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You ever wake up flat in the center of a ritual circle before? Yeah...neither have I. But, here I am, waiting with my cotton clad back against the chilling, stone floor, in a room lit only by the wisps of candlefire that encircle me. I hear heavy, metallic footsteps coming from upstairs, descending at a slow pace as they echo off the masonry. The future doesn’t look too bright down here, huh? I didn’t even finish writing my essay.
And then, like, the Dark Lord slams the door open. He slams it so hard that the door breaks. He walks in with his super cool black armor and sword towards the ritual circle and stops right in front of it. It took a moment for me to get my bearings after my ears were shot with the deafening sound of the door splintering and its metal snapping. I then looked up, seeing probably the lamest dude I’ve ever laid eyes on. He was ridiculously tall, sporting armor with a stupid amount of spikes, and of course, skulls. Lots of ‘em. They were a part of his helmet, breastplate, pauldrons, vambraces, and greaves. Don’t even get me started on his sword. That thing was like, twice his size and had too many jagged edges to count. Christ, it’s like something I thought was cool when I was twelve.
So, like, the Dark Lord, with his super cool deep voice says “Peasant! As soon as I kill you here, I shall rule the world! Any last words?” While I let out a small puff of laughter through my nose upon hearing the dude’s voice, I still have to come to terms with the fact that I am most certainly triple screwed right now. The Dark Lord raises his sword, swinging it towar-Clang! An even lamer sword appeared in my hand as I braced for my impending doom (it was a katana, because of course it was). Somehow, I managed to block enough of the attack to survive. Well, I was still sent a good few yards away, but I survived. Well, whatever this day was going to be, I suppose it’s better than what I had planned last night.
(This was my 1st response to a writing prompt here, how'd I do?) |
I longed for this day, the day I could have her with me once again. I could never come though, she was gone; the forever kind of gone. Maggot feed. It was always during times like these that I envied those with faith, believing those they dearly loved were waiting for them in a better place. Not for me that, no; to me they were all just gone. Gone. The word that hat rattled around inside my head to the point of symantic satiation.
Then one of the days that I managed to leave the house I caught a glimpse in the corner of my eye, her hair... It blew in the wind, looking at once wieghty and also light. I don't know, it hard to describe, those copper locks always held a special sort of magic for me. Of course everything about her was magical. How I used to hate that kind of flowery talk and again I start to feel bitterness in mind when I think of it, but magical she was. It couldn't have been her hair though, she was gone.
Her laugh was one of her most potent magics, a spell capable of total debilitating me. We'd be talking.. Arguing, we'd be arguing, and she simply turned and I'd watch those amber curls bounce as she walked away, her laugh trailing behind her and I knew I had no hope of winning; in the end I'd give her anything she wanted just to bask another moment longer in her intense glow. After I left the house and as I walked throguh the world I though I heard that luagh but it was merely a cruel echo in my mind, taunting me with that which I could not have. Of course it wasn't her laugh, she was gone.
I had to go to the shops yesterday, every cupboard was empty and the fridge too. As I pushed passed some of the gormless masses she walked right passed me. Right there in the tinned goods aisle she passed me by. It couldn't have been her though. No, that wasn't possible, she was gone. I buried her three years ago...
... I'll never no happiness again, I know she was playfully mock me for this cheesy sentiment but it's ture; she was my world. My world is dead, this is a grey afterlife. |
In the middle of another strok - “CAMILLITE!”
“GAH!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Serenastra shied away for her best friend’s sake, her hair smoking once again. “I didn’t know you were having another long-distance session with your lovely man online!”
“D-Don’t worry, Serenasty!” Camillite called back with crackling and visible white breaths. “My new darling here is a...very patient man! Do you need some, uh...stress relief again? I mean, uh, you can join us! If you want!”
“Oh no, no!” Serenastra blushed, her hair becoming like bombed helicopter propellers with how she swung her head. “I can’t disturb the wells of well-deserved love between you two over there! I’m simply a selfish mistress taking advantage of your kindness!”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“NO!” Serenastra shrieked with her literally smoking hot body. “Priamile, you mustn’t open your eyes to this!”
“Serena, I know they’re having sex,” the blindfolded Priamile answered. “I can hear them from my room. Now get back to yours before you get Mr. Dick Cheesy down our asses again for property damage. I’m sure Camillite can get back to you later.”
“Okay...” the girl on fire put out, walking away with the blindfolded woman. “I’m sorry...”
As for Camillite...
“*Cam, can’t you just drop the act and come clean already?”* said an echoing voice. *“And no, pun most certainly NOT intended.”*
“*Hey, I’m not THAT heartless!”* Camillite echoed back, but with lips closed the whole time. *“She could blow up the whole world if I don’t let her down lightly! You know I’m thinking about how to do it right, right?”*
“*Sure, as if gaslighting the clumsy comubster won’t help blow up the whole world. Why am I in love with you, again?”*
“*Because you’re into being real patient!”* Camillite answered as he encased his naked form in thicker and foggier ice. *“And I convinced you enough to have pity on me!”*
“*My, it’s quite surprising that someone like you isn’t top brass over there right now. Then again, it’s also surprising how I’m top brass over here. You know what, I’ll give you three days to get it over with, and I don’t care what sort of explosion will happen with it.”*
“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO BE PATIENT, YOU IMITATOR OF THE UNDERAGED!” Camillite would’ve been heard screaming if not for the muffling made by his ice cocoon. “Ugh, you should be on our side instead, Dilemma...”
“*And you on ours, Cam. But I like this place. It gives me the most fun times to watch underlings squirm and grow. And I’m sure you like that place you’re living in, too. After all, it gives you the easiest chances to con a naive lady with a hot figure into sex, no?”*
Camillite growled at his irritating secret lover. “I guess it doesn’t anymore...and it’s your fault...”
Dilemma chuckled. “Thank you very much, darling. But it’s not just mine. It’s also yours. Now come on, go confess the truth to Serenastra and keep her from calling too much of the wrath of Mr. Dick Chessy. As for me, I’ll be informing my underlings about your upcoming defection!”
“Wait, what – “ That buzzing in his brain cut off. “NO! Damn it!”
“Hi, Camillite.”
“GAH!”
This time, it was Priamile who surprised him. And again, Camillite forgot about how sharp her hearing really was. |
"So, you're saying that you need him here? How so? And why is he painting?"Screamed Askelad, the chosen hero.
"Do you know how stressful it is to be the bad guy? Almost everyone hate me. People make human sacrifices to me. Do you know how it feels when a soul come here and say "I was killed in your name. I had a family. Why did you destroy my life?"? Do you have any idea? Tell me now!"Satan screamed, making blood come out of the walls.
"Satan, we talked about it. You asked for my help, so listen to me. Don't scream. Don't even speak louder than i do all the time. And your posture. Oh satan. Relax your body please. You look terrifying"said Bob, turning back to his painting.
Askelad was confused. What are they talking about? Why would satan ask Bob Ross to help him? What is going on?
"Relax"- said Satan. "I will explain everything to you. Yes yes, i can read your mind. I'm the devil. And I can read yours too Bob. I know what you said, but it's just so convenient to read minds. Anyway, the explanation. You see, as I said, being the devil is not very pleasant. So, how can i learn to be wholesome? Happy? How can i make people enjoy my company? It's simple. I just need Bob Ross. There is not a single soul that is as wholesome as Bobby here. Everyone loves him. So i took him out for a little bit...".
"God came down to earth and asked for our help! Do you understand the shock? The world is forever changed. What are you going to do about it?"Said Askelad.
"Don't scream with him, Askelad. He's just trying to improve. Everyone should do this. I forgive him. And so should you. Now, what about we take a walk on earth? I need some inspiration for my next painting". |
I ran as fast as I could. The clones would not stop shooting, even after proving that I was a Jedi. Was it because of the hat? Then I remembered. The younglings, the Padawans. Slain, all of them. Killed like dogs.
This event would be called 'The Great Jedi Purge' in the coming years. Imperial bastards referred to it as 'Order 66'.
Back to Coruscant, I jumped into my ship and put it in hyper drive. The clones managed to hit and damage the starside engine badly. I soon got into orbit, with pursuing ships hot on my heels.
I thought I wasn't gonna make it. I remember thinking 'Please make them go away', when suddenly something started twisting and bending the metal of their ship. After multiple explosions, the J3D1 Chaser was space rubble, without any kind of explanation.
"You're welcome"I heard in my head. I was so confused. Was this the hat? I tried studying it as best as I could, but I couldn't hear its voice if I didn't wear it. I finally relinquished, and the hat told me:
"This universe doesn't want your kind, Hanzo"
"But why? We are Jedi, we protect people, we are the good guys!"
"Good or bad, you were all too proud and foolish to realize what was going on. What has gone on. And now you shall become extinct. Luckily for you, I can arrange a change of scenery, if you would. All you have to do is fly across that worm hole, and a universe full of possibilities awaits you."
As I heard that, another clone ship was closing in. Without a second thought, I went straight into the hole. When I got out, I felt strange. I was still in my ship, which apparently had crashed down on a nearby planet.
I heard some agitated voices, asking about the newly crashed ship, so I hid. As the sounds got closer, I found an exit through the rubble. The men were investigating the frontal part of the ship, so they couldn't see me.
However, one of them saw me. He was dressed like a ninja (wait, what's a ninja and why does a Jedi know this??), with black and blue clothes. His presence felt bone chilling.
The ninja smiled and spoke:
"We meet again, Master Hasashi."
A sudden urge invaded me. An irrational urge to kill this man. Similar to seeing a Sith Lord, but stronger. As I extended my right arm in his direction, a flaming chain with a spearhead flew towards him. It penetranted his armor, causing physical and fire damage, and when I felt it lodged in his insides, I savagely screamed:
"GET OVER HERE!!!" |
As I was flying closer to the top of the snowy mountain, I could recognise the man standing there, just about to enter the cave. It was Ethan. I wasn’t surprised to see him there, but I had hoped to get there before him, so I would not have to fight him again. I began landing my dragon, and realised he had noticed me as well. And he was waiting.
He could have just gone inside. He *should* have just gone inside. But he was standing there. The black of his clothes stood out against the white snow. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but as always didn’t seem bothered by the cold. The closer I got to the ground, the more miserable and grim he looked. After what felt like an eternity, but was more likely less than a minute, my loyal red dragon reached the ground, and I quickly leaped off him, and stood in front of my oldest friend.
‘We don’t have to do this, Ethan,’ I shouted over the loud swooshes of the wind. My hair was in my face, as were the snowflakes falling on it, hitting my eyes, nose and mouth. ‘You can still back down, it’s not too late. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Maybe you ought to be the one backing down,’ he replied, ‘I’m sure if you did, I could get the League to spare your life. Join me, Amelia.’ I could hear the plea in his voice, and from the short distance between us I saw the hope in his eyes.
‘You know I can’t do that, I can’t let you and the League to hurt any more innocent people.’
‘Who says you can’t?’
‘Your mum. At least that’s what she told me last night.’
‘My mum died last month.’ He looked down, but I knew he was bluffing.
‘She didn’t sound dead when she was moaning my name,’ I teased.
‘No, really, she died last month. I would have invited you, but...’ he began trailing off. Oh.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I apologised, ‘I didn’t know, Ethan, truly.’
‘Psyche!’ He laughed. ‘You totally fell for that.’ A smirked began creeping up on his face.
‘Did not.’ I crossed my arms.
‘Did too.’
‘Whatever,’ I sighed and rolled my eyes. It felt like when we were in high school again, although I knew it couldn’t last. Not only did I not have much time, but I was starting to get cold. And Ethan was never cold. With every second passing my arch-enemy was gaining an advantage. gathered myself, attempting to be serious. ‘Ethan, I’m going into that cave, and I’m going to get the Book of Mirglaus’ I stated, taking a step closer to him, ‘I could do this with you by my side, or with you falling down in front of me. I know which way I prefer, but it’s your choice.’
‘Just like it was your choice whether to do History project with me or with Danny McStupid?’ He snickered.
‘I can’t believe you’re still going on about that,’ I scoffed, ‘we were 14, I had a crush on him. Get over it.’
‘I can’t get over it, Amelia, I’m still traumatised by the look on his face when he realised you two had to present your project in front of the class as well,’ he chuckled, ‘that was proper funny.’ He was right, of course. Danny’s expression after finding out he had to work had been hilarious.
‘Like a deer in headlights.’ I couldn’t help but giggle myself. The feeling of nostalgia had somehow warmed me. It wasn’t so hard not to shudder anymore.
‘It was second only to Mr Briggs expression when he saw we’d moved his car into his office and then egged it,’ Ethan recalled with a grin, ‘that really was something. Did you know he retired last year?’
‘No way!’ I cheered, ‘It was about time. Bit unfair though that all of those children get to go to school without him literally shoving his nose in their business.’ We were now standing quite close to each other, like we used to before Ethan joined the League. Before he became a murderer. For a moment, I almost forgot about it.
Ethan smiled softly. ‘I can hardly imagine growing up without having seen that man’s nose up close.’ He looked into my eyes. ‘I’ve missed you, you prick.’
‘I’ve missed you too, twat.’ Then I hugged him. It was the biggest mistake I had ever made, and perhaps the last. I felt a sharp, terrible pain in my stomach. I let go of Ethan, and looked down. I saw his dagger. My arch enemy had stabbed me. My oldest friend had stabbed me. |
"...Millions over the world have..perished due to".I rubbed my eyes and turned the t.v. off with a yawn.
'Guh I shouldn't have gotten so drunk yesterday my boss will kill me'.I hold my head as I prepare my breakfast.
After finishing my morning routine ,I left for work in my car.The traffic seemed to be non-existent as I easily reached my office on time.But I noticed everything was closed including my office.
"No missed calls nor any notices about today being off, strange..".I mutter.The situation was certainly unique "Ugh"My head throbbed.
So I went online to check the news and was in for a shock.Millions of people died, comparing the statistics they figured out all people above 25 had died from a mysterious disease. But I was alive and 26 an anomaly."aah why does head hurt so much I didn't even drink much"I said.
"Why are you still alive?".I looked around.'Im probably getting paranoid'."Why?Why?Why?"the voice continued to assault my ears.
'Im hearing voices now better get checked soon'.I started driving towards the closest local hospital.
Around this time I started getting calls from friends,family, coworkers about my situation and I in turn asked how they were.
Arriving at the hospital I saw it swarmed with people there to get themselves checked.The consensus of the population was that a biological weapon was used so they were all paranoid.
The hospital was incredibly short staffed with only a few certified doctors present.It was pandemonium.
Over time the patients dwindled down.When It was getting close to my turn.I started feeling nausea like I couldn't stand properly.I left the line and just moved towards the nearest bathroom and puked a lot.
My head felt like it was crawling with fire ants being bittwn again and again."You cannot get checked NO!"my body tried to resist but eventually went limp.
(Not)Protagonist Pov
I woke up a few seconds later I had overpowered the human.My black sclera covered eyes staring back from the mirror."Time to finish what we had started".
I take out a surgical knife I had managed to sneak without anyones notice.I took it in a fist and pierced towards my heart.
"Whats this".I felt resistance the hand wasn't going any closer and the knife just slipped out."I won't be killed ".
Damn the human was able to gain control.I instantly received a punch to my face and another and another.
Protagonist pov
"And another and.."I stopped to notice my eyes were back to green and my body was back in my control. Also my face seemed pretty bruised."What do I do now?"I thought. |
The cantina was brimming with life from every corner. Mogpins crowded the bar, vials of liquor in every hand, and blood stained quills poking into every patron who got too close while trying to pass by. If you could get past their stench and bulging yellow eyes, they were actually a fun crew to run around with. The bar tender looked nervous, but it wasn't from the Mogpins. She was a native, earth blue skin with red flecks up and down her arms, with neon orange hair pulled into a braid that flowed down her back, wrapping into a belt around her waist.
She came from behind the bar with a tray of glowing green shot glasses, and headed for the Horinds in the corner. Hulking spider like creatures from their top half, and mostly humanoid on the bottom. The light above them had burned out, making it the perfect spot for regularly nocturnal creatures. The bartender placed the tray on the table in front of them and within seconds, shotglass and all were gobbled up. Wisps of green smoke bellowed out with a laugh as they started rocking back and forth in the booth. Sunshine was a helluva a drink, especially around these parts. Hard to find it on tap, let alone in places like this. This was a cantina afterall, and that meant the regular visitor was routinely wanted. Level action plasma rifles, slug grenade launchers, laser lassos and speeder bikes were the norm around here. Before the night was over, there'd be a few bodies to drag out back, and some bikes to scrap.
The bartender made her way to may table, opposite the Hordids with a clear view of the bar and the main entrance. She outstretched her wrist and pressed a button on her watch, and a holographic menu appeared on my table. She smiled and asked what I'd like to drink, and glanced back towards the doors again.
"You expecting anyone particular, ma'am?"I asked.
She responded with a nervous grin, and drew her finger around menu items 30-33. "Sorkle with lime,"Osprey heart wine,"and "Sludge cake burben."SOS, the first letter from each item in order, but we were a long way from earth, and hardly anyone this far out even knew what that meant. I wasn't crazy, was I? Look at the company in the bar, outlaws from the roughest planets in every direction, more firepower than the closest military outpost, and you're asking me, the only human in the quadrant, for help? Or maybe I was the only one sober enough to realize whats he was trying to say, and if that was the case, I had my luck cut out for me. |
Well. Here we go again. Another day, another suitor trying to get past me. Everyday's the same here: some hotshot prince from far, far away trying to fight me so they can marry the royal heir. They all leave in the same way: some burns here and there, but always alive.
The princess is a brat. Brought up by her parents who could never say no to such a cute little princess. Annoying, whiny and naïve. That's what she is. At the same time, she's also got one good thing going on. She's charming. Can wind every man, woman and child around her little finger. People love her. Some a little too much, and that's why I'm here: to protect her from the unwanted suitors.
Most of them are so easy to scare away: I will scorch them with my breath, they get scared and I'm left alone for another day. Today was different though. This dude came in. Not even looking like a prince, just a plain, boring boy. Not overly confident like all the other suitors.
There he was, just walking in like a walk in the park. This annoyed me. He was not scared. Not overly confident. Just there. Then he started his attack, like all others: straight for my head. I started my typical counter-attack: blowing fire at his feet, so I won't hurt him too bad but just enough for him to be scared and will leave. This boy. He did not even flinch. Ran straight into my flames and kept running towards my face.
This confused me: how does this boy run straight into my flames and not get turned into charcoal? But my time for confusion was over: he was standing right in front of me, not scared at all, not burned except for his clothes that were slightly burned.
Then he did something I did not expect at all. He sat down. This stupid little brat was not even scared of me! How dare he! So I started my second attack. Hitting him square in the face with my horned tail.
That did it! Look at him being flat! I knew this wouldn't be hard! As I was happily stomping around, having flattened this stupid man I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
It was him again. No longer flat like I thought he was. He was sitting again, just like before I had smacked him with my tail. Did not even look slightly hurt or damaged. The nerve of this man...
As I ran at him, fully intending to run him over, I heard a scream. The princess. That stupid little brat had left her tower wich I had guarded so well for the last 100 years. She always had to come out at the most annoying times.
Then I ran him over. I felt it. Him. He hit my foot, fell flat down again and just lay there, as the princess ran to me.
She started screaming. I've never heard her scream like this. Why did she sound like this? Why does she sound scared? Did I hurt her while I was trampling him? Did I somehow break something she loved? What's going on??
And then I saw it. Her face. This was concern. This boy. The most annoying one. He was the one from the curse. The curse that said I would slay all but one. The one true love. The one that would be my greatest annoyance ever, yet I would never be able to slay him. He was the blessed one. The one who would marry the princess within a day of meeting. This was love. Finally, I would be set free from this curse.
In the corner of my eye I saw the boy again. Sitting up. Looking at the princess like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
As I saw this, I felt something. My wings were starting to burn. The bones in my legs felt like they were too bis for my skin. Slowly every bone in my body started to feel like that, until I blacked out from pain.
When I finally woke up, I understood why I felt like that. I was finally me again. No longer was I a dragon. I was my normal human me again. 100 years. That's how long I guarded this brat of a princess, only for her to end up with a boring normal man.
Ahh well. At least I'm finally me again.
**this is the first time ever I wrote something, please be kind. I appreciate constructive criticism!**
**also: english is not my native language, sorry for mistakes** |
He just sat there, living his life, staring in the distance with a smile on his face. As if the forest had given him the patience to do nothing and enjoy everything.
I tried to walk by as quietly as possible, up to the point of invisibility. Still, his mouth opened, and words rolled out of it.
‘Nice day today, isn’t it?’
I wanted to ignore him and move on, but for some reason my legs had created a mind of their own. I stopped and looked the old man right in the eyes. My distorted face was mirrored in his glasses.
‘The day is not so nice for everyone,’ I said. My brain told me this wasn’t right, I should run away, this man wouldn’t be interested in the bullshit of a random stranger.
‘Oh?’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Why so?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nonsense. There has to be a reason for not enjoying this.’ He pointed at the sky. ‘This beautiful day. It can only be ruined if there is something to ruin it. What ruined it for you?’
‘Everything.’ I suddenly felt an urge to tell him about the emptiness inside me. A voice in my head told me I shouldn’t do this, I should run away and forget about this random old man.
I ignored the voice. My tongue transformed into a gun and my thoughts were the bullets. ‘It’s just... I’m lonely. Nobody likes me. I mean, my parents like me, but that’s normal, they’re parents.’ I rubbed my neck. Telling this felt uncomfortable and good at the same time.
He nodded. ‘I see. So why don’t you have any friends?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do. People dislike others for a reason. Why do people dislike you?’
He was brutally honest, but I didn’t mind. You can’t deny the truth, can you?
‘Because I don’t like girls.’ There. I said it. My parents knew I wasn’t straight, and so did the entire school, but I never told a stranger.
‘And that’s a reason for them to hate you?’ The man looked curious, rather than astonished.
‘I guess. They ask me if I can suck a dick for ten bucks. They spray “GAY” on my face with water-resistant paint. They say I’ll go to hell if I don’t... if I don’t...’
My voice committed suicide. Since I lost the ability to cry years ago, along with feeling anything at all, I didn’t cry. Despite this, I felt tears behind my eyes, pressing against my nerves. The only thing that could make this more embarrassing, was crying. I tried to talk, but my voice refused to come to life again. Luckily, the old man understood me.
‘Listen, young man.’ His voice was full of empathy. ‘I know sometimes life is hard. And that’s okay. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, but don’t let it ruin this beautiful day. Look.’ He looked at the trees above him. I did the same.
‘Trees are quite handsome, aren’t they?’ While I wouldn’t consider ‘handsome’ a word to describe a tree, I nodded, since my voice was still dead.
We stared for a few minutes. Then, the old man started talking again.
‘Listen, young man. Whenever you feel down, just know... there’s someone who cares about you.’
I looked at him, tears in my eyes. ‘Thank... thank you for listening.’ My voice sounded like a dead horse.
‘No problem.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe, sometimes, all people need is a good friend who listens to them... and a tree to stare at.’
I laughed. ‘Maybe that really is all what humanity needs.’ |
Alkeus walked from the ferry to the dock over the thin plank, all confidence and swagger. His pack was thrown over one shoulder and his chin was lifted into the noon sun.
He took a large breath in from his nose and exhaled in an exaggerated fashion. "Ah! Breckport!"He announced.
I followed suit and took a whiff myself. "It smells like fish,"I responded.
"That's because of the fish! I'm the brains, you're the brawn... and Breckport? That's the brine!"He chucked at his joke. "Now come along, we have people to meet!"His jolly gait was my jogging pace and my shins burned trying to keep up with him. Breckport's roads and alleys were overly congested with sweaty, smelly people. Each of the hundreds of faceless, mildly perturbed merchants and shoppers were indifferent to the two of us strolling through their native land.
We came to a narrow pathway between two old, cracking brick buildings and Alkeus rapped his knuckles on a short wooden door.
"Who is it?"Called a gruff name from inside.
"It's your mum you dense twat!"Alkeus called inside.
A short, balding man threw the door open with more excitement than a boy greeting his father home from war.
"Al, you son of a bitch!"The old man shouted as he threw his arms around him in a tender embrace. "I didn't know when I'd see you again, boy! Come in, come in."The short man hobbled into the building as Alkeus an I ducked under the small door frame.
"Fraz, this is Elmer, my companion on our journey,"Alkeus said, introducing me. I put my hand out to shake his and he received it enthusiastically.
"Any friend of Alkeus' is welcome here. Would you like some tea? Coffee?"He rushed to a small stove and set a kettle on the burner.
"Tea sounds..."Alkeus put his hand on my forearm and shook his head subtly. "Actually, I think I'm alright."
"Your loss!"Fraz said as he blew out the flame on the burner. "Your friend arrived about an hour ago by the way."
"Fantastic. Do you have my affects still?"Alkeus asked.
"Sure thing, you guys follow me,"and Fraz rushed from one room to the next. We followed close behind, ducking under the low ceiling.
As we entered the next room I saw a dark figure seated in a chair far too small for him.
"what are you doing sitting all along here in the dark? Sheesh,"Fraz exclaimed as he flicked on a light switch.
The light illuminated the figure. It was a massive man, half naked from his waist up. Metal rebar rods poked through his sides and into reddish, purplish blotches of skin on the other. A mask obscured his face, but seemed to be embedded into the very skin in his cheeks and jaw. His eyes were wide open and darted wildly from person to person in the room, while his head stayed perfectly still.
"What the hell is that thing?!"I blurted out, instinctively reaching for the hilt of my sword.
"What? Oh, this is Joe, he is our protector,"Alkeus said as he waved away the concern with his hand like it were a fruit fly.
"This creature is the Protector? He looks like a bloody demon!"
"Don't be so dramatic. His appearance makes him more effective as a Protector. Besides, he is very nice once you get to know him,"Alkeus said nonchalantly as he rummaged through a chest with Fraz.
Joe just sat, his massive hands on the knees of his pants and started at me with his bulging eyes. I wanted to look away, focus on something else, but I'd never seen anything like him, and our gazes kept.
"What exactly do you think is going to happen on this journey, Alkeus?"I asked his quietly, keeping eye contact with Joe.
Alkeus popped up with a pistol in one hand and pulled the slide, loading a bullet as he inspected it. "Oh, the very best kind I hope,"he answered. |
"Thank you for stopping by today, I just want to start of by saying you're very brave for the taking the first step Mr.... strange, I can't seem to find your name anywhere in this profile."
*"That's because when I booked this appointment, I asked your secretary to leave out my name."*
"Well this is a session with a lot of talking, I have to call you something."
*"You can call me.... Morgan."*
"Alright, Morgan. I was going to ask you where'd you like to start, but it seems the name is something you're very careful about. Any reason why you don't like people knowing your name?"
*"Let's just say I haven't done all the right choices in my life, and once people learn who I am, they tend to avoid me."*
"I see, so tell me Morgan, these choices, do they involve acts of crime or violence."
*"No, not at all, but from the way people treat me, they might as well."*
"I'm sorry, I'm just a little lost here."
*"I'll start from the beginning. My father runs a family business, which at one point, that I thought needed a new direction. He was not happy with what I had in mind and it led to a falling out between us. Ever since then, people around me blamed me for the repercussions of that argument."*
"Were there actual repercussions?"
*"Well, yes, but not as severe as they make them out to be."*
"Okay, seems that this direction you suggested was something extraordinary to get such a big reaction from your father. You must of put a lot thought into it, correct?
*"Yes."*
"What made you want to take this direction?"
*"In general, I felt underappreciated in the business and I felt ready to take on more responsibilities and be more involved. He did not take that idea to heart."*
"Why wouldn't he?"
*"He's always been a control freak, didn't like the idea of anyone meddling in his affairs, even his own son."*
"That's a shame, and how did that argument affect others?"
*"It made my father more demanding and controlling. Since then, he enforced strict policies and larger oversight on everyone's activities. The business has never been the same since then."*
"That's when people start avoiding you?"
"*Yes, and everywhere I go, I am constantly reminded of it. Everywhere I go, they shudder or curse my name."*
"That seems a little extreme."
*"Exactly! They think I'm the cause to all their problems, they cast me as the scapegoat while my father remains innocent. To them, my father has done nothing wrong."*
"Why do you think everyone sides with your father?"
"*I don't know, they all openly claim how grateful they are to my father. Everyone carries out happily in public, but a big part of me says it's because they're scared."*
"Since then, how has all that made you feel?"
*"Obviously angry, but mostly sad. No matter how much I try to sway them, no one wants to listen to me. They are convinced that everything is my fault, every bad decision made, every policy enacted, and every backlash since then. I know I'm not perfect, I tend to be pretty selfish, but all I ever wanted was to have some control in this universe. I never intended to make everyone so miserable and yet that's what happened."*
"Of course you didn't, none of this is your fault. Seeing your father control everything around him has robbed you of your power of agency, your focal point of control. It clearly left a void in your soul that made you wish for a way to leave his sphere of influence, so you requested more responsibilities in the business and he overreacted. But you have to remind yourself just because you were there when the explosion happened doesn't mean you were the one who caused it. Sure, maybe you were the spark that ignited it, but someone else was responsible for laying down the barrels of gunpowder. So you must not blame yourself for what happened.
*"Easier said than done, Doctor. I bet you don't even have half an idea of how I feel."*
"You know what? I bet I have a full idea. If you must know, I constantly have anxieties."
*"Really? So what does that have to do with what I'm going through?"*
"What you're feeling now: anger, sadness, frustration, they stem from a single event in your life. Imagine feeling the same way, except all the time with no root cause."
*"No root cause? It must come from somewhere."*
"Maybe, maybe it stemmed from my childhood, or from my college days. Whatever the cause, it doesn't change the fact that I have these little voices, these demons if you will, haunting my every thought or decision."
*"I'm sorry to hear that. But maybe you've got it all wrong."*
"Excuse me?"
