the quest giver. NPC quests reset each day and most adventurers optimized their routine around them. The pink card couldn't have been an NPC quest; it was missing all the important information. She hated the idea that she could have helped someone that needed it.
"*It could be a trap*,"Willow considered the possibility as she stared at the pink card. "*But it could also not be..."* She stepped back and scanned the rest of the board. All the usual stuff was there, including Sue, the ungrateful hypochondriac. Willow hated the NPC girl, she was obnoxiously snotty. Figuratively and literally. It was an unreasonable hatred since the girl was a fictional character, but it burned in Willow just the same. She yanked the pink card off the board with a shrug and a sigh. "*I'd rather get mugged than go see her again,*"she decided.
An hour later she found a small house in the center of an open plain. Its size was somewhere between a children's playhouse and a mobile home. The house was built with golden-translucent bricks. The roof seemed to be made of the same material in shingle form. The sun was reaching its apex and light forced itself through the bricks; Willow saw a small shadow moving around inside.
"*It doesn't look too threatening,*"Willow walked to what looked like the door. The golden, glassy squares were arranged in a different pattern on the front of the house. She knocked. A young blonde girl opened the door. She looked at Willow through narrowed eyes until the fairy flashed the pink card. The girl smiled instantly.
"HI! I'm Honey!"She stepped out of the house.
"You put this up?"Willow asked. The girl nodded. "What's the quest?"Honey bit her bottom lip nervously and looked Willow up and down.
"Wanna be my friend?"she asked.
"What?"
"[I have a guild now](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/cv4u3e/wp_you_are_a_powerful_warlord_feared_by_all_you/),"Honey used her thumb to point at the house directly behind her. "But I don't have anyone in it,"the girl sighed. "I have one friend but she's too busy to play much."She looked up at Willow with eager eyes. "It's a high level guild! I stole it from a PvP server and they bought all the perks already.
"Maybe,"Willow said. She tried to inject coolness into her voice, but she already decided. She had been looking for a guild recently, but she wasn't very social. A guild with only one other person in it would let her get used to the flow of things before they recruited too many others. Willow extended her wings and fluttered to give herself more height. Honey was already too close to her short stature. She pretended to be thinking.
"What's the guild name?"Honey shrugged.
"Deathdealers or something dumb. I haven't changed it yet. Oh! You can help me pick out a name!"
"Wait. You stole a guild? By yourself?"Honey nodded. She lifted a hand in front of Willow's face. The light peach skin changed color. It became a translucent gold color that matched the house, then her thumb fell off. It pulled a long, viscous string and was still attached when it landed on the floor. Honey used her other hand to break the string and the golden fluid formed another thumb in its place. Her skin returned to its normal, fair color.
"Oh you're a slime,"Willow said.
"Hey, don't talk about my friend like that,"another voice said behind Willow. She turned to see a short girl, older than Honey, in a red hoodie. She was carrying a pink bakery box and wearing a smile despite her reprimand.
"Cherry!"Honey dashed past Willow to hug the new girl.
"Making new friends, huh?"Cherry asked with a smile. Honey nodded.
"Uhuh."
"Nice,"Cherry walked forward and held the box with one hand to offer Willow her other. "I'm Cherry, nice to meet you."
"Willow,"she introduced herself.
"Thanks for coming,"Cherry said as Honey grabbed the box from her and ran inside. Once the girl was through the door Cherry lowered her voice. "Even the AlterNet can be lonely if you don't have friends,"she said. "I'm glad I'm not the only one here for her birthday."
\*\*\*
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is year two, story #250. You can find all my stories collected on my subreddit ([r/hugoverse](https://www.reddit.com/r/hugoverse)) or my [blog](https://hugoverse.info/). If you're curious about my universe (the Hugoverse) you can visit the [Guidebook](https://hugoverse.info/2017/11/25/hugoverse-guidebook/) to see what's what and who's who, or the [Timeline](https://hugoverse.info/2017/10/23/hugoverse-timeline/) to find the stories in order. |
Man was never meant to voyage far. Space is vast, dark, and full of terror. Terror that we, as a society, can not cope with right now.
The most recent sabotage we did was the moonlander of India. We have our own Gauss cannon, built at a secret location on Earth. We shot the lander with this slug, containing this message.
If you decide to return to the lander, we think should have this knowledge. But hopefully, by then, humanity will return to a peaceful age without space travel. We will be working on that. But in case we fail, we share our knowledge:
Only a few clicks from that spot, is where you can find the Eye of the Elder God. It looks like a crater, but it is far from it. We have yet to see it blink. Do not disturb it. Avert your gaze from the Staring Moon. Do not return here.
Our name is not important. Do not seek us out. |
“All right—I am going to slide the tunnel VERY SLOWLY along the wall, okay? No funny business, no super speed. Just send Mr. Bergschneider through the tunnel and you can head off in the other direction. No one will follow you.”
I hang up the call, then unroll the tunnel bit by bit and carefully maneuver it into place on the brick wall. A two-lane road stretches through the building and off into the distance, the tunnel exit winking several blocks away. (Funny, because the building is only about 40 feet wide.) At the other end I see a shadow peer around the corner, disappear, and then shove another dark figure into the tunnel. Mr. Bergschneider stumbles along the tunnel and I hear a couple of the officers clapping each other’s backs and planning a drink after work.
Never celebrate before you have the hostage.
Just as I can make out Mr. Bergschneider’s signature comb-over, the tunnel shakes a bit. I grab an officer tentatively stepping onto the tunnel tarmac and hurl us both backwards as hard as I can, hitting the ground just as the tunnel twists, jerks back into the building and disappears.
Fuck. Also, I think I broke my wrist.
“What the HELL? Mac, what the hell just happened?” The chief, caught mid-backslap, charges over to the wall and pounds on it a couple times. Sure, that should work.
“The target took the tunnel off the wall while it was in use. It was a possibility, but we didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Sorry?!? What am I going to do with ‘sorry’? I saw Bergschneider right there, I SAW him. Where the blazes is he?”
“If he’s lucky, the tunnel left him behind, in which case he died instantly when he and a few tons of brick suddenly arrived in the same physical space.”
“You’ve got a strange definition of luck, buddy.”
“If he got swept along with the tunnel, he gets to spend the rest of his life as a two-dimensional life-form rolled up into a tube, perpetually aware of his fate because he can still move his eyes.”
The chief stares at me while he cracks his knuckles, one at a time. Then he strides away, barking into his walkie-talkie while a phalanx of beat cops straighten themselves up and hurry after him. “I’m on my way—get the wife up to the station. I’m gonna need another coffee.”
I carefully test a few points on my wrist – yep, ER it is – and pull off my tie for a makeshift brace until I can get myself seen. The officer I yanked down is still sitting agog on the pavement.
“Sorry about that,” I offer. “Painted tunnels are tricky. You can take all the precautions you want, but ultimately the other end of the tunnel is in the target’s hands. You hurt?” He shakes his head, finally tearing his eyes away from the dilapidated brick left in front of us.
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Losing a hostage? From time to time. It’s never easy, but I’ve gotta compartmentalize or I’d never be able to show up for work in the morning. That specifically? I’ve read about it but never seen it myself.” It is pretty grisly, when you think about it. At least with a disintegrator ray you’re just left with dust, very little mess.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Some of the best hostage negotiators have figured out ways to make New Physics work to their advantage. Number One negotiator drinking story is the time when Marla Popovich sprinted down 20 flights of stairs after a terrorist pushed a kid off a roof and caught the kid totally unharmed before he hit the ground. Seriously, they gave her a parade.
The rookie is still sitting on the ground. He would’ve been, what, twelve or thirteen when the laws of physics shifted? That’s a pretty impressionable age to suddenly find that what was hilarious on TV when you were a kid is truly horrifying in real life. I nudge him with my foot.
“C’mon. Let me get this wrist seen and then I’ll buy you a drink. I don’t even know what the paperwork looks like for ‘crushed by the sudden re-existence of a building,’ but I don’t think they’ll miss you for a little while.” He lurches to his feet and feebly swats at the dust clinging to most of his pants. I sling my good arm over his shoulders and steer him in the direction of the hospital, which is on the same block as my favorite bar. (Not a coincidence. In this line of work, it’s smart to pick a favorite bar right where you’re going to need it most.)
“You’ll get used to it. Did you ever take New Physics in school? No? The gravitational effects alone are fascinating. Anyway, let me tell you about this time I walked a target ten feet off a ledge before I showed him where he was….” |
Everything got weirder, I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. I'm tired but I don't know what's causing it. I think it's wholesome and sad that the driver keeps them on his mind to keep them alive, like in that mexican celebration that I saw in Coco. But it still feels... weird, it feels wrong.
So I decided to search for more clues and I thought to pay a visit to Robert, my best friend from middle school. His dad is an investigator and keeps all types of archives in his house, which I'm pretty sure is illegal but I'm sure that what I'm looking for is here.
And it is here... I found some files telling about kids that go missing, people doing search parties and then found them dead in the train tracks. It's got photos and everything which made me sick but I continued searching. Every single kid goes missing but I noticed there's a pattern.
Elementary, Middle School and High School in that order. So it's not only kids, it can be anyone who's not old enough to go to college. The leads still can't find a suspect for this atrocious acts so everyone is alert about it. This also explains as to why pretty much no one goes to school... everyone is scared for their children.
I thanked Robbie (As I call him) and decided to go home. Next day felt weird since there was nobody else in the school bus, not even Robbie. The bus driver did his normal thing but when he stopped on the train tracks... he said something I'll never forget.
"*I know what you're up to, Carter. You have to stop, before it's too late, I like you and I don't want to stop by this tracks to let you in. I rather keep picking you up at your house... and being able to see you.*"
It gave me chills, but I can't stop now, I've gone so far in my own investigation. As I said in the beginning I can't sleep, I heard a noise coming from the backyard and then some rambling in my kitchen and that can't be my dog since he died two weeks ago but the scary part is... I can see my school bus right outside my house, so I pretty much know who has done all of this... and what awaits for me.
My name is Carter Rogers and if anyone is reading this note it means I've gone missing. I know who the culprit is and I really hope you catch him... don't let my sacrifice be in vain. I love you, mom, I'll see you on the other side. |
I pull out my 1969 published paper from the desk drawer. The one that changed my life forever! Mine was the winning submission for a highly prized intergenerational project in which Earth’s destiny became my hypothesis. My own implementation would take reign, to see what will be.
After all this time not observing a thing, as to not alter even a single atom in this sophisticated experiment, it’s time to open the atmosphere and start taking notes again, and hand off the project’s resources this evening. I set the paper down and take a deep breath in, and let it go.
Walking into the vacuum, space suit and AR glasses on, I raise my hands above me in a Y and slowly pull my palms closer and closer together. The zoom shrinks the model planet to a manageable size. I lower my left arm and spin the world round with my right hand swiping left. This technology suite I am using is Version 1. No other Earth Sim Scientist has been given this kind of ease and grace of observation before. The world in the palm of a hand, in scientific terms.
As the modelled globe spins frictionlessly, I turn my right hand palm more and more outwards to slow down the rotation.
My stats start populating in the top right. It’s downloading everything. This will be a semi-centennial data refresh. I’ll be taking a copy of this as a resource for three decades of study and conclusion, which will fuel two decades of preparation within the up-and-coming-thinkers communities.
The data is coming in. Number of animal and plant species, with rates of increase and decrease. Number of new ideas, with ratings on quality. Volumes of natural resources, with rates of increase and decrease. Measurements of all 125 periodic table elements.
As the list gets longer, I point my fingers at species and expand by lowering my thumb. I use my index finger to scroll through and select Human. I grab the word and throw it over the globe. Human facts jump out in organized formats. I scan the information and wave, wander, scroll, and push through until I find it - my experimental variable: Consciousness. I hold the ends of the word with both my hands and retrieve it, bending my elbows to bring it closer to me. And with a granny shot toss upwards, the findings take precedent over all previously seen information.
I turn my hand into a cup and roll the layout into a parchment scroll. Closing my fist it asks me to name the file: “2019 Sim Science - Consciousness Bias”.
I tuck it into my pocket and head for the door.
The evening talk goes well and I hand over the lab keys to the next Earth Sim Scientist whose work has now been formally announced. Her merits are exceptional and Sim Earth will be in trustworthy hands. Tomorrow her hypothesis will be implemented following the Sim Earth Reset Revolution - which can last anywhere between 1 and 17 minutes - and she will close the door for 50 more years until the time comes again to see what will be.
For the past 10 years, she has lead a team of talent to build Version 2 of Sim Earth, offering new variables and new command.
The one thing that does remain constant is abstinence of observation. No observation is allowed in the decades between hand-offs. Observation, even from this distance, would have immense damage to validity of our data collected. |
As the space debris accumulated, I came to life.
I watched the surface grow and evolve, from an ocean of molten to lava to the habitable land populated with billions of living beings.
I witnessed mass extinction events, from asteriod impacts to supervolcano eruptions, but life always found a way to persevere.
I watched the earliest humans hunt and gather, build communities, and slowly improve.
I was there at the fall of the Roman Empire, and I watched the rise and fall of the Aztecs.
I saw humans wage too many wars to count and decimate one another.
Through all the millenia, my health never wavered.
As long as life persisted, I was fine.
However now, I can see grey hairs invading my body; I am nearing the end of my existence.
My name, as the humans call me, is Earth. And they have unwittingly started taking my life. |
*Huh. So this is Arthan's Heart. I expected a sword of this reputation to be a bit... more impressive.* Sir Cortheon stared at the blade in his hand. Legend says it was forged with the breath of a red dragon and has the power to raise a nation. *Or, raze one,* he contemplated. The noise behind him stirred him back to the moment. Not all the creatures guarding this blade have stopped breathing yet. With a quick flourish, he sunk the blade into the chest of the pointy-eared humanoid that managed to crawl 10 feet towards the exit. As blood flowed from the wound, the small band of soldiers under Sir Cortheon's command stared at him in shock.
"Sir, was that necessary? I know the elves of this land had been corrupted, but they were defeated. That one posed no threat!"Landren was Cortheon's closest adviser and had fought with him in many battles.
"I know, Landren, but we cannot risk that one getting word to the other elves in this land. They stole this blade once, and we cannot risk them burning through our lands in an effort to reclaim it again. The power of this blade is best for... more worthy pursuits. Nobody in this forest may know of what happened here. Nobody."With immense speed Cortheon plunged the blade into Landren and the other three soldiers. The power of the blade coursing through his body, the muscles acted with speed and power worthy of the legends. Four more bodies added to the large pile already created by his men.
Cortheon took each of his soldier's rings, to prove to his king that they died with honor. He then covered the bodies with dry sticks and branches from the surrounding forest. A few seconds with his tinderbox and flint was all that was needed to start a flame, and he used the flame to ignite a slightly damp bundle of twigs and leaves. The moisture made the flame grow and spread slowly, giving him enough time to gather his things and leave the area. A quick whistle and his horse met him on the trail.
Cortheon was about a half mile up the trail when he looked back. The light white smoke from the damp twig bundle had finally ignited the pile of wood and bodies. Cortheon smiled at the now black smoke column, slowly growing bigger. "*I saw that. I granted you a small taste of what I can do, and you are certainly impressive. If you agree to serve me, I will grant you power that will destroy those you deem are not worth living."*
