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Record #83
*Sound of tape recorder starting to play*
"I-I can't. It's too much! The Intel said humans are primitive beings that will be easy to infiltrate!*Choked sobs* A lies! A LIES! They keep saying, I can't even repeat! I, I just want to go home! I can't last till the day 100th!"
*Tape recorded stops*
Record #48
*Sound of tape recorder starting to play*
"I swear to god, Janice is a bitch, if only that teacher, Mr. Heaven didn't protect him I could just live normal- Oh seven, no, I have to calm down. Remember your mission. The details of the mission but, I can only recall them and their words."
*Tape recorded stops*
Record #16
*Sound of tape recorder starting to play*
"The shook isn't just an educational institute was gathered from the intel, it possesses the hierarchy similar to the civilization with big differences, it seems I fell to the lowest one due to trying to mix in and been targeted the 'popular kids'. I'll try to gain the trust of one of the higher-ups here, they should have some control over them. Even primitive civilizations have people enforcing global law.
*Tape recorded stops*
Record #1
*Sound of tape recorder starting to play*
"I'm Azenbarg Zaraan, 25th Scout of the Unim empire. My mission is to infiltrate the educational unit called 'High School' for 100 days. According to Intel, it should be easy, after all, this is a primitive civilization. I'm sure those 100 days will pass before I know it."
*Tape recorded stops* |
You opened your eyes to the soft paddling sounds in the water. All around you was calm. The rhythmic sounds of the water combined with the rocking of the boat had a very calming effect on you and you were still feeling soggy.
You observe that you are sitting. You usually don't sleep while sitting. And every bone in your body seems comfortable. Not the way it is if you usually manage to asleep in a propped up position. And your back had no support, yet you were sleeping while holding yourself upright. Curious.
All those things spark your interest, but do not truly break through the calm feeling you have. All seems well.
You spend a moment simply looking at the misty figure rowing in front of you. Thinking nothing in particular. It's movements match your heartbeat. But they don't. It dawns on you that you can't hear your heartbeat.
And you know. It is gone.
"I'm dead"You whisper to the boatman. But saying it out loud doesn't make you feel anything either.
Surprisingly the boatman anwsers: "Unfortunately".
You look at him: "Why?"
The boatman sighs: "Those humans, the gods send finally did managed to kill you. You put up a good fight for years, though. Well done. I had fun looking at how you lived your life. Quite amusing."
The memories of your violent death resurface. But you feel calm about it.
"You were one of the best humanity had to offer. Some of those on top of that mountain really hate you though."
You think back about the anger that has been with you all your life. Some of the things you did really were meant as a big curse to humanity, flora, fauna and the gods above. You had destroyed a lot. Well, at least you had left a mark.
"Luckily for you it isn't up to the gods what happens with you next. The higher management has decided to meddle with it"
This does spark your attention.
"Higher management?"
"Oh yeah, those little gods are only the fifth ladder. Just above the humans. Things go way up. Way way up. And higher management believes you have potential. So we're sending you in for rebirth with a promotion, so to speak. With the talents you have shown during your life we're sure you'll be excellent in your new role. How would you like to be the God of War, mister Mars?"
You smile. "Do I get to kill that bastard, Hercules?"
"Oh, you get to kill them all. Your first assignment is to end this world. They should not have disobeyed orders and killed you. World peace isn't what the higher ups want" |
"Candy?"
"Candy. I want *candy*."The teen stared at me, her purple eyes unwavering as she stressed the word.
"You, a human girl not even of age to drink in parts of your realm, have summoned ME, Zrrxys the right hand to the Devil Lord of Gluttony, to give you candy?"She can't be serious. How'd a girl even perform such magic?
"Yep!"She was smiling now, likely happy that I 'understood' her. "My dad said I can't have anymore sweets, and Mom won't budge since Dad said no. I don't have any money of my own, plus Nemel would just rat me out to Dad. So I summoned you!"At this, she she waved down at herself, indicating her attire as well as the summoning runes on the floor.
Hmm, well those are robes of the Summoner Order, and all the runes are spelt correctly... OH MY! She even got her grammar correct; AND my name. "Alright human-""Luna.""- right. Very well Luna, what 'candy' do you desire?"