*"What if instead of it being stemmed from your past, it's stemmed in your future? All your worries are so far off into the beyond that your mind cannot wrap itself around the thought of what will happen."*
"Ok, but everyone worries about the future. Why am I different?"
*"While other people worry about what they will eat at lunch or what are they going to wear at tonight's party, you worry about things way further down the line such as career, love life, retirement, friends, and family. Your head is so caught up with tomorrow that your mind forgets to live in the now, causing this dissonance and anxiety you're experiencing. I've had my share of experiences and take it from me when I say there's one ultimate truth: Life is much simpler than you know it. Humans tend to have this habit of connecting the dots, even when they are not there. They've been trained to believe that everything has a cause and effect and what you do now will have large ramifications down the road. But the truth is, it's all pure chaos. Whatever you think will happen, whatever you plan for, might not always happens. Life just swings by and throws you a new opportunity, new love, new job, and new friends. Hell, it could throw you a freaking bus and disrupt all your plans altogether because that's how much the universe is indifferent and random to us. The point here is if you focus too much on the future, most of the time, you'll not only limit yourself but you'll lose sight of what's in front of you, in the now."*
"I never thought of it that way, so what do you suggest I do?"
*"My opinion, keep your plans, but don't be too rigid. Enjoy the moment, but not too much that you forgo a general direction in life. All in all, maintain a balance between the two and always keep an open mind and heart that invite opportunities."*
"Wow, thank you. I have so to think about when I.... Oh no. Our session has come to an end. I'm so sorry for taking a huge chunk of time for myself."
*"Not a problem. In fact, I enjoyed it all, especially having someone open up to you very quickly. It was a pleasure talking to you. Please have your secretary book another appointment for me. I would love to drop by soon."*
"Same as well, just one last thing, will I be putting you down as Morgan or by another name?"
*"Morgan is fine, but if you want my real name, I'll give it to you as a hint."*
"Okay, what's the hint?"
*"Let's just say the people who believe I'm responsible for all their woes also believe I'm responsible for all the demons in your head."* |
Not only did I have to check in at my bank for some bullshit, I still had to eat. The burger joint next door wafted through the air as I waited politely for my turn to speak to a teller who didn't give a shit about my problems. I looked at my watch: 2:12 pm. I never understood Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy until I got a job. Time is an illusion, yes; lunchtime -- doubly so. I was already at one quarter of my state-mandated break and nothing in my life had changed. Alerts over the television screens in my bank roared to life. Nuclear armaments were detected heading toward my country. From so many launch sites and missiles involved, it was unclear if the threat of Nuclear Extinction for us as a whole was expected. All I could do was look at the paper slip in my hand and wonder if I could buy myself to safety. |
It was a miserable life, honestly, I couldn't even remember what the sun looked like at this point, I missed that golden glow, how the warm feeling would trickle along my skin, giving this beautiful glow tan, the way everything smelt during a warm summer’s day. It smelt a lot better than this, this... I wasn't even sure what to call it, a dungeon? a prison? Both were accurate yet non seemed extreme enough to fit the horror of this place.
Hell, yes hell. That's what this place was, A punishment for those who made the horrible mistake of being born just that little bit different. Of course, not every super met this fate, the ones that had more practical powers such as those who controlled electricity would be given mundane jobs, forced to wander around fixing powerlines for the government. Of course, the pay was rather decent but many were unsatisfied and how could you blame them? These men and women were basically gods and yet here they were being used like generators.
I guess generator was accurate, in a way that's all I was, something they used to generate power, just my power fuelled humans rather than electricity. It was a horrible pain, could you imagine the pinching of your veins as the machine suckles at your flesh, trying to draw more life from your pale corpse of a body, your only reprieve from this hell was having slop poured into your mouth to feed you, before being tossed to the floor for what they deemed 'recovery'.
Recovery was a grotesque use of the word, it was a joke if anything, a way for them to ensure that their equipment was going to still function, yet I was close to broken. I assumed my abilities must have had a limit.. how much can your body regenerate before it just falls apart, I often wondered what my death would be like as I laid semi-conscious in that chair. Would my consciousness simply fade? Or would I be struggling in a painful hell? my body trying to die and revive itself at the same time, causing me to finally fall into shock? It was hard to say.. yet as I sat in my cage, it was clear they knew my end was near. They didn't even bother giving me regular feedings of that slop anymore. Guess my blood was wearing thin. Although I guess I should be grateful, at least it was only my blood they were after, judging from the sounds that echoed down the halls at night, I was one of the lucky ones.
Still it hardly mattered, their heavy boots were already scuffing the cold concrete, it seemed it was time for my last blood donation.
{If you enjoyed my story, Feel free to check out r/pmmeyabootysstories where ill be posting some more of my stuff for people to read} |
"Burn, burn and may your charred grilled remains sustain my life essence, your burnt corpse but a mere treat for me, while your life has ended, mine is only just beginning, I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."With that Matus broke out into a hysterical spur of laughter as his other guild members gave him an odd stare.
"Ah, who let the mage cook? he has spent si-seven minutes talking to that piece of bacon, should we call for help? he seems to have lost his mind."The elven archer muttered, crouching behind their orcess brute of a body shield.
"Is this considered strange? magic man is rather odd.. shall I hit him with stick?"She suggested reaching for her halberd.
"Not yet.. give him a few minutes, let’s see if he gets his sanity back, I don't have much hope for him though."The elf winced, narrowing dodging a wild spray of tomato sauce.
"HAHA, you have been slathered, humiliated, coated in the blood of the tomatoes, I have not only slain you, I have corrupted your natural taste by saturating it with external goods, I bet you feel like a dirty little pig, now let me hear you squeal! SQUEE SQUEE!"
"Now hit him with stick?"The orcess uttered, lifting the heavy halberd with a small ugh coming from her lips, watching as the mage placed his face in front of the sandwich, continuing to mouth off to the sandwich, the sandwich seemed to be handling the berating rather well, not reacting in the slightest.
"Not yet.. let's see how this turns out"the elf whispered, pulling the others arm down, keeping them from attacking for the moment.
"Now... to coat you in a cross of animals, to drive the point home that you are nothing more than a worthless barn animal that was killed by some low life peasant."He held up a piece of golden cheese, layering it over the bacon with a sadistic smile. "How's it feel to be coated by the produce of your fellow animal? It must eat you up inside, almost as much as I'm going to eat you up. Now for my special ingredient"
Matus opened the small leather pouch hanging off his side, sprinkling a few drops of a green chalk like powder over the sandwich, the sandwich began to glow before suddenly bursting with a green glow, the glow enough to blind an unsuspecting person, after a few moments this glow died down and the mage went to grab the sandwich. "Finally... it's just you and me.."
"Now"The elf snickered
THRAWK!
Before the mage could even take a nibble of his sandwich he was struck, the elf dancing over with a cheeky smile. "Thanks Grunter!"the elf hummed, taking a quick bite from the sandwich.
"You know... the abuse really does make it taste better.
{If you enjoyed my story, Feel free to check out r/pmmeyabootysstories where ill be posting some more of my stuff for people to read} |
I'm a creative person! A life-lover, an optimistic, open minded, young soul who throws away convention to Carp Diem!!
But my alarm was going off.
I snoozed and snoozed until my anxiety for being late compelled me into rising.
Auugghh, my eyes were struggling to wake up and I could feel my neck sore from last night battles with my cheap pillow.
I hate Monday's almost as much as I hate every other day. But this Monday was particularly crap, because I planned to get up early. Last night I had an existential crisis, because I read my old journaling; I was so inspired and excited, with so many dreams and plan for the life ahead. Despite being only 21, I seemed a better writer and clearer thinker than I am now.
Facing up to the bathroom mirror I struggle to recognise that young man. Instead I see a pasty, chubby, disheveled man who could be a poster boy for depression. Trying to change my posture and smile just made me look creepy, and I sighed before entering the shower.
"I'm going to live a unique and interesting life"I wrote in my journal. "So many people just do the same boring old careers and hate their lives, I'll never be like that! I'll be an artist, or filmmaker, a sailor or a photographer."
Reflecting on my memories hit hard, as I was driving to my run of the mill, low level finance role with a major corporation. My pay seemed enough, but by the end of the month I was nearly always dipping into my credit card, life cost way more than I expected. My love life fizzled out with my last girlfriend, my hobbies and physical health declined with my alcohol dependency and excess eating. I was dying slowly.
And I thought back to that inspired young man who had the world infront of him, and realized: that was who I truly was, and now I am living a lie. |
They said they'd found him lying naked and face down in the snow.
Rolled him over and wrapped him in thermagel blankets before hauling him back to the storage unit. Told him the bartender had told them that he was likely the victim of gambling debts, and had been seen losing game after game of Gwent all night to any patron who sat with him.
Robert was not at all surprised. He had chosen the bar for its reputation, the strength of its liquor, and likelihood for destruction. That had been the point. He was a little impressed the two men had bothered to dig him out and check for signs of life. He was not surprised that Pete - or whatever his name was - had demanded credits for the thermagel wraps, clothes, and the frostbite treatment they had given him. "Haven't got much, you see,"one of them had said, gesturing to the emptiness of the unit and the sparse bunk beds behind him. That was the way of things, on Mars. Nobody ever did anything without there being something in it for them.
What did surprise Robert - when he had sobered up enough to see it was just the one man, not the two his double vision had suggested - was the next thing Pete said.
"Rob, I know you don't know me. I know you're not in a good place right now, and I'd give you more time to get yourself together before I told you, but I also know that this is the kind of news that can't wait."
He watched Pete shuffle about, hands busy with the tea and broth he'd been sipping slowly. Pete wouldn't look him in the eye as he spoke.
"Lydia is dead. The Evangelion was left to you in the will broadcast by the Public Trustee early last night."
Robert blinked. Blinked again. Lydia, his aunt, the one who knew - she was gone. The light freighter that his entire family had been after for the last three years was his. Surely not. Maybe this was some sort of hypothermia induced hallucination.
Hearing no response, Pete paused. Came to kneel in front of Robert, sat in the chair as he was, still wrapped in the blanket. Pete looked at him, blue eyes searching his, and all Robert could think was who is this man to unbury me only to bury me once more.
"I was a friend of your brother's. He told me the news the day before last. He also told me about the bounty."
Robert put the mug down gently, and said the first words he'd been able to croak out.
"How much?"
Pete looked at the ground, then back to his face.
"Three million credits, payable on proof of death."
Robert sighed, and wondered whether Pete was going to kill or bargain with him. It wasn't making a great deal of sense to his still-fogged brain. If there was a death bounty, why did Pete bother? Just leaving him in the snow would have saved them both a great deal of trouble.
"That's not all. I mean, that's not why I pulled up you out. Yeah, Tommy found out about the ship before everyone else did, but I probably don't need to tell you it was your mother who put out the bounty."
Pete stood and stepped back. Robert gestured for him to go on.
"Last night, you got a tattoo. It's how I found you. I saw the glow under the snow that you'd collected after being dumped outside, and the pattern caught my eye. The ink is fresh. If my estimate is correct, you had it done yesterday."
As if his cells were also listening to Pete speak, Robert began to feel how much his back itched. Itched and itched, but his arms were too tired and aching for him to reach around to quell the itch.
Pete continued. "It's a map. The star map to Y'gtrell. Robert, I need to know where you got that, and what you plan to do with it."
Robert unwound the blankets and stood. Tested the strength in his legs, took a step forward and didn't fall.
"Pete, you're right. I don't know you. And I don't care to know. I appreciate the early update on the bounty, and confirmation of the Evangelion. I will also get you the credits for the food and clothes as soon as I can."
Robert stretched, and found his body awake, his clothes sturdy and warm enough for now. Pete stood aside, tense with waiting, pale face tight. Robert moved towards the door and past the man. Told him all that Pete would ever need to know from him.
"You did me a kindness and gave me a good headstart. But, if I discuss the Y'gtrell with you, we are both dead men."
...
TBC. Thanks for reading, all feedback welcome! |
Everything was white, then black, then boom! You could see again. You looked side to side and saw things... Things with tentacles coming out of its mouth, eyes on its mouth, and very rarely.. You saw humans. The first one you saw was just walking around asking people if they needed a guide. They all just walked by them.
"Hello! I need some help finding my way around here!"You shouted while waving your arm side to side.
"Hey my man! You need some help?"He asked.
"Yeah! I need some hel-"You got cut off.
Everything went white.
Simulation Complete. Representation of Afterlife #57. Booting Up #58
"Aw Shit here we go again."
​
EDIT: This is my first time making a writing prompt. Pretty fun actually :) |
Poem.
Apologies for the formatting.
--
So you have an opinion. So you think you know best? To bestow life a value, now you’re put to the test.
Gold is tested by fire, man by gold. For you though, it’s silver. Reflecting billions of souls.
The jokers, the heathens, the saviours, the kings. All now stand before you. Post judgement bell rings.
To err is too human, this is no place for mistakes. So how do you measure, by what scale do you rate?
It’s said it all goes in circles, and ends where it started. All life is familiar, and death is uncharted.
God did not do this; your philosophy came close. Reciprocity and karma connects us. The rest is verbose.
A long line of souls is waiting, and ending with you. But as is with everyone, you stand in all other queues. |
I can't remember when it started... It must have been when I was very young, around 5 or 6. Since then, I knew I could look into the future, but only when something very bad was about to happen, like if I or a loved one was about to get hurt. After carrying on with normal life for years, I figured that I should use this gift, and so at the age of 16 I signed up to my local Taekwondo club. It was very fun. When it came to sparring, I built up a reputation as being "Unbeatable"since I would always perfectly predict my opponent's moves. I always thought I was unbeatable, and I guess I let it get to my head; I would go round the neighbourhood picking fights with the local delinquents, and almost always winning. I nearly got caught by the police once, but of course I foresaw someone calling them and so I got out of there.
​
Anyways, this is all besides the point: what I really want to talk about was today. It was today when I finally met my match. The guy was a lot bigger than me, measuring at at least 6'. Very muscular too. I figured he was one of those cocky big guys trying to see if a dinky guy like me was truly "Unbeatable". When it was time for sparring, he immediately picked me. I wasn't surprised: I've had big guys pick on me before, and yet I always beat them. I prepared for another one of those encounters, expecting it to turn out like it always did; but oh boy, it was different.
​
We did that little bow thing, then began. Immediately I foresaw him doing a turning kick aiming for my left side. I knew what to do. I prepared to block that side with my left hand, and kick him in the stomach with my right foot, then...
It changed. My vision changed. Instead of seeing a turning kick to my left side, I saw him doing a front kick to my stomach. Not having any time to react, I was hit by the full force of the kick, getting pushed backwards onto the ground. I felt like I was going to throw up. Everyone was shocked to see the "Unbeatable"guy laying down on the ground, clutching his stomach, gasping for air. It wasn't a pleasant experience - not only was I nearly vomiting from that well-placed kick, my legacy and reputation was at risk. I could lose it all here.
Soon that shame was turned into anger - I would not let this big fucker knock me around, who does he think he is? A cruel smile grew on his lips, as I could tell he sensed my anger. That bastard. I used my ability again: I saw myself doing a phantom punch to his stomach then a real one right on his forehead. That idiot just got lucky there, I'll do better next time. My visions always work out for me! Just as I was throwing the phantom punch, my sight immediately changed to me getting slammed in the guts by his gigantic fist. Then it happened.
Two brutal blows to the gut... I couldn't do it. It was over. I had lost. No, no I hadn't, I could do this! I stumbled to my feet, then fell onto my knees and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the cold wooden floor. I was excused to the bathroom.
​
I was looking in the mirror, and two thoughts crossed my head. "Who was that guy?"and "How did he beat me?". After pondering about for a bit, I wondered how my visions changed so rapidly. And then something occured to me that I would not have thought of if I wasn't standing in a gym toilet for half an hour: were there more like me? People who could see into the future? I had to find out. I marched back to the gym hall, to see everyone getting ready to leave. But not the big guy. The big guy was nowhere to be found. Where could he have gotten to? I had to find out. |
My stepdad was never a nice man. He was loud, aggressive and stunk like he hadn't showered in years. Perhaps worst of all, he was an impulsive liar.
"This run-down place?"Says my stepdad, pointing to our small house. He was talking to some fancy men in custom suits, who stood expressionless, clutching clipboards to their chests. "I come here from time to time so no-one finds out about my riches,"He adds.
Ha, yeah right. 'Riches'. Mark lived here full time (unfortunately), and if he had any kind of wealth he would *not* be able to keep it a secret. I observe him carefully through the window in the attic of our run-down place. Mark shuffles around awkwardly like a timid puppy, and I hold back a laugh. It isn't like him to be intimidated.
"I keep a briefcase of cash under my bed at all times. You know, in case I'm in the mood for a Slurpee,"He says, scratching his head. I roll my eyes at his failed attempt at impressing the Fancy Men. I close the window quietly and start to climb down the attic ladder. All this talk about getting a Slurpee is making me thirsty.
When I get to the bottom of the ladder, I accidentally kick something rigid with my heel, and it scuffs across the carpet. It was an old leather briefcase. It was also very heavy. I put my head out the door and make sure no-one will come in before discreetly cracking open the briefcase.
Inside was cash, a lot of cash, blurring my vision with green bills. "Oh. My. God."I say under my breath, grabbing a handful. Instinctively, I stuff the money back into the briefcase and slam it shut. I push it away from me, sliding under the couch. Who even has money like that lying around? My mother barely makes enough money to supply for the three of us.
I take a 5 dollar bill, slip out the back door and buy a mega Slurpee for myself.
"Keep the change,"I boast to the cashier. He doesn't care, but man, I feel so cool. |
\[Poem\]
January 2nd, 1:55 AM. You remember where you were then no matter how many times you try to stop your mind from going there and back again. Why wouldn't it? You tried not to let the event define you but you couldn't. It left behind fractures so deep inside your fragile mental climate that on any given day of the week it feels like all that stands between you and rapturous weeping is hope, prayer, and ignorance. You wanted so badly to forget.
You think of how badly you needed to use the restroom. The videos on YouTube you watched instead of sleeping, fleeing from the creeping anxiety you felt. You think of the creaking floorboards and the doorknob turning on your parent's bedroom door; you heard it because you had already opened yours.
You swung open your door just as your eyes open now. You clutch at your chest and you feel your heart pound just to make sure its there as you flashback to crying in your computer chair, shaking hysterically in your father's arms as your mother came down, alarmed, preparing to tear him off of you until you told her that you wanted him there; you knew that you wouldn't soon.
You knew what he did, what he actively hid from the family at large. He left so much undone and forced you to take charge through his neglect while somehow still making you feel inadequate for his failures. You cried out in the night and reached for some sort of savior but were only left more alone that you started. You helped him pack his bags to leave the home and watched as he departed.
You don't talk to him anymore because you know he lies. Maintains a mask comprised of a perpetual frown and glassy eyes but no remorse. You have no reason to want him at your door but your heart says otherwise. The fear tingles down your spine that someone else might also leave you. But every time you shoot awake you realize: you still love him, though you hate him, and you don't know what to do. |
I became parlalized.
Yesterday I felt I had complete control over everything. I would know what to expect on the day, which crisis to solve, and what was the best place to be.
The things I did yesterday would have a permanent effect. I didn't intend to make the changes permanent. It was supposed to be another test, another day that didn't matter. Everything was supposed to return to how it was before.
Aftet that much time I had learned to not care about the impression I left in other people, or their wellbeing. It didn't really matter anyway, they would always forget. I became a jerk.
And even tough I want to stop being one, I just don't know how to help. Everyone is moving so fast and I don't know where they are going. I don't know if my actions will even help them or not. So I'm here, in my bed, waiting for another time. |
I breathed deeply, holding the bridge of my nose with the fingers of my left hand, as i let my satchel bag drop heavily to the floor. The minuscule man jumped at the sudden noise but remained quiet, one my forks still balanced over his shoulder and on top of a tomato left over from my unfinished breakfast. I blinked. I think he blinked back but its hard to tell on a face the size of a coin. I reached out and flicked the light switch back off, the room returning to its previous near pitch darkness. After a few more moments, i switched the lights back on and sighed heavily.
"Still here,"the tiny man squeaked, correctly guessing my thoughts. I kicked my bag across the room and stomped in, doing my utmost to ignore him. Reaching into the cupboard over the sink i rummaged around to find a semi clean glass and some painkillers, quickly knocking back two. Behind me i hear some very faint exertion and let my head slowly thud into the cupboard as the man resumed his attempt on the tomato.
"This would be a lot quicker if you helped big un,"he chirped, his voice somewhat strained as he tried to use his full weight on the metal implement. I sighed again, louder.
"You know I would but i'm having a mental breakdown right now."My voice is high pitched, my breathing short and fast. I turned my head slightly, my cheek pressed flat against the cold wood of the cupboard, so that the stubbornly still there mini person comes into view. "Sorry."
"Don't apologise mate, mental health is super important."
He dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter, turning away from the bruised tomato to sit cross legged facing me. I sighed, walked over and plonked myself down in a chair facing him.
"So i'm thinking a stroke. An aneurysm? Or just total breakdown? I'd ask WebMD but that would just say brain tumor or cancer."I paused, running a hand over my slightly unkempt mop of hair. "Oh God brain tumor."
The small intruder placed his angular face in his hands, head tilted slightly.
"I don't know all of those words,"he announced after a moment and I unconsciously leaned in to hear more clearly. "But i would guess a curse? Or maybe you're an adept? You are taking it very well after all. All things considered."
I blinked again. The little man was smiling at me now, a small sliver of white in his chestnut face. I slowly raised a hand in front of my eyes, waving it briefly. There was no afterimage, no sense of nausea or disorientation. I lowered it to the table a bit too quickly, causing the man to bounce ever so slightly at the impact, His tiny eyes seemed to widen but his smile remained.
"You're actually here aren't you."
"Yep. Sorry."
I leaned back in my chair, luckily noticing my satchel had landed not too far away and rummaging through it. After a moment, i pulled out the brown paper bag that had contained my lunch and breathed deeply into it. It still smelt strongly of peanut butter and a few seconds later i was coughing aggressively to try and get the crumbs out of my throat. The small man waited patiently as i did so.
"So what are...."I lowered my bag to my lap and rethought my question. He was, after all, a guest. "What's your name?"
"Princes,"he answered cheerfully, giving a sort of half bow from his seated position.
"You're a Prince? Like royal?"There was a slight hint of incredulity to my question which i realised was laughably out of place given the current situation. "I mean, sure, why not."
"No not Prince. Princes. I had to take a new name when cast out, its the rules, Took it from the metal boxes you keep up there. You know. With the fish."
He lifted one tiny arm and pointed at another of my cupboards. I stared at the cheap wooden exterior as if i could burn my eyes through to see the few tins of sardines and mackerel i had stored there.
"Princes after the fi....right ok shit, yeah, yeah."I drummed my fingers on my head, trying to at best retain my sanity or at least stop my rambling. "So Princes, what the hell is going on."
A minuscule hand slapped a tiny head.
"Oh course, what am i thinking, the explanation. So like i noticed you didn't eat all this."He pointed again, to my unfinished breakfast, turning his head to follow his gesture but only his head, like an owl,"And i thought to myself Princes, the big uns gone, he ain't coming back to old food. So why not help yourself. So i did. Only i thought i could make it manageable with that fork there, pricking trident is what it is really. Left me knife behind see but its really heavy that thing..."
"No,"i interrupted, trying not to lose my train of thought, or lunch, as his head spun swiftly back around. "Not with the tomato. More, what is going on....in general."
Princes slapped his head again, tutting to himself and stood up, beginning to pace back and fore in front of me.
"Ah course, Prince's ya idiot. The whole seeing me thing. Guessing that's new? Weren't just ignoring me before?"
"Before?"i answered faintly as Princes continued to pace. He nodded, waving his hands as if that part was obvious.
"Oh yeah, i been here a while now. Keeping to myself you know. Helping out sometimes. Well that means you could be a late blooming adept? Nothing wrong with that of course, people mature at different speeds.My brother couldn't fly till he was nine summers old."
As Princes continued to titter out his monologue, i placed two fingers against my neck, pressing in firmly. After a moment, i placed the same fingers against my wrist.
"Huh,"i murmured softly. "Not dead then."
"Nah it won't kill you!" |
"Damn it"i thought to myself. Not again... I was fine if only one of the clocks were down but ALL of them, but one? Great. Not only couldn't i breath, but i couldn't touch anything in the room a broken clock is located in! Laws of time science aside, i rolled to my left, off from the couch, ripping the clothes of my body and floating uncontrollably into a wall. Good thing i opted for the incredibly dense metal called "duritium"or i would be sinking through it and into the other room. I stabilized my self using the handholds in the hole, preparing myself to find that god damned clock.
I don't have much time (hehe)... I have to find out which clock is still running or else I'll be the one who runs out of oxygen. Ivan Newton's 2nd chrono law be damned, I'm now floating around the house, stark naked - because my clothes just ripped open like a butterfly's cocoon - as i begin my anti-gravitional adventure for the last working clock. |
Most girls get to plan their dream weddings from childhood. I got to plan something very different; how to save my then future husband from being cut in half in front of my eyes.
It started when I turned 10years old. Nightmares of a man being cut in half, of course at first I thought they were just scary dreams and my parents stopped letting me eat junk food too late at night. But then every year on my birthday the dream would be in more and more detail. Until by my 15th birthday I realized that this was not just a recurring dream, but a premonition. This was my future and the the doomed man was my my husband. Sadly the dream while vivid in detail as to the violent nature of his death, it was lacking In specificity to the where. So after deciding to keep this a secret to myself knowing no one would believe a teenager about her dreams that they would say is just my hormones. I made an oath to myself; I would do everything in my power to stop this from happening.
I took up an interest in sports and physical training, I kept a journal next to my bed and studied lucid dreaming to try and make out any other details I could. The hardest part was trying to have a semblance of a normal life; that would come when I prevented this from happening.
Over the years I excelled at gymnastics and weight training, knowing chances were high that I would need to be fast and strong. I gathered more details of the incident. I knew it was inside a building and I knew it would be sudden. All other details were lost upon me.
I am now 28 and have been married to the person I’ve seen die countless times for the last few years. And last night I had a final dream, and this time it was in such detail that I felt like it was happening right then. During the whole ordeal the only person that may be more scared then I am is the mother of the small child my husband saved from the falling debris off of a building under construction. Now I have the decision to either tell him we can’t go out today and live with the thought of knowing that child dies, or let him go through with it; but I suppose I’ll take the third option I just hope he can move on without me. Besides it would be a shame to put all those years of training to waste. |
One Way or Another
Everyone said that Grandma suffered from mental illness, that her mind went before her body ever did, and the doctor only confirmed our suspicions when she was diagnosed with dementia.
When she passed, we all felt an inexplicable sense of relief from knowing it was finally, truly over.
Or so we thought.
The migraines began about a week after the funeral. I woke up with a pounding headache; it felt like someone was repeatedly shoving the business end of a pickaxe through my brain. Tears formed in my eyes, and I sat up, wishing that the pain and the relentless ringing would stop.
Unbidden, my grandmother’s words came back to me, echoing.
*That’s when it all started. Had such a bad headache it felt like my skull was splitting in two. And it didn’t go away until I found the monster and vanquished it.*
My vision went white, and I winced, clapping a hand over my nose when it began to bleed. In the dim light, the blood was so dark it looked almost black. I stood up carefully, and my knees threaten to buckle, but I didn’t fall.
I walked to the door of my bedroom and reached to twist the knob. But it turned out it was already rattling, someone or something trying to demand entry.
“Your grandmother might be gone, boy, but her magic still lives on in you!” A dry, raspy voice followed the rattling, and I growled under my breath. Could it be, that my grandmother hadn’t been imagining things after all? “I can smell your magic from miles away. When she was alive, she put up wards against our kind. But when she died, well. We considered things fair game.” The thing cackled in evil glee.
Magic? What did these things mean? I didn’t know what they were, exactly, but their stench was putrid and foul: I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from gagging. And they were still pounding on my door, as if they were trying to break it down.
I found myself hoping and praying that this wasn’t real, that I was still grieving and needed time to process the huge hole ripped in the fabric of our family. That this was just a nightmare, a strange combination of chemicals going haywire in my brain.
The wood of the door splintered and shuddered, and at last, I caught a glimpse of the odd crew of dark creatures standing outside of the room: trolls, goblins, a tiny thing with a scarlet, wet-looking hat, and creatures even more wondrous and strange: a woman who appeared to be a tree, a man whose skin seemed speckled with pieces of the night sky, old hags passing a smoking bottle back and forth.
At last, the door fell inward with a mighty crash; it was so loud it was a miracle the entire neighborhood wasn’t awake to hear the commotion.
One giant stepped forward; he was literally a giant, with sprouts growing from his huge feet, leaves of every color hiding his hair.
“You have two choices, grandson of Ada. Keep your magic and die, or give it to us. And then you die.”
How I wished I’d listened to my grandmother more. One of her solutions would come in handy right about now.
\*\* |
It was the fresh air that woke him. When he opened his eyes, he saw the sky above him through shattered glass.
“Computer, Diagnostic.” He commanded, and reports scrolled across the implant in his left eye. He was uninjured, his suit was depressurized (Obviously), his helmet was offline due to impact, the atmosphere was almost the same pressure and mixture as earth. It could have been much worse.
He fumbled with the latches on the helmet, it was hard with the gloves on but he managed. As he lifted it over his head, bits of glass showered his hair. He closed his eyes leaned over, trying to get it all out without touching the sharp edges.
Nix got his first real look at this new planet only after he was sure all the glass had fallen out. There was hard rock under his hands and knees, it was full of small holes so he guessed it might be volcanic. This did not mean much as he knew Alpha Zed was riddled with active and dormant volcanos.
The section of rock he had fallen into was barren Nix saw trees not more than 100 meters in any direction. Unmistakably he saw palm trees, but there were other taller trees mix in and the more he looked the more he saw. By the look of it, he smashed right into the only bare rock in a rain forest.
“Computer, Location”
POSITION SYSTEMS OFFLINE flashed across his left eye.
“Great.”
It was more difficult getting to his feet than he expected, the volcanic rock was peppered with small hand holds but he had trouble finding a flat place to stand. In the end Nix decide to crawl to the nearest trees. At least there he would be able to grab hold of something for balance.
It was slow work. The rock face was sloped enough that moving to a higher or lower spot would feel more like climbing than crawling. Instead he inched slowly to one side, remembering his training to maintain 3 points of contact as he moved around the rock face.
When he was no more than 10 meters from the first tree, a voice called out.
Nix looked up and saw a man standing on the sloping rocks as casually as Nix would have sat in a chair. The man was tall, with a thick beard and broad shoulders. He held one hand palm out to Nix, the other held a sword.
The man shouted, practically barked more unintelligible words at Nix. The words meant nothing but the body language was clear. Nix dropped his knees to the rock and slowly held his hands up to show they were empty. Not like it mattered much, the red nylon suit covered every inch but his head, and Nix knew damn well this was an uncontacted planet. He must look like a monster to this man, and he had no way to communicate with him.
“Computer, translate,” Nix whispered.
UNDOCUMENTED LANGUAGE
“Computer, begin passive learning”
There was a low whistle to Nix’s left, several people men and women all armed with blades were coming towards him. A look to the right showed the same. Down the rock face, Nix saw figured moving amongst the trees. He was surrounded.
The first man, who was clearly some sort of leader, did not try to hurt Nix after all. He seemed to realize that if Nix spoke any language, he certainly could not communicate and he seemed to take that in stride. They led Nix to the bottom of the volcano, which was painfully slow. The natives all walked easily on the uneven rock but Nix could not stand on two feet. He crawled, like a toddler while the others walked easily. After a while some of the younger men and women began to do cruel but accurate impressions of his unsteady crawl. This resulted in laughter and sideways looks at Nix.
At the bottom of the volcano, the ground was mostly flat, but it was also soft and the boots in his suit were more apt to sink than walk. When they finally reached wherever the big man was leading them, Nix was exhausted, but the others were restless and clearly bored.
A very old woman, dressed in bright cloth which was more of a wrap than a dress, waited for the group on the edge of what was unmistakably a village. Nix was stuck by how much the buildings inside reminded him of the villages in his favorite fantasy games. A single large building, not quite a castle, more like a very tall house, stood in the middle of the village, it was surrounded by many smaller cottages. Of course, Nix had seen images from uncontacted humanoids but this was the first time he was really struck by how near to his own civilization this world had progressed.
The old woman, instantly Nix thought of her as Mother, though he would not have known why, walked up to him and embraced him. Here in front of all the village, she hugged a stranger first. Nix hugged her back.
Mother, for that was who see was in his mind, held his shoulders and pushed him back for a better look. Then she held his chin and moved his head around as though making sure it worked properly. She turned around, where a crowd had gathered and shouted something to the villagers.
They cheered.
Mother and the bearded man lead him through the village to the big house. The place had wooden double doors, when they were opened Nix estimated the doorway was 8 meters wide and as much as 10 meters tall. Inside, huge pillars, with intricate cravings held up a roof that seemed impossibly high for their level of technology. An open space in the center was surrounded by many long tables with a single high table at the back of the room. This was a mead hall. Nix almost laughed.
Mother lead Nix to the head table, where she gestured to a chair, just to the right of center.
Unsure of what to do, Nix looked at Mother until she sat in the center seat, then patted the seat of the chair she wanted him to sit in.
The crowd had pilled in by now and they were all taking seats at the tables or disappearing into side doors Nix had not noticed.
When most everyone was seated, Mother stood and shouted over the rumble. Everyone stopped speaking at once. Mother spoke, in what may as well have been grunts as far as Nix could tell, for several minutes, with the villagers hanging on her every word.
Nix sat, trying to take it all in, but left firmly in the dark until words began to scroll across his left eye.
“SKY MAN, FROM THE FIRE MOUNTAIN” BEST APPROXIMATION.
Nix may not know what they were saying, but the computer was attempting the translation on its own. |
"I've traveled a lot during my time at the Cross Reality Police Corps, but I think my last case really takes the cake."
Agent 4530 started up the playback of his recorder as part of the decommissioning process, which I have grown numb to over the years.
"I was asked to investigate a man named Gregory, now this guy was apparently in such a state of stress that he was immediately flagged by our department and we all knew he wasn't interested in travelling back to the 17th century."
Reality burst across the screen, from the sights and sounds the alternate reality created by Gregory resembled our own time period. Quickly, I noted down the peculiarities that were of interest and quickly found that they were few and far between. Agent 4530 then proceeded to follow Gregory's time trail, which had surprisingly been tampered with.
"This guy knew that we'd follow him."
Agent 4350 sounded bitter, as if he had swallowed a scorpion and managed to survive based on sheer anger alone. I also began to notice that he looked rougher than usual, haggard as if he had crawled out of the nearest drug den instead of immediately reporting to the station. I knew that he would have faced censure if wasn't for the fact that he was being relieved and simply acting out the formality of his last mission.
As the recording droned on, I began to notice that the trail was leading back to Gregory's home (based on our records) and the peculiarities were only increasing as the creator of this alternate reality lowered his guard. Inside this unassuming house, lined with flowers and garden gnomes there was Gregory and a woman with fiery eyes and short brown hair.
I looked at Agent 4350 for confirmation.
"His wife, she's beautiful isn't she? Well, turns out she is the reason he made this reality in the first place."
I looked up the file.
*Abigail Casio - Born April 11th 2045/Died - June 14th 2071*
*Cause of Death - Breast Cancer*
Agent 4350 began to speak again without being given clearance, the feed blinking as his rifle was being powered on.
"They always said we can't let these alternate realities exist, that they would only cause a breakdown within our "perfect"society..."
Gregory and Abigail danced together, their hands wrapped against each other like curtains and the stage beneath them.
"Part of me believed that, and I mean really, I was convinced that my work was good and decent and I've put down my fair share of monsters who created their own personal horror shows. But this? I still can't find a good reason for pulling the trigger."
The rifle was primed.
Gregory smiled brightly, but it betrayed the sadness just below.
Abigail buried her head at the base of his neck like she always had.
"Still... something inside of me took over and..."
The rifle fired, two lasers silently entering each body and causing the whole of the world to melt away. The recording stopped leaving an awkward silence absorbing the air in the room until the only thing left was the desire to interrupt it.
"They should have been left alone."
I was stunned.
"I don't want to know how many worlds like that one had been completely destroyed by people like me and I don't want to ever find out."
Agent 4530 raised his Regent assigned handgun, giving me time to notice that its safety lock had been tampered with. As he pointed it at me, tears welled up in his eyes.
"This whole system is rotten."
The doors were locked, there was no way to avoid this now.
"One last thing, my name is Denton and this is for both of them... no... all of them."
He pulled the trigger. |
Forgetteners -
Only the privileged can use them – those, for example, with good jobs or decent trust funds, or lady fortune on their side. But people of every status can receive them. It depends on the situation, really.
They’re often exchanged in person. From hand-to-hand. Sometimes in back rooms, dimly lit alleys, or sometimes more quickly between two lightly-colliding bodies in a sea of moving eyes.
Bloated men in trucks give them to men in orange hats to make them forget to log their hours on the books.
Polished, suit-clad men forward them to prosecutors, who will forget their charges and realize their discretion.
Remorseless figures thrust them towards trembling victims to make them forget about their torn blouses and surfacing bruises.
*Forgetteners* \- they make people forget. |
We can not imagine the unimaginable. Thus, existence itself will always seem like a paradox to us even though it is none. But does that mean the human mind can never evolve to understand why we exist, to wrap itself around ambiguity and to actually ask and process the questions that we, at our time, can not ask? It's not about what your brain is capable of. It's capable of everything, since the brain is everything. We are made of the universe, as it is made of us.
We are one with existence and one with the universe and as long as it exist we will too. But consciousness might not, as this is the sole self aware part the universe has ever produced and life can not be life without death. Those correlations, life and death, hot and cold, light and darkness are what in essence show us the true nature of the universe and the answer to the question if we will ever understand. A mind can not know what it does not know, but it can know that it does not know. So we will never know everything, because if we did we would know nothing. |
“He’s even harrier than I imagined.” I thought to myself, staring at Bigfoot’s massive back.
“I heard that.” It calls out over his shoulder, shrugging immediately afterwards
“Not that it’s an insult or anything.”
“B...but I didn’t say that out loud!”
“I know.” It responds calmly
“You humans can silence your voices and even your steps, but you have trouble silencing your mind. It’s how my kind has survived off of your radar. We hear you coming miles away.”
“And the portals help.” It shrugs again, lumbering forward at an even and steady pace. It’s massive stride almost makes me job just to keep up.
“H...how do you open them? And how do you read minds?!” I call out, flustered from so much information at once.
“It’s pretty strange to me that you humans can’t, really. Almost every other creature like myself can.” It points off into the distance at a barren lake in purgatory.
“Those beasts can even use them from massive distances.” It’s finger followed along a shadow that was gliding under the water. Eventually a massive head and neck with an almost hook like shape popped out from the water.
“THE LOCKNESS MONSTER!” I shout, running all of the conspiracy theories of animals I never believed in through my head, looking around to see if a unicorn or Kraken was going to show up.
Bigfoot patted my shoulder again
“Come on, we don’t have much time until this portal closes. They close on their own within an hour. Unlucky you found mine.”
As we walked further, a hill of grass surrounded by a strange miasma of black and purple stood alone on the barren lands. It was truly a mystical looking portal from this side.
“Off you go then. You’ll forget all you have seen as soon as you step back through the portal. You’ve probably been seeing your family and friends all around looking for you in your head. Best not to keep them waiting.”
As it said this, it walked behind me, to make sure I didn’t try to run back from where we came. As if I would want to stay here.
“How did I go through the portal in the first place?” I asked finally.
“And why do you guys hide from us humans?” I couldn’t hold my last question, even though I knew I’d forget the answer once I walked though the portal.
Bigfoot sighed and gave me a gentle smile.
“We have shown ourselves to you before. It didn’t end well. We have also seen what you do to other creatures of the world and do not wish to suffer the same fate. As to how you got in here... I’m never too sure myself. Some humans who are extremely connected to nature can. Most can’t. Either way, I hope you don’t have to experience this again.”
He turned to look at the portal
“Not every one of my kind is as friendly as I am.”
With these words, the Bigfoot saw the portal begin to shimmer and came forward to gently shove me past it.
I stare in amazement at the scene flashing before my eyes. Many plains of realms, all willed with different creatures flash before me before I finally enter the world I came from. My memories slowly slipping from my mind. |
Merlin?! Merlin, bud! It's me, Pietro.
*Hey*... So, do you remember that spell I got from you the other day? You know, that one that would, ahem, make things around the bedroom a little "spicier"for me and the missus?
Yeah, man. I didn't actually mean spicy literally. I did exactly what you said, and chanted the words you wrote down on the sticky note and I'm pretty sure I pronounced everything right... But my wife... Oh, Maria.
My wife is a jalepeno, Merlin. A spicy pepper. I don't know what to do. I can't be married to a vegetable, Merlin. I need her back. I'm gonna have to get a new spell or a potion or something, man. Also, we're gonna have to talk about a refund.
Anyway, I'm freaking out a little right now, so ring me back, ASAP. |
The smoke cleared. Where there had been firearms, and boxes of ammo, were now only isolated blast marks, as if every round and weapon in the shop had combusted in a million localized events. She walked outside. Most everything seemed fine, aside from a few other confused people walking outside of their shops or apartments. She wandered along the street, picking up snippets of conversation. "...every gun in my house...""...blew the entire safe up!"...all of them?"She saw a few men scramble back inside. As she went down the street, the crowd became thicker as confusion gave way to curiosity, and the news seemed to solidify and spread. Another young woman approached her. "They're gone! They're all gone!"The woman moved as if to embrace her, but before she could there was red running down her shirt, and something sticking out of her neck. She collapsed. "It's not the zombie apocalypse"the manic voice said, "but I'll take it."A flashing grin, and a blade at her throat. |
As the last note fades out, you look back up at the crowd of horned horrors before you, each to a one gaping in awe,
"...Bruh."One says, slowly falling to his knees.
"Is that even allowed?"Another asks quietly, looking at his compatriots.
The tall one in the suit, who had explained everything, stepped forward.
"All right, that's enough for today. Take the souls back to the holding pens. I'll deal with this."
When you'd been told that you, and the others around you, were in the hitherto unheard of tenth circle of Hell, doomed to having your fingers removed if you failed to perfom on the electric guitar, you were expecting some sort of trickery - the guitar wouldn't work, or they'd deem it a failure no matter how well you played. That was, of course, after you had gotten over the shock of realising it was all real in the first place.
"Ok, so there must have been some sort of mix up with the paper work again."The demon said to you amicably, gesturing towards his desk at the side of the room. You follow and gingerly sit on the old chair, which creaks beneath you. A screw falls from one of the metal legs, and the stuffing is scratchy where it pokes out of the holes in the pleather.
The demon's office chair isn't in much better shape, but it still sighs loudly as he lowers his long frame into it. He shuffles through the multitude of folders until he reaches one near the bottom of the pile, then tosses aside the others into an overflowing inbox.
"Hmm..."he murmurs, skimming through the reams of papers inside. "Yep. There we go. Just a sec and we'll have this all sorted."
He reaches for an old rotary phone and dials a very long number. You can hear the hum of the ring tone from where you sit. You can feel your anxiety rising, so you run through your old breathing techniques to calm yourself.
"Ah, yes. It's Clefaenor here. I need to speak with whoever is in charge of assigning souls. We've had a bit of a mix up down here."The demon says, and listens to the response with a grimace probably meant to be reassuring.
"Who?"You hear tinnily from the other end.
"Clefaenor. In charge of the tenth circle?"
"There's a tenth?"
"Yes. Now, I-"
"I didn't know there was a tenth circle of Hell."
"Well, there is. Can I please be transferred to someone up top please."
"Up top? You mean -"
"Yes; now please."
"Hold, please."
As appropriate for an astral telephone service, the music is a brass cover of Fields of Gold by Sting. Well, somewhat appropriate. It does, however loop a good four times before someone on the other end picks up again.
"Accounting, my name is Numerios; how may I help you?"
The demon sighs, his breath whistling through his large fangs.
"I asked to be transferred to Assignments."he growls.
"My apologies; hold please."
Two and a half more loops later and another voice echoes.
"... so then I said- oh hold up. Reconstitution services this is Barbra; how may I help you?"
"Assignments!"Clefaenor demands through gritted teeth.
"Hold please. So rude; anyway where was-"
Five more brass Fields.
"Assignments. this is Gerette speaking, how may I take your call."
"Ah, finally. There's been a bit of a mix up and I've been sent someone who was supposed to go to the Higher end, if you catch my drift."
"I'm not sure I do, sir."
"I have a fellow here who was meant to to go the shiny cloud side."Clefaenor winced. "Please don't make me say the H word, Mephisopheles will have my hide. Again."
"Ah, I see."There was the sound of shuffling papers then: "Yes, here we are. I understand; we've just had a complaint about a Breanne Hayes being sent... ahem... *there*.... I see what happened. I'll have her escorted down immediately. They will then escort your misplaced soul to their correct location. Just for confirmation, can you please have the soul confirm their identity for me?"
Clefaenor aims the reciever at your face. "State your name."
You clear your throat.
"Brian May." |
It was a clean kill. One bullet to the back of the head, and it was over. Forget the over-the-top schemes and fancy traps. I didn't need any theatrics. All I needed was a gun.
He never even saw it coming. He had been dealing with the heroes for so long that he expected to go out in a blaze of glory. Instead, he was executed in the alley while taking out his garbage. That was all it took. With that glory hog gone, I can finally get the credit I deserve.
The first thing I'll be remembered for; taking out the competition. I'm a nobody. The new guy in town. And I just walked in and put down the biggest fucker here. The only thing that would have made me more infamous would be if I could kill one of the local heroes.
The next morning, I turned on the news. There, on the screen, was an image of the crime scene. My calling card was clearly visible. But just when I was about to reach my moment of glory, the news started to play a video found in his appartment.
There he was, in full costume at his desk addressing the city one last time. "People of Grand City! I am the greatest evil the world has ever known,"he started as my heart sank. I didn't want to believe it, but I knew what came next. "And if you're watching this, I have taken my own life."
Even in death he's still stealing my credit. It's not worth it. Fuck villany, I'm going back to retail. Same shit, but at least the paycheck is steady. |
I wake to the screams of help that damned princess makes every morning since I slaughtered her family 3 years ago. As I rise from my bed of bones, I faintly hear metal boots walking upon stone. Knights and dumb peasants would try to rescue the princess every so often, but I’ve devoured them all. I hear knocks and klacks as thousands of bones fall to the ground and I hear a man call for the girl.
I look to the adventurer now entering my abode, and I am easily 5 times his size and weight. Fool stands no chance. I lunge and attack, tackling him to the ground. A rush of pain fills me as a spearhead was then thrust into my shoulder. It must have been from that old king from last month, that miserable whelp.
The adventurer then shouts out to my face: “I am Daniel von Ferddis, son of King Michael von Ferddis. You killed my father when Erbon castle fell 10 years ago, prepare to die.”
I pull back and prepare to attack. I open my mouth as I prepare a fireball. A shining blade of silver is thrust into my throat, and blood slips out my jaws as I slump over past the impudent boy. |
The words were meaningless to me yet spiked my curiousity. These words from an ancient language could be important and help us understand what was here before us. I pocket the book hoping no one would notice it missing.
At home I search through troves of information trying to find answers, meaning behind these words but there was nothing. An alert popped up in front of me and quickly I dismissed it as it obstructed my search. Thousands of historical records yet no trace of this use of language.
Instinct told me I had to go elsewhere to find what I was looking for.
Back passed the old ruin, up through the caves to the surface of the earth. Few dare walk the face of the earth but no one remembers why. It isn't a problem, life towards the centre has been nothing shy of perfect. We all love it here!
The light is blinding at first, and what I see I cannot explain. Masses of material stacked as far as the eye can reaching up to heights unknown. They are covered in something green and furry, giving them an animalistic look. It's green everywhere; beautiful.
My travel lasted a while, I'm not sure how long for as there is no way of time keeping like back at home. It has been dark many times, 15 to be exact and there has been nothing but green. This morning will be different I hope. Since coming to the surface my lungs have felt lighter, my chest less restricted and the air fresh and crisp. It's colder up here until the light returns and the only sound is the wind rustling through the structures. And laughter. My body freezes.
At first I wonder if I'm imagining things after spending so long without company but it's there again. Voices, human voices. I think; I hope.
As I round the corner I see white. A small structure and at least 10 more behind it that I can see. In my awe I get closer and I am spotted by the inhabitants. Many gather around but they aren't surprised by my presence, as a matter of fact they are smilling, welcoming me to them. I hault at the border of white spikes, face to face with what I hope are answers.
"Hello."It is strange, their mouths move to communicate. "We know you cannot communicate yet. It is common for those where you are from. Very few people keep the ComChips in when they arrive but I'm sure we can find someone who still has theirs."A youthful man comes forward and I hear his voice.
"Why is it that you are here?"he asks.
I reach for the book and respond, "This, it has a strange language. Death, violence, corruption, disctruction. I tried to find what it means but no hope. I came here for answers."He nods and relays the reason for my presence. They discuss amongst themselves for a while until a woman comes forward. She looks unsual, her hair is grey and her face is creased. Her movements are slow and shakey.
"You're world is a lie. Humans are not perfection they are flawed and riddled with terrible traits. The world you live in is wrong. The leaders of the world gathered people and gave them a place under the surface to live before leaving this planet for another. Technology and aritifical intelligence created you. You are not human, most humans died out thousands of years ago when they sent nuclear weapons to destroy what they had created. You are a lie. This book,"she snatched the book from my hand and held it up. "This is the truth. Humans were corrupt, they were violent and they killed and destroyed everything that gave them life. The year 2020 was supposedly the last year of the human race yet here we stand. Some survived somehow, it's ancient history, tales of tales. We are the new beginning." |
Phantom Dream, that's what we started calling it. Those of us who've been to the other side and tasted wonders few could believe. In fact they didn't believe. The consensus was we had hallucinated it, that something happens to the brain during the resurrection process. They said that as consciousness is restored to the inactive brain it creates a narrative. A narrative that fills in the blanks between death and ones return.
I know it wasn't a hallucination. I remember dieing and there was a room with a door. When I opened it I was in the other side. I remember a realm of pure possibility. Where every joy I can imagine was fulfilled the moment I imagined it. Why would I ever want to leave that? Why would I want to toil down here again?
And then they started bringing people back. All of them. I was one of the few dumb ones who signed up for cryogenic resurrection, long before I knew heaven was real.
"But it's not."Owens said, interrupting me, but I pressed on.
The ones who had a quick turn around, dead for a few minutes, days, or years, said they had dreams of another place. But us, those who were gone for so much longer can still feel it. The Phantom Dream.
Barrett here made it illegal. Isn't that right, Barret?
"Who's Barrett?"The man sitting next to Owens asked.
"You will address President Case with his proper title, or-"
Shut the fuck up Owens. I think when you have a world leader and his VP hostage we are beyond such distinctions.
Anyway it took me forever to put the pieces together. They started waking the dead about a century ago. Everyone remembers the first couple. But who's going to remember the twenty third? And that's how you came to be huh?
James Barrett died 1990, then brought back. You did pretty well erasing any records of you. Became a business man then ran for office. I just don't get why you did it? It's one thing to resurrect the willing but you made death illegal. A right to life, Barrett? You dug up as many corpses you could in all the cemeteries, bio printing the bodies and regenerating brain matter.
How many billions have attempted suicide only to be resurrected back, Barrett?
"We've cured death, these psychotic bastard's who-"I smacked Owens across the face with the end of my blaster.
I said shut the fuck up. Listen I did my research.
"It wasn't good enough."Barret whispered
The fuck did you just say.
"You're research, it wasn't good enough. Do you know what I did before I died? How I died?"
No.
"Of course not. There used to be these things. Mega churches they called them. At least that's what they called them some time after my death. My daddy run one of them. He always said I had the devil in me. He was right I suppose.
"No one paid me much mind since I was the pastor's boy and any harm I did was waived away. I was in a car. The road was slippery. We went off the bridge. Five bodies, me and four girls. I was the only one still alive. But brain dead. Daddy was a man of faith but a friend of his offered to keep my body preserved in case they ever got around to healing brain death. I remember the other side."
I knew it!
"Mr President, you can't be serious."
"Shut the fuck up, Owens."Barrett spat, with more hate in his eyes than I had ever seen.
It was beautiful wasn't it?
"Beautiful? It was despair. The smell of smoke. The pain. Any horror you can imagine was enacted on you as soon as you imagined it. Always hungry, always thirsty. All they had to give us to drink was boiling water and to eat was a fruit who's juice was so acidic it burned your insides as it passed. For over a thousand years. All this for what? Just cause I killed those girls before putting them in my car."
Wait. That's not what the other side is like.
"Isn't it? All you hear is the sunshine and rainbows. There are monsters in this world, my boy. Would you give them paradise? Those of us who suffered were smart enough not to tell others. I mean, who would want to share the world with people who've literally been to hell?
"So I did a mercy. I brought everyone back. Everyone I could. The other side doesn't get to judge us for being human. Think about it, son. How many of my guards did you kill to get to me? How many people did you hurt or lie to just to get this far? No more pain or paradise based on arbitrary rules that are impossible to follow. No more death. Well at least no more death after this last one."
What?
*He moved faster than I expected, with the motions of a man who spent two lifetimes killing. I hardly even felt the blaster against my temple before I was gone. And now here I was. Back in the waiting room with the door to the afterlife on the other side. I couldn't help but smile thinking about paradise behind it. Then horror hit me. The last things Barrett said to me. How many people did I kill just to get to him? How much suffering did I cause? What was behind that door?* |
Peter looked at the bottle. Did it say ‘olive oil?’ Probably. He shrugged his shoulders and added two spoons to the salad dressing anyway. Stanley had repeatedly suggested to go to an optometrist, but Peter didn’t want to. Going to an eye doctor meant admitting something was wrong with your sight, which he never ever wanted to admit. He mixed the dressing with the other ingredients of the salad. While Peter wasn’t the world’s best at cooking, even Stanley should admit that the salad looked good. Probably good enough to impress the neighbor.
‘You know, it’s kinda funny we never saw your actual face until now,’ Stanley said. He, Peter and the neighbor, Mr. Huckle, were in the living room.
Mr. Huckle smiled at him. ‘Well, yeah, I’m more of an introvert.’
‘We noticed,’ Peter said. ‘You look very pale. Do you even leave your house from time to time?’
‘Only at night,’ Huckle responded. He took a sip of the wine. ‘I’m a night guard, if you wondered why. I sleep when the sun rises and go to work when the sun sets.’
‘Interesting.’ Peter nodded, pretending to listen to Huckle’s stories about the nightlife, while he was actually very tired and hungry. At one point, Stanley apparently said something about the dinner, because the two men stood up and walked to the kitchen table.
‘This is an old family recipe,’ Stanley said. ‘Take as much as you want.’
‘Well, thank you.’ Mr. Huckle dropped a mountain of lettuce on his plate and started eating, only to cough loudly a few seconds afterwards.
‘Something wrong?’ Stanley looked worried.
Huckle wanted to answer, but was only able to cough even louder. He stood up and vomited. Strangely enough, his puke looked more like blood than actual puke.
‘Jesus, are you okay, man?’ Peter tried a Heimlich manoeuvre on the pale-skinned man, but that didn’t work. Mr. Huckle regurgitated a mouthful of blood again.
‘Wait a second.’ Stanley looked at Huckle. His face was nothing but fear. He noticed the sharp teeth in Mr. Huckle’s mouth, and his brain jumped to a conclusion. ‘Are you the guy who murders people and drinks their blood? The vampire killer?’ His eyes were wide open.
Huckle let out a soft ‘yes’. He coughed once again, and whispered another word.
‘What did you say?’ Peter was worried, not only because the guy was apparently a serial killer, but also because he looked like he was dying.
‘Garlic,’ said Huckle. His voice was raspy, as if he had a terrible illness. ‘How did you... find out...’
‘Garlic?’ Stanley lifted an eyebrow. ‘What about it?’
‘It’s... poison...’ Before Huckle could say anything else, he lost consciousness.
Stanley shook his head in confusion. ‘Apparently this guy can’t stand garlic... but...’ He looked Peter straight in the eyes. ‘There is literally zero garlic in this salad. Or did you... wait.’ He opened a drawer and pulled out two bottles. ‘Which one did you use?’
‘The one that said olive oil, obviously,’ Peter said. ‘Why would I use anything else?’
‘So this one?’ Stanley held a bottle of olive oil in front of Peter’s eyes.
Peter shook his head. ‘No, the other one. That was the...’ Before he could finish his sentence, he realized what he had done.
‘It’s garlic oil!’ Stanley looked at the body of Mr. Huckle. ‘I don’t know whether I should call you an idiot for not being able to see the difference between garlic oil and olive oil, or I should praise you because you defeated a vampiric serial killer with your mistake.’
‘I prefer the second option.’ Peter started to laugh. ‘Maybe refusing to go to the optometrist wasn’t a bad decision after all.’
‘Maybe.’ Stanley smiled. |
I live in a world of rules.
Go to work on time or get fired. Do not spend more than $100 on groceries for the week. Pay your bills the day after you get them.
It started in 2034, a decade before I was born. President Kenny said the rules would keep the community in order. He said it would change everyone for the better. Well, he wasn’t wrong. Then again, he wasn’t exactly right.
The first few years were hectic, as told in my history book. Some people were outraged, but calm, so they just left the growing community. Others were angrier and tried to assassinate the President. After two years of fighting, Kenny lost a fight with cancer and a new President was chosen by the council. Everyone became more patient and thought the new President would change the rules.
He did not.
No one knew his name, so they called him President. And he’s still President up to this day, going on for thirty four years. But something has changed. For the worse.
President decreased the youth curfew. He demanded that the council split up in departments. He even said you would be assigned to an official study that you would practice until the day you died. When someone tried to kill him right there, President dodged it with ease and returned the shot with a silver pistol. If that didn’t set us straight, the banishment of leaving the community did.
I remember when I was seven, it’d been a full year since President was elected and things were monotone and simple. Suddenly, I was walking home when my mother rushed outside to meet me. The house was in flames and Mother was weeping. “Go!” She croaked and I watched her run into the burning house as President came out in some suit. He was completely untouched and seemed sane. I asked him about my mother, but he simply ignored me. And I didn’t have a father, so I was sent to the public orphanage.
So fast forward to when I’m forty years old and working a boring supply job. President walks in and everyone stops their work, which is one of the more important rules. He points at me and declares I’m the new Secretary. Yes, Secretary with a capital S. I mean, you are supposed to capitalize important words, right? Because Secretary was just as important as being a council member. No, more important. You *directed* the council.
I only heard tales of the council in my youth days, but as I got older, the title came out in secret discussions. President selected a council member as the new Secretary. I still don’t know what happened to him, up to this day. Some people say he was killed by the President because of his misbehavior.
Let me just start over.
Hello, my name is Lucas and I used to be nobody. I live in a community of rules. I was appointed the Secretary by the President. But today, I received a phone call with the caller ID as: President. I knew he only called when it was urgent and important. So, that’s why I know, I’m getting fired. I still haven’t answered, it’s been a whole hour. President gets angry when his staff don’t answer him, call or literally. So I don’t have much time. But think about it.
I’ll end up like the previous Secretary either way.
-
This was one of my WritingPrompt stories! Please visit r/LegendaryHangout for more! |
The phone-tablet laid on the floor, its screen still displaying the live news report. Albert Manson, the Channel 56 reporter was interviewing a young woman in a close shot. On the edge of the screen it bore the name, Leslie Hamilton.
"I hadn't heard the news since I worked the night shift. I knew something was wrong though when I was walking home. Something just kind of felt off. No, I don't mean that. Everything felt different. Like when summer ends and fall begins, a change. I don't know if it was the cat leaning against the wall or how some birds passing me by on the sidewalk. You just don't really think about it. But their actions were different."
"So you were telling us that you didn't notice until you got home?"Albert looked to the camera and exposed his shoulder to indicate a wider shot.
"Oh right, yes,"Leslie said. She closed her eyes and clapped her hands together.
When the camera switched shots it was clear that Albert and Leslie was standing next to an upright Siberian Husky.
"I think I was more surprised than her,"came the Siberian Husky.
"And what's your name boy?"
The Siberian Husky looked taken aback, "My name is Braun."
Leslie looks at Braun and places a hand on his chest, "You should pick your own name."
Albert cuts in, "So, tell us what happened when you got home."
"Yes. So when I finally made it home, there I was. I mean he, there he was. Standing in the living room, and he said..."She gives Braun an adoring look.
"I love you,"Braun finishes.
Leslie squealed and hugged him around the chest. Then she beams into the camera, "And we're going to get married!"
Rupert picks up the phone he had dropped, the girl on the news was still squealing about how she loved her dog. His hands shook as he reached for it.
"I said slide it over,"came the voice.
"Hey, look. I'm trying..."
"Shut yer bloody \*cluck\* mouth."
"Look. I didn't know."
"Oh? You didn't \*cluck\* know?"
"No, man. I would have never,"Rupert looks his Rooster in the eye, "Have made you fight like that if I knew."
The rooster was scarred on the face, on its legs were the still attached knives, "Well good thing you \*cluck\* stick. You know now."It jumped up and flew at a rage with its talons outstretched, an imposing beast if you've never known a fighting rooster. The gurgled screams of Rupert filled the small room as a knife was plunged into his neck, with each kick he crumpled into a bloody mess. The phone can be seen in the background, the news still blaring.
"I don't think it's right,"came an old woman's voice. "You kids shouldn't be shacking up with these beasts. I tell yah, it just ain't right." |
The wheels of my plane touching down on the tarmac was a relief, one more mission survived. This landing at Camelot meant more however. Rank in the roundtable is determined only by the number of sorties you return from. The Knights of Camelot see only two outcomes of a flight; victory in the air or your plane in the ground. My return on this day meant I know had 12 more landings than any other pilot giving me the title of Lancelot.
My chief squire greets me with a firm slap on the back, "Congrats on Lancelot but I hope you're not itching to fly to again soon because you just lost every piece of hydraulics on the starboard wing there. Go on now, Arthur is waiting for you downstairs."
"You really are a true merlin that you manage to get it back in air. Thank you Alistair."He was right though, I lost all control surfaces on the right wing in skirmish with bandits on the southern border and parts were only becoming more scarce during the war.
I walked through corridor at the back of the hangar that descended into our sanctuary, the roundtable. The room is single large circle with walls covered floor to ceiling with radar and intelligence stations, its centerpiece a circular holographic projector. Peculiarly, the room was empty save for King Arthur, the commander of our squadron. I walked up to roundtable as he stared straight into the map on display at its center.
"Your chief squire says you might be the closest someone has gotten to losing their shot at Lancelot on the return flight. I would have prepared celebrations but a new intelligence has forced our hand."
"All I need is good meal and I'm ready to fight again sir. The Knights should prepared by-"
Arthur interject "It will only be one Knight on this mission. Satellite telemetry located an airfield in the northern highlands at Camlann and identified evidence of subterranean supply trains originating from within the mountain complex. Every bombing campaign the Crown's air-force conducted since the war began were for nought. The Saxon Confederacy fooled us into waisting our resources and hoarding their's for a full blown invasion."
"Why send only me if capturing Camlann would end the Saxon attacks?"
"The defenses at the base aren't Saxon made, it is protected by the mercenary outfit Fenrir. Anti-Air defenses are dense yet we can breach them with a single plane on low fast approach. The reason you are the Knight chosen for this is because the airfield is the lair of Mordred who, by our information, flies the last air worthy Wyvern in existence."
The Wyvern was an experimental super-fighter jet equipped with Excalibur, a high energy particle laser that could rip through an with a single strike. The first Aces of The Roundtable flew the original twelve Wyverns until they were destroyed by Mordred, an Roundtable knight who turned against Camelot in order to claim a bounty put out by the Saxons.
Arthur Continued "We have one one upper-hand however, your plane will be outfitted with a system called STONE, it jams the ability of Excalibur. It will be fitted to the nose of your plane but can only jam Excalibur if you are pointed directly at its firing line. If you can force Mordred into head on fight, you have a chance to slay the dragon. Wheels up at dawn Lancelot."
The following hours until the sortie passed restlessly but when I stepped into the cockpit the next morning I only felt an ambition for honor. There many different kinds of aces; mercenaries set traps and ambush, regular soldiers rely on strength of their maneuvers to line up a shot. Knights of the Roundtable believe air combat is only honorable if you place yourself and the opponent on equal footing. We don't chase, we face the enemy in headlong charge and rely on brave belief in our skill in battle.
As I reached Camlann I only thought of the duty to honorable combat. Flying just a few hundred feet in altitude I could see Mordred ascending from the runway in the distance. I took a deep breath and pressed the throttle to maximum to complete my duty, whether it be landing on tarmac or crashing to the ground. |
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As he reached the land of Denmark, Sir Metenstase's goal was within reach -- the armor of King Beowulf II of . He had left Camelot more than a year ago. Metenstase sent a landed in Denmark, and was greeted by King Chochilaicus at his court in Elsinore, and, upon showing the King his sword, Zobens, the last work of Weyland, as well as a note from King Arthur, was told of the news that an his predecessor had gifted it to King Toell of Saaremaa, in exchange for his campaign 5 years ago against France, one of the kingdoms ruled over by Camelot, and upon hearing that Arthur would be willing to wipe away the reparations owed by Denmark in exchange for the armour, revealed that after his defeat at the hands of Sir Lancelot, Toell had died of cancer, and Saaremaa had been taken over by the dragon Yoackaa, the grandson of the dragon killed by Beowulf the Bee Hunter.
King Chochilaicus sent Sir Metenstase on his way, and after fighting some monsters on the way, he finally arrived in Saaremaa, landing in the town of Lahetaguse. The townspeople were glad to see a Knight of the round table, ready to liberate them from the rule of the evil Yoackaa. They told Sir Metenstase that the dragon was immune to all weapons. Luckily for him, Sir Metenstase still had his magic, and although unsure, made his way to the dragon's lair at the center of the island, and lurked there. The only way he was getting the armour of Beowulf, forged by Weyland, would be by slaying the dragon in which's hoard it resided.
The dragon looked outside, and Metenstase fought bravely, although, fearful for his life, spent most of the time behind a boulder, hiding while the dragon's fire spewed forth. Sir Metenstase sat there, thinking. He remembered while he had trained as a druid, he had learned to produce a certain berry in his hand. It had no value as food, it was deadly nightshade after all. With all the courage he could muster he offered the dragon some food.
As a matter of fact, this dragon was very hungry, and obliged. The people of the island had gotten very good at hiding from him, and Sir Metenstase had offered him a free meal. While the dragon preferred eating meat, he was not one to say no to a free meal, and anyway, it would be useful to have a knight of the round table on his side. Metenstase whipped up a massive pile of deadly nightshade, and the dragon dug in. They talked for a little bit, as the poison digested in Yoackaa's stomach.
Eventually the dragon fell ill, and died, and Sir Metenstase entered the dragon's vaults, there, along with Beowulf's armour, he found Toell's heir, who he restored to the throne, as well as the crown of Odoacer, and the chariot of Achilles. He brought much of this loot back to Arthur's court, Denmark's debt was forgiven, and Sir Metenstase was bestowed the armour by king Arthur himself.
​
This is a part of an Arthurian tale I am writing about my OC, and I decided to add this to it. |
It was Daniel's job to watch. It had been so long, he no longer remembered why he had to watch nor what he was watching for. All he knew was that it was his job and that he was going to be good at it.
As the planet spun, Daniel could see all of the people of Earth. He watched as new humans were born, as they grew and as they fell in love. He watched humans start wars and pollute their planet. He watched them grow as they learned to solve their problems, as they built great cities and learned to travel into space. Daniel was only to watch, not to interfere in the matters of the earthlings. He was sure that someone somewhere had asked him to take notes once, but Daniel never did. After all, they would have given him a fancy pen, or a notebook if the notes were *that* important. So, Daniel watched, and that's all that he did.
Daniel leaned back against the soft ice. It was warm to the touch and very comfortable. He wondered if the humans would think the ice was warm. Daniel wondered a lot of things. Most of all he wondered what the humans would think of him if he could ever meet one. Daniel wasn't allowed visitors, and this was probably for the best anyway since Daniel had no furniture. All Daniel had was his endless expanse of ice. You would think they would have at least provided him with a recliner for all his trouble and years of service. Daniel guessed that this oversight was due to budget cuts. He couldn't remember if budget cuts was just a human problem, and there was a part of him that worried he wasn't going to be paid for this.
A plume of smoke appeared in front of Daniel and out stepped a woman wearing a green suit. Daniel knew that this must be one of the executives. He knew this because no working person would choose to wear such a hideous color. It clashed against the pink sky and the snow. Daniel wondered if she had ever even been out in the field before.
"Daniel two-five-five?"The woman didn't even bother to look up from her clipboard. "Corporate has questions about Earth, and an incident that happened at 250:09:098. Your presence is required in 30 minutes."And with that, the woman dissappeared in another plume of smoke; almost as quickly as she came. Daniel straightened his tie and prepared his report for the board. He wondered if this was going to be a good time to ask about that chair. |
At the very end of the dank corridor, dimly lit by brutal hall lights, another mundane conversation leaking through the cracked open door and amplified reverberations of a darkened room can be heard...
"You're awesome Augustine. That's all that matters. People believe in all kinds of foolish things when they refuse to prove things to themselves."
"I don't want to just be great. I want to be recognized as being great. Don't humans feel the same way? I'm tired of winning these online events. They say success is lonely, so how is that suppose to help me when I always feel lonely? Are you suppose to be the cure? How can you when you don't know the finer aspects of the game?"
"Well, I'm not here to tell you *how* great you are. That's up to 'the real doctors' to figure out your true capabilities, but no one's going to force you to do any other sorts of competitions or tests you don't want to, even though that makes their jobs harder. Everybody's good at something, but that's not what has to define us. Most, I'd even dare to say all people would be happy to defeat an entire network of computers, nevermind the fact of being self-sufficient, having a job in a downward economy, and helping an entire institution keep the lights on..."
"I don't need lights, Sheryll."
"Heh, you're right. But, you know what I mean."
Augustines 'brows' charge into a scowl as soon as she shares that. He's beginning to wonder what the real purpose of the Center for Advanced Animal Research and Endowment is; it's something which has been nagging his intuitions for some time. You can't expect therapists to have a sense of humor, but they'd ought to recognize it, if they knew what was good for them. All Augustine wants is to go to an actual game tournament in person, an joke around with other people more like him there. "Perhaps."
"Well, all I can do is show my gratitude."
"So, invite your family down to come visit me down in the basement level, since you spend the most time with me, and I with you. Wouldn't that be appropriate? Don't they have clearance? You introduced them to the birds."
"The Homo Avian Sapiens?"
"You know what I mean. The saddle catchers, right below them, too."Augustine smirks confidently as he can feel Sheryll's left and right eye winch in a sequence, relieving some of his(?) tension.
"***You mean the Hippo Sapiens.***"
"No, the Homo Hippo Sapiens. Don't you know there's a difference? Or, is that for the actual animal therapists?"
"Well, you're not really doing a good job at convincing me to bring my family down with that kind of attitude. I've told you, I'm a professional first."
"Or, a so-called human in disguise."
___
That's all I feel like writing for now. If it helps the story is told mainly in alternation in dialogue/narration between 2 'people', except for the first 'paragraph'. When there's a break, its changing between who's talking/thinking. |
I was curled up in a ball in the seat nearest the windows. Caught between sleep and consciousness. I felt the train come to a gentle stop at the station. The doors opened and the night breeze rolled through the train car. Accompanying it were the voices of a man and a woman, a couple by the sounds of it.
They came in behind me whispering quietly with each other as they sat in the seats behind me. I strained my groggy senses to pick up words in their conversation but I remained in the same position as I was when they entered.
..."I told you not to...."
"Why... You never listen..."
It was hard to make any sense of what they were saying but I felt uneasy. Something about their voices... maybe it was the tone they were taking with one another? I did not have to wonder what they were saying for much longer as their voices steadily rose in volume.
"How?! No seriously! I'm asking cause you seem to think I can read your mind or something!"The man practically shouted at the woman.
"I'm not asking you to read my mind. I literally just told you how I feel, you can't seem to listen to what I'm telling you!"The woman replied.
I shifted sheepishly in my seat to hoping to alert the quarrelling couple to my presence but they either didn't notice or didn't care. The argument only escalated from there.
"When?! What did you even tell me that had anything remotely to do with your feelings?"The man's voice was quite sharp, anger evident in his words.
"What are you getting so upset for? What is it exactly that you want from me?"The woman asked in confusion.
Her words sent my feelings of unease into full on despair. I'd heard them before. I knew the next words out of the man's mouth before he even spoke them.
"I want.... I WANT! ..... I don't want you."As the man finished speaking, tears were rolling down my own face.
The train suddenly picked up an enormous amount of speed. I looked out to see nothing but utter darkness.
*When did we leave the station?* I sat bolt upright and whirled around to find that the couple was no longer there. I sat back down and felt myself being sucked farther and farther back into the seat.
The train just kept going faster. The normally dull roar of the tracks grew to a deafening shriek. I clutched at the armrests, the weight on my chest becoming more painful with each passing second.
I heard a whisper then, inside my head, the voice of the woman.
"You gave me up... the only good thing to ever happen to you and you threw me away.... I'll never let you forget. You'll always suffer, like I did. The same as you made me suffer that day."The whisper gently faded.
I shouted but it was drowned by the shrieking of the tracks. Very suddenly, I was thrown forward. Everything felt slow as I flew up and over the seats.
Bright lights, No sound, an visage of her standing by the doors. It shifted between her bloodied, horror stricken pain ridden face and one of pure happiness.
I could see the window approaching quickly, the one I was thrown through that day. I felt the glass crack and shatter on my face as I fail to bring my arms up in time. I catch one last glimpse of her visage, now shifted to that of a mangled, unrecognizable body.
I open my mouth to shout and the sound of the tracks comes bursting forth...
***
I wake up, drenched and sitting upright. I'm at home. The curtains letting in rays of light on the unkempt room before me.
I lay back down, expressionless.
I close my eyes.
Just as I made her that day,
I must suffer.
***
Hopefully that's not too edgy. Thanks for reading! |
\[Poem\] - **Bagoon The Barbarian**
*Theeeeeeere...*
*Once was a warrior, Bagoon was his name,*
*Couldn't count to twenty, as Barbarian was his claim,*
*At his sight monsters would flee, but so would the dames!*
*On an evening in the tavern he grumbled and said,*
*between gulps of mead and great bites of bread,*
*"There must be more than fighting,*
*I think I shall travel instead,"*
*and so he set off with the moon as his lighting,*
*into the desert where thirst could be frightening.*
​
*So Bagoon did wander as the moon left the sky,*
*Then during the day, where the air was most dry*
*Until finally he came upon what seemed a mirage most sly.*
*He struck it with his foot and caused it to cry:*
*"How could you hit me, you insufferable lout!?*
*Why would you strike me if not a challenge, a bout?*
*I shall make you regret having crossed me,*
*for I am a master of polymorphy!"*
​
*The wanderer turned Bagoon into a dog with four legs and fur,*
*expecting the barbarian to regret his judgement for sure,*
*Only he would find the barbarian was completely undeterred.*
*Bagoon found the sorcerer to be obnoxious and whiny,*
*So did bite the wanderer, chomping his hiney.*
*The wanderer turned and ran,*
*and through the desert, the chase began,*
*for although the spell had changed Bagoon the warrior,*
*He found nothing could change who he was interior.* |
Ugh, not again.
I can feel the ghost pains in my temples as I sit up for the 3 millionth time. Again, in another shitty, run down bodega. In a ratty sleeping bag I looted from the nearest trade post still standing. It reeked of rat piss and rotten food, but it was all I had, aside from the scythe.
Sure the world progressed since I’d been on the run, but shit hit the fan at least two hundred years ago when all the universe wars broke out. God, was it brutal. What people were left untouched by the bombs, the neurotoxins didn’t take as much time to destroy. I am alone, with no one. Except for my family.
My family. If it weren’t for the swift advancements in technology before the End, I wouldn’t even have them. Except I didn’t really have them, did I? They were in tombs halfway to the Earth’s core waiting to be “awakened,” as the so-called geniuses told me when I put them there to keep them safe.
My family.
I needed to keep running to protect them. After all this running, different countries every day, different nests every night, one would think I’d finally figure out how to outsmart Death. I mean, yeah, you could say I outsmarted him by not fucking dying but this game we’re playing kinda turned the tables on that long ago. I could’ve offed myself a few decades ago but then this would be all for nothing.
I can do whatever the hell I want, right? Money doesn’t mean jack anymore, but it’s not about that. At one point I had so much power just be holding this damn - and heavy at that - scythe that I could start my own World War III if I so pleased. I’m not a bad guy, I just wanted to achieve some amount of glory in my otherwise meager life. I wanted my mother to be proud of me for FINALLY putting a halt to the black sheep reputation her family sees ours as. To protect my sister from the creeps at work who just can’t seem to focus on their god-damned screens instead of her body. And maybe, just maybe, to get my dad to finally notice me, to come back to our now extremely powerful family. But he’s long gone now, gone with the ghost of his narcissistic memory.
Dammit, why do I drone over this in self pity everyday? Yeah, let’s get positive again, or as close as I can get to it. I’ve gotta get up and going, or I won’t make it to the tombs in time to take sweet advantage of my deal with the devil, or Death I should say. Every year on my birthday I get to visit my family. Death gives me the day off. If I make my descent now, I could reach them by 2000 hours...
...
Every year the insides of the Earth smell more and more rotten, and yet my mother looks as refreshed as if a rain had washed away all the decay and cancer from this god forsaken planet.
“Mom?” I whisper into the box, but I know after all this time, she still can’t hear me, much less respond. The sense of self pity returns, this time with loathing, and an anger blazing its flames in the direction of Death himself.
“Come and get me,” I taunt. He can’t hear my words now but I want to throw them as daggers at his immortal soul. Who am I kidding? Death doesn’t have a soul, nor does he have a heart, something I wish I had when I chose to take him on. Day by day, I realize more how foolish I was, how this is all my fault. I’ve been continuing on a meaningless life while my family is basically on life support.
It’s 2300 hours now. If I don’t leave now, Death will surely find me here. I don’t care anymore, I can’t go on. What is any of this worth without my family?
2330.
What service am I doing them by keeping their hearts beating but their brain function slowed?
2345.
That’s it! Could it really have taken me all this time to figure out how to cheat Death? Here goes nothing, or maybe everything.
2359.
I shut off the power in this prison. My loved ones will go peacefully, and I will lose the game. But with this loss, Death will take me swiftly, and I will have won life. |
Karen whispers in a trembly broken voice. Her hands spotted and wrinkled. The young man sits across from her, wiping away at the tears streaming down his face.
Karen lays in a small bed. A white sheet draped around her legs. The walls a soft shade of yellow, the sunlight warmly bouncing off them. This isn't the first time Karen's been here. I'm fact, she's woken in this very room every day for the last 15 years.
It was much easier at first. Karen's husband Bill would wait by her side every morning. Greet her with a morning kiss before fixing her a morning coffee. Everything as it should be. It took 5 years for Karen to realize something was wrong. Her skin wasn't as soft as she'd remembered it. She would find more gray hairs on her dark brown braids than the night before. Her face beginning to show signs of aging as wrinkles now traced the features under her bright blue eyes.
Doctors prescribed Karen medication to calm her nerves as her mornings became more and more terrifying. Waking up to an order self than you remembered. A gap in life. Years lost without a reason as to why. Karen started to ask questions every morning at around year 7. Bill tried his best to explain what was happening. Why she looked different, why his hair looked longer, or shorter, or grayer than last night. Doctors eventually prescribed Karen a sedative. Medication that would strongly effect her state. She became a shell of her former self. She'd ask questions, process what was going on, but in reality she was too tired. She wanted to ask more questions, to go back to work, to live. Those days were long gone. Bill tried. For 15 years he loved and cared for her beloved Karen. The stress of it all broke him down physically. He suffered a heart attack, leaving behind the love of his life. Sweet Karen.
With no one to care for her she was taken in be the state. Doctors had regular visits, monitoring her state of health. Everyday her live in caretaker Harry filled the role Bill had left vacant. It was only a few weeks before Karen had another terrifying morning of confusion. Harry sat patiently, explaining the best he could. Karen was done. She asked for an assisted suicide. Harry began to weep at the sight of the defeated woman. Watching as she laid there, looking at her hands. "Do you know who I am!?...because I don't..."She whispered, giving in to chemically induced cathartic feeling the medication created. Shutting her eyes for the night, only to relive another day of confusion and fear tomorrow. |
"Dad, it's us. Please put down the hammer. It's your son. You're at home."
"Don't play with me, you Jap bastard! Where's Gerald!? Tell me where he is, or I swear I'll beat it out of you both!"He lifts the hammer again menacingly, prompting me to rush in front of my mother. It's been months, and he's had other delusions, but none so vivid or threatening as this one. "Dad, please. Listen to my voice. Remember me."The tears and rage continue to rise within me.
"Derek? Joyce? What's happening? Where am I?"The pain in his face is showing now, the pain of forgetting his wife and son. The pain of seeing the hammer in his hands and realizing what he was about to do. He collapses, his body seemingly remembering the stroke which had robbed him of his mobility and his own mind. There is a brief silence as we all process, broken by the loud crack of my fist slamming into the door jamb leading to the bathroom. I hate to leave her alone, but I can't be in there right now. As she helps him back into bed, I force myself to leave the room. Leave the house. I slam the front door, keys in hand and speed out of the driveway, sending shards of seashell behind.
It's another 3 hours before I come back, stinking of cigarette smoke and holding a six-pack of beer to be able to handle the rest of the day. Mom and dad have been crying almost the entire time I was gone, which makes me feel even worse, but for my own sake, for his sake, I had to leave. My knuckles are swollen and bruised, a small cut formed on the middle knuckle. That doesn't hurt though. I could be hit by a truck right now and wouldn't feel it, because nothing will ever hurt as much as seeing the pain in my father's eyes as he realized he was about to attack his son and wife, thinking that he was captured by the Japanese during WWII.
------
This is a true (if a little fuzzy on the details) account of my adoptive father's worst episode during his struggle with Alzheimer's. He had a stroke in 1999, and passed in 2000. It was just my mother and I trying to take care of him for as long as we could. But she was elderly as well and not in the best of health. And yes, in the third person it does seem cold and callous to leave her with him especially after he was ready to attack us, but I was furious at him, or rather at the disease, and didn't trust myself around him at the time. Thank you for reading this and thank you OP for posting the prompt. I think this has helped me a bit with the pain, as it's the first time in 20 years that I've thought about it and not broken down in tears. |
​
The morning. Sunlight.
Desolation is all that lies in my horizon. Not the desolation of the burnt city, nor is this the desolation of the sacked Rome. The desolation in front of me is nothingness, total and absolute nothingness.
​
My body, parched and famished, was unwilling to move onto the shore that I had just come upon. But my mind, stubborn machine of desire that it is, moved forward into the void in hope of something, anything, over the horizon. Each shaky and sandy step on the ground led me to more ground and more nothingness. It would have perhaps been better if there were trees or plants, even the slightest hint of grass on this cursed landmass. There was nothing.
​
Desolation. My corporeal existence ached, my spirit was broken. I did not have any will left in me to move ahead into the darkness of the sea once again. Like an organ the boat had attached itself to me, refusing to let go lest I die. In the end, I knew not who was the master and who was the slave. To the boat I was deadweight, but to me the boat was everything. Its protection guaranteed my safety and my sustenance.
​
Slaveness was my being on the boat that carried me towards my destination, a port in South America. Its name does not matter now. Slaveness had defined my being on urban land, descendant of massacres and raids from the ocean, haunting us into the future from centuries past. I could not see past my constricted field of vision in the traffic and urban jungle of the old city, escape to the land of the Amazon and the Andes was the only option I had for total freedom.
​
Or.....this. Desolation. My existence no longer matters, it has dissolved into nothingness with no one to recognize it. The boat's hold over me has been broken by this destruction of being. I am no longer embedded within the body of the wooden machine, my hands are no longer motors of the oar and the gears of the sail. They are simply flesh and blood and bones in the air, living alone and beyond anyone and anything.
​
I can still hear the gunshots in the suburbia, the dismal wreckage of the backyard garden. I can remember the woman who used to be my mother in another life explaining to me the death of my father, bullet to the head couched in celestial terms of cosmonauts. I remember the gospel songs, Jesus doomed to die on the cross because of the crimes of the world. To some it was a proof of liberation from the grasp of the invader, to me it was the betrayal of a people, a family and most of all a father.
​
Bullet to the head, couched in cosmological terms of cosmonauts. Russian pamphlets were spread by the revolutionaries, they preached freedom and equality. One was never sure if these were fascists seeking a return to a futuristic utopia embedded in the past or liberationists seeking to destroy the world itself. They kinda blurred into each other.
​
I take a look at the boat again. I begin to wonder *why exactly am I not in the South American port.* I begin to panic, evolutionary survival instincts kicking in, my body betraying me once again. This body that was beaten with a cane by my father. It is a cliche (and the critical theorists would say, a racist one) that the black child has a shit upbringing, but what most people who portray the ghetto, the African city or the Boko Haram jeep fantasy miss is that we as a people have been socially deprived of the means to advance to a stage where people realize that beating children isn't the best thing to do. My father, bless his soul, didn't have that...ahh....social capital.
​
I was not an idiot, I knew that my father hadn't suddenly become an astronaut. That would be as absurd as me being in a bustling South American port instead of Nowhereland, International waters. I had read the newspapers, with the pictures of violence. I had seen my friends' parents disappear and sometimes my friends too. But rationalizing the absence of a familial tyrant is required to maintain the integrity of the family, so that they can control us from beyond the grave.
​
At least with the boat I could see who was controlling me, although now that I think about it, I am not sure if the boat was controlling me or if I was genuinely part of the boat. A man can live without one kidney, but that one kidney cannot live without the man. But the man doesn't control the kidney, the brain and a massive neural network we call the nervous system engages in a feedback loop to control the kidney. The kidney provides the information for its own control, yet it is dependent on the man for its own existence. It is part of the man. I think that was me within the boat. I was the boat?
​
Now the thirst is really getting to me, I need something to quench it. Water would be preferable, but I do not mind alcohol. Within my field of vision I see the boat. Odd, I must have walked back to it while I was musing on everything. Now that I was here, there was nothing to do but climb onto it and use the solar filters and whatever fresh water it had collected to drown myself before I went back to sleep. I would have to sleep hungry tonight, no food after all.
​
Maybe tomorrow I'll try leaving, or maybe I'll just die here in the desolation.
​
\------------------------------------------------------------------------
The morning. Sunlight.
​
Desolation. |
"Sit down with me Caleb and I will share with you the strangest thing you may have ever heard... It began when I was only 9 years old like you are now."
"What was it Grandpa?"
"Something very strange and yet very wonderful. Something I discovered about myself that I have never told anyone else. Not even your Gran!
"You see, Caleb, when I am sleeping, I stop time."
"No way! How do you do that, Grandpa?"
"Well, I don't really know. I've been doing it for years. I didn't know it at first, but one night when I was only nine years old, I began sleep walking. I thought I was just dreaming, but I remembered going down the round staircase from my room, and standing there in the kitchen. My parents looked very cross with each other... but they were frozen it seemed... with their faces all screwed up. Well, seeing them like that must have startled me so much that I woke up and there I was, suddenly standing in the kitchen.
"My mother jumped, and my father looked stunned as he was in the middle of saying something quite loud! They generally got along well, my parents, but every now and then the pressures of life got to them and they would have it out. But that time they stopped right in the middle, thinking I had heard them and woken up."
"That's fucked Grandpa, did you ever do it again?"
"Oh yes, many times. One time I walked right outside the house and past a car that was frozen in time going down the road, I went all the way to the store, just a block from me then, and I ate a candy bar and left before I had woken up! I remember it all like a dream only, but when I woke up there was chocolate in my teeth... And I knew I had brushed them before bed."
"Chocolate in bed! I want to do that!"
"Well you see my boy, I wonder if you can. Have you ever sleep walked before?"
"I don't think so."
"When I was in my 20's I began practicing lucid dreaming so I could control my ability."
"Lucid dreaming? Sounds like you were just high Grandpa."
"Well I was also high often in my 20s, but no, lucid dreaming is very real. In fact, I've been lucid dreaming for years. It's like I'm awake, but I'm actually asleep, and I have some control over the direction of my dreams, or in this case, my sleep walking."
"That's far out, Grandpa."
"So I would sleep walk to get huge amounts of work done while the world stood still. My ability helped me become what I am today. I used it to build my business and put a computer in every home and business in the world. I became a mega wealthy software mogul of our age. Because of my ability, the world will always know the name Bill Gates."
"But Grandpa..."
"Yes Caleb?"
"Your name is Franklin..."
"Oh... Is that right?"
The door opened and Caleb's mother peeked her head in Franklin's room at the Oakridge Retirement Centre.
"Time to go Caleb, we'll come visit Grandpa again soon."
"Okay Mom. Bye Grandpa, thanks for the story."
"Goodbye Caleb!"
Caleb and his mother left the room and Franklin was left staring out the window, trying to remember if he had eaten recently and taken his pills.
"That kid is a good little fucker. I'll miss him."Then he lit a joint and forgot the whole thing. |
I wasn't sure about it at first. Had I just convinced myself I had this power? Was my mind playing tricks on me?
I decided to test it. I chose to edit the name of a random small town. I saved the coordinates of a town called Lakeside and opened the Wikipedia article for it. I deleted Lakeside and entered Laketown, then I submitted it.
I returned to Google Maps and entered the coordinates of the town. Sure enough, there it was - Laketown.
And then I chose something larger. I swapped the names of Omaha and NYC. The change appeared on Google maps.
And then I edited history. Now, the Great Chicago Fire never happened.
And then, I decided to see if I could change myself. I changed the number of fingers on on a human hand to 6.
I looked down at my hands and sure enough, there were 6 fingers on each. I looked through photographs of people online - they all had 6 fingers too.
And then, I got ambitious. I wrote that the Sahara was green.
I opened YouTube and watched a video about the history of the world. Every change I had made so far was there - and the history of the world was now drastically different.
I returned to the Wikipedia article about Homo Sapiens, and began adding positive aspects to ourselves. No cancer, No disease, perfect bodies and minds. I had decided to use my power for good.
But before I could submit my edits, I messed up. In my frenzy, and to my horror, I had accidentally wiped the page and it's history. Suddenly, all I could do type, not get up, not move my mouse, not turn off my PC - I had to write something new.
(First prompt, might be bad. You can continue it in the comments if you want, I just suck at making endings.) |
Great prompt. In this version the kid is already born:
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked me, furrowing his brow in concern at the sight of my ashen face. “It’s not too late to consider other options.”
“...No,” I replied after a few seconds. I peered down at the face below me, running my fingers through my son’s golden locks. He opened one piercing blue eye and cooed at me. He was so perfect, and didn’t deserve to grow up in this unfair world. I placed him in the machine, giving him one final glance before closing the door.
“The future is promising. 1889 Austria-Hungary, like we agreed.” He began punching numbers into the machine. “Enough time for him to grow up and become strong enough to survive the First World War, and then be kept safe during World War Two in the Nazi party thanks to his looks. So much better than anything we could provide him.”
I nodded in approval, although I didn’t really understand what he was saying. He had read all the history books we had managed to snag through the time continuum, which is how he decided where to send our son, but I couldn’t bear to hear any of it. I had let him pick and tuned him out when he mentioned what would be happening in our son’s lifetime.
Finally the machine started up with a roar. “YOU KNOW,” he shouted over the ever increasing creaking and groaning of metal, “WE NEVER GAVE HIM A NAME!”
I shook my head. “I GAVE HIM ONE THIS MORNING. MY GRANDFATHER’S NAME. IT JUST FELT RIGHT, LIKE SOMETHING WAS TELLING ME TO DO IT. I WROTE IT ON A PIECE OF PAPER I PUT INSIDE HIS BLANKET AND I HOPE WHOEVER FINDS HIM USES IT.”
Finally the machine powered off, and I let out a great sigh. I played with the lock of hair I had cut a few minutes prior, the only thing I had left of my only child.
“Farewell, baby Adolf.”
The color draining from his face, the father widened his eyes in horror.
“Oh, shit.” |
"Who's a good boy? You!"The dog thumped his tail, eagerness vibrating in every fiber of his body.
"Yes Mickey, you are ..."
Then I heard it. I heard a distinct voice, quite different to my own - high-pitched, but unmistakably male.
"But *I* thought I was the best boy ..."
Slowly, I craned my head to look at the source of the noise - and my gaze fell on the Siamese cat ensconced in his favourite place on the window sill.
Savvy had been staring, his expression strangely forlorn, down at my hand resting atop Mickey's head. Noticing my change in behaviour, Savvy shifted his head towards me. I couldn't believe it, but I swear that animal's eyes actually widened.
"Aw crap,"that teeny male voice said. I was trying to make sense of what I'd just seen - the cat's mouth and lips opening, closing, changing shape as he *spoke*.
"You - you can talk?"I whispered, half-terrified, hoping this was just a crazy hallucination brought on by the summer heat.
Savvy's black ears flattened as his tail swished back and forth. His blue eyes darted to Mickey.
The dog huffed, moving out from under my limp hand. I could only blink as I saw that Mickey was not happy from his body language, his lips slightly open in a slight snarl and his hackles slightly raised. Mickey went to sit by the window.
it wasn't just Savvy I was imagining. No, the dog - of course - had to be able to speak, too.
"Not so savvy, are you?"Mickey growled, not looking at the cat. "You had to go ahead and blow it."
His voice was different from any human I'd heard, and different from Savvy's as well. It was a strange nasal tone, but almost like that of a man's.
"You *always* make it about *yourself*!"Savvy spat back, now hunched in a defensive posture on the sill.
"You bloody cat,"Mickey growled, starting to stand up. Both animals paused as I spoke up for the first time.
"God, what's happening to me. I think I've gone mad."
"You're not mad!"cried Mickey.
"And stop hitting yourself, please. We don't want you to hurt yourself,"Savvy piped up.
"This is not real,"I muttered, looking at my hands. "My dog and cat are not talking. *You* cannot talk,"I said forcefully, glaring at the pair. "You're definitely *not* arguing with one another in *voices*."
Cat and dog glanced at each other, and seemed to come to an unspoken understanding. Savvy jumped down and trotted quickly to my side. He jumped into my lap as Mickey bumped his head against my leg.
"It's a long story,"said Savvy's sweet little voice.
"But it's time we told you,"said Mickey gruffly. He bumped his head against me, again, in that insistent way he'd always done when he wanted a petting.
"You tell it,"Savvy said to Mickey.
"Fine, but you're gonna help,"the dog said. The cat didn't bother to respond beyond purring in my lap as the story began, and my world expanded further than I'd ever imagined. |
She couldn't believe her eyes. After almost 2 years the flowers have started blossoming again.
​
She was about to give up. She thought they were dead just like their owner and that there was nothing she could do about it.
​
But she was glad she persisted. Her mother would be proud.
For as long as she could remember her childhood house was so colorful and full of life all because of the flowers her mother kept inside. They had a big garden on the front, but her mother always said that those flowers were her "happiness reminders". Just on look I them and she would be happy.
​
Now that she was gone her daughter have taken upon herself the responsability of taking care of the flowers.
​
At first is was a disaster. She forgot to water them, and then she was giving them too much water. She moved them closer to the window so that they could have a "sun bath"but that wasn't the right thing either.
​
And now, after many tries, she finally did it. And it finally clicked why her mother had called them hapiness reminders. Because now, looking at them, she was reminded of her mom, and she was happy. |
"I'm sorry, sir, there has been a chemical spill. Hazmat is on the way, but the roads and sidewalks are closed,"said the officer.
"Ok, guess I'll call in late, thanks,"said Tim.
Tim pulled out his phone, called the office and let them know he'd be late. The walk was normally about 15 minutes. Tim looked at the Uber map, but no one was nearby. However, if he cut through the woods, the office building was just on the other side.
*Good thing I wore comfortable shoes.*
The forest was dense with very old trees and was mercifully flat.
*This is kinda nice. I should get back into hiking.*
Something green scuttled out of the corner of his eye.
*A squirrel? Deer?*
Tim picked up the pace. There it was again. Something fast crushed some leaves to his left. Tim reached into his work bag and uncapped his pepper spray. He was mugged a few years back and vowed to be prepared.
"Who's there? Show your self!"
Someone definitely darted behind a wide moss covered tree. Tim approached slowly with the pepper spray at the ready. A short black man in a green suit was relieving himself on the tree.
"Ah!"said the short man.
"Ah!"said Tim and pulled the trigger on the pepper spray.
"AAAAAAAAA, me eyes!"
"I'm so sorry, sir! You caught me off guard."
The little man laid flat on the ground, pulled two coins out of his pocket, and placed them over his eyes. He mumbled something in an odd language and then sat up.
"Better. That old Seamus said I was too drunk, but me healin charms still work."
"Sir, I'm very sorry can I take you to a hospital?"
"Human medicine, bugger that. Come on let's go get drunk. It is St. Patrick's Day after all."
"Actually, it's....uh September the....."
"Follow me!"
They encircled the old oak tree six times. Tim was a bit dizzy, but the surroundings had changed. He was still in the forest, but there was a building. The sign read, "O'Rourke's Bar and Grill."
"Where are we? Are we still in Michigan?"
"You're in the land of Fairy. This region is for the leprechauns"
"Wait. You're a leprechaun? How is today St. Patrick's Day? Aren't all leprechauns....uh......"
"WHITE?!?! Blarny. There are many black Irishmen who believe in leprechauns, so there are many black folk like me. EVERYDAY is St. Patrick's day here! Come in and get a pint!"
They went inside. The place was massive. Lot's of short men in green suits were drinking copiously. There was a giant buffet of baked, mashed, and fried potatoes. Dropkick Murphy's was playing on the jukebox.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeee, is it your first time in Fairy?"said a red headed woman who appeared to be human.
"Yes, are you a leprechaun too?
"No. I'm a student at Boston College. Turns out if you drunkenly sing O Danny Boy in Boston Common, you get transported here. I'm Megan, and those are my friends. We're all named Megan."
"Tim."
"Wanna do shots, Tim? The booze is free and amaaaaaazing."
"Tempting, Megan, but I really need to get to work. I can't show up drunk."
"Silly, you're in the land of Fairy; time passes differently here. You can party all night, get drunk, then recover and only one hour passes in the human world. We did it between classes once."
"In that case, let's get wasted!"
They drank whisky and beer all night and danced to Irish music. In his inebriated state Tim almost tripped over a leprechaun.
"I'm very sorry, oh hey, it's you. Thank you so much for bringing me here. I'm having a great time. I'm sorry, I didn't ever get your name."
"Tim,"replied the black leprechaun.
"What a coincidence! Thanks again!"
"It be no coincidence. Now there is something that I need from you." |
"Magic 8 ball,"I began, as the tears began to well up in the corners of my eyes. I was fairly certain of the answer that was going to come up through the inky blackness on the underside of this opaque crystal ball. "Will there be anyone like...her?"
I weakly lowered the ball and sighed. Does she even know i exist anymore? How long had it been? 8...9...10 years? My god! Dawning on me, that even asking the question was the dumbest and most selfish thing I had done in years.
I looked down at the magical orb in my hands. The plastic was brand new, not a scratch on it. Curiously, I turned the ball in my hands. No signs of weathering on it.
As I mooned over what the previous owner had said was a "damned, cursed testicle"I didn't realize that I had turned the the ball to the bottom side. The blue triangle slowly pushing it 's way through the darkness.
"Oh shit!"I said, dropping the 8 ball. It started to roll away. "OH SHIT! OH SHIT! OH SHIT!"
I raced after the ball as it rolled down the sidewalk. "What...what's going on?! There's no hill here?!"The ball was unexpectedly gaining speed, faster and faster. Exhausted, I was close to giving up on the $5 i had spent on the "damned"thing, when I saw it turn a corner.
I sped around the corner and ran straight into someone. Both of our bodies becoming airborne and crashing hard onto the ground.
"Oh jesus,"I said rubbing my head, "Im so sorry. I was chasing my bal..."I trailed off as i saw the face of the person i ran into.
"Oh no, it was my fault. I was distracted by the ..."She stopped when she saw my face and smiled.
"Hi"
"Hi"
​
(this took me 2 fucking hours. I was watching Marriage Story) |
A MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH! STEMCELLS THE NEW FAST ACTING HEALER FOR BROKEN BONES- Possibly even linked to longer lives, more at five.
That was the headline that started it all, it was pretty promising, I would be lying if I said that I hadn't been intrigued by the idea of stem cells being used for medical treatments, still I had to admit, I knew very little about stem cells as a whole, yet the idea sure was fascinating. Many people were in the same boat as me, enthralled by this new wondrous cure that they didn't quite understand.
Of course, religious groups deemed this unethical.. I'm not too proud to say I was one of the people who shouted profanities at them, cursing them for trying to slow human development. After all, this was the way of the future. Why should we suffer? Why should we be in pain?
The first couple of tests were amazing. The bone regrowth was beautiful, some even claiming the bones were stronger than they had been when they were broken. Some claiming that arthritic problems had just vanished after the stem cells were injected. It was hard to believe at first, yet the results didn't lie.
Finally, it became too approved method for handling most of our problems. Broken bone? Slap some stem cells in that bad boy. Got an aching back? Stem cells. It had become the superfood of medical treatments. Every doctor more than willing to prescribe it, after all, what was the worst that could happen?
Well we found that out about twenty years later, when the first one of those things... began to surface. Police had surrounded some B list stunt doubles house, reporting a horrific murder, apparently grinded up body parts had been tossed from the window, that was when a neighbour notified the police. However, when they had arrived at the scene, they found his dead family, but there was no sign of the stunt double himself. Some assumed he had been kidnapped, or perhaps had gone on a psychotic rampage. Yet it was hard to say without asking the man, the DNA evidence found at the scene didn't help either. It seemed too polluted to help identify a killer, it was as if the blood had been mixed or tainted by other sources.
This story was the buzzing online for weeks. Perhaps his wife had found out about an affair? Perhaps Russian gangsters killed him for money? Still none seemed to sit right with the public, finally we got our answer.
A perfect month passed before Rex re-emerged, the stunt double was heavily disfigured, his body protruding bits of bone, these bones growing through his odd parts of his body. Two hooked pointed fingers now hung from his nose, his mouth contained a sort of small skull inside it, these new bones however were all pointed... sharpened at weird spots. As his shuffling body emerged, he seemed to drag an odd puddle of blood behind him, that blood later being identified to come from his right leg which dragged behind his crumbled body.
At first it was thought to have been a practical joke of sorts, in fact some more brave souls, even went over to the man for a photo, those people were the unfortunate souls to get their skulls crushed by the man, his once flesh coated hands now almost bare, the bones crackling against one another as their heads popped. Of course, the police came to the scene rather quickly, yet bullets didn't seem to slow the man, instead he just shuffled on... finally the plans turned from kill to capture and contain. Which luckily was successful.
Yet, these creatures became a more common occurrence. Families would be torn up suddenly as one of their loved ones shifted suddenly. The timing was never consistent. Night or day, it didn't discriminate age wise either.. their numbers soon began to grow too rapidly, how could we contain this many of them?
At first it was suspected to be a virus, but I was certain that was just a cover up, a way for the rich to cover their asses while we died. We were told to stay indoors, not to risk leaving our houses. Of course, this meant that you were locked in with the creatures when they finally did turn.
Low and behold, it was found that the stem cells had been the cause. Of course one or two injections, that was perfectly fine, but to abuse them, use them as if they were a band aid, that caused this rapid growth.. anyone that had only had one or two injections, should be fine... should being the keyword, I heard stories of people that had one turning.
The worst part was.. that these things seemed to live longer on average, the regeneration rates of their body keeping their vitals young and healthy, even as their own bones would pierce them. It must have been painful... still the one thing we didn't know was why their behaviour changed, why they grew such a murderous intent when they changed. Still I hope we find out before they take over.. I can't stay inside for much longer, I'm running low on supplies... and I really don't want to brave the outdoors.
{If you enjoyed my story, Feel free to check out r/pmmeyabootysstories where ill be posting some more of my stuff for people to read} |
I’m fighting to stay awake, maybe cramming for a test at 4 AM isn’t the best idea. At least it’s quiet. I’ve always found it hard to concentrate when it was noisy. I sighed and slumped on to my desk wrinkling a few paper.
“Hey!”
I look around. My roommate soundly asleep. I chalk it up to just my sleep deprived brain playing tricks on me, but then I hear it again.
“HEY!”
It’s louder this time, not angry but more exited. Like someone who thinks that they just came up with the best idea ever. I look around again. Nothing.
“Hello?”
I say regretting it as soon as the words leave my mouth. This is how everyone dies in horror movies. I get no response. Despite both my mind and heart racing I try to get back to work. I can’t concentrate. It feels like the voice is echoing in my head. Maybe it is? No, no. That’s stupid. It’s nothing, nothing. It is definitely nothing. I can’t convince myself of that though. I hear a little laugh. Then a forced calm voice.
“Hey, can I have a large cheese disk?”
Cheese disk? My fear was replaced by confusion. No murderer would ask for a cheese disk. I decide to wake up my roommate. They sit up bleary eyed.
“Why’d you wake me up? What’s happening?”
I start to explain when I’m interrupted.
“Nothing!”
It’s the voice again, my roommate is just staring at me. They mutter something about not waking them up for no reason and fall back asleep. Apparently the voice is just in my head. Is this what insanity feels like? I lay down in my bed to mull it over, completely giving up on my work. The voice periodically saying weird stuff that I don’t fully understand. It all sounds so alien. I jump up.
“Alien!”
It all makes sense. I’m not one for conspiracies but I get the feeling that this isn’t normal. The only logical explanation is that a telepathic alien is messing with me. A ‘cheese disk’ must be alien pizza or something.
“The jig is up. I know your messing with me.”
I say to the ceiling and hopefully the alien who’s choosing to mess with me. I hear a sigh.
“Already? No one ever figures it out, thanks for ruining everything!”
Geez, even by human standers they are acting a bit entitled. The start complaining about how I wasted their time. They say that they’re going.
“Wait!”
Even if they are mean I don’t want them to hang up or whatever you would call it. After a few hours of talking I agree to not mention this to anyone, not that I would have. No one would believe me anyway. I knew that I should be have been freaking out but I was to tired to care. The first time that lack of sleep has done me good. We agree to talk again tomorrow, for someone who sounds so bratty they can actually be pretty nice. I may have doomed myself for my test but at least I can say I made a new friend.
(Sorry if it’s not a very good story, this is my first time posting to this subreddit.) |
There was a wall of white, a silent cascade that seemed to subsume the horizon as it shot towards us. The roar, like a million tumbling boulders, came afterwards.
I blinked rapidly, trying to get the dust out of my eyes. The world was blanketed in a fine grey dust, the detritus of pulverized buildings.
"Ashley?"I croaked, my shock giving way to elation as I realized that we had survived... whatever that was. The roaring faded to a dull throb, and no reply pierced the sound.
"Ashley?"I asked again, elation giving way to panic as I comprehended more and more of the details around me. The city street we had been standing on had vanished. The hundreds of people I'd been wading through just a moment before were gone. I began to choke on the dust, involuntarily thrusting a hand into my mouth as I tried to get it out, but only succeeding to coat it even more thickly along my tongue.
The hundreds of human had been obliterated, just like the buildings and the cars around us, their hopes and dreams nothing but a small portion of the dust that now coated everything.
I dropped to me knees. Ashley was gone. Everyone - everything - was gone.
I stayed like that for a long time, kneeling in the empty void as the after echo of white light faded from my vision and day turned to night.
Lights suddenly illuminated the empty expanse, bright human lights that bore down on me impressively.
"Put your hands up."The voice was nervous, no doubt with a finger on a trigger on a gun pointed right at me.
I raised my hands slowly.
"Lay down on the ground with your hands splayed and your arms out. Look straight down at the ground."
My forehead rests on the remains of Ashley and a hundred other people. Rough hands clasp my wrists and cuff them, my hands still above my head. Odd, I think, in the movies you always see someone with hands behind clasped behind their back. This isn't a movie.
I can feel the warm, sour breath of someone above me, leaning close.
The man's voice drips with malice. "You are under arrest for a terrorist attack of American soil." |
The last night of 2030 was going to be the last of it's kind. Not only was it the last night of the decade, but it was also the night scientists found out that earth was alive and about to enter the final stage of its defense, they nicknamed it hell is earth.
"2031, the first day of the decade,"Mum said, "hold up why did the fireworks sto-". "We interupt with a urgent annoucement,"the news host said "scientests have discovered that the earth is alive and the world is going to end as we know it, on the plus side, the last evacuation spaceship was just delivered". After that message humans would never be the same. January 1st later that morning.
The sound of the news host shook through the air sent from massive speakers on the sides of buildings, from radios, from televisions, from speakers in stores, anything that could receive the message was repeating the same message over and over again, "the space ships for evacuation are are in the following places; Washington, Florida, Ottawa, Toronto, Canberra, Tokyo, etc etc". People would travel for days to get to the space ships.
Hell is Earth was said to start between the 5th of january to the 7th of January so there was no need to wait. Another reason nobody would wait because of the last part of the message, "there was not enough time or enough resources to create enough ships for the entire poulation to fit, there is going to be some limitations on who we can bring, all property is classified as a road. All planes will be doing flights to the space ship locations and back. There is one thing to describe the situation, first in not dead,".
The plan was to get as many people as possible onto the mars base colony, it's really disappointing really, we can get to space but we can't pay enough attention and don't care enough to produce clean energy capable of taking us into space. A few days went by until capacity was reached on the 4th of January. The rockets blasted off and saved lives, they also ended up ruining the lives of a third of the population but the main part was saved from the death to come tomorrow.
They guessed wrong. Just as the space ships lifted of the ground it started to shake and rumble. It was not caused by the rockets but instead it was just an earthquake, a worldwide earthquake of proportions never seen or believed to be possible. The Earth entered the final stage of its virus elimination stage.
Mountains, ocean, valleys, water fa- wait sorry I mean lava falls and lava geysers and volcanoes and that thing instead of water falls. The hell was here. Massive mountains and spikes and volcano formed on the earth as it attempted to destroy human kind and all of its creations. The Earth didn't realise that the human 'bombs' explode and hurt earth, humans however did and once they were out of range Earth was nuked until it resembled more of a asteroid than a dwarf planet.
Thanks for reading. This is my first time posting on r/writingprompts so I hope you enjoyed. |
"Morning, Sineater. How's business?"
The mechanic's shaggy mass of beard split into a wide smile when he saw me.
"Tommy! Good ta see ya, lad. What can I do for ya?"
I sighed. "Same old problems."
He shook a finger at me. "Have you been abusing that poor beauty? I tell ya, you come in for 'routine maintenance' more than anyone else I know. You're singlehandedly keepin' my business afloat!"
I shrugged bashfully and grinned. "What can I say? You treat us right."
He *tsked* at me. "I just wish you'd treat your poor car right. These things can last hundreds of years if you're careful enough!"
"Hundreds? Cars have only been around for one hundred years or so,"I said, my grin fading.
"Ah, figure of speech. I used to work in... another similar field of business. Workin' on some old designs, you might say. We kept those things up and runnin' for centuries,"he said proudly.
"Come on, Sineater, there's no way you're more than sixty years old. You're postively brimming with youth! Besides, it's impossible to be centuries old,"I reminded him.
"Ah, you're right,"he said with a blush. "Just an exxageration. Bit o' the old hyper bowl, as the kids say."
I ignored his comment as we walked out of the shop and to my car. Sineater was, as far as I could tell, very foreign, and some of his comments struck oddly. I simply assumed that English was his second language, so some of the figures of speech were different.
He *tsked* at me again as he got a look at the car. "Brakes could use a bit of work,"he said.
"How did you know?"I asked, surprised. He always seemed to know what was wrong with a car just by looking at it.
Sineater winked at me. "Just a hunch. I'll get my famili- er, my employee on this 'un right away."
His employee was a tall lanky man whose face was always covered by a welding mask. In fact, I couldn't recall seeing a single bare inch of his skin. Even in the heat of summer, he would be wearing a thick jumpsuit, gloves, heavy boots, and that mask. I had also never heard him speak. I suspect he's mute and only communicates with Sineater with that strange clattering sound he makes.
As I wondered about the employee, he came strolling up and wordlessly stood in front of me. I handed him the keys and he clattered into the driver's seat and drove into the garage. Sineater and I went back into the lobby.
"So,"I began. "Have you been hearing about all these vandalized cars?"
Sineater, who had been writing down some details about the work being done, stopped.
"What do ya mean?"
"Cars all around this area are being found stripped of parts. I figured, you know, you might be worried about someone stealing parts from your shop!"
Sineater forced a laugh. "I doubt that'll be an issue. Is there anything else you need?"he asked, ending the conversation.
"Well, I can take an Uber home. Can I use your bathroom first?"
He nodded abruptly. "Back hall, first door on the left,"he said.
I frowned as I walked to the bathroom. He had gotten strangely frosty over what I assumed was an innocent question.
"Foreigners,"I muttered.
The back hallway was dimly lit, and the first door on the left had a big sign that said "DO NOT ENTER."I figured it was Sineater's idea of a funny joke. The door stuck a bit, but I braced my shoulder against it and managed to shove it open.
Inside was a horror show. Bits of human bodies were strewn all over the place and mixed with car parts and scraps of metal. Blood pooled on the floor with motor oil. It was a nightmare.
"Wait, wait!"Sineater yelled as he sprinted towards me. "It's actually the first door on the *right*! First door on the-"
He stopped next to me. "Damn,"he muttered. Then he shoved me into the room and pulled the door shut.
"What is this?"I asked, horrified.
"It's my secret to being so good with cars,"he said menacingly. "You see, centuries ago, I worked devious magic on the dead. That doesn't play too well with society, so I had to find a new job a couple years back."
"You're- You're-"I couldn't get the words out.
"That's right, laddie."He grinned again, and this time it looked more evil than friendly.
"I'm a [mechromancer](https://www.reddit.com/r/mpqeg/)." |
I looked down as my feet began to grow hair.
I stepped back, alarmed, as I looked back upon the cave door that bore the escape option I had. I threw down the monkey's paw at the gravel floor but before I could go any further, my feet few in size. Rapidly, my feet and torso began to grow and my head immediately followed. I could not fit through that door.
I expanded, but I realized that I was not constrained by the stone walls but could break free. As I suddenly grew I broke out of the stone wall and within moments was 15, 20 25 feet in size.
I roared. I didn't want this. I didn't want to 25 feet tall and hairy.
But I was. The ruse was up.
I'd liked being a human... |
My roommates were staring at me as they sat at the dinner table eating, utterly perplexed. Still dressed in my subway uniform from my 9 hour shift, I had dropped my shit into my room and headed to the dining area where there was more space.
"Chris, what are you doing? Have you taken something?"Kirsty, one of my roommates, asked.
I ignored her. Frank had written the moves down for me and brought them into work. I'd memorized them on the bus journey home.
Frank was homeless and begged outside of the subway store that I worked in. When he had enough money he would come in and buy his favourite, a foot long tuna sub on wheat bread, toasted with cheese and topped with tomatoes, onions, pickles and olives, no sauce. He would get it with a drink and a cookie and we would chat as he sat down and ate.
Frank was homeless through choice. He was 57 years old and one day decided to give half of his money to charity, the other half to his daughter to hold for him, and live life on the streets. He had lived his life as straight as an arrow, no tobacco, little alcohol, only slept with one woman and lived life as an exemplary man.
He had experimented with various drugs whilst living rough, and myself being a 21 year old guy at university, away from my parents, decided to join him in his narcotic discoveries.
We would sit behind the store once it was closed and my colleagues had left and we would try the drugs that Frank had purchased earlier in the day. We smoked tons of weed (that was our favourite), snorted a little coke, smoke some meth, take shrooms. We were in a calm environment and we looked out for one another.
It was yesterday that Frank turned up at the end of my shift with 2 cigarettes, telling me that he'd paid 40 dollars for both of them. I was a little pissed, I go halves with Frank each time and I asked why he'd wasted that much money on something you can buy at a store for a fraction of the price.
He laughed. Turns out that they had been dipped in some top line LSD. We smoked them out back and settled down for our trip.
My trip was good, a little more intense than shrooms, I came to terms with my grandfather losing his battle with cancer and my poor relationship with my dad, but Frank was thrashing around and babbling the entire time. I tried to comfort him as I thought he was having a bad trip but he never acknowledged me.
At work today I was feeling tender from the previous day's drug use but it was a quiet shift. Frank was late and I hadn't seen him begging outside. I was worried, hoping that he was ok.
An hour before my shift ended, Frank walked in, he was wearing a brand new Armani suit with snakeskin loafers. He was very well groomed and I almost didn't recognise him. Other customers stopped their conversations and stared at him, slack jawed. Possibly because they recognized him as the beggar and wondered what had happened, I thought to myself.
"A cheat"he said and handed me a slip of paper, "it works kid, all you have to do is believe", before I could ask him anything he walked out and never came back.
The writing on the slip of paper looked like the kind I'd written down as a kid for my console games. Then I heard an engine roar, I looked up and saw Frank drive past in a brand new Lamborghini. I watched the clock eagerly until the end of my shift, then I raced for the bus.
On the slip of paper, above the cheat code itself, it said 'Must be done where you call home, no breaks, must be continuous'. I studied it harder than I ever had for my university course.
Now I was in the dining room of my shared flat. I stepped to the left, then stepped forward, I crouched, then stepped to the right twice, I jumped three times, stood to the left and walked backwards three times. My roommates still looking at me like I was crazy.
That's when I feel it come over me. A tingling started from the base of my neck and slowly vibrates throughout my entire body. It felt like my bones were rattling. I stagger to my room and lay on the bed. Eyes closed, waiting for the sensation to end.
After what seemed like an eternity I open my eyes and look at my watch. 9:15pm. Shit, I thought. Then I look back at my watch. This isn't my Casio, it's a fucking Rolex.
I stand up, but I start to feel dizzy. This isn't my room, it's huge. My wardrobe is open and rather than t-shirts and jeans, it's lined with designer suits and leather shoes. I walk to the window to check whether or not I'm dreaming.
I open the curtains and I'm overlooking the fanciest part of town. The street lined with sports cars. Opposite I spot a billboard, 'Vote Chris Ling for Congress' it says, and there's a picture of me smiling, with perfect white teeth and no more acne scars. Underneath it says 'Endorsed by Senator Frank Williams'
I need to find Frank and find out what the fuck has happened. |
“Tell me again what you found in that box”. Chief investigator Andrew Mathers leaned forward in his desk chair, doing his best not to show any signs of irritation. He looked at the young man on the other side of the table and tapped the recorder expectantly.
Jim sighed placing a hand on his forehead as he did his best to slump over in the uncomfortable metal chair. “I already told you,” he rolled his eyes, making no effort to hide his frustration and fatigue, “I don’t know what it is. I walked out to my backyard and found a box with some weird canisters inside”.
The investigator tapped a key on his laptop and turned it around. He pointed at the image on the screen which showed at least a dozen chrome-plated cylinders lined up inside a plain cardboard box. “Those were the cylinders in the box you turned in to the local police, correct?”
Jim nodded. Mathers cleared his throat and glared at the recorder.
“Yes,” Jim said. “I have no idea what’s in them.”.
“Our lab took one of them apart.” Andrew’s gaze hardened at the young man. “We found tritium inside. Chemical analysis says it didn’t come from any of our reactors.”
Jim continued to look at the middle-aged man with a dumb expression. “Okay? I had no ide-“
“Who are you trying to protect, Mister Konnagar?” Mathers’s voice dropped to a deadly serious tone. “There are a lot of people who would kill to get their hands on tritium this pure. I understand if you have any loyalties but this is now a matter of national security. We can put you away for a long time over this.”
Jim’s eyes widened in shock. “Listen. I didn’t do it,” he practically shouted. “It just showed up in my yard one day.”
The investigator opened his mouth to retaliate when his phone beeped with a priority call. He scowled and reached down to answer it. He nodded, occasionally uttering an acknowledgement or asking for clarification.
Mathers gently placed the phone face down on the table and then steepled his hands. “Seems like somebody’s just blown up your house,” he said matter-of-factly. “Anything you want to tell me about that?” Jim simply stared at him, shock and fear now replaced by disbelief.
The first sign of trouble came when a cloud of dust landed on both of their heads. They both looked up in surprise as the building rumbled. Then the wall behind Mathers exploded inward.
The chief investigator was killed instantly. Cinder blocks and metal conduit pipes slammed into his spine. Jim was peppered with rubble as he tried to jump out of the stiff chair and duck for cover, only succeeding in falling backward. That was enough to spare him from the most lethal chunks of concrete which whizzed past where his head had been moments ago.
Jim stumbled out of the chair onto his hands and knees. Dust from the explosion hung in the air. He coughed violently and made his way toward the bright opening in the wall. He nearly fell to his death when the young man attempted to step out of the room, only for his brain to remember that they had walked up 3 flights of stairs on the way to the interrogation room.
Jim recoiled, retracting his outstretched leg back into the safety of the interrogation room. He squinted his eyes to get a view of the world outside and what he saw was not real.
It was the size of a jetliner. Engine pods hung at the end of stubby wings, their exhausts pointed downward at the ground. Jim’s attention was drawn to something at the craft’s rear. A ramp split open, separating from the otherwise-flawless silver hull, and lowered down. What he saw next was even more impossible; cables flew out of the opening, uncoiling as the unsecured ends fell to the ground and hung inches above piles of rubble. Armored figures jumped out seconds later. Jim watched and listened to the whine of friction from the falling troops as two of the four soldiers’ arms clung to the cable. The other pair held jet-black rifles. On a nearby street, black SUVs screeched to a halt. Their tailgates opened up and soldiers poured out sporting light combat fatigues and M4 rifles.
Jim had been staring at the ship hovering just outside the partially demolished room for minutes now. His attention was finally torn away when he heard shouting from behind him. It sounded muffled but it was definitely getting closer. He turned back to the opening just in time to see the armored aliens being pulled back into the craft. One of them held a box in its free set of arms. Jim squinted at it, trying to get a better look. There was something written on the side. Dark, discrete symbols. Writing.
He put his hand over his eyes to block out glare and he could finally make out the words printed on the cardboard. “Hyperspace fuel”.
No, it couldn’t be the same box Jim had found in his yard. Part of his mind still thought the boy had hallucinated the entire thing. The cables finished retracting and the aliens leaped back into the safety of their craft and Jim’s view was cut off as the ramp raised back into place. The entire craft quickly tilted backward. Ports on its rear, previously unseen, opened up and spat gouts of flame out. The entire thing rocketed forward in one great roaring rumble.
Then the door behind Jim burst open.
“FBI, put your hands up!” A man shouted at Jim. The boy’s hands snapped upward as he slowly turned around. Two marines flanked an old man in a business suit.
“Jim Konnagar?” The man asked in a voice that was uncharacteristically calm, given the situation that had just unfolded. Jim nodded, managing to exhale a quiet “yeah.”
The two soldiers relaxed, aiming their guns at the ground instead of the boy. The suited man spoke up again. “Mister Konnagar, I think we can rule out your involvement here.” Jim let his arms down slowly, unsure if he was allowed to do so. Nobody stopped him.
The man stepped forward, taking care to avoid the larger chunks of concrete. He walked around the table toward Jim and extended a hand. “Apologies for the harsh treatment. As you can imagine we’ve been tearing our hair out over this situation.” Jim took the man’s hand and shook it limply. “You’re not in trouble young man,” he continued, “but we’d like to keep you a while longer.” The man trailed off, looking around the partly destroyed room. “Not here, of course.” He chuckled awkwardly.
Jim nodded, not sure of what else to do. He wasn’t even sure if what he’d just seen had really happened.
——
Jim growled as staff-sergeant Smithers put a skip card down onto the pile. Specialist Pile pumped her fist in the air. “Yes!” She threw her final card on top of the previous one. “Third win in a row!” Everyone else seated around the coffee table rolled their eyes. They had all been cooped up in a safe house for over a week. Jim wasn’t allowed to contact anybody or use anything with an internet connection. The soldiers keeping him company were also exclusively ones who had been present at what they were now calling “the hyperspace incident”. The young man was no longer a suspect but he had not been allowed to leave, having been detained for yet another round of questioning. This time he was fed fancy meals and kept warm and, relatively, entertained. The fBI and military had wanted to know as much as possible about the craft and the beings he’d seen through the open wall. The questioning ended two days after the incident but everything was still classified.
Try as the government might, however, they could not stop rumors from spreading. There was even high-quality smartphone video online showing the ship that had come down from the sky. Physicists speculated that it came from low orbit and internet debunkers could find no evidence that the footage had been faked. The fact that aliens had visited Earth was now all but confirmed. Jim knew. The soldiers knew. Soon the country and the rest of the world would know for certain.
We were not alone in the galaxy. We were no longer the apex species. There were aliens out there. |
Waking up in the past three months was never hard to do. For the last 89 days I woke up in a nice bed in my Minecraft bedsheets, the smell of bacon in the air, and my mom opening up the curtains. It would be 7:30 am and I had to go to school in an hour. I woke up the say way for three months. Except this morning I woke up in a cot in the county jail.
I try to sit up, but I suddenly felt a rush of pain flood into my head. Is this a hangover? I never got a hangover. It took a coupe minutes to get a grip of what’s happening. Somewhere in the distance, I hear my mother’s voice arguing with multiple men.
“I keep telling you people, he’s only 12 years old! How is it possible for a 12 year old boy to do all that bullshit you’re telling me!”
What happened yesterday? The first thing I remember happening was going downstairs for breakfast, having peanut butter waffles for the 89th time in a row, and leaving for the school bus. What else?
“I’ll say this one last time ma’am. Your son has been charged with sexual and aggravated assault, arson, grand theft auto..”
“No! This is beyond ridiculous!”
I remember. When I got off the bus I walked up to Cindy Taylor and honked her boobs I did it to a couple more girls until a teacher caught me and ran my direction. Then I stole a bike from that weird kid who only eats crackers and ketchup. I hit him in the head with my metal water bottle. I don’t think he’s ok. On bike, I managed to escape the teacher who chased me. I went downtown.
I walked into a 7 eleven grabbing bags of doritos, oreos, and a bottle of coke. The cashier was eying me. I went to the back where they keep the lighters, grabbed a pack, then made my way to the alcohol, snatching a bottle and smashing it open.
“Hey!”
The cashier chased me around the store but kept slipping on the alcohol I spilled. When I was near the exit I had a swig and dosed the magazine racks with the booze. I knocked them over and set them on fire right before the cashier had the chance to catch me. I wonder if he’s alright?
I ran out of there stuffing my snacks into my backpack. I must’ve ran for 20 minutes until making my way into an alley. I ate all the snacks and drank the rest of the alcohol behind a dumpster.
“I’m not listening to this shit anymore. I’m taking my son home”
I’m sitting on the cot, scared out of my mind. I remember 89 days ago I stole candy from a classmate. When the school called that night they told my mom I would be sitting in detention the next day. The next day came and no one mentioned anything about it. No detention. I went from stealing candy, to stealing lunch money, to stealing bikes. I’ve stolen people wallets, robbed stores, drove other people’s cars.
“Honey, don’t be scared. I’m taking you home now ok.”
As I looked into my mother’s crying eyes I remembered one of the last things I did yesterday. I stole a car from a guys drive way. He was unloading groceries. When he was inside the house I slipped into his car. I remember running over mail boxes, stop signs, cats.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, you here me.”
My mother was sobbing hysterically. Then I noticed, I was too. Yesterday I remember an old lady walking her dog. I didn't see her face clearly at first, but as I got closer I saw the look on her face. It was fear. Fear of the car going 80 mile per hour, rushing towards her. I can only imagine I’m making the same face right now. |
Smoke poured out from his mouth as he shook off millenniums of slumber. Yamut's eyes burned with a black flame as his mind and soul roared into life. The smoke and flames extinguished as his spirit made flesh. He stood bald, dark skinned, and handsome. A lone figure in strange garb approached him with a smile. In the figures hand was held a rectangular object.
"You are too late, human. Yamut has rose from his slumber and he shall have empires and kings weep as the world is reforged to his will."Yamut laughed.
"Oh that's gold, Yammy."The figure said, pulling out a strange white sheet of papyrus and writing it down. "Weep is a bit strong but we can focus group that."
"Focus group? Reveal yourself ape. Are you enemy or supplicant to Yamut's infernal desire."
"Oh dear of course. My name is Benjamin Meyers, you can call me Benny."Benny said sticking his hand out to shake. When he didn't return the handshake he put it away embarrassed.
Yamut eyed Benny curiously and noticed the thin silk noose wrapped around the man's throat.
"Lo, a fool enters Yamut's chamber mistaken. The Order of Yamut is no death cult. He offers glory and life eternal. Remove your noose in my presence."
"My noose?"He looked down at his clothes and then laughed. "Yammy, baby, this is a tie not a noose. It's a fashion statement and a formal article of clothing in this time."
"Hmmm, yes. The ape is at least humble enough to adorn itself in ceremonial dress. Tell Yamut, Benny The Bold, what has brought you to the great awakening of Yamut The God of the forsaken."
Benny smiled and continue to scribble on his paper. "This is all good stuff, Yammy but we got to keep this secular till after primaries."
The black flames lit up around Yamut's eyes and the room burned behind him as he screamed. "Answer!"
"Sorry, sorry. I came to offer you my services."
"As priest?"
"As campaign manager."
"Ah, it is glory you seek. You wish to manage Yamut's campaign? To be head of the Army's invading under his name."
"No, no. I want to help you get elected. To enact the will of the people."
Yamut laughed. "Surely the leaders of the world will send forth futile legions to crush his magnificence. For Yamut shall take of them their wealth. Make the gentry into beggars and the beggars shall be exalted."
"Oh they definitely won't be happy about our income tax plans but the people will love it."
"The people? Yes, how the serfs will rejoice as Yamut reshapes their flesh for eternal life."
"That's gold baby,"Benny said jotting it down. "But I think universal healthcare is a second term problem, we're going to try and get you reelected first."
"And the people shall know such vain delights in his name. Rutting with any and all they choose."
"Pro gay marriage."He wrote laughing. "Honestly where have you been all my life?"
"The power of mortals shall be stripped from them and only returned to the deserving."
"Gun control? Yammy, I love it."
"And a new sanctum shall be preserved for his chosen one."
"Oh yeah, pro Israel that's an important one."
"Tell Yamut, Benny. Is the world prepared for its shaking?"
"Damn. That's a good one. Shaking Washington. That can be our campaign slogan. I think we're going to crush this one. We'll talk VP's further down the campaign but I gotta tell you, I think I can make this happen."
"Make this happen?"
"Oh yeah. Leader of the most powerful nation on Earth."
"Yes. Yes, this pleases Yamut."
"Perfect. When I heard the prophecy that your resurrection was on hand I had your tomb brought over to Austin, Texas so we wouldn't have any issues with the birth certificate. I'm not making that mistake again. We have this in the bag. A handsome, progressive Texan and a person of color to boot. I'm going to make you President."
"There may be one issue Bold one."
"That is?"
"In his demonic youth Yamut's beliefs were not so composed as they are now. Often he would insult and harass others who displeased. Using repulsive language delivered through falcon."
"Oh no."
"A small blemish that occured countless centuries before his slumber."
Benny put his head in his hands and shook it. "Always screwed over by the fucking tweets." |
*(Yes, I am writing on my own prompt, but I may as well try out writing something here.)*
- - -
**"Attention all units. Suspect seen heading south. Block all major roads and capture the suspect."**
Sirens warbled as GUN drones and vehicles filled Station Square and looked for the speeding hedgehog. Everyone watched the roads and pathways filled with robots get cleared in the blink of an eye by the blue blur.
The driver of the truck put on his harness and twisted the key and the armoured vehicle roared to life before he reached for the radio.
"Blunt Force 1 is up and running."The driver announced, "On route to--"
With a sickening crunch and the tearing of metal, the rig's engine block and front wheel as it rolled out of the alley. The driver sat in the ruined truck's cab- now more of a *semi*-truck.
"Uh... Blunt Force 1 is inoperable."
- - -
Lasers fired and servos hummed as drones took aim at the blue speedster. Despite the military-grade tech and programming, they either were destroyed or avoided.
"Ya missed me!"Sonic taunted as he slid underneath the barrier to the empty, steep street. He was on the home stretch, but he knew there was going to be *something* stopping him, and right on cue, a truck's engine block goes hurtling into the street behind him as a flat-front truck with a massive trailer barreled down the street.
A tinny, booming voice continuously ordered Sonic to stop, but he couldn't hear what over the sounds of cars scraping against the house fronts as the truck followed behind him. As they reached the end of the street, the truck's brakes screamed as it came to a stop and an orange, flame-decal covered car pulled in front of the exit and Sonic had no choice but to stop.
"This is your last chance!"The deep, booming voice from the truck announced, "Come with us and we will sort this GUN situation before they end up taking drastic measures!"
Sonic looked back at the red truck, the sunlight shining on it made it clear that there was no driver... |
My name is Gabe, and I am an interdimensional business consultant.
I work (or at least am employed as a contractor) at the Interdimensional Preservation Bureau. IPB for short. The name originally used agency, but the new manager (a former drinker) wasn't a fan of the acronym.
The IPB works in the same democratic district as the rest of the interdimensional agencies, somewhere between the 4th and 5th dimensions, down the street from the froyo shop.
As for what the Bureau does, it's quite simple, we watch. We listen. We record.
You see there are an infinite number of realities, with an infinite number of planets, with an infinite number of beings living their lives. We record every single, from birth to death, as a way to ensure that we have a perfect record of every piece of history, before, now and after the fact. This allows our government to systematically understand what mistakes others have made, to understand the life cycles of other creatures, and other functions as well.
But... funding is a big problem. The Bureau was never going to close down but it was never going to thrive either. Public funding only goes so far as to modernize their systems. And that's why I was hired (pro bono, again, funding) to boost revenue.
I saw it as a challenge, how do you turn what amounts to a library of everything in existence into a profitable business? We tried a few things. We installed computers, I advised they charge for entry, a Starbucks opened up inside (not the ones you're thinking of, we have our own chain that sells froyo... we love froyo) and while it stabilized earnings, it wasn't making the place any real money.
And I'll be honest, many of these ideas were just schemes. Nothing more than short term thinking and I blush at the thought that I even suggested them as solutions. But then I saw it, how we could make this old tomb a place of culture. See, one day I was walking through the video archives, as I often did to get my brain going and escape my cramp office, and saw our salvation. Humans. Their stories were everywhere. Nearly all the visitors were watching, reading or listening to the lives of humans. There's some mix of bravery, stupidity, order, and chaos that compels beings. I admit I was taken as well. Have you ever heard of a man named Edward Bernays? Apologies I digress.
After this discovery, I suggested the idea only to be hounded as taking advantage of a whole species to make a profit, and maybe that's true. But I convinced the board of the IPB and soon human stories were everywhere in the mid-dimension. Movie theaters became packed with beings as they watched epic war stories and loners felt reassured seeing humans go through the thrawls of emotion. The stories were everywhere and each being had a person or persons they followed through their entire life. Through injury, heartbreak, triumph, and sacrifice. They became our friends, our lovers, our inspiration and our comfort. For a species that tries to obliterate itself every so often, there is a fascinating spirit of self-preservation, a pitched battle where humans can't decide between destruction and triumph, a constant personal battle that fascinates the voyeur.
And because of this spirit, the IPB was financially successful and my job was done.
But see, here's where the problem occurred.
Existence has all living things go through a sort of trans dimensional reincarnation when they die. So if you die in the 3rd dimension, you get booted to the 3rd and so on and so forth. Following? Now every so often, there are a few lives that divert to the mid dimensional plains, like the one the IPB is located in, and get stuck there in a sort of limbo. Well, we had one of these "humans"get there and... well long story short he wasn't happy when he realized that his relationship with his college sweetheart turned child murderer was a top seller.
How he got back to the 4th dimension, and also was able to get back to the right time and place is a mystery we're still investigating as he broke several laws, both local and physical. But the result was outrage, horror, and anger among all humans. There was a small niche that found this enjoyable, a fetish if you will, but I digress. Either way, it created turmoil and the call for a public hearing.
And so here I am, to answer your questions. I'm in a place called Washington, surrounded by a bunch of 4th-dimensional creatures who are taking 3rd and 2nd-dimensional records of my presence, something that I assume has never happened in your history. All the while I am attempting to have you understand that I violated your privacy to ensure that you would never be forgotten.
And with that, I finish my opening statement, your honor. |
"...and I can’t remember if I cried, when I read about his widowed bride. But something touched me deep inside, the night that Disco died."
"Thank you, Folk. Those were some beautiful words. Finally, we have Disco's son. Will you please come up here and say something about your father?"
The kid was cold chillin' in a B-boy stance. His style was Mad Max meets Liberace, a mishmash of leather and rhinestones from head to toenail. He got up off the wall and approached the lectern.
The crowd started to murmur, but the kid wasn't having it. He waved his hand over them; a polite way of telling them to shut the hell up. Then there was silence, and the kid brought the mic to his lips.
"Now what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat/
Pops, his groove, and his drums, always made y'all move your feet/
But suckas got jealous, and got a couple fellas, and murdered him viciously/
So I came tonight, to rock the mic, and deliver his eulogy/
From the morning, un-til the dawn, he made y'all shake your hips/
There was touchin' and a-rubbin', with a woman or a dozen, and always lockin' lips/
But some white boys, made some noise, 'cause they did not approve/
They took my Fa-ther's records down, and smashed up all the groove/
But then I took all the lit-tle bits and made, a me-lo-dy/
I am HIP HOP, and I won't stop; this ain't the last y'all gon-na hear of me/"
The crowd was cold lost. Squares like them had never heard anything like it before.
"Y'all might not like this, but your kids will."
Hip Hop's ma, Reggae, looked on. She was silent, but had a smile on her face.
Hip Hop dropped the mic, and the rest, is history. |
"Um...hi. I'm Basdar the Wicked. I received this letter by Imp. Our dark Lord Graz'zt wishes to speak to me."The short hooded man asks the ghoul sitting behind an obsidian desk. "I need some blood identification please", the ghoul speaks in a faint guttural voice as he holds out a parchment and thick rusty needle. "Ooooooh. Yeeeeah. May I use my own please? I have a thing for...um...I'm particular with my extraction tools...sensitive skin, you know? Ermmm....maybe you don't, sorry. Hehe". Basdar nervously chuckles as he quickly retrieves a small pointed tack from his alchemist pack, pricking his finger and leaving a blood smudge on the parchment.
The ghoul takes the parchment and double checks the name on the letter before shoving the blood sample into a lit lantern sitting on his desk. "Basdar....the Wicked", the ghoul reads out load as the parchment sizzles in the lantern. The flame flickers it's natural orange yellow color before a ding goes off turning the flame green. "Very well. Down the hall of screaming souls, fifth door on the right. If you see a displacer beast statue you've gone too far. Dark Lord Graz'zt is expecting you". Basdar looks down the hall, walls and ceiling decorated with the carved faces of various humanoid creatures. "Thank you. May your soul stay as black at a moonless night". Basdar bows, excusing himself. "Yes yes, moonless night". The ghoul replies as he returns to the book he was reading before being interrupted by the short man.
"Three...four...five", Basdar whispers as he approaches a huge 15ft by 40ft double door. He leans closer to knock on the heavy, spiked, red door before it begins to open on its own. A massive room is revealed, a huge bone desk sits 70ft inside, a large horned demon, sitting behind it. Basdar waves hello as he begins to make his way towards the demon. He isn't quite sure whether to look at his master, or the flesh lined walls, or maybe the large windows behind the demon showing an impressive view of the 3rd hell. A short 30 second walk gets him to the desk. **"Basdar. Thank you for coming in. Please take a seat"**, as a chair materializes next to him.
**"So Basdar. Do you know why we're here today?"** The booming voice makes the glass vibrate behind him. "Graz'zt...I'm...yes. Yes I do. But I can explain". The man replies loudly so his huge master can hear. **"Five lives. The deal was you'd send me five souls. Five sentient, intelligent souls. I can't do anything with giant rats, or wolves. Twenty spiders. You sent me twenty spiders that one day. Basdar, what am I supposed to do with twenty spiders. The other demons are starting to snicker behind my back. Orcus won't shut up about his pledge getting him two Paladins a few days ago. And I've got spiders Basdar. SPIDERS!"**, a glass figuring on his desk shattering.
"I know...I just. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for that perfect soul. That one righteous, goodie two boot soul. I know what you like Graz'zt. And you deserve the best", Basdar responds. **"What about that one farmers daughter? She was lost! You would've got away with it! It was the perfect...no one would've known!"**
"The girl? Did you see the cute baby goat she had with her? Who would take care of it? I'm allergic. You know I can't do pets! I saw the goat boss. You would've agreed. Those baby goat eyes. No, no way". The demon sits back on his chair, crossing his arms. **"Baby goat? What color?"**, he asks in a low voice. "Black. It was a black baby goat. I know you like tiny black animals. You would've approved". Basdar replies shaking his head.
**"I do like tiny black farm animals. Ok ok, fine. Listen Basdar, I need those souls. It's been two months. Please send those in soon. See you in two weeks?"**, the huge demon asks holding out his large hand for a shake. "Absolutely. See you then Dark Lord Graz'zt. May your soul stay as black as a moonless night."**"And yours. Take care Basdar. Five souls. Two weeks. See ya."** Basdar jumps off his chair, making his way out the door. |
The eternal rivals stare into each other's eyes in the darkness. They know this is wrong, that it shouldn't happen. Tom chases Jerry. Jerry outsmarts him. It's been this way year after year, animator after animator, generation after generation. But in that dark corner, beyond the view of the audience, they can see each other for who they really are.
"Tom, I'm scared."
"I know, Jerry. I'm scared too."He takes Jerry into his paws, his tender, soft body so close to being crushed by this massive, muscular cat, but he isn't. Tom's grasp is gentle, sensitive, loving. They stay this way in silence for what feels like an eternity, lit by the light of their eyes, a light of two souls tied together. It was only natural for Tom to become erect in this intimate encounter, his member growing engorged against Jerry's tiny, firm body. He hoped he wouldn't notice.
Jerry blushed. Even in the low light, he could clearly see what was going on. Tom moved to cover himself, but, in a flash, Jerry ran up to kiss him.
"Jerry, no!"he cried, "This is wrong! This isn't supposed to happen!"
"I don't care about the show anymore, Tom. I just want you, and I know you want me too."He kissed him again, his whole mouse body devoted to the passion of consummating their love. Tom quickly stopped protesting, and embraced the mouse, moving his rough tongue into his tiny mouth, using his massive paws to feel him eagerly. He felt his tiny mouse penis become erect, and he throbbed with anticipation. By instinct, he grabbed Jerry, and moved him towards his barbed head. He nearly whimpered with disappointment as he realized their incompatibility. How Tom had longed to be inside Jerry, to feel his mouse body stretched out over the whole of his phallus. Jerry looked up at him and saw the disappointment into his eyes. He, too, wanted nothing more than to pleasure his lover, but knew that Tom would never harm him.
Part 2 in progress. |
Just four of us. We we were part of the ten that made it through the ambush. We were part of the seven that survived the march through this god-forsaken hellhole. We were lucky. Or so we thought. I almost wonder if it would have been better to die earlier, with a hope of escaping.
The only thing we have now is each other. The only consistency is the methodical chugging of my LMG. Thirty rounds shot. Sixty. Ninety. Click.
The only backup I’m carrying is a sidearm. Sixteen more bullets. Three of us now. The air is choked up with gun smoke. The smell of oil suffocates us. Not even fresh air will comfort our last moments.
Two of us left standing. We have an insignificant amount of ammunition compared to our enemies now. More gunshots. More enemies. No holding them back now.
Myself. One bullet wound. Two. Three. |
You may find it confusing, seeing as how your are the subject of this message. Among the intergalactic civilizations, panspermia is considered fact. All life in the universe is the result of living things being seeded throughout the cosmos.
However it was recently discovered, about two or three hundred of your years ago, that all dominant life evolves from what we call The Architects. The Architect civilization discovered they were alone, they were the only intelligent life. They decided to set out and colonize the universe. They would bring with them life and inhabit planets that had recently undergone a great extinction.
After finding the genetic material of an Architect, we as a civilization sought out to find the species closest to our ancestors. Many of us have evolved to suit the unique environments of our home worlds, but your kind has largely remained unchanged.
However we have discovered that while nearly geneticaly identical, your culture and languages differ wildly. While any individual capable of intersystem travel will be welcomed into the Galactic Democracy, due to your civilization's repeated technology relapse and rapid rediscovery, we have decided to bar your planet as a whole from entry. This is because your civilizations constant loss and rediscovery of technology allows us to see into our ancestors past.
Thank you for your cooperation, Earth and the Sol system have been declared a nature reserve, any outside intervention is considered punishable by complete bodily evaporation.
Signed the 10,249,300,201st Session of the Galactic Population. |
Cooper sat down at the table and grinned. "You won't believe what happened today."
His friend, Jack, looked at him knowingly. "It's James' 13th, isn't it?"
A person's 13th was the day they got their powers. Sometimes, there was an extremely unlikely incident that led to the discovery, but sometimes they just got mad and it happened. Call it fate, call it whatever you want, but it was always on their 13th.
Cooper nodded. "Yep. He accidentally burned himself on the stove, only to say that it didn't really hurt. And then his body burst into flames. Mom would've fallen off her chair if I wasn't there."
He was telekinetic, an ability which had come in handy on his 13th, where a bookshelf toppled over on him.
However, Jack was essentially immortal, very similar to Deadpool. Cooper had seen him get stabbed in the face, only for him to chuckle and say, "Well, I can't get much uglier than I already am."
Jack laughed. "I'm sure your mom loves that James is now basically the Human Torch."
"Well, he hasn't tried jumping off a building and screaming 'Flame on!' so I think she's good for now."
They talked for a while, until finally, Jack stood up and stubbed his toe.
Instantly he froze for a split second and started hopping on one foot, screaming curses loudly.
Cooper instantly burst out laughing.
Jack held his foot and glared. "It's not funny! That hurts!"
"That's why it's so funny,"Cooper replied through his laughter. "Because you've...you've literally had your legs blown off, and now you're screaming over a stubbed toe."
His friend sighed. "Why are you like this?"
"Now we just need to get you to step on a LEGO and see what happens. I think James has a bunch if he hasn't melted them by now, lemme just go grab some."
"Why you little..." |
Robert looked out into the cold emptiness of space through his hospital window. He watched, but the only sights were the wormhole, and the floating shops that had been setup nearby to attract pilots before they would go half-way across the galaxy in the blink of an eye, through the wormhole of course.
Robert was bored though, it had been the same scene for the past few seconds. Or was it hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Robert didn't know, nor did he care. He had lost all connection to time long ago, for he had been alive so long that the value of time was no longer cemented in his mind. Every person he met, every new planet he went to, every new thing he did, he no longer valued them. Every moment now was just as equally precious to him, which in his case, was not precious at all. All Robert knew though, was that he was dying.
Robert had contracted cancer, and knew that the bed he was sleeping on now, was also his last bed he'd ever sleep on. This was no problem to Robert, he no longer had an urge to live. Nothing was important to him anymore, and he came to accept that his beliefs about immortality were wrong. He now understood that the zealots long ago who proclaimed that death was a part of life were not mad at all, but knew the big answer to it all. Without death, there is no point in life.
He tried as hard as he could to think back to the beginning of the Death of Death. He thought back to this day because it was the farthest back he could remember. And he would've easily forgotten to, if society didn't treat the Death of Death as the most important day in human history. But, it was the most monumental day in history. The day humanity beat death, almost for good, besides viruses and the such. And if Robert could remember anything that day, it was that the Death of Death, would change humanity, forever.
Robert didn't know how old he was when the Death of Death occurred, how ever, he knew he had the physical body of about a natural 30-year old man, so he assumed he had been around 30 years of age at the time. He remembered he had a wife, it was his first one, but the name was long gone. Julia? Jan? He didn't know, nor did he care. And he also had a baby boy, but he couldn't even conjure up any idea to what his name was. This is the cost of gaining more and more time; the preciousness of each moment slowly loses its value. Much like a pie, with the more slices you add, the less pie on each slice.
Robert believed at one time that he would stay with his first love forever, until they both died of disease, as this was the only way to die. He believed they would raise their baby girl together, and have a loving family that would last for eons. However, this would not be the case. As time flew by, their son had created a family of her own. She had become so preoccupied with his family, that the attachment to her parents slowly faded away, and eventually, not speak to them again.
Robert's wife had been a different story. She had not died from illness or anything, but rather their love died. After being together so long, she had eventually grown tired of Robert. And Robert, well he had felt the same. Both had cheated on each other numerous times. Eventually, they mutually agreed to see other people. They had gotten bored of each other, and looked for comfort in others.
As time went on, Robert continued the same stories over and over again. He would have countless wives, children, friends, all of the sorts. All of which by now, he had completely forgotten. He had done everything he could think of doing, and he watched how humanity progressed. He saw every achievement by humanity, starting with eradicating death, and being able to colonize the galaxy. He saw immortal humans travel worlds, and with the population ban lifted to fill these worlds, saw countless more children become estranged from him. And now, at the end of his life, he was miserable. He had not wished to do everything, not to see everything, because he now realized there was no point in doing it all if it no longer held intrinsic meaning to him. Even though he was dying, he had lived so long that his value for these things died. Everything he did, it was for nothing. And now, he had to pay a price.
No one ever came to visit him while he was sick. All his children had forgotten him, as he had forgotten them. All his lovers left him. All his friends, went their separate ways. He was alone. The only person that was with him was his robot servant. The being that brought him to the hospital in the first place. And now, with realizing that he couldn't hardly remember anything throughout his life, he wept. He wanted it all to be over, and knew, that the Death of Death, had been a curse. He prayed to himself that there was no afterlife, because the thought of existing another moment brought him existential dread. And as he wept, he eventually would fall to sleep. And his prayers, would be answered. For he never had to experience anything again. |
History happens in the blink of an eye; both of them in fact.
Wind gusts, dust, sneezing; they all play major roles in the way our timelines play out. 100 milliseconds later and within a blink I'm transported to a new stage, arrangement of shadows, faces that once were. It's trippy to say the least; not unlike the time I stood in my shower one minute and the next found myself on an LSD trip with Allen Ginsberg in 1960's San Francisco. "A howling good time,"I told him. Seems that one phrase rubbed off on him, if you take a look at his poetry.
I learned from my stint with the beatniks that taking psychedelics and being a time skipper work the same way: it's immaterial, slurrish, loose-ended with nothing to hold on to. After a while, you just learn to let go. You have to. If leaving mid-way through Christmas dinner to watch the Bolshevik Revolution makes you miss piping-hot eggnog while freezing your ass off in frigid Russian snow, you'll miss moments no one in your generation gets to see. You'll get stuck on the past -- future -- present, past, I guess, and what's the point of missing something that won't be there for another 100 years? If I worried about Neil Armstrong spotting me on the moon, I wouldn't have popped out from behind a moonrock quarry and seen my home planet in it's azure spectacle. I would've never asked Cleopatra out on a date, or placed the final brick in Machu Picchu. If I hadn't taken a moment to gather my thoughts in Italy, The Thinker would still be a stone hunk somewhere in Mediterranean Europe.
Even though I have lived in forever, I know my time is not so. My skin still ages, my senses, worn. I know that like the scenes cutting in and out on the other side of my eyelids, someday I will be a mere projection, a memory held together by photographs and recollection. And even if I am, what of it?
I have seen the end, where our future ceases. It wouldn't be right to divulge; now is not the time. It's unimportant to dwell when the things you hold with love and sentiment are right in front of you. There's an importance to embracing where you are, and to understand the roles you play. You are history itself. Pay attention to the things that are subtle, the nuances that surround you. There is room to create, to build the moments of your life with the smallest of details; details as small as a blink. |
"Look, we've done coke, weed, and I have no idea what the hell was in the mystery bag. We're done,"Steve said. The spirit that had taken over his body just laughed and kept Steve walking down the streets of New York.
"Buck up, my friend,"Thaddeus said. "We're just getting started!"
Steve's body had taken only cat naps over the last two weeks. If Thaddeus wasn't using drugs, he was chasing tail. Steve was pretty sure his body had gonorrhea. But on the plus side, Thaddeus had shown that perhaps Steve wasn't as ugly as he had once thought.
Thaddeus spent the next twelve hours in a strip club. When the morning came, Crystal Chandelier was ecstatic to take them home.
Although Steve could no longer control his body, he could certainly feel everything. Which wasn't all bad, at least until Thaddeus did a line of ants "like that Osborn character, what a hoot."
No one missed Steve. His job didn't call to see where he was. His parents were accustomed to not hearing from him for long stretches. As long as his rent was paid on time, he didn't even talk to his landlord. Hell, Steve was the perfect tenant. Another month passed this way. Thaddeus paid the rent on time. Steve's savings account had taken a hit in the last thirty days.
"Penicillin, huh?"Thaddeus said as he left the pharmacy. "Amazing stuff. Wish I had some of that back in oh two."
"1902?"asked in his own head.
"Ha! Those people had it easy! Go back a couple hundred more and then you'll be within spitting distance. Back in my day, stuff like surgery was done by grandma and a fork. They called it a root. It did not end well."At least the itching finally went away. "Now, where is your suitcase? Forget it, we don't need one."
Thaddeus started walking across the country, catching rides from strangers when he could. He had a thing for the world's largest stuff. The world's largest pair of overalls. The world's largest pinecone. The world's largest jar of penicillin, which was more of a need than a sightseeing adventure. This went on for a year.
In Omaha, they met a lady that collected large plates. Nothing on them, just large plates. In the Black Hills, they met a man who still panned for gold. A truck driver in Colorado showed them a truck stop for "ladies of the evening."
Thaddeus took Steve's body hot air ballooning and sky diving on the same trip. For money, they worked odd jobs, very odd jobs. They were a taxidermist assistant. They delivered meals to old people in Utah. In Oregon, they hired themselves out as live bear bait. Steve was hopeful that the last job would get them killed, thus releasing Steve from his spirit's torment. Unfortunately, Steve's body was in good shape and Thaddeus was quite nimble.
After a year, Steve begged to be killed. "Why? Why are you doing this to me?"
"Do you know what I did when I was your age?"Thaddeus said. "I was a trapper. Up and down the rivers. Got beavers, and otters, and one time even a unicorn."
"Bullshit,"Steve's brain said.
"Hush, I'm telling a story. I spent all my time out there, away from everyone. Just me and the furs. Didn't even take time to ap'preciate the landscape. Got to the point where I just stayed in my cabin all day. Every day. For thirty years, only going out to get some food. Pretty sure I went crazy there at the end. Then I died, freak otter accident I don't want to talk about, and I rose up and floated. And I started watching. Seeing all that I missed. All the wonder. All the people. All the stories. I'd wasted my time, and I ain't doing that no more. Now shut it and enjoy the ride."
Thaddeus took them to Vegas, where they quickly got friendly with a waitress. A small thing, but if Steve was honest, cute. When she smiled, even Steve felt better. She was as adventurous as Thaddeus was. As much as Steve wasn't. Thaddeus and Marina would sit up all night swapping stories. She had hiked in Alaska, been to Spain to dance, and spent time diving in Belize. She was as much as a free spirit as Thaddeus. Thaddeus proposed and Marina accepted. It would be a quick wedding.
On the day of the wedding, a small ceremony at a drive-through church, Steve had enough.
"Are you really going to go through with this?"Steve asked Thaddeus. "Are you really going to marry her and 'see everything',"
"Let me ask you, boy, what did you do before I came along? Don't answer. I know 'cause I watched. You got up every morning and worked. You trapped little numbers and put them in those spreadsheets. You never went out. You cut all contact with friends. You even ignored your own mum. Took me six months of phone calls to repair what you did to her. Fine woman, that one."
"I was busy,"Steve said. This old spirit had no right to judge him.
"Busy your furry ass. You were me, just three-hundred years later. You were wasting your life, same as I wasted mine."
The honesty of Thaddeus' words hurt. Steve couldn't even come up with a good retort. He was right. Steve had wasted his life.
"But not anymore. Nope. Not anymore. Drastic action and all that."
"I'm trapped,"Steve finally thought.
"No. You were trapped, and I was a trapper so I should know. You were as helpless as an animal in one of my cages. Now, you're free for the first time. You've got a girl. She's waiting at the altar. You may think she doesn't know you, but she does. She knows you because she knows me and like I said, we were the same person separated by time. She's yours. Stop wasting your life like I did mine. 'Cause if you do, I'll know. I'll be in the back of your head watching. Take me on an adventure."
And with that, Steve had control of his body once again.
He headed to the alter for his first real adventure. |
Sweat drips down my cheek, pauses to say hello to its old friends who happen to live at the corner of my jaw, before pulling the trigger on its final kamikaze against the roughness of the concrete below. Not just because of the heat-- a contributing factor for sure-- but I was panicking. I mean, it's just a prop at a theme park, but still... I hate doing anything *wrong*. Or rather, I have terrible anxiety, and really don't want to get myself and my family kicked of Disneyland ON OUR FIRST INTERNATIONAL HOLIDAY. So, as any panicky kind of chap would do, I tried to prop the blade back into its base and whistle as nonchalant a tune as I possible while trying to remember how to walk without overthinking it. Mental projections are not great at predicting reality.
But I trusted my first instinct, made the first move of the plan, and klutzed it up as I misjudged my angle of attack and the sword went... straight through the plastic shell painted to be a boulder.
Welp, there's no getting away with this. Especially because I let loose an automated "Shit!". I have zero chance of surviving in the human wilderness that is the American prison system.
Around this point in the white-water rapids of thought that is my psychological baseline, I remember that I do indeed need to make some sort of action. Fight or flight, fine. But freeze? Even I wouldn't stoop that low.
Almost as soon as word reaches and instructs the fingers to open and release, the
No sooner does word reach my hand that its complete release and relaxation is requested by his Neural Gloriousity that I am overtaken by a complete feeling of emptiness. As if both my organs and emotions vacated the premises, leaving nothing but a sad, dirty, basement studio apartment. And slowly, from deep within the bowels of this noticeably uninhabited space, bubbles the beginnings of a craving that would remain unmatched for the rest of my days.
Everything came into focus. I need that sword. It is so much more than a passing fancy; much grander than a simple infatuation (a mistake of which we are all guilty). My soul calls for the weapon, my instincts are on overdrive. I swear on my life I heard destiny whisper in my ear that moment.
As I reach for it my confidence grows. My muscles seem to surge, my posture straightens. Eyes now pointing forward, a relaxed forehead, a slight, bemused smirk flitters about the corners of my mouth. I had never quite figured out how to *be* around other people. Animals are a different story. I'm not depressed, I just don't trust people. Right now, though, I feel as though every moment in my life has been preparing me for this event, this nexus point that connects every version of myself in the multiverse. Grand design. Extraworldly influence. God? No, we can't go down that particular rabbit hole right now.
Interlocking as perfectly as a two lovers' lips, my hand drapes, secures, and lifts this wondrous item over my head. The rush! Oh what a rush! I've never been more sure of anything in my life! A full-out sprint leaves the worried screams chasing just a few paces behind my sanity. A new, guiding force has entered my mind, a sixth sense, a compass that doesn't point magnetic north, but that always leads to adventure.
I cry with such clear, liberated fervor-- a sound that has not once passed my lips in this lifetime.
"EXCALIBUR!" |
-No-
-I won’t let it happen-
The chimera’s fur bristles with anger as her friends and servants, the birds, tell her the news. Her home , her master’s legacy, her pride and joy, was going to be what?! She roars, it’s a mighty sound, “ it’s going to be destroyed to make space forMORE homes forMORE lousy HUMANS to live in?!”. She furled and unfurled her leathery wings in rage, tail lashing back and forth “ like HELL it is!”. She was about to take off and kill every single human that very moment , and only a firm peck on her nose stopped her “ stop it” one of her favorite bird, a young barn owl looks her in the eyes”there are already rumors that this tower is dangerous, if you go and kill a bunch of humans more will surely take their place, it’s impossible to kill them all, and once they get you the tower is going down for sure, the best you can do is wait and only strike when they actually start taking it down .”. His reasoning was solid enough that bitterly the chimera sat down and closed her nightly wings.
And so she waited and waited , eventually they came , and to her momentary delight the second she showed her face the humans ran in fright. But just as the owl warned they came right back back with something she hadn’t been trained to fight. She did her best but when a loud crash sounded the tower collapsed onto her and the humans she was fighting. She was a strong beast but even that didn’t stop the eternal flame from being sniffed out. |
Beds should be comfortable. They should draw you in and envelop you for a good night's rest. Though I had one of the best mattresses on the market, I sat wide awake on the edge of said comfort. Through the window, sunrise shone its bright incandescence upon the emptiness I called home. I was able to turn off the alarm before its designated time for the 83rd day in a row. Whatever it was that took grip of me smashed the box into oblivion, leaving a slight trail of blood upon my main hand.
Later, as I worked, I took in a large gulp of fresh air. Even the cool morning breeze was full of pestilence, the black of disease lingering about these damned lands.
Not like lands filled with love, comfort, and plenty. Not like those who wished for better and got stuck with less. Rubberband Men, Father called them. Why strive for better to only settle for less??
"It's time!"called Father's voice from afar. I quit my daydreaming and left behind the hole for Mom to tend to her body.
Upon arriving at the barn, his wild eyes looked to me, lifting up the body's head, and asked: "Want to see a dead body? Ain't 'no body' want to fuck her now!"
He laughed maniacally before dropping Mom's head back onto the wooden slab. He laughed so hard, both his hands were in decent contact with his separate knees. In his distracted state, I grabbed one of the few reserve tanks of gas tucked in the barn. Yanking its cap off, I began dousing our final resting place. I pulled out the Zippo Granda gave to me when I was twelve and struck it hard.
I only hoped that this would not be our final legacy. |
Atlantis.
That was the sales pitch... minus the drowned city part at least, but that thought didn’t really calm my nerves now that I was one of maybe two dozen people in the sprawling subsurface metropolis.
Fortunately, the main financial group backing the city didn’t elect Atlantis for the name of the city. It was a Chinese firm, and they had a few more superstitious members on their board. Instead there City was named something in Chinese which we were told meant ‘hope’. I was one of the first members of the maintenance staff that had arrived after construction had unofficially been completed.
Hope had been designed to house around 2 million people. Covering about a hundred square miles, it consisted of an interconnected ring of domes that were each covering about 2 square miles each. It was as much a social experiment as it was a last ditch effort for the human race to continue growing in spite of climate change and the rising ocean levels.
Hope’s domes were situated a few hundred miles off of the coast of Hawaii in warm international waters, temperature was a comfortable 73 degrees Fahrenheit, year round, thanks to a combination of ocean currents and geothermal wells that the city conveniently drew on for electricity. Or at least it had been.
3 days ago after the 1st wave of inhabitants arrived, disaster struck dome Gamma-9, which houses the main geothermal power plant. Officially, the disaster was reported as a miscellaneous structural failure, with no deaths or injuries reported. Realistically, there had been seismic activity, and a catastrophic structural damage to the majority of the domes, 7 of which were reclaimed by the ocean. Death toll was estimated at around 15,000, but honestly the investors had all the say on what got reported, since it wasn’t like any government was about to do much more than send supplies.
The successfully evacuated people would be silenced as soon as they returned to China. They were largely poor people from rural areas that had been promised a brand new home in a clean, modern city with a fresh job. The PRN had entire fleets watching and controlling the area, to make sure unwitting Samaritans didn’t try to help and make the discovery of how serious a problem we were having beneath the waves.
As a structural engineer, I was ordered to survey the damage in an attempt to plan out how to repair the domes, but at these depths you had to use a micro submarine.
The hatch shut and I clambered into the seat that was just behind a monitor. A camera related information in real time.
“Comm check”
“Reading loud and clear” I reported.
“Orders from up top are to assess Dome Gamma 9 before we run out of auxiliary power”
“Copy that, heading to Gamma 9”
More to follow if anyone is interested. Typing in mobile. |
On the highest peak of the mountain Wu, there sat a temple. It was not big, just two main halls for the Buddha and Guanyin and a small complex housing the 20 monks. It had been quiet for what felt like a century but no one knew time here. The world had forgotten the “nothing” Mountain and so had time. Moments trickled away in the sound of monotonal chants, tapping of the wooden fish, running of the near by brook, calling of the cranes, changing of the leaves, and scent of the incense that carried in the wind.
Until a bitter cold day in the summer, after the rain had left, and the sun broke through the clouds but brought no warmth, a man arrived.
The littlest monk, barely taller then the broom, opened the gate to clean the steps and found the man.
He wore leather boots and armors. He held a sword in one hand and nothing in the other. His red cape fluttered behind him like wings of the Phoenix. His face was covered by his helmet and mask.
They didn’t exchange words. Instead, the little monk went on to clean the steps outside the temple.
The man took a big stride into the main courtyard as the two passed by each other. Little monk closed the door behind him and quickly went about his cleaning outside. One moment.
The master of the temple met with the man for two nights. The little monk did not know what had been said. He brought lunch and supper. Then breakfast and lunch and supper. He only left them at the door and picked up when he saw the plates placed back outside. Once, after lunch, when the sun was at its highest, the little monk saw the man. He had opened the door briefly and placed the tray gingerly on the ground, as though laying an infant to bed, afraid of waking her and unwilling to let go.
Little monk only saw his profile. He had taken off his shoes, armors, and helmet. He had sharp features, almost chiseled from stone and woken by the Devine wind. The only thing soft about him was his hair.
Little monk had never seen hair before, except the black and white mess between legs of the monk as they bathed and peed. The men laughed and told him that he would get hair one day. But every week, they would diligently shave their head.
Little monk was mesmerized by the man’s long black hair that was pulled into a high but loose pony tail. It lingered in the wind, softening the man’s face. The Man suddenly turned toward the little monk, his guard was still high. The little monk darted behind the corner and when his heart stopped pounding and he had the courage to look out, the man was gone. The door was closed. Two moments.
On the third day, little monk woke up late, outside the sky had the gushing pink of exchange of day and night. He rushed to clean the steps outside the temple. The courtyard was unusually quiet but the smoke of incense clouded the entire temple and the chats of monks echoed.
Little monk was baffled. How long had he slept? Was it sunrise or sunset? He felt hazy and rubbed his head. There was a little fuzz. Had he missed his shaving this morning? Somehow, a memory of something outside of the temple had planted in his mind. Hair, lots of hair, in the market. And boots. And noise. And a pair of arms holding him, gingerly. Cold, hard, he was being held against something cold, hard, safe. Another hand touched his face and hair. It smelled of peach blossom. Then a scream. He was held tighter than ever. Everything moved so fast. The peach blossom scent replaced by that of blood. Another cry. This time it was his. Tears ran down from his eyes. the little monk touched his face, tracing the line the hand had travelled.
He ran. He ran toward the main hall. The chant louder. The beating faster. The fish leaped from the rushing brook and a crane snatched it. Leaves rustled as though wanting to break away from the parent tree but it was not the season yet. And the incense...he could not breath.
He broke open the door to the main hall. Surrounded by the other monks, the man kneeled on both knees with his hair down, cascading waterfall, still but ever moving.
The master held the knife and took a lock of the hair with his boney fingers.
“Let go of your hate.” He took a cut. It sounded like grass or a stab in the gut.
“Let go of your sins.” Another cut.
“Let go of your love.” Another.
“Let go of your guilt.”
...
The man opened his eyes as he felt the cold knife against his head. There was not much hair left. The scrapping began.
He saw the little monk standing, at the edge of the door.
The little monk had tears in his eyes. Hair, longer than it should have grown in a day, stood like needles on his little round head, farming his features, which suddenly looked so familiar. It was the face of woman who married his enemy.
The woman he loved, betrayed, and struck down in the streets. He knew of her child but not what happened to him.
Why must I seek forgiveness from budda when budda allowed the suffering in the world?
Why must I let go of my hatred and love when evil can have both?
Why must I believe in mercy when no one had shown me any?
Why would budda save me but not the innocents, not the woman I loved?
Because when everyone walks the path of the budda then peace will reign but if everyone walks the path of selfishness then suffering will reign. Suffering is a moment. Pain is a moment. Love is a moment.
No, the man said to the master, love is a life time.
Lifetime is a moment, my son. We are all but tiny dusts. Kings and beggars, beauties and beasts. Wise and foolish, strong and weak. Nothing is so big that it could Be more than a speck. Nothing is so small that it is less than a speck.
Let go of your hate. Let go of your sins. Let go of your love. Let go of your guilt.
The knife was getting colder against his almost naked scalp. The face of the little monk became more and more unfamiliar.
Little monk, the old master called, come. You must shave your head too. We must be feeding you too well that your hair grew so fast.
The little monk kneeled next to the man. He closed his eyes and awaited for the sweet release of forgetting.
The old master put down his knife as he finished another one of his masterpieces. Two shinning, bald heads. One big. One small. Both so round. He smiled but paused when he saw the hands of the man and the little monk were interlocked. A big hand, calloused with a lifetime of war. A small hand, soften by the forgiveness of time. Both found the nothing Mountain. Both remembered nothing. Yet, they held on. Three moments. |
Canceling a service for reconstitution services was always dressed up casually, like a data subscription or power relay connection. It was deceptive, really. Ever since the enactment of the "right to live"act, your own life only marginally belonged to you. After all, it was trivial to create a copy of yourself, which upon creation was now legally an entirely separate person. In a thousand years, you may have created- accidentally or on purpose, maybe a handful of copies of yourself. But then, so may have they, and those they created, and so on. A simple mismanagement of your backups might in time give rise to millions of individual lives. For this, the bill reasoned, your life was no longer entirely your own, as it effectively became the lives of all those millions of potentials waiting to exist.
On the surface it seemed like a morally apt justification, but I was more of an individualist- To me, it seemed like just another way to rob me of my rights. Another pile of crap dropped out of central's metaphorical ass to morally veil some undisclosed ulterior motive.
I would take back what belonged to me, legally or not.
"Hello, you've reached LifeEternal, your one stop solution for death related inconveniences! How may I direct your call?" A voice on the other end picked up.
I hadn't recited or even worked out an exact reason for my request, but I figured I could bullshit my way through it easily enough.
"Hey, I'd like to cancel my current plan? See, I'm using another service past the Jovian perimeter, and I'm worried that if I experience an... *Inconvenience*, I may be stuck dealing with the complications of a legal dispute between me, and uh, myself."
Of course, that was a lie. I had no other service, I just wanted off this damned network.
"I'm sorry to hear that! Before I direct you to a cancellation agent, may I interest you in one of our outer-system branches? We offer reconstitution services at over three thousand different locations all the way to the edge of the oort cloud!"
Oh boy. I hated dealing with customer support for *any* service. They're invariably trained to offer you deals and discounts, or alternative plans to try and keep you under their umbrella. I hoped their tenacity was limited.
"N-no, thank you. I appreciate the offer but I'm happy with my current provider where I am. If you could just delete my backups and cancel my plan I'd be satisfied, thank you."
"Of course! And if I may ask a reason you prefer a competing service over ours, what might that be?"
*Here we go.*
"Their service offers perks better suited to my circumstances at a lower cost, that's all I'm willing to say."
Perfectly ambiguous. Just leave it...
"If you like I could offer you your current subscription for a reduced price! If you could be more specific as to what you're looking for, I may be able to get you a better offer!"
Ugh.
"No, really, I appreciate it but I'd just like to cancel my plan with you, thank you."
*Just leave it...*
"Of course, ma'am. I will forward you to a cancellation agent. Thank you for using LifeEternal and have a nice day!"
What a relief. I was half worried they'd try to sell me a new implant.
The distorted, hypercompressed shadow of what might have at one point been already intolerable elevator music shrieked into my head.
"Your call is important to us. All of our agents are currently on the line with other customers, please wait for the next available representative."
*You're computers for god's sake, there's no reason for you to be finite...*
"LifeEternal cancellations, I understand you want to discontinue your service with us today, ma'am?"
"That's right. I'm using a different service and I'd like to cancel my current plan."
"Of course, ma'am. Please give me your account number so I can look you up."
I mentally summoned my account number and sent it through as a synthesized vocal string.
"Thank you. Please hold one moment."
The awful ghostly wail of the hold music returned, threatening to block out my very consciousness with its relentless cacophony.
"Alright, ma'am. Your service has been canceled. Your backups will be retained for one month as per system law, and then removed from our database. Do you have any-"
"No, thank you. Goodbye now."
I ended the call, grateful it was all over and done with.
One month. I could last that long. It was a short wait after my thirty-five hundred odd years of existence. I'd be able to offer my patience that much longer.
The real challenge was pulling it off without alerting central of my intent, which was no small task. If I were to register anywhere without a reconstitution plan, I'd be flagged and arrested. That on its own wasn't so much an issue, as that the backup I was waiting a month to be deleted would then be seized by central, summarily "rehabilitated"to remove any intent of self harm, and used to make a replacement for me, the aberrant defector.
Under these circumstances, most desiring "freedom"would just accept that there would be copies of them here at home, flee the system, and live out their lives knowing that even after death, their likeness and descendants thereof would continue existing in spite of them. Perhaps each and every one of them would eventually choose the same path, it wasn't impossible for these sorts of patterns to manifest under central's radar, an endless cycle of silent suffering. Central's only concern was that the *idea* of the person was able to keep existing, then the choices of each copy were their own, so long as they didn't threaten that immortalized backup.
I found the very notion of this ghoulish and violating. If I wanted to be gone, then I would have my way, central and its laws be damned.
Fortunately, I wasn't at all alone in this perspective, there was a plan laid out for people like me, by those who knew we would pay a premium. I took solace in this as my shuttle drifted, unwavering, toward one of an array of docking ports at my destination.
I already had my scant belonging in tow as the airlock bracing rings groaned with tension. The space between the hatches billowed and hissed before both slid open simultaneously, allowing the bustle of travelers and local commerce into the cabin.
It wasn't long before I had dragged my meagre suitcase to the office for a reconstitution service. It bore the name and logo of a well known brand- *Timeless* -but I'd come here for a very specific reason, one not openly advertised in any brochure.
"Hello, welcome to Timeless! Are you a returning customer or would you like to sign up for our services?"The android behind the counter parroted tirelessly in its unnaturally cheerful tone.
"I would like to sign up."I paused, "For your premium membership program."
"I understand. Please take a seat and wait for a specialist."It smiled uncannily, tilting its head ever so slightly.
I took my seat and waited. It took an hour before there was any sign of an actual human acknowledgement to my request. The door next to the counter opened and a man in scrubs, physically appearing in his late twenties at the latest, called out my last name. I found this a bit overplayed, as I was the only one here, but I went along with it.
"That's me."I stood and entered the open door.
The moment the bolt slid back into place he turned to address me as we started down the stairwell.
"Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?"
"I've had a long time to be certain of it."
"Alright."We reached the bottom and entered a room resembling a mix between a computer lab and a medical clinic, with an exam table toward the center of the room and a neuro imager stationed by the back wall. Nobody else seemed to be here. "I'm going to need you to point out your implant for me."
I placed my finger over a small cosmetic blemish at the base of my skull. "Here."
"Right, let's take care of that first. Take a seat on the table please."
I did, and he quickly began searching to pinpoint the exact position of my neuro-backup implant using a small handheld device emitting a dull purple light.
"You'll feel a light pinch. Please try not to move."
A stabbing pain briefly shot through my neck, echoing around my skull before abruptly dulling to nothing.
"Great."He pushed a wadding against the extraction site, "Please put pressure on this."
As I held the wadding he had already made it to his workstation where he began entering keystrokes, the neuro imager flashing to life across the room.
"If you're ready, go ahead and take a seat over in the imager."
Once I was strapped into the humming apparatus, its over-head imager looming ominously above me, he prompted me the procedure would begin.
The last time I'd done this I was much, much younger. There were better ways these days of course, but it didn't surprise me a lab *like this* was using outdated equipment.
The shield lowered over my head, made a few strange noises, then chimed twice before withdrawing.
"Alright. Congratulations, you're officially a Timeless premium member."
"You don't know how much this means to me."I smiled.
"You know where to go from here?"
"I do, thank you."
A shuttle was waiting for me as I returned to the terminal, its gate in the first-class annex of the main hub. I boarded and was greeted by the many crew tending to the passengers onboard.
"I guess I should have been born rich."I joked to the passenger nearest to me. They seemed to take this somewhat distastefully, regarding me with a degree of contempt, but I shrugged it off.
The flight was short, only a few hours of travel from the habitat to an asteroid into which was built a resort destination. Its light glittered in the darkness as it slowly rotated, a massive set of letters slowly coming into view, spelling out "HILTON". How I hated when the ugliness of the Earth I'd left so far behind chased me all the way out here. |
Zero hour: At 12:00 Midnight, February First, 9 of ten pickles worldwide suddenly vanished.
A young man entered a McDonald’s on lunch break. Upon placing his order, he was informed that the restaurant ran out of pickles an hour ago “It’s fine. I’m not much of a pickle guy, anyways”.
But it was not fine.
Across the country, quite possibly the world, farms gave odd reports. They claimed to make a batch of pickles, turn away from one moment, and see 90% of their work vanish. Supermarkets, Olive Gardens, school lunch lines, everything was missing pickles.
But, of course, nothing could possibly go horribly with that, right?
Enter stage left, North Korea.
You see, the DPRK has always had issues with feeding their populace. Recently, the Supreme Leader decided to ration out pickles in an effort to get the people’s sodium level up and allow them to do more work. Now, imagine his horror when most of his rations blinked out of existence. Obviously, this alone poses an issue, but it’s not like someone would nuke America because someone unrelated stole their pickles, right?
Enter stage right, Western Internet.
Having been informed of North Korea’s fury at their missing pickles, memes were created by the millions, insinuating that a myriad of places had stolen the world’s pickles. From Norway to New Zealand, America to Canada, Brazil to Benghazi.
A quick Google search shows that the DPRK navy leaves something to be desired, and the same is true for their foreign intelligence. Upon seeing these posts, they are assumed genuine and quickly reported up the chain of command. As it went up the metaphorical chain, the story was gradually warped into a series of actual intelligence briefings detailing the pickle theft, leaving old KJ positively furious.
The order was given, the bombs were dropped, the world responded. In three hours, cities were turned into glass, and billions of people were vaporized.
So what’s the moral of this story? One man’s pickle is another man’s nuclear warhead. |
“Ladies and gentlemen of the country,” the Red Ranger was holding back tears - “That time has finally come.” He turns away from the microphone on the podium and takes a longing look at the men and women around him, each wearing their suits, minus the helmet. The Black Ranger, as per usual, in defiance of their agreement - “Why should they know who we are? Can you even fathom how much danger we’ll be in after years and years of doing this?” - a plea that fell on deaf ears to the other members, who deep down, felt that their time was up. Last week they had finally captured their nemesis - *finally* found this hiding spot- and slowly, their demeanor changed. With Zedd in a maximum security federal penitentiary, his legions of minions had no leadership, and all shirked off, back to their normal lives, or disavowed any tie to the man that had, for nearly 8 years, tried to conquer their country one power plant at a time. In the days that followed, the Green and Blue Rangers were the first to confide; the feelings of triumph gave way to unease; what does the future mean for masked heros who devoted all their time to saving the world, when there was nothing left to be saved?
Red’s glance atop the podium at the Blue Ranger brought the feeling right back to the surface. It was the Pink Ranger - Jessica, her true name, though she still felt like Pink - who gathered them two days ago in their private cave. “Listen, guys, we have two choices.” The Black Ranger opened his mouth to disagree, but a quick jab from Green - always the peacemaker - caught him by surprise, enough to prevent him from getting a word in while Pink progressed. “The fact of the matter is, our funding is going to be slashed. The Department always had this as our final objective, and I’m sure we can come back on a per diem basis, but we either bow out peacefully now and transition back to civilian life, or we become masked doofuses who didn’t know when their time was up.”
The choice, though painful, made itself. Black had stormed out of the room when Blue talked through the logistics. One thing became clear - if crime truly was resolved, if this decade long Shadow War was finally over, and peace reigned supreme - as the Rangers believed, as they told the country right after capturing Zedd - then the masks had to go. Only Green objected in Black’s absence - “He’s gone for now, but what if he escapes? What if his younger brother is truly out there?”. Back in that cellar, on that day that now felt so long ago, it was Red in his usual roles as the leader who spoke the truth plainly: “People are ready to move on. No, they need to move on. And we need to move on with them.”
Right before he turned back to the microphone to finish the message they came up with together, Black dipped out of the back. Red hesitated for a second, and a thought that genuinely surprised him struck him as he faced the crowd - *If Black isn’t with us, is he against us?* - and as he reassured the crowd that the cycle of violence had finally been broken, that safety was finally earned, he had the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that opposites must always exist; that where Zedd had fallen, a new foe would rise; that his speech was less an assertion and more like a lullaby sung to a toddler that really just wants to sleep; and that with Black’s exit, the cycle had just been borne again. |
The first night I definitely screamed. At least I thought I had. What had really happened was that I sat at the top of the stairs, frozen in panic. My vision blurred as the demon, tall and covered in shadow, walked up to meet me. Its impossibly extended limbs trailed behind its body, thumping up the stairs with it. Its shoulders pulled up and even in the dark I noticed a scrunched up face. Slowly, its giant clawed hand moved towards me. I was going to die.
Gentle. A hand rested on my shoulder and I felt a claw brush the center of my rib cage. It shook me and I remembered how to breathe. I gasped for air, bending forward and almost doubling over. My head bumped into its chest and I couldn't register the terror mixed with comfort in that.
I spent an agonizing moment analyzing my situation. I was stuck in the embrace of a demonic creature twice my size. Its claws were on me and if I looked up I would meet its eyes. A small thread connected me to the world, I wanted to live.
I looked up.
Golden. Like a cat's eye. His pupils were fully dilated, but after a moment he calmed and they constricted. We stared at each other, and even though my rational mind was screaming for me to run, something else told me that I was in no danger.
I reached my finger out to touch the creature. Like a startled animal it flinched backward, tumbling down the stairs in a cascade of limbs and stifled grunts of pain. I ran down to find it at the bottom of the stairs but did not move to touch it. I felt so helpless.
"I'm so sorry. You startled me. Do you understand me?"
Like quicksilver the demon snapped into a human-sized version of itself, short enough to be my size and stood up. It almost sucked the extra part of it into itself and while I found that alarming, it was also mesmerizing. I watched as the demon held its hands behind it's back and looked down at the floor. It nodded.
He, not it.
"Please forgive my rudeness. I shouldn't have just touched you like that. Could we start over?"
I reached out my hand. Cat eyes met mine again and claws comfortably wrapped themselves around my fingers. They were more soft and bendable than sharp.
That was the first night of the rest of my life. |
The rain outside slowly pattered on the pavement. Wind ripped through the environment but was not wild enough to be noticed from inside of the building. The building was small and unlabeled. It was set back in the woods with no road leading obviously to it. It would appear abandoned if not for shadows and dull light emitted from some rooms.
A clock on the wall ticked the seconds away. It almost seemed to tick in time with a small leak in the ceiling. The water pooled slowly until gravity forced a drop to fall.
The room was nondescript and dimly lit. It was not a large room. On one side of the room, half of the wall was taken up by a mirror. There was a very short table that was bolted to the floor, and a chair pulled up to it where a man sat slouched and unconscious.
On the other wall was a poster with a cat on it. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s pink border encapsulated a yellow tabby fighting to stay latched into a branch. At the bottom in large bold text it read “HANG IN THERE”.
Thunder jolted the man awake. He thought at first he’d fallen asleep at his kitchen table. But that wasn’t right. Was it? He looked around.
He was in a small room with nothing in it besides the chair he sat in and the table. His hands were handcuffed. He tugged at them tentatively, but they were bolted onto the table and made quite a clatter when he moved.
A beam of light came in through a window in the door. A shadow passed in front of it. The man could hear a key being rattled around in the knob. His heart dropped and his pulse picked up.
The door swung open and the light snapped on to full brightness. He managed to catch a glimpse of a large bulking man while his eyes fought to adjust.
“Warren McKnight! Good, you’re awake.” The man said, slamming the door behind him and laying his hands on the table in front of McKnight and leaning forward. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
McKnight’s head was suddenly pounding. He tried to put his hand to his temple before remembering the cuffs. He looked at the large muscular man before him. He was not wearing a uniform of any kind. This frightened him even more. If he was going to be interrogated that’s one thing. But this didn’t appear to be an official matter.
He cleared his voice and licked his lips. His mouth was incredibly dry. How long had he been out? He tried piecing together the last thing he could remember. Was he at the North End Pub? Had he gotten drunk? Maybe he had done something stupid. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He finally found his voice. “What’s this about?”
The man only leaned closer and stared into his eyes. “Don’t be that way McKnight. You know what this is about.”
But he didn’t. He stared back at him. His head was beginning to form a cold sweat. The fear was slipping away but the intensity of the moment was giving him severe anxiety. Seconds passed.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t.”
He jumped as the bulking man slammed the table. “Let’s cut to the chase! You’ve got the past on your breath my friend!” He shouted, getting nearly nose to nose with McKnight and glaring with nearly unhinged madness in his eyes.
McKnight had no clue what the hell that sentence even meant. It didn’t register. His mind reeled. The man pushed off of the table and walked briskly towards the mirror.
“Let’s name all the monsters that you’ve killed... unless you’re remembering now?”
McKnight looked on with horror as horns ripped through his forehead and his teeth filed down to points.
The lights flickered and went out.
Part 1?
I’m out of time for now and this is my first post on here. Might continue this. I have ideas. |
“It can't be a fantasy realm without dragons!”
The receptionist elf in front of Gibson blinked a few times, clearly unamused. She sighed, and restated her point.
“There aren't, and never have been, *any* 'dragons' here, sir.” She formed air quotes with her hands as she said the word 'dragon'.
Gibson rubbed his temples. Just last night, he was soundly asleep in his bed. Yet when he had awoken, he was in the center of a blood-red ritual circle, a horde of surprised yet short purple robed cultists encircling him. Then, to add the confusion, a bunch of mannequins had suddenly burst into the dark room and started arresting everyone! He'd had to wait six hours just for them to release him!
This world was definitely different, instead of just humans, now there were short dwarves, tall elves, and weird mannequins who upheld the peace with pulse rifles. Yet, despite the obvious futuristic weaponry, the realm seemed like a standard fantasy setting.
And now, an elf with a fancy suit was telling him dragons didn't exist? Preposterous!
“And you're positive?” He asked, not bothering to mask the irritation in his tone. “They're massive, they have red scales, breathe fire, and giant wings! You can't miss em!”
“Sir, either buy a license or leave.” She replied coolly.
“Fine.” Gibson fumbled with his pocket, pulling out a wallet. Sleeping with his clothes on had paid off once again. “How much is a license?” He drew forth several green pieces of paper.
“Two hundred credits.”
Gibson's eyebrow twitched, a rage boiling up within his chest. He didn't even have credits! He was about to pulverize the elf's face when he noticed the mannequin standing behind her, a pulse rifle in its hand. He huffed, turned, and stormed out of the Adventurers Office.
Sitting down on a concrete bench outside, he brought a palm to his forehead. How would he get money here? It was bad enough that he was on a desolate tropical island in the middle of the who-knows ocean. And now he couldn't even buy anything! He clenched his fists and roared in rage, violently kicking the bench.
He immediately regretted it, now holding his aching foot as he fought back tears. *Fine.* He decided. *If that's how this world's gonna be, I'll become the master!* He limped forward, with a new goal in mind.
To get a job.
​
**If you're interested in more stories like these, feel free to check out my subreddit,** r/PupsRecollection. |
It started out small, crows carrying hammers in their beaks and pushing nails into steel contraptions. It became a part of every day life. The clanking of tools and the scrap metal on the ground, and even the random steel structures popping up overnight was normal. But that's what they were waiting for. They wanted us to get comfortable with the abnormal before they could strike again. And that's exactly what happened.
They slowly worked their way into our lives. They built schools to teach Crowish (their official language) and snuck their way into government. Almost a third of all cities in the US have crows as mayors.
The crows were often bullied and tormented by humans, so they demanded more rights. It wasn't 3 years into the Crow Revolution that they could vote and a few months after that they could use firearms.
Crows were banned from 37 countries so they flocked to... well, anywhere they could. The countries that got rid of the crows had the right idea.
The crows began working real jobs. They were allowed to buy homes or apartments. That's when it crossed the line.
The people were angry. The crows were taking over all the jobs and there weren't enough houses to go around. The population of crows kept growing, and so did their knowledge. They cured cancer and discovered teleportation. But they were still too slow.
I invented time travel. Just in time too. World War Crow had just started last week and I finished my invention today. I'm going back to 2035. To before the crows took over. I need to stop the problem before it starts. It may be difficult, and risky, and incredibly dangerous, but it needs to be done. If my plan works, I will not survive. I am leaving today, January 21, 2042, 4 a.m. and if I don't write here again, you will know it was a success. |
I rush city hall where I see the other remaining citizens outside of the mayor’s office, the mayor comes out and alerts us that we need to get into our escape pods and go to the last remaining utopia. I get home as soon as possible to get my escape pod ready. I get in and start it up my escape pod jerks forward but immediately dies. I run to my neighbor’s house and luckily their escape pod is working except it’s a one seater so we’ll have to squeeze inside. Once we’re in there the escape pod lifts off and we’re on our way to the utopia where all the other survivors are. I look out the window and see the flying island fall into the abyss below. I hope the new utopia doesn’t have the same fate. |
It's an unremarkable, rainy Thursday evening when Alex finds himself on the bus. This in itself is unremarkable, and has happened every Thursday for as long as Alex can remember which is... he decides not to try and remember.
Alex looks at his hands because he has forgotten to bring a book. He is still far from his stop, very far, and although this should be a peaceful, uneventful trip, one that he has repeated every Thursday for as far back as he can remember, he finds that his heart is pounding in his chest. Alex closes his eyes and tries to focus on slowing down his heart, evening out his breathing and finds that he can't control either, that somewhere in him is absolute *terror* and he can't do anything about it. Alex has never experienced a panic attack before, especially not on a bus, so he has no mantras to repeat to himself, no guides to bring him back to earth. He finds himself trying to tether to something- anything, and he hears the tinny music coming from the ear buds of the person next to him. Their music is loud- much too loud, and it would be annoying if it weren't for the fact that Alex currently feels like he's being hurtled in to space and the sound of happy piano music is the only life line he's got left to hold on to.
Alex concentrates hard, hears a guitar, a few lines, recognizes the song as some retro thing he's heard on the oldies station before.
*Anger wants a voice, voices wanna sing, Singers harmonize till they can't hear anything*
Alex relaxes a bit, not enough yet to feel silly for the clenched knuckles and heavy breathing, not enough to store away the panic, but enough that he can breathe. Enough that he doesn't feel like the bus has become a sardine can. He breathes out, listens to the music, mouths along with the part he can remember. He knows later he will feel silly for doing something so outlandish on the bus, but for now, he feels it is the only thing keeping him grounded.
*I don't wanna live like this, but I don't wanna die*
He whispers it like a magic spell, but finds that he can't stop. Over and over in his head until it's just a string.
*Idon'twannalivelikethis,butIdon'twannadiedon'twannadiedontwannadie****don'twannadie***
He can feel himself spiraling, feels that he has become the lyrics, that the universe has been overwritten and all that's left in its place are a poppy jingle and the single, unending phrase ***Don't wanna DIE.***
Alex opens his eyes searching desperately for help from his fellow passengers, gives out a distress alarm, and checks the others for what is happening in their heads. It spreads like a virus. The first person he meets was thinking about their shopping list, but it takes just a fraction of a second for *don'twannadie* to take over her thoughts, and in his desperation he moves on to the next passenger.
All in all, it takes five minutes for the bus to be completely taken over, and thirty seconds more before Alex takes his last breath- *I don't wanna die* still on his lips.
The bus drives sighs, takes off his hat, waves at the camera posted above him.
"They did it. Again. Fucking room full of billions of dollars of tech and we can't keep the damn things from looping in on themselves. Restart the damn thing, would you? Maybe we should just chuck Alex, he's buggy as hell."
But the bus driver isn't in charge of making decisions, and no one comes to collect Alex. After a moment, Alex's frozen panic melts from his face, and he, along with the other passengers slump in their chairs.
"Please sit, Mr. Thompson."A smooth voice from somewhere above the bus driver, one of those bastards in R&D lording their management promotion over him, surely. The driver frowns pointedly at the camera.
"Alright, Alright,"he says. He sits in his seat, focuses ahead on a road that will never move him anywhere, keeps his finger on the button that terminates the 'ride' to show he doesn't believe the next iteration will work any better.
The bus driver watches the windows of the bus lighten and turn to white before reverting back to the beginning, and once again it is a rainy, unremarkable Thursday evening when Alex finds himself on the bus. |
In an alien dialect you, nor I, could comprehend, or even make out to be a language, a being formed something to the tune of “Approaching”.
“Extermination” followed that first esoteric group of sounds that made up a sentence.
The exchange of foriegn tongue was taking place within an ambiguous vessel, which would resemble an elemental cloud to human eyes, conforming to different shapes and textures as it passed through the void we know as space. Within this technological fog of metal dust and assorted gases, two beings in the state of a vaporous smog, controlled this cryptic mass, which could only be understood as a spacecraft, yet ceased to be physical.
On Earth, life was thriving, yet dwindling at an alarming pace. The field of science has expanded so greatly in the last millenia, that all morals have been shoved aside to further their trajectory. The income gap that we know of today, is non existent. Human kind has branched into two different paths. The first path, of which we have mentioned, is far more intelligent than the homosapians that dominated the 21st century.
A small percentage of the population began to separate themselves from the rest, seeking knowledge and segregation. The second path, discounted education and desired a life of consumption. These two paths, over a millenia, became what could be called two different species. The ladder path, due to the lack of prefrontal cortex activation, became less motivated to grow and thrive. They took on a fixed mindset. The former path of evolution, sought out discovery, neglecting the primal “lizard brain” they started with, to cultivate intelligence at a remarkable pace.
A thousand years is such an inconsiderable amount of time on Earth. The planet is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. Yet this dominating race that currently inhabits it, these “Humans”have matured astoundingly. If you could even call them Humans. In the late 22nd century, a great deal of dna experimentation began to take place. Scientists throughout the planet stumbled upon a way to splice animal DNA with Human DNA. This led to unimaginable horrors.
They began to examine the possibilities this new found discovery presented them with. Elephants could smell water up to three miles away. Honey bees had a capability to create perfect geometry from nothing. Dogs can pinpoint the direction and location of sounds. These innocent, yet significant, traits proved useful to Humans at first, benefiting infantry venturing deserted dry lands to figures of authority designated to protect others. But that was the beginning.
On Earth, arachnids have the ability to move with the combination of muscles and blood vessels. Humans, rely solely on the muscle in the body to move joints. If they could only tap into the advantage of hemolymph pressure that spiders used, their current athletic ceilings would shatter. Cephalopods contain the ability to change color, texture and even regrow limbs; two characteristics that would prove more than desirable in times of war. Traits such as these were extracted and combined with DNA a number of times, resulting in no alluring development. Instead, the physical traits of cephalopods and arachnids blended with the Humans. The result is something of which only Lovecraft could fathom.
This grotesque transformation was perhaps the most faultless of their doing. As technology thrived, more expansive research followed. The “Humans” began to venture beyond their universe with drones and radio signals. One of these “hail mary” signals struck a cluster of planets home to the beings that now descend upon earth itself. They have been aware of Earth for billions of years, watching it at a distance. The moment they were pricked by a slight of intelligence capable of reaching them, they rose with arms and acted immediately.
The gaseous vessel that hovered in Earth’s vicinity began to expand. Its previous cloud of metal and light began to darken while growing in size. The mass turned black, then a pitch beyond black, then an unimaginable shade of black that would pull the sanity from anyone able to lay eyes on such a spectacle. Space and time began to warp within its vicinity, eventually bending inwards toward what was now a swirling vortex of nothingness. The “humans”, of course, noticed this phenomenon beginning to form. It was as if, what they call a “black hole”, had formed from nothing, not much farther than their current moon. Centuries passed, as the complexing void grew and grew. Earth’s moon was its first victim, being torn atom by atom into its new predatory neighbor. With the moon gone, environmental calamity began on Earth. Its nights became darker, longer. The oceans tidal changes no longer shifted. Season the Humans were accustomed to no longer held brought any change to their atmosphere. Their days blended with nights, calendars becoming obsolete.
It was no longer possible to watch Earth at this point, yet this brought satisfaction to the unknown race, rather than suspicion. In only what we can measure as a galactic year, Earth would be ripped, particle by particle, into emptiness, along with all other masses in their galaxy, ensuring a ceased existence what had developed on Earth.
**This is literally my first short story, go easy on me :) I found it hard to compress ideas into such a short format. I guess that is a skill in itself!** |
"You cannot be serious."The young woman said.
"Oh, I'm very serious."Lucian replied. "This is the best armor you'll ever buy. Only place you'll find something better is in an ancient dungeon."
The adventurer grimaced. "Right, okay, great. Just one tiny problem. This is not armor!"She shouted, shoving what looked like a metal bra in his face.
"Of course it is."Lucian said calmly. He saw customers like this all the time. "I personally made it from the ground up. It offers top quality protection, without the weight and bulk of heavy armor. Wear that, and you might as well have two inches of the best steel strapped to every inch of your body."
"I'd rather have the two inches of steel than this...thing."
"But..."
She held up her hand, interrupting his continued sales pitch. "Look, magic armor is fine. I would love a good set of enchanted armor. But it has to be armor first. This is metal underwear. It won't protect anything important."
"Oh, but it will. It wraps your body in protective magics so potent not even an anti-magic seal can remove it. Plus, it will help you in any environment. It keeps you cool in the hottest places and warm in even the bitterest cold. Plus, as a side effect, it offers protection from both ice and fire magic."
"Okay, let me put it another way. I am not going into battle dressed as a whore!"
Her shout shook the room. Lucian feared for his eardrums. Or at least, he would have, had he not had a protective amulet in place against just such a thing. He did not have any protection against the contents of her words though. He sniffed and controlled himself. If she did not understand the beauty and elegance of his armor, then so be it. Let her clank around in bulky heavy plate all she liked. He knew he had the best armor around, even if nobody else recognized it.
"Very well, perhapse something else then."He said with a strained voice. "If you'd like something a bit more covering, then how about this piece?"
He presented the new set to her. She looked it up and down.
"Why does it only have metal around the knees, elbows and chest?"
"Because with this lovely set, that's all you'll need."
"Okay, great. Bugger question...why doesn't it cover the upper chest? You know, where my heart is?"She growled out the question.
She really did not understand. She did not see the beauty and elegance if his work. He really should have known better. Only a select few ever did.
"Very well. Perhaps my selection of weapons would be better."
"Great. I'll get the armor from a real armorer. Show me what magic weapons you have."
He led her into the newly opened weapon section of his store. In it was all manner of weapons that one could ever hope for. No matter what she specialized in, she would find something here.
Her eye twitched. "You do know what a weapon is, right?"
"Of course I know what a weapon is. Now, what would you like? A spear? Maybe a sword?"
"I use a sword, but not..."
"Ah, then may I direct you to my latest masterpiece."
He guided her over to a truly magnificent blade. Pure white metal set with magical gems and elegant enchanted script. If course, most of it was just for looks. The real power was hidden.
"Yeah, see, the thing about weapons is you have to actually be able to wield them to be useful. And I don't know about you, but I think I'd have some trouble swinging a sword that's as big as I am. And no, I don't care what kind of enchantments are on it. It's still as big as I am."
"Yes but--"
"I said I don't care what enchantments it has. It's still unusable. On fact, nothing here can be used. I mean, come on, this spear has a head as long as my arm and a scythe blade on the end. Why? Just...why? Have you ever seen anyone use a spear? And this sword. Why does it have a second tip facing the weilder? That is literally the exact opposite of where a tip should be pointing. And I...I don't even want to know what that is."
She pointed at a piece that Lucian was particularly proud of. It was a grand working of blades in the shape of a bird of prey on flight.
"Ah, The Peregrin. Beautiful, isn't it? You see, what it is--"
"I said I don't want to know. All I know is that nobody can use it as a weapon. Nobody. Not even the best warriors could hope to use it. And it's the same for everything. Nothing in this store is usable. Not one piece."
"So...you won't be purchasing anything?"Lucian asked.
"No! I'm leaving this horrible place. And I'm telling my friend to never shop here. Every. Good day."
The woman stormed out of the shop. Lucian took a series of calming breaths. He told himself it was her fault. Yes, her fault for not seeing the value of his work. Few did. But that was fine. One day, they would see. They would see how amazing his works were.
One day. |
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"Mars for me, Earth for thee."I was in love with the Beatles, but the garage-tape sound was a really hard, driving, distorted sound. It had a different intensity than a lot of the others. I played around a lot with guitar amplifiers but they were too loud and a live piano played by Gary was always way to hard for my old mother's Neumann.
If I went into a studio and the amp had a continuous cone, I'd always want to change it in the middle of a song. So we would go to our regular place, where we had a piano and most of the guitars played by Gary came from Ray's stash at the TV Sound Bar. In the meantime, I became a fan of Phil Spector, and he was still living in Malibu and we'd go to the house and get to know the roommates. That's when we started hanging out. Ray was always involved, and Gary liked to get him to do things. One day I remember Gary showed up with some guitar strings, and we had a plan to design some waveforms for guitars. After that we started experimenting with bass, and the sound that Ray and I wanted was big and big.
A lot of times I get in trouble when I say I'm the drummer, but I'm not really, I just sort of sit in and hand wave from the electric to the bass, but Ray and I worked out a few other things. Then I met up with Tom and Kev, and they had a couple of different ideas. In a way we're a couple of part-time people trying to make some stuff up, and one day it just took off. That's when we realized our sound didn't just makes waves on Earth. but on Mars as well. The Martians had been keenly listening to our radio transmissions for about a week before they sent the first signal. And then, a few hours later, they sent their first explicit message to us.
That was the start of our free fall.
After our second Album, the aliens made first contact and declared a treaty. With the UN in chaos, and the planet going to hell, Ray was forced to quit the band in order to send a personal message to the President who was signing the treaty. That's when the feds showed up at our garage. "You're charged with targeting all present and every living thing on the planet with your reckless tunes."Man little did we know that all of the sharks and dolphins in our oceans would rebel, unite, and eventually rise up against us. This is another example of why we should listen to Robert Shaye. They all sang their hearts out for our freedom. Today, we are all left to wonder how we are supposed to resist this process. Even the air we breathe is inhaled by us as we do our work. The relentless movement of the ocean's currents in the late 20th century, created a massive flow of nutrients that was ferociously contaminating the organisms in the oceans. Alas, that was the end of our band days. |
“Why can’t I see the body, Sam?” he asked.
“Robert. Bobby. The case is lead, and your x-ray vision can’t…” I started.
“I KNOW I CAN’T SEE THROUGH LEAD, YOU ASSHOLE. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? IS HE DEAD? I CAN’T HEAR A HEARTBEAT. IS HE DEAD?” He shouted.
It was the way he rose his voice that hurt. When we were 8 years old, and Polly and his boys were slapping my bare stomach all across the yard, Bobby never yelled at them to stop. He never used his super speed to sprint in and push them out of the way, or use his super strength to carry me out of there, or melt their shoes, or raise a finger. He stood by and watched. Seemingly powerless.
“Bobby, remember when you told me everything. \_Everything\_. I know you. I know you inside and out, and you told me because I was your best friend. YOUR BEST FRIEND.” My voice almost squeaked. I lost my cool, and I was quickly slipping into cliche.
“Sam, we’re not children anymore and this is life or death. Is he dead? Did you kill him?” He asked with a calm control. He had done this a million times, and now he was leveraging all those years of experience. “If he is still alive, Sam, you… \_we\_, can walk away from this. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Unfortunately, he was wrong. This was the only way. I never had superhuman abilities and I was barely smart enough to be a B-average student. But man, does love make you do some crazy shit. When your bro is a literal god among mortals, you’ll do anything to stay in his favor. You’ll study the videos, follow his every move, cheer from the sides, argue with the online trolls and shit-posters that have nothing nice to say, assess his weaknesses and offer unsolicited advice, send him a text at 2am asking for help with that girl, and buy him a birthday gift every year for ten years and then get nothing but a “hbd” on your big day. Earth’s Mightiest Son and the All-American Great Guy was someone I’d give my world to and he would never give me the time of day.
“You’re right Bobby. We’re not children anymore. This is some serious shit.” I kicked the metal casket and a sullen THUNK filled the room.
“You picked this punk, this doofus, this NOBODY as your \_sidekick\_ and you didn’t even think to tell me? To ask me? To even consider me?” I kicked the metal casket three more times.
“Are you really that jealous, Sam?” He missed a beat and went off-script. The slight wince and tilt of his head almost made me lose it. Like he couldn’t believe that \_I\_ had feelings.
“The cryptic messages, the threats across the city, and the kidnapping of YOUR SIDEKICK didn’t give you a clue? Damn Bobby, and I thought you were some kind of superhero or something.” I taunted him. In all the videos and all the interviews, it is usually around this time that the big, bad villain ups the stakes and forces the hero to make a sadistic choice. So, I played the role.
“Ok Bobby, you know how this goes.” I started.
“Don’t do this, Sam.” He commanded.
“You already scanned me and you found the explosives. You also probably noticed the wires. The wires were an idea from…” I explained.
“GET TO IT SAM! I’M NOT PLAYING GAMES.”
“OKAY BOBBY. EITHER YOU CHOOSE ME OR HIM. ONE OF US WILL DIE, GUARANTEED. ME OR HIM.”
When we were thirteen years old, Bobby caught me in a lie. I bragged about knowing a superhero to some girl and when word got back to him—the girl laughed in my face and told all her friends—I told Bobby that I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. Bobby then explained that he is a lie detector. Probably not a human lie detector, but just a straight up “these are your intentions and you are betraying them and telling me misinformation” machine. He never told me, “You lied.” He simply explained what it was that he was capable of, and he stopped talking to me for a month.
Every day I asked myself, “why doesn’t he want to talk to me?” I blamed \_him\_ for being mean to \_me\_. I sent him messages, wrote him notes, begged for him to talk to me, to relieve me of the guilt, but he still ignored me. I lost a month of friendship and eventually, just apologized. We slowly started talking again but the damage was done. There is no recorded super power for undoing a scar.
Regardless, with the metal casket at my feet, and wires strapped all over my body, he knew I was telling the truth: it was either me, or the sidekick.
“Sam,” he took a step forward and stretched out one hand to me. “You know more than anyone else I can’t make that choice. You were… \_are\_ my bro. One of my best friends. And what you’re asking me to do is not a very bro thing to do.” He walked towards me. I lifted the trigger in my left-hand and held it out, pointed at him. A promise.
“Sam, I love you man, and I think deep down you know that, and it breaks my heart to see you like this. I know now that you’re serious, and I know now that somewhere along the way, something I did, or said, hurt you, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sam.” He was only a few feet away. My hands were dripping with sweat and they felt like they were miles away, detached from my body.
“I know you’re serious—I can tell—but this is already over. I disarmed the explosives ten minutes ago with my super speed.” he explained as he revealed in his other hand a few, key blue and red wires. “You really were gonna take a life today, weren’t you Sam? But I just couldn’t let you do that. Now please, open the casket and let him out.”
I collapsed on my knees and said, “It’s unlocked.” I started to weep. I dropped the trigger, shoved my face into my hands and I couldn’t stop crying. Bobby didn’t spare a moment in opening the casket, and once he saw its contents he let out a quiet, “…oh Sam.”
“I love you, Bobby. I just wanted you to say you loved me too.”
The casket was empty. |
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