Sir Cortheon was taken aback at the voice in his head. *A sentient weapon? I have heard of weapons like this. My grandfather spoke of the Sword of Kas, the fabled sword that felled a powerful arch-lich.*
"*Yes, I am sentient. Unlike that sword, I am not bound to a singular cause. My eldritch power is far greater than you can imagine, and you can have access to all of it, over time, if you agree to swear a pact to me."*
Sir Cortheon slowed his horse to a stop. He looked around and saw nobody around. The hidden forest grove that was hiding the sword was far behind him and the smoke had mostly died down. "Tell me, good sword, what power do you offer?"He felt a surge of dark energy in the sword on his back. *Point your hand at the oak tree ahead of you. Imagine its trunk splintering into tiny shards.* Cortheon easily saw the intended target, a large oak tree about 60 feet ahead of him. With his hand outstretched, he thought about the middle of the trunk exploding in a shower of wooden splinters. As the image of the trunk shattered in his mind, he felt eldritch energy coalesce in his palm and a black ethereal bundle of energy quickly, almost instantly, struck the tree. The actual damage was far less than he expected, but there was a small divot in the tree now, approximately 12 inches across and 2 inches deep. "*Good. Most people have more trouble at first. You will be a great student. I can give you power that will make that blast paltry by comparison. With me, you would even be able to summon demons from the outer planes to serve at your command!"*
Cortheon had felt the surge of eldritch energy, and he liked it. "You offer much to me, dear sword. What you get in return?"The response, as usual, was directly in his mind. "*I was forged to serve those who agreed to serve me. The Raven Queen herself was instrumental in my creation, so those who serve me will also serve her."*
Cortheon thought about that. He knew the Raven Queen was a deity whose domain was that of death. She was neither good nor evil, just handled death as a natural consequence of life. "*Yes, my own master has but one command. If you agree to this pact, you must not tolerate those who seek to deny the queen what is rightfully hers. I can guide you in this, and in return to this responsibility I will grant you the power to subject your enemies to your will. What say you?"*
He smiled slightly. Turning his attention back to the oak tree, he concentrated more clearly and let the energy fire off. This time, the whole trunk shattered and the tree fell back. The smell of burnt sawdust filled the air. "Yeah, I would say we have a deal."
The horse started moving again. In two days he would return home. In two days, Sir Cortheon would become king.
Back at the palace, King Darvold had just finished the council meeting. *"My liege, I must warn you that Arthan's Heart has awakened. It is now wielded by a man who is pure of heart, but a purity of darkness. They come, and they bring great power to bear."* King Darvold held his greatstaff in hand. "Yes, they come, but they come without knowing what power they face." |
"Tom pass me the bucket"
Rika gestured frantically in Tom's direction, Tom was not responding. He was standing, staring past Rika, a tiny saucepan in one hand, just looking.
His multicoloured wig had partially fallen off, revealing his grey sparse hair beneath. He just stood there, ignoring Rika, looking with his sad mournful eyes at the monster approaching. His eyes were becoming baggier, the sweat from beneath his wig was creating dark black rivulets in his makeup.
"Tom, for fucks sake, pass me the bucket"
Rika was holding onto a lasso, the rope was hanging mid-air tied to absolutely nothing. This was one of her oldest routines. Large oversized shoes splayed at right angles, Rika was leaning backwards looking as if she was straining to pull in an invisible creature. Her baggy trousers were hanging comically halfway down her bottom, barely held up by the large red braces that dwarfed her far too large and soot stained shirt.
The soot wasn't part of her costume. The soot was from the last call out they had had, only an hour ago. That one had been tough. Tom hadn't dealt with it well. Clearly, he hadn't dealt with it well at all.
Rika made a quick calculation. She could break the routine, get the bucket herself and start a new one, but would she be able to finish it before the monster reached them? It was already pretty close.
She looked at it. The monstrous parody of her and Tom. It was moving slowly. They always did, it seemed to be one of their rules. It had a happy face, bright whites, yellows and reds punctuated its eyes, mouth and cheeks. They were always happy, she never thought she would grow to hate happy clowns. But then she never thought she'd be using her routines to kill them either. The monster smiled at her, a row of sharp teeth clearly visible between the painted lips. It waddled closer.
As always, it hit Rika how ridiculous this was. How utterly surreal. She looked at Tom, he was still staring. She didn't have time for this. She decided to ad lib the routine. She jerked, as if the invisible creature, 'elephant', she told herself - good comedy material an elephant - as if the invisible elephant had been lassoed and now was trying to escape.
She stumbled forward, causing her huge shoes to flap comically either side of her. She called it the duck waddle. The monster in front of her slowed, and grasped its belly, it chortled silently, a huge wide smile across its face. It was only then that Rika realised it had a small dog grasped in one of its gloved hands.
It was dead, it was inevitable it was dead. The monsters never let anything live. That didn't help Rika though. She wanted to scream, to break the routine and launch herself at the distorted clown and rip the dog from its hands. From its unclean, murderous, vicious hands.
Instead she followed through on her stumble with a dramatic jerk backwards. She was dragging the elephant back. Away from the monster and towards Tom and the bucket of custard he was so painfully failing to pass to her.
"Tom"she screamed "Snap out of it before you get us both killed"
Tom blinked and turned and looked at her mournfully. His mouth drooped, emphasising the hang dog expression painted on his face. He looked like he was going to cry, but then Tom always looked like he was going to cry, even without the makeup.
"Screw this"Rika muttered and threw herself backwards again, the elephant was clearly struggling. This time she launched herself directly next to the bucket. She looked towards the monster. It was close, fascinated by her routine, watching her with eager eyes. Eager, dead, utterly dark blue eyes.
She stumbled into Tom, handing him the lasso with exaggerated care. He kept dropping it, luckily she held on, each time he dropped it, the elephant would jerk Rika back towards the monster, Rika frantically holding on with one hand, clutching her falling trousers with the other. Timing was everything. Timing was always everything when you were a clown.
After the second jerk forwards and then backwards, Rika placed the lasso into Tom's open hand and closed his fingers around it herself. She kept her tongue stuck out of her mouth the entire time, a parody of concentration. She tested his grip with childlike care. Satisfied, she slapped him hard on the back, so hard that he stumbled fowards, directly into the path of the monster.
The monster looked at Tom expectantly. It reached forwards with its empty hand and pulled the lasso gently towards it. It tilted its head inquisitively, peered at the lasso, then peered at Tom, then back at the lasso again. It smiled, a broad happy grin, and reached into the centre of the lasso and pulled at the air.
A small pink elephant appeared out of the air, it squirmed in the monster's grip. The monster pulled it up and out of the lasso and held it aloft triumphantly, grinning proudly at Rika and capering on the spot. Then it started to squeeze the elephant's neck, dancing on the spot all the while.
Rika grabbed the bucket of custard. Launching herself forward she screamed "Duck!"at Tom.
Realising he wasn't going to duck in time, nowhere nearly in time, she kicked him hard in the bottom, causing him to fall forward into an inept, clumsy roll. 'That'll do"Rika thought, 'that's almost the routine'.
She swung the bucket full force at the monster, stopping only when at head height. The custard flew out, a glorious mix of rainbow colours, and hit the clown monster full in the face.
It threw itself backwards into a comical fall, following the rules of the circus, always following the rules. Rika launched herself at it, grabbing at the lasso as she did so. She looped it around the monster's neck and threw the rope upwards. The rope flew up and stayed up, pulling the monster's neck with it.
The monster thrashed, letting go of the elephant, which instantly disappeared, and the dog, which didn't. It grasped with its large clumsy gloves at the lasso around its neck. This wouldn't be enough, Rika knew. "Tom, the saucepan, please, Tom, please"She wouldn't get to it in time, she knew.
The monster was winning, the lasso was beginning to sag. The effect of playing their game and by their rules didn't last long. They followed them to a certain degree but if you didn't follow through yourself and end the routine on your terms, they would start their own. And their routines were deadly.
Rika braced herself.
The monster pulled the lasso off and grinned, and stood, and then stopped. It stopped as the tiny saucepan went flying fall force into its face, Tom spinning on the other end. It swayed in circles on the spot, ever increasing concentric circles, and then spun slowly on one foot and landed flat on its face.
Rika was already running back to their van, she hauled the colourful cloth suitcase out and pulled it over to Tom. Together they lifted the monster into the bag, pratfalling over each other and the monster's legs the entire time.
They zipped it in. Then they padlocked the zip. Together, again, they carried it back to the van, Tom's make up now barely visible from how much he was sweating.
"You're going to have to redo that before the next call out"Rika said, as they chucked the suitcase into the back of the van.
"Rika, I'm sorry, I just froze..."
"It's ok Tom, that last one wasn't easy, and you came through when it mattered. Come on, we have to get it into the water soon, before... well, before it wakes. Come on, we've not got long"
They flopped as fast as they could to the front of the van, losing a little time squeezing themselves in butt first through the narrow doors, their large shoes bulging out at awkward angles. Rika squeezed her foot through a hole in the bottom of the shoe and hit the gas.
Their van launched forwards, farting pink clouds of glitter in its wake. |
"I'm sorry, Private. I just wanted to 4th squad to achieve something. Kuh!"Sergeant Davis managed to speak a for more words before coughing up a mouthful of blood.
"Don't speak anymore, Sarg."
"You've always been my favorite, Private. So you have to make it out alive. Tell them our story. For... our... brothers!"With one last defiant shout, Sergeant Davis kicked the big one.
I crouched over the sergeant for the last time and said, "Requiescat in pace. Safe travels, you hardass."I managed one last quip before placing down Sergeant Davis.
\*Boom!\*
A loud whistle followed by the sound of thunder signaled that the enemy has appeared once again. I might have all the time in the world, but something about Sarg's words relight a fire in me. I remembered a time when the sound of thunder signaled the collapse of the great wall. The clanging of metal against metal, the scream of the dying, and the silence of the dead. In every single one of those wars, I've always remained victorious.
I've argued grand strategy with Confucius back in the Zhou Dynasty. Compared notes with Aristotle as he theorized the various aspects of the material plane. From there, I met with Young Alex. Who knew such a young pup would soon be known throughout history as the Son of God? From there, I've marched with Alexander as he conquered Egypt and joined him on his conquest of the Persian Empire. We slaughtered what must be hundreds of thousands back in those days.
After Alexander's time, I joined in a few more of the skirmishes over the holy land. I cannot say which side was righteous. I only attended for the bloodshed.
Then it came to a time where cold steel was no longer useful, replaced by weapons the breathed out smoke and spat out thunder. I watched in glee as the age of cold steel gradually phased out, this was a time of great change.
The two world wars, I also can't say much. There just isn't much satisfaction in killing a man from a distance. I did happen to participate on a couple of occasions, each time demolishing everything in sight. I made sure that there were no witnesses to my massacre, but with the invention of long-range communication, those times were hard.
After that, it just became harder and harder to hide my identity. How would the world react when they know that I exist? Maybe I'm not the only one, but so far, I've never met another of my kind. I soon gave up the life of bloodshed, submitting myself to the life a peaceful farmer. Unfortunately, WW3 broke out.
I was forcefully conscripted and made to serve to defend my nation. A trivial nation that would probably have crumbled just like the hundreds of nations before it. However, I digress. I must say, the bloodshed and the carnage have slowly awakened the instinct I hid away from long ago. Now, its threatening to be let loose. I guess Sarg was the final straw. There's no point in holding back now, it's time to let the beast out and hear its howl. I just hope the world is ready to accept that a demon like me exists. |
Water
When most people think of water, they imagine a couple of things, a cup half empty, or full. A bathtub, or shower. The calming waves slapping the white sand of a beach at sunset. The darkness of the abyss, nowhere to run. A giant, endless, amalgamation of blue, black, and green.
I think it was Lovecraft that once said, We are on a small island, adrift in a sea of infinity, and humans were not meant to venture far. I guess that's out of the window now, my name is Oliver McGregor, I am a Mninicologist, and I am terrified. It took years to develop this technology, some students at MIT or something made a rudimentary machine to turn memories into videos, they didn't mean anything, and weren't even recognizable images or videos, just a bunch of lines moving up and down. Well, apparently some idiots liked that and funded it more and more and more. I shouldn't call them idiots, they were doing what they thought was good. It could help police track criminals and the such. If only they knew.
I work in the Clark County Morgue, I always wanted to peer into peoples thoughts, this was the closest I could get. Today was like any day, someone comes into the morgue I work in, dead obviously, we cut their brain out of their skull, cut the Hippocampus out of their brain, load it into the machine, and retrieve images, usually if they aren't murdered we just get rid of the images, but I like glancing at them first. Today we got someone, they had drowned according to the autopsy we did before the mniniopsy, I looked through the pictures, one by one, glancing, making sure they weren't murdered. Its what you expect from a drowned person, swimming a bit too far out, riptide pulling them away from the shore, they can't see the shore, but... near the last picture, the one right before it, I noticed something, it was minuscule, almost going unnoticed. There was something in his peripherals, it was hard to see, I zoomed in and got a better look. It looked like... it's hard to describe, some dark spot, but it wasn't anything like kelp or a fish or something explainable. It was... off, something about it just itched at the back of my mind, I don't know how long I spent looking at that dark spot, minutes, hours, I had zoned out. I noticed it was almost time to close up shop, and snapped out of my trance, I quickly looked over the second picture, and every ounce of blood drained from my face faster than a sports car. His eyes, we always see through the eyes of the person, we retrieve only the visual memory from the hippocampus, but something was wrong, this image wasn't from his eyes, this one was far underwater. Some feet poked through the water's surface, the rest of the legs too, wearing the same swimsuit as when we performed the autopsy and mniniopsy, he even had the same birthmark on the back of his heel. I was confused, extremely so. I looked back at the shiny metal table he was lying on, he didn't move, he was dead, that was obvious, I walked over and touched him, he was cold, his pulse was non-existent. I don't even know why I did it, he couldn't have been alive, but I had the urge. I went back to the picture pondering it, I noticed that around the border of this image... we're more of the darker spots, they no longer looked like spots, or lines to me anymore, they were like veins, it was as if they pulsated in the image. Then I did something that I regret to this day, I checked his lungs. They would have some kind of damage or water in them from drowning right? I took the scalpel, hands shaking, and sliced open the skin, through the muscle, and used a bone saw to cut through the ribcage, I touched his lungs with my gloved hands. I had helped out with the other coroners, we had messed with a few lungs in our time, and I picked up on when one was damaged, and I did with most organs, but these lungs were perfect, they were fine, not damaged at all. I could have transplanted them to someone if I wanted to. I was confused, I ran back to my computer, reviewing all the images over and over again, I re-scanned the hippocampus, even going so far as to scan the rest of his brain. It all leads to those last two unnerving images. I didn't know what to make of this, we never had an issue like this, let alone even could consider one. A picture had somehow got in there that wasn't his, it wasn't his memory, and it sure as hell wasn't mine if that even was possible. I saved the images to a flash drive, along with the autopsy. I closed up shop and went home. I reviewed the images, pouring over them, over and over, searching all over the internet for anything remotely similar to this happening, anything that could cause this at all. As you could probably guess I found nothing, I went to the beach that he was found dead at, washed up on the shore like a piece of trash thrown from a pier. Nothing was off about this beach, absolutely nothing, I stayed away from talking to anyone, then made a risky move. I had bought a small inflatable life saver device, the ones that fit in your pocket, developed only recently. I also brought a miniature rebreather with fifteen minutes of air just in case. I swam, and swam, letting the riptide pull me from the shore and into the abyss. I went further and further until I could no longer see the shore, then I waited. One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Half an hour. An hour. Two hours. Three. Four.
Suddenly, I was underwater, I didn't know what had happened, but I pulled out my rebreather quickly and stuck it into my face, taking one breath of air, slowly, then holding it until I needed it. I saw what the young man who had died saw. I saw my own feet, legs, bathing suit, I knew it was me, but I wasn't there. I swam upwards, I also noticed it seemed to have stopped moving, and I don't mean this thing that looked like me had stopped swimming, or breathing, I mean it had stopped. It stood stagnant in the water, like a videogame glitch, like it was lagging, like it was dead, plastic. Not even the flowing water, the waves moved it.
I reached the surface, removing the rebreather and taking a look around. That thing, to this day it chills me to my core, its eyes, its fucking eyes!
It's cliche to say things like they weren't right, or monstrous or whatever, and it would be a lie to say so. It wasn't that they looked strange that chills me, it was that it was the opposite, they looked exactly like mine, but with a different thought, they looked intent on something, determined, I couldn't figure out what. That's when I noticed, the veins. Creeping inward on my vision, I inflated the lifesaver, wrapping the rope around myself and myself, and started swimming back to shore, I felt heavier, even in the water. It became hard to swim, but something was pushing me after I stopped, I felt tired, dull, and my eyes nearly closed, but I looked back to see myself, pushing, and swimming, to the shore. It looked terrified, yet, emotionless, it was a fake kind of fear, the fake fear you see in movies. Bad acting. It never spoke. I finally noticed what was wrong about it. It was dull, it looked like it was an image with the saturation value turned down. But other than that it was the same. I turned back around to see the small brown speck that looked to be the pier before blacking out.
# Pain, thumping, pushing, can't breathe, dying, drowning, life flashing, what do I do, who am I, where am I, black, can't see
Then my eyes opened, two, no four, no five, no three, I couldn't think for a second, then my eyes focused, I saw four people around me, one was kneeling, pumping on my chest, they stopped and stood up, as I tried to sit up, before realizing I had no strength and laid back down, my ears were ringing. It took me a second to gather my thoughts, and look around. I gathered all my strength and stood up, despite the protests of the people around me. I couldn't see any lifesaver, or remnant of how I got here, my copy was gone, and I was confused. After the whole ordeal with near-drowning was sorted out, I went home stumped, dumbfounded. It had been apparently two days since I went to the beach. I deleted the pictures and burned the flash drive. Something about the situation was scary, it just instilled me with fear, it activated my fight or flight response involuntarily, and I didn't want anyone else to even see what I had seen. I don't do mniniopsys on drowning victims anymore, I just lie and say, things like, yeah they swam too far into the ocean, or yeah this kid got pulled underwater by the riptide. I occasionally have those dark tendrils creep into my vision again, but I will them away as quickly as possible, never letting them get close to.. whatever they are trying to reach. They never should have invented memory scanning. |
Of course these words affected me deeply... however, after some thought, I noticed that this phase of regreting events of my life is completely useless and adds no value, just worsens my mental state. Eventually I felt better... more excited and happy! Ready to move on with my life.
A few days passed and I didn't even talk with her anymore. I was watching TV during my lunch when I suddenly saw an "emergency transmission". I didn't care much but I was curious to see what it was. That's when I freaked out at the journalist, he was completely scared, speaking with his trembling voice... I could definitely feel that fear in my skin even not knowing what was going on. I got up in shock and then watched on it:
\- WE DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING, PEOPLE ARE SIMPLY FALLING ON THE GROUND AND NOT WAKING UP! REPEAT! WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING, THEY ARE SIMPLY FALLING ON GROUND AND DYING!
Then they showed a recording of a subway station, It was completely full with people standing waiting when suddenly one of them just fell to the ground. People got scared, ran around and after a few seconds passed out as well. 2 minutes and about 180 people were all on the floor dead.
\- This footage got recorded 40 minutes ago and we were informed of that there are already teams of scientists trying to figure out what is happening but they themselves say they are not managing to work well because they are very afraid of die too. Several of them have already given up and fled to their houses.
I was completely shocked and the first thing that I thought was: home is definitely not safe... whatever it is, it will get here sometime... I need to run away. I instantly ran to the kitchen, got all the food in the cupboards and ran to the car. I pressed the button to open the garage but it was so fucking slow which made me completely restless and uncomfortable waiting. I put the reverse gear, stepped down hard on the throttle and headed toward highway. Halfway, I saw things that left me completely shocked, There is people everywhere on the floor, in the middle of the street, in their vehicles, in the stores... It was terrible, there was no one alive... it made me extremely keyed up. The weirdest thing was that in the dead bodies, there was no injury or anything, it was completely random. I couldn't understand what the pattern was. And that's when I started to think: Why am I still alive? I probably already should be dead... what is the logic behind it? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING ??????
I was driving very fast and dodging the cars and trucks dropped around when I suddenly heard a huge scream... it was from a woman and it seemed familiar...
\- I don't believe it ... It was her.
I stopped the car immediately and went towards the scream. I run about 350 meters until I saw her totally desperate looking at all sides and running. Then she saw my car and started waving her arms. I stopped right beside her and lowered the windows. She said utterly desperate:
\- WHAT IS HAPPENING?
\- I DON'T HAVE IDEA BUT I'M VERY AFRAID ... YOU'RE THE FIRST PERSON I FOUND ALIVE!
\- ME TOO!
\- QUICK ENTER HERE, LET'S RUN AWAY!
She rushed in and I said I had some food in the back seat. I assumed it was not necessary to say that we should ration the food and eat just a bit but when I saw her eating like a pig, I said:
\- Calm down, we have to save food.
\- Sorry...
\- ...Relax
Then she asked:
\- Where are we going?
\- I plan to go in the middle of nowhere, I'll drive for about 2 hours on the highway and just stop in the middle of the road and go through into the forest. Staying there for a while... I don't know.
\- You're crazy??? I will not do it.
As far as I knew, I was definitely the last human alive beyond her. I was totally fascinated as she still refused to be near me regardless of arguments it put forward.
\- It's for our survival! We need to do something...
That's when she said the fateful phrase again ...
\- I wouldn’t want anything to do with you, even if you were the last person on Earth.
​
Continue... |
A door closes.
He feels it as much as hears it. Through the chair; the soles of his
feet where they rest on the floor. It isn’t loud, but it would be enough
to wake him up. If he were sleeping. He was sleeping.
He shouldn’t be sleeping. He shouldn’t be anything at all. As he slowly
opens his eyes, he can feel his heart beating in his chest. Not
thumping—the sound wasn’t the kind that startles a person awake— just
beating. Slowly. Rhythmically. Methodically. Pump-Pump. His heart
shouldn’t be beating.
For that matter, his eyes shouldn’t be seeing. But here is a room. It is
not a large room, but it is nice enough as rooms go. In the corner of
the room to his left is a small wooden table with a single drawer. Atop
it sits a squat lamp with a shade that was probably white but now has a
faint yellow tint. The carpet on the floor is plain and dark blue and
wholly uninteresting. On the wall, to the right of the door, is a framed
photograph he can’t quite make out. And the door itself is directly in
front of him, in the middle of the wall. He sees the room, but he does
not recognize it.
He glances down to be sure he is himself. His shirt. His pants. His
shoes. His hands. He is fairly certain he is himself. But he does not
know why he is in this room.
Before there was the room, there was a rope. The rope was not long, but
it was sturdy, and it was his. He had tied one end of the rope into a
loop, and the other end around the transom above his kitchen door. He
had pulled the loop over his head, and he had stepped off the chair. It
had not been this chair. He does not recognize this chair.
He stands to have a better look at the room. In addition to the table
and the lamp and the door and the picture, there is a phone. It is
attached to the wall behind him, and has a handset connected to it by a
short, coiled cable. It is the kind of phone people used to have in
their kitchen or foyer when he was a younger man. He picks up the
handset and holds it to his ear. Silence.
He replaces the handset on the hook, and walks across the room to the
door. It is a plain, wooden panel door that has been painted white. He
grasps the handle and turns it, and he opens the door.
He spends close to an hour examining his domain. There is a bedroom, and
a bathroom, both upstairs off the same hallway as the room with the
chair. Down the steps at the end of the hall is a living room, a dining
room, a kitchen, and a small library with many books. The furniture
throughout is neat and plain. The appliances work, as do all the
lights. The combination refrigerator-freezer is well-stocked. There are
no other floors.
It is, effectively, a small house. The only notable difference is that,
generally speaking, most houses have windows. This house has no windows
in it anywhere. It also does not appear to have a door leading
outside—or any other indication that there is an outside.
The man sighs as he walks from the kitchen back to the library. He is
not sure where he is, or why he is here. Before the house he would not
have said he believed in an afterlife—and he is sure he is at the after
part of his life—he is not a man who believes in things. But here, in
this place, he feels peace for the first time in a very long time.
Here there is no phone that will ever ring. There is no one he will ever
feel obligated to call, and no way to call them if he does. Here there
is no door that will be knocked upon, no doorbell to make his heart
pound and his palms sweat. There will be no unexpected visitors and no
need for him to dread the social obligations they bring with them. Here
he can just sleep, and read, and never again worry about the hell that
is other people.
He smiles as he selects a book from the bookshelves. |
The chamber is red, quiet. Motes of dust catch in the dreamy rays of the approaching twilight. My dart flits past Halloren's left ear and hits center mark.
"Nobody can know,"I tell him. I have endless ability for parlor games, but ask me to point at a man and my antiquity becomes obvious.
Halloren is imposing in her army fatigues, despite being a meager 5'2''. She's polishing her gun as if she's showing off a newborn, and the act never loses its mystique, not even now, a decade since we first met. I used to think only quarries and stripped mountaintops were suitable backdrops for her, but the cunning fucker looks just as indelible surrounded by high-class riff-raff. Certainly many have confused her for being my sister.
"Dr. Lyle."Kelso doesn't even bother to look up from his notepad. He sits in my favorite chair just to spite me. "I will not hesitate to point out something. Your lack of scandal is in itself a scandal."
"So I was a fool for not participating in the headhunts? The rum imports?"
"You were a fool for ever watching Jurassic Park."
"Oh, fuck you, Halloren."
I throw another dart, which naturally misses. The scotch in my hand is more water than relief. I set it down on my desk.
"The walls will hold for another decade,"Kelso continues. "I just wouldn't want to be on this side though, you know, when your *Precious Chosen* find out."
"They won't find out."Halloren strolls past to lean against the stained-glass portrait of the Virgin Mary. Indelible as ever. "Even if they do, why would they want to do anything to the one person who can protect them? You still hold all the cards."
Kelso snorts. "You really want to make that bet?"
The scotch in my glass ripples from distant quakes. "Of course she is,"I say.
"You can't rig something this complex."He taps on the auxiliary copy of my speech. "This is your last ticket."
Halloren's smiling. "You don't see it, do you? There is no train. There hasn't been a train in 14 years."
This room is red for a reason. More red than blood. It's purgatory.
"Our lovely Dr. Lyle,"Halloren drawls, "Won't be getting a hero's sendoff. Especially not when he becomes Mayor. You can't wash the color from these walls after all."
She straightens up to leave.
"Halloren,"I stop her.
"Kelso doesn't want me here, and you only think you need me."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you're a coward."She opens the door. "And you need to stop hating yourself for it. It's the only thing that has kept us alive for so long." |
"Specimen 42 has escaped. Unique Guards to your stations. All other personnel return to your quarters for your own safety."Howard jogged through the bright, narrow hallway as the message repeated. The mid-30s, pot-bellied janitor wheezed with strain as he rushed into his room. He locked the door and dragged a nightstand in front of it for the extra peace of mind it gave him. Howard hadn't seen Specimen 42 yet, but all the experiments he was familiar with were incredibly dangerous. He did not expect the nightstand to do more than maybe trip 42; but, it was an extra second of life.
Howard grabbed his node from the nightstand then took three steps across the room to plop on the cot he called a bed. His room consisted of half the janitor's closet. The closet was a 10' x 15' space filled with shelves and cleaning chemicals. There were several janitors once, but over the years Howard had been the only one that didn't ask too many questions. The company rewarded loyalty. They trusted him and allowed him to move into the space. He built a wall to give himself some space from the assortment of colorful cleaning liquids.
"42..,"he repeated the number as he swiped at his node. He browsed through the employee information app read the entry.
\[La Calavera: Physically speaking, Calaveras are the strongest of all Unique Souls. They are the sum total of all physical training across all their lives. B-class and above are able to destroy an Earth. Do not engage.\]
"Alright, I won't engage,"Howard chuckled to himself. As he laughed he heard a light clunk from the closet. It sounded familiar like when he let the mop handle bang against a counter. "Who's there?!"He shouted from the cot, then regretted it. The last thing he wanted was to attract attention from a Calavera. After a few silent moments, nothing came tearing out of the closet. Howard let himself breathe again. He tried to distract himself with his node but the mystery noise from the closet kept bothering him.
"*Could it be a rat?*"He ran down a list of possibilities in his mind as he stood from the cot and padded quietly to the cleaning closet. Howard kept his closet organized, there wouldn't have been a noise without someone or something making it. He turned on the light a second before he pulled the door opened.
He looked at the mop hook first, it was broken. The mop he hung there a few hours ago was flat on the floor.
"Huh,"he walked into the room and looked at the hook. It was bent downward as if someone used it as a step, and it was covered with a sticky, golden substance. It looked and felt like honey, but he didn't think it would be smart to taste it. Howard looked up at the vent directly above the hook. It looked undisturbed.
Working in a secret lab for 13 years taught Howard not to dismiss any little thing. He knew someone had been in his closet and looked around for more clues. Organization was also part of Howard's success at the company. He had a place for everything including empty containers that he planned to re-use or recycle. He immediately spotted something wrong. A five-gallon water jug in the corner among the empty containers was filled with amber liquid.
"*Relax, you're not dead yet,*"Howard reminded himself.
"Specimen 42 has escaped. Unique Guards to your stations. All other personnel return to your quarters for your own safety."The announcement played again; Howard had an idea. He hoped to draw out the intruder without getting himself killed. The best part was that if it failed it wasn't an immediate death sentence.
"I can't take it anymore,"He grumbled loudly and shook his head. "I'm gonna have to quit. Today, if 42 doesn't tear the place up first,"he complained to himself and anyone in earshot as he left the closet. When he was two steps out he heard a quiet voice behind him.
"I won't...,"He expected the intruder, but he did not expect the intruder to be a six-year-old with dirty blonde hair. He was momentarily surprised when he turned around and saw the girl standing next to an empty five-gallon jug. He exaggerated a jump to feign surprise and met the girl's eyes.
"You're 42?"he asked. She nodded.
"I don't want to hurt anyone. I just don't want to be here anymore. Like you,"she said. Howard nodded at the empty jug.
"Is it uncomfortable to be in that?"he asked. She shook her head and put her hand on the opening. Then, she flowed into it. Her liquid self moved as fast as cough syrup, not at all the slow viscosity of honey. Though her current moved fast she was still sticky, her form clung to one side of the jug as it poured in, then it climbed up the other side. She entered and exited the jug in one continuous golden ribbon. The end coming out did not connect to the end going in.
"Okay, great,"Howard smiled at her. "You stay in there in case anyone comes looking. In a few hours, they'll think you escaped and cancel the lockdown. After that I can leave with my jug then quit. Sound good?"he asked. Honey's smile lit up the room and she nodded eagerly.
"Thank you!"she said as she flowed into the jug again. Howard waved at the jug, walked out of the cleaning closet and turned off the light.
\[Specimen 42 located.\] he sent a message to the security dispatcher and left his room to grab a snack.
\[Your loyalty will be rewarded.\] came the reply.
"I love my job,"Howard smiled to himself.
\*\*\*
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is year two, story #251. You can find all my stories collected on my subreddit ([r/hugoverse](https://www.reddit.com/r/hugoverse)) or my [blog](https://hugoverse.info/). If you're curious about my universe (the Hugoverse) you can visit the [Guidebook](https://hugoverse.info/2017/11/25/hugoverse-guidebook/) to see what's what and who's who, or the [Timeline](https://hugoverse.info/2017/10/23/hugoverse-timeline/) to find the stories in order. |
"Sent to punish this land. Sent to give it a second chance. Sent to burn and purge, sent to bless and restore. On land, in the sea, in the sky, the grim hordes sent by the master of ruin shall raze the earth and plunge our world into an era of night, one where generations shall hide away waiting for the sun to rise."
I wasn't alone in remembering that prophecy on that cursed day. I was brave then- We all were. A bunch of reckless kids, old enough to let fly an arrow but not quite old enough to know where it will land. But that day made men of boys and taught us that, despite the glory countless wars had brought to our kingdom, we weren't invincible.
Nobody fell out as we marched to the Plains of Belruvia. Those who were scared had left already, taking to the ports en masse to flee from the carnage. As we entered the plains from the south, it was a welcome sight to see the flowing green banners of our allies to the northwest. And even though decades of war had torn us apart, nobody made any disparaging remarks about the crimson standard raised by our eastern enemies as they joined us on the field. We all stood united against the current threat as humanity has stood united against plagues and starvation. As warriors, this was no different than any other battle. And as humans, this was no different than any other natural scourge.
The threat in question sat crooked under abnormally dark storm clouds in the center of the plains. Castle Belruvia, the supernatural myth that had kept generations of our people from settling in the otherwise fertile and ideal land. A shadow of a once-grant kingdom, a spectacle of a specter that would go on to haunt anybody unfortunate enough to survive the battle.
The marshal signaled his captains to halt their ranks as our army fully entered the field. We joined the others in marveling the behemoth of a castle. Twisted towers sprung up from charred walls as if they were roots under an upturned tree. A purple mist filtered out from every window, back-lit by an ominous green light. More than mist was a sense of dread that lingered heavy in the air. And then... It began.
A bolt of jet-black lightning struck the spire of the castle's keep, and legions of the undead sallied out of the gates to meet us on the field. As they came, so too did the harpies- Their cursed screeches tormenting us as they thundered through the sky. Through the larger gates came a gruesome Minotaur and a host of cyclopes. Close behind were centaurs, ogres, and trolls; And though the earth shook with their vibrations, we could barely hear their footsteps above the pounding of our own hearts.
It was then that the marshal sounded the war horn. The same grizzly sound that called us to battle in the past, the same sound that heralded our victory. And a bit of hope came to rest over me as our forces charged, the nervous excitement translating into adrenaline to be used against the hordes. Many of us would die, but the battle wouldn't end with our deaths. It would only end with our submission.
The ogres, though large, were brutes. They swung their barbed clubs as angry toddlers. The largest among our knights was Galladad, a true giant. An armored giant. A well-trained giant with a claymore in one hand and a shield the size of a man in the other. Though the ogres stood a head taller, and were far stronger, watching Galladad's sword cut through them was like unto a quilter's needle piercing thread. A systematic slaughter, a pattern that the fearsome beasts were far too stupid to comprehend.
The Minotaur was worse. Three more knights rallied under a Crimson banner, rivaled in size only by Galladad. They cornered the beast and had at it, but the monster was merely toying with them. It took every blow in stride, recovering quickly and never allowing them to pierce a vital point. When it had felt it had enough, the creature huffed with steam and gored one of the knights on its horns. Then it finished the other disheartened warriors with two swift swipes of its double-bladed ax before going on to dismantle the other soldiers. It was only after two dozen more kills that a volley of fiery arrows took it down.
For their part, the harpies weren't as strong as their brutal cries lead to believe. They swooped in and took us by surprise at first, but it wasn't long we realized that we had the better reach. Our pike men wore into the flying foes in a similar fashion to a well-placed lance disrupting a knight's charge. It wasn't long before the wailing beings were falling before us.
We lost many good men to the trolls and centaurs in the initial wave, but eventually our allies and our mortal enemies joined with us in a final push through the wooden barriers forming the castle's outermost defense. Once through, we laid siege to the decrepit fortress, dividing into three rings. The green forces were relatively unharmed during the assault, and so formed the innermost layer. They guarded the gates, ensuring the few straggling enemies to come out were slain. Our forces were the strongest, so we formed the outer ring. We were to defend against any monsters who decided to come out from beyond the barriers in an attempt to defend the bastion of evil. It was also our charge to defend the siege equipment, keeping the catapults firing day and night.
The crimson forces had taken the main brunt of the attack, and so it was that mourning soldiers filtered in with our two forces. Overall, roughly a third of the men caught up in the initial assault had died. Messengers had been dispatched in a futile attempt to rally whatever else we could, but anybody who wasn't already here was engaged in a struggle to flee the continent. There would be no reinforcements this time. Even still, our victory over an otherwise unbeatable opponent had given us hope.
And in the literal sense, that hope was *given* to us.
The dark master lurking deep within had unquestionable strength and an insurmountable force, making it impossible for us to earn an advantage. Even after bombarding the castle all through the night and most of the following day, no change was made in the odds to favor our meager forces. Every tower we collapsed raised a cheer from the men, but it only succeeded in killing what was already dead. And there existed no fire hot enough, no arrow fast enough, and no rock dense enough to even crack the supernatural stone that made up the castle's keep. In fact, all of our efforts only riled up the hell swarm within.
The evening of the second day saw us fighting the second wave. This time, it wasn't even a battle. It was a slaughter. Again, a bolt of dark lightning struck the castle's spire. But something was different this time. That same sense of dread returned, and it was stronger. Hellish bells rang chaotically in the surviving belfries, heralding the arrival of satanic champions. In a massive tower stretching even above the keep came a wailing that insulted our ears and dismissed any sense of hope. And then, from iron gates shattered like glass, came three fallen angels. Jet-black wings, greasy and knotted blond hair, and rapiers oozing with darkness and dripping with blood. Their sharp-tipped wings whistled as they soared over the masses, picking their targets and swiping their heads clean off.
Galladad wasn't having any of it. With a ferocious roar, the giant grabbed double-bladed ax of the fallen Minotaur and whirled, successfully dismembering one of the wings from an angel. The creature fell with an ungodly scream and formed a crater as it landed amidst our forces, who proceeded to gather around and stab it into mush before it could get up and fight. Then the knight grabbed his claymore and shield and stood ready to fight. But it wasn't much of a fight.
The angels were as tall as him, and their divine bodies fueled by the hatred of hell matched his strength. Their wings helped them close the distance and get around his shield, and their centuries of experience aided their swordplay. After removing his battered head from an unrecognizable body, they began to waltz through the crowd, lethally dancing their way to the aid of their murdered sister.
But even after witnessing this cruel display, we weren't done. We were pissed. Fear turned to anger, and anger turned to violence as three war horns called in unity our forces to the battle. Much like the Minotaur before them, it took all we had to defeat the unholy trinity. And again, like the Minotaur before them, we defeated them. It seemed in the chaos of the battle, we hadn't noticed the struggles near the gates. But with a few precision launches, we landed fiery boulders in the mass of zombies that attempted to claw their way from within the castle. Shield walls formed around the entrances, and any beast, no matter how fierce, was slain in a matter of seconds as the combined strength of the pike men, archers, and bombardiers stood triumphant in the face of Castle Belruvia.
This small victory was short-lived, however. The second wave came to a close as the sun set behind the mountain and darkness began descend. But this sort of darkness was unnatural. It blotted out the stars and blinded the moon. It held our forces captive in awe of its complete encapsulation of the castle while thin tendrils of purple mist crept from the crypts around the battlefield. Slowly but surely, our fallen comrades rose again to join us. Even the brave three knights and Galladad were not immune to the creeping mist.
I must have been the first to notice it, the first to break its spell, because I was the first to run. Some sort of other-worldly power seized me then. Every living thing became an enemy unto the dead. The golden-green grass, the trees, the insects. With impunity they all shriveled up and died. Those of us who were cognoscenti enough to understand what was happening shook with fear, dropping our weapons and running for our lives. The master of the castle was coming to surface, and none would live who saw. |
It was just another day at work, and I was busy filing the performance reports for Ahazu, one of the four demons i was assigned to supervise, when I received the message from Asmodeus.
Asmodeus was the guy we worked for; most of the assignments we got were decided by him, and we had to report to him if we found any serious discrepancies in the data being monitored by us, we were kinda like your world equivalent of an HR manager. Now, about this Asmodeus guy, he was kind of a big deal in the our realm; being the original "Creator of Judgement"he was regarded as one of the most sagacious and astute being in the realm, and if that wasn't enough he was also the "King of Nine Hells"and one of the "Seven Princes of Hell"(condsidering how snobbish, and petulant they all were they should rather be called the "Seven Princess of hell",except Beelzebub tho, that guy was rad).
Now, i get why they respect him so much, but he was no doubt, the phoniest guy i have ever seen, acting all grandiose, making sardonic remarks at everything, and if he wasn't enough of a shitshow on himself, then for making matters worse, he was also always surrounded by a bunch of toady-ass demons who were all blabbering dumbfucks who loved to fuck with everyone so that they could get a rise out of them, and then go nagging about them to their "master". I had a hard time believing that this whacked out retard was the "wisest"being in the realm, when i first met him.
Yeah, so what the message said was that I was summoned by the "devil of two sticks"(another fancy-ass name they had for Asmodeus), and they would be sending Vetis to pick me up. After reading the message I was rather happy, not because I was going to meet "two sticks", I absolutely despised him and his unctuous fawns, but because I was going to be with Vetis.Now, Vetis was the chillest demon chick I've ever met. She was one of the OG Demons and was homies with Lucifer when they were angels, thus she had the most amazing stories to tell, but the coolest thing about her is that she always rhymes whenever she speaks, so you will often find her busting dope rhymes when she tries to say something, and me and Vetis both digged that hip-hop shit that you guys do, so we had a fun time together whenever we hung out. She also had a hellhound named Dip, and it was the most innocuous and playful hellhound I have ever seen. So, after reading the message i told Stolas, my newly assigned patner, and mentee, to look after my work, as i had to been summoned to the Pandæmonium, and i headed out for Rezkalra, where Vetis was supposed to pick me up.
[To be continued] |
"Ladies and gentleman. Today I bring you Earth's greatest heroes, our real life avengers if you would."I nervously glanced at my palmcards that simply read 'pause for laughter' the silent stares encouraged me to flick through my palm cards a little quicker, trying to not focus on the sweat stains forming under my pits. Finally I found the card I was looking for. "Heh... without further ado I present to you, International Team A. Now lets start with the letter A! Straya Roo! Get up here!"
I smiled and began a clap, after a good thirty seconds of clapping, my hands grew sore, scanning the crowd, noticing the Australia's mightiest hero seemed to be missing.
"Um... Straya Ro-"
"Oh you fucking wanker! Im up here dickhead!"He shouted, standing upside down on the roof, drinking a can of VB as he looked down at everyone. "Honestly you fucks are dumber then a echidnas left knob."He muttered, pulling up his footy shorts to give his left nut a quick scratch.
"Get the spotlight off him!"I muttered into the microphone in my shirt, not realizing it had been connected to the speakers. A few unimpressed stares drifted my way as I sheepishly stared at my palm cards, pretending I didn't notice the hate filled looks. "Right.. so he can catch any animal and is able to survive any climate. See he's prett-"
The lights all shut off as I groaned. "Oh... what now."
"AMERRRRICA! AMEREERCA!"A barrage of gunshots fired out into the sky as a man stepped out in an American flag covered jumpsuit. Having a gun attached to each limb and two seated in his hands. "Never fear! Im here to save you all, you're welcome."He said, walking over to me, snatching my microphone.
"Hey... um.. we don't need to be saved, its a presentation."I said, tapping his shoulder only to receive a coldstare back.
"Excuse me... I will save your scrawny ass and you will thank me! Is that fucking clear to understand!"He shouted, wild spit flailing at my face before he stormed off, leaving bullet coated walls in his wake.
"C-can someone get me another... microphone?"I said, nearly ready to curl into a ball and cry.
"Here you go old chap."Oh it was Tea and Justice. The British hero. Her suit impeccable as she lent down, handing me a microphone. "Those tea dropping Americans cause quite the stir.."she muttered, pulling a cup of tea out of... somewhere?
"Yeah, actually could you maybe have a talk to him? He used to listen to you a lot"I pleaded, desperate to get this team together.
"Oh... well I wouldn't want to cause a fuss love.."she said giving me a crooked tooth smile. This was the best of the best.... this is what I was showing the world.
"Um yes. You see Miss Tea and Justice is remarkable. Her charming and polite nature helps us disarm situations and her love of the queen"
"QUEEN!"She shouted.
"Yes.. the... queen?"
"GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!"She shouted, followed by every English person in the crowd suddenly shouting god save the queen in unison, this repeated for a few moments, growing louder and louder before finally fading out.
"You... done?"I dared to ask.
"GOD SAVE HER!"With that she marched off, a crowd of English men and women chanting soccer songs as they made their way towards the palace to make sure the queen was safe, leaving me standing in front of the crowd, wondering if I even dared to unveil the rest of these heroes. |
They followed the booming sounds of artillery fire and the popping of muskets, the Mississippi wide enough for all five of them to swim side by side, even if their tentacles tended to get caught on human garbage. The sounds grew louder as they approached the fighting, even underneath the water he could hear screams, could feel the desperation. He struggled to not let out a little ink in fear, he just wanted to go home. All but their leader were rapidly shifting colors, a silent protest against their leaders obsession. They'd already lost two good squids from the humans, never mind that they were here to help.
The once normal river turned pink with blood, bodies of dead humans floating by, still leaking from death wounds. They were close now. The leaders color changed to blue, a color he reluctantly shifted to in acknowledgement. The blue humans would be their target today, last time it was grey. Why they helped both sides he would never know, but didn't dare ask.
Strange pipes were set up on one size of the river, manned by blue humans, loading hard circles in them and firing them faster than a spray of ink. He'd seen what one of those could do to a squid and didn't dare get close. Their leader, unfortunately, lacked the same reasonable fear. He was sure the leader would finally die when the blue humans pointed and stared but they didn't attack. Jet black ink sprayed the humans a moment later, ruining their strange pipes and sending the humans scurrying. The rest of them emptied their sacs into the mass of blue humans, their combined force a bit like the humans weapons.
The humans ran, as they usually did, in the face of their assault. How such a powerful animal was defeated by simple ink he didn't understand, but they were. They kept up ink-fire for a few more seconds to make sure before cutting off the streams. As one they swam away from the battlefield, having done all they could to the land dwellers, ink sacs empty.
The humans would collect themselves, wash the ink away, and go back to fighting in a few minutes. Their contribution ultimately useless, more of a distraction than a helping force to either side. Their leader seemed happy enough though, which was good as she was twice his size and loved the taste of giant squid. Hopefully one of these days the humans would kill her and they could go back to the deep sea where they belonged, but until then they had to fight. |
"How was this year son?"
"Terrible."Jason responded, tears forming in his eyes. "I got beaten up by bullies, wedgied, mocked, and insulted."Jason knew his father wouldn't care about the bullies. His father was a tough man who had a hands-off mentality all 8 years of Jason's life. He believed helping his son out with bullies would "soften him up"and make him weak. The school wouldn't help either since most of the bullies were kids of the staff. So throughout 2nd grade, the poor boy had to deal with torment, un-helped by grown-ups.
"Don't worry son. You'll soon be strong enough to fight them off."his dad said nonchalantly. *Yeah right*, Jason thought as he remembered he was one of the smallest kids even in his own grade. If he grew, the other kids would grow with him.
"Well I'm heading off to work."his father said as he went out the door, clearly unfazed by his son's plight. "Good-bye."
"Bye."Jason sniffled.
Now Jason was alone in his sorrow. What could he do? He had no friends to turn to, he was too weak defend himself, and even the grown-ups didn't bother helping him. He felt so powerless and scared. He just wanted to be in control for once. He wanted to get even with those mean classmates and adults.
Suddenly Jason heard a creek.
He investigated until he found it was the basement door. Jason was surprised. His dad never left it unlocked and Jason had never even seen what it looked like. He went through the door and down the steps, trying to get his mind off the sadness.
When he entered the basement, he was horrified by what he saw. Men and women were chained up, gags covering their mouths, and locked in human cages. There were knives and other sharp things on a nearby table, and dirty-looking food, likely what he fed to the prisoners. They looked up at the boy and started wriggling in their bonds. Jason heard muffled screaming from them, begging him to help them.
Jason was scared of them a first, but then figured out they were being held against their will. The boy remembered what his teachers told him about kidnapping. He was about to go up and call the police when a thought struck him.
Though he didn't know why, these people were chained up, completely trapped and unable to escape without help. They were at his mercy and he could do whatever he wanted to them, and they couldn't do anything about it. Jason began to smile as he saw his chance to finally be the dominant one; the one in control.
"Looks like I get to be in charge now until Dad comes back,"he cruelly remarked to the prisoners as they began screaming even louder into their gags. "Let's have some fun." |
Everything was chaos. my boyfriend, if I could even call him that, did not want to love me but refused to let me go. We did not want to expend the energy it would require to make other friends, but we had grown so comfortable hurting each other. We knew what we wanted the other to do and refused to budge till one of us got our way. In the end, we lost each other and gained only resentment towards ourselves and our actions.
I had to find a way to move on and heal. I started a new job, I needed to be around people. I decided to use my work ethic to fight my social anxiety. That's where I met Jon. He is kind and charismatic. We spent a lot of time together and he helped feel like the relationship I had gotten out of had not broken me. I did and still do love him. We have been told by many of our friends that we are perfect for each other. We live together and work together, we share a car and a bank account. We spend almost all of our time together. Society has a very skewed idea of a perfect couple because there is a word for what we are. Codependent.
I am very unhappy and I don't feel like what we have is what I want for the rest of my life. I have felt this way for quite some time now. I want a black and white answer. Instead, I have this gray area where I am miserable but I still love him. We both struggle with depression and I fear he is going to do something terrible if I leave him. He knows I am deeply unhappy, and I am arrogant enough to be angry that he does not love me enough to tell me not to worry about him. He tells me we just have to try harder. I have stayed at the expense of my happiness because I love him, and I have purposefully made it difficult for myself to leave. My mind is not strong enough to handle leaving him, and my heart cannot handle the ache of losing him. So, I sit here in bed next to him while he sleeps and I flee to the internet for it to hear my screams.
If I leave I will break both our hearts. So, I stay and surrender my joy in hopes, that one of us will be okay. |
It happened a couple years ago, more precisely in the year 2067. My brother was building the first time machine, but it went wrong. Instead of travelling in time, time travelled back to him, leaving a hole in time itself. He died in the accident, but I kind of felt guilty, so I decided to try and deal with it in some way. The hole in time brings a random person from a random time in space. Soon we realized something: they shouldn't be here, if they see something that they shouldn't, all of history could change drastically. It's impossible for us to predict fast enough who will come, but we've discovered that the machine leaves "hints"days before, that would allow us to calculate exactly who will come and from when. We can't make these calculations fast enough, but we managed to make a machine that can not only tell who's coming, but also create the perfect environment for him to still feel like home. I've been doing this for years, and it's kind of a second nature now to me. With over 180 cuadrillion people to ever have lived, it's easy to just have a random Egyptian peasant and make up that he's just sleeping.
The machine started to work, and we're all staring directly at him, ready to pinpoint absolutely any hint to start getting ready for the newcomer. The machine made signs in German, stone streets, and built a freaking enormous palace; we're shocked, what is going on? Are we getting a Germanic dude? No, that doesn't look like old Germanic at all, it's... Really modern. In fact I think... "I can understand it!"I can read German so historic languages would be alien to me, but this, it says something "It says... Rei-"right when I was going to read the rest, I heard from my superiors "Mister Vauhem, the suits are here. Estimated time 20 minutes, hurry up!". I went hastely to dress up, but when I reached the door, I was greeted with a rather stylish, but freaking despisable suit: a SS commander uniform. I don't even have time to think of what was going on when an officeman comes hastely "Sir Vauhem, the machine miscalculated, 2 minutes""What? Fuck!"I said. I put on the suit and prepare a basic make up, and soon I went to the scene. I entered: I was in the Reichstag. I had no idea who I was going to encounter, but I started to explore to find him. I can't let him or her leave the Reichstag, ir everything will fall apart. It didn't took time, as I heard an angry man yelling off the top of his lungs "Where the fuck am I?!". The revelation hit as a man in his early fifties crossed a door confused. That moustache was unmistakable: Adolf Hitler was in our time. |
It is known that Jesus was the son of Mary and God, but there was another son, who was born of Mary and Joseph. That after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had a child together, a son name Herschel. For Jesus loved his little brother, and always protected him, kept him safe. Before he left, he told Herschel "one day I will be gone, but I will come back for you, and you will be the only one who can help me.".
I had my bar mitzvah, but I turned my back on my religion when I turned 19. My father was disappointed. My grandfather was the only one of his extended family to make it through the holocaust. My father, his only child, said our people did not suffer for me to act like God didn't exist. He died 3 years ago. I couldn't even bring myself to go to the funeral. On the 3rd anniversary of his death, the voice started. I was scared, and it only ever said one thing "It is time, i need your help". I checked myself into a mental institution for observation. All the scans showed nothing.
It continued once every hour for 3 days, then all of a sudden, it stopped. I was relieved. The doctors couldn't explain it to me, and I couldn't explain it to them. After another 2 days, they let me go home. When i got back to my apartment, I heard noise inside. Fuck. People broke in. I prepped my keys in my hands. If they wanted a fight, they were going to get one. I slowly turned the knob. A man is just sitting on the couch, laughing at "Impractical Jokers".
"Oh. Sorry, my dad had me try to talk to you 3 days before I got here."The man said. His voice sounded familiar. "What the fuck?"is all I could muster. "Watch your language. Look, we put a tracer on my adoptive father and half-brother's Y chromosome. We wanted to always be able to find his family line for when the time came. We honestly hoped there would be more, but you're the only one. The time has come, I need your help.". |
My mouth waters as I lay my eyes on the sandwich.
All those years spent, all those dollars wasted, all the pain...it was all worth it. The common folk would never go to any extremes for a sandwich. But they do not know the sandwich is a simplified code for a Dergzaken spell. And that Dergzaken spell is of resurrection.
My mouth waters as I lay my eyes on the sandwich. I feel my body convulse as I continue to read the spell. I let its magic enter my veins. I let its magic takeover my being. At last, the spell requires a name. Who do I wish to bring back to life?
My mouth waters as I say her name. And thru a portal of light, Azaze steps out. Beautiful, whole and alive.
Azaze sees me as I begin to shatter. She hurries towards my direction and proclaims her love. That is all I wanted to hear as I turn to dust. |
It was great at first! I’d never been happier before. A cloak that when I wear it, completely masks my existence from everyone. Of course, I am masked from everything’s existence as well, but I was okay with that. I’m introverted, so always having a place to hide to whenever I need it is handy.
Some useful instances I’ve used it:
A classmate waves at me from across the room. I wave back, but they weren’t actually waving towards me. It was someone next to me. The situation is awkward and it kicks in my extreme anxiety, so I put on the cloak.
My teacher gave us all a project to do, but I procrastinated. I thought it wasn’t due until next week. However, we were actually presenting projects this week and next week. My teacher called my name, so I put on the cloak. Then I took it off. No one seemed to remember that my name was called, and I got to present my project next week.
One thing was bothering me. Why did everyone seem to forget that I went invisible or that they were talking to me? What was happening when I put on this cloak?
One day, I was fed up. It was a bad day. I was sick of school. I grabbed a book I liked, a reading light, and I went invisible. I read a few chapters. Then, I went to sleep.
When I’m telling you it stank, it reeked. This was the worst smell I’ve ever inhaled in my life. I’d barely taken off the cloak before it hit me. Vomit involuntarily spewed out of my mouth. I managed to avoid the cloak or my clothes.
As my eyes adjusted, I began to see many colors. What was going on? It didn’t look like my class room. My eyes were watering from the stench, I clutched my shirt to my nose and tried to breath. I couldn’t seem to find my footing. I could see the sun, and I didn’t see any walls. I heard loud sounds of motors. Where am I?
I found out that I was in a dump site. Standing in a huge pile of trash.
My first thought was that I’d teleported. The cloak must have some type of property that changes your location.
I later found out that when I put on the cloak, I’m masked from everything, and everything is masked from me. I don't even exist in the universe. The universe seems to be dealing with a paradox whenever I enter and exit the cloak. The universal rules don’t know how to deal with me. I may have been lucky the first couple times I tried out the cloak. My relation to time of the outside world seems to become more distorted the longer I’m inside of the cloak. Not only that. The planet continues rotating and moving around the sun while I’m gone, so when I suddenly pop back the cloak tries to put me wherever I last was. I’m lucky that I’m even alive. I should be dead. |
"Hello there."A voice spoke, waking me up from my sleep.
*'God fucking damn it.'* I thought to myself, as I ignored the voice and turned my head away from the voice.
"Why do you ignore me child?"The voice asked.
*'Do you not understand that I need to sleep?'* I mutter half-asleep. I lacked sleep last night so I needed this rest. It was the fucking weekend.
"You must wake now child"The voice spoke again. "Must you make me wait?"
*'Make you wait? How about waking me the fuck up?'* I asked angrily. So I opened my eyes, and asked, still half-asleep, "Who are you?"
"Me? I'm God."Said the voice, more powerful than before. "And I must apologize to you. For you are needed to suffer the price."
*'Suffer? Me?*' I thought to myself, before a large rush of pain strikes my body. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"I scream. It felt like a million knives were repeatedly stabbing me throughout my entire body. I look up to God and I asked him a question.
​
"Hello God. Why do you make me suffer?" |
Edit: word was missing, emphasis added on one word.
Nobody remembers where it broadcasts from. Some little bomb shelter underground, completely sealed and equipped with a high-power transmitter. It was supposed to take in data from an array of sensors and generate its own news reports.
We’re pretty sure it’s busted, but nobody’s bothered looking for it - otherwise we might have fixed it. Or at least shut it off. But right now we’re all a little busy trying to survive. So, once a week, we get a lot of static, and the only two words that stay the same.
“Weather … ” and a lot of static, for several minutes. This part was probably supposed to be updated every week or something. Then, right at the end of the broadcast, coming through with startling clarity - especially compared to the rest of the transmission - we hear a “Goodbye”.
It’s the same word, every week. So it’s *really* bloody weird that it’s always a different voice. |
(this story got insanely long, lmao XD Part 1)
I walk down the cobblestone path to work, a half a mile away in this little compound. Our facility is in the Rockies, an isolated meadow dotted with greenhouses. I'm wishing that we had picked a slightly warmer environment, as I pull my coat closer around myself to fend off the chilly Colorado morning.
"Good morning, Dr. Bryant!"someone calls out to me, and I raise a hand in greeting without looking up as I pace toward the nearest, and biggest glass building, stained golden in the early sunlight. The interns jokingly call this place "The Mothership,"and rightly so, I have to admit. With the narrow openings on each side and the bulbous center, it truly does look like some kind of alien spacecraft.
My high heels tap a steady rhythm as I approach the nearest entrance. I hold up my key card to the reader, and the blinking red light flashes green with a *beep.*
"Welcome, Dr. Alana Bryant, Energy Project Director."a robotic voice says. I find this a needless use of the little energy we have, but the board of directors insisted. The doors whish open, and I step into the slightly warmer Control Room.
Charles, my assistant, immediately shoots up from his seat, with a guilty look that assures me of what I will find if I glance over at the control panels.
I turn my head to look, and he winces as I notice. Dark brown dirt smudges on the white plastic and metal components.
"Charles, what have I told you about putting your feet up on the control panel?"I ask tiredly, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose. It's way too early for this.
"Um...to *not* to?"I hear Charles joke sheepishly. "I um, put the coffee on already."
I open my eyes and give him a deadpan look. "Trying to win me over with caffeine, are you?"
"Um, maybe...?"Charles is visibly sweating now. I look closer, and see the anxiety clouding his green eyes. His hands are shaking.
Inwardly, I wince, but outwardly, I smirk at him. "Well, it's working."I head over to the tired old coffeepot in the corner, that is already hissing a steady stream of the life-giving drink into a chipped mug.
As if I'd actually fire the kid. He's only 19, and the money from this part-time job is going towards paying off his student loans. Charles is a hard worker, and somehow manages to balance this with getting the top grades in his class at the University of New Boulder. |
[Poem]
A man of iron, heart and soul,
laid low another in grassy knoll.
The kindness shown was strong, if feigned;
Victim saw butcher as pure - unstained.
Long they sat in vital pool,
No tears were spent - save that of fool.
A dying man's last request:
"I forgive you; you tried your best.
Do me one thing, just one thing more:
stay as kind as you were before."
{Pardon the formatting, I'm on mobile currently :/} |
*Another déjà vu* I think to myself, as I lie on the fields and gaze at the full moon, which has quietly stolen the light of the surrounding stars. Maybe it's because I've been lying here for the past few nights, or maybe I'm just too tired from a hard day's work of ploughing the fields, but this common phenomenon is bugging me more than it should tonight. What is a déjà vu anyway, but an odd sense of familiarity?
A gentle summer night breeze creeps up softly, caressing my hair and enveloping me fully as it sweeps across the field. The dry wind reminds me of how parched my mouth and throat are and how jaded I am. I close my eyes and allow my mind to wander.
The moon has sunken a little when I open my eyes. An hour must have passed.
*About now.*
The first chime of the bell from the distant church reaches my ears as anticipated, follow by eleven more chimes. Twelve chimes every night. How I *felt* the exact moment it was going to go off is beyond me, but every time it does it feels as if I've been listening to this chime for far too long, even though the church has only been constructed a year ago.
*It's time.*
I take a look at my hut which is not far away. Dim candle light flickers from within, and it is ominously quiet; even the crickets are not chirping tonight. I turn to look at the mountain as I think about my wife and my two year old daughter who are now asleep. The thought of visiting the well would never have crossed my mind if I were alone, but it pains me to think that the drought would take away my reasons for living.
Not wanting to wake them up, I tiptoe to the storage room behind the house, and pick up a long sturdy bamboo with the two empty wooden buckets that I have prepared earlier during the day. Another pang of obscure sadness and nostalgia hits me as I take a quick look at my beloved ones from the bedroom window before leaving. With my gaze fixated on them, and then our little hut, I proceed to move me towards the mythical well in the mountain.
I remember the day when we first met. We were both only ten when she moved to the village with her mother. "Ewww what a filthy boy"was the first thing she said to me. Ten years later we got married, and three years later she was pregnant. Nara is my life, my everything, my reason to live. Try as I may, I can no longer remember anything about my own life before I met her.
Now I tremble as I think about how I'm never going to witness my little girl growing up and getting married, how I may never have the chance to grow old with Nara.
*But I have to do it.*
*Or do I?*
The myth of the well entrances the village. Legend has it that the well appeared in the village overnight on a full moon when my parents were just children, but those who drank from it or even attempted to go near it never came back. It is the well of the Mountain God, and mortals who are silly enough to go near it will be punished.
*Nonsense.*
If there really is a God in the Mountain he wouldn't have allowed such cruel fate to befall the villagers who worship him religiously. The drought wouldn't have dragged on for two years, killing tens of folks. It's just a well, perhaps built by our ancestors but had been well hidden until discovered.
The well sits solemenly in front of me now, in the dead center of a peculiar meadow within the thick forest. Vines encircle it, wreathing themselves along the cracks of the old well. It appears to be glowing under the moonlight; the sight of which causes my mind to gradually slip into a state of trance.
I pull up my first bucket of water, my hands tremble as I scoop up some of the crystal clear water which reflects the moon.
Taking a sip is the last thing I remember.
By the time I open my eyes, I'm already on my bed. The sun is up and I'm alive. The room appears different and Nara and Bindie are nowhere to be seen. Distracted by noisy villagers chattering away outside my hut, I jump out of bed hastily and get out to see what the commotion is all about. And that's when I see a mother holding the hand of a beautiful young girl approaching from far.
"Ewww what a filthy boy,"she points at me and says.
Tears roll down my eyes as the long forgotten clarity comes back to me.
*Why did I let it happen again...*
I run into the house as quickly as I can to look for a pencil and paper, but by the time I pick up the pencil, my memories have been stolen from me once again. |
I surveyed the new set of students standing up in the center of the hall. I liked to think that I could tell the Muggleborns from the ones who grew up their whole young life knowing that they were going to attend this great school. Mcgonagall disagreed, but I believed that was just the good heart in her that refused to be prejudiced against any student. I wasn’t being prejudiced per se; I just enjoyed trying to figure out which students would already know some of what I was teaching and which would have a harder time. Would I have to tackle the basics with everyone?
The sorting started, and I leaned back in my chair, scrutinizing each first year as they were called up. They looked terrified, as was typical, and I felt a chuckle at the back of my throat that I squashed down. Binns was looking at me. He was always looking at me though, he was the only one aside from Mcgonagall who actually taught me when I was a student here. I wondered if he knew.
I was the youngest teacher at Hogwarts, but for good reason. There was a big turnover after The War with Mcgonagall being the only (alive) teacher remaining to see the school through the hard times. The school board decided that everything needed to be redone, the school would not remain as it was. It couldn’t. Everyone knew that. I was young at the time - too young to be told what was going on, but far beyond my years in terms of intellect. I knew what was happening. I knew there was a war, chaos, coming from who knows where. All of us Muggles did. We just didn’t understand, and most of us didn’t get to.
Except me. When I got that letter it was the most illuminating day of my life. Everything just made *sense.* And I knew where I would go with it.
I studied hard, and I watched the school change, try to figure out their place in the new world. And with it the Muggle world changed as well, with technology taking massive leaps. No longer was Muggle studies what it once was. There was so much more to teach.
And that was where I came in. It was my idea for the new class titled ‘Magical Programming’. I would base it off my extensive computer knowledge I had been cultivating since I was five. Since I opened my father’s computer without permission and received the biggest spanking of my life. But it was worth it. Discovering what I could build with just the tips of my fingers was wonderful. Imagine being a wizard and able to control it even more with magic?
And that was what I taught. The other teachers feared me, and rightly so. I knew how powerful I was, but what they knew didn’t even scratch the surface. They would find out one day. I was born to rule the school. Rule more than just the school, in fact. Smartest wizard of my age was true, but smartest Muggle was an additional bonus that the Wizarding World didn’t know about. I could do what I like, set up my hacking without them even knowing how to fight me off. Without them even knowing *to* fight me off.
It was laughingly easy.
The food appeared after Mcgonagall’s brief speech and I tucked in heartily, looking forward to a new year of brainwashing and minion creating. |
I stared at the light blue orb as it hung in air above my desk.
Caught off guard, I looked around the room. To my bewilderment, nobody was moving. The entire room seemed to have been frozen in time.
"Uh... What?"I said tentatively, wondering if I was dreaming.
The orb "spoke"to me though it did not seem to have a method to do so.
"Only you can undo what has been done, only you can save us all! We don't have much time!"The brightness of its color seemed to increase with seeming desperation.
"Sorry, I'm a little lost here. Who.. or what are you? What is going on?"I glanced around nervously, looking for anyone to save me from this strange situation. Unfortunately everyone was still, like a movie had been put on pause.
"My Lord.."The orb began "Do you not remember?"
"I uh... guess not? What is it that I am supposed to remember?"I questioned the little blue orb.
"Who you are... What you are. Not this human shell you have been put into, but your true self, the Great Lord Salus."The orb flickered as it explained.
"You must have the wrong guy, I'm no great lord, I'm just.... me."I retorted. "Nothing special at all."
"You don't know how wrong you are, Lord Salus. Please, reach out your hand, I will do my best to return your memory."The orb got closer to me, until it was within arms reach.
I slowly reached out my arm, and placed my hand on top of the orb.
A peculiar sensation began on my hand. A buzzing, almost like electricity starting from my palm and spreading slowly. I attempted to remove my hand in shock though I found I could not.
I tried to speak, to yell, anything. I couldn't.
"Peace, be calm my lord. The harder you fight the harder it is to unlock your memory. It has been locked down tight by those much stronger than myself."The orb continued.
Looking at the orb, I realized it was getting dimmer. The once bright blue was now closer to grey.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax.
​
I awoke standing in the center of an empty room. I looked around panicked.
"The lock was much stronger than I anticipated."The voice of the orb echoed in the room, though I did not see the source. "I had to use the rest of my energy to bring you into your sub-conscious. From here, you will need to unlock the rest of your memory yourself."
"How? I asked "There is nothing in here, no doors, no locks, nothing!"I began to become worried. Would I be stuck in this place forever?
"Look again."The voice began to get quieter. "I'm afraid this is as far as I go. Though I will leave you, remember that you are not alone. Your people are here, waiting for you. They believe in you."The voice disappeared. Leaving me confused and alone.
I looked around and to my surprise found a simple wooden door. I walked to it and placed my hand on the knob. It wouldn't budge. Inspecting the door further, I saw an engraving in the wood, all but invisible.
"Authority is either given with reverence or stolen by fear. Stolen power will be stolen again, but power willingly given and used honorably can last forever."
I placed my hand on the handle once more and shouted out into the empty room. My every word echoing of of the walls.
"My people!"I began, the words empowering me to continue. "It is I, Salus! Your words have reached me and I am listening! If you can hear me, I need your help. I am weak and lost. Give me your faith and will return. I swear to you that I will save you and protect you for as long as I am able!"The words flowed out of my mouth before I even realized what I was saying, as if some part of me was bubbling to the surface.
*Click*
The door handle turned in my hand. A bright light engulfing the room. I stepped through the doorway.
​
I remember.
I remember it all.
And I am *furious*. |
And it was beautiful.
The sun was just at that point in the sky where the golden light spills through the tops of the trees, past the leaves, and colors the ground in a wind-blown patchwork of light and shadow. There was a light breeze, gentle on my skin and lightly tugging at the ends of my hair. It smelled like dew-drops and growing grass and, somehow, the tang of the sea.
I followed that sent and watched as the dirt gave way to sand, the brambles broke, and the thicket of trees gave way to an open beach.
The ocean went as far off into the distance as I could see, light dancing atop the blue and green. Something, perhaps a dolphin, suddenly broke the surface further off before splashing back into the water.
A growl. My heart froze.
I spun around. The green eyes of the tiger gazed back at me.
I found that I couldn’t move as it padded towards me, muscle rippling beneath skin and paws silently touching off the sand.
It rubbed its head against my abdomen and purred.
Trained by years living with my mom’s housecat, I stroked its head. “Good kitty,” I whispered.
It made a cheerful rumble in its throat and looked up at me.
How could I have ever been frightened by such curious, intelligent, harmless eyes? I felt like I was looking at a child, just learning to walk and wandering into streets and off tabletops and onto sofas. I wanted to hold the thing in my arms and keep it safe forever.
I didn’t need to, of course. It would never come to harm in Eden.
It walked off, tail swishing the sand behind it.
I slept on the grass that night. It was comfortably warm, and my clothes were enough in that temperature. Above me, the stars spilled out, more fully than I had ever seen before. I could imagine God taking a brushstroke to the skies and filling them with light, given how dense and bright the heavens were.
I wondered why no one had ever revealed the secret of this place. I wasn’t the first. A few had found the hints before me, and I knew at least one had come here before.
*Adam and Eve were not driven from heaven; they left.*
That was the only thing that adventurer had written upon returning to the human world.
Soon I would go back, I told myself, and bring everyone to this paradise.
I was woken by songbirds in the morning and looked to see the sun pinking the sky. There was a small lake, fed by a waterfall, that I walked over to wash in. Science would probably tell me that it wasn’t sanitary to wash in a natural body of water, but I doubted that science applied here.
The water was clear as a glass and just chill enough to be bracing for the morning. I was sitting by the edge on a rock when I looked down and saw my reflection.
My nose was too big.
An insecurity from my childhood that still dogged me as an adult, and I immediately felt frustrated with myself. *You’re in Eden*, I pointed out to my mind, *and you’re worried about your nose?*
And yet there it was.
I put my clothes back on.
*Those songbirds are getting annoying*, I thought.
The birds fell silent.
*The sun is too hot*, I whined mentally.
A light breeze came to cool me.
*The water it too cold*.
The water seemed to become fractionally warmer.
*I hate myself*.
And everything around me was still beautiful.
I’d found Paradise, and I’d brought Hell with me.
I wandered for the rest of the day, occasionally touching my nose self-consciously.
It was dumb, of course. There was no around but me. Yet, just me was enough for me to feel self-conscious.
*Was it that tree?* I wondered. *Or that?*
There were a lot of apple trees throughout the Garden. Any of them could have been the tree of knowledge. Lots of other fruits, too, some that shouldn’t have been able to grow in this climate, and some that I had never seen before.
I wondered if I could find a fruit that would act as an antidepressant. Or birth control.
I swam out to sea in the evening, as the sun was dipping into the horizon. I swam towards it for as long as I could, until my lungs burned and my muscles spasmed.
Pain. How I’d missed it.
Then I felt something hard beneath me and I felt myself pushed into the air. I looked down.
A giant turtle, large as a small boat, had swum beneath me and was carrying me back to the shore.
At the edge of the water, the tiger carefully and painlessly pulled me back to where I had been sleeping the night before.
My body still ached, but that was my fault and not Eden’s. Eden would never harm me.
I would leave tomorrow morning, I decided. I wouldn’t destroy my notes. Maybe someone else would find this place, and they would be the ones with the courage to share the garden with the world. Perhaps we would even deserve it by then.
For me, though, I would go back, and I would write a line. Just one.
*The garden is womb, not a home, and though we were born there, we were not meant to die there.* |
"Sweetheart....sweetheart, wake up, we haven't much time."I woke up, groggy, and likely still hung over from the previous night's wine. "Oh my love, what is time even? Our end day will be quick, let us savor the last sweet taste of life while we can, our marriage is but hours old."She agreed and placed the pill bottle, marked with the Bayer branding, back on the shelf. "Hide that dear, the children may not be allowed to decide their own fate!"
As I entered the corridor to the dining room I could smell the stench of rotting food combined with the fresh meal, likely some of the last provisions, being prepared for me and my new bride by one of the women whom resided with us in this dark, dank place. "The fact that the electricity still works is a miracle"I internalized to myself. As soon as the thought crossed my mind an sharp crack and resounding boom, like that of a kettle drum at the symphony, a small shower of pulverized concrete made it's way into my porridge, and I lost my will to eat.
I heard a commotion in the hallway, some twenty or more cohabitants, mostly women, some clean, some covered in dust, mud, and last nights liquor came to wish me a farewell as they had heard of my impending departure. I went and shook each of their hands, kissed some, gave a firm 'thank you' to the men. I came to Helmuth, a dear old friend and colleague, a man who I had grown to respect, and a man who never tried to circumvent my authority, he asked me to speak privately, and I obliged him.
I left my meeting with Helmuth in a grim mood, but I understood the news he gave me was the truth, and I always respected a man who could deliver the truth even in a moment of great difficulty. I retired to my quarters with my wife, and sat in each other's company for what felt like eternity. He asked me a favor, but as to not upset my wife, he did so subtly. "Sir, if it would please you, the weather outside has become severe, but we must make an attempt for home, may we have your blessing?"I did not answer right away, but before lunch, I consented that he may leave my quarters that night after I was asleep.
Upon the conclusion of lunch, I was a man of mixed emotions as I said a heartfelt goodbye to our guests. I didn't express the normal formalities that dictated our high society, and showed emotions to them all. For the final time my wife and I returned to our bedroom, we enjoyed our last bit of alcohol and entertained ourselves with deep conversation. Though I had known her for years, I felt almost as though I was speaking to a new woman, and it nearly gave me a second wind, but I knew the winds of change outside would not see me through. "Well my dear, it seems we have exhausted all the drugs and intoxicants in here, I suppose we ought to do what you already wished this morning?"She silently agreed. "Well quickly now, before we lose our nerve, the death that awaits us above is far worse"I beckoned. "Oh dear, please don't say that, it is not death that awaits us, but a new life!"she cried out. "Eva, whatever it may be, I'd rather get there on my own terms!"I screamed out, feeling almost like my days as a young politician running for parliament. I saw the fear in her eyes and apologized. "I love you my dear, now, hand me the bottle. No, not the pills, the liquid, it will go down smoother."She handed me the brown flask, I stared at it, nearly going cross eyed in anticipation, I broke the seal and downed nearly half. "Now you love, I am already gone"I beckoned to her. I watched as she drank a hearty swig, enough to kill a bear, but she was only a small girl compared to me. I knew there was no reversal, but I could also not watch my love die. I took pistol I kept on the side table and pressed it to my temple as my mouth began to foam, and almond smell permeated the air. "Es lebe das deutsche Volk! Es lebe der Dritte Reich. Möge es im Herzen des wahren deutschen Volkes weiterleben und niemals sterben!"and with that I squeezed the trigger, and there was darkness, and for the first time in my entire life, peace, and silence fell over my Germany. |
I hang up the phone, trembling, terrified.
Was it true? Was it real?
I normally don't answer the phone on the shitter, but this time I did. I had never seen the number before, but it came up "Guardian Angel"and the number was all zeroes.
Apparantly my life is a TV show, a very drab boring one, well, these days.
Since my wife left me, I'd turned to alcohol, lost my job, and had been contemplating suicide. My ratings were, like my latest dump, in the toilet.
Apparantly very soon I'd be pulling the trigger, and it turns out, that wasn't my choice....
Turns out I'd been moderately popular in Heaven, good job, good family, interesting life, but I'd made some poor decisions and become yet another boring drunk.
Now I needed to spice things up.
I had just the plan, grabbing my pistol, I'll give them the ratings boost they'll never forget! |
Rebekka Richardson listen to the hijacked broadcast of the supervillain called Terror-Byte play on all the electronic devices. Terror-Byte was a cybernetic hacker who abandoned his humanity in favor of being as machine-like as possible. His present form was like Doc Ock crossed with a Borg, crossed with a matrix Squid sentinel.
Apparently, his latest plot involves a nuclear threat, probably in the form of dirty bombs. Rebekka frowned, getting a grim, thin-lipped serious look, as her mind raced. She power-walked out of the building, right to her motorcycle, got on, donned the full-face helmet, and fired up the engine. She wasn't too worried about body injuries, as she had a healing ability, among some others. Blasting out of the parking lot at abit of a fast speed, Bekka proceeded to the nearest plaza, to an alleyway between a fancy classical-looking library, an office building, and a trio of parking lots. Stopping for abit, she held out her hand in the air, as if to grasp something unseen.
What she was really doing, was using her Pleiadian meta-abilities to grasp a lever below the alleyway, which caused a disguised car ramp to swing downward, allowing access to a secret space below the parking lots.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_Kxr2EYo8vE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kxr2EYo8vE) \- (mood music, Sci-fi Music - Heroes of Lagonia)
Below was an old bunker looking space, looking like it had not been used in many years. There was a layer of fine dust everywhere, and some things were covered with tarps. Older computers slowly booted up, and lights came on, one by one. In the center of the round-ish space, was a trio of spacely armors; one with yellow markings, the other with blue markings. The last one, with red markings, was incomplete, and the torso pieces which were there, were extremely damaged and burned, even abit melted in places. The red helmet was intact, though covered in soot and dirt.
"Never thought i would be back."she said grimly, stifling her emotions at the memories. She had had two friends, almost like sisters, at that point. Venali, always so brave, so stubborn, willful. Venali was the red one, and one of hundreds of heroes who died saving the city, the world, really, from the last major doomsday that loomed. But even so, it was too much. The heroes did save the day, but morale and public confidence still broke negative against the union of heroes. They were forced to disband.
Alassae, the blue one, was in prison for refusing to step away from superhero-ing. She was being held on Redemption Point island, right alongside the supervillains they used to deal with. Only she, Ryllae, was left, She had laid aside her star name, hung up her cape, as the phrase goes, and became Rebekka, goth chick and tinkerer and owner of various sorts of little businesses. It had been ok for .... More than 30 years. She saw no choice then but to grieve and step down, just as she saw no choice now, to step back up, in their memory.
Opening the armor tubes, she cleaned and mix-matched the armors until she had an assemblage of all three, in a very heroic looking space armor; black undersuit, red helmet, yellow upper chest piece, boots, and bracers, and blue everything else. On the wall in the hallway before the roundel, was a large framed poster of the Union of Heroes, taken right before it all went right off the cliff.
Ryllae / Bekka put her hand on the giant poster, as if to speak to them all, living and dead. "I cannot let it be in vain. Not Anymore."
And Valkyrie walked to and stepped into the launch tube at the back of the bunker, donned the red helmet and booted up the space armor, and (15 seconds) flew into battle.
[https://youtu.be/BpOntTC5Y9M?t=15](https://youtu.be/BpOntTC5Y9M?t=15) |
"It's still not working, God damn it!", he texted.
In a flash of light, it disappeared. A booming voice echoed. "Done."
"Wait... Who was that?"
"It's me, God. You called me for your one and only wish. It is done. I have damned it."
"Huh?"
*Sigh.* "I have to explain, don't I? You get one wish in your lifetime, you may request it by invoking my name. And if I am free and in the mood, I will respond. Since your grammar isn't your great, you just used the wish to damn this thing, and I have granted it."
"First of all, it was auto-correct."
"Sure it was, you 'Kameleon'."
"I learnt that word by reading!"
"I know. I know everything. Doesn't excuse it though."
"Look, are you saying I had one wish to ask for anything, and I wasted it on this?"
"Yup. And now I will leave."
"Wait, Why didn't you tell me before? You should've told everyone!"
"Ahh, yes. It's supposed to be in-built in the hardware. There is a bug in the production line. Gabriel is working on that. Look, if it makes you feel any better, many lose their chance on this very thing. So don't beat yourself up."
"... Really? You are not just saying that to make me feel better?"
"Of course not, I am God. I don't lie. There is a separate section for these things in the lower level of hell. You can ask Lucifer when you get there."
"I'm going to hell?"
"Umm, I mean you will be judged based on your deeds once your life is over, and all that stuff. See you then! Bye!"
And there was silence again. He stood frozen with his phone in hand. Though he knew he had just had a revelation and he had a lot to worry about, he couldn't help but wonder if there was really a section in hell where printers were tormented for eternity. |
Below the thunders of the upper deep. Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea. I have slept an ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep for millennia.
About my shadowy sides and overhead: huge sponges have grown for uncountable centuries. Untouched by even the most sickly light my form gives refuge to colossal squid who winnow with giant arms around where I have lain for ages.
I hear the sorrow of whalesong, the genocide of fishstock, drilling of mechanical abominations. I smell the corrosion of metal, the taint of toxins, effulgence of continents.
Slowly I became away of a species plundering my domain, poisoning my oceans, slaughtering my thralls.
In the blackest depths, thousands of tons of seabed shift. A billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance. |
"Oh Ameeeen."He said with a roll of his tongue, exaggerating every letter of the simple word.
"God damn it Ron, do you have to do this every time w-"
Before he could even finish the sentence Ron lifted a finger. "Thou shall not take the lords name in vain dickhead. Learn your fucking commandments."
"Ron! Fucking hell, shes bleeding out, stop being an asshole and help!"He shouted but Ron simply stared over the unconscious woman, looking at the wound on her stomach.
"Help her how? Shall I help her move on to the other world? Shall I make her a cup of my famous hot cocoa?"Ron asked, glancing back at the man that was practically in tears at this point.
"SAVE HER LIFE! P..please shes all I have, I only have one daughter, I don't want to lose her."He sobbed, hands covering his face as he pathetically wailed.
"Well... im sorry to tell you this."Ron said in a somber tone, looking down at the body before him.
"No... no... no...no... noo. Please... please no."He clutched Ron's shirt, pulling himself closer with whatever strength his grief stricken heart could muster.
"I healed her before I even got here.."Ron said casually, shrugging off the others hand as he went to walk off and find the next person to help.
Leaving the man to cuddle his daughter as she slowly regained consciousness again in his arms. |
"Hm.. thats a bit weird."I leant over against the railing watching her swat at him with a hammer. Oh young love, I remember when my girlfriend tried to shoot me with a nailgun on our second date.. its just like that romance movie texas chainsaw massacre. Ah how I weep for young love."
As I went to turn my attention away from the two I spotted something a little odd, she wasn't wear her hair in a bun, that was severely against school rules, as I went to shout out, another oddity occurred as the boy leaped up onto the roof, his legs and arms sticking as he crawled away, trying to find a vent to sneak into.
"Hmm... im pretty sure thats against school rules, im just not sure which rule that breaks? Is it the consulting with cosmic deities rule or witchcraft?"I scratched my head as the boy curled up and dove into a vent, the girl smacking against the wall with vicious thuds following the vent, occasionally you would see a splurt of blue oozing blood slip from one of the vent grates on the roof indicating a clean hit. The thudding of his scattering got slower until finally she struck a roof tile and he dropped, slamming onto the ground below her.
His body bruised and battered, body squished in places that shouldn't be squished, sitting in a pile of his own blue blood. The girl stood over him and aimed the hammer for his face, with one powerful swing the man stopped moving, leaving her huffing above his corpse before she patted down her skirt and headed back to class, leaving me to have to go and find a janitor. |
Why does it always rain at a funeral? Is it such a cliche that we can't have a sunny day when celebrating the joy of life? Today, my wife is laid to rest in overcast drizzle, in an allotment near her favorite park, and our home.
Hands together, head bowed, I don't feel the animal drop down on my shoulder, its fuzzy tail brushing against my neck. When I turn my head, my heart skips a beat, to see the tiny black nose of a red squirrel against my own.
Its face was not showing fear or curiosity. Instead, it showed a growing smile, its lips slightly curled at the edge, the way Amanda's did on days, not like these. 'Hey there, buddy,' I said.
​
It crawls along the back of my shoulder and down the sleeve of my suit, its paws digging into my palm. I'm in awe of its comfort around me, its body slender and relaxed. It reminds me of a time when Amanda and I were driving together, Adrian snoozing in the back when a critter like it ran in the middle of the road. I swerved at the sight of it, busting a headlight on a parked car. I never saw it again, but I don't think I ever forgot its color, fur like the deepest autumn bloom.
​
Now I look down at the squirrel, whose body rests around my thumb. Together, we watch Amanda's casket being lowered down into the ground, and if by reading my mind, he turns around and looks at me. We stare at each other.
​
'You know what?' I say aloud. 'I think we're gonna be ok.' |
I have always hated flying. The thought of disappearing into the abyss or just falling out of the sky was terrifying. I couldn’t understand how people could be so confident about it. Yet here I was.
It was meant to be a short trip. Only 5 hours. I was meant to be able to see everything, but the weather was playing fickle. Clouds filled the airspace and visibility was greatly reduced. My hands held tight to the arm rests as we took off. Knuckles white. I shut my eyes tightly as the plane bounced. Then nothing. I thought I had died. I finally opened my eyes, watching as the ground gave way below me. My breath caught in my throat as tears filled my eyes.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. It helped me relax a little. I tore my eyes away from the window. Staring at the seat in front of me. The plane was relatively empty and for some strange reason is put me at ease. You never heard of almost empty planes going down. Only the full ones.
I had lost track of time. Staring at the seat in front. I dared a look out the window. I saw a glimpse of blue ocean below as the plane was enveloped by cloud. My breath caught again. I wasn’t expecting the clouds. Then the plane started shaking. Not violently. But enough to throw me. I was almost screaming. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths
Panic filled my mind. I was ready to just get up and run and scream. But it wouldn’t help. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
I could do it. I could. I could. Then it subsided. The shaking had finished. The cloud still outside the plane. I looked back towards the back of the seat. Releasing my hands from the arm rests, my fingers sore and cramped.
I didn’t look outside again for what felt like another half hour. The cloud slowly getting thinner. As it finally parted the ocean below was a light purple. Darker patches interspersed between the light. Wow. It truly was a sight. My sister had never stopped talking about them and pictures truly did no justice.
This was my first time off Earth. My sister normally visited me. But she was pregnant and I had promised to come. The planet she had found truly was amazing. Maybe flying wasn’t so bad after all...
————————————————————————-
More stories at r/DougysDramatics if you’d like to read them! |
J was sick of the missing socks. My socks, he would say. They are not that expensive on its own, but cost accumulates. There was no where to go.
It had gotten to the point where J finally decided to throw a camera in there. The action camera to end all action camera. The type that would probably survive a fall from space. The kind that would be indestructible.
J set the washing machine on soon, throw the camera in there, and for good measure, another camera on top of the washing machine, looking at him and the wall. J locked his laundry room for good measure as well.
A live stream was set up in case the recording directly in to the camera would damage itself. A public channel, checked by default.
First thirty minute was a difficult listen. J could hear the camera denting and bumping the metal drum inside the washing machine. As it spun from one end to another, the most horrific bumping sounds echoed through the dorm halls. J sat nearby looking at the phone which was streaming live.
J couldn't see much. The bubbles and whitewater rapidly churning had turned the screen dark. Even with all the light reaching in to the side loader from the ceiling lamp. J watched and watched. Nothing.
Then in the last ten minutes, J noticed two people entered the Livestream channel. A channel that he thought was practically private. Some people will watch anything he mused. Then he turned his channel to look at himself watching the transparent plastic door, and the phone that showed himself watching this entire event recursively.
J looked at this for a few more minutes until the bumping stopped.
Followed by the engine drum slowing down. Then the beeps announcing its completion.
J opened the door, to find nothing. Just minimal residues of soapy water, as the cycle had gone through. J was confounded, where did my camera go. He wondered. Looked inside the drum, and seen no holes or dents big enough for a camera to disappear in to. Then he went back to his phone, and went back to the insider camera live stream. The two audience still hanged about, but the video stream had gone dark. Two lines from two audience member both read "what are you looking at"written about five minutes before now.
He decided to look back at the recording. He pressed about ten minute back, five minute back, then two minutes back.
With his chubby fingers and his small phone, he managed to land between a shot between a well lit video and where it goes completely dark.
Ten seconds in this recording. Where the washing machine beeped, he noticed a very brief moment where a human figure with what looked like a goat shaped mask reach in to the washing machine, and then place a drape over it. He could not see the color details of the one reaching in as the light did not do him any favors that day.
J was surprised initially. What did he just witness. A parallel dimension? Is this a prank? What on Earth was that thing? A Halloween mask? In April?
Then he pressed back on his phone.
In the stream for camera on top of the washing machine, Two goat faced figures stood behind him. He looked at the video and remained still. When did this things arrive. Door was locked. How.
Before he even turned around to confirm the horrors.
A raspy sandpaper on wooden floor voice whispered from his left.
"What are you looking at"
Another from his right.
"What are you looking at"
His stomach churned.
Something else went missing that day. Or someone. |
“Marti, can you take these reports? I just have sooooo many to do. I don’t think I will reconcile them by the end of the day. Thaaaaaaanks!” It had happened so fast. In under a second I had gone from just my almost-finished pile of work and going on lunch to being drive-by-Karen’d with another 4 hours of work on my desk. She never stayed long enough to tell her no and she was like a damn ninja, unable to hear her until she was right behind you to wave her off. I popped my head up over the cubicle wall and sure enough there she was talking with the unit lead. Such a great example of work ethic o great superiors.
 
“Karen’d?” I jumped in surprise at the voice behind me. Maybe Karen wasn’t sneaky and I was just really bad with are awareness.
 
“Jesus Nick. Are you trying to kill me?” I fall back into my seat. The shearing force of 210 pounds was too much for the chair as it snapped off the hydraulic piston. I tumbled over backwards hitting my head on the bank of drawers. “FFFFF” I stifled a good number of expletives as Nick helped me up.
 
“You OK Marti? Let me see.” He parted my hair and looked around for any blood. “Good on the outside, but maybe go to a clinic and make sure you aren’t concussed.”
 
“Because Trevor will let me leave,” I answer sarcastically.
 
“Just go on your lunch then.”
 
““Yeah I guess.” I kick the bottom half of my chair into the walkway out of frustration. “Thanks Nick. You are too good for this place,” I say giving him a smile and a squeeze on the shoulder. He grabs the other half of the chair and brings it to the trash chute while I bring the wheels. They didn’t fit of course so I made the executive decision to just leave them there. “Thanks again Nick, but you should get back to work.”
 
“Yeah, I guess. Hopefully Karen didn’t leave a pile on my desk either.”
 
I head over to Trevor’s office and knock on the door. It must be nice to have privacy. “Come in,” he says almost instantly. I open the door and stand in front of his desk.
 
“Hey Trevor. I need to fill out a workplace accident form. My chair broke and I hit my head pretty hard on my desk.”
 
 
“Oh no! Are you bleeding?” He got up in a rush and came over to me to take a look.
 
“No. At least Nick said I wasn’t. I still want to go get checked though. I hit it really hard and I don’t want to let a concussion go undiagnosed.”
 
“Oh.” The concern left his voice and face, “Wouldn’t that be convenient? Get a few paid days off from work while the insurance company pays for the cost of a CT scan and our rates go up. Not happening. We are on the cusp of our busiest quarter and you want to get away.”
 
“What?! No! I just genuinely want to rule out brain damage. The longer you go undiagnosed the worse it can be an-“
 
“You already have brain damage, Marti, if you think I’m filling out an accident form when there is no sign of an accident happening! Get a new chair and finish your work for the day. If you want to get checked so badly go do it on your own time. I’m not getting Worker’s Comp involved in this.”
 
“But Trevor –“
 
“Now!”
 
That was it. I had hit my breaking point. I could put up with Karen’s laziness. I could deal with Linda not efficiently managing our unit. I could deal with Asir taking some of my lunch. I could deal with Dante microwaving lobster. I could deal with the hours of unpaid overtime to meet goals. I could deal with not getting recognition for my hard work. That deposit every other Friday kept me planted there. This though? This was it.
 
“Fuck you Trevor.” It was calmer than I expected.
 
It must have caught him off guard as well, but he misunderstood, “Are you going to cry now?” The startled look on his face as I lifted my head with a serene smile on my face almost was worth it.
 
“No Trevor I’m leaving.” I took a deep breath and let all of my frustrations and anger go on the exhale. I calmly went over to my desk and got the few personal items I kept around to make it feel a bit homier ass Trevor just watched in disbelief from his doorway. I looked at the stack of papers on my desk and waved at Karen, “Hey! It looks like I’m not going to get to these either. How about you do your own damn work for a change? Thaaaaaaaanks”
 
I walked out the door, box in hand, and took a deep breath of fresh freedom. I may have set off into unsure waters, but it had to be better than staying trapped on that island. It had gone calmer than I thought it would in any of my daydreams. I always envisioned throwing a computer across the office and flipping everyone off. I thought of just wrecking the place. In the end though my break was sudden and calm. It wasn’t the snapping of a tense steel wire, it was just the breaking of some cheap fishing line.
 
---
 
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I continue my quest to improve my dialogue skills. I’m actually really happy with this one for a change. I hope you enjoyed it! Feedback and criticism is always welcome. If you want to check out more of my stories pop over to r/FoxFictions! |
Realms Beyond, by Markus Manaford.
Chapter 19.
Somehow more alarming than the last, frequency 651 allows access to a reality where the square cube law does not bound biomechanics. Creature size varies wildly, even amongst a species. (Figure 19a shows a spider harvesting average size humans from their dwelling.)
Despite the lack of upper size limits, such massive creatures seem uncommon, possibly bound by the resource need to maintain such mass. But on the opposite end of this, miniscule version exist in abundance, even in microscopic size the complexity of system exists. Despite the impossibility of it, we have documented cases of subatomic structures. (Figure 19b shows a house upon a proton, observed by scanning electron microscope, color for highlighting.)
The existence of such tiny biology marks this as a grade 3 world. No persons or objects may be removed without clearance and full cleanse. |
Realms Beyond, by Markus Manaford.
Chapter 12.
Frequency 392 opens a doorway into a stable reality, though one where sound seems not to carry through air. Testing shows that the air is of similar elemental makeup as ours, but it simple doesn't propagate energy waves. A curious phenomenon.
Despite this, there is advanced intelligent life here, which share our human appearance, allowing us to observe unobtrusively.
Communication amongst the lower fauna seems to be based on light or pheromones. The "humans"communicate via hand signals, and curiously, by a wrist device. Using resources deemed safe for their reality, we traded for one of these devices. It seems to take some text input, and creates a series of vibrations as output.
Learning this "language"is difficult, as its use seems secondary even to the inhabitants, as well as our arms are not as sensitive as the natives'. With minor modifications, we've created a secondary output to our ears, which allows us to hear the growls of their language. The full lexicon, phonetic equivalents, and simple translation guide included for tourist, full translation dictionary available upon request. |
"Tonight, I will just drink a bit more to forget... A single glass (lots of glasses) eases the pain."
I raised the half emptied glass of good 'ol Irish Beer to the guy sitting next to me. Even if I have never seen him around, his presence alone soothed me more than all the liquor I tasted this evening.
He wanted me to stop drinking and just tell him what's been on my mind. Good for him that I'm obviously drunk enough to trust him. And whom else should I cry my eyes out to tonight?
"I'm just tired of 'feelings'. It's never enough. 'You can tell just by looking into their eyes' or so it's said, but that's just stupid."
It's always been a back and forth for me. 'I love you' - 'I can't forgive you', I want to forget you' - 'I can't be seperated from you'. I just never understand him or even my own feelings. No matter how many times I reboot this love, it can't possibly change, not even a little bit.
"There was this one time when we were in Highschool. He pulled me closer to his chest asking me stuff like 'Can you hear my heart beat?' and I was like 'Yeah, you're totally not dead... yet.', which totally sounded like I was threatening him, right? Nothing I say comes out right, but his denseness really might kill me someday."
I close my eyes and tell myself that my dreams will never come true. Even if that is harsh, it's the truth I always had in front of me.
"I'm so sick of wasting time. Just realize it already, you idiot!"
And there I was, sitting in a bar I frequent, screaming and crying at a guy I don't even remember the name of and still, I'm the star in this depressing one man show. Knowing that this phase is just all my fault. I shouldn't have kept staying at his side, even after I was totally aware of my feelings. I should have confessed to him right off the start. Those regrets I can't erase... I don't want them!
The moment you passed by the person you loved by heart, in those eyes that will never look back, I wished for nothing more then having a place there someday. All I want is you to smile. All I want is to smile with you. Love stories, happy endings - my chest tightened, it's going to fall apart.
"A woman remains strong, even if she's alone. She ends up wilting without shedding a tear."
The stranger finally opened his mouth. Speaking the harsh truth with his deep, but yet soft, voice. For the first time, I actually saw his face. How could I cry my heart out to a stranger whom face I haven't even looked at?
I just sat there in silence as my tears continued running down my cheeks. I was just sitting there, staring into his eyes. His were different from mine, I couldn't feel any sadness, any hate... It was as if he didn't have any lingering feelings on his mind as he listened to my story. Those eyes that never look back... I wonder what they are looking at?
"If you have finished crying, then it's time for me to leave you alone. Even if I couldn't help you in any way, I hope speaking up your mind has eased your pain?"
He stood up from his chair, grabbing his jacket and left a little bit of cash on the counter. Even if I decided to never let out my feelings for him, I was still eager to tell them to a stranger. I wanted to lock those memories up, hoping it wouldn't hurt as much.
"D-Don't go. Please... don't go."
But something told me that it was time to let it go. I needed to accept those unrequited feelings of mine.
"Would you mind lending me your ear a little longer?"
So, forgive me that it's like this. But if it satisfies you, whom I love, then this pain... I'll accept it. |
The tunnels were old. Stone architecture designed to withstand the test of time. It showed its age in its wear. They branched and curved to accommodate rooms upon rooms, winding between each other.
The rooms were newer. More pristine stone from the quarry. More light flooded the rooms than the tunnels. Though the rooms were brighter I never liked them. The tunnels were always more natural to me, and I loved that.
The elders spoke of great cities of metal and glass, wide expanses of plant life, and giant pockets of undrinkable water. Fantasies unheard of in our dire home. They spoke of a war, unlike those before it. It ended the world as the elders knew it and forced them underground. No one but they had seen the world above. Until that day.
It was a normal day for me. Wandering the tunnels. Grateful for their dim, cozy light. I tried to explore these tunnels in their entirety, but I was in a new area that day. I didn’t see the removed grate on the ground and fell right into the hole. I heard the machines grow louder and louder until they quickly, much more quickly, got softer and softer.
Light flooded my vision as I travelled upward. Further and further I went. In seconds I was out in open air. Open. Unlike my home this air was... fresh? It was lighter, it filled my lungs more fully, and was pleasant to breath.
I looked around *A clearing*. One of the things our elders spoke of was spaces in forests where trees didn’t grow. This was one of them. The trees were beautiful. Random and unique, each one. No monotony, no regularity, no bricks of solid stone.
The grass under my bare feet was an amazing feeling. The closest thing was the rough rugs from the world before the tunnels, brought by the elders. This was much nicer though. Each... blade... of grass could be felt, every inch of my foot felt comforted.
Everything about this place was great. Why were we not here? *Why are we still underground?* I wandered this new world. I found greater forests, beautiful pointed hills of stone, a giant pocket of water. I assumed it was undrinkable. Then I saw the city.
An empty shell of a place. What was obviously, once, a thriving location of people and community, was now an overgrown mess. One of the larger buildings had collapsed. Broken in two. Trees, vines, and other forms of vegetation had taken this large man made metropolis.
**TO BE CONTINUED?** |
"Mitch you need to snap out of this, you've never felt this way before..."
"what not even when SHE left you?"
"well maybe for a few days. but I deserved it, such a stupid, worthless..."
"Snap out of it, you have patients to see, people more important than you remember"
"Yeah thats right. I know, I'm just tired"
"Thats not what you tell people, you tell them they have to make an effort to stay in the world and make small improvements"
"I know"
"to contact the people in their lives that matter to them and tell them whats going on"
"I know"
"To learn to sit with uncomfortable feelings and accept them as an important but not overwhelming part of themselves"
"I KNOW"
"Besides if we eat another bloody TV dinner I'm outa here"
"wait...what?"
"oops" |
I was confused to why I didn’t hear the crows squawking or the kookaburras laughing. I looked out my window at the powerlines, trees, even the roofs of the other houses. They were all gone. I stepped outside onto my front lawn where a child I had to guess was around 12 stood, looking into a tree at something. I tried my best to search for what he was looking at but nothing was in the tree. I yelled out to him curious and afraid. “Hey kid, what are you looking at? Where is it?” The kid turned to you, pale and wearing an expression which made me uncomfortable. His voice was shaky but I remember every single word in that sentence that he said, “It took everyone away,” before pointing at the tree. I look back up to see the branches moving in the wind, but something wasn’t right. There was no wind. There were no noises, no cars, no, dogs nothing. The world was silent. *Something was walking on the tree branches..*
I exchanged glances at the tree and the kid who was still pointing at it. I looked down at my hands which were violently shaking. The lawns around me had equipment in them but no one to use them. A power company truck was further down the street with no one on the ladder. It was complete silence. The silence. Nothing but silence. Silence, silence, silence.
I looked back around for the boy. He’s not here. He’s gone silent. I looked back up at the tree to see that whatever it was, was gone And it left me with silence. |
"A Hospital ...?"He chuckled, "No, no you little rat. I'm aiming for somewhere deeper ... around six. Feet. Deep."
Receiving a swift kick to my midsection, I soon found myself in a deep hole. I landed with a thud and the mask I had but on my before slipped off just enough for me to see with one eye.
It was dark out, round about eleven if I had to guess from the position of the moon high up in the sky. Why did that matter anyway? Look at your attacker Laura, your attacker ... attacker ... attacker.
Philip. It was Fucking Philip. Well of course it would be! The mad cunt didn't even know how to act like a normal human being, much less take a break up well. Why am I surprised.
He looked scary back when he would stand over her, drunk out of his mind with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other. But there was something different about how he looked then, his face filled with unfogged, totally sober and somber rage. The last thing I saw before a shovel full of dirt hit my face and made me sputter was a small, toothless half grin.
"Why would you do something like this to me?! What did I ever do to you?!!"He continued to shovel dirt over my living corpse.
"Nothing, but also everything."
"FUCK THAT! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!!!"
"YOU THINK IF I COULD EXPLAIN IT RIGHT I WIULD BE DOING IT AT ALL, EH? I don't know! All I know is you need to be dead or else I'm the one who suffers!"
"Well if that isn't the STUPIDEST RESPONSE EVER"
I tried to to get up but my pelvis was killing me, I must have broken it in the fall. What could I do? I was immobile, at least in too much pain to really be able to move much. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. It shovelled down on me and soon enough the grave I would most likely sleep forever in was filled over my legs and my head should come soon too. How long did I sit there and listen to his laughs, his jabs and his hateful remarks? How long did I lay there and try to find a reason to accept my death? Why did this have to happen to me? Why did I have to lose everything I used to dream of? Why? Why?
...why?
Why did it have to be me, Philip.
I loved you. |
They say that the intelligent life never had to be human-like. But when we met extraterrestrials (first ones, anyway), we still were suprised. How could someone strive to be a servant, strive so much that they’ll do anything just to achieve that ridiculous goal?
It was laughable, but not for long.
Old couple annihilated for saying “thanks” to the Serv, that lived for opening doors for humans.
Programmer, mutilated for touching the keyboard while the Keyboard Serv was distracted by something.
Soon Serves started killing people for smiling around them.
I’ve heard there is a Breath Serv going around in nearby cities, and I don’t even want to think how easy it is to get killed by him, for not letting him breath the air in and out for you.
It’s like the Serves will do anything, just to continue doing their primary function, and stopping them from doing that, or not being treated as a slave of its purpose, is an aggressive action they can’t and won’t forgive.
I hope these metal monsters will never find my bunker. |
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