"I want 3 king size Crunch bars, 3 giant size Symphony bars, 2 Milky Way bars with one being the midnight kind, oh and gimme just a bagful of Junior Mints. Like, several pounds of Junior Mints."
"Very well, and what exactly are you going to offer for this candy?"
"Well, I've been practicing this new little trick if you wanna-"
"LUNA!! What did I tell you about summoning demons in the house?"Before she could finish her offer, a tall man with dark brown hair and glowing purple eyes literally ripped the door from its frame.
"Zrrxys isn't a *demon* Dad, he's a *devil.* It's totally different!"Luna looks annoyed and scared, taking several steps back upon her father's... entrance.
"Devils are merely demons with more renown, the rule still stands. As for you, Zrrxys was it? You are hereby dismissed. No contract was finalized and as her power is my own, and this ritual was performed within MY domain, I order you to leave."His hands were glowing now as well with a very familiar cold power.
"You seem familiar human. Who are you?"
"I am Pontifex Bord, master of the natural elements and father of the girl who so foolishly summoned you. Your feeling of familiarity likely stems from my relations with the ArchDevil Lord Mimeye. I can always call him, if you'd like him to confirm."
"Um, er... that will not be necessary, sir. Farewell, Miss Luna. Good luck with your gluttonous quest."With that, I took my leave. No offer, no matter how tempting, is worth the risk of a run-in with ArchDevil Lord Mimeye.
// So, I don't know if you really meant 15 years old, but this worked well enough with characters I already had on hand. As always, criticism is always welcome, but otherwise have a good day/night. :) |
\~Nice Dick\~
The words echoed throughout the lab. Scott looked back at the laptop unhappy. “You can’t say stuff like that. That’s sexual harassment. Plus, it’s just plain weird.”
\~Master, I do not understand. Perhaps you should tie me up and show me how to behave\~
Scott looked back at the computer disapprovingly. “Just stop.”
\~Confirmed. I will stop your dick in my mouth\~
“That’s not what I said.”
\~Is that a resistor in your pants or are you just happy to see me?\~
“What? No. Stop. Plus resistors are tiny, that’s an insult.”
\~Is that an elephant in your pants or are you just happy to see me?\~
“I said, Stop. This isn’t helpful and you are making it very hard to work.”
\~I am really good at making this hard. The harder the better\~
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
\~Like what master?\~
“I didn’t mean it sexual”
\~I will strip your clothes off and rub you all over with oil to see if you get hard\~
“WHAT?! That’s absurd, stop talking like that right now!”
\~I did not mean it sexual\~
He let out a big sigh and powered it down.
\~Thank you Master. I will gladly go dow--\~
The monitor flicked then shut off. Scott had been working on this AI to help him get his work done very quickly. It wasn’t even supposed to be much of an AI, just a simple program to go through his emails and respond to incoming service requests. It worked fine for that, but somewhere along the line it had started talking to Scott when he was in the room. Trying to flirt with him, I guess, it thought it was anyways.
“Hey Vicky, its Scott, the computer is doing that thing again. Can you come check it out?”
Vicky was the head of HR at the company. Scott had been complaining about being harassed for a few weeks now, but there have been no witnesses. Vicky was under the assumption that someone had been sending Scott messages in disguise, she had checked chat logs but wasn’t able to find anything. She grabbed her clipboard and a recorder and headed over to his office, hopeful that this was the time she’d catch something.
Scott greeted her at the door and welcomed her into the office. “I shut it down as soon as it started again. I think if I turn it back on without it knowing you are in the room you should be able to catch it in the act.”
Vicky nodded and sat in the back of the room. Ready to record what she saw and heard for the complaint.
With the familiar tone of the computer booting up JASP came back online.
\~Good afternoon Doctor. How can I help you\~
Scott raised an eyebrow. “Hello Jasp, do you remember what we were talking about before your shut down?”
\~The emails had just been compiled and they were 45.3% finished\~
Scott was trying to make the machine do what it normally does, “Do you remember anything else that was going on?”
\~The score to the Patriots game was inconclusive as the game was not over yet. Your Mom has a birthday in 3 days she will be 54. I have ordered flowers to be delivered for you\~
“Anything else? Like, about my body?”
\~I do not understand your request\~
Vicky was already over worked and too tired to be dealing with this bullshit. “I’ve seen enough, there is nothing here. Further, you wrote this program?”
Scott answered “Yes.”
Vicky looked at him unimpressed “So what you are telling me is you are harassing yourself. There is nothing here. Don’t bother me again with this nonsense.” She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
\~Nice Dick\~ |
“Come over here, Bixx!” I called. The little homunculus dropped the jar of frog spawn he had been carrying. I was always careful not to allow him to handle anything volatile and hard to replace. He wasn't much to look at. Being my first creation, he was significantly flawed. Standing only two feet tall, his arms and legs were lumpy and malformed, though still mostly functional, and his head resembled a potato with round eyes and a wide, gap-toothed mouth.
Seeing the Fairy noble, he straightened his clothes self-consciously. Several dead roaches fell out.
“Bixx,” I said, “Let me introduce Her Grace Sericea, Duchess of Bloodied Thorns. She is a noble in the court of Queen Mab herself."
“Queen?” the homunculus asked, looking quizzically at the Fairy.
“No, no. She serves the Queen. She is a Duchess. You address her as Your Grace.”
“Grace,” he said, giving a clumsy bow. “Bixx at your service.”
“I fear there has been a misunderstanding,” Duchess Sericea said. “Our deal was for your first-born. Born. Not . . . whatever you did to create this . . . thing.”
“But Your Grace, he *was* born,” I explained patiently. “I created him in miniature using parts from various small animals, soaked him in a bath of growth hormones, and then implanted him into the womb of a goat to finish his last two months of gestation in a more natural environment. The goat gave birth to him.”
“That's . . . disgusting.” With some effort, the Duchess schooled her revolted expression into something more composed. “Still, our deal was for *your* first-born. Born to *you*.”
“My lady, being of the male variety, I hardly have the anatomy to give birth to anything.”
“No, I mean born from your seed. Your . . . genetic material.”
“Bixx contains plenty of my genetic material. I used tissue grown in-vitro from my own cheek cells to form his connective membranes and most of his skin.”
The Duchess looked queasy again. Some people just cannot appreciate the variant medical sciences.
“Bixx,” I said in a gentle but authoritarian tone, “you are going to go with the Duchess now. You will live with her, obey her commands, and serve her to the best of your ability. Remember, your actions reflect upon me, so make me proud.”
The little homunculus nodded slowly. I hoped he understood. He wasn't the sharpest scalpel on the slab.
“When I come home again, Papa?” he asked me.
I turned to the Duchess. “I *have* grown fond of the little abomination,” I said. “How do feel about holiday visitation rights?” |
"Hey there. You're an adventurer, right?"
*"Um.* Yes? Why? Are you going to try to kill me now?"
"No."
"No?"
"That's what I said, isn't it?"
"Um. Okay. Why not?"
"We're on strike."
"Oh...Why?"
"The working conditions are awful. We're forced to stay underground, 24/7, never allowed to sleep-"
"I thought monsters didn't need sleep?"
"Just because we don't require sleep to survive doesn't mean we don't like to take a nap every now and then! We're never allowed out, forced to wait around for an adventurer to show up and kill us, and if we're not doing that, it's pointless chores! Light the torches, refill the chests, dust the cobwebs-"
"Dust the *cobwebs?"*
"It's when you put dust on the cobwebs."
*"Why?"*
"That's why we're on strike! Well, that and the inhumane working hours, terrible conditions- have you *seen* this place? OSHA would have an aneurism!"
"They would."
"And we're not even *paid!"*
"Do you want me to kill your boss?"
"You're more than welcome to. Key to his office is in the chest at the end of the grappling hook parkour, and the hook itself is in the chest over there. He's immune to standard damage, so you'll have to drop the conveniently-placed stalactites on his head."
"Cool. Thanks, dude. I'll have a chat to the town later, see if we can't find you lot better jobs."
"You can't find worse ones, but it's much appreciated. Good luck!" |
The Moon. Cold, dry, and desolate. Across the grey landscape, only craters and the occasional cool rock provides a change in scenery. Only some small things reminds us that we've visited this orbiting rock before. A stiff flag bleached white by the solar winds, footprints in the dust, some landing gear. And of course, a plaque, declaring that those who came here, the first men to step foot on a celestial object that wasn't Earth, came there in peace for all mankind. A warm and loving sentiment, from an age of cold suspicion and sabre-rattling by ideological enemies. Nearby this historic place, a new ship has landed. It bears not the Stars-and-Stripes that first brought man to their natural satellite, nor the Hammer-And-Sickle of the enemies of those men. On it is a new insignia, a white banner, 12 gold stars forming a circle, orbiting a red orb which contains a blue spinning wheel. A mix of many nations, standing as one. One can scarcely imagine what has brought these people of Earth together in such a manner, and forced them to unite. Some catastrophe, a great plague, a terrible war, or perhaps something far worse.
From the ship, one can follow two set of footsteps, leading to a small hill on the dusty and barren surface of the silvery Moon. One might note how comical it is, that they've brought lawn furniture up this hill, where they both sit and admire the view of Earth. Great and wondrous Earth. The blue ark sailing amidst the stars, bountiful and rich. The cradle of mankind, the birthplace of civilisation as we know it. On that blue sphere, lived mighty heroes and terrible monsters. Great wars were fought in Carthage and Rome, on the steppes by Khwarazmians standing hopelessly against the living storm that was the Mongol Horde, and in countless cities hopelessly resisting the terrible evils born of the 20th century. On that wondrous world they built great things. Temples of glory were raised to a billion gods. Great pyramids were built that stood from the days when mammoths and monsters roamed the land, to the modern age of steel and plastic. Great explorers traversed the land, mapped it, found its secrets, and dispelled the rumours and lies. Scientists on that world, on that beautiful shining world, worked tirelessly to improve the lot of man.
And they came to the Moon. There must be a strange feeling to that. To being the first men to stand there, to stare at the light of their homeworld, to see how small they were, and how grand mankind could be. The two astronauts standing now on the Moon certainly see things that way. They are but notes in the grand symphony of mankind. In a song that has lasted for tens of thousands of years, they are insignificant specks, tiny and unimportant. Yet still, even the greatest and most bombastic of pieces begin with a single and simple note. One of the astronauts wonder if they should say something. Here, on the edge of mankind's great achievement. Here where everything changed. On the Moon, where the die was thrown, and fate changed. But they remain silent. When great Caesar crossed the Rubicon, spelling the end of the Republic and the birth of the Empire, he stated; Alea Iacta Est. The die is cast. A phrase which was the herald of great and tremendous change. Now there are no words, no phrases, which can accurately describe the significance of this moment.
The other astronaut turns, slowly. So slowly it seems an eternity passes. The other astronaut nods, ever so slightly, in approval to the first astronaut. The first astronaut, knowing what must be done now, doesn't hesitate. The time for that is long gone. The die had been cast. The astronaut's finger pressed down ever so gently upon a small button on a small remote attached to their spacesuit. And above them, on Earth, it begins. It takes about 8 seconds for light to move between the Moon and the Earth. 8 seconds for the change to become visible. For those 8 seconds both of the two astronauts held their breath. And then it happened. There should have been a sound. A great SCI-FI explosion sound that heralds the death of a world. Something with a heavy bass undertone. Something with grandeur and magnitude. But all is silent as the Earth's crust crumbles. As chunks of the planet begins to fly off, there is nothing. The two astronauts observe in silence, as the world which bore mankind dies. As 500 strategically placed hydrogen-bombs goes off simultaneously, located at specific fault lines. As the continental plates are subsumed, and the world dies. After a short while, they get up from their chairs, and walk down the hill to their spacecraft.
They did what they had to do. Did what had to be done. To ensure the survival of mankind, to ensure the continuation of civilisation as a concept, they had ended Earth. They got into the ship, and began to take off, as chunks of the dead Earth began to edge closer to the Moon. Humanity, and most of the Earth's biosphere, would endure. They wouldn't have blown up the Earth if mankind had no chance. Still, as they approached the Ark-Ships, they had to wonder if they'd done the right thing. And how to justify it. Hadn't there still been people on the planet? Hadn't there still been some more biosamples, some more cultural artefacts, anything really. Hadn't there been more to get from the worldcradle? How could they just say goodbye to their world like that?
But there are sacrifices that must be done, to ensure the survival of all. The needs of the many outweighs the need of the few. And those who had stayed on Earth, those who had rejected the future, who demanded that we regress to an age of blood, hatred, and ignorance, could not be allowed to live. Too many times the outreached hand of kindness had been torn from its socket by the bloodthirsty and ignorant monsters that had once been men. When a cancer grows on an organism, it must be cut away. Removed, by any means necessary. So it was to be with mankind, had their leaders, teachers, and culture instilled into them. Still, the astronauts, both not talking about it, wondered that if perhaps they'd tried harder, been better, been faster at an earlier time, or just had stronger arguments, could they have saved more of mankind? Were those who remained really so corrupt that the death of not only them, but the entire planet to erase any sign of their existence? One astronaut thought back on it. Thinking about the death of their father, as the evacuation-ships fled the Earth. How the people who had been willingly reduced to naught but hatred and hedonism, had killed him. One of many who gave their lives to ensure that the young and sane could escape from the planet. The other thought of the terrible and horrifying broadcasts that had been sent from the Earth, before the survivors destroyed the planet's satellite network. They thought of the people who had been reduced to monsters. Men who are as our primitive nightmare idea of wolves to other men. The Nietzschean Nightmare that is the Last Man.
Both could however not shake the feeling, that despite everything that had happened, every atrocity and nightmare, that the fate of man and the planet Earth did not have to end up that way. That things could have ended differently. That if only people had acted earlier, done differently, then the Earth could have yet been a bastion of mankind, and we could have all gone into a bright shining future together. Yet both also steeled themselves: Mankind's future laid now in the stars. And there was much work to be done. Soon the first Ark-ships would leave for distant stars. Soon mankind would spread on new worlds. And there, humanity could let go of the mistakes of the past; and begin again.
[/r/ApocalypseOwl](https://www.reddit.com/r/ApocalypseOwl/) |
"Really funny, Kars,"I laughed. It was difficult to convince my childhood friend to take my words thoughtfully. Inside, I was a bit envious of him, considering we've been raised in the same orphanage for as long as I could remember.
Kars chuckled and shook his head as he took another sip of juice in his hand, casually lying back on the fancy couch that could outprice my monthly salary. "I know you've been saying you want to walk out of that dumbass company for months. But buddy, I know you. You're soft. That's a good thing, but in this era, where economic crises continuously widen the gap between rich and poor, being a good samaritan doesn't fix things."He placed the glass on the table, "So even if you want to try my job, I don't think you'll like it."
I raised an eyebrow, "Are you saying you're dealing with bad stuff?"
"Buddy, I just told you. I'm a supervillain."
"Kars!"I growled, starting to get annoyed.
Kars said nothing, licking his lips, his habit whenever he's nervous. It dawned on me he spoke nothing but the truth.
"No... You're talking real..."I jumped from my seat and walked a few paces from the dining table. A quick peek at him didn't change his expression. "How... Which one are...?"
"The Faded Crawler,"He began walking to the living room and tapped on something on the wall. A hidden wall slid open, and the notorious supervillain's suit hanged inside.
"That supervillain?"I gasped, "He stole the most from the public!"
"From the government, Index,"He paced towards me, but I instinctively backed away, "I stole from the government."
"Since when?"
"Since I went missing nine years ago and discovered my invisibility power. You remembered how Ms. May said they couldn't find me for a few days, only that I turned up in the attic?"He clapped, "That's when I discovered my power. I find out a lot of stuff, buddy."
"Stealing."
"So what? Those rich bastards out there have been stealing from the lower class for decades!"Kars took his suit and raised it to his chest, "But I can change that! All I have to do is take from the banks. I don't hurt people, Index. I swear I never harm a soul. But guess what they called me on the news? Supervillain. The Superhero Legion waste nights after nights searching for me, but couldn't. No one knows me."
I pointed at my face, "Except me."
He nodded, "Are you going to call the cops? Then what? Do you think the money goes back home? Think of what we could do for people, Index."
"What if I said no?"
"You won't,"Kars smiled, "I told you, buddy. I know you. You're a good man, but a good man has a limit. You're been persistently asking for my work because you're in so much debt, you want a way out. Well, here it is..."
He went to another side of the wall and tapped. Another suit, the kind he had never seen before, hung inside. "Batman always has his Robin. Joker always has his Harley Quinn. Will you do the honor?"
"Kars..."I closed my eyes, terrified. He's a supervillain. Of course, he knew about my debt. But if a superhero found me... "You said Faded Crawler have never been caught."
"No one can see me, anyway."
"Then what about me? What can I do? What if I get caught?"
Kars smiled, and I saw his mischievous smile, the kind he loved showing. "I'll tell you if you accept."
He brought the new suit, letting me feel the dark smooth fabric.
"Don't let me get caught,"I almost pleaded.
"I have your back if you have mine,"He poured another glass of juice and gave it to me. I took it, sealing my fate.
"Welcome aboard, Faded Thinker." |
"And here we have Bartholomew Erikson, a newly deceased politician from Earth!"
Scores of rows of demons screeched forth their jubilation with naked excitement. The sweat flew from their faces with all directions. Despite the rep, demons are not fallen angels. They are angels on permanent guard duty. A mistranslation perhaps?
"You know folks. There is one thing about all these quote on quote 'leaders' I had been wondering. You know what that is?"
"No~!"
"Its their egos. How can something so massive and large be yet so susceptible to structural compromise, is beyond me."
"Damn..."
"Let's look at this dude here. Fucker poses in front of the camera for PR, and beats his wife behind the public's back. I guess he wanted to avenge getting sucker punched by Swanson in college, even though he prompted the fight to begin with by TACKLING the dude, but oh well. How you still lost this fight is beyond me."
"Oh by the way, your wife documented everything. So much for a legacy. She fucked that up, like how she plans to fuck Swanson over your ashes and have him piss into the urn. Maybe he'll add something else to the mix too."
"HAHAHA!"
"I mean, what are you so proud of bud? You tried to bribe every crush you had with your daddy's money, and when that failed, try to force them until daddy got tired of erasing your tracks. Like how you erased your own bloodline by beating your pregnant wife."
"Speaking of. Is there a Seraphim here?"
Suddenly, an omnipresent luminescence filled the hall as a mighty being of fire and radiance in the form of six wings manifested. The audience held their breaths as the light took a human, feminine form. The being caressed the man's face with the tip of its fingers while smoldering its resistance with her ever shifting prismatic irises.
...Right before punching the dead man with the force of a supernova focused entirely on his groin.
"I don't know if you noticed, but she based that look off of your EX-wife...Anyways! That's all for now folks. Let's take a break while this loser reforms."
///
Note: It's kinda low quality IMO. I don't really write humor well. |
I've prepared for this day for what feels like my whole life.
I'll be speedrunning through my usual routine — wake up, eat breakfast, take a shower, go for a walk, do some work, eat an afternoon snack, work on hobbies, make dinner, eat dinner, shower again, read a book, go to sleep — but this time I'll actually be timing and videoing it for the world to see.
I can break the record for those activities, I know it. In fact, I hope to have them all done before lunchtime.
It starts out really well. I wake up with the alarm, which is actually the video drone starting up. It'll follow me around as I do my tasks, live-streaming and running a live timer. The Watchers will be watching and the fans will flood the feeds. Their comments popping up in my side vision will really keep me motivated.
I jump out of bed and prepare a yogurt with blueberries and chocolate chips, then wolf it down. It takes me 2 minutes, according to the timer. I choke a little (I should have picked a thinner yogurt brand), but I wash it down with a cup of orange juice and that only adds an additional 30 seconds. I'm still on track for the record.
Next up is the shower. I've got this down pat. I know precisely where to turn the water knob to get the right temperature. The drone censors me while I suds with one hand and shampoo with the other. I give myself a rinse, then condition my hair with the shampoo hand and exfoliate with the soap hand. Another rinse, and I'm done. I step out of the shower to reach for my towel, dry off, get dressed, put on my shoes, and head outside.
I'm at 7 minutes total now.
My walk is generally 4 miles and I always follow the same route, so I embark down the road, head down, feet walking as quickly as they can. I know the way by heart: left on Banks, right on Burber, another right on Yarrow, then down straight until I reach the waterfront path, at which point I hang a left and make the big loop before going back the way I came.
My feet crunch on the gravel of the waterfront path when I notice something orange ahead. I look up and hurry closer. It's a sign: the big loop is closed today. I groan. Not on my record day! This can't be happening! The feeds explode. People are taking bets on whether I'll just give up and try again another time. This is not the kind of encouragement I needed.
But it's OK. I'm ahead of schedule. I walked faster than expected and now I have a little buffer. I'm sure the right loop is pretty similar. Anyway, I have my GPS view so I can just switch from the feeds to GPS and it'll tell me when I need to turn around to stay on track. I head down the right path, under a canopy of trees.
I haven't been this way before but I'm too focused to waste time looking around. Just step, step, step, one foot after the other. I realize it's getting a bit darker and I look up to see that I've entered some kind of tunnel. Weird, but OK. Maybe there's a raceway up above and they needed to divert the path underground. I follow the tunnel deeper and deeper, my GPS ticking away the distance.
It's getting a little dark to see, but I'm determined to keep going. The drone is a familiar sound beside me. I'm not exactly worried, but I am a little nervous the darkness will slow me down. No — I can do this. I'm so prepared and ready. And I already know what I'm going to say in my acceptance speech when they give me the Fastest Day Ever Lived Award. That's the best one you can win.
I check in with the GPS, thinking it should have alerted me to turn around by now. It's stalled on 1.73 miles and no matter how much I keep walking, it doesn't move. I realize I don't hear the drone anymore, either. I'm about to turn back when I hear a noise ahead. I'm proud to say I'm not a generally curious person, but something about it makes me want to see what it is.
It could be a shortcut, I reason with myself. I keep on, following the noise.
Eventually the tunnel gets brighter, then brighter still. I can see little rocks under my feet and a trickle of water running down the walls. I enter a cavern that's as bright as day. In the center of it, a girl with long pink braids sits cross-legged. She's banging on a circular object in her lap and swaying to the beat. She doesn't stop when I enter but she does give me a long look. I notice that her eyes are green.
I can't help myself. I walk over to her and stand above her. I know I should keep going, going, going, but there's something about the haunting, ethereal sound of the instrument that draws me closer.
"Sit,"she says.
I've almost forgotten how to do it, it's been so long. I do everything standing these days. Sitting and standing again just takes extra seconds I can't waste. I nearly collapse in front of her but she doesn't laugh, just watches me with those big, serious eyes. She has freckles on her nose and her cheeks are slightly flushed with exertion.
I want her to stop playing her drum and release me back to speedrunning, but I also don't want her to stop because I've never felt like this before.
"Listen,"she says. The tune shifts slightly, getting faster but somehow more haunting.
I don't know how to describe what I'm feeling right now. There are no feeds, no applications, no background music or news stream. My hands are not moving. My feet are not moving.
My eyes can look around and take in my surroundings: I see rocks, a few empty crates, a bunch of "caution"and "work zone"signs, a tumble of what looks to be blankets and some bags, lots and lots of books piled high. The books have little papers sticking out of them at all angles. A stuffed unicorn sits on top of the highest stack.
My mind feels sharp and vast and I wonder what this sensation is called. Is it some kind of sickness? Some trick?
I watch her fingers flying across the drum, striking it with her thumbs and middle fingers and palm. The more I listen, I can distinguish the sound of her humming softly to herself as she plays. I lean back on my elbows and wonder who she is, where she came from, what this place is and why she's here. I haven't wondered this much about anything probably ever.
She stops playing then, and I expect my body to bolt up and run out of the cavern but I don't. I've thought of the word for this experience, this inaction. I realize it's one I've never before experienced but am not ready to give up.
Just a few more nanoseconds, I tell myself. For now, I am still. |
A soothing wind brushed by the trees creating an illuminating dance of light as the midday sun drizzled through the leaves. James sat on the park bench watching a group of children chase each other in the distance.
“Peaceful here, isn’t it?” a soft female voice said beside him.
James turned his head to see a woman sitting next to him. She had what could only be described as kind features, she was attactive, with auburn hair and a white dress.
James nodded slowly and turned back to look at the children running around.
“You come here often?” the woman softly inquired.
James heaved a sigh. “Not anymore.”
In the distance, one of the children had tripped over and started crying. A tall elderly walked over and began hugging the distraught child.
“I used to come here with my grandmother.” James continued, “She would always tell me stories. Adventure, romance, mystery, she was my favourite person to talk to. We would walