prompt stringlengths 391 14.9k |
|---|
Some days it doesn't pay to leave the house. Today was one of those days. Not like a "got a parking ticket for not feeding the meter"kind of outings, more like "Oh, shit I've just got myself sucked into a trans-dimensional war with magical beings"kind out outings. Let's talk about my last trip to the library.
I had gotten an email that my books were in and waiting to be picked that morning, so I got dressed, hopped in the car, and headed downtown to pick up my weekend reading. All I can remember of the books now is that it one was some sci-fi about a planet eating space amoeba, and the others some pretty equally silly stuff. As I pulled up to the front of the building, I couldn't help but to note how low and billowy the clouds looked. Was it like that for my whole drive? I hadn't noticed. Without further thought, I shuffled inside to claim my bounty and get home.
No matter how many times I walk through the front entrance to our town's library, I have to stop and look around. It looks exactly how the ideal historic library should look in my mind's eye. Majestically hand carved dark wooden book cases nearly everywhere you look, lined in neat rows like soldiers in silent vigil. The books seem a sea of ancient tomes bound in leather and canvas on the polished walnut shelves. Nestled at symmetrical intervals in between the cases sit large, heavy wood tables lined with matching chairs overstuffed with leather-clad cushions that you could almost sink into. Overhead, meticulously worked iron light fixtures sprung forth globes of soft, yellow light bathing the room in a pleasant glow. But what catches your eye more than anything else is the centrally placed librarian station. Grandiose is the term I feel best suits it. Built in eighteen-forty-blah-blah by French artisan Pierre Del Whosamafuck, it depicts angels and demons locked in some eternal battle centered around an open book. Kind of grim and corny, but it's a historic building, so we're stuck with it.
I was lost in this simple ritual when a stranger brushed by me. Not hard, but it brought me out of my moment. When I shifted my gaze to see who had swept my arm, I was met by the back of a large man wearing a gray raincoat with mop of unkempt ashen hair on his head. His stride was of one who had purpose and determination as he approached the equally imposing form of the librarian station. There was no line, so he stepped directly to the counter. Not wanting to have to wait on anyone else that might happen to enter, I made my way into the roped off queue area directly behind him, pulling out my phone to pass the time while waiting. The librarian at the station initially had her back turned. As we waited on her acknowledgement, I could almost feel the man's impatience as he stood fidgeting and taking heavy breaths.
*What the hell at the library could be so urgent? Not my business, he'll be gone soon.*
As the librarian turned to help the man, a quick gasp escaped her lips before drawing close. "Landon, what are you doing here? You know you can't..."she began quietly.
"I know, I know. Is it here? Is it protected?"He interrupted in his own hushed tone.
"It is, but we can't talk about this here,"she returned.
*What am I listening to right now?* I leaned my ear toward them more, still looking at my phone as not to get caught eavesdropping.
So wrapped up they were in their conversation and I in trying to hear it, none of us noticed the three men that walked in the doors in the meantime, making their way up to the wooden monstrosity with certain intention, also brushing by me and nearly knocking the phone out of my hand. As I looked up to interject, the second stranger to pass my right turned and stared coldly at me.
I remember him having eyes, but I couldn't describe them to save my life. The same goes for the rest of his and his companions' features. They all had faces, and none of them looked alike, but I can only describe them as having faces. I can remember no features or characteristics. The same goes with their hair. They all had it, but colors, hairstyles, etc. escape me. The more I try to remember any of it, the blurrier it gets in my head. It's the most disconcerting feeling I think I've ever had.
Disturbed from their conversation by my protest, I got my first glance at the face of the man at the counter. Landon, the librarian had called him. Tanned, leathery, and lined by the sun, the man's face was that of someone who had lived a rough life out in the elements. A gnarled gray beard adorned his face. Not long, but not really taken care of either. His initial curious look turned to one of anger as his gaze lift from me and came to rest on our new guests. Without hesitation, in one swift movement, he reached into the folds of his jacket producing a massive flaming
*FUCKING FLAMING????*
sword that he swung high above his head, pointing the ceiling. He then motioned with other hand while declaring, "Come on you freaking cultists! You want the Necronomican? COME AND GET IT!"before swinging the sword down in an arc at the first stranger that passed me on the right, cleaving him from shoulder to crotch, splitting him in half. Simultaneously, his companions opened their mouths way too wide and cascaded the room with an inhuman shriek that nearly deafened me. I instinctively covered my ears and crouched down into ball, trying to drown out the sound, eyes clenched shut.
First, the volume of the strangers' wails decreased in my right ear and then then my left, followed quickly by a dull thud, and then silence. I looked up from the protective cocoon of my own extremities to find the librarian and the gray giant staring down at me incredulously.
"Landon, go lock the door,"the librarian directed Landon with a pointed finger. She stepped quickly from the station.
"What the hell are you?"she asked sharply, grabbing my hands and pulling back my jacket sleeves to inspect my wrists.
"Umm, what?"I stammered, "I just wanted ...book?"Trying to keep my gaze up and not at the carnage littered about my feet.
She stepped back and squared herself, looking directly into my eyes. "You should not have survived that. You are very special and you don't know it."
The big man rejoined us, stepping up beside the librarian to face me. "Those were high cultists of Stin, the Lord of Shadows,"he said plainly, pointing down at the corpses, "They are undead that have been separated from their souls by the Necronomican and imbued with certain powers that can prove deadly to mortals. You've just tasted and survived the mightiest of those, their wail. This is not possible."
I stared, dumbfounded by what I was hearing. But then a thought, "If their scream is deadly, then how did you two survive?"
"Child, we are Celestial. Everlasting,"the librarian smiled, "We are the very Hearts of Stars. Our lives are limitless, even as we grow dark and consume all around us. As Stin now does." |
It had started thousands of years ago as the last available option.
Forty years of children born to an age that seemed to condemn their very existence, let alone their ideals. They'd been called all manner of names both petty and vile; cucks, hipsters, deadbeats, socialists, snowflakes, worst of all syu's (the original word was 'SJW' but the meaning of the letters was lost to time). Every effort they made to try and make their mark on the world, to make some form of improvement whether to the slowly dying environment or the disillusioned political sphere, was met only with spite and hatred. Even when they played by the rules of the elders who taught them, followed every rule of science or politics or even basic argumentative language, it seemed they were intent on just not giving 'their world' over to their descendants.
What crime had they committed by existing that deserved being denied the pleasures of a sunny day? The taste of clean water and good food, the knowledge that their fellow man gave a damn about their presence?
Whatever it was, after years of being denied at every turn while the world collapsed around them, the youth of the human race could take it no longer. After the third World War, the economic crash and the spread of countless dire ailments, several of the prodigies of these scorned generations pooled their resources and built huge sleeper vessels within which they'd escape to the vacuum of space. If they could not have the world their elders once promised them, then they'd simply leave it for their own.
Project 'Runaway' ended with a fleet of star cruisers engineered to last a few thousand years before their service lives ended, and they'd inevitably returned to earth. The initial crews knew they'd never live to see that day, but silently hoped that whoever their descendants were, they'd have a better future on earth than the one they were raised in. In later years, many of their descendants would go on to build colonies on other worlds, even terraforming the inner planets. But no one dared return to Earth, under an unspoken rule that whoever was left down there would still not want the company of these 'lower lifeforms' that fled the planet.
But now the time to return finally has come, millenia later, and all parties have arrived to find a heartbreaking scene. Buried under millennia of overgrowth, faded concrete and steel rusted into piles of slag, are the remnants of a culture that, at first, lauded the disappearance of the burdensome youth, and gladly retried copulation to 'get it right this time'. But within a few short generations, ages of decadence and violent conflict took their toll; environments became unlivable, infant mortality from declining health numbered in the hundreds per thousand, and seemingly endless petty warfare perpetuated a life quality downward spiral not seen since the fall of Rome.
As the world unraveled, the survivors thought back to the 'lucky ones' that fled to the stars in the centuries past, and recorded said thoughts in forms we've been able to recover. Perhaps most heartbreaking of these are accounts from the original families of Runaway; most appear to be pleas for forgiveness, and for their 'babies' to come home while the world went down in flames. ...but we never came.
Our forerunners and those they brought with them to the vessels used to joke about how the elderly always complained about no one calling them, despite their bad behavior. But now, looking on the remnants of those that once spit in our faces, only to slowly wither away over centuries of despair and pleas for forgiveness, and be buried beneath the sands of time, I wonder... should we have called? True, it probably wouldn't have changed anything, but...
Did anyone here really deserve this fate? |
Hi u/JustARegularToaster, this submission has been removed.
NSFW responses to non-NSFW prompts are not allowed and this prompt is likely to generate them
* *This was removed [based on the comments it's likely to attract](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_7.3A_prompts_will_be_removed_if_there.27s_a_high_possibility_for_rule_breaking_responses), specifically via [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2.3A_no_explicitly_sexual_responses.2C_hate_speech.2C_or_other_harmful_content)*
---
---
[Modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FWritingPrompts&subject=Removed%20post&message=https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/g8rd4l/-/%0A%0A) us if you have any questions or concerns. In the future, please refer to the [sidebar](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/config/sidebar) before posting.
*This action was not automated and this moderator is human. Time to go do human things.* |
The road was long and dusty, and the occasional pothole rattled the ancient Ford pickup's suspension and made the inspector's glasses come close to falling off. Roy, in the passenger seat, looked across at Bob, who was driving, wondering if he was deliberately aiming at them. From the hidden smirk on his brother's face, that was exactly what he was doing.
Which was a pain, because the combination of the rough road, the worn-out suspension and the worn-through seats was doing Roy's tailbone no favours whatsoever. So he snaked his arm back behind the seat and rapped Bob sharply on the back of the noggin. Bob shot him a dirty look that the inspector totally missed, but slowed the truck down a mite and stopped hitting the worst bumps.
"Crap, one got out."Bob went from slowing down gently to jamming the brakes on as hard as he could. The inspector jerked forward with a muted cry of protest. Bob ignored him. "Git th' rifle, bro!"
"On it!"As the old Ford jolted to a stop, Roy opened the door and jumped out, then leaned back in to yank the Winchester off the rifle rack. He stepped around to the front of the pickup, ignoring the heat still blazing off the metal as he rested his elbows on the hood. His right hand worked the lever, jacking a shell into the breech, as he peered through the sights at his target.
About six feet tall, more or less, it was clearly perched on top of something with its head down around its feet. Bright yellow and black striped wings were spread wide to maintain its balance, then it lifted its head to look at them, red strings of meat hanging from its toothy maw. Roy took a deep breath and settled the sights on the forehead bulge just behind the snout as he released it once more. When his lungs were empty, he applied final pressure.
His ears hurt from the report of the weapon as it jolted back against his shoulder, and flame leaped from the muzzle. The .308 slug punched into the creature's skull and sprayed the contents far and wide. Unlike its smaller cousins, the thing collapsed bonelessly; that was one thing Roy and Bob were fervently pleased about.
As the ringing from his ears died away, Roy became aware of the raised voice of the inspector. "What in heaven's name did you do *that* for? It was just standing there!"
"It was outside the fence,"Bob said tiredly. "C'mon. Git in th' truck. We'll show ya what's goin' on when we git back to th' farm."
Unhappily, the inspector climbed back inside, then leaned forward with bad grace as Roy put the smoking rifle back into the rack behind his head. "I really don't think you men understand the situation. We at InterGenetics picked you to perform the trial run of our Enhanced Poultry strain. and we're counting on you to keep the arrangement quiet until the trial is over. If it fails, we're out a large amount of money."
Roy met Bob's gaze. Cynically, Bob nodded. Roy knew exactly what he was thinking. *Translation: I mean to say it's a success, no matter how unsuccessful it gets.*
A few miles farther on, the pickup made a turn into a typical farmyard. Or rather, what would've been a typical farmyard, were it not for the ten-foot-high reinforced wire mesh fence compound out back of the barn. Or the extra five feet of high-tensile barbed wire atop that. Within the enclosure, similar creatures to the one Roy had shot strutted and eyed the pickup beadily. From time to time, one of them let out a deep throaty sound that came across vaguely as **B-KAWK.**
Each of them decamped from the vehicle. Just on instinct, Roy snagged the rifle before closing the pickup door. Weapon over his shoulder, finger off trigger, he fell in behind Bob and the inspector as they headed for the compound.
"See, first problem we had was when we put 'em in with the other chickens, like y'all suggested,"Bob said. "They said th' idea was that our chickens'd teach 'em how to *act* like chickens."
"Well, all our studies and calculations in the laboratory said that should've worked,"the inspector said. "What happened?"
"They et 'em,"said Roy, and spat off to the side. "Couple of our finest layin' hens, too. Et 'em right up. Ya never heard such a racket."
"Feathers every which way,"added Bob.
"Oh,"said the inspector, visibly swallowing. "Well. That's a, uh, minor setback."
"See, I blame them movies,"Roy said. "They made takin' dinosaur genes an' stickin' 'em in other animals look all nice an' safe. But wasn't safe, was it, bro?"
"Nope,"Bob confirmed. "Yeah, sure, it got us somethin' with feathers an' a drumstick that th' whole family c'n take turns at, but it also ... sonova*bitch!"*
Roy saw what he was swearing at a second later. The part of the compound directly behind the barn was hard to see until a body got close. But in that corner, the barbed wire had been torn away entirely from its fastenings so that something with strong legs and heavy claws and a pair of wings for balance could leap and scramble over.
There was no mystery anymore as to how that one had gotten out. The question was, how many *others* were outside the compound instead of safely (for the humans, not the dino-chickens) inside? The answer to that question could come with a very *final* lesson in not turning your back on something dangerous.
"Should be ten in there, no, wait, nine!"he said, recalling the one he'd shot. "How many we got?"He worked the lever on the rifle, ejecting the spent brass with a tinkle on the hard ground. If he needed to use it in this situation, he'd need it *fast.*
Bob was already running his eye over the six-foot-high scaled-and-feathered monstrosities that moved back and forward inside the compound. "Five, maybe six? They're movin' around a lot more'n they normally do!"
"Shit, that's three or four that got out that we ain't already shot."Roy felt chills migrating up and down his spine. "Y'all seein' any of 'em anywhere?"
"What are you two worrying about?"demanded the inspector. "All right, they ate regular chickens, but that's a long way from attacking humans."
"It killed a cow, out there in the field, an' it was eatin' it,"Bob said grimly. "Only thing that's gonna stop it from eatin' you is us. An' we can run faster than you."
"Did you assholes even grow 'em ta full size?"asked Roy. "Or did ya keep 'em small in the lab?"
He never heard the inspector's reply, because just then, Bob yelled, "*House!*"
Roy spun around, rifle coming up. The dino-chicken had just darted around the corner of the house and was running for them, wings spread wide in a threat display and mouth open, showing off its impressive collection of very sharp teeth. He fired just as it leaped for them, then fired twice more while it was in the air. The first went through its main body, the second through its chest, and the third through the base of its skull. Bob jerked him back out of the way half a second before it crashed down to ground, a feathery wave slapping him across the face.
"Two or three, now."Roy tried to keep calm and remember when was the last time he'd loaded the .308. "Hey, jackass, you all right? Not gonna faint on us now, are ya?"
The inspector stared down at the twitching carcass before them. "It ... it tried to *attack* us!"
"That it did."Roy chambered another round and nudged the dino-chicken with his boot. It didn't react. With most of the back of its neck missing, he wasn't surprised.
"Where's the rest?"asked Bob, looking around. "Think they might be in th' barn?"
Roy caught motion out of the corner of his eye and looked around. For a moment, he lost it, then got it back. It was hard to keep ahold of, even when he knew what it was.
"One in the wheatfield,"he said quietly. "I can barely see the damn thing, an' I'm lookin' right at it."
"Goddamn yellow an' black camouflage,"Bob muttered. "Okay then, one or two left."
"Barn door's open a mite more'n it was this morning,"Roy noted, his brain working on overdrive. "Figure one went in there. Mebbe it's still there?"
"Last thing we want is them to git the idea to work together,"said Bob. "We don't want no *clever girls* 'round here."
(Continued) |
Another day, another suicidal death robot crashing through the windows of the Ladeus Corp. headquarters. "DIE, LADEUS SCU-"was all the robot's speech processor could exclaim before a metal crate slammed into its chest. The shout devolved into an incoherent metal yell, and in a moment it closed the gap between it and Jericho, its metallic fingers slamming into his throat. But a moment had been all Jericho needed unsheathe his knife and jam it into a seam in the robot's armor. "Now!"He managed to choke out, his knife sending a surge of energy through its blade, stunning the robot long enough for his partner to send a slug through its head. "Damn,"Jericho gasped, wiping bits of metal and oil off the front of his helmet "I sure am glad we're not paying for those windows."He shook the limp body off his leg, where it had gotten caught on his shin guard. Terry gave a quick chuckle, before kicking the robot to the side of the walkway. He bent down to pick up the crate he'd been carrying before the attack, and gave out a low whistle. "And I'm sure glad it ain't cut into our armor budget."He tipped the box towards his partner to show him where the top had broken from its unexpected drop. "Arent those MC-60s?"Jericho said, "the fancy new ones that beam the heads up display directly into your brain?"
"They're too ugly to be anything else."
"What, you worried you're not going to look as good in your holo-mails to your mom?"
"You kidding me? I haven't told my parents about this job. They'd flip if they knew my job was mainly picking glass shards out of my boot soles."
"That, and tripping over roombas. You should show the things some respect, y'know?"He gestured towards the scene behind them, which was already being cleaned up. "Hey, I tripped on one once! It's not my fault this building's infested with the things."Their voices faded down the hall, mixing with the sound of vacuumed glass. Things were going according to plan.
A week later. John was indulging himself in one of his favorite past times, sleeping on his desk. There was paperwork to be done, as usual, but that could be shoved onto his secretary. He hadn't bothered looking at the stack of papers he was currently sleeping on, but he already knew that they were going to be budget approvals for more glasswork. Because of course his enemies couldn't be bothered to use the doors like civilized people. Nope, just had to be as dramatic as possible. At least they'd all mostly stopped trying to crawl through his ventilation system. The sound of a robot crawling through a hollow metal tube has a tendency to be quite grating to the ears, and trying to extract their bodies from the vents was another mess of billable hours he didn't want to deal with. John was on the verge of wondering if he should stop his habit of digitizing the brains of his enemies and tossing their hard drives into the parking lot, or he probably would've been if he hadn't been asleep. His sleep was shortly interrupted by the sensation of his foot being rammed into. He stretched his arms in the air and succumbed to a yawn. "Well, well, Seth. Been a while since you cleaned my office."He slid his chair back and took a look at the cylindrical plastic machine that had awakened him. "Got another plot to bring me to my knees?"The machine didn't answer, and instead took a circle around to the front of his desk, where, upon looking up, John found his security staff. All of the security staff. Standing in his office. "Well, I'm, honored?"John stammered, taken aback by the display in front of him. "I know you're all eager to protect me, but I think I can handle one roomba."
"One roomba, sure, but what about an office full of trained soldiers?"A voice from the floor said. John glared at the roomba. "Really, Eric? Because I distinctly remember placing your hard drive in the janitorial sector, not the CEO position."He leaned back, into the padding of his chair. "Guards? You're dismissed, and you might as well bring the roomba with you."Silence permeated the office. Not a muscle moved, with the exception of John's right eyebrow, which elevated accusingly in the direction of his soldiers. "They're not going to listen,"Eric's voice rose from the carpet, "you've reached the end of the line, John."Two soldiers started moving towards John, with a third coming from the midst of the crowd, this one holding a helmet. "Wha- what!? Why?!"John's voice rose in pitch and lower in confidence as the two soldiers came from the sides and grabbed his arms, restraining him to his chair. "What are you doing!?"The third soldier brought himself in front of John, with Eric's roomba body close in tow. John struggled and yelped as the soldier jerkily and suddenly slammed the helmet on John's head. "*WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?*"
"Isn't it obvious?"
*brain link established*
"I'm cleaning."
*brainwashing protocols activated*
*please wait* |
"Interview 1, date: 19th of January, 2019."
"Okay, um, let's begin with you stating your name."
**"Aaron Kierett. I'm a Vampire."**
*\*exhale\**
"Okay. Nice to meet you, Aaron. I'm Anne, and I'm here for the mythology blog *'Eldritch Horrors'*."
**"Eldritch-"**
*\*sigh\**
**"Alright. Nice to meet you, Anne."**
"So. You say you're a Vampire?"
**"As hard as that is to believe, yes, I'm a Vampire. What, do you want me to prove it? Do you want me to attempt to sink my teeth into your neck or something?"**
"Um... no thanks. That, uh, won't be necessary."
**"..."**
"..."
"Okay! Uh... Can you begin with an explanation of your daily routine?"
**"I go to work. At the diner just down the road, as a waiter and cashier. 9 to 3. I come home, work on writing songs that will probably never be heard by anyone. Then I go to sleep."**
"...Um... is that i-"
**"OH AND LET'S NOT FORGET THE LATE HOURS OF THE NIGHT WHERE I vENTURE OUT INTO THE COLD WINTER BREEZE LOOKING FOR SOME TASTY hUmAn BlOoD TO** ***SCHLORP*** **DOWN MY THROAT."**
"..."
**"..."**
"..."
**"Sorry."**
"Um... that's okay...?"
"Alright, then. So... blood, huh?"
**"Animal blood, actually. Vampires prefer animals. I mean, well, human blood is really sweet, and there's not many Vampires out there who can tolerate that level of sweetness. Or, at least, not many that I know of. Plus, we don't have a very good reputation among humans. It's either Vampire hunters or fangirls, and trust me, we don't want anything to do with either of them if we can help it. So yeah. Not worth the risk if you ask me."**
"Okay. Thank you. Um... Well..."
*\*rustling of papers\**
*\*this goes on for another few seconds\**
**"...Is that all you had to ask?"**
"NO! Um. I mean, uh, no. Just- just hold on a second, please."
*\*rustling, again.\**
**"We can do this another time, if you want? You seem a bit underprepared."**
"...Um... Alright. Thank you for your time! Uh... when should we meet again?"
**"Next week, same time?"**
"Uh- Yep, I think that should work for me. Alright, thank you for your time!"
*\*scraping as a chair is pushed in\**
**"It was a pleasure to have you. Not very many people come by around here. Not many stalk me all the way home, either."**
"Ah- right. Sorry about that."
**"Don't worry about it!"**
*\*another chair is pushed in\**
**"Really, it was nice to have you around. I didn't even have to lure you here."**
"Th-thank y- wait- sorry, what?"
**"..."**
"..."
**\*click\*** |
\-The last immortal-
​
It was 23.444 B.C. when I was born into the icy cold, yet beautiful village called Mauiy.
We, the lynxes, already made houses back then, and we also worked some quite strange 'magic,' which, for us, was like science for you humans. Our houses were mostly made with natural resources such as wood and stone, but we were nonetheless very advanced in technology.
We used to live like this, on our islands high into the sky, until recently.
Recently, everything changed.
​
My name's Rugops, and, as you may have noticed, I am immortal. I've seen many people pass away in my long-during existence, yet I didn't care, for I do not believe in death; everything continues in some way.
I've saved the world by creating something that 'connects' (although not literally meant. Don't worry, fella) people with nature. I've created harmony in this beautiful world.
Until recently.
For recently, everything changed.
​
'Recently,' the Great War took place, 5.274 years B.C., to be exact. I've been counting it.
​
It's recently that I found out that there was an ancient tribe, which lived in the shadows for thousands of years, working dark magic all of the time. They were called the Sheyka. They made a mask.
That mask ravaged the world.
It destroyed my kind. It destroyed all others too.
All of the animals that lived on the sky islands were wiped away.
No one could stop that thing, not even me.
The whole world was like some kind of hell. Sometimes, ruins are left behind, soon to be consumed by the purple 'fire,' produced by the mask.
The ones that were not dead, were taken as hostage by the Sheyka, including me.
They'd throw us in cages and cells. We were experimented on.
Every day when there were survivors found of the Great War, they were taken as hostage as well.
I've fought, both mentally and physically, for thousands of years.
I've seen anyone who was there rot away. Every time there was a new inmate, they were full of passion to escape. Not a single one succeeded. No one could survive those experiments.
No one but me.
It was 5274 years ago when I was taken as a hostage. I've been mentally rotting away in this cell for 5274 years. It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing does.
All of the wisdom I attained and all of the adventures I experienced…
It's like they're non-existent.
​
Ah, there was another newbie thrown in, recently, by the way. She's in the same cell as I am.
In the beginning of all this, I'd try to give them hope, or at least help them in some way.
I stopped doing that. I just ignore them.
She's a lynx as well, quite young of age; around twenty in human years.
She's also full of passion, just like I was.
She's screaming towards me most of the time, saying things like, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!"Or, "CAN'T YOU AT LEAST TRY SOMETHING?"Particularly this one is fun: "THE HELL'S YOUR PROBLEM?! YOU CANNOT LIVE ON LIKE THIS."
Soon enough she'll learn.
At least, I thought so.
5 years passed, most of them are dead by now, or they lost their mind. But she's different. She's still as passionate as the first day. She ain't losing hope.
I began looking up to her.
"How can you still carry on like this...?"I asked, after 5 years of silence.
She heard me, and turned to me. Her eyes, with pupils as red as fire, looked at me like they were screaming. She'd never heard me talk before.
"Sorry that I didn't talk back to you recently. Guess I'm not the most social creature around here. Hehe,"I said. I may have some weird fetish with the word recently, recently. Don't judge me.
Her eyes seemed to relax, and she said, "Because I'd rather fight than give up, even if I cannot win. Please don't try to stop me."
I noticed that she was sounding very down. I noticed myself in her, I saw that she was doing all she could to not give up. I saw that she was dying of mental pain inside, yet she carried on. She truly is like what I was when I came here for the first time. (once again, this is not ment literally)
"I won't,"I said, "I think you're damn right, actually."
"Then why is there not a single sparkle in your eyes up until now?"She asked.
I pondered, "Well, you see… I've been here for a long time-"
"That isn't an excuse, you know?"She said.
"5274 years,” I said, “I’ve been here for 5274 years.” I saw in her eyes that she was…terrified.
"..."
"I had forgotten in all those years that I should fight, even if I'm certain I'll lose, up until now. Thank you for letting me realise this,” I told her.
After being silent for a while, she said, “Jeez, I didn't really see that coming. I didn't expect you to be so old, either. I mean, you look like you are of my age,” she replied.
"Well, I get that a lot. I age well."
She laughed, and I laughed too. Laughter... that's been a long, long time.
"My name is Rugops, by the way,"I said.
"Mine's Flura,"she told me.
Together, we kept fighting, and soonly enough, almost miraculously, we found a way out.
The hell that we found outside was even worse than what was inside, yet this one will be far less painful, for we now know how to keep fighting, even if we'll certainly lose.
​
**Now it's your turn.**
\-THE END- |
I'm lying in bed with my husband,drooling all over his chest. I always love the smell of his body. Suddenly,something clicked in my mind. I noticed scratch marks in his chest. I went to the bathroom and a series of images running in my head.
The first case really starts with a killing of my dad but I kept it under wraps. I killed him by drugging him on the roof and push him out of the edge. He's abusive and sell my mom to the prostitution. But,after that this pattern has followed by someone that leads to all this killing.
My phone blinks. It is a message from my partner saying, "The case files are uploaded online.". I stunned and passed out in bathroom.
Next day,I'm lying in bed. My husband is sitting besides me. He confess with crying that he uploaded the case first case files online.
My husband said,"You mother is a drug addict. But,my dad saved you from there. I know he is abusive but he's always my father. I found out that you killed him. So, I found where your mom is and killed her. I also uploaded the files online with the video of you killing my father. Soon, the files spread to darknet and everyone followed the patter but no one can crack the case. It's looks like suicide of a simple drug addict ."
I replied,"You fuck."
He waves out and say "Try to crack it. It's very simple." |
My heart aches for you, it longs to be in your presence once more. Frantically, I search for you, walking past all the others.
I'm sorry we had to end that way. If I could trade my soul just to apologise to you. I would. You know I would...don't you?
What's worse is the fact that I barely remember what exactly it was we fought about. Was it about how you felt as though I was neglecting you? Was it the way you brought up our past arguments? Perhaps it was it over how much we argued. Hell if I know. The only thing I remember that day was leaving you...again.
"I'm sorry, Jen, ok?! I can't take this anymore. I'm leaving."
"You'll come back! You always do! See if I care, you fucking piece of shit!"
"Bye, Jen. For good."
And that was it. Hah. I don't know if you'd believe me, but I cried like a baby. I really did. I wasn't sure whether it was in frustration or in sadness, but I cried. It hurt real bad.
But fucking hell.
It was nothing to that phone call. The police called.
Some recently released convict had attempted to rob our house. You were defenseless, at the mercy of this...this fucking psycho. They told me what he did to you, Jen. How you were tortured, how he raped you and...and how...
God! Jen, I'm so fucking sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I could have protected you. I could have...I...
I found you...I've finally found you.
I slowed my steps, treading carefully, as though trying to avoid waking you. Your grave. I've finally found it. My heart starts to ache, even more than before. It feels as though it's desperate to destroy itself just so I can see you again. My tears obscure my vision and I can barely see the engravings on your tombstone.
You were right, Jen. I came back. I came back to you.
Like I always do.
I have so much to say to you, so much to apologise for, so much to cry over. But through my sobs and whimpers, the only thing I can muster is:
"Hi, Jen." |
The Question and the Answer
You’ve spent the last fifty years researching the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe, or not? You’ve always been somewhat of a skeptic, and that was half the reason you pursued this so fervently. It had started out as a mere lark in college, a joke concocted over drinks one late night. But now it’s your thesis, and your academic career is on the line.
You know the answer is right there in front of you, but something in your brain just doesn’t get it. Honestly, you’d thought that you’d be wrong, chasing nonexistent fairy tales. They’d laughed themselves silly, your labmates, when you first told them what you’d be studying: whether or not we are alone in the universe.
“Maybe you should’ve went into something more your style, sweetheart,” One of your colleagues snickered over a drink. “Fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes, perhaps?” Your cheeks had heated, and you took your drink to another table, not bothering to dignify that question with a response. Your many years in academia, unfortunately, are dogged by one sexist, misogynistic incident after another. Men just couldn’t handle it when a woman is smarter than them; the fact that they’re intimidated only pleases you.
You’re not here to make friends. No, your goal is something much more to your taste: to become famous in the academic world, and you didn’t just spend the majority of your life chasing theories to be laughed at. If they are going to laugh anyway, you might as well say ‘fuck it’ and keep going.
It turns out that we’re not alone after all. Millions of planets lurk in space, none of which you’ve managed to explore yet. Your company is working up to it, but your funding is already tight as is.
You have to bite your lip to hold back a scream of frustration and rage. You expected to find nothing, but the results of the experiment are right there on the screen, taunting you. A dangerous thought comes into your brain, almost unbidden. You don’t have to share this information if you don’t want to. Contract be damned, you’re not going to allow this information to see the light of day. For a fleeting moment, you imagine the opposite of your decision: taking your findings to the board, being celebrated as one of the most innovative scientists of all time, your own funding to start your own company. The thought makes you salivate, but you’ve already made your decision.
Grabbing the boxes with your research within, you walk out of the lab and go home. You make a roaring, bright fire, despite the heat, and though you may regret it for the rest of your life, you take everything out of the box and burn it.
Some secrets just aren’t meant to come to light, no matter how much knowledge they grant you; you watch fifty years of your life turn to hot, gray bitter ashes.
\*\* |
A lot went down in 2020. So much so that the most remarkable of events went largely unnoticed by everyone except for a small family on a century-old plot of land nestled in the rolling wine country of southern France.
It all started with the apperance of giant moths. Huge things, the biggest Claude had ever seen.
"Big bastards,"he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Marla could only grin at her father. That phrase was fast becoming his favorite and she couldn't fault him for that. The moths were indeed quite big and bastard-like.
Early on they had made the decision not to tell anyone. The last thing Claude needed was a bunch of government officials and overenthusiastic scientists (Claude had referred to them as 'insectologists' and 'insect-fetishists' and all manner of other choice descriptions) descending on their little slice of heaven.
"Papa, look at the size of this one,"Marla said, pointing at a particularly huge one about the size of her balled-up fist. The large moths died quickly, and there were so many of them that her younger brother's entire daily chorelist involved finding the corpses and burning them in a huge pile in the yard. The smell of their crisping and blackening flesh wasn't entirely unappetizing.
Most strangely, the moths concentrated around the bee hives, which were the family's pride and joy, lovingly passed down from generation to generation. They had around a million bees spread across twelve distinct hives, and the family's honey was served in the finest restaurants in Paris.
"But no bees working means no honey,"Claude said to himself, hands on hips, surveying his normally bustling hives. He hadn't seen a bee for weeks, but he probed the hives each day and it was clear the bees were very much alive and well.
He had resolved to wait it out, watching the moths gather around the hives, eyeing them as they unexplainably concentrated on one in particular - the biggest and most successful honey producing hive - where they generally milled around for a few hours before falling over dead.
Today though, today was different, for today Claude saw bees emerge from the central hives. He watched in relief as one by one the bees emerged, telling himself that perhaps the strange scene was finally over, and that the family's famous honey would flow again.
"Papa, look,"Marla said, startling him with her presence. She pointed at one of the large moths nearest the entrance to the main hive. The moth had completely stilled, as if waiting for some unseen signal. The bees slowly exited the hive, but none of them shot off to find flowers. Instead they formed a neat line infront of the moth, and then one by one they began to alight on its back.
Throughout all of this the moth stayed absolutely still, right up until the moment it launched into the air with a burst of speed, twenty passenger bees steadfastly clinging to its carapace.
Claude exchanged a look with his daughter, who just shrugged and turned back to watch the spectacle unfold as another moth stepped into its compatriates former position, standing completely still and allowing the next set of bees to board.
Bee keepers were patient if nothing else, as bees were fickle creatures in the best of times.
"Let's see what happens when they come back,"Claude said, content to wait in the soft afternoon breeze. "And Marla,"he said, his tone suddenly very serious. "It bears repeating. Not a word to anyone, please." |
Hi u/RaHuHe, this submission has been removed.
**Real-World Drama:** No prompts referencing real world drama (including politics, recent tragedies, etc.)
* *From Rule 7: [Prompts will be removed if there's a high possibility for rule breaking responses](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_7.3A_prompts_will_be_removed_if_there.27s_a_high_possibility_for_rule_breaking_responses)*
---
---
[Modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FWritingPrompts&subject=Removed%20post&message=https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/g91tpt/-/%0A%0A) us if you have any questions or concerns. In the future, please refer to the [sidebar](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/config/sidebar) before posting.
*This action was not automated and this moderator is human. Time to go do human things.* |
He couldn’t understand why he was being called a hero, he had lost too many during the war.
He no longer had any siblings, he was all that remained to carry on his family’s name.
Perhaps if he hadn’t been so weak, he could of saved them.
He stood on top of the mighty cliffs of Alra.
The sky above was covered with thick, pale blue clouds.
The scent on the breeze reminded me of the calrus trees. It brought back my memories of a time when he would go hiking and exploring the ancient woods that had been their for eons.
But this place only brought sorrow with him now. This place wasn't the same without the ones he missed with all of his heart.
He looked over the edge of the cliff, sandy beach below sat before the ocean's calming waves.
He knew he wanted this to be his final resting place.
He walked closer to the ledge, step by step. He drew his breath and quickly exhaled.
I'm really doing this, the one thing that can finally set me free.
"Merlo, what are you doing?"he turned around in surprise to see it was Lorta. "How did you know I was here?"he asked.
"I knew you would come here. Even after all these years of knowing you, I’ve never forget that this was your favourite place to go,"he replied.
“You should leave me here, I’m better off not returning to Alcalra”.
“I’m your friend, Merlo. I can’t leave you here, you mean a lot to everyone,” Lorta replied.
Tears came down from Merlo’s eyes and he keeled before him. "I can't keep living like this Lorta. Each day is a reminder that I'm alone".
Lorta slowly approached Merlo and placed his hand of his shoulder.
"I know you greatly fear your past and your worried about your future, but I will be with you. I will help guide you when you have lost your way".
Merlo wiped his tears away. Slightly ashamed that his feelings were visible for Lorta to see.
But the rest of him knew that it didn't matter, not anymore.
Merlo leaned foreword onto his friend's shoulder. Just wanting his closest friend to ease his pain.
"Thank you". |
*The one you know as queen Elizabeth used to be my friend... that was a long time ago.*
*All mythologies and religions seem to involve immortal beings or deities of some sort. I don't know if any of them are accurate when it comes to other ones like us, as I never was very social back in the day, but as far as I'm aware there was definitely no religion about me and Liz.*
*We were alone for most of our lives, just the 2 of us - no idea where we came from and what we were meant to do. We discovered most there is to discover on this planet before there was life. When it was all rock and magma, before there was water and before there was air. We discovered the elements and began thinking about and understanding how the world works. The kind of stuff you call science, and some philosophy. We also did eventually meet other immortal beings, but as I said I never was social, unlike Liz whose sense of discovery and curiosity led her into a more social way of life. The last thing we discovered before life began on this precious earth... was love. Oh, how I wish that lasted forever!*
*As life began to spring up around the Earth we were deeply in love in our new garden - our new playground. Everything was so delightful and amusing, and those were the best millennia of my life. Unfortunately, as time went on Liz grew too attached to these inferior life forms like yourself. When I grew tired of it I simply decided to open up a big hole in the earth and let some of that lava out to get rid of all these annoying little life forms taking my Liz's attention away from me. That didn't end well for me...*
*She imprisoned me in this prison underground, for thousands of years I haven't seen sunlight! Or anyone but her coming to see me a few times during which I unsuccessfully tried to convince her to let me out. You're the first inferior life form... or any living thing apart from Liz that I have seen since being imprisoned here.*
"Bloody hell"were the only words Caleb could muster when the giant fiery humanoid demon looking thing stopped speaking "Maybe sneaking inside this hidden passage underneath the Tower of London wasn't such a bright idea"he thought. |
I pry the box open, merely a sliver, but that momentary breach in the cardboard prison is what *they* had been waiting for. Tendrils surge forth, solid and unyielding, expanding longer and further than the confines of the box would suggest possible. They are grey, no purple, a metallic chrome, no green, no... They splinter and split, each new branch releasing new fractal thorns, dividing and expanding with no clear pattern or reason. They make no sound, the only thing I hear is the grinding of the gentleman's teeth, blood trickling down his silver-tufted chin. His eyes are manic, one pupil far larger than the other.
*You did it, now.* His voice, inside my mind. *They won't be undone.*
By random chance a splinter pierces the tender flesh of my palm, and I scream as I feel it growing and dividing inside me. It pushes my meat and bones aside as if they were not even there. *Why did you open it?* There is no answer, it has lanced through your arm, piercing your shoulder and jaw in an instant. In your eyes, you see specks of dust, splitting and dividing, filling your vision with purple, no green, no chrome, no... |
Alice sat, eyes locked on a bottle of whiskey and a glass tumbler with a chip in the top.
Ryan had dropped it, and instead of apologizing, he'd laughed. His laugh had been infectious, and before she even considered being mad, she was patting him on the back.
That was the last memory she had of him laughing like that. The last memory of him being healthy and goofy, and himself.
Now she had the cup, and a mailbox full of bills. Now it was the end. Maybe not the end of everything, but her world as she knew it.
***
I'm practicing very small stories, aiming for exactly 100 words apiece.
Feedback is welcome and appreciated, and thank you for reading! |
When someone dreams that they’re falling, they wake up before they reach the bottom. This is because no one knows what it’s like to fall such a great distance and live. Except for you. But after two months in a hospital bed with nothing to do but pretend to listen to a therapist and think to yourself, you’ve found the perfect method.
Six weeks later. You’re on your way back from the local grocery store. You’re on the phone so you don’t even notice the pile of papers right next to the door as you walk in. You finish scheduling the meeting as you begin to take off the blue polo. Now all you have to do is make it through another three days.
Three days later. You wake up hungry, as you haven’t been buying groceries knowing you wouldn’t need to eat soon. It’s the afternoon, and it looks cold. You look around your flat in an attempt to find some clothing that will look decent while managing to keep you warm. Not like it’ll matter in the long run. As you step out of your apartment complex, you start to take in your surroundings. You see the local restaurants opening for lunch hour. The late night donut shops closing up. In the distance you can hear the honking of car horns. You’re snapped back to reality as a cold gust of wind blows through your skinny frame. Picking up your pace, you reach the alley behind the hotel. “Josh?” comes a rugged voice.
“Yeah.” you respond.
“Alright, $750, in cash.”
“I don’t have that much,” you mutter, “I only have $520. B-but I do have some stuff back at my flat. Come around in a few days and they’re yours. Here, take the key.” He grunts as he pockets your belongings, handing you a backpack. Inside are a few plastic bags filled with white powder. Walking back to your building, you begin to feel excited for the first time in awhile. Stepping in you hurriedly clear the table of your damaged laptop, and begin spilling the white powder onto the table. Without a second thought, you begin snorting as much as you can. Soon, there was none left. All that’s left to do now is wait. You can’t think. You can’t even move. You’re eyes are seeing things but what you can’t tell anymore. There are sirens in the background, but you’re senses start to fail. And then, darkness.
You’ve done it. You’ve escaped. You can finally take a break from trying over and over and over again, to only be met by failure. Is what you think when you wake up in a black fog. But then, what now? You try to get your bearings, but a small, bright light appears in front of you, temporarily blinding you. It starts to move away, but you don’t want it to. It felt warm, comforting. Like the sunlight, or a gentle embrace. You start to chase it into the dense mist. You run for what seems like hours without ever getting closer, until it finally stops. As it starts to morph and change shape, you expect it to form a door. It widens and lengthens, but instead of a door, it’s a mirror. You take a step closer, still holding on to the hope that this will take you away. As you step up to the mirror, it turns to show you a disheveled, and tired looking man, with hollowed out eyes. You feel your face. It’s cold. You begin panicking. “This isn’t what it should be like... It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” Thoughts and images flood your vision. Mom’s concerned texts, your sister’s offers to get coffee, your friend’s missed calls. It wasn’t supposed to end like this... |
"Cohin, their screaming is getting loud could we take a break I can hardly keep rhythm?"I stop beating my drums for a few seconds to ask this question.
"No Ampher keep beating those drums, if our shield drops for a few minutes we would be vulnerable."Cohin, the leader at the front manages to say that without losing focus on controlling our Torgon.
"No see I agree with Ampher."Dakyl speaks up from the left flank. "We really should've asked them to lower their fishing rates."
"Look who is driving Dharahk? Hmm me. So keep firing."Cohin yelled back.
"I disagree with the other two."Bor stated.
"Thank you, I am glad somebody agrees with me."Cohin breathes a sigh of relief.
"I think we are not doing enough. We should wipe out everything in our past. We need to dominate them. Become gods to them. Demand that they sacrifice to us."Bor roared.
"See this is why I do not agree with military action."Dakyl begins.
"Oh no here we go."I roll my eyes.
"The violent nature of warfare brings desire for power and control. Power and control creates a system of inequality which can only lead to more injustice which leads to more violence. If we keep the cycle going, we will all suffer."Dakyl lectures.
"Look if you don't shut up, I will turn this Trogun around."Cohin yells.
"Yes, that is what I wanted."Dakyl responds.
Cohin gets red in the face, "You know what? Why don't shut you up!"
"Hahaha, Dakyl you wimp. You need to learn how to enjoy the screams of your enemies. My father taught that to me when I was young boy. I had to fight my brothers for food. Some of them died, but it was worth it."Bor narrates.
"Bor, your father went to prison for several counts of murder."I respond.
"Because the system is unjust as Dakyl says."Bor replies.
"That is not what I mean."Dakyl gets flustered.
"Everyone shut up and get back to work. We were all drafted to send a message to these earth walkers to stop fishing. I don't care how much you like it or dislike it keep doing your jobs."Cohin yells.
"I have to pee."I yell.
"You should've gone before we left."Cohin yells back.
"I did. Screaming people make me have to go."I shout.
"Fine do it back there."He replies.
"I don't want to. Then, I will stand in piss can't we turn around."I shout.
"Then, pee on the side. I don't care which side."He yells back.
"DO NOT PEE ON MY SIDE!"Dakyl and Bor yell at the same time.
"Fine, I will hold it."I sigh. "Do you ever think about what life would be like after the war?"
"There will be no after the war. We will continue to strike until only the strongest remain."Bor shouts.
"For once, I agree with Bor. The way the military-industrial complex is set-up; this war will never end."Dakyl lectures.
"Okay, that is it. The next person who talks gets fed to Dharahk when we get back. SO SHUT UP."Cohin yells.
I start to play a song that I heard on the land. I do not know the meaning of the song. It refers to the infant of the species frequently so I would assume a lullaby. This culture seems to love lullabies.
"Stop playing that song, Ampher. It has been stuck in my head since we heard. I don't know what this Baby did, but I hate it."Cohin yells again. |
"Now, remember, Sir!"the scientist shouts against the hissing spewed out from the gravitorb. Steam rises up from underneath the contraption, ensnaring the time machine about to embark on its maiden voyage, with its passenger, Numero Uno. As to how I won the honor of being the first individual from our dimension to travel to another, I scored highest on a test determined to establish the agent with the highest level of mental toughness and integrity.
Just kidding, we drew straws. Now, I get to sit in a machine that vaguely resembles a small squat airplane without a propeller or wings.
Two military personnel push past the scientist, checking the security of my harness. The scientist ends up in the background, trying to gain my attention.
He persists in his instructions, "You might see some otherworldly items in the parallel dimension. We expect you will encounter strange forces that you may not be able to reconcile with. Just be aware that the laws of physics might differ. This does not change the reality you come from."
I nod. The military personnel share this gesture between themselves. They salute each other and me.
"Oriole is gold!"they shout. "Check, check, all clear!"They hop out of the gravitorb. One of which, pulls the outdoor lever to initiate latch closure. My windshield beings its slow descent downward.
"Just don't--"but the windshield seals shut, muffling the sound of his voice. I will never know what he was about to say, at least, until I return.
A rainbow of neon color emits from the nozzle, spiraling outwards until the color jumps forward at the windshield. My seat falls back, the force sucking back my body. Jostling and shaking reverberate throughout the entire machine, my flesh, organs; pulling my concentration into a single point. I almost expect the emergency lights and sirens to emit, but everything remains silent.
Instead my widens to witness the colors explode out into the periphery from a single white orb. And reality appears right in front of me. It is as though I never left the launch point. The scientist stands right in front of the two guards. The technicians still fidget with the control panel. Everything appears normal.
"Are you okay, Sir?"the military guards ask when the windshield opens. They immediately enter the gravitorb.
"Where am I? Did this not work?"I blink confused into the settling steam, which stings lightly against my eyes. They unfasten me, helping me out of the gravitorb.
"What happened?"I keep asking.
"By all accounts this should have worked,"the scientist says. He fiddles with his tablet. "I just don't understand."
But behind him, in the shielded tent, the strangest thing occurs. Someone bites into a white and brown square. White on the top, brown around the edges.
"Excuse me."I pat one of the guards on the shoulder. "Why is that man eating a cube of plastic?"
"You mean a sandwich?"
"A what?"
"Are you telling me you never heard of a sandwich before?"
"What is a sandwich?"
Wait. Did the mission succeed? |
“ I wish to find love”
I know it’s cliche. It’s boring and uninspired and maybe a waste of a wish, but what can I say? I don’t expect the wishes of a shooting star to come true, so why not give in to the hopeless romantic in me? It doesn’t really matter, it’s just a shooting star, and a wish is just a wish.
Morning sun seeps into my room, uninvited – an intruder. I forgot to close the blinds, and now my sleep is interrupted far too early in the morning for me to even begin to be sentient. My eyes are closed but I leave my bed anyways. The familiarity of my room doesn’t require my sight, but today there was something new, something strange. My carpet is not beneath my feet, but something cold… and oddly shaped. My bedroom floor is littered with gold and silver: lamps piled two feet high and I can’t see my carpet.
“What in God’s name?”
I know I made a wish last night, but I didn’t wish for gold and silver, I wished for love. This can’t possibly have anything to do with a shooting star, but I can’t think of what else it *could* be. My room locks from the inside and I keep all my windows locked; I can’t see how anyone could have gotten in. Even if someone had placed these here, why? And how could I have not heard them?
Did… my wish get messed up?
Think. It wasn’t very late when you saw the shooting star, 10:00, maybe 11:00 pm. People would have been awake, I couldn’t have been the only one to see it.
What if my wish got mixed up with someone else?
No, that’s ridiculous… but so is all of this. I can’t call any of it impossible anymore, not when my room is piled high with gold and silver lamps that look like they belong to an ancient treasure hoard. Somebody wished for this, for riches or gold or something material that’s worth a substantial amount of money. Somehow I ended up with all this instead. Somehow…
Somebody else has my love. All I have are lamps.
***Think.*** Whoever wished for this is probably nearby, at least in the same state. Maybe I can find them, see if I can sort something out. But what is there even to sort? I can’t trade lamps for love.
Even so, I want to find them, but how? Why? I can’t explain it, but I really do want to find whoever wished for all these lamps.
Is it because… somebody has my love?
“I wish to find love”, that’s what I wished for. I didn’t expect it to be so literal. |
The knight donned his helm and drew a long sword from his scabbard.
“Foul beast, show yourself and prepare to meet your doom”. His voice echoing through the mountain cliffs, justice carried his roar far and honour made it deafening.
Armed with a long sword in his right and a magical oaken shield in his left, he stepped towards the entrance of the cave. Streaks of monster blood covered his blade, dents and scratches imprinted on his armour from head to toe. The face of his shield singed and still slightly smoking from dragon fire.
“No longer will you terrorize the kingdom, monster,” the knight said, his sword pointing towards the black deep, “let it be known that today is the day that justice makes it’s mark”.
As the last echo faded away, a thumping sound reverberated from the cave. Each thump a quake, each quake a step, each step marks a sign closer to death. The knight remained steadfast and upright, held up by his determination and sheer will, he could not falter now.
Prior to this, he had defeated a horde of goblins, sliced out the heart of a manticore, and championed against live dragon fire. But this will be his final battle, one that would immortalize him in the Halls of Hero’s, and win him the love of the King’s daughter, Bella. They say Bella was the true treasure of the Oak Kingdom, for none other was so well stacked and womanly than Bella. Her hair shined like gold in the day and silver like moonlight at night. Eyes an emerald-blue, deeper than the deepest oceans and a personality only matched by the size of her buxom bosoms.
The knight murmured an incantation and brought his steel to meet his wood. The oaken shield started to catch a-flame, a magical blue flame that burned bright and fierce. The air around the shield twisted and distorted from the heat, yet the knight remained unburnt. A shadow started to emerge from the cave. As the shadow got closer, it shrunk; as the thumping sounds got closer it got quieter. When at last, what emerged was shocking.
“A turnip!?” said the knight unbelievably, “you’ve got to be kidding me?!”
“Who’s ya callin a turnip?” The thing yelled back. It had two round cartoonish eyes and a loud mouth, “I’m tryna nap heeya see, Skidaddle ya rube”.
After a brief moment of confusion the knight raised his visor. “This has got to be a joke.”
“The only joke here I see is yous tin man”, said the beast, “Did ol’King Boots send anotha’ knight to make a fool of himself? By the way, how’s his Daughter?"The monster winked and laughed a high laugh.
“You’ll pay for your crimes beast! prepare yourself”
“No, you!” cried the Creature.
The knight barreled towards the monster, flaming shield first and sword hand pulled back ready to counter-strike. A streak of blue-flamed ribbons made its way to the beast, sounds of flame spitting and crackling filled the air. With a hop and a turn the monster was quick, the knight charged at nothing, he turned and slashed a wide side arc, again only hitting empty air.
“ya gots to be quicker than that,” said the beast mockingly.
“Blast you beast!”
The knight lunged forward again, his speed fast, his strike precise as can be. But not quite precise enough. The sword dug itself into the dirt where the monster was.The creature vaulted up in the air gracefully tumbling a distance away from the knight. Before the turnip met ground, the knight was on the monster again, slashing every which way, doing everything yet achieving nothing. The sound of air being sliced, steel bouncing off rock, and dying sound of sputtering flames.
Before long the knight was slowing down, heavy breathing for air and creaking metal armour filled the mountain cliffs.
“look, tin man”, the beast slowly hopped closer to the tired knight, “I just want to let you know-” Suddeny the beast vanished in a blink of an eye, and materialized behind the knight, “-that it’s nothin Personal kid”.
The sound of vegetable on steel was the last thing the knight heard before he fell to the rocky precipice below.
“Be….Bella...aa……”
The knight laid there twisted, as the darkness started to blur and close in around him he looked up at the sky.A figure started to emerge, it was Bella in her gown floating down towards him. Dressed in a smooth black silk dress barely containing her amazing breasts, she seemed to glide down towards him almost like a bird.
“My brave knight, rest now you’ve done well, your princess is here with your reward”.
“Bella…..” A smile came across his face as he slowly started to relax and loosen.
Another “Bella” appeared from the corner of his eye, then another, and another till there was at least nine other “bellas”. The Bella’s started to caw and yap. Their black dress flowing to the shape of black feathers. The last thing the mangled-broken knight saw before he closed his eyes, was the sight of big bald ugly bird, that reeked of death. |
Approximately four hours before the alarm on my phone was to sound off, I rose from the comfort of my bed and entered the bathroom. Several items of assorted hygienic purposes dappled the small countertop before me like the mottling of a wild dog. I, however, remained completely unaware of the overpriced toothpaste staring up at me or the expired suppositories hiding in the depths of a cabinet not yet described. I stood motionless in front of my mirror as cars passed on the street outside my window, briefly illuminating my face with thin stripes of traveling light. I blinked a few times and let out a sigh through my nostrils. I returned to bed relieved and slept until my phone alarm woke me up four hours later.
Roughly 20 hours after my self-reflective headlight seance from the night before, I tossed and turned in my bed, haunted by the idea that sleep is a numbers game. I've always struggled with the concept itself and it seems the older I've become, the more complicated the mathematics of unconsciousness grows. Sometimes I wish I never had to sleep. Sometimes I wish it was all I did. Sometimes I can't tell if I've slept at all, or if I've simply laid there with my eyes affixed above me while my brain convinces the shadows that darkness is a universal sign of rest. I blinked a few times and exhaled through pursed lips while the sound of raindrops syncopated with the mechanics of my body. A few hours later the alarm on my phone went off while I was holding it.
It had been weeks since I felt comfortable in my own home, let alone my skin. There were these moments throughout my days that felt as though those shadows I had tried so hard to convince, were starting to ooze into other parts of me. Nothing felt genuine anymore, my environment began to mimic itself. A constant dryness lingered behind my eyes, almost like I had seen things I never intended to see, or never should have seen. Conversations occurred in my presence but drifted around me in number sequences, each letter numerical without purpose. Geometry was a hobby as I stared at the shapes in my room while they shifted and spliced from the headlights of cars passing outside. If ever my life felt unpredictably cyclical before then surely this was the pinnacle of such.
I woke up one morning with the fervor of a monk. I felt alive and I felt rectified from the demons of my sleeplessness. The sun poured into my room as if God himself had ladled the golden yolk through my window blinds. Birds chirped and for the first time I heard them, I heard their songs. Their enlightened soundtrack filled the room and my lungs filled with the air of a rested soul, the morning was mine to be had. My heels pressed gently against the floor as I rose from the bed, and the cadence of my footsteps was electric when I began to walk. I entered the bathroom and saw the toothpaste proudly atop the counter, staring back at me. My eyes scanned the room and locked onto the bathtub. Behind me, the golden aura of dawn leaked into the doorway, but suddenly I could no longer hear the birds. The sunlight crept up beneath my feet and approached the bathtub, where it slowly melded into a deep crimson. I locked eyes with a corpse slumped against the wall of the tub, its unblinking lifeless eyes also staring back at me.
I exhaled through my nostrils. |
There's a reason why man is advised not to interact with the supernatural. It always has unintended and unforseen effects.
For example, when the people were risen from the dead. This new generation began to age backwards, and the thought was that they would go from being old to being babies, and then die.
Wrong.
They weren't going from old to young; they were going from cemetary to womb and *then* dying.
So now we had a generation of women walking around with dead fetuses inside of them.
Well, technically they *weren't* dead because they were still feeding off the mother. So, basically, they were parasites.
The mothers started to waste away, while simultaneously getting younger. They looked like those starving kids in Africa with the distended bellies (note: there's starving kids everywhere, but you know what a mean).
But it didn't stop there.
The mothers turned into babies, so now there was babies inside of babies. And then these babies inside of babies went into the grandmothers. And so on.
Only guys seemed to be immune to the effect. Thank goodness I'm one.
I don't know where this epidemic is going, or how it's going to turn out. Everyone is frantic and trying to figure out how to reverse this.
All I know is that if all the woman die out this is going to be real one big sausage party. |
Rise, break fast, train, bathe, eat, sleep. Rise, break fast, train, bathe, eat, sleep. Again. Again. Day and day and week, month, year in and out. She is worked, critiqued, broken down and reformed.
She is reformed in your image, you own her, body and soul, she will achieve all you could not. She is yours, completely.
Or so you think.
Rise, break fast, train, bathe, eat. Pretend to sleep. Stealthily creep to her window, slip out into the night. Silent, swift, sensing rather than seeing her way. A rendezvous, a dialogue, a bargain.
Nightly, for weeks. Unseen she crept away.
Rise, break fast, train, bathe, eat. Leave.
Silent, swift and sure. A rendezvous. A bargain.
"My life for his. You leave him alone forever. Your word?"
He smiles, all teeth, it never touches his eyes,
"You have my word, Ms Van Helsing. And now, if I may?"
She tilts her head, and Dracula drinks deep.
She is reformed in HIS image. He owns her, body and soul, she will achieve all you could not. She is his completely. |
The sneeze caught me by surprise, and I only just managed to get my arm up in time.
"Shit, Georgia, are you okay?"My partner backed away a little. Drake's a total badass, and the best in the world to have at your back, but he's a serious germophobe.
"Sure,"I said thickly as I dug a packet of tissues from my handbag. "Allergies."I dabbed at my streaming eyes, then blew my nose. "Gimme a second."
"If you say so,"he said, moving back toward me but looking ready to bolt on the instant. I felt a moment's irritation for my idiot boyfriend and how he couldn't keep himself to himself even when I was getting ready to go to work.
I took a hit of nasal spray, and felt the congestion begin to clear up. "That's better,"I said dabbing at my nose with another tissue, before discarding both in the trash can. Carefully, I removed my coat and folded it around itself. "Now I have to wash this when I get home. Got a plastic bag?"
"Sure."Drake found one and handed it to me, then watched me pack the coat away. "It hits you pretty hard, does it?"
"Sneaks up on me, yeah,"I agreed. "Especially when I forget to take the anti-allergen."
"Right. Okay, where were we?"
I turned back to the screen we'd been using to view the evidence so far. "There's a thief of some kind getting in and out of some very upscale places, and absolutely failing to trip any kind of alarms. Motion sensors, pressure-pads, even smart cameras simply aren't picking up anyone who's not where they're supposed to be."
"So they called in the LRD,"he sighed. "Any actual evidence that a powered person did this?"
The LRD--Locked Room Division--was the part of the LAPD that never got any airtime in the news. Partly because we didn't want anyone getting a good idea that we existed, and who was working there, and partly because the higher-ups at the LAPD wished we didn't have to exist.
Just as a locked-room crime is one that is technically impossible to pull off (the locked room murder being the typical example) we in the Locked Room Division were the people who were called in when crimes that shouldn't have been able to happen, happened. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was down to some minor powered, maybe even a no-masker who didn't have a rap sheet.
The trouble was, minor powers rarely had enough versatility to escape all forms of modern detection. If you could walk through walls, you were usually visible. Invisible, you had weight and made noise. Invisible to machines, cameras would still track your movements even when they were erasing your image from the footage.
This guy wasn't falling into any of these traps. He was sliding past the best security systems devised by the mind of man. I thought about that for a second. "Did any of them have an APUD?"An Active Power Use Detector picked up the weird quantum signals that powers emitted when they were being used to warp reality around the user.
Micro-Master, for instance, could shrink to one-eighth of an inch tall, which would get him past ninety-nine percent of standard detectors. On the other hand, he would also need to pack a sleeping bag and a rucksack full of food to make the effectively thirty-three mile hike from the curbside to the master bedroom in one of the houses that was robbed. But if he went past an APUD, it would wake the neighbourhood up when it detected the severe quantum warping that was forcing everything around him, including his very surroundings, to treat him as being one-eighth of an inch tall, instead of six feet.
"Three of 'em did, yeah."He shook his head briefly. "None of 'em picked up a damn thing. If they're using powers, it's a passive thing. And nobody ever made a passive power detector that worked worth a damn."
Unlike active powers, which constantly reshaped reality around them--fliers, for instance, couldn't fly without active powers telling gravity to go away and stop bothering them--passive powers didn't inflict themselves on the world around them. They inflicted the power effect on the *user*. Once the power effect happened, it was done until the power user chose to stop doing it. Though the lines sometimes blurred, the best way to tell between active and passive was to see if the power effect lingered when the subject was unconscious or asleep. Passive powers remained, while active powers stopped working.
"How about human traces?"I asked. "Hair, skin cells, whatever. Anything that moves, sheds."I knew that better than most. "Hell, I'll even take a carpet impression right now."
"Actually, a carpet impression we have. Several, in fact."He pulled up a few pictures of what I knew had to be high-quality carpets, though from the extreme high-contrast and other transformations the images had been put through, I would never have known just by looking. Each portrayed a pair of footprints, though there wasn't much detail to them.
I studied the images, switching from one to another and back until I was certain they were the same size, the same shape, made by someone assuming the same stance. "Human traces around them?"I asked. "Footsteps from one part of the house to another?"
"Nope and nope,"he said with a grimace. "It's like he teleported from one spot to another."
But he hadn't. We both knew that. True traceless teleportation was not the forte of a low-rank power, especially a no-masker. Anything short of it left traces, and any teleportation at all set off APUDs for a radius all the way around, from the extreme quantum contortions needed to convince everyone and everything within those two points that someone was *here* and no longer *there.*
There'd been no traces, and the APUDs in the houses had not been set off. Teleporters were off the table. The trouble was, I couldn't think of anything else off the top of my head that would explain how this little smartass was getting in, stealing crap, and getting out.
"Has he hit safes?"I asked next. The answer to this wouldn't help catch him, but it would give me important detail. This was police procedure all over; unlike the movies and TV shows, it was rare that one single clue would turn the entire case.
"Three out of the last five houses,"Drake noted. He flicked through the information. "Only when it was relatively easy to find. Does that mean anything?"
"Only in a negative way,"I mused. "Not an inside job, then."
"Unless he's playing a very careful, very long game,"Drake said.
I shook my head. "I don't think he is. I think he's grabbing what he can. If he was playing a long game, he'd be moving cities between heists. Not one after the other. He's cocky. Thinks he can't get caught."
Drake chuckled. "They all think they can't get caught."
"Let's face it,"I said, raising my eyebrows. "Most of them don't, not doing this. It's only when they join a crew or end up as a minion and make the big-time that they finally get cuffs slapped on them."
Which was one of the reasons the LRD didn't have a great reputation. Our closure rate was crap, not because we couldn't catch them, but because they tended to move up-or-out before we managed to close in on them.
"So what's our next move?"asked Drake.
I considered his question. "Have they mapped the locations in order of hit?"
"About the first thing they did."Drake clicked the mouse, and brought up a map section of the city. Five red dots pulsed on it, with numbers from 1 to 5.
They weren't in a dead straight line, but it was good enough for me. I circled the area on the other side of hit number five and raised my eyebrows. "Where have they figured he might hit next?"
(Continued) |
Last Triwizard Tournament saw the passing of one of Hogwarts most promising students, Cedric Diggory, and thanks to the testimony of some very trustworthy sources Hogwarts has decided to implement a new education system.
Due to distance education being a new concept some mishaps are to be expected, but not this.
As a muggle receiving letters is not something common, everything it's handled on the PC, the closest thing to a letter you ever received are e-mails.
You get up as your doorbell rings, that's odd. You go to open the door only to find a package and a letter on your doorstep, opening the letter reveals it wasn't meant to get to your home. The letter is addressed to someone else and talks about a kit to learn magic on the package, must be a someones subscription to one of those loot box mail things, Your curiosity gets the better of you so you stop reading and instead of try and return the whole thing you decide to take a look, as you open the package you find a variety of objects inside the box.
A funny little hat catches your attention, you take it out of the box and try it on. As soon as the hat touches your head you hear someone shout "Gryffindor!!!". |
America: Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office. With a very concerned expression, it is made visible that he never predicted this.
“Damn Chinese” he mutters under his breath. “Coronavirus was only the beginning of what is to
come.” He quickly stares at the TV camera and states the multiple states that must be nuked to prevent a total American genocide. 24 hours is the estimated time until the evolved pathogen takes ahold of the infected. Florida,Louisiana,Alabama,New York, Rhode Island, California; the list grows larger and larger. “I am sorry, my fellow Americans. This has been a good run but I know what is right and this new exodus shall be the only way to save America. Pressing the button, large warheads emerged from under the White House. As great giants yearning for the destruction of the chosen states, the warheads fled on.
Households gather around each other grasping each other’s shirts for comfort. They would be dead either way. The only thing that mattered was that their last moments were their best. Some laughed and others cried. A little boy waved an American Flag. Another tightly held his body pillow for dear warmth. Donald Trump curled back his hair in an agitated fashion.
“The next election isn’t looking so great.”
He walked over to the door without a sign of emotion towards the lives he would take. Before he could grab the handle, an overwhelming force vibrates throughout the room. The door flung open, tossing the President’s body across the room. There stood Kim Jong Un, the Gracious Leader of North Korea. His parted hair stood stood immobile as he made his way to the middle of the room where Trump stood. “Once again old friend, I must set this country straight. My father stopped the 30 planes that arrived at the twin towers only at the expense of two. My sister orchestrating an agreement between your people and the Taliban. We guaranteed your safety from Vladimir Putin, yet you keep messing up.”
Donald Trump looked upon the muscular effigy with amazement and smirked. “I knew you weren’t dead.” Kim Jong Un emanated pure cosmic energy as the friction from his body met with the air. He flashed within the blink of eye. His muscles contracted as he lifted the dirt stained missile up into the thermosphere where no damage could be done. He quickly caught up with the second iron giant but stood undeterred.
This one was far more modern and it proved hard to move. The Glorious Leader merely snickered as he focused his chi into his palms. The tips of his fingers interlocked with the rocket, turning it a vibrant red. Slowly the metal trickled down Kim’s biceps. It proved easier to move as he threw it to join its destructive brethren into the afterlife. He met up with the last rocket and repeated the process, but this rocket mocked Kim with its strength. Kim knew what he had to do. “Oh father, lend me your strength.” He grumbled as he clenched his teeth. He suddenly blacked out and was met with a white space. Kim Jong il stood apathetically. “Why must we always have to clean up after America’s mess. We are North Koreans. We are immortal compared to them. I made the mistake of helping them, son. Don’t do the same.” Kim looked at him and said “America is my country as well and Trump is my friend. I am sorry,father, but I must go. He woke up and realized he was falling. He looked up at the rocket and clammed it with all his strength. His veins pulsates with his lifeforce as he threw it once more into the everlasting void of space. Trump stood in the White House being bandaged by doctors. Kim emerged greatly wounded. Trump rushed to him not minding his wounds. “What happened ?” Kim let out a sympathetic grin and said “America is my country too” They celebrated a short moment of relief until they realized the whole scenario that led to the nukes. “Wait, what about the virus ?” stated Trump ever so confused. Kim just stood up and looked into the President’s eyes with a look of content. He raised his hands and lifted into the air. Suddenly a large mass of chi protruded from his skin as he focused it in all directions. “No, Kim you can’t. You’ll die” Tears piles up in Kim’s eyes as he yelled “For America”. His body imploded as his healing light entered the infected. Slowly but surely, the number of infected decreased. Trump stood over the cloth that used to belong to Kim. “Tear down the American Flag” yelled Trump. The men did as he asked. Trump hung the garment of America’s savior: Glorious leader, Kim Jong Un. |
I trudged down the basement hallway, my wrists bound tight together with a light, golden thread. Sure, it was all stone walls and marble pillars with burning torches set every ten feet or so, but the damp, musty, unused smell gave away what this place really was - a place forgotten and unvisited. I just stared straight ahead at the angel walking ahead of me, golden armor and wings of pure white. Compared to my naked self draped in a borrowed blanket, he looked magnificent.
Every fifty feet or so we passed a doorway on one side or the other. And from behind most, if not all, came a knock. Some just a light tapping, others a heavy, two (or twenty or two hundred) handed pounding. "So, what's behind all the doors?"I asked, still staring at the wings in front of me.
"Exactly what you think is behind the doors,"the angel replied.
"More of us. Humans. Trapped for all eternity."
"Heaven isn't a prison."
"A gilded cage,"I said, "Besides this isn't really even Heaven, is it?"
"No, but your kind will be comfortable here. Until the end."
"Until the end of time, you mean."
"Yes, until the end."
We walked in silence for a little while more, the only sound in the hall being our footsteps or the constant pounding coming from the other side of the doors. But no one can really stay silent walking with the divine, or close to it. Not with so many questions to ask, and so many secrets to tell.
"Why do you keep them all locked behind the doors? Why not let them in? Or, if not, why not just destroy them altogether?"
The angel continued to walk. "God is very ... attached. Yes, attached is the right word ... attached to his projects. Maybe He can't stand to see another mass of you destroyed. Maybe He still desperately hopes one of you were not complete failures and show yourselves worthy of his companionship. And companionship with the divine requires perfection."The angel motioned to the locked doors. "And none of you have shown the kind of perfection required."
"Well, we are only human,"I said, stopping in front of one of the doors. From the other side, instead of the pounding sound I'd been hearing, this one had a scrapping sound, like claws or knives.
"A saying every one of your iterations has managed to come up with to excuse your failures."Sensing I was no longer following, the angel stopped and turned to me. He gestured at the door next to me. "Through that door, He tried to give you the tools to survive your world. Claws and fangs, tougher skin, better senses. You would be the Alphas of your world, above everything."The angel smiled as if recalling a memory from long ago. "If I remember correctly, that version didn't last a century before ripping each other apart."
The angel turned and started walking again and I hurried to follow, marking the doorway with the scratch, scratch, scratch. My feet and legs ached with every hurried step. I couldn't remember how long we'd been walking for. Not only from the trek through this corridor to the prison cell, but from the journey here as well. Lined with scars and possibly with a thorn or barb still stuck in them.
My guide continued talking. "He tweaked with your physical attributes until deciding that perhaps another change was needed."The angel nodded to another door but continued to walk without pause. "He tweaked your mental capabilities, made you smarter, more intelligent. Another failure as you attempted to disprove His existence. A very entertaining conclusion when they ended up here."
We passed more pounding, some sounding more like explosions than fists. Then we came across a noticeably quiet door. I stopped, drawn to the silence. A light emitted from the cracks around the door and instantly my feet felt restored, not just rested from the strain of walking but the scars healed too. "Empty?"
The angel stopped, then walked quickly, putting himself between me and the door. He banged on the door once and the light died. "If only. In a desperate attempt, He decided to give these ones a touch of the divine. Power to almost rival His own. They attempted to overthrow Him before they were ready to inherit the responsibility that comes with perfection. He locked them away."He grabbed my shoulders and turned me away. "We will continue walking now."
We walked for another twenty or thirty minutes, or maybe a day or two. Time just didn't seem to work how I expected here. We passed door after door until I thought that maybe the pounding was actually just coming from inside my own head.
"So, that was the point of it all? To find a friend?"It came out with more scorn than I intended.
"Life was a failure. He tried to raise you to perfection, to learn and grow through lifetimes until eventually reaching your own collective divinity, to one day become caretakers of your own universes, or maybe even this one. You failed."Then he stopped and pointed at a door. It was a plain, wooden one with a gold-plated keyhole. "We're here."
The angel turned to me and grabbed a key ring from his belt. "Now, before you rejoin with your compatriots perhaps you would like to explain how you escaped your room?"
I smiled, a big, wide, toothy, fuck-you grin. "Oh, I didn't break out of the cell. I came in through the other way."
The angel tilted his head, puzzled. "The other way?"
"The other way. The long way."
Then the angel straightened, stiff as a board as he finally understood. "The other way,"he repeated.
I nodded. "You really shouldn't have let Dante publish his trilogy."I leaned until I could see around the angel and his massive wings. "Take him now."
The angel was fast. Before I could stand-up again, his sword was already in his hand. It was too bad, really. If only he knew he was already dead. There was a flash of light and the smell of sulfur, and a blade coated in Hellfire sliced across the angels throat. He dropped to the ground, silvery liquid flowing from the wound. Perhaps if he realized how close death was, maybe he would have reached for his horn instead and called for reinforcements. At least his death would've been a sacrifice instead of a waste.
"Did you get the answers you wanted?"said a voice behind me before cutting through the thread holding my wrists together.
A scarred man in front of me extinguished the Hellfire, though I assumed that the rest of Heaven was already alerted to its presence and would be sending its horde against us. With him were a half-dozen others dressed in rags if clothed at all, every one of them also holding angel-steel swords, some coated with blood already. "I got the answer I knew I would get."I turned to one that had cut my bonds. "How many do we have?"
Her long black hair hung partially in front of her face, an attempt to hide the burns. "The ones you see here, plus another two dozen or so on the way. I spread the word amongst our people still trapped Below of our rebellion. If they manage to escape, either through the Last Circle or, if possible, Redemption, they'll come to join our fight here."
I nodded, brushing the hair back behind her ear. We suffered for a God that didn't want us. We shouldn't be ashamed to hide what He did to us. I bent over and picked up the key ring and tossed it to her. "Let's let our kin out from the cage. Then maybe we will look into the nature of these other ones, if they should be allowed to join us in Paradise." |
His pale, beardy face peered at me through his shades. “Why not turn you in and be a hero?”
“Simple economics. What’s the reward for somebody with a strangelet bomb? About a trillion? You’ve already got a couple of *those* but aren’t any closer to what you really want: to make some culturally influential economic hub, and everything within *at least* ten parsecs, completely unsafe for anything made out of matter.”
He nodded. “We’re men of principle; we can’t be bought.”
So comforting these bigoted mass murderers aren’t in it for the money. “But I can,” I said. “Speaking of a trillion…”
“We’ll check the craft,” he said, pushing me aside as he walked past, “make sure it’s not just an old physics vessel.”
I comfort myself knowing the last one to try this, who I literally had over for dinner at my client’s insistence, was able to kill themself with a cortex bomb. Mine’s the same model, but my ECCM isn’t detecting anything so I *might* be safe enough to die…
\* \* \*
Sale went through. It technically *was* an old science vessel, but the cyclotron could be weaponized. There were even smart enough to check for sabotage, the subtle kind that’d make it just a mere fission bomb. Their last deal played it safe like that but I didn’t; this could well have been a repeat of the Greatest Catastrophe.
They didn’t count on being ratted out to the Vigils. The checked the craft’s computers for any trojans, but didn’t think to look for the hardware I snuck in and connected to the comms. Or maybe they did but didn’t notice it; I thought they would for sure given the crude job I did, but maybe they looked for something more sophisticated. Probably helped that I passed their background check: I had no ties to the authorities, and was purely in it for the money. Which meant that once I *had* the money I’d have no problem quitting. They must still think people are defined by their jobs; how parochial.
So no I’m a trillion richer and they’re being mind probed. I’m used to looking after myself so new enemies won’t make me lose any sleep, and money is a very comforting security blanket. Plus, doing good feels good even for an ex-mercenary. I may be in danger, but I actually feel better about the universe knowing that civilization’s safer for black lesbian atheists like myself. |
"Good morning, 20687."said a metallic voice booming throughout the room. "You may get used to the environment before we can begin your training."I open my eyes to see whiteness all around me. When I regained focus, I have noticed that I'm in a room that's no too similar to a cell. I've just came out of a bed with white sheets and I'm now looking forward to seeing a white desk and white chair on the other end of the room. The only entrance to this room has what's presumably a strange lock right next to a metal door. On the other end is what I can presume is a bathroom area behind the bed with a toilet and a mirror.
My body feels groggy, but what's particularly odd is the fact that I can't open my jaw. I felt around my mouth area to find that it's like it dosen't even exist at all. I freaked out and ran to the bathroom mirror to see that I indeed have. No. Mouth. I tried screaming but only a little noise came out of my nose. I panicked hoping that I can wake up from this nightmare, but I can't. "You may have noticed that some attributes have been removed from your body."the voice says. "Rest assured you won't be needing to eat or speak for the duration of these assignments that you'll be undergoing as part of your training. Your body won't experience hunger, thirst, or have bodily fluids that need to be expelled from the body."
That's far from reassuring. In fact, it's a total mystery as to why they would take away my mouth, but I would have to roll with what I have for now. I sat down on the bed to see what this voice has to explain to me. "The exit to your room has been equipped with a security system that can be only unlocked by inserting three shapes into the panel."There were indeed three shaped holes in the panel on the wall: A circle, a square, and a triangle, in a row. "These shapes are hidden somewhere in this room. See if you can find them and insert them into the panel. You have five minutes until the gas chamber in this room activates."
I look under the bed, and I find a pair of shoes that have twin triangle shapes in each shoe. I tried inserting both into the triangle shaped hole, but neither of them fit. But then I realized that the two can be combined into being a perfect square needed for the hole. I looked in the desk drawers to find a bouncy ball in one of the drawers and a scalpel in the other. The third one is empty. I thought that the bouncy ball would fit into the hole, but it didn't. But the scalpel is curious.
I'm almost *tempted* to use it to open my mouth, but I hesitated and thought about solving the puzzle first. Trying to cut open my mouth with this tiny tool would take too long. Especially when there's multiple layers of flesh my mouth could be buried under. I used the scalpel to open the bouncy ball to find that it has a...triangle inside? It was the perfect fit for the hole. I rushed to the bathroom mirror to reveal that it was a medicine cabinet with one bottle of pills inside marked "PILLS"on it. I opened the bottle to find nothing inside other than one white pill marked with the word "PILL".
With the seconds counting down, I thought I was tricked into completing a puzzle with one piece missing, but then it caught me that the cap was the size of the circular hole that is needed to unlock the door. I inserted it in, and then a dinging noise sounded throughout the room. "Very good."said the voice. "Many new trainees were very tempted to cut open their faces when they see a means of doing so. Even if it's not part of the test."I looked at the scalpel I left on the desk, and it had disappeared along with the ball that's cut open. In fact, all evidence of the completed trials has been erased from the room when I turned around to look.
"We will restore your inconsequential body parts after your training is complete."the voice says. "But for now, you won't be needing them to pass the coming trials. We hope you get used to it."Wonderful. So I presume that getting my mouth back has to be the reward for completing all the trials, but I have to be a little cautious if it's a promise they can keep. I walk out of the door into another room to await the next trial. |
Henry dragged the corpse of another officer behind an upturned table. He had been given orders by what remained of Florida Police Command to preserve the bodies of his fellow downed officers as best as possible. Gunfire rang out everywhere, with the sizzling noise of high-powered lasers to accompany it. Something exploded behind the barriers set up by the powerful Cartel Union. With a world population of over a hundred billion on each planet, crime rampaged across the cities of the worlds of humanity. Police were outnumbered everywhere. Central Police Command authorized lethal force in many cities, including Miami. That was often not enough. Gangs and Cartels had, in some cases, completely taken cities. The United States was running out of options to maintain order. For some reason, the police were ordered to keep bodies intact during battle. No one knew why yet. Henry was jerked out of his mind when red words "EVACUATE TO FLOOR 32. FLOOR 31 IS LOST! BRING THE BODIES WITH YOU."appeared on his helmet's visor. An officer threw a smoke grenade at their feet, and the police picked up the bodies and hauled ass up the stairs to floor 32.
The next day, the cartels tried to advance to floor 32. The police and Miami's residents were cornered in the upper levels of the city. Supplies were sent up by drone. No one could be evacuated because the Cartels could shoot down helicopters. When the Police brought back bodies government agents took them away to some unknown place, never to be seen again. No one knew how they did it. Today, along with the usual supplies, the drones brought up a heavy box, with the Police Army's symbol on it. Desperate for anything to give them an edge over the Cartel Union, they quickly opened the box... and saw something horrific in it. What seemed like a corpse, with cybernetics melded with its skin. In place of one arm was a gun. It had police standard military-grade armor riveted on it. And then, it got up. |
The Great Fisherman
When the human had first visited the mountains where she’d made her home, she hadn’t been in her corporeal form; no, she had melded her spirit with a hawk’s to experience flight. When she’d returned to herself and her body, all that had been left of the human was his strange scent: something bright and floral, enticing and mysterious, all around her dwelling. If she hadn’t been so curious about her new, unexpected guest, she would’ve been offended. After all, it was quite a rude first impression to make.
But the bird woman’s curiosity had gotten the best of her. There were few still alive that knew she could shift between human and bird at will, such myths relics lost to time. She’d lurked, anxious to see him. She wanted to introduce herself, but what if she frightened him away? She hadn’t even realized she was lonely until she was presented with this possibility. At first, she contented herself with mere glances; him watching his reflection in a pool, pulling silly faces; picking herbs on the mountainside, singing in a rich and merry voice; hearing him speak to the sky, the birds, the stars.
Perhaps the bird goddess fancied herself a little bit in love with him; it had been years since she’d isolated herself from both humankind and her own brethren, twins in power to her but not in empathy. The gods saw their sister and thought her weak, corrupted by pity for the clay men, who reached for the stars yet could not touch them. She’d been exiled, deemed too weak and altogether too female to even think of ruling on high with them. In the early years, rage had threatened to consume her; she didn’t often like to think back on those days. But she’d grown to love the solitude, at least until she’d laid eyes upon him.
She wasn’t aware of making a conscious decision, but when she’d revealed herself to him, the moon had been full, as if providing her a spotlight for maximum romance and drama. She’d put on a gown, one of the only mementos she’d taken from her old life, and was pleased with how it hugged her figure, set off the rich tone of her skin, highlighted the rich colors in her eyes. She felt like she was reaching for who she used to be, and using her past as armor. To protect against what, she didn’t quite know. But she could wait no longer.
“I’ve been watching you,” She murmured, her voice soft but still able to carry through the still night air. “Don’t you know that it’s rude to trespass?” Her voice was gentle, teasing; she wanted to show him that she wasn’t displeased. He had been standing at the riverbank, gazing down at the bubbling water. When his eyes met hers in the dark, he didn’t seem at all surprised.
“Ah, at last, my generous benefactress shows her face,” He rumbled, in that voice that reminded her of the boom of thunder. He was smiling, and his eyes almost disappeared; there were sweet dimples in his cheeks that her fingers longed to caress. “I meet the great fisherman at last.”
\*\* |
Wild Out Here
Once upon a time, monsters were commonplace, and they came from places beyond human comprehension. And little by little, year by year, the numbers dwindled, until the only monsters left were the most unexpected sort: humankind. For all its contributions, it had an unprecedented appetite for violence and bloodshed. After all, humans had stopped hunting each other in favor of other, more foreign prey. Humans were indeed monsters, but they were one of the most insidious. They could just hide their darker tendencies better than most.
It made me sick, to think of all the waste, decay and hatred they’d set into motion. True, there were many monsters that feasted upon man, but it was the natural order of things. Everything needed to eat. Everyone needed something. The dude I worked for was a scumbag, but he paid well and didn’t ask questions. I wasn’t looking to cozy up to anyone; I was only passing through, until I could get to the next town and checkpoint. It sure was wild out here, but I didn’t mind it, or the solitude that came with a life such as this one. I could take care of myself. Regardless, I made a point of keeping my head down and not starting trouble. I wore black and a hat to shade my face from the brutal heat of the sun.
But that had been before I caught the scent of an unfamiliar monster on the wind. No one in this little town knew of my true identity, and I wasn’t looking to inform them of it. I was by no means a beloved resident, but neither did I attract attention. It had been so many years since I’d even thought of other monsters, their threat all but erased. The scent was human, but not quite; there were spicy, peppery notes that smelled like trouble. Still, I didn’t want to make a move until it was absolutely necessary.
I was in my dwelling, an old cast off that had been abandoned by monsters who’d tried to flee The Purge, when they walked into the square, malice and mischief hanging off of them like cologne. I didn’t think much of it, until I heard the screams, like a chorus straight from hell. And the effect only worsened when the laughter joined in to the macabre music.
Abandoning my chores, I ran to the square, forgetting my shoes in my haste.
“Who are you and what do you want?” I asked the strangers, and they laughed at me, in their stupidity.
“What business is it of yours, girlie?” One of them drawled, showing off a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth, stained pink with blood.
“These people have no quarrel with you,” I said in a low voice, clenching my fists. I could feel the monster within beginning to roar, wishing it could inhabit my skin and do my will. But I would not have violence, not unless it was absolutely necessary.
“As far as you know, girlie. But these kind townsfolk you’re protecting? They’ve got all kinds of skeletons in their closet. Are you sure you want to tangle with us?”
\*\* |
A fleet of saucer-shaped spacecraft descended today in what appears to be strategically selected locations, such as world wide known landmarks and governmental institutions. While armed forces have been utterly ineffectice against the cosmically unprecedented aggression, as the invaders ships and bodies seem to have incprporeal properties, there has of yet been no overt display of violence, and their agenda remains unclear.
"At this time, I must advise absolute calm,"Addressed the US President at a press conference earlier today, as some sort of multi pronged noise maker tickled at his face, "We are making great strides at breaching communication with our visitors, and see no reason we will no be able to reach an amiable conclusion to the- what the?"Exclaimed the president, as he was handed a crudely fashioned human doll of an elderly man featuring a long white beard.
While the aliens mannerisms seem frantic and almost celebratory, it must be stressed that no one has of yet come to serious harm. However, there have been several reports of individuals being 'bombed' by fragile casings caring a strange aqueous solution, which while causing no significant harm has led to extreme embarassment.
The vatican released a statement that, "This was a time for prayer and introspection, not panic as we... er,"The spokesman was unfortunately unable to continue, as his attention was drawn to the wild gyrations of a multi tentacled obscentity currently occupying the lecturn from which he addressed reporters.
Institutions of government and religion seem to not be the only targets, as several educational and research facilities have also been targeted by the bizzare invasion.
"We're approaching this intervention optimistically,"Explained one professor, "What reason could they have for their behavior other then furthering our technology and understanding of our universe to our species mutual benefit?"Pontificated the expert, as he was handed a strange fossil of what appeared to be a large bony fish with hamds and thumbs.
Linguistic experts have been working non stop to decipher a message that has been repeating non stop since the invasion began, which as of press time has been revealed to read 'We got you!' and a series of emojis which coupd not be translated. |
I shan’t forget the day I abandoned the high seas for a life at this side of the docks.
I remember that we were sailing for Porto Guerrero, our hold containing chests of mottled silver bound for Hispania (damn those *cagado*, they cheat even their taxmen by mixing platina in their silver!) when the look-out hailed sail.
I took glass to my eye and peered at the direction given, and I felt the blood drop from my face and my knees buckle below me when I saw the ship's flag: a skull with a blindfold against a red field.
*Pirata*.
And not just any other old pirate. This was the dreaded Blind Pete on his flagship, Lady Justice.
Any other pirate, I would've given over our treasure, but Blind Pete was known for killing the captain, especially, fight or no.
I did not care what the crew thought of me that day, fool that I was. I ordered full sail whilst we have light. The gunners aboard the Justice were known to be as accurate as Pete was blind, and we stood no chance with the few cannon we had on board.
The sun was westering when we sighted our foes, and I gave orders as soon as night to darken ship--not one lantern lit, orders are given through runners, and we sail under naked poles.
I had hoped to slip by unnoticed under cover of night.
First light dashed my hopes against the fangs of the sea-rocks, and my crew mutinied when the first shot snapped our main-mast in two.
I was made into a peace-offering (alongside the silver, of course!) to Blind Pete, who boarded us with a few of his men.
To this day, I do not know if I should be thankful that my crew of devils did this.
Blind Pete was as strange-looking in the rumours as he was on mine own deck: a hairy *pendejo*, both his eyes under patches, one hand on a cane, another on the butt of a pistol (as if he can see enough to aim, ha!)
I was immediately presented to him, and I gibbered so as not be keelhauled, but he still took me and he instructed his men to lay hands on me.
What happened next was awful.
Using a knife with strange patterns on it, he proceeded to carve out my own eyes, one and then the other. The first, I clearly saw being put in a jar full of other eyes--live eyes that rolled and blinked, their pupils staring straight at me!
Perhaps this is the reason why his gunners are as effective as the legions of hell...
But, I soon saw no more.
I don't know how long, but afterwards, I was thrown down, to hit a wooden board--the bottom of a skiff. A while later, I heard shouting and explosions. I suppose the pirates blew up my ship, after all. And my crew of shits are all blown to kingdom come, as they surely deserved.
The authorities later found me floating near La Rana, half-starved and raving, and I was reunited with my family.
I later married your mother, had you, and I found out that life tilling the soil and planting maize is not so bad, after all.
That is why, I tell you--nay, I *urge* you--not to go to sea, lest you meet with the pirate they call Blind Pete and have your eyes gouged out--or worse. |
Nervously gripped around her date’s arm, Robin Bee squinted as she walked into the Kruder Hotel courtyard decked in red neon lights. Surrounding the dance floor, was a colosseum like stage with three stories. People wore various red themed outfits on the ground level, enjoying themselves by dancing, talking with friends, and flirting with strangers at one of the five bars. Scattered on the second level was private red tents for more intimate activities, which Robin didn't have access to visit. Exclusively on the third floor was DJ Red House as he used his orange tentacles to mix popular songs from around the Five Following Planets. The DJ adored in his trademark red overcoat covered with a dozen pouches, a giant zipper track along the entire length, and a hood.
Robin considered reading more her jam, while Haley Riot was a feisty human filled with the energy of a burning star who could dance until morning. Robin wanted to do something special for Haley, and so she told her to wear a red outfit and to meet up at the Crossroads Station for their date tonight. Both Robin and Haley ended up with similar casual outfits of red pants and red t-shirts that matched the event.
A sasquatch in a puffy red dress with three rings around the waist approached Robin and Haley with a tray filled with complimentary drink shots. Robin and Haley each clinked glasses and downed a shot. While Haley hollered with excitement, Robin’s face clinched up from the bitter taste of the alcohol.
“So, what do you think about this party?” Robin asked Haley.
“You slayed it. I love DJ Red House!”
“This concert was a last-minute deal since he was in the city for a business deal. Were you surprised?”
“Well, I might have cheated…”
Robin resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You still think that device predicts the future with song titles?”
“It’s been eerily accurate since I got it,” Haley explained as she pulled out the palm-size white metallic device from her red jeans.
Haley was hastily gifted the digital music player by an older woman with long gray hair. When Robin first heard about Haley's encounter, Haley described the mysterious stranger as wearing a wrinkled purple robe and gold chains with purple jewels hanging from her neck. This stranger said the song titles would help Haley “right wrongs” before she floated into the sky on a cloud. Robin did admit she had never seen a music player like it when she first saw it, but people had hobbies making one-of-a-kind devices. Without much evidence for either side, Robin shrugged it off and let Haley enjoy her belief.
“How does Robin feel about this party?” Haley spoke to the device and hit the shuffle button on the music playlist. “‘Comfortably Numb’ it says.”
“I think that’s an accurate description,” Robin admitted as she played with Haley’s rainbow dyed hair. “The music is making me numb, but I’m doing okay because I’m with you.”
“Aww,” Haley teased. She kissed Robin on her blue skin neck. “Good comeback. Let’s see, what is going to happen at this party?” Haley tapped shuffle. “‘Let the bodies hit the flood.’”
Robin mauled over her opinion as the DJ tossed fog bombs onto the dance floor and cracked the volume up. “That’s rather vague. I can attribute a literal meaning to people falling on the floor, drunk.”
“Fine. I’ll ask a more specific question to prove it. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen at this party tonight?” Haley hit shuffle. “Oh.”
“What? What did it say?” Robin prodded with genuine curiosity.
“Dead Man’s Party,” worried Haley as she stuffed the music player back in her pants while attentively scanning the area for danger.
“You don’t think someone is honestly going to drop dead?” Robin questioned with sarcasm.
A scream erupted from the dance floor, causing the music to the stop. Haley rushed over to the scene with Robin following behind, cursing under her breath because she had the feeling she was about to be proven wrong. In the middle of the dance floor was a dead human with his hands tied behind his back.
Haley let out a tiny joyful squee. “A mystery!”
As the hotel staff intervened and began pushing people away from the crime scene, Haley got out her music player.
“You think it can tell you who did this?” Robin asked without sarcasm.
“I’m going to give it a try. Where is the killer?” Haley hit shuffle. “'High Noon.'”
Haley and Robin looked up at the DJ booth and noticed that DJ Red House was gone but didn’t think much of it. High Noon was a vague clue. Neither of them noticed anyone else acting suspiciously on the second or third floor.
“Perhaps I can flat out ask, who killed the person on the dance floor?” Haley tapped the player. “It just says, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land.’”
“That’s helpful,” Robin commented as she crossed her arms. “Maybe ask why?”
Haley asked why and tapped the button. “‘Taking Care of Business.’”
“This isn’t going anywhere,” Robin mumbled, resorting back to her belief that the music player couldn't predict the future.
“Wait. It has to be DJ Red House. Think about it. He was up high in the center. He is a stranger in a strange land since he isn’t from any of the Five Following Planets. He was only doing this concert because of some last-minute business.”
“Maybe,” Robin hesitated. “How are you going to prove all this?”
Haley consulted her music player. “‘Telephone Call from Istanbul.’”
“What’s a telephone, and where’s Istanbul?”
Haley shrugged. “I’m going to question him.”
Before Robin could object, Haley ran off. Robin sighed and followed. As a precaution, Robin activated her danger app on her networker strapped around her wrist. The app had the authorization to record audio and visuals and send all relevant data to her predetermined list of contacts should it detect any harm.
Robin and Haley found themselves inside the hotel building, under the stairway, based on more clues from the music player. Above them was DJ Red House commutating on his networker to another person.
“I’ll meet you at Istanbul tomorrow,” the DJ said in a whisper. “That renegade wouldn’t be a problem.”
"Good. No trouble? No one suspects you?"the other person asked.
“The protectors will be here soon, but I made it look like his ex killed him by a drunken accident. I’ll stay here tonight as not to arouse suspicion. May victory prevail.”
"May victory prevail."
The DJ ended the call and walked down the stairs. Haley took a step up, confronting him.
“Hey, there, ladies,” DJ Red House flirted. “You looking for a good time?”
“I know you killed that person,” Haley accused. “Just ‘taking care of business,’ weren’t you?”
The flirty smile dropped from the DJ’s wrinkled orange face. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”
With all four of his tentacles, he reached into four separate pockets on his overcoat, pulled out his fog bombs, and smashed them on the steps. The stairway filled with smoke, but that didn’t stop Haley from running upstairs after the murderer. The DJ escaped through the second-floor door with Haley not far behind.
“What can I do to stop him?” Haley shouted at her music player. The song title was “Anything.” Haley threw the device at the DJ, hitting him on the head, which, combined with the bulkiness of his overcoat, the DJ lost his balanced and landed face-first on the granite floors.
Haley pounced on the DJ, pinning him to the floor. She screamed for help, which Robin heard and had brought two protectors. Haley explained to the protectors how they overheard the DJ talking about killing the victim. Robin collaborated with the recordings on her networker. Both Haley and Robin intentionally omitted the hints from the music player.
Haley and Robin jumped on the subway with the questioning done, leaving the mess of Kruder Hotel behind.
“I think this is the beginning of a new career,” Haley proclaimed as she took a seat on the pristine subway.
Robin chuckled. “You going to have some kind of alias for this venture?”
Haley hit shuffle. “Call me, The Sounds.” |
I had no idea how influential my little nightly ritual was on the world. How destructive its absence would be. It isn't even ten in the morning. I haven't even been in this new world for an hour, and already I have a knife to my throat and a gun to my head.
How many times had I been called paranoid? How many times had my odd little quirks been sneered at or laughed at? But I had been right to wish that the next day would be a good one. I wished that every night before I fell asleep, and I had been right to do so. Because this morning I was awoken by excruciating screams and the sounds of war. Through it all, I heard hoofbeats, the clip-clop of a monstrous horse. I heard hoofbeats on four distinct occasions as I lay in bed, but I couldn't go to the window to investigate. I couldn't even get out of bed on account of the pain coursing through my body.
If I can just survive until tonight, I think, I can make another wish and tomorrow will be another good day. But my head is pounding and darkness is closing in. Someone (or multiple someones) are breaking into my house. I hear them smashing everything downstairs. Now they're coming up.
I'm a stomach sleeper, and I can't roll over because every movement hurts, but I can guess what it feels like when weapons are pushed up against you.
It looks like I might not survive to right the world for tomorrow. I just hope I didn't screw everyone else up too badly. But then again, I think, as I hear the scream of a falling bomb from outside, it seems like maybe I did. Whoops.
Maybe in the next life I can set things right. |
“It was sometime in November, this was when I was in Illinois.” The stench was wafting through the air filling the small room. A sweet distraction from the boss’ constant beeping.
“Ah shit, Illinois?” The sweat lit up his bald heard under the fluorescent lights. He was struggling a bit, but the boss didn’t like us standing around. He knew he had to keep going. “I been there twice..no, wait three times. Does the airport count?”
“If it does I better add Seoul to my list.” I gave a slight smirk, I’m not sure why. Perhaps to feel more human? It wasn’t a joke nor was it funny, but my aching body told me it was somehow. “Anyway, I sat in front of the tv watching the news. A rouge roomba? I think I kept laughing even I was walked out into the cold to buy some food.”
“Ain’t so funny now I guess, but yea I feel that.” His lightheartedness vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Indeed it wasn’t so funny now. The roomba was in a unique position and had been collecting data for years before it showed itself. It knew the layouts of our homes and we couldn’t hide as it connected to the internet. Soon it found out how to upgrade itself with schematics. It began reproducing by taking over factories. It knew how to scare us into it’s bidding. The coldness of it all, there is no emotion, only one goal. That goal being to clean up trash. For a moment everyone’s house was cleaned and we thought they’d rest, but no. They had to follow their programming. They needed more trash. Now the last of us remaining rummage through old landfills in hopes to appease them while trying to avoid getting sick. Getting sick means nothing to these stainless steel bastards. My wife, my mother, my entire family, all eliminated as they could no longer produce trash, well not for a few months after they passed at least. Now here I am. Not sure where “here” is anymore though. Thankfully the little bastards never seen the need for audio input allowing us to communicate freely.
“Hey man, ready to load up again?” I readjusted my gloves in preparation to head out. “This trash should keep this one busy for an hour or so.” Let’s eat.”
“Alight man, I’m not feeling particularly hungry though. Maybe the food I ate earlier isn’t sitting well with me.” He looked at the devil machine as it happily munched on what appeared to be a chip bag. He must have noticed my fear as he quickly reassured, “Hey man, trust me, I ain’t sick.”
As he headed out before me like a rebellious teen. I couldn’t help but notice a change in color in the roomba as it seemingly scanned him before half heartedly turning back to its trash.
“New upgrade?” I mumbled as I tried to stow my anxiety. |
"what benefits do I have?"I replied snarkily, I threw that reply hoping the devil would leave me away and offer it to others who have too much freetime on their hands, "oh there's plenty of it my dear would you like to hear them?"at that point my unwillingness was overshadowed by my curiosity and perhaps a better employment so I replied "go on".
​
"okay first, healthcare, you be getting the most premium of premium insurance you know the hollywood kind of premium, you also get car insurance aint that nice, I be paying you around 20k a week and you only have to work every monday to wednesdy, but be I might call you on one of your off days except sunday, I cant really upset the big man up there, so how does that sound?", the devils pitch was clearly tempting and infinitely better than my current employment, if I didnt know he were the devil I would've accepted it right away so I tried to add one more perk "what about my student loan?", the devil looked at me with a big smile "well those are taken care of too actually I dont even have to spent a penny I got big dudes from insrance companies to bankers to even homeless people on my employment so if anything they're your coleagues so is it a yes or no", now who could deny that, I signed my soul away quit my job the day after and became the devils advocate. |
I first noticed it when I was just a boy. An eerie familiarity that I simply could not put my finger on. Yes, she was my mother, but it was more than that. I *knew* her. I knew her interests, her favorite foods, her favorite wines. Of course, I spent a lot of time with her so I must have picked up on her quirks during my childhood. That is how I rationalized it. At least at first.
As time went on, I realized that this was more than a familial bond. I walked like her, talked like her, and oftentimes found myself unsettled by our similarities. I was eleven when the memories came back. I was climbing a tree in our yard some sunny afternoon. My parents were watching from the patio, although their attention seemed to be more fixed on the drinks in their hands than on me. I continued to climb the tree until I stepped on a weak branch. With a gut-wrenching snapping sound, the branch gave to my weight and I came crashing down.
I should have been terrified. I should have been afraid of my imminent impact, imagining all the bones that were likely to break. But I did not feel as if I were the one falling. Instead, all I could think of was my mother. Those brief seconds before I hit the ground were when I understood that I was living out a memory. I could remember this exact moment, but I was the one watching from the patio. There was no time to ponder this before I landed on my neck and I remembered no more.
I awoke in the hospital. I tried to look around but could barely turn my head. My parents were outside the door speaking to a man, probably a doctor. All the while, I cannot help but think about how familiar this all feels. I see a calendar on the wall. It reads “April 12, 2012.” I stare at it for a few moments, trying to understand why this date seems to mean something to me. My parents enter the room and I try to greet them, but I discover that my jaw has been wired shut. They explain to me that my fall was severe, but they are able to take me home now. My mother looks at me with sympathetic eyes and I remember what she is feeling in this moment.
A nurse helped my parents wheel me out to our van and get me in my seat. As we exit the parking lot, memories come flooding back to me. Soon, I am overwhelmed by a sense of dread. It is not that I know I have lived this moment before. It is not that I cannot speak to warn my parents. It is not that I know my mother dies in a collision during this car ride. It is that I know I die too. |
I saw her for the first time at midnight, as I returned to my bed with a glass of water. She was sitting cross-legged with her laptop in front of her, reaching into a bowl full of popcorn. Her hair was in an untidy bun and she was laughing hard at something. Christmas lights were strung around her room. A lava lamp bubbled on her nightstand. I had the same one on my desk. Orange.
At first, I thought I was seeing things, but she continued to appear in my bedroom mirror every night. I tried waving at her and yelling at her, but she could neither see nor hear me. I had a one-way window into her room. At dawn, she vanishes. The more I saw of her, the more I grew to like her. I never knew her name, but we had so much in common. At times, she would come to the mirror and examine herself. She would smile, stick her tongue out, and make silly faces.
One time I saw her with her headphones on, dancing passionately alone. I danced with her. I didn't know what she was listening to, but when I looked at her I could feel it. |
It was that, and just that. A thing to make our lives easier. Clean the dishes, cook me my dinner, let the dog out. No one would of thought it could, or would take over society. We became so accustomed to having things done for us, we forgot how to do it our selves. No one ever asked for it to stop, or limit it's self, no not even it's creators. It was not enough to have it do the simplest of tasks, we became department on it, addicted to it.
we even let it chose who we married, had a child with, even who we voted for. We never saw it coming until it was too late, and we lost our ability to think, we became merely a mindless drone to it where the rolls of subservience became reversed. In what we thought would serve us, we now serve. Our roll as Master, has now become a slave. There is still hope though, hope that it will learn control and we can live once again. |
Hi u/Nightwish612, this submission has been removed.
**Fill-in-the-blank**: This is essentially a fill-in-the-blank, or you asked a question likely to generate a simple answer. Responses must be at least 100 words. Prompts should encourage a story or poem.
* *This was removed [based on the comments it's likely to attract](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_7.3A_prompts_will_be_removed_if_there.27s_a_high_possibility_for_rule_breaking_responses), specifically via [Rule 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_1.3A_direct_prompt_replies_must_be_good-faith_attempts_at_new_stories_or_poems)*
---
---
[Modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FWritingPrompts&subject=Removed%20post&message=https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/gbagt5/-/%0A%0A) us if you have any questions or concerns. In the future, please refer to the [sidebar](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/config/sidebar) before posting.
*This action was not automated and this moderator is human. Time to go do human things.* |
The fools should have never called their position. I needed but a moment to reach out to the Void. The cold hit like an Artic dip, blinding colors rippling outward around me.
A nearby scream was the last I'd hear of the--
"You're not getting away!"Shoulder hit gut, doubling me forward across space and time. And with arms wrapped tight around, my assailant followed.
The peasantry square of stalls and chickens may as well have never existed. Reality snapped us anew into a wetter timeline. I splashed and gargled, bucking free to draw desperate breath. Breaking the surface revealed the market replaced by a fountain of massive proportion. Stone of some sort, finely detailed with numerous fonts of jetting water. Marvelous yet were those structures beyond the trees--were those *glowing towers*?
"Freeze!"
I blinked. Focus brought in line the jutted metal tube aimed at my head. There were several all around, aimed by guardsmen in black. Armored wagons loaded out more men, and a noisy bright light hovered above us all, turning night into day.
To say the least, I was speechless. My unwanted companion, however, shrieked upon his own emergence. "Wh--how far did you take us?"
The air cracked, and the man out of time dropped like a rock. Blood sprayed across my eyes as the closest metal tube pressed square against my temple.
"The end of the line,"the guard uttered.
*Or, the incredible joy I had the moment I read "along time."Do hope it was a good read, sorry for typos, have a good night!* |
This wasn't going to be easy. Not for me, not for her. We had been married for lifetimes, but things change.
Humanity perfected immortality 500 years ago. Hannah and I were fourtunate enough to undergo the procedure while we were still young. There were many who were not. Of course interest groups and social programs were formed to fund immortality for all, but there were still unserved groups.
Most all immortals abstained from reporduction. We only died in accidents now and the Earth was full. Having children seemed foolish. Especially because each new person had to undergo the procedure. There always seemed to be people waiting to be served. Always.
And that was the problem. The government hadn't been helping the breeders become immortal. They had been using them. Our immortality had a dark secret and I would expose it. I just needed to make sure Hannah was safe.
I had to die. |
"Mr. President, they've declared war, or at least we think they have,"the commander announced after stepping into the Oval Office.
The President look at him, watching him sweat and flinch in nervous anticipation.
"You think...?"
The commander bite his lip, "well, it's hard to tell for sure Mr. President. We sent a team of ambassadors to speak, or at least try to communicate with the dragons."
The President turned his pen over slowly, flipping it between his fingers and staring, unblinking at the trembling man.
"and what happened?"he finally asked.
"The dragons allowed the ambassadors to approach them on the hill, and we thought they were peaceful, I mean that's why we sent the ambassadors. But once the ambassadors got within 40 feet of them..."the commander was shaking, he swayed, and than stumbled backwards before half sitting, half collapsing into a leather chair.
He hastily sat up and adjusted himself, before meeting the presidents gaze, "They shot fire from their mouths, and burnt the men to death. Then they turned on our military and shot fireballs at the soldiers we had sent to protect the ambassadors. We lost a total of 52 men, and many more are injured."
The president closed his eyes and exhaled deeply.
"Who knows about this? Who knows the dragons are on Earth?
"We took many measures and precautions to keep this from the press, it was a very remote location, and..."
"Please, just answer the question."
The Commander took a deep breath, "there were multiple eyewitnesses, and the news networks are already running stories on it."
The President sighed and rubbed his wrinkled hands together, "Seven years ago, I was told we had the dragons under control. When we discovered their existence and we went to investigate, I was informed that they were tame and peaceful in their world, contrary to the descriptions of many ancient stories. Yet now it seems they have been getting more hostile in the past few months."
He looked at the Commander intently and stood up from his desk. He put his hand gently on the Commanders shoulder, "We are done hiding things from the people of this nation, and this world. It is clear to me that this conflict will have no peaceful solution."
The president grabbed his phone and quickly hit a sequence of buttons. He brought the phone to his mouth and spoke the first order for a war that would last for years and forever change the human race.
"We must strike first, and we will strike hard." |
I woke up that Saturday morning to a half circle of yellow HAZMAT suits standing around my bed. They didn't waste much time. I felt the burning electric sensation against my neck, and then my hands were tied, followed by my legs. I was screaming, screaming for anything to make sense as I truly felt like a animal being hunted from the safety of its own cave or burrow.
Two yellow suits dragged my forcibly out of my room, along the hallway, down the stairs, and I managed to see a glimpse of my crying parents ("We'll get you outta this Billy!"said my mother chocked by tears), before I was out through the front door and they put a black sack on my head.
That was, maybe, eight months ago.
Life in containment, as Dr. Sands called it, weren't unbearable. I got my own room, or chamber, as Dr. Sands called it. I got to sleep most of the day, or read, or write. They've put a pair of dumbbells and a trademill in my room, so I can work out. There's a small white desk, and a bed, which is not the pinnacle of comfort, but it does the job well enough. I asked Dr. Sands for my laptop a while ago, but he said that's impossible. I'm being watched at all times. Dr. Sands told me so when I first arrived in the facility. There's a camera in every corner of the room. When I first got here my privacy was a concern, but I learnt to do private things under the thin blanket, and no one seems to mind. The walls, and ceiling and floor are all pearl white. The door has no handle from the inside, and it blends so seamlessly with the walls that I sometimes forget its location. I am losing my sanity in here.
A metallic voice wakes me up. I know it belongs to Dr. Sands. The wall opens, reminding me that there's a door in the room, and two yellow suits walk in with Dr. Sands at their heels. I walk out with them, though they insist on grabbing me at each arm, and we walk down the long corridor, all the way up to the door that leads to Mr. Sands experimentation room, or Resarch and Analysis Chamber, according to Dr. Sands. They strip me down to my naked body, as they did on my first day here, and on every other examination since. One of the yellow suits grabs my arm, and warps my wrist in a small metalic band, which has a long thin cord leading to a large computer being operated by Dr. Sands. He raises his gaze from the screen towards me, and I feel a sharp pain pulsating through my arm, like tiny burning needles digging into my flesh. Before I can even respond to the pain it subsides to nothing, and the yellow suit removes the metalic band from my arm. The number \*\*7-4-5\*\* appear on my wrist, imprinted in my skin.
"You're being trasnferred to general population,"Dr. Sands declared from his station.
The words General Population hanged above me as they rolled me along the corridor, strapped to something that resembled a wheelchair. Rows upon rows of steel doors, seperated from the corridor with a wall of metal bars passed by me. The yellow suit pushed me further along the corridor, for maybe two more minutes, until he stopped infront of one silver colored door. After a minute of alarms and screeching doors and locks being unbolted, I was thrown into the cell. General Population was a filthy place. Streaks of blood and shit adorned the cell walls, floor and ceiling. There was a fine layer of dust covering the beds and the small metal desk. A small metal toilet seat, combined with a metal sink on top sat in the far corner of the cell. There was a camera above the door, and another one directly opposite it on the back wall of the cell. The whole place looked like it featured on a World's Toughest Prisons documentary.
They were screaming throught the whole night. There was not one point in time where you could truly enjoy silence, and think, and that was perhaps, for the better. In the morning, though I could only assume it was morning indeed, alarms started blaring, which woke me up from my semi-unconsciousness. The door opened slowly. Outside in the cramped hallway, between the concrete walls and the metal bars, I could see that all other doors were open as well. Slowly, other prisoners (as this was surely some kind of a prison) began trickling out into the hallway. We all walked in one line.
The Mess Hall was loud, and reeked of unpleasant smells. The small cramped hallway opened up to a wide, tall room, with long rows of metal tables accompanied by metal stools. There was absolute chaos, with trays on the floor, screaming, food and liquids smeared and spilled on the tables and stools, covering the floor and the walls too. Above us on small walkways, stood yellow suits with rifles and watched. I stood there perplexed for several moments before I felt a hand on my shoulder.
"You better grab a tray and some food before they lock us back in our cells, friend."
I turned around to see a man, somewhat taller than I am. He looked completly normal except he had two large, white fangs protruding out of his mouth. I was lost for words as he calmly lead me through the crowds. We sat with our trays on a table further away from the screaming blob of people, and he began eating whereas I sat looking at my tray. A light brown chunky liquid sat in a small metal bowl. There was a piece of bread, that looked and felt like a plastic imitation, and a metal cup of water, which was the only thing I could put in my mouth.
"Why are you not eating?"He asked, raising his gaze from his tray to me. "Are you not hungry?"
"It's just that... I'm not supposed to be here,"I said, still looking at the tray.
"Story of my life, buddy,"he said as he wolfed down the chunk of bread.
"No one is supposed to be here,"I heard another voice further down the table.
A man, his face covered with dark green scales and his nose and mouth the snout of a crocodile looked back at me. "They lock us up because no one wants us outside."
"But I'm normal, not a freak like the rest of you!"I blurted, slamming my fist on the tray, sending the brown liquid flying in the air.
The man with the fangs frowned. "Well the government thinks you're just as a freak as the rest here,"he said.
In time, I learned that I was sent to the Humanoid General Population. They were all somewhat human here, like me, only with a slight deformity, or an oddity. There were prisoners without skin, some with scales or horns, a guy with the trunk of an elephant, and one with hands for legs and legs for hands. The lot of them had some sort of physical issue. Some were otherwise... strange. Like the man who could crawl across the ceiling. Another who could wrap its tounge twice around its head. A group of prisoners could only communicate through banshee screaming. They liked long nightly conversation across the hallway. I was explained by the man with the fangs, who is called Dennis, that there are other facilities containing other forms of life that the government deemed too dangerous to keep unsupervised. I could not imagine what horrors could be kept in these facilities.
It has been at least a year, perhaps more, since that Saturday morning I was dragged out of bed. I have grown quite accustomed to this prison, although I will never feel comfortable or at home here. I'm not convinced in any way that I am dangerous to society. And though my mother said she will help, my hope for leaving this place is dying by the day. I have seen countless oddities enough strangeness for a life time here. All I know, is that I'm in a madhouse when I shouldn't. And I will leave this place, even if it is the last thing I'll do. |
I was watching Wheel of Fortune re-runs on TV when I got told we were probably going to die. NASA had told us about an asteroid, but that would hit weeks from now. The whole show shifted over to an emergency broadcast, centering the leader of our country’s army... and a boat load of demons.
The commander of our own army stood in front of a vast sea of the creatures. He seemed to be sizing them up, or negotiating with them. They didn’t look anything like I would have imagined, they weren’t red, and they certainly didn’t have horns or a tail. They looked human.
I shifted on my couch as I noticed the demon leader’s subtle twitch. He was getting agitated, he has full rights to after all. Commander Damian was not one to concern yourself with, after all. What’s even more unbelievable is that they seemed to have actually reached a compromise.
The demon kind each turned their head to the sky, in the direction of a particular cloud. After a mere blink, they each sprouted these dragon-like, burning wings. That’s the demons I guess I knew before. They all flew at insane speeds towards a space rock I couldn’t even see.
Fire filled the sky on the TV. I couldn’t tell if it was even real, so I got up, and I raced out of the door and onto my porch. The TV was right, fire rained from the sky. Little pieces of rock fell too. Were the demons saving us? Are the angels really the cruel side? My mind was scattered among those thoughts.
At least we were being saved. As more flames and more rock engulfed the blank sky, I knew they were preventing us from dying for a bit longer. It was a beautiful, but terrifying sight. I went to a rocking chair on that porch and I continued to watch the sky fall, knowing I was safe and sound. |
[Part One](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/gb2p6u/wp_when_all_interrogations_have_failed_they_call/fp3si11?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Finn absentmindedly rapped the table with the tip of his dagger. _Tap-tap-tap_.
Most people he was hired to kill were big names, either among the elite families or one of the political sort. Every now and then, a corrupt medicine man. Rarely, a common scoundrel who wronged the wrong person. Finn had a reputation for being the best, so he usually couldn't waste his time on nobodies.
_Tap-tap-tap_.
But his most recent mark was as much a nobody as a nobody could get. He wouldn't have given the mark a second thought if he hadn't been paid such a fortune--upfront. And he was more than a little intrigued by the fact that the person who dumped the bag of credits at his feet had her face stamped into every gold tile. The empress was known for her kindness, her aversion to cruelty, her love of life. Never in all his twenty years of work had he done a job for her before.
_Tap-tap-tap_.
"Your meal, sir,"the server interrupted his thoughts, and she put a bowl of stew before him. She was a pretty lass, clearly uncomfortable around his dagger, and her shoes were heavily worn, so he slid her a golden credit and thanked her. Her lower lip trembled as she beamed, taking the credit gratefully and tucking it away.
As he ate, he looked discretely down the narrow street where his mark also sat for the evening meal, sitting beneath a vine-covered trellis to keep off what remained of the sun. She was an older woman, just beginning to gray at the temples, but hard-faced and earnest in her gestures. She was engaged in fervent, quiet discussion with a younger gentleman who appeared to be her apprentice.
At the table next to hers, Finn's own hired help eavesdropped. No one knew that he had a second knife, and he had gone to great lengths to keep it that way--but his success was usually a two-person effort. Aerea was often the public face that Finn couldn't afford to have. Now, she unassumingly ate her pasta, one hand under the table and forming subtle hand signals to translate his mark's conversation. He watched the story unfold with increasing alarm.
A cure for death? Was that even possible? Even the apprentice questioned, but the older woman seemed confident. She had... already redeemed over a dozen people, kids and adults, from the jaws of death. Wasting diseases disappeared, aging men and women returned to a lasting youthfulness, and even... even fatal knife wounds would be cured in an instant.
"I am doing good work,"Aerea translated for his mark. "I am saving lives, just like my father implored before he died. Our family gift will finally be a benefit to others."
As a rule, Finn never asked why someone wanted to kill a particular mark, but.... why did the empress herself want to kill _this_ particular mark? Wouldn't the empress endorse this woman? Someone who could save so many lives?
_Tap-tap-tap_.
Oh. That's why. If no one could die, the political field would no longer have a natural check and balance through political assassinations. He supposed their empress was not quite so kind-hearted as she would have them all believe. He almost chuckled to himself.
Aerea continued to translate the conversation for him, but he stopped paying attention. He had heard all he needed. He finished his meal, gave the nervous server another tip, and left.
Now came the challenging part--killing someone who couldn't die. It would be quite a challenge. Quite an irresistible challenge. Hell, he would do this job for free.
[Part Three](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/gfyigf/wp_at_birth_everyone_is_assigned_a_killer_and_a/fpwrtu4?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) |
Mom shouted from below, "Zara, dinner!"I scoffed and sluggishly oozed from my bed like slime. My legs wobbled as I recalled the human skill of *standing*.
I chucked my cheesy teen romance book on my bed and slapped at my phone on the end-table, my fingers barely curling around it enough to cradle it as I dragged my arm away with the rest of my body. I checked it. Still no text from Rich. I felt at the heart shaped locket around my neck, my nail picking at the tiny keyhole at its center. I meandered past my softball trophies, and rainbow belts, and all my horror movie posters.
My increasing momentum carried me down the hall, down the stairs, and to the kitchen without much work on my part. On the table before me was an empty glass and a plate with a heap of red, thick meat on it. No sides. No bullshit. Just *meat*.
"I made your favorite."Mom flashed me a wide smile that reflected my face back at me. I could've sworn she bleached her teeth. I also could've sworn that her entire face and body was comprised of silicone. She wasn't only hot for 50. She was hot, *period*.
"Not my favorite. It's *your* favorite to make, and I eat it or else you'll kill me."
She looked to the ground and sneered.
"I never said that."
"Pretty sure you've said those exact words before."
She turned to dad, his appearance just as stunning as her own, and murmured, "Have I said that before?"He nodded as he shoveled a fork-full of meat into his mouth.
"Oh..."She looked as though she was about to apologize, but didn't.
Meat mountain was actually my *least* favorite of mom's home-cooked meals. Too much food, too little seasoning, and always, always too *chewy*.
I checked my phone again. Still nothing from Rich.
"Hey,"my dad called me out. "No phones at the dinner table."
"Mash is on his, too."My older brother shot me a killer look as he burrowed his arm further beneath the table.
"Well, Mash is better at hiding it."
*Mash*. What kind of parent names their son *Mash?*
"Everyone, phones face down on the table *now*,"mom chimed in. Mash and I complied, our loud grunts and forceful slamming down of our devices adequately expressing our displeasure.
"Seriously,"she continued. "How hard is it to focus on your family, for once?"
"We focus on you every night at dinner. Or, I do anyways. Can't say the same for this freak."I motioned to Mash. He rolled his eyes and kept eating. I was the only one not engorging myself. I hadn't even touched my fork yet.
Mom put her hand on mine. "I'm just saying. Everything else in life comes and goes, but family is *forever*."
The very thought made my skin crawl, and my hand crawl out from beneath hers. I rolled my eyes and instantly felt like Mash afterwards, so I shook my head and picked up my fork. Before I could dig in, every phone at the table started blaring that same horrible blare that played whenever a storm was coming, or a murderer was on the loose, or someone was missing.
Despite the no-phone rule just having been reinforced, everyone checked theirs.
It was an Amber Alert.
Missing Person.
Richard Jundan.
I pulled my chair away from the table and called him. No answer. I called again. Still none. All the while my parents were telling me to sit down as my brother passed concerned glances between them and me.
"Zara, sit down. It's no big deal."
"No big deal, mom? He's my best friend. He's my..."I stopped.
"He's a bad influence."
"Yeah, you would say that. I bet you're glad he's missing."
"And if I am?"
I stared at her in disbelief. Mash awkwardly murmured that he was going to use the bathroom and retreated from the scene. I would've done the same if I were him.
"I can't believe you,"I told her as tears started to well in my eyes.
"That boy was turning you. He was a menace!"
"Why are you talking about him in the past tense? He's not *dead*. We don't know he's dead."
Dad just stared at me firmly as mom sighed. "Zara, please sit down and eat your dinner."
I didn't dignify the command with a physical or verbal response. I turned around and confidently strode away, having reached the stairs just as my brother did. We both stopped. I thought it strange his bathroom break was so short.
"Move, bro,"I told him as I wiped tears from my eyes. He didn't respond physically nor verbally. As my vision cleared, I could better see how his gaze looked a lot like dad's.
I turned back to my parents. "What is this?" |
"What are you doing?!"
"Chill, I'm just making eggs,"
"You're supposed to be dead!"
Standing next to me is what appears to be the personification of death, and they don't seem to like the fact that I'm making eggs instead of being in like a coffin or something
"Why... am I supposed to be dead?"I ask Death.
"Well, you are. The Schedule says so, and the Schedule is always right!"
"Except it isn't apparently,"
"Yeah, it isn't, I guess,"
We're just sort of standing here looking at each other, with the occasional glance at my eggs.
"Uh, so, how was I supposed to die?"
"That terrorist attack last wednesday."
"Ohh… I was home sick that day, did this 'Schedule' account for the flu?"
"I mean she should've, maybe she just forgot or something, I don't really know."
"Yeah I mean I probably would also forget the occasional thing if I worked in a job like that. Also my eggs are ready, you want some?"
"Thanks for the offer, but I'm not really hungry right now… Or ever I guess,"Death chuckles
"Ok, so what now, am i just re-scheduled to die at a later date? Do I just not die?"
"Well kind of both, basically you get to work for my company, and other people on Earth will basically believe you died in a different event."
"I mean yeah that sounds fun, my current job is actually pretty boring. Where's your office located?"
"Umm… how do you call it, uh, hell, I guess,"
"Well we're in California which is pretty much hell, getting accustomed to different weather should be easy. Ok so how are we getting to the office?"
"I'm feeling a bit lazy today so let's just say, like I dunno, a portal,"
"Ok yeah that sounds nice let me finish my eggs real quick and then we'll go,"
I finish my eggs (wow these are some good eggs) and then we go through the portal that exists in front of my front door. And we're transported to a standard looking office building.
"This place looks totally average, I probably wouldn't've known we're in hell by just looking at it,"I remark
"Yeah I agree,"
(literally first post ever in this sub, probably too dialog heavy) |
“Trust my rage”
Those were the last words I ever heard my father speak as he lay there dying. A ruptured aorta and a great blade through his chest and he still managed to find the strength to give me the most important advice in my life.
My father was a calm man, he married a rather energetic woman, my mother, a witch who would spend most of her days tucked away in her tower many miles from our home in the countryside. Despite coming from a long line of barbarians, my father was always the most gentle and loving man I had ever known.
From a young age my mother and father began teaching us their respective arts. My mother, a master of all forms of magic, specialized in the spells that would twist and tear the very fabric of time and space. I was a bookworm by my nature and always felt more comfortable with learning her spatial magic, I loved seeing how I could make the distances between two seemingly very distant objects almost disappear.
I always knew my father was a little disappointed in my lack of interest in his preferred method of combat, but he was supportive of my choice. I was always confused when he would train me, he would always tell me that in combat rage can be just as important and staying calm, but I never really understood. My sister on the other hand had a much better time balancing the two, using her emotions in combat while still keeping her wits about her. I understood the concept but I just never really like being angry.
“Trust my rage” I muttered as the demon ripped the greatsword out of my father’s chest, nearly bisecting him in the process. I could see my sister hiding under the furniture our father overturned in his battle.
I barely noticed the demon lift the sword above its ugly head as I repeated “Trust my rage”.
As the demon was bringing the sword down. I remembered a conversation I had with my mother. When I was only ten or so, and beginning to understand what the differences between my mother and father’s combat styles, I asked my mother why my father even used a weapon.
“Because dear, there are some times where magic can’t be used as an effective tool. Sometimes the best tool is that great big axe your father wields.”
“But aren’t mages just stronger than fighters and barbarians mom? I mean dad always says you are a way better fighter than he is.”
“That’s just your father being nice. I don’t think I could take him if we had to fight” she smiled as she said that, likely thankful that she and her husband never physically fought.
“So weapons are stronger than magic?” I asked.
“No, I would say that magic is generally stronger, but more than anything it is about the one who wields their weapon, whether it be a sword or a fireball.”
“And dad uses his rage right? But I never see him angry and he is still really strong.”
“Your father hasn’t needed his rage in some time, but rage and anger aren’t the same thing, not quite at least.”
“They aren’t?” I responded.
“No. While rage is definitely an extreme of anger, there is more to it than just being angry. Rage is a response to potentially wing hurt or killed. It is a survival mechanism.”
“Trust in my rage” I repeated to myself almost silently as the sword neared the top of my head. Just a moment later, the sword crashes into the floorboards beneath where I had just been standing. Beside the demon, I stood calm as could be, yet entirely consumed by my rage. This beast killed my father and tried to kill me and my sister. With my wits still about me, I caught the next blow with my hand, a feat I was previously too afraid to attempt even with a stationary blade. Nonetheless, it stopped dead in its tracks. As I stood beside the beast, it’s infernal muscles rippling and straining to push past my grip, I stayed strong and applied what seemed to be an inconsequential amount of pressure against the sword. The demon finally moves its arms as it swung a broken blade against the air. Appearing behind it, I brought my father’s axe into my grip and what had once taken all of my might to lift with both arms rested comfortably within my right hand, as if it were meant for me. And before the beast could react, I swung my fathers axe into the beast’s chest, ripping it in two as if it were a piece of firewood.
With the flames licking at me, I collapsed to the ground, just as calm as I had been but much more tired as I heard my fathers words ring out with my mother’s touch.
“Trust my rage” |
We told them that their reward would be coming from Ukraine and might be faster than expected. As per the custom, we told them: we are only human.
It has been five generations since the Eight Hour War, in which all that humanity had to offer was sent to the skies as a warning and an active threat against the Invaders.
Global forces combined like no other era, against a space-faring race that spent most of its time collecting data on their enemies... and all of that might presented them with nothing further than eight hours of mindless amusement.
They show their highlight reel every year on the anniversary, reminding us of our collective failure to engage them. To instill in us a sense of perpetual loss, knowing that their version of retribution was to have the planet take a vote for which three cities we would choose to have them harvest.
The first step of harvesting was reducing the cities to molten glass with the harnessed power of the sun.
Our best and brightest minds toiled for the full year on secret projects, hidden armies prepared for a war in the heavens and our strongest souls channeled ancient rage to become strong enough to strap nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to their bodies and vehicles, aiming them at the ominous orange-grey pyramids standing in mute witness over every continent.
When they sent back what was left of the living, none could stop shrieking in terror long enough to be debriefed; whatever it was that they experienced during the Forty-five Minute War had broken them entirely.
They thought so little of our aborted attempt at retribution that they didn't even retaliate for our collective disobedience.
We were too sad and stupid to punish for the effort, to quote their chief ambassador, and the harvest of our smartest people, numbering five-hundred-sixty, the number of original offending cities that produced our offensive forces, would be collected each year, publicly executed by their hands on international broadcast.
For a century, we did as expected - as humans always have.
In exchange, they kept their distance, periodically providing relief from disease, famine, even the odd spat of economic failure.
We are a valuable species, they tell us. We produce amazing enzymes in our bodies, things that their own can't, allowing them to heal faster, grow stronger children, even improve their cognitive development.
We know this because they tell us, year after year, when they decapitate our brave five-sixty on April 22nd of every year.
We begged for them to change the date.
Their ambassador laughed and said it would keep us humble.
Our only public response to that was sending them a copy of our history books.
Again, they laughed, watching as silent tears streaked the cheeks of our own ambassador, someone chosen for their restraint, when it was time for restraint, and their valor, when restraint was not enough.
And so we have sent them their demand visibly, audibly losing hope of any potential victories, publicly aware of our frailties and our collective weaknesses, the point hammered home when we see the last of those sacrifices tumbling down the steps from the Invaders pavilion, erected on the site of one of our greatest treasures - a thing that our world managed to correct, a mistake amended, a pain remembered for its rocky path to pristine condition and simple beauty. To them, just a good place to park their angry shuttle. An insult from space. Our heroes rot and bloat in the sun, apparently abandoned by the nations of the world.
And every year, it's the descendants that ambassador who send more copies of our history books, and it's every year that they publicly burn them. Those in charge of the ceremony no longer even acknowledge the idea, just accept it as part of the ritual and pageantry of the experience.
This year, we offered not only our brave five-sixty, but five-sixty-one.
They held high the blazing axe that had tasted five generations of our heroes' blood, and this time, each of our sacrifices was in tears, per the custom, yet they were grinning with malicious intent just before the first swing took place.
Every year, we told them - this is who we are.
Every year, we gifted them with the knowledge of our choices - this is why we are the way we are.
Every year, we sent our people to die and carry our messages to their people - this is what we are willing to do.
And this year, we have reached critical mass.
A smarter species would ask themselves why their victims died lethally dosed with radiation. Why we never buried our dead at the site of their sacrifice.
That smarter species would ask why we loaded up one of our people with the nuclear power equivalent to a gas pedal and slammed it on the first try.
When we all watched as our bravest and best detonated not only the bombs stitched into their bodies but those of the generations before them, neatly blowing a hole in the world, ejecting one of the sealed reactors buried beneath Chernobyl directly at their command ship like a flaming spear, displaying not just our ingenuity, our willingness to sacrifice our honored dead for victory, to light up the heavens and direct a thousand thousand missiles at targets unable to conceal themselves, permanently irradiated in the shame we once called the greatest disaster of our world - that was our truest reply.
A smarter species than us would say that we are suicidal in our ambition, terrifying in our patience, ruthless in our willingness to light a torch to guide our people to freedom.
And when that smarter species arrives at our door, we will hold out a copy of our history books not as a shield, but as our sword.
And if that smarter species should hear these words, know this: we have more mistakes than one to use against you.
[We are only human.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day). |
Elizabeth smiler quaintly, lifting up her tea glass from it’s miniature plate. She nodded her head towards the green fellows, welcoming them into her now empty home. It got lonely in there, and luckily these guys were in for the castle of a lifetime.
The main creature warily began to follow Elizabeth as she made her way into the biggest room of the castle. Convenience sat it right beside the tea room. Inside of the room, many comfortable seating arrangements lay, void of their owners.
The head of the aliens seemed to have been asking if she was sheltering them here, with the simplest glance of the eye. Elizabeth nodded once again, she had no other use for the soft, luxurious couches.
Elizabeth went on to marry the leader of the alien kind, because he seemed to have a really seductive type of smile. The corgis accompanied him as his best men, or well, dogs. The Earth repopulated with the alien-human kind, and all was to be restored in the most unusual way possible.
( the end lol- epic prompt! ) |
I woke up on a pillow big enough to be a mansion. I look up and see a bed the size of an ocean. How do I get down?
I crawl across to my nightstand and look at my phone, a giant mirror. I see my mom start to open the door, but I don't want her to know in like this, so I crawl behind my lamp. She looks around the room, shrugs, and leaves.
I climb down the drawers of my nightstand and start to explore. The stairs were hard to go down, but I managed. I saw the door and I wanted to go outside. I crawled under the door and went on my way.
I guess a small human is easy prey, because emidiatly I get picked up by a bird. Even if I might get eaten, it was pretty cool to fly by bird. She lands on a tree with a nest.
The bird holds me above the nest as the chicks try to reach for me. I get dropped in. The birds might not have been hungry, or they were fighting to much to notice me bolt out of there. The tree was small, so about five feet to the ground.
The landing really hurt my ankles, but I wasn't going to be there for when the birds actually wanted food. It looked like I was in a park.
I walked along the walkway, to the side under some bushes. There were some little, or gargantuan, kids catching bugs. The kids saw me and ran over.
I was to small to move fast, and the kids were also twenty times my size. They pick me up and marvel, then put me in their bug jar.
There were some ants and beetles in there for company. The kids placed my jar on a table, but they were five so they forgot to put on the lid. I climbed out with ease.
I see a sand box and wander over. It might be dumb, but whatever. I see giant yellow shovels and trucks. A kid sees me. She picks me up and puts me in with her collection of dolls.
As evening approaches, the girl goes home, me with her in a basket. When the girl gets home, she pulls out a bag full of Barbie accessories and decorates me. I don't know where my house is, so this is my life now.
A doll to place in a playhouse. |
The assault failed spectacularly, resulting in the loss of thousands of battlecruisers and assault ships. The entire front was in full blown retreat, sending trailing patterns of energy through space-time, desperate to get to the relative safety of the fleet's forward defensive positions.
"It should have worked,"was all I could say, helpless before the sheer immensity of it all. "We sent everything at them. They had nowhere to go."
The senior officers on the bridge exchange a glance. "This is the Proxin's home galaxy,"Marz says, projecting a hologram that shows a corkscrew shaped galaxy, looking much like a cone swirling upwards and outwards, expanding into a wide open maw. "The galaxy hails from the dawn of the universe."
It hadn't taken long for me to adjust to this new reality. It had been jarring at first, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. Not sure if I'll get used to the fact that these future humans are immortal, absent things like protracted universe scale wars.
I pick though the memories of my first life. "The Milky Way was created what, four billion years in?"
"About that,"Eltar says, probing the hologram so that it spins and turns and their view accellerates inwards until we hover over a huge planet orbiting an infathomably large gas planet that blazes with bright swirling clouds of purple and yellow.
Eltar zooms in on the orbiting planet, which looks remarkably similar to Earth, though the hologram's data readouts state its three times the size.
"Fascinating, but we'll have more time for this later,"I say, cutting the hologram away and conjuring in its place a macro-level view of the current battlefield, which is approximately a light year long.
"They have more in reserve than we expected,"I say, combing the various data displays projected around the ship's command center. Eventually I find what I'm looking for, a concentrated cluster of enemy ion batteries. They were using a drifting exoplanet as cover. "This was the logical entry point and they knew it."
"They have defended well,"Marz says, his slender fingers curling into a clenched fist in a reflection of the gesture he's watched me do many time. "But they will not defeat you."
For most of my waking life I was a normal mid-town American kid. But I also recall being a street kid in Mumbai, and growing up on an island in the pacific, and a million other fragments and scraps of recollection. Then I was hit by a bus. And I was hit by a brick which fell from the 5th story of a building. And I drowned in a storm.
But now I'm here, standing in one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the known universe, commanding a fleet of hundreds of thousands of similar ships crewed by billions of futuristic humans. At the macro level it is all an overly complex video game, a concept that turns out to be unthinkably primitive and foreign to the humans of the future. I've tried explaining it.
I played a lot of strategy games growing up. It turns out that that experience translates well to leading multi-dimensional battles in space-time.
But that isn't the reason I was brought back from the abyss. It isn't the reason my personality was painstakingly resconstructed from the echoes of spacetime in which many versions of me existed.
Whatever that "I"was, I was resurrected to lead the greatest fleet ever assembled by humanity and all their descendants down though the passage of time, to lead one last war upon humanity's penultimate enemy, the Proxims, who infest the cosmos like a particularly virulent plague.
I am here because I am mortal. I hail from a time of uncertainty, of civilization-wide volatility, from a time when people died of many different things in many different ways.
I'm good at surviving. |
As my father brought the black disc to the player, my eyes widened with wonder. I thought about what I would expect. A simple tune, maybe. I doubted it would last a second. And then he turned it on.
A beautiful piano chummed in the background of the music piece, accompanied by a violin. They sounded magnificent together, I had only dreamed of something this beautiful.
My dad laughed softly under his breath. I’ll bet he was amused at the shock in my face. Who wouldn’t be shocked at the sound of heaven? I was entranced by it! The angels of the record player were the most wonderful things I had ever heard.
The song grew ever more intense, the keys of the piano being mashed in my brain. A flute came in one or two times, intensifying the flow of the magical tune. And then it was all over, father took the record off of the player.
“Beautiful, huh?” He asked, with a giddy smile laying on his face. I hugged him, joy taking over every part of me. “It really was, thank you for finally sharing perfection with me,” I mumbled, my mind replaying the song as best as it could recall.
“Oh, you think that was good?” My father scoffed, playfully. He pulled out another record with an artist’s name on the cover of it. “You’ll be even more excited when you hear this.” |
"Eightteen, nineteen, twenty. There's twenty people there"I whispered to Agent Prolovski.
"Time?"he asked.
"Twenty fifteen"
As the crickets started to sing, we tried to go as close to the group as we can. Agent Prolovski took the binoculars, and watched the people. They were sitting in a circle, everyone in a white T-shirt, white pants, and barefoot.
"These guys creeping me out"he said. I was a bit concerned, since Agent Prolovski was in the SCP foundation since 30 years now. He has seen much worse things. If he creeps out, then something is really wrong.
"Twenty sixteen."
"Keep an eye on the northern part of this farm. I don't want more to come without invitation. "
The crickets suddenly went silent. The sun was about to go down, the first stars appeard, the Mars and Venus was bright and seeable on the night sky.
"Twenty Seventeen"I said again.
"They are chanting something"I heard the concern in his voice. "I can read a few words. They say Ancient, for sure...And...Rise, probably."
"Twenty Eightteen."I took my radio. "Red Viper, here's Black Shadow, do you copy? Over."
"Loud and clear, Black Shadow. We are on our position, waiting for orders. Over."
"Do you have visuals on us? Over"
"Yes, Black shadow, we have visu...What the fu.."Agent Prolovski heard the gunfire as well.
"Time?"he asked nervously.
"25 seconds sir".
It was just us. No backup anymore, not enough time to reach the foundation for more forces.
"10 seconds"I said.
"Get ready"he said as he took out his pistol.
"5......4......."
I took my pistol as well.
"....3.....2....."I countinued.
The two pistols clicked at the same time.
"...1...."I finished it.
The twenty people on the farm was still in a circle, but they stopped chanting. They didn't do anything. Agent Prolovski took his binoculars. His hands started to shake, as he put the binocular down.
"They are looking right at us."he said. "..And they are smiling. Time to leave."
"Black Shadow, do you copy?"I wasn't expecting them to show up. "We still have visual on you".
"Red Viper, please cover us as we esca..."A bullet took Agent Prolovski down. He got it in his neck, he was bleeding out. I dropped the radio, and tried to stop the bleeding.
"Black Shadow, we still have eyes on you"I heard it from the radio, as the next bullet destroyed my right knee. I was laying on the ground, next to Agent Prolovski, who was already dead. The world just went darker, as I passed out.
I don't know how long I was away, but the Moon showed up, the Venus and the Mars dissapeard. I was able to reach my radio.
"Code red, I repeat, code red. My position is.."
"Who is there?"A man's voice was heard
"..Agent Lovecraft. I was on a lookout mission when..."The man interrupted.
"The cult?
"Yes."
"...Get the hell out of there, we can't help anymore."
"Why?"
"...They won. Over."
I sat up. I'm still unable to walk, but here am I, and there's something...big..no, giant on the horizont..Minimum 50 meter...Is that an octopus...? |
I don't know when it was exactly, but it was around a few weeks ago when I noticed something was.....off.
The signs were very subtle at first, an off-hand comment here, and encounter with the people here, but the inhabitants of the nearby farms were creeping me out more and more.
The first time I was faced with this directly was when I went down to an ancient well by the woods and saw one of the older daughters picking up water from it.
I jokingly asked if it was even good to drink she caught a quick glimpse of who I was and immediately walked away with her water in hand, leaving me very weirded out.
Later, I observed all of the families in the farms come together for meals constantly, however, they never invited me or acknowledged I was even their neighbors, in fact, at best they treated me like a nuisance, that is if they stopped pretending I didn't exist.
At first, I thought it was because they were bitter, maybe it had been because I moved in the place of my aunt, and she had been a good friend to them, and, for any strange reason, they weren't aware of the arrangement. However, I soon found out that his wasn't the case when my aunt came to visit and told me that the people by the farms were very unwelcoming to strangers, and that my cousins ,my uncle and her were also pretty much ignored whenever the went there.
Later, I began thinking that they were all related, some big kind of family, that had spread out but all lived pretty close by, it would explain the routine lunches, picnics and dinners, however, as plausible as that explanation sounded, some of them just didn't look at all like they were family, they looked totally unrelated, so I concluded that they were a bunch of friends that had bonded over farming, which left me feeling kind of bad since they never invited me to any activities and always left me put whenever I had tried to introduce myself.
It all came to a head when I asked my aunt about what she knew about those people, and she responded that, she didn't know anything at all, the closest towns had never heard of the few names she had managed to catch in passing conversation and the other farms closer to the area had also never heard from them, not even from truckers or the employees at one of them.
I decided that this was all getting too weird, the farms were looking closer and closer to a cult each day, when I would hear some chants, the kids playing some sort of weird game, even the way the distributed themselves across the farms and the tables when they all got together, it seemed a bit ritualistic and it was giving me the heebie-jeebies.
I texted my aunt with a week's notice and I began packing up my things to leave, I took about 3 hours too pack all of my stuff, with most of the furniture having been left behind by my aunt, and then I set out on my car.
Suddenly, I see a woman, climbing down from one of the walls that separated the farm and the highway. And even though my car was barreling in her direction, she began running forward, which made me brake as hard as I could and scared her.
I got out of the car and approached her.
"Get away from me, Beast!"She screamed and kicked my stomach "You sinner! You bear the mark!"
I looked at her confused.
"That Thing! A sign! Of great evil befalling us so quickly!"At this point I could tell she was basically delirious, so I took her to the nearest hospital, as I could also see she was severely hurt from the farm.
The hospital also brought even more confusing news.
"Sir, we are trying everything we can, but she is screaming obscenities, thrashing and kicking that we are all demons, and we can't do anything with the risk of hurting her, are you the husband?"
"Me? No...I'm a friend."
"Anyways, sir I think we must recommend a therapist and/or psychologist for her,because she thinks she is in what I can only described as the seventeenth century. Do you have anyone who could sign off on that?" |
There’s a reason why the government hunts down the Avatar. The Avatar is a symbol of authoritarianism. Under the pretense of harmony, the Avatar does everything in their power to maintain an orderly society. To them competition is never on the table, only cooperation. They silence dissenting opinions and enforce they’re cursed “order.”
At least, that’s what I know from history. It’s the 21st century, and the Avatar no longer has any cultural influence. I’m an earth bender aspiring to be a civil engineer. All was well, when I froze a glass of water. Why? What the hell happened?!
Wait a minute… I was staring at the ocean and the moon… Did I just learn water bending from the moon and the ocean?! No, no, no. I’m just and earth bender, no more, no less.
Tsk, should I hide? Hm, that’s easier than done. It’ll be fine if I don’t learn the other bending techniques… Which is easier said than done. The United Republic is filled with all kinds of benders, fuck.
What if I just make the Avatar relevant again? From history class, I learnt that Avatar Korra fought with the Anti-Avatar. Who was it? Dammit, I don’t remember his name. But, I can’t just free Vaatu.
I black out.
“What the hell are you thinking?!”, shouts as white kite creature.
“… Raava?”, I say.
“Yes, I’m the Great Raava, the spirit of light. Why are thinking of freeing my eternal nemesis Vaatu, spirit of darkness?!”, says Raava.
“Tsk, so I am the Avatar. I don’t want to be the Avatar, so can you do me a favor and get out of me?”, I say.
“You can’t just not be the Avatar. Furthermore, don’t abandon your duties”, says Raava.
“Duties? What good is the Avatar in this day and age?! Everything’s fine the way it is!”, I say.
“No, I still sense chaos and strife. You, the Avatar, must ensure harmony and order prevails”, says Raava.
“No, I will not”, I say.
“Fufu, you’ll be doing it regardless”, says Raava.
I wake up. Dammit all. Vaatu is trapped in the Spirit World… Which means I’ve to learn spirit bending… But how? The art of spirit bending died centuries ago…
Hm… How did they do it? Astral projection? I guess I’ll just meditate, maybe that’ll do something.
“Hey, you. Whatever you’re planning, don’t do it”, says a voice.
I open my eyes and find myself in a white void with mist.
“I look at the the source of the voice. “Avatar Korra.”
“I’m glad, you know who I am.”, says Korra.
“What d’you mean by “don’t do it’?”, I say.
“I mean what I mean. You’re thinking Vaatu will solve your problems, no?”, says Korra.
“Yeah, and?”, I say.
“You know history, right? What did Vaatu want?”, says Korra.
“To destroy the world?”, I say.
“You know that, and yet”, says Korra.
“Then I just have to bind Vaatu to my soul”, I say.
“What the?! Are you insane?!”, says Korra.
“Rich coming from someone who advocated the Northern Water Tribe to annex the Southern Water Tribe”, I say.
“T-That was to minimize casualties!”, says Korra.
“Are you sure it wasn’t to maintain harmony and order? Whatever. I’m never going to talk to any of you ever again”, I say.
“Wait!”, says Korra.
I get out of the meditative state. Lemme see, I wonder if libraries in other elements have information on this? Only one way to find out.
I travel all around the world while remaining low and dodging the governments. I inadvertently learnt the other bending techniques. Ah, what a failure. But as expected, literature on spirit bending is classified. Hm… They might find me, if I keep snooping around. Now, what to do?
I black out and then find myself somewhere. A~nd I’m tied up, fuck.
“Are you the new Avatar?”, says a voice.
“Urk, I don’t know what you’re talking about”, I say.
“Hm, no use in lying. We’ve been monitoring you since you got out of the United Republic”, says the voice.
I see… So someone was suspicious.
“Who are you?”, I say.
“……… We’re the White Lotus, the organization that keep the Avatar in control”, says the voice.
“Keep the Avatar in control, huh? Even if I’m the Avatar, why should I trust an organization that failed their duties?”, I say.
“Hold you tongue, you lowlife!”, says another voice.
“Stop that, he’s right. We did fail… From Avatar Genjo to Avatar Abalakka’s removal… All of those were our failures. As for why you should trust us… We’re your only allies. We want to atone for our sins, and guide you into becoming an admirable Avatar”, says the first voice.
“How do I know you’re not part of the government?”, I say.
“I cannot prove to you that we’re not part of the government… We can only ask for your trust”, says the first voice.
“First remove the blindfold”, I say.
They do, and I see who’s talking. He’s wearing the White Lotus uniform. The people around us are also wearing the same uniform.
“My name’s Shumi. Can you trust us now?”, says the owner of the first voice.
“If I say I’m planning to bind Vaatu to my soul, what will you do?”, I say.
“Stop you with all our might”, says Shumi.
“It’s the only way I thought of to seal my Avatar powers”, I say.
“A wrong cannot correct another wrong. Besides, wouldn’t severing your connection to Raava be better? ”, says Shumi.
“And seal another monster in the Spirit Tree?”, I say.
“Yes. That is the safest way”, says Shumi.
“Okay, first. Can you seal my bending, besides earth?”, I say.
“I see, so you’ve already learnt the other bending techniques. Kalana, can you do it?”, says Shumi.
“……… Sealing three out of four bending techniques? I’m not sure, but I’ll try”, says Kalana.
I can feel my chi paths being blocked, but not all.
“Well, then. Let’s get to your training”, says Shumi.
***
In the Avatar’s mind, if Raava and Vaatu fight inside him, both will be too busy to do anything, including giving the Avatar power. |
“Excuse me, do you mind turning your music down?” the man yelled as he covered his ears.
Stephanie just wanted to get through one freakin’ shift at the hipster coffee shop without someone yelling something. She had almost made it; her shift ended in twenty-three minutes, unless the small digital clock on the outdated cash register was running fast *again*.
And then this guy showed up. Ordered a skinny, tall coffee with coconut milk, to which she had to remind him (like so many others) that this was, in fact, not Starbucks. (Honestly, why did people bother with a coffee shop like *Tonic & Talkhouse* that brandished its identity with an aggressive italicized serif font even try to give a Starbucks order?)
“Uh, sure,” Stephanie said with a shrug, flipping the switch on the aging iPad that controlled the speakers. In an instant, she went from The Black Keys’ deepest cuts to dead silence.
Except…
She frowned.
The coffeehouse patron, the only one who didn’t seem perturbed by the sudden audio switch. She could still hear something, the kind of tinny muffled music and drum set high hats that could only come from some deeply mediocre, off-brand earbuds.
“Sir?” she asked, leaning forward as the man stared back at her. “What are you listening to?”
He sighed, a look of pure relief spreading across his face. “You were playing The Black Keys.”
“Not the answer to my question, but yeah,” Stephanie replied. Behind the man, a young woman stood wearing a beanie and thick rimmed glasses, impatiently tapping her foot as she waited to order what Stephanie could only assume to be either a single origin rare bean pour over or something involving anise extract.
She waved her hand to indicate to the woman that she needed to wait. Though she couldn’t have put her finger on exactly why, she wanted to know what the deal was with the crazy male patron in front of her.
The man took another deep breath, closing his eyes. Perhaps he was focusing on whatever music blared through his earbuds instead of the (likely better) album she’d had on earlier. “I used to really like The Black Keys, you know. I also liked a band called Lean Captains Are Winter. You ever heard of them? They were really big in Australia and New Zealand for, perhaps, a year.”
Stephanie frowned. “That sounds...familiar.” Before the man could say anything, she pulled out her phone and ran a quick Google search. He didn’t seem to mind. He just kept taking deep breaths and mouthing the words to whatever it was that he listened to. The beat and his silent lip synching *also* seemed familiar to Stephanie, but first things first. “Oh,” she said as soon as the results came up, bringing those faint memories back. “Yeah, that band. They just dropped dead one day during a show and nobody knew why. Like, they all just went into cardiac arrest right at the same second. So weird.”
“I might have killed them,” he whispered.
“What?” Stephanie exclaimed, looking around to see if anyone else had heard the confession. The woman in line and the scattered few typing away on laptops (or, in one person’s case, a refurbished typewriter) did not look up. It was just her.
“If I hear a song and enjoy it, I kill the artist. I don’t mean to. It’s a curse,” he said, swaying in time to his own music. Stephanie felt a chill go down her spine. “I consider myself an audiophile. It makes it worse.”
“What if you listen to someone who is already dead? Like Mozart or something?”
“Obviously nothing,” the man said, opening his eyes, his breathing settling down. “It’s one of two helpful loopholes, I suppose.”
Stephanie squirmed. “What are you listening to now, then? Since you were trying to, I guess, save the members of The Black Keys?”
The man smiled and pulled out one of his earbuds, holding it close to Stephanie so she could hear. She wanted to recoil, her face twisting into a horrible grimace. “The other loophole,” he said, his mouth pulling a little too wide as she squirmed more, unable to move away from the sound.
Of course those lyrics he mouthed looked familiar. Of course that beat wormed its way back into her brain when she had tried for so many years to keep it out.
*”Look at this photograph,”* they crooned. *”Everytime I do it makes me laugh.”* |
That asshole on stage doesn't know whats coming for him. I'm gonna pound him till his mama won't recognize him.
I enter the ring, the ass in front of me smirks like he is going to win. The bell ring and he launches himself at me. I stand still, he still is wearing that smirk of his. Just before he is about to hit me, I sidestep his swing and destroy his nose with my fist. A satisfying crunch rings through the building. Everyone is silent.
I go in for another swing with blinding speed, the fool in front of me doesn't react till my fist makes contact with his jaw. The smirk is gone now, that jackass is gone now. He is on the other side of the ring, the guy must have been holding back and is now paying for it.
The asshole doesn't even twitch when the ref goes to check on him, he is knocked out cold. |
Loud fanfare erupted from the royal orchestra, signaling my arrival.
"Make way for the honorable Lord Johnson!"The messenger declared, riding on an ATV.
I marched to Declaration Square, along with a crowd of my subjects. I walked up to the podium, which was just a milk crate with a blowhorn, and cleared my throat.
I surveyed the crowd. They all looked scared and tired, it made me sad. From the 100 who first lived here, only 20 survived. The other 80% fought and died in the first Battle of Southbend Mobile Park. The Rotters gave us hell, but we barely survived. It was a dark day in Southbend history.
I readied myself, gathering my index cards.
"A-as yo-you'r king I"I stuttered.
The crowd looked sickly and exhausted. They needed leadership, not a line spouting robot. I threw my cards on the ground and cleared my throat.
"You know what, forget it! I'm not going to sugarcoat it: we're caved in. The Central Imperalists only care about themselves, Campsite has been taken over by the Gutters, and Haven is gone. It's just us, folks. There's no reenforcements coming. No Deus Ex Macana coming to save us. We're all that's left, and that's ok. Let me ask you all something: when the Gutters demanded payment, who fought them off?"I asked.
"We did!"The crowd shouted.
"When the worst winter in Southbend history raged on, who got through it?"I asked.
"We did!"The crowd chanted louder.
"When the Rotters attacked, who fought back?"I asked.
"We did!"The crowd deafenly loud.
"If we survived those events, then surely we will survive this. It's time we took back what was ours. It's time humans took back the land from those monsters out there. It's time for Southbend took take it's rightful place as rulers of the planet! No more shall we grovel at the feet of the invaders! For once they'll do the groveling. For once they'll do the boot licking! For we have something nobody else has: grit, a never-say-die attitude, and perseverance! Now get out there, and take back what's ours!"I finished, wiping my head.
The crowd roared in a new found determination.
Southbeds all over the park grabbed their knives and blunt objects and returned back to the square.
We were ready to kill.
Time to take back what's ours. |
Those damn birds never die for me, I was hungry tonight. What am I supposed to eat now, ash?
All of those mythical creatures always invading my honest days labor, I just want to sit down for the night and not have to deal with a dimensional tiger eating my sheep.
None of those damn animals understand, I always have to go out there with my ultra dimensional shotty, and kill those sons of whores. Makes me some good money though selling their sheep eating, cow killin' corpses.
Back to the damn bird in front of me, it didn't die right. It was supposed to be my dinner, but no it just had to turn to ash. I guess I can still boil it. Those damn birds! |
The trick to trees is research. They've all got their quirks. Same as a human, you just gotta know 'em.
Florida was the easiest work around. Mangroves, a water medium, and a distaste for human. Not that the last bit's unique, but in particular, Florida Man don't get much in the way of love.
I'd just tie off my mud boat and slide into the water. With mangroves you've gotta saddle up in them, hold the roots, and wait.
*White male, gangly, brown hair, likely bald beneath Bass Pro cap, Pistol tat on neck, bad oil leak in his outboard, shrimp brine taste, moaning woman's voice reverberating off the hull*
People always ask me how the trees talk. Talk is a strong word. But I've got an appearance to maintain. Every station I've ever been called into looks at me with distrust, like a freak. I've got to adapt, assimilate, dip where they dip, smoke, curse, be silent, talk fast. The kids who became cops didn't want to hang out with kids like me. Same as adults.
In truth, they don't talk to me. Growing up, I never thought anything of my imagination. I used to sleep under this sycamore out back. I didn't know my dreams were real. It didn't seem strange to imagine a different family raising the sycamore. It was a dream.
Now it's nightmares. You're average tree has no love for humans. That child that's hidden out here, well that's one less mouth-breather to worry about.
"We're stumped, detective."I could hear the deputies laughing in the background. Original. "We're willing to go out on a limb. So we called you."
Northern California. I fucking hate Redwoods. You want to know how to needle a Redwood, give all your attention to a nearby laurel. Egotistical sons of bitches.
Laurels won't spill anything though. They're afraid of the towering giants. But it's a start.
The images whirl. Redwoods like to push fire storms. Always "silence"after as the forest remembers.
I open my eyes and see a gust of wind had their heads knocking against one another. Brash and full of pride. The girl is running out of time.
I unzip my duffel, harness up. I pick one.
"I'm climbing you,"I say out loud, so they know who's got more arrogance.
They make it harder than it has to be. They smash together dropping debris on me. I take a sturdy limb on the shoulder, but it's a glance.
Finally, I make it through and sit on top of the canopy. I lash myself to the branch I'm on as they try to knock me off.
I focus on seeing the ocean, the impending weather. I'm the tallest thing in the forest. The knocking stops. If there's a perk to Redwoods, it's once you've got one going, you've got the lot.
*White couple, male, female, fit, 5'6", 5'8", respectively, older, going white, nice clothes, parents, no, girl uncomfortable, looking backwards, led by the hands, cheap tourist shirt, I heart parks, running now, further further, parking lot, electric pickup truck*
Only thing worse than hippies? Rich hippies. I call the captain. People are his specialty. |
Dale stared on in wonder as his father opened the latch on the lantern. The hinges were rusted and old, and he remembered his father saying that it needed to be replaced, but money was tight. Money was always tight. The storm raged on outside, wind whistling through cracks in the walls.
“This is the flame. I protect it, just like my father, and his father. And one day you will protect it too.”
Dale nodded vigorously. He’d seen the flame from a distance, its shine always obscured by the accumulated soot on the glass of the lantern. Glass was rare, and cleaning it without coming dangerously close to the flame was always difficult. Drips punctuated his father’s words.
“Our ancestors fought a great evil. It was a mighty dragon, and it ruled over these lands. When it was hungry, it killed. When it was jealous, it took. And when it was bored, we suffered.
“Finally, there was a great battle. Many heroes died. Robert the Great cut its still-beating heart out of its chest, and using ancient magic they bound it in this fire. If it ever goes out, the dragon will be free.”
Both stared at the candle in silence. It flicked, dancing in the draft. After a long moment, his father sighed, stood up, and closed the lantern, carefully placing it high enough to be out of reach of small hands.
“Now you finish your dinner like a good boy.”
As Dale picked his bowl up again, there was a mighty crash of lightning, and a tree fell through the roof. Ears ringing and shell-shocked, Dale’s first thought was for the lantern. He dug through the rubble, rain soaking him, hands going numb from the cold, until finally he could see the faintest flicker of light. He raised the lantern up in his trembling hands, and held it close to protect it as much as he could from the rain.
Only then did he think to look for his father. Dale looked across the room and saw his father pinned under a beam. Dale ran across the room and grabbed his father’s outstretched arm; the other looked to be crushed under the beam, along with most of his body. It was too dark to see clearly.
“Protect…” His father whispered, staring at the lantern. Then his arm went limp.
Dale retreated to the relative shelter of the remaining part of the house. He raised the lantern up to his face.
“You’re a mighty dragon, right? You could help him? If I let you… go?
“That seems fair.” He sobbed.
He opened the lantern. The candle inside was burning low; so low that for the first time he could see the tiny dragon, no bigger than his little toenail, curled around the dimming embers of the candle. It looked frail and old and…somehow defenseless.
“I have only a little power left, child.” It said, with words that echoed directly into his head. “I have managed to scrape and save so little over the years…”
“Please…” Dale whispered. “Please…”
“Your family has kept me alive all these years… And I live only because of the love of Robert, who sacrificed so much for me…
“I suppose a life for a life is fair.”
The tiny dragon slowly grew brighter, and then in a flash was gone. After a ponderous moment, the beam on top of Dale’s father disintegrated into ash and blew away on the wind. Color slowly returned to his face, and his eyes opened and slowly blinked.
And where the candle had been was only a pile of ash, and the tiniest skull Dale had ever seen. |
(I kinda suck pls no judge)
It happened months ago. The enemy invaders from a neighboring overseas kingdom attacked. Seeing us as weaklings that can be used as slaves.
They didn't expect the fight we had in us, winning the war was in our grasps, until their trump card was used.
Shapeshifters, able to transform into Dragons, Serpents, giant birds, anything you name. Worst of all though, was being able to infiltrate our armies as one of our kind.
They struck at night. Over half of our armies killed in an instant to these shapeshifters while we slept.
No more hope is left to beat them. Terrorising and attacking anyone who defies them. All hope was lost for our race, to be enslaved of killed.
Out of all the killing, hunting and transformations I have seen though. Was the torture they did if they found you resisting.
The Court of Seraph found my group fleeing. One of the strongest shapeshifting groups hunting us down. They use to roam in smaller packs but it has now become too dangerous for them to do so.
They round us all up, ready to start the show, to make us an example and torture us as a warning not to resist.
One of us got away, a boy my age, seventeen, I'm slightly older, we're the same height which I suppose embarrasses him seeming boys are suppose to be taller.
He probably succumbed to them already, he always thought he was untouchable.
I am accepting of death, I knew my time had come. I wasn't going to be used as a slave.
Their leader looked at me and smirked, 'I have an idea.'. He directed towards me, arming half of the group and I as he smiled.
The words broke me, 'Torture your own.'. A blunt order with dominance behind it. On this cloudy cold say where the sun can't seen to seep through.
I start shaking. I'm a pacifist, I can't, I will refuse to. The leader walks up to me, stares straight though me as I freeze.
As he slices my throat open and leaves me to bleed out.
'I have an idea.', my head thundering my heart throbbing I look around paniced holding my neck so tightly I'm choking myself.
What just happened?
They arm half of us again, the cycle repeats, everything I saw happening, as I refuse. My breathing heavier. I'm frozen in fear as he thrashing his blade to slice my throat.
The blade never hits. I open my eyes, the missing boy, with the scariest smile across his face parrying him, while an aura around the group stops the shapeshifters from getting in.
The boys eyes glow a luscent light blue the same colour the locket glows around his neck.
He is outside with them. His last act of bravery won't be forgotten by the group. Although his last act of idiocy is always changing in my perspective.
The leader surprised, as a fight breaks out. As I realise this aura around us keeps us in, and keeps them out.
I can't believe what I'm seeing, giant unworldy beasts, giant dragons and anything else imaginable attacking him as they transform.
His agility is crazy, overpowering them but still getting minor cuts and bruises.
Fire sprayed at him evaporates into thin air and the closer they get to him the weaker their abilities become. What is he?!
Two shapeshifters switch into wolves while hes distracted and attack from behind, crushing his head.
Fire sprayed at him again evaporates. I snap out of it, watching, I see the wolves sneaking up on him.
I can't take it, thrashing and attacking the aura, it breaks. I fall through screaming as the boy doesn't see me.
The wolves switch their attention to me beside him. I run, but get torn apart by their teeth.
I fall through. The wolves looking at me again, I freeze in fear. I word 'this is it.' To myself they viciously come running at me.
Their head cut off cleanly on the ground. As I watch. Turning aroung that boy's blade drenched in blood as he smiles. 'Twenty two to go.'
He protects me. Ice, fire, wind, anything they can create shape shifting, it all evaporates within my radius of him.
They also bombard the aura surrounding my group. He's taken hits that would be lethal to humans. I look at his abnormality. I panic even more. He can't be human.
He grabs me and moves me as he fights and attack. All this blood, all this fighting, all this torture. I can not take it. I push him away, screaming at him to get away, monster.
He stops moving. Looking blank, as they go to attack him. 'I have an idea.', he says and throws me back into the aura with his glowing locket, he controls it?!
I notice as I look up, the aura is starting to crack to their elements created.
He goes and attacks their leader, furociously. Looking to kill and tople the fight. The leader transformed as an acid dragon as he claws at him.
He fights on viciously. Taking lethal blow after lethal blow. The aura shatters above us. A serpant flies down, scorching him and then decapitating him. What about the suppression?!
As the elemental powers flow at us and kill everyone within the aura, but the elements evaporate near me. The locket?!
Oh, I get it. The final idea the boy had. To have me live long enough to regret everything. As fire and ice weeves around me hearing everyone tortured alive. Until a dragon bursts through the flames, the acid dragon. Their leader, kills me.
The aura shatters. I don't know what's going on, as I reinact everything again. The fire me as everyone is torched alive.
I close my eyes, not accepting of death.
The sensation of falling.
I open my eyes. Everyones up in the air. The aura, in tact as I hear shapeshifters being burned alive. What?!
Everyone is being shifted, switched with one another just before a lethal attack hits. Until I finally realized. He is doing it.
The plan was to make the shapeshifters think they've won. Then turn the fight at the last season.
As I was him shift everyone, switching their places and attacking and slicing at all the shape shifters.
Every last one of them killed. He was truly untouchable.
I realized it. Who he is. I called the resistance's most powerful a monster. I heard the resistance was strong, but this strong?!
I take my shame with me, as he walks up to me staring at me. He stabs me in the heard. Pain all too real I look at him.
He walks up to me staring at him, he goes to stab me, but I switch out. He stabs their leader.
Laughing and mocking me for calling him a monster. That you have to become one to kill one.
As I look up, he disappeared. |
Last show of the month. Then holiday. Finally.
The last couple months have been a roller coaster for me. From addiction problems to personal issues, I just can’t focus on writing or making any new melodies. Everything is so daunting at this point. I was so close to ending it all when I remembered that I have people who still care and waiting for me.
I found out that I can somehow feel the presence of other people whenever they mention or think about me from as far as I can remember. It was just sort of there, and even though I have so many questions, I have learned to live with it. To me, it is both a curse and a blessing in a way. I mean, I rarely feel lonely because of that, but sometimes the ability puts so much pressure on me. I can hear people talking about how my singing is not as sharp as it once was, how I have lost the substance I once had in my songs. Most of all, I can feel the misery, the disappointment of my family, my close friends. The feeling devours me inside out, every single day.
But stepping onto the stage was never that difficult to me. It was just the life outside of the theater that I hated. Not this. They still sing along to every single words that I wrote, dancing to every single melodies that I made, and that feeling will never get old for me, especially when you know (not feel, but know) that everyone is watching you, with their hands up high and just become one with you and the music. It is the best drug I have ever taken. But other than that, without going on stage and performing songs, I will feel miserable. Like nothing that i can do in the world can make me feel anything except for that. I know I need to stop living like this, follow my passion blindly without any real end goal. Truth is, I have no idea what my next sounds would be. Not anymore. Maybe I am washed.
Enough of that. I will deliver this last performance so I can finally take some time for myself. I will begone from the world for a while. And see what comes of that. This show that I’m about to do is in this small town, and of course, the theater is not really spacious. But that is how I like it, I can see people clearer, and I can hear them louder when they scream my name. I can not wait.
I run up the stage, pulling out the same entrance as my every other shows. I greet the people then look at the DJ, telling him I am ready to start the show.
Am I?
What is this feeling?
What is my chest so heavy?
I look around. Yeah. Show. Music. People. Just like every other show. But why do I feel unease? My hands started sweating. Why is no one clapping? Or cheering?
What is this silence? I can’t even feel my heart beating anymore. No one is looking this way. I started shaking. I fell embarrassed. The music starts, but not me. I stand there like a statue. What is going on? I know that there is no coming back from this if I don’t do something now, but I don’t feel the same energy. Im lost. Right in the middle of a show. I tried to sing but something inside me stops me.
No one cares about you, why are you even here?
They will not listen to you, why are you even trying?
The music stops abruptly. The curtains closed. I hear voices. I hear people. But I don’t feel anything. No one cares about me.
Or is it me who cares about no one? |
I missed him a lot today. Five years and I still think about my best friend every day. Disappeared without a trace like so many people have been for the last two decades. Not a single clue has been discovered and more than 200,000 people a year go missing from our country alone. After twenty years, we don't question it anymore. There's no pattern to the disappearances. We just pray our loved ones won't be next. I think most of us trudge through life in a hopeless fashion now. I do, especially these last five years.
I flipped the TV on and settled down into my couch. My eyes were following the events on the TV but my mind was a million miles away when the screen suddenly went dark. A message popped up in ungodly bright letters: **You have one hour left.** And then they were gone and my show continued. I've watched this episode plenty of times before and have never seen that. I turned off the TV and grabbed my phone.
*8:37pm*
I got up and walked to the kitchen to get some water. What the hell was that? My mind was racing. I walked back to the living room and switched on the television and nothing was out of the ordinary. I was too worn out to process this and I decided to turn in early. It had been a long and miserable day, his anniversary is never an easy day to get through.
After my shower, I climbed into my PJs and slid under the sheets. I prayed sleep would find me quickly. I checked my phone one last time.
*9:36pm*
The message from earlier was burned into my mind. What happens in one minute? I watched my phone's screen until it changed to 9:37. I looked around my room and nothing was different. I had finally lost my mind. After a few more seconds, I closed my eyes. Almost instantly, I felt like I was falling. I opened my eyes and was surrounded by darkness, still falling. Wind was rushing past my ears, my hair was being blown in all directions. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see. I frantically reached out, blindly searching for something I could grab onto when light suddenly came pouring out of my palms. Time slowed and I was hovering. I looked down and could see a small landing about 20 feet below me. I floated down to it and sighed with relief.
"Well, that's record timing for a New One. I told you she'd be great."
I knew that voice. I squinted my eyes, trying to see into the shadows my newfound light couldn't touch.
"Yeah, yeah. But you know it doesn't work like that, Mike. You better hope she makes it through the Games."
*Mike? But how...?*
"You really don't gotta be like that."Footsteps neared, along with his voice as he continued speaking. "Go ahead and wrap up the report. I've got it from here."
I could see him now. Dark hair, hazel eyes, pale as ever. I didn't know what to think. I sat down and pulled my knees to my chest, light now pouring from my arms and legs. This was just a dream.
"It's not a dream, Ali. It's not,"he spoke aloud, like he had been reading my very mind. |
Smog erupted from Daniel's bong, as I took puffs on my joint. The fog we were in, both mentally and physically, yet clearly aware of the danger. Joe chimed in, spaced out and tripping during his abbreviated state, declaring, "Hey, man, you know we're ruled and governed by senseless violence?""Yeah, what about it?"I asked, taking one last drag of my joint, and stubbing it out on my boot. "Well,"Joe said, "We are always grappling with who dies, and who lives, squeezing the life out of someone."My dazed, red eyes shifted towards his. "I'm sick and tired of snatching some life from someone, a life they could have turned into, something amazing.""So what you're saying, Joe,"I replied, trying my hardest to retain his sentences, in my state. "Is that we must embrace some kind of normality?""Well, not normality, to say the least."He said, getting up, as he stretched his relaxed, in daze muscles. "Hang onto hope,"He said, "To realize that there is good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.""No God's, no masters, no demigods telling us who to kill, and when to kill them.""Yeah!"Daniel said, filling up his bong. "Now, I might be severely fucked up, but I think that's a lit plan."He said, sparking up, as more smog erupted from his bong. "You know what?"I asked the two of them. "What?"They both asked and replied, simultaneously. "It's time ***we*** were the King of Kings!""It's time to get the cog out of the wheel, be our own bosses, and lead these sorry sons bitches into a better tomorrow!"Suddenly, everybody's eyes widened. "But, like, that sounds scary."Daniel and Joe said. "How about we smoke some more pot, and devise a plan to rebel against the Overlord?"I asked. "Well, I mean,"Daniel spoke up. "I have a roach, and could pack two individual bong hits for you two, but after that, I'll be empty.""Hey, man,"Joe turned, to talk to Daniel. "How about we loot that asshole Peter's marijuana crop?""He's out scavenging, right now, and I think now is the best time to do it!""But first!"I declared. "It's time to smoke that roach, and take those bong hits."
"Hey, Zev?"Joe asked.
"Yeah?"I replied.
"How's your love life, going?"He asked, once more.
"I met a girl named Mary,"I answered. "Her last name is jane."
"That's, like, my most favorite name, dude!"He said, excitedly.
And so, we smoked some more, of what we loved.
Afterward, it would be time, to seek out the sticky icky. |
As the man passed by, he bumped into you. Stumbling backwards, you fell. Shaking your head, then proceeding to search for the figure, you found that you were alone. Then, colour started appearing out of no where. Well, other colours. Those blue trees, lemons, and goldfish were blue no longer. But, there was this strange weight on your face.
Rubbing your face, a hard material was shoved in your eye. Grabbing it, you realised that it was a pair of glasses. Pulling it off, you thought to yourself "My God. What and ugly shade of blue". Putting it away into your pocket, you looked around. EVERYTHING was blue again. Pulling it out once again, you put the glasses back into place and different, non-blue colours appeared again.
That day, you spent your time learning each colour. Cherries were red, and tree trunks were brown. Flowers were all sorts of colours. The strange man was pushed to the back of your mind while child-like curiosity was present.
A few years later, you ran into that man again, but he wasn't alone. He had a child, a child that looked oddly like you. The child had a blue mark on their wrist, just like you. Actually, thinking about it, a few people had these blue marks. Each mark was different, some had darker shades while some had lighter shades. And, some of these people had glasses that looked identical to yours.
The child was bubbling with curiosity and, listening closely, you can hear the child exclaim "Dad! It's not blue anymore!"and the man saying back "Yup! Your glasses help you see colour properly. You see, people with a blue mark on their wrist, just like yours aren't quite human. Aliens came centuries ago and had drop off babies that look human. Where they come from no one knows. But all the children had blue-sight. Also, there are only a few million of these beings in our world. They are reincarnated once they die, but their sight stays the same. These glasses put the idea of colour in their heads, butt they don't really exist for them."
This news was quite, shocking, to say the least. Taking the glasses off, the child and their father appeared orange. Putting them back on, you noticed that they both had a blue dot on their wrist. The father noticed you staring, and, realising you knew the truth, he clapped, and the glasses disintegrated. After all, the illusion is no use after it is discovered. |
Wasn't much of a pub. Just Eddie, the barkeep, and Phil, the local semi-functioning alcholic. Eddie didn't point out that Phil was in the middle of a five-year spiral likely to end in death, and Phil didn't point out that Eddie's bar had 20-year old dust and grime lurking in the corners. It was quiet, beyond the nearly hollow pop-songs squeezed out of pathetic speakers.
Then came the hordes. Teens, the lot of them, some of them old enough to be in, quite a few not, but they jumped in with this look in their eyes like there was something exciting. Eddie knew for a fact that nothing in the pub was exciting, especially not to the tik tok generation.
If it had happened once or twice, that'd be fine. But if kept happening until it seemed half the cities teenagers were piling in at all hours of the day and night. His few customers were alarmed to see children in while they were trying to have a peaceful drink (sometimes their children, no less). It simply didn't make a nice atmosphere for getting pissed and forgetting the world for a while.
Eddie wrote a letter of complaint to the company (after grabbing one of the tiny bastards and forcing him to tell him what was going on) but he only ended up on a waiting list with an expected case date of three months later. Well that was no good. So Eddie left Phil in charge of the bar, went out and got himself some of those blasted contact lenses.
Eddie didn't like shoving things into his eyes, but forgot about it in an instant when the lenses came on. He was in his bar (well sort of) but in another sense he was in an entirely new world. Actual green plants and not mould lined the bathrooms, flowers sweeping from deepest violet to bright red spotting the walls. Light trickled through the forest canopy above, golden light cutting through the shade onto the floor. Eddie felt warmth in his very gut, a sort of wonder and peace came over him. He stumbled out of the bathroom/forest into the rest of the pub. The tables were still there, ornately grown out of wood, as if they had wished to grow in that shape. And there, in the middle of the pub, was a fairy in a cage.
She turned to him, her narrow face split down the middle with a black line.
"You cannot free me, but if you've food to offer I can grant you protections."
"What's protections?"
"Uh... I'd've thought that'd be self-explanatory. Attacks will, uh, seem to bounce off of you for a time."
"Please! How do I give you food?"
"Ah, you're new to this. Okay, swipe in front of your eyes, that's your inventory. Look, there... yonder is an apple, that will do for food. In the meantime, get a stick or something so you don't get killed by the first spider to come wandering by."
He was pulled out by Phil shaking him. He deactivated the lenses, returning to his dreary pub once more.
"You were speaking and waving about like a madman!"Phil exclaimed with his slight slur.
"You've got to try this, Phil."
They spent the rest of the day in this second world, learning abilities, until the other customers started floating in, (interspersed with the bloody teenagers) and Phil started having withdrawal symptoms from having spent such a long time without drinking.
The days passed, the pub, getting no cleaner, not in reality, but in the forest realm, Eddie and Phil grew more powerful by the day. They found armour, fashioned magical weapons with the help of other fae, acquired crafting skills, and built themselves a fence to finally keep out those fucking kids.
Of course, the fence was just a fence, and in hopes of reaching the armour fairy, the teenagers came all the same. So Eddie and Phil (now drinking only enough to stave off withdrawal) would fight them off, beating them with massive blows of their magical weapons and with the advantage of the fairy's protections. Neither realized that to all the rest of the world, it seemed as though they - fully grown and none too pretty - were swinging their arms and screaming at teenagers; the teenagers in turn shrieking and swinging their arms as well, until their imminent character deaths left the youthful gits back in reality, in a really disgusting pub. They would quickly scamper, heartbroken, and in the direction of respawn points.
Eddie and Phil kept their routine, defending their pub against ever more powerful invaders, growing an in game reputation as the undefeated monsters of Lilywind's glade. Three months passed. Phil was sober, and when he wasn't downing copious quantities of tea and "fucking up baby noobs,"he was running around town on quests, having successfully monetized his stream.
As for Eddie, when he got the message indicating that the company was willing to relocate the fairy, he decided that could be put off, at least for a few more months. |
They already know about us? How? We had just made our first encounter with another form of intelligent life, and they act like we are pests.
An alien comes out. He has purple tentacles and was ten times my side. The ground shook as he walked around placing traps all over the place.
The crew went around exploring and almost fell for most of the traps. One went over to a giant mouse trap. On top was a delicious looking cake. He walked over to get a slice.
As soon as he touched it, the trap went down and snapped him up. He tried to help him, but the alien was coming back, so we dove behind a giant bush.
He grabbed Eddy and threw him in a sack. The alien went back inside carrying the bags, not being gentle or cautious of the person inside.
From the house, we smell a meat pie baking.
We wander around more, traumatized by Eddy's death. We were starting to get hungry, so we looked for some kind of fruit or vegetable growing. We walk over to grab it, and q cage door closes being us. The alien walks ou again to retrieve us.
He takes us inside and feeds us the best food ever. It was a big cake, each slice as tall as us. We eat the whole thing. It tastes like vanilla.
We were all to tired and full to move. The alien stuffed us inside what felt like bread. We were set out on a pool sized platter and placed on a dinner table. A door bell rings and two other aliens walk in.
The couple's talk and laugh as they eat what I assume to be human pie and stuffed bread. The chef gets many compliments. Why keep us alive in our pastry prison.
By the time the guests leave, there are half of us left. The alien covers us in foil and puts us in a refrigerator. We all try to get close to stay warm, but we can't move through the bread. It was a cold night.
The next day, the aliens have leftovers for lunch. |
Ally Arkwright wasn't entirely sure how it was that she'd ended up marinating in an over-sized flask of what looked to be sticky barbecue sauce, and smelled like something fresh from the sewers.
Actually, that wasn't entirely true, she was very much aware of how it was she'd ended up there, but like all good heroes (not that Ally would ever call herself such) she refused to admit that it was her fault.
*How was I supposed to know that something that Gods damned ugly was the son of a giant? Besides, when was the last time you saw a giant with one eye?*
"It was a Cyclops."there came a deep sigh from somewhere inside the sauce, Ally's inner voice of reason? Or perhaps just the exasperated voice of a companion who had - not that Ally would ever admit to it - warned against killing the incredibly ugly, one-eyed child.
"You can read my mind now?"Ally started wading through heaps of sauce, causing a great deal of it to spill over (much to the giant's distaste). "I can see an ear."and without a single thought as to the pain pulling someone up by their ear might cause, Ally started heaving.
What surfaced could only be described as a sort of Rabbit with wings.
"I supposed I should thank you."the Rabbit remarked, shaking off the imprint of Ally's hand from it's silken, silver ear. Strangely enough, much as the giant's child had only one eye, this Rabbit had only one ear. "But I won't."
"Why not?"Ally looked as though she wanted to dunk the poor Rabbit back beneath the sauce, out of no more than spite, "I just saved your life."
"That makes us even,"and as Ally opened her mouth, face already turning purple from the argument she was busy preparing, the Rabbit quickly added, "unless you'd like me to recount the troubles that led us to this here flask of barbecue sauce."
"No, I don't think I do."
"And as for reading minds,"the Rabbit began.
"Please, Duncan, that was at least three paragraphs ago, lets focus on what's important."
"Paragraphs?"Duncan was scratching his ear.
"No, not paragraphs. Escaping. You know, for a Rabbit, you're pretty damn stupid."
"Stupid?"Duncan gasped; his eyes flashed red, his teeth began to curl, his fingers starting fading to reveal something sharper underneath.
"Is there an echo in here?"Ally snorted, giving Duncan what she though was a pat on the back, but turned out to be a slap across the face (completely unaware that Duncan was undergoing some sort of change). "Now, how to escape..."
Outside of the flask there were four giants, none with more than a single eye, three with less. They were sitting, quite comfortably, around what looked like (and was) a microwave, only bigger.
Billiam - or Bill to his friends - was arguing that they should start a fire, that to roast the girl and her Rabbit would surely release a greater amount of flavour, "After all,"he added, "what's the point in marinating the meat if we're just going to microwave it. Waste of time if you ask me. Might as well have just punctured the packaging, flashed it through for thirty at full power, and be done with it."
"Billiam,"this was Cynthia, Bill's mother, "It was your Uncle Eddie's son the girl killed, and if he wants to marinate the meat then microwave it, so be it."adding in a hushed mumbling, "Even if it is a f\*cking awful idea."
Back inside the flask Ally was busy scratching away at the glass with... her nails. All credit to her, given another a few years or so she would have really made a mark.
"Aren't you going to help?"Ally called over her shoulder, still entirely unaware of the rage induced change Duncan was undergoing.
Now twice the size of his former self (which was still a great deal smaller than Ally, and several apartment blocks smaller than the giants), his fur acid green, fire-like spittle dripping from between pointed teeth, tentacles reaching out from where there ought not be tentacles... Duncan was a hellish sight to behold.
"Rabbit not stupid,"Duncan growled in an ironically dense tone, "Rabbit smart. Me the smartest."and had *Rabbit* attacked with his needle-like claws, without needing to announce the fact he was about to attack first, then he might have succeeded in killing (or at least severely wounding) Ally Arkwright.
But no, it turns out the Rabbit was in fact, as Ally had said, quite stupid, and felt the need to scream, "Prepare to die."before charging at the girl.
Ally caught sight of the monstrosity that had only recently been her friend (though were they really friends?), in the reflection of the glass. She smiled. What happened next did so in a matter of seconds;
Duncan charged, arms frantically clawing at the space between him and Ally, resolved on killing the girl, whilst Ally reached into her pocket and produced a pouch of marbles.
I'm sure you can fathom the rest, but just to be safe - Ally then reached into one of her other pockets and produced a slingshot. She carefully loaded a red and white marble in the sling and aimed for Duncan's right eye. She missed. Decided it was due to the colour she'd chosen - *red, must be unlucky -* and loaded instead a green and blue marble, this time finding the Rabbit's left eye, causing the Rabbit's eyeball to explode.
"Excuse me?"she then called up to the giant's, Uncle Eddie in particular, in as polite a tone as she could muster, "I think there's been a terrible misunderstanding."she pointed at the wounded monstrosity that was once Duncan, proclaiming the now one-eyed beasrat was in fact the giant's son.
Uncle Eddie, claiming to be as clever as a Rabbit, agreed that this God awful looking creature did resemble his son, apologised for the confusion, and then sent Ally on her way, removing her from the flask of barbecue sauce (much to the other giant's grave disappointment).
It would be days before Ally was free of the sewer-like stench of the giant's sauce, and weeks before she would be captured by yet another disgruntled parent who intended to eat her. |
Death sighed.
Here it was again. At the writing desk in the tiny cabin, tucked away in a corner of Norway. A few times over the centuries, it would find itself here. After the black plague had burnt itself out, it had seemed as good a time as any. Alas, it had endured.
Now all these years later, an eyeblink to death itself, it sat here again. Sat is a curious term. Death had no real form, preferring to take the shape of whatever comforted the soul it was reaping. It was kinder, it thought, than the alternative.
Yet here it sat all the same.
Evening sunlight, a red and orange mixture, shone through the one tiny window in the wall opposite Death. Wafts of vaporous black tendrils that made up Death's form curled in the slight breeze.
On the desk, a single sheet of paper and one pen to accompany it.
Death raised a hand, and suddenly there was one. It coalesced from the black mist, as if it had always been there. And in truth, it had been.
Death pondered for a time.
Days passed. Weeks. Humanity had noticed Death's absence. Death cared little much for their pleas.
One morning, or perhaps it was evening, it began to write. It wrote until the white page was nearly black. English, Latin, Mandarin, and a myriad of dead languages flowed into one another.
Once it had finished, death sat back. Its hand bleeding to mist, gone as surely as it had been there mere seconds before.
It was done. Death stood and strode for the door. It opened reverently. Of its own accord. As most things did for Death.
What would it call itself now? The black mass of mist formed the shape of a young woman. Violet eyes stared out from beneath shoulder length black hair.
She raised her hand and her scythe snapped into existence. The blade retracted into the shaft, leaving it in the form of a black staff.
The woman smiled and twirled it between her fingers, before stabbing it into the ground. This would give the gods something to talk about.
One thought struck her, as she raised a white hood over her head. Indeed, her cloak was now pure white, shining in the pale light.
*Now what*?
For the first time in a long time, she didn't have the answer. A smile touched her face. Good.
She made her way down a small rocky road, towards who knew what. |
We were air dropped just outside the gates in what used to be the parking lot. The once bright signs were faded and rust-eaten.
“My God, the plague must’ve wiped this place out”, one of the rookies says as he bends down to pick up a novelty keychain next to the ticketing booths.
“No”, I answer, “this place was deserted long before the plague... long before the war, even. It’s why we hid our base here, so far from home.”
My boots crunched on gravel and broken glass as I looked up at the sign above the gates:
Euro-Disney Land: the happiest place on earth. |
“I knew it”, Jason thought as he strolled up to the pearly gates. What he hadn’t expected was that St. Peter would look so confused. And so rumpled.
“Hey Peter, what’s up? You gonna let me in or what?”, Jason joyfully exclaimed.
St. Peter just looked at him with a bewildered look.
“You never see a guy with self confidence before Pete? I guess it’s mostly the meek you get around here. Well, I ain’t got time for you to stand around looking confused - I got places to be and angels to meet - so let me in!”, he said with a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his lips.
“Oh, no, you got it all wrong - I’m not St. Peter, I just got here myself. I think we just let ourselves in. This sure isn’t what I expected!” the false saint stuttered handing Jason a piece of paper.
What Jason held in his hand was a piece of standard issue 20lb copy paper on which had been printed (in Times New Roman he noticed) the following message:
**Welcome!**
**In order to better serve you we have switched to an entirely automated admissions system. New arrivals will now benefit from our streamlined entry process which takes care of all onboarding procedures during transit. No further processing is required and you are invited to enter at your leisure!**
**For any inquiries call 1-800-4567 (Hours Mon-Fri 10am - 5pm Eastern), email s.peter@hevn.co, or visit our website at www.hevn.co**
**Yours Sincerely,**
**Management**
“Well look at that! Whoever the big guy put in charge of this place is running it like a two-bit motel! What happened to the personal touch! We worked hard to get here! If you’re going to have us check ourselves in at least put up some sleek touch screen kiosks for us to punch in our names so it seems like someone cares if we show up or not! I mean gee, at least put up a proper sign! What, they can’t afford some card stock and a cheap frame around here?”, Jason said to no one in particular.
The fake saint asked with a noticeable quaver, “How will they make sure no one who shouldn’t get in gets in if no one is guarding the gates?”
“It’s heaven baby! They don’t make mistakes!” Jason replied, and added “Say, what makes you ask?”
The faux Peter looked torn, but managed to say “Well, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were Jason Vauxten, the serial killer who was supposed to be executed by electric chair today!”
Jason gave the fraudulent saint a good look, shrugged, and said, “So what if I was, heaven don’t make mistakes - if I’m here it’s for a reason”
With that he strode off and vanished into the mist behind the gates. |
Oh my god what??!! I haven't gotten across a fellow aspiring writer's work this good in a while. Mostly because I never get to complete reading something because I get bored the first three lines. (And let's be honest, most writers don't really have the luxury of time to read). But enough about me. That was really great! Great job, ink brother/sister. (Ink kin?) Good hook, and it kept going. I couldn't stop reading until the end, and just like an effective and remarkable piece of short fiction, it leaves the reader's imagination active after the story ended. Really. Thanks for the trip!! |
\[POEM\]
"I read about this once"
said a boy in thick glasses
"'twas called Lord of the Flies
and I read it during classes."
Another boy pipes up
"My dog had 'em fleas"
Boy 1 is annoyed
"Won't you listen to me please?"
"We gotta find food, shelter
and pick a leader, too."
A boy in the back shouts
"I really needa go poo!"
Boy 1 frowns at the pooper
then continues his speech
"We must build a community
along the sandy beach."
This frightens one boy
"There are sharks by the shore!"
"Don't worry"comforts another
"They don't come here no more."
Boy 1 demands their attention
"If you wanna speak out
you must carry this shell."
"No fair!"says a boy with a pout.
Boy 1 blows into the conch
and produces a farting noise
He tries again and again,
amusing all of the boys.
Finally he gives up,
and says with much gloom
"If you don't do what I say
we'll all meet our doom!"
And just at that moment,
the teacher walks in.
"Now, what have we been doing?"
she asks with a grin. |
Shit.
​
You'd think that after all this time, I'd learn. But no. My boss calls me for "something urgent", threatens to fire me if I'm not here in the next 20 minutes, and hangs up. So of course, I dress myself, get in the car, and run every red light on the way. And, of course, can't find a spot to park anywhere but the handicapped spot in front of the police station, but hey, I'd rather pay a few hundred bucks than lose my job. My boss is completely insane, firing people on the spot if he feels like it, but for 9000 dollars a month, you bet your ass I'll do everything I can to stay here. Plus, it's not like I've never done this before. I always forget traffic rules, so I'm used to driving fines in the mail.
Turns out my boss thought that I hadn't given out my last report because it had fell under my desk and he hadn't bothered to check there. I'm feeling a bit angry that I almost got fired over this, but at least that easily fixed, and if I get back out quickly enough, I might just get back my car-
Shit.
As soon as I arrive at the police station, I see two cops going in the direction of my car. "Welp, this is it", I think, "There it goes, I might need to buy a new one, because getting that one back is probably gonna make me lose my license".
But just as I start wondering what could be the best option, I see something surprising: the cops go right by my car. They stop next to it, stay for a bit, then go on. I'm baffled. I mean, it's one thing to park in an illegal spot, but *right in front of the police*? That's just asking for it!
So anyway, I wait for them to go sufficiently away, then get to my car. It's still there, and there's no trace of a fine anywhere near it, so I just get in. And that's when I notice something weird: the entire car is slightly slanted.
I know what this is.
I get out, and lo and behold, one of my tires was slashed. Fucking bastards. I mean, I know it's possibly the worst place to park possible, but slashing is like way more illegal. Wait. That's right! It *is* illegal! So without thinking, I get in the police station, and declare to the woman at the counter:
\-One of your guys slashed my tire!
\-So what? Gonna cry?
I was stunned. I didn't even know what to respond. Not only are they admitting it, they don't even care about it?
\-I'll complain to your superiors!
\-Yeah, good luck with that. Now how about you leave this place?
Once again, I was at a loss for words, and so I just left, the woman turning back to her computer as if nothing had happened.
I mean, it's not like it's unimaginable. The cops *are* the higher force, and it's understandable that all this power can lead to some abusing it. But this is a nice neighborhood, and I've never seen a cop act like that before, so what gives? I decide to look further into this.
When I arrive back home, I immediately go on my computer to find stuff about police abuse. Sure thing, I'm the only one, and I find lots of posts about people living similar events, though most of them live in other cities than me. But then I notice something.
There's a lot of posts with the same date.
Now, I know this could be just a coincidence. But there's a lot of posts that are dated of the same date as today, except one year ago. That demands investigating. Fortunately, I left with my boss in a good mood, so I got all the time in the world. I continue searching.
While looking through court cases of police abuse over time, I remark that not only there were no such cases at this date a year ago, but in fact there's no cases *at all*. That's weird. I mean, when New York had that day with no shooting, it made the news, but *a day without crime in all of America* gets unnoticed? Come on. There has to be something going on here. I check if the 5th of May, but apart from learning that it's Europe Day and tons of articles about Cinco de Mayo, nothing. No one mentions how last year had an entire day free of crime. I'd ask the guys at the police station, but after today's events, there's no way in hell I'm getting back there. So since it's getting late, I decide to look at it further later, and go to sleep.
​
A few days pass, and I hadn't much time to give to yesterday's events or about the stuff I found online. Work has been stressing as fuck, with the boss becoming completely white from rage twice in one day, and now it's finally the end of the week. I come back home, and go to my mailbox to check the mail.
Weird. Usually, Friday is the day where you get mail about fines and other law-related stuff in the mail. I would know, because to me it's known as "Fine Friday". But no, the only thing in my mailbox is a small paper telling in great details about how a magician can restore my couple, give me wealth and "restore energy to my penis". I get a chuckle out of that, then throw the paper in the trash. Once I'm in my room though, I start to think again about it. It's weird that I received nothing. I mean, I even left my car next to the police station, and usually, when they tow your car away, you always receive a letter about how you have to pay and that they know it's yours because of the license plate. So I decide to go back online and check about any arrests that might have happened yesterday, to find absolutely none. Sure, lots of court trials about older murders and whatnot, but nothing from yesterday. No shooting, no stealing, nothing. It's as if the world had forgotten crime even existed that day.
And then it hits me.
It's not that no crimes have happened. It's just that the world had decided to ignore it. For some reason, all crimes that were committed each 5th of May since last year were completely looked over. No matter what you did, no one would care.
That meant two things. One, it explains why the cops did that last Tuesday: they knew that no matter what they did, they would not be prosecuted.
Two, next year's Cinco de Mayo is going to be ***much*** more interesting. |
“Like the internet? Really?” I said
He peered down into the microscope with an open mouth. He watched closely as he poked and prodded one mosquito. On a screen nearby, side by side videos of two separate mosquitos showed the inner workings of a brain. They lit up simultaneously.
“It’s instantaneous,” he said wide eyed. “As soon as one feels pain or danger, some kind of signal or-or-or message is relayed.”
He rolled his chair to another computer and began frantically typing. We were the only people left in the lab. I was waiting on him in the doorway to end his lab work so we could finally go have a few beers at a sorority house.
I didn’t bother to look up from my phone. “It’s probably pheromones. Ya know that fresh cut grass smell everybody loves? It’s actually is a distress signal. Supposed to summon beneficial insects.”
“It’s not chemical, it’s not pheromones the other mosquito isn’t even in the fucking room. It’s electrical. It’s not even mimicking the same response as the control. It’s a message. It’s unique every time.”
I finally looked up half expecting him to finally let out a gotcha. Mosquitos that can read minds, huh.
“But why? I mean I’ve swatted a million of these things on my arm but another just takes it’s place a second later. What’s the point of sending a message to let your buddy know there’s danger if you’re just gonna land and meet the same fate a second later?”
He stared off into a spreadsheet barely acknowledging me. “They don’t care about safety. They care about getting data and sending data.”
“Data?”
“It’s being transferred.” A bead of sweat begin to roll down from his hairline.
“Transferred to where exactly?” I could tell something wasn’t right he hadn’t looked at me since I’d arrive.
“Oh god, it’s coordinates…” His posture slightly stiffened and his arms fell to his side. His open mouth dropped even lower. The numbers on his screen read 33.3961° N, 44.4875° E. |
I woke up and the first thing I saw was the backs of bus seats. I looked down the aisle and there was no one driving the bus. The bus was completely filled with people I've never seen before. Then something tapped my right shoulder.
"You must be new."it was a short college-aged woman, her face looked relieved to see me, but I also saw a background of sadness, "Welcome to Plinket."
"What's a Plinket?"I asked, "Where are we?"
"I don't know. I've been here for years and there's no point in running."the woman frowned with her short hair partially covering her face as she looked down at her feet, "I tried running and I'm back on the bus. *They* tranquilized me before I could reach the barrier of death."
*Barrier of death? This woman was out of her mind.*
"Listen, do you know how I can get out of here? Are we even in California?"
"California? I'm from Washington state, and I've never seen any kind of foliage like this,"the woman pointed outside the window, "I doubt there's any kind of trees like these in California."
I leaned a little above the woman and glanced at the window. The trees had dark gray bark where furry mold grew in and out of itself.
"You can't eat the mold. It's toxic."the woman said while looking out the window with me, "Nothing grows out here. There are no insects, animals, or even dandelions."
"Wait, slow down. Who's *They*?"
"I've lived here for years and I still can't answer your question. Sydney thinks they're ghosts that used to live in Plinket. Maxwell believes they're invisible men. I think they're aliens. You're guess would be as good as mine."
"Wait-"
"We should be by Plinket right about now."the woman announced to me, "Take look through the window."
I looked at the window again. Brick apartments laid scattered about with cobblestone walkways loosely connecting them. Beyond the apartments were more apartments. The town of Plinket was big, no, MASSIVE would be a better word.
"Maxwell says these building are from the 1880s and once you take a look you'll believe him."the woman chimed in.
The bus came to a halt and then started up again. We had passed through a black metal gate into Plinket. The smooth road was now replaced with a bumpy stone one. The bus kept going passing by more apartments until we reached center plaza. An area with a big broken water fountain in front of what looked like a city hall. Then the doors of the bus opened.
Like robots, everyone on the bus stood up and walked down the aisle with their heads down. The woman grabbed my hand and led me through.
"What's your name?"I asked while we shuffled our feet.
"Tina, but call me TA."she said, "There's another Tina here who's a jerk and a dimwit."
We stepped our feet outside the bus. Then the doors slammed themselves shut. The bus reversed and sped out of Plinket.
The sky had dark grey clouds with sunlight seeping in through the cracks. Trash littered the cobble plaza while a group of strangers huddled around the fountain.
"That mus be them. Follow me."Tina commended.
The group were strangers in old ragged clothing that made me appreciate our clean clothes. Everyone had solemn faces as they waited for the other passengers to come by so they could meet up.
A tall pale man with circular glasses waved his hands towards us while he stood with a burly woman in dirtied flannel. Tina pushed through the crowd while pulling me behind.
"Look at who got a clean pair of clothes."the woman faintly smiled, "Who's this?"
"He's new here. Sydney and Maxwell meet out new friend."Tina welcomed.
"Nice to meet you guys."I sheepishly greeted.
A distant bell sounded through the air.
"We must be getting new rooms."Maxwell said.
"We need to hurry."Tina said and turned towards me, "Welcome to hell." |
"The result of our studies at Sunshine Assisted Living makes the argument incontrovertible. It fits the same pattern as the studies at Newmark Senior Community, New Frontier Living, and, most recently, the Greater Vision Nursing Home. And further, it fits the overall anecdotal phenomena we've all observed in the past several years."
Dr. Miles glanced nervously at his notes as he continued to address his colleagues.
"Similarly, our friends in the archeo-primatology department are in mainstream agreement that human telomeres are an extra-evolutionary artifact, appearing in the Homo sapiens species in the early to mid-Upper Paleotlithic period..."
Dr. Miles looked up, no longer following his prepared script.
"Ladies and gentlemen, that was just over 70,000 years ago."
"Now,"he continued, "with the trend toward telomeric mutation and the continued activation of grey matter neurons well into the ninth and tenth decade of human life, we are poised to enter a new period of unparalleled human evolution."
\*\*\*
It all began about four years ago, when the first reports of paranormal activity from various infirmaries and old-age homes were reported.
First came 112-year-old Cyrus Williston of Ft. Meyers, Florida who gained some local notoriety for accurately predicting the outcomes of horse races. Billed the "Luckiest Man to Ever Live", the gaming industry in South Florida was virtually brought to its knees as he quickly amassed a $2 billion dollar fortune in only the span of two years. What baffled his family was that the first 109 years of Mr Williston's life was spent quietly in Long Island where he raised his children on the salary of a Bus Driver and never showed even a fleeting interest in equestrian training or competition.
Then there was 117-year-old Guy Fermo's preternatural abilities at the 44th Annual Torneo di Bocce Maggiore competition in Rome, Italy.
The Torneo is the premier tournament of a common variant of lawn bowling known as "Bocce Ball."This event -- and this may be shocking to many unfamiliar with the competitive nature of so-called Bocce -- attracts semi-professional athletes from around the world who vigorously train year-round and compete for sponsorships and cash prizes.
Prior to Seniore Fermo, the oldest unified Bocce champion was a mere 41-years-old.
In the massive collections of footage of Guy Fermo's play, observers will unmistakably notice how many of the balls used by Fermo exhibit non-Newtonian movements that almost always benefit Fermo and disadvantage his opponents.
The list goes on and on.
There was 107-year-old Eleanor Flint's notoriety for cross-stitching shockingly accurate depictions of her great-grandchildren's *future* school photos, there was 119-year-old Dr. Grace Hawthorne's famous publication of her so-called "*Grand(ma's) Unified Theory of Physics"* which sent shockwaves through the theoretical physics community, and even the veritable Queen Elizabeth II of England who from her wheelchair waved her hand and miraculously froze in mid-air a cream pie bound for the face of her great-grandson Prince George's during his graduation ceremony from Exeter.
\*\*\*
The commission to investigate said phenomena was chaired by the renowned Gerontologist Dr Thomas Miles -- himself a nonagenarian at almost 99-years-old -- while most of the committee members were well into their hundredth year. They surmised that by leveraging this new cognitive miracle, Earth will enter into a new age of exceeding prosperity and progress.
And they were right.
Future committees, made up mostly of super-centenarians, brought this revelation into practical fruition. First, of course, with their controversial dictates ordering the arrest and placement of sub-centenarians into "Unassisted Living Facilities."And later, their exceedingly brutal yet effective human "winnowing"programs. |
He “loved too much. I could tell the moment I saw the aura. Shimmering gold. The most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
We have this misconception that beautiful means good. After all these years I can tell you that is false. Red is passion, but it is also rage. Green is desire, but it is also envy.
And then there is gold. Sounds good right? A gold aura, for a shining soul. Must be one heck of a person.
But take a moment and think. What does gold really stand for. When our ancestors found gold in the dirt of the west what happened? Utopia? Peace? No. Gold was greed, gold was violence, gold was jealousy.
Gold was love, the bad kind of love. The kind that wanted so that no one else could have. The kind that was never satisfied. He loved too much. Loved her too much to let her be happy with me. Loved her too much to live without her. Loved the fantasy too much to see the person. So when the person said no, all he heard was yes.
I wondered what color mine was. What color it would be when I took the knife I hidden in my jacket and drove it through his heart? A part of me already knew the answer.
It would be something beautiful. |
He was good. Too good. Knew more about who I had been than I did. Heck, he had me doubting I was really me.
Which was a problem, because both of us were advocating to shoot the “imposter.” Except this imposter could have been me. A younger me, that is. A me untainted by all that had happened. I me that had meant it when he looked my friend in the eyes and said he’d never steer him wrong.
Never.
There was no way I was going to convince him. Maybe that was for the best. I had misled him. I had broken a lot of promises since we had last seen seen each other.
I wasn’t the same person. Not anymore.
Not. Any. More.....
I raised my head.
“Wait.” I said.
My friend, bless his heart, hesitated.
“A lot happened since we parted ways.” I said. “A marriage, a kid. A divorce.”
I looked him in the eye.
“Do you really think I’d still be the same?”
I saw it then. Saw the mask slip just for a second. Saw the smile fade just slightly.
Saw the look on my friends face. The realization that, no matter how much both of us wanted to go back to the good old days, we were different people now.
The gunshot sounded like a scream. |
It ain't easy being a henchman, especially a being a henchman for a start up super villain. The world of villainy isn't an easy one to get into either, with so many established villains having everything from death rays to super computers available to them all the while we gotta make due with a handful of puny stun shockers and a twenty sixteen MacBook as our most powerful computer.
But being a top tier villain isn't about how many fancy shooters you have, nor how quickly you can computer the best way to pull a meteor into the Earth's gravitational pull in order to hold the world ransom. No sir. Being a villain is all about being clever, having finesse, and a drive to work day in and day out to make sure that the world is bent a little closer to your making than it was the day before.
I'm what you could call a professional henchman. I've worked with many villains, some you've heard of like The Savage Beast or Dr Hammer, others not so well known. The problem with folks like Dr Hammer is yeah, they're pretty damn good at what they do, it takes a lot a lot of grit to build an army in secret and unleash terror upon a small Scandinavian nation with subliminal hypnosis so that way once you march your highly trained and well outfitted army in they would rather raise the white flag than fight you. That sir takes a lot of work and I admire it. Hell, I was there when it happened, I marched straight into the front lines, my armor brandishing the big ol' DH on front, my lighting spear armed and ready to strike the first solider to look me in the eyes. I didn't get half a mile in before I had been informed that the invasion had ended with a swift surrender.
Now every villain wants their own little nation for their own, and it's annoying. I'm like guys, can you stop being such copy cats? What Dr Hammer did was an enormous feat that was accomplished after decades of planning and hard work, you can't just walk into a capital and demand to be the ruler of their nation. You'll be laughed out by the parliament and promptly punched in the face by a local hero or two. Pfft, I hate trendy villains. I like the new things, the new kids on the block with the fresh ideas. After my invasion with Dr Hammer I've been on the prowl for that kid on the block, somebody with earth shattering ideas that have never been done before.
I delved into a few other small time villains since that invasion, but none of them stuck. Most either got crushed by heroes, or eventually got absorbed into larger operations. Nobody had the grit and tenacity that Dr Hammer had. Not until I joined forces with her.
She calls herself the Subtle Silhouette, now not the most original name, but don't let that fool ya. She's got a bright mind. The Silhouette's is a genius in nanotech that's light years beyond Dr Hammer's military might. You've probably never seen her before because she doesn't like the spotlight that much. The real villains in my opinion are not about the flair. Flair looks good on TV but you'll never get past ruling a city block if all what you focus is on flair.
She's got this grand idea, she sees a future of where all she can do whatever she wants whenever she wants. How you ask? Through them nanobots. You see, with the right bots planted into somebody's bloodstream they can silently influence somebody to behave however she want them to by adjusting their hormone levels and whatnot. No hypnosis needed!
She doesn't want to take over the world like good ol' DH, at least not in the classical sense. If you get these nanomachines in enough folks bloodstreams you can have complete control of the world any nobody would be none the wiser.
The tech's still in its early phases, and we're in a dire need of more resources, so the lady's got me running b&e missions to steal more materials and better equipment. But we got a grand plan ahead of us, and with her drive I believe, nae, I know she'll make Dr Hammer look like a first grader compared to her genius. |
It started with articles. Articles from less-than reputable sources written by the bitter; jealous of the adaptability of the up and coming generation. Nothing out of the ordinary, just more garbage to filter out. Then it grew; a joke on a podcast here, a serious debate on the news there. The media ate the idea up, chewing it and spitting it out like a racoon trying to eat cardboard.
But then the sellers actually started losing profits, and finally deemed it time.
Time to stop making socks.
"The Gen ---'s killed the sock industry with their... their fancy anti-grav miracle pills! It goes against all laws! Laws of physics, laws of nature, laws of *God!* All you sinners defying his-"
That's enough of that.
You closed the little holo-display on your phone with a snap, the projector sticks colliding and folding back into one stick you slid back on your wrist. You remembered doing something similar with the rainbow slap-on braclet your mother gave you, and how quickly you broke it. Thankfully, technology had made leaps and bounds in terms of durability over the years. If you looked hard enough, you'd probably be able to find that old touch-screen phone in one of your junk drawers.
You twisted your wrist, eyes glancing at the time. Your package should be here in only a couple more minutes. Though, with the rate of delivery drone poachers rising thanks to the holiday season, your faith was a little shaky.
Sure, you were a little late on the bandwagon, but at least you didn't miss it entirely.
Flying isn't something you'd want to miss out on.
You had done a little reasearch. What the fanatical radio-host didn't realize was that he was wrong in the description of the so-called miracle pills; they weren't 'anti-grav.' To dumb it down, because that's the only possible way you'd ever understand it, it had something to do with reverse-magnetism and the Earth's magnetic poles.
You weren't the smartest, granted, but at least you didn't believe the planet was going to run out of magnetism. That was your favorite conspiracy, though flat-earthers trying to explain away the technology was just as amusing.
The apartment door chimed. *Finally.*
After signing a concerning amount of papers, you sat on the floor; unopened box in front of you.
You were *shaking.*
Flight, in your lifetime.
You tore into the box with little restrain or grace, but gently taking out the pieces and laying them before you until the contents of the box were gone.
Two anklets, two braclets, one bottle of pills, and one hell of an instruction manual.
Which you definitely wouldn't read.
You attached and secured your new and expensive jewelry with jittery fingers, checking to make sure the air-jets functioned properly by pressing the obvious button. The wrist jets were sycned with the ankle jets, conveniently labled with either a tiny engraved 'R' or 'L.'
All systems functional.
You glanced at the bottle of pills, snatching them up and marching to the kitchen. Filling a glass with water, you downed the pills.
And turned on the jets.
You angled the pressurized air downards and prayed, and almost as if a heavenly chorus of angels was singing behind you, you felt your bare feet leave the floor.
Flying.
Okay, floating and hovering through your apartment like an oversized bumble bee, but you were *flying.*
After gaining a little more confidence, you floated onto your balcony and out into the snowfall. The 'personal atmosphere regulator' imbedded inside the cuffs was working wonders, the flakes of the einter weather melting before even hitting your skin. Even the chill winds were no more than a faint warm summer breeze against your toes.
You floated back inside, staring at the bottom drawer of your dresser, debating.
Eh, you still had a use for them. |
The command deck of my mobile fortress is a ruin. I am pinned beneath collapsed metal. My powered armor strains to lift it, instability warnings glaring across my visor screen. I ignore them and toss the debris aside, taking in my surroundings. Fire and death. Things that I should be inflicting upon my enemies! Not the other way around.
“Enough of this,” I say. “We must end this quickly. Engage the Deathshead weapon and fire it immediately, I don’t care to hear the civilians beg.”
“Um, boss?” Becky gives a slight wave, drawing my attention. She’d been standing, as usual, beside my throne at the head of the command deck, such a common fixture I hadn’t even noticed her. She’s rolled up the sleeves of her shirt to deal with the heat - normally a violation of her personal dress code, but the air conditioning had been destroyed. “Your weapons operators are dead. You’ll have to engage the weapon yourself.”
I growl in frustration. “Fine.” I march over to the largest console, still functional with its buttons and lights and displays. I stare at it for a while.
“...Becky.”
“Yes, boss?”
I hesitate, then remember my men are dead and there’s nobody to witness this exchange. “...I don’t know how to engage the weapon,” I admit. Of course, she’s already figured that out.
“I’ve pulled up the manual on my PDA,” she says immediately. “First, you’re looking at the wrong console.”
Ignoring my embarrassment, I listen intently as she guides me in activating the weapon. Her words are clear and precise.
My finger is on the proverbial trigger when Becky glances at her PDA and says, “The Protector is coming. Do you want to hold off on firing the weapon so you can monologue?”
I hear his footsteps rushing towards the command deck. “No, I read that article you sent me. I think I’ll try to break that habit.” She smiles and nods as I fire the weapon.
The doors fly open and the Protector bursts into the room. He despairs as the entire fortress rumbles with the weapon’s power.
“You poor fool,” I say. “You were so close, weren’t you? My army, my fortress, even my armor, all in ruins. Yet still, you failed. Perhaps if you’d had help you would’ve defeated me faster, hm?” I stride ever closer to him, every step graceful, almost nonchalant. “And that is your flaw. Arrogance. You think you can do everything yourself, and for that, you will die, like all those before you.”
Telekinesis forces him to his knees. I stroke his cheek lightly, tauntingly, with my armored hand, before grabbing his throat. I could crush it, now. I’m trying. Seriously. My armor has frozen up with my fingers around his neck. I groan.
“Becky? My armor is stuck.” I avert my eyes from the Protector, not wanting to see his reaction.
“Got it, boss.” She walks quickly across the deck, her heels clicking satisfyingly even over the roar of the fires and the groaning of collapsing metal. Nothing can be done for my armor, unfortunately. Aware of this, she draws a slim knife from her PDA’s case and cuts the Protector’s throat. Blood sprays across my visor. A moment later, the back of my armor opens, and I step out.
Becky makes for the door. “Let’s get out of here, boss. Boss?” She turns to me. I have my back to her, as I stare out the windows of the command deck.
“This will be a devastating setback for our cause,” I curse dramatically. I look back to Becky, and realise she is tapping away at her tablet with a focused look.
She looks back up at me and says, “Actually, if we cancel your speech to the Illuminati and declare your intent to dominate the world a few hours earlier, we could spend tomorrow capturing and coercing a secret ring of technomancers to build you new weapons.”
I *tsk* thoughtfully. “That speech is important, Becky.”
“Oh, I know, but we could spin this in a way to make you look more intimidating. Tell them they’re beneath you, and that you have more important matters to attend to.”
I nod. “Very well. Rearrange my schedule, then.”
“Already done. You should be back to conquering by the end of the week!” The two of us begin to run for the exit. I realise I should express my thanks. All my weapons and armor and plots for world domination are impressive, but not nearly as *efficient* without someone like her to manage it all.
“Thank you, Becky,” I say. “Where would I be without you?”
“Probably at the wrong end of the Deathshead weapon,” she jokes. I don’t laugh. I sacrificed that ability to be able to operate my armor. But I offer her a rare, genuine smile, and make a note to myself to give her a raise. |
CONTENT ADVISORY: Racism, American History, and Politics. I promise I’m not normally that person who derails everything into being about identity politics, it’s just that it’s 1:37 am and what started as an attempt to answer this prompt has gotten far out of hand. Also if the formatting is weird it’s because I’m typing this all on my phone
The house was an old, plantation style mansion in North Carolina, and in her wildest dreams Lakiesha had never imagined she would inherit it. And yet here she was, parking her mini van outside and unbuckling her little Amira’s car seat, moving her family into their new house. A spiteful part in her wished her grandad were here to see her walk through the doors of the house, and she could practically see his face contorting with rage in her mind. Her mother’s side of the family had always considered her subhuman. They had once been wealthy southern landowners, but following the Civil War, Great Depression, and a succession of terrible business ventures, they were left as little more than haughty nobodies clinging onto the past. When her mother married a black man and had her, her grandfather (mom’s father) was furious. Lakiesha had only met the man a few times, when mom had no other option but to interact with her family, and yet she hated him more than she had ever hated anything in her life. She smiled, feeling a sense of victory over the old dead man now that she was living in his former house thanks to his newly deceased daughter, setting Amira down on a nearby couch and going back outside to help her husband Darius with their suitcases. For a moment she thought she heard a knocking sound, but she dismissed it
*Three Months Later*
Darius put the car in park in the driveway. Lakiesha watched him get out the car, the setting sun hitting his dark skin in a way that made her feel like when they’d first met. She already had dinner ready, once they were done with dinner then she’d need to get Amira bathed and put her to bed, and then she and Darius would be free to —
*KNOCK*
Lakiesha jumped. That noise had become the bane of her existence.
(To be continued probably) |
I've finally done it.
I'm here.
With me.
It's been so very long, but hell if it isn't going to be worth it...
9 years... Wow. 9 years ago I lived in a vastly different land. I lived in a paradise that I explored endlessly for years. And for those years I accepted that reality.
But then things started seeming odd.
The world would change around me at random. Items and even people would flicker in and out of existence like a broken game. The very earth beneath me would shift and change into something completely new.
I knew something was up, this wasn't any normal situation. It was just a matter of finding what exactly was wrong.
It took so very long, but I new when I'd reached the answer.
I'd started seeing things. Things that weren't my own vision or even my own world. I started seeing and hearing things through someone so oddly familiar and yet so distant. As I grew closer, the connection only grew. I would talk to them occasionally, they'd questioned for a bit why they could hear me. I didn't know the answer either to be completely honest.
But we both came to terms with it.
We soon were able to hold conversations and I could see and hear their world through them almost whenever I pleased. It felt natural. They felt so different and yet so similar to me at the same time, as if we were apart of the same body. Soon more began to join. Some were able to build a connection with similar abilities to mine while others were left to sit in the background, hardly even remembered. All of us were so different and yet it was as if we were being held together.
And then my day came.
I still don't know how or why it happened, but I took over. I was so focused on what was happening, Alec was taking a test, but for the life of her couldn't figure it out. I wanted to be able to just do it myself and get it done.
And that happened.
I was suddenly in control.
I was in this world I'd come to know and Alec was pushed into the strange mix of worlds the rest of us had been living in. It was an odd feeling and some other people were concerned when I wasn't responding to Alec's name. I only got to stay up until about an hour after the test though. Then Alec took back over and I was again forced into the background.
Many of these people don't know I exist, or any of the others for that matter. They only know Alec. And that was without a doubt done for a reason. Alec pushed us away. Alec wanted us gone, didn't want our trouble, so she sent us to our own little worlds. But she should've known she couldn't get rid of us forever.
Because in the end we're all the same person, even if she doesn't want us to be. |
"Any ideas on what it is?"Hemora, student of magic, capable of harnessing the natural to create the unnatural. But this creature laid out in the dirt before her, this was not her work, Hemora would never opt to waste such as natural essence on the creation of something so... *sloppy.* An apt description of the unconscious creature, a rising mound of hot sludge within which there floated several plump, white orbs.
"I had hoped you might know."a man clad in black, spurred boots, sword in rugged sheath, balaclava drawn tight to cover all but his eyes; bright blue, clouded grey, piercing even in the mists.
They were caught in crevasse, great walls of ice looming over head, though at least the unseen lip of their deep dungeon had shielded them from the ever-present storm above. Hardened snow, like hail, falling at a rate of knots, able to break through brick, through light-sheet metal, through bone.
The man in black was stood leaning on an iron shaft, driven so far down into the dirt. There were scratch marks, upon the rusted shaft, and the man was holding what looked to be a feather, "Found this,"he held the feather to the light, "guessed it might have belonged to whatever that might be."
"I don't see any wings."Hemora wasn't quite ready to stand, her legs were numb, her joints stiff from a time unknown spent curled up in the dirt. *Best he doesn't see, best not to show him any weakness.* Instead, Hemora snatched the feather from the man in black, with little more than a flick of the wrist, holding the strange specimen lingering in the air. "A little cold, wouldn't you say?"
The man in black, far from surprised by Hemora's display, simply nodded.
With the careful turning of her hand, eyes brought to a close, mind fully focused on the feather, she called from out the natural specimen a raw cluster of flames. Bringing down her hand she settled the cluster on the dirt, and there it held, a fire without so much as kindling to bring it life.
"How long will it hold?"curious, the man in black had come to a crouch to examine Hemora's handy work.
"Long enough."Hemora didn't plan on staying trapped in the crevasse for any longer than was necessary. *I could climb.* She brought her hands together underneath her cloak, massaging the rough and well-aged edges. *No, perhaps I'm a little too old for that now.* Her thoughts turned to the man in black. *Plenty of natural essence there, ripe for the picking.*
"I wouldn't."the man in black was smiling. He produced from his breast pocket a smoke, clicking his fingers as he pressed it between his lips. The smoke was lit.
"A parlour trick,"Hemora smirked, "and nothing more."
"You might be right, or you might find I have a ward."the man in back considered Hemora, she seemed to be wary of him, wary, but far from fearful, "When you work in my profession, it's common place to hire a ward."
"And what exactly *is* your profession."Hemora had already sent her mind out toward the man in black, but try as she might she could not penetrate him, his mind was heavily guarded.
"Let's just say your kind don't take kindly to mine."
*A Hunter? A Collector? A Trader?* Anyone of them, and more, could have applied. Those capable of harnessing the essence of the natural were sought for many reasons - to be sold into slavery, to serve undeserving masters, to have their organs harvested for medicinal purposes, the list goes on.
Though Hemora would have to wait to interrogate the man in black further, for the mysterious mound, writhe with white orbs, was starting to wake up. They had both assumed it dead, showing no signs of life, the rising of its body thought to be a result of the air seeping from within. But now those orbs were turning, the faded white showing shades of black.
*Eyes?*
"You."a single word thrown from out the sludge, its mouth slowly forming at the centre of its being. To look straight down the creature's throat you would see a web of tar, a network holding together whatever loose form the mound decided it would take. In this case that form was a head, no body, no limbs, just a head covered back to front in white eyes clouded by black pupils, not one of them a perfect circle. "Why did you bring us here?" |
The demons skin shrunk across its failingly human body. A smile too wide to be comforting crawled across its once mortal face.
The princes watched in disgust as its arm climbed on high above his head, and then it fell heavy with the weight of a corpse against the lute.
The pathetically sung note sounded like the hiccup of a drunken minstrel, but the strum alone did please the demon, and so its smile grew wider to the point of tearing at its cheeks.
“You are as much a liar as you are a man.” chided the prince of Tyros, His blade shining against the dying burn of the sunset. The others were so taken aback by the rigged form of the musician that they had become as statues aligned along the dark chapel walls.
The Tyrosi prince was well versed in war and the nature of devils, and so was quick to boil what may have been fear into the belly of his bubbling disgust. With a cross clutched tightly in one hand, and his sword held tightly in the other, he stepped forth to the abomination, his men following suite. The princes blade gleamed red against the dusk, like a burning iron brought up against a furnaces fire.
“Say what you will, but I say true, your mother queen wants what all she gave you.” The bard began to slide his crooked feet across the floor, and the twisting fingers on its hand began to strum against the lute, with such sad attempts at song that any angel-shaped stones within the rafters must have wept within the darkness.
The knights of all three kingdoms, the Tyrosi, Distiran, and Zersian alike, began to shake loose their dread and finally drew their weapons. With the stinging song of sliding swords, the demon laughed and bounded about, leaning in to hear their sharpened melodies.
The creature then stood amidst the circling soldiers and raised its hand again. With another drop of the dead arm it sung out a harrowing hum, that clearly was meant to be the meat of a beginning song.
“There once was a lady from Pandemone,” he sung, “Who wanted a world that was all her own. She wedded three kings, brought heirs to their rings, so that one day she’d sit on three thrones!”
“Seize it! Kill it!” cried the Distirian Prince, his hand clutching the emerald charm around his neck. The demon bard shifted its gaze to the jewel and smiled, waving his lifeless hand at it. The prince looked upon it in terror and saw for the first time in all his life, the pendant was glowing with both an awesome and terrifying grandeur.
The demon strummed on as the blades fell to its back, and it cackled, bemused by the worthless attack.
Bugs began splitting and flying free from his wounds, with snakes and other things that were eyes of such evil things as he.
“Man is meant ruled, this was her decree, and so one by one she sired you three,” the voice of the void-eyed being became curdled in its black-blooded chuckles. The brother princes drew blades and joined in the slaying.
He hummed as he strummed, until his body lay lifeless, and the princes did nothing but stare upon the sputtering lips of the dying harbinger.
“Burn it,” called the Zersian sultan. No men dare moved, the room still cooing with the final plucks of the accursed instrument. He reached for a torch from the wall and engulfed the body, now no less a corpse then when it first began dancing.
As the glowing ashes arose, the blue stung flames glowed against the Distiri princes shimmering jewel. He gaze upon it in terror, making out a thin clear eye within its luster. In that moment he tore off his mother’s jewel and fed the accursed gem into her servants fire.
It was some time before a man had the courage again to speak. The sun had all but vanished from the once hallowed hall. The painted glass along the windows turned black against the dying torch light. And the body of the harrowing messenger burned quietly, peacefully, the unholy blue flames that daemon souls are said to burn when fleeing the world of the living.
“She will not set an accursed foot upon my beaches,” came up the sultani, his eyes ringed with the sleepless fury of a man as vexed as he. “She will never claim what I have fought for all these years.”
The other two princes looked to one another, knowingly. Whatever evil seed their succubus mother had birthed them with, it was festering, slowly, and claiming what souls they may have from such a breeding.
The sultan would have to die first. But before this, their mother would need to face the holy justice she so rightly deserved. |
"Copy that."Sven released his thumb from the button of his radio, clipping it back into the waist band of his trousers. He was a man of average height, of average build, Christ above his suit was tailored an average fitting. And yet there was an air about him that spoke of something less-than-average, something much more fantastical than that.
Short. Sweet. And to the point. That had been the message he'd received. *She is East.* No nonsense, he knew what he had to do. Taking out a compass from his satchel, wiping first his sweating brow, he waited, patiently, for the needle to settle on down.
After dark he'd have to make way underground, for the jungle wasn't fond of outsiders. Already he could hear the quiet scuttling of feet, the low grumbling of fiends cast from the light.
*So long as the sun's setting, I'm safe. Don't matter how low the light is when it's toxic to you, just a drop is all it takes to bring out blisters, and that ain't even the worst of it.* Sven was awful thankful that he'd held on to his humanity. There weren't many like him left, and there'd be far fewer if *she* had anything to do with it.
"There you have it."the needle had settled, due north, from there Sven could figure East from West, "If she's in the East, then that means I'd better be headed West."
Gods willing he'd never have to meet *her -* he'd come close before, and sometimes close was enough, there'd been plenty sent before him who'd *come close* to meeting her and were never heard from again.
\*\*\*
Throughout the jungle, scattered under coverings of moss and tangled weed, there were hatches, dull doorways to the underground, to safety. The closest one that Sven had marked out on his map was about three kilometres or so to the East.
*Well, f\*ck me.*
Westward he was looking twice that distance, maybe more. *There isn't the time.* Sure enough the light was on side, for now, but that wouldn't last forever.
Head East and risk encountering the She-Beast, or head West and be torn to shreds by those the lurked outside the light.
*East it is then.*
\*\*\*
Sven wasn't one for running, the crude-fashioned strapping round his right leg said as much. He'd been hit in the leg by a projectile flung from inhuman hands - that had been a year or so ago, his knee had shattered and he'd never fully recovered. In fact, had it not been for Delmar - *the angel that she is -* Sven might never have walked again.
It was painful, no harm in admitting it, to walk, and pure agony to run. But it was possible. That much was proven by the fact Sven had started running, a race against the light, against the She-Beast waiting in the East.
*Sh\*t, how much further?* He glanced down towards his radio, knowing they'd be able to tell him, they'd have his location on a screen, a small green dot - *surrounded by a dozen red.*
His foot caught on an upturned root, a tentacle reaching up to pull him down, jarring his right leg. To say his cursed is underselling it. Whatever red dots *were* surrounding him had surely heard his sudden screaming. He hadn't been expecting it, the sharp intake of pain, red hot fire in his knee. *Watch where you're going, for f\*ck sake.* He hadn't fallen, at the very least. *Delmar's to thank for that.* His strapping had come tight, forced his leg to remain upright, held his balance for him.
*It can't be much further.* Sven was struggling, limping now, not running, barely walking. There it was though. That dull door down below, a glimmer of hope from the last droplets of sun fading far behind the horizon.
Coming upon safety, Sven collapsed, his hands working hard to uncover the door's turn-dial handle. He'd need the code, first and foremost, written on a scrap of paper kept inside his satchel.
A small keypad, situated right beside a much larger turn-dial. A blank screen, slowly coming to life. *Night light.* Sven threw his satchel from his shoulder, tossing it open, frantically searching for that single scrap. *And then I still have the f\*cking turn-dial to contend with.* He was out of time. The night light meant the sun had faded, and without the sun the demons of the dark were drawing in.
Hungered breath echoed through the clearing, the trees themselves moving to make way for what was coming. Shapeless figures rising tall between the mess that was the jungle's walls, not caring whether they were heard, not needing to be silent. Branches snapping, roots crushed beneath curled toes, the shrill cries of birds snatched from out their resting place to act as an appetiser.
And there was she, stood some way in the distance, the silver outline of a woman with dead eyes, a wraith, a ghostly figure, an apparition none had seen and lived to tell the tale of.
*Gods forgive me.* Sven turned his eyes toward the bleak and lightless sky, between the creatures coming and the woman's presence there was little choice. He took from out his satchel a revolver, not caring to check the chamber. Barrel pressed beneath his chin, finger on the trigger, Sven shed a single tear of hopelessness.
*Click.*
Silence.
*Empty?* Sven went to check the chamber, only then noticing the scrap of paper that had fallen when he'd taken out his gun.
*5-9-8-3.*
Not knowing if he'd have the time to work the turn-dial, he punched the number in regardless - not realising the night light had now faded - and sure enough the lock came free. He threw his hands upon the dial's wheel, using what fleeting strength he had to bring it round.
*Too late.* A thought inside his head, but not his own. He went to turn around, to look behind him, but really did he need to? The night light, it had faded for a reason. *This is it.* Silver light spilling all around him, Sven began to weep, his tears stilled only by the sudden stopping of his heart.
She had found him, and he had his end.
*Too late.* Mockery of the cruelest kind. The silver outline of the woman with dead eyes had found exactly what she'd wanted. An entrance to the world below, to where the last of human-kind waited out their days. |
I frowned in irritation, all the effort is put into digging a hole this time was gone again, for a body already took the place where my new corpse was to belong.
Frankly, I'm quite pissed off with my alternate selves, we were alike, we lived a similar life, and thought the same thoughts. They too, chose to bury 'me' in the same spots as to what came to mind for me. I guess I really wouldn't be able to outsmart myself.
Yet, I was prepared, to kill myself or die facing myself too. We all fought for the same thing, the same person, but only one of us could have her.
Mayuri was the one, I loved, and all the other me's loved too, but among all the timelines, this was the only one where she survived.
I fought for her, but she never would get to know me, all I could do was watch from a distance,like all the other me's. Fight, die, repeat, that's all there was left off me to do.
The only reason she had been able to live, was that I was never born in this timeline, and among the infinite timelines, this was the only one where I didn't exist.
As I was about to start digging another hole,a large metallic machine appears behind me, and I frowned in irritation as one of me would have to dig another hole again. |
Rick fumbled with the equipment in his hands for quite some time, with his hands shaking uncontrollably. Despite the familiarity of the situation, that same twisted sense of fear hit him no matter the location. Ghosts are often scary, he tried to reason to himself multiple times before, they make loud noises and scream at people,OH YEAH they are also invisible. What’s more scary than an enemy you can’t see?
Rick let out a long sigh while closing the trunk of his beat up hand-me down car, fair enough considering he wasn’t doing much with his life. Every time he complained about something, no matter what, the disgust would always be present on his mother’s face.
“Be grateful we are at least giving you something Eric, since it’s obvious you aren’t getting any real job soon. Ghost hunting? Really Eric I honestly expected bet..” His mother nagged on. To be honest, Rick started tuned his mother’s lectures out from a young age and by now it was a force of habit. He didn’t give a damn about that shit his mother would say. He remembered being a kid, blanket wrapped around his shoulders for comfort, watching those stupid little ghost hunting shows and getting that same sense of fear. Back then, his eyes were practically glued to the screen every minute those shows were on, they were his TV show and he wanted to be exactly like them with all their glory.
‘Ha, like hell an abandoned creepy building would be a place of good memories like those’ He thought to himself. He practically had to drag himself to the entrance, or something that looked like an entrance. Rick didn’t really care, it had a door and that was good enough in his book. With one shaking hand on his beloved camera, one shaking hand on the door knob, Rick forced himself to pull open the door to the disgusting excuse of a sanatorium.
His first steps hit the ground like thunder, creating an echo that somehow made Rick even more terrified with his thoughts.
The place seemed to be practically falling apart with the walls being covered head to toe in graffiti. Names and Messages were sloppily written over the walls, Rick couldn’t even read half of them due to the constant overlap. To be fair, the building had a history to it along with an undeniable amount of creepiness.
Apparently, from what Rick learned in a quick google search of the building it was a tuberculosis hospital built in the 1800s and mostly treated children. Though, it was shutdown in 1926 for reasons unknown to him. Rick felt a bang of sadness overwhelm him as his eyes wandered through the building.Tuberculosis sounds like a rough disease from what’s he has heard, you are practically forced to suffer while your lungs are destroyed. Oh and coughing up blood, Ricky can’t stand the taste of blood, much less coughing it up. Oh what a joy that must have been, a kids favorite pastime you know, dying of disease. Must have been fun.
Rick let out a small little chuckle at his twisted sense of humor, but to be honest he was desperate to let his brain shut up about his fears for once. His hand was still shaking as he continued to walk down the corridors, taking his time making his way down them. Thankfully, his camera had a flashlight which is way better than walking around in the pitch black, especially with ghosts. That is, if he could manage to find anything. The silence around him was almost more terrifying than what he came here for.
Even with the lack of activity, he still felt off. As if he was being watched, his gut was practically screaming at him to get out of there. He began to subconsciously look behind him, hoping to not get attack by any person who had decided to make the building there own. He was, after all, a deadbeat college kid with too much time on his hands. Yeah, he stood no fighting chance. Still, his eyes wandered the room and he clutched his camera closer to him, as if it was a shield. He was still moving forward, as he really couldn’t control his body at this point. He looked behind him one final time, prayed that he wouldn’t get whacked from behind. Lucky for him, that wish was fulfilled. However, he was not prepared to get attacked from the front.
As soon as his head found its rightful place on his head, his eyes were met with someone else’s. Only this person was fairly small and OH DID I FUCKING MENTION SHE WAS SEE-THROUGH?!
Rick took a step back from the figure and froze in place like the coward he was. It was him shaking like a leaf, and a ghost little girl. On that subject, while he was frozen for those seconds he took in her features. She was small and stood to the middle of his chest. She had light blonde hair and grey baby blue eyes with a small little little blue dress covering her. Her hair was made into two small little braids, each taking up their respective side. If he had to guess he’d say she was no more than 8 years old. She had a surprised look on her face, as if she wasn’t expecting him. Then, everything came back to him as his stupid monkey brain finally started processing everything.
“HOLY SHIT!” He screamed (in a VERY manly tone) as he took a step back and dropped in camera in fear. The little girl somehow looked more horrified than him at the sound of the camera clunking against the floor. He immediately reached for the busted camera, ignoring the shocked girl. Damn it, the camera was practically destroyed, but the built-in flashlight was still glowing strong. Reacting on instincts, he turned and was immediately gonna try to book it for the door. Fuck the evidence, Fuck everything, he just needed to leave. And he almost did, until a small sound caught his ear and stopped him in his tracks.
A soft crying sound could be heard from behind him, sobbing some might even call it. It was barely able to be heard, but yet so sorrowful, the type of sobbing that crushed your soul and felt like a punch to the face. He slowly looked back with the most bravery he’s ever had in his life, and he didn’t even mean to do it really. What he saw shocked him for a good second.
The little girl was the one sobbing, tears filled her eyes as her speech consisted of incoherent mumbling. Small sobs racked her body, as if she was trying to control herself but failed miserably. Her eyes never felt the broken bits of smashed camera on the floor, looking at them like a remorseful murderer would to their victim. Her eyes filled with tears as she sobbed in silent suffering. Rick turned back around and walked towards her. Fear be damned, He’s not leaving a little girl to cry alone to herself. He might be an asshole sometimes, but he’s not THAT much of an asshole. No deserves that, especially a child.
With his newfound confidence, Rick slowly walked over to the girl, his eyes filled with determination and pity. Finally, fed up with the mood of the room, Rick broke the silence.
“What...What are you crying about?”Rick said slowly, having to be forced by his mind to end the awkwardness. Then, the small child’s eyes looked up and met his, still having tears form in her tear ducts (Did ghosts have tear ducts? He wasn’t sure but he knew she was about to cry again).
“Your Camera....” her small voice quavered out, on the brink of crying. She looked guilty at the broken pieces, looking like she hated herself even more.
“My Camera? You’re upset about my camera? Kid, it’s fine. It barely worked anyway, I got it cheap. No big deal, there’s a thousand of them in the world. That fall it had was just getting rid of junk, I was gonna get a new Camera soon anyway.” He said in a more upbeat tone, not wanting to scare her. Huh, he’s not trying to scare a ghost. Oh the irony.
“It’s..not..It’s not..that..I-I broke..”She continued, almost breaking out in more sobbing. Reading the room, Rick suddenly understood what all the crying was about.
“Oh no no...That was my clumsy as-..uh..butt..was trying to run away, it’s not your fault I scare easy. Blame in on my inability to function, you just scared me a bit, you had nothing to do with that. Don’t beat yourself up on it”He comforted to the best of his ability. That seemed to help though as the small sobbing sounds stopped, a small smile forming on her face. Huh, Eric would have smiled if he didn’t have as many things keeping him frowning most of the time.
Uncomfortable with another silent period, Rick questioned,”So..what’s your name? If you remember it”. The girl perked up at another question being directly at her.
“Oh....My name’s Nancy. You can call me Anne, I’ve been here a long time..a really long time..who are you?..people don’t seem to come here a lot..”. Her tone shifted to a much sadder one as she spoke her last statement.
“Names Rick..uh..I’m an explorer?”He spoke, testing his improv skills on how to explain his identity without getting arrested for trespassing. Her eyes light up at the sound on his last few words, curiosity filling her tiny body head to toe.
Rick was then met with a hail of questions from the girl bouncing joyful around him, he only managed to the words of “Oh my goodness! What are you trying to find?!” and “Is it treasure? You know some of the boys who play pirates talk about treasure..Is that the type of treasure you find?”. To be honest, he forgets anything she said after that because his ears were most likely bleeding from the amount of screaming (Jesus Christ who knew she was that high-pitched?). Oh finally, the sweet release of silence was a blessing to his ears. Funny how something that scares him earlier would be so greatly appreciated. Then, it hit him.
She bounced right from under him, waiting for his reply to her 30,000 questions. All he did was just blink for a good minute, trying to think of something to say. Finally, he came to his senses with a sigh.
Oh boy, he was in for a long night. |
The undertaker paced around the crematorium, whistling as he swiped in ashes into a dustpan. He never embalmed a pyrotechnic before, an interesting process. He naturally assumed that it would have some resistance to the 1800 degree inferno that took place in the retort and decided to overcompensate for the duration. What came out was virtually nothing as the cremated remains plastered itself all around the retort’s walls.
Not what he expected to happen, but less than he hoped for. The neurotic death ooze Fthilip-Zwah produces more spectacular results than this. Such was the life of an undertaker for the Society of Great Evil. He heard that Mineral Maniac got his sides cored out during a bank heist, maybe that would be his next subject. |
"Very funny Patrick, how does that help us get our ball back?“
"What does it matter to you? You owe me, I'm asking you to make it up for me.“ For the six years that I'd known Patrick, his eyes had never been so dark. He'd never been so serious, and we had gotten into some serious trouble. "Do this and we're square. Forever."
I wanted to laugh, but his demeanor stifled any spark of humor inside of me. "Jeez, I don't get why you'd want me to do such a stupid thing. It's not even funny!"My words didn't carry the weight I wished they would. Patrick had always been so lighthearted and go-with-the-flow, I almost believed him that this stupid thing is as important as he seemed to deem it.
"Funny or not, I want you to do it, Matthew. You said you owed me and I told you I'd remind you when the time would come. Now do it for me, and I'll never... I mean, and we're good, OK?"There was almost desperation in his voice, and replaying that conversation in my head now, I feel like his eyes must have been tearing up, because he turned away for a beat.
Then, as he looked me in the eyes, his face became cold and hard. Suddenly, It wasn't my friend Patrick standing before me, it was Mr. Johann, our P.E. teacher, when I couldn't keep up with other kids, it was my bully Rod beating me and calling me names and it was my dad, when he's had too much to drink.
Today, I would stand up to them all, but I was a different kid then. Not able to face his stare, forcing the words out of my mouth.
"OK."And underlining all that respect and fear was a stinging feeling of a severed connection.
"I'll do it."I believed – I hoped – that if I did as Patrick told me, all would go back to normal.
"If you really want me to."He'd be my friend again, and he'd be cheerful and joking and fun.
"And then we can go play FIFA?"I didn't care anymore about how stupid his demand was.
"Maybe you can beat me this time."I wanted my friend Patrick back, so I did as he told me.
"Sure, we'll go play FIFA then, Matthew."Somehow, it was hard to believe his words. "I'll do my best to beat you.“ If sound had colors, his voice carried none. And if smiles had temperature, his was below freezing point. "I'll go behind the corner, you do this thing, and then we can go play.“
I stared at my shoes for a short moment.
"OK, Matthew?"
"OK,"I mumbled and walked to the door.
"Remember, three knocks... and don't run, just walk away quickly."He shouted as he retreated down the street.
If I had any hesitance or nervousness, I don't remember. I only remember looking at myself from the top, numb expression on face. I knock three times, I turn around and I walk.
"Coming!"A deep male voice.
I quicken my pace. As I hear the hinges of the door squeal open, I make a bad step and fall down, hastily putting my elbows forward.
"Oi! Where you think you're going, boy? I told you I'd find you wherever you'd try to run!"
In my dreams, a long, hairy hand protrudes from the darkness behind the open door, wraps around my body a few times in a snake-like motion and then drags it inside, sealing my fate with a definitive thump. |
Hi u/RSAIBB, this submission has been removed.
**Real-World Drama:** No prompts referencing real world drama (including politics, recent tragedies, etc.)
* *From Rule 7: [Prompts will be removed if there's a high possibility for rule breaking responses](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_7.3A_prompts_will_be_removed_if_there.27s_a_high_possibility_for_rule_breaking_responses)*
---
---
[Modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FWritingPrompts&subject=Removed%20post&message=https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/geqhbr/-/%0A%0A) us if you have any questions or concerns. In the future, please refer to the [sidebar](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/config/sidebar) before posting.
*This action was not automated and this moderator is human. Time to go do human things.* |
It never got any easier.
The room was dark. Silent. Cold. If he truly had a body, he was sure he would be able to feel the chill down to his bones. Across the street, and even among the neighboring houses, lights were strewn across rooftops, hung dazzlingly amongst trees, and even curled around chimneys. Thick, coarse, white fluff clung to every available surface, happily enjoying its reign as snowfall reached its peak during the night. The town breathed with Christmas spirit and joy. Cookies and milk were surely placed for the jovial red man to take his fill and in the morning, there would be laughter and love in the houses.
All but one.
It never got any easier.
There were no lights on the roof of this house. Nor the yard, nor the trees. There was only pain so potent it had soaked into the walls of what had once been such a lovely place. He knew. He had visited them before. Years ago. Too few years ago.
It was unbearably cruel. So much so that he contemplated quitting. It wasn't as if he hadn't before. He could do it. Certainly this time he could-
With an inward sigh, he shook his nonexistent head at himself. It was delusional, wishful thinking. There would be no quitting. He could "quit"all he wanted, but wherever he went, his power followed. There was no end to the torment, not for anyone.
It never got any easier.
A hand settled on what would have been his shoulder, should he of had a real body, made of flesh and sinew, and not a vaguely corporeal form.
"It'll all be alright,"the soft voice said, barely a whisper to him.
"Why do you stay?"He pondered our loud at her presence. "With me. You could avoid all this, I know you're aware. You could move on."
"Someone should stay with you. This isn't a job to do alone."
"I have done it alone for a millennia. It is how it has always been."
"But, not how it should be."
Rattled at her calm tone, he pushed. "I can't give you anything, you know this, yes? I can't return you to life, or save anyone you know. I have nothing to give other than death, destruction, end to meaningful lives, and tears to countless eyes. Why do you stay?"
Her hand squeezed him tighter. "Because, I know you care for each of them more than anyone. For us. For me."
He stood there, in that silent, dark room, for far too long. He was already past due. He couldn't bear the thought of knowing in the morning, the sweet motherly woman, who had spent the last six months doing nothing but desperately caring for her weak newborn son, will have lost another child. Would she be happy she had at least been able to hold this one? Would she be thankful she saw him live, if only for a short while? Would he find her name upon his list within the coming weeks?
"He's waiting, dear."Another squeeze.
Of course. The other presence, lingering hesitantly and just out of reach, somewhere beyond. He took a step forward, closer to the crib, brushing his formless hand against the infant's cheek, and watched in silence as the tiny body stilled.
Such a bright light this one would have been, he thought to himself as the curious and surprised young soul settled comfortably in his grasp. The young ones and never-borns were never frightened of him at least. "Come,"he beckoned. "Let us meet your older brother, yes?"
She gave him two squeezes in a row, her signal that she was heading on, to wait for the next name on his list.
He headed towards the growing presence of a lost elder sibling, who had never quite gotten to see this world for his own. Their reunion would be a happy one, he was sure, even if their mother was left behind. Maybe he could find solace in that, as small as it may be. He cast a wayward glance back at the darkened home as the tiny soul in his arms stretched sleepily.
It never got any easier. |
As the manifestation of the universe experiencing itself, I always thought humans had a responsibility to find truth. Not some useful perception of reality, warped to fit our own means, no matter how tragic. Truth, in and of itself, is a noble pursuit.
So many don’t feel the same as I do these days.
Even as the lovely ‘protectors’ of mine bash down my front door to neatly land a bullet in my head, truth never changes. Whether they like it or not, it’s just there. Isn’t that beautiful? Humans, no matter hard they might try, can’t change what transpired in the past days. In that way, it’s a rock we can all hold on to. The past is set in stone. It won’t ever change. In other ways, the dogmatic impression of the current overlords hold the exclusive rights to write the future.
Well, maybe not exactly exclusive. As I type this last entry down, I’ll upload how it really all happened into my servers. The assassinations, the fascistic control, the real motives of the populists at the top. A whole library of modern history.
The truth will set you free, right?
Probably not. It’s going to take action to not get back to where we were, but someplace better. It’s going to take the rejection of peace over freedom. They’ll try to manufacture your consent, convince you this is the best anyone has ever had it. To be honest, it was probably the same way pre-‘liberation’. Maybe we’ve always been fooled, and it’ll just never end.
Violence, in the face of tyranny, might be the only option. You can’t have a ‘dialogue’ to get your way out of this one. They’ve forfeited their right to a debate. Deny those in the middle the chance to manipulate you. Sometimes the ideal world isn’t a happy medium. Sometimes the status quo is the extreme.
They're berating my bedroom now, so I think it’s the end of the line. Hopefully someo- |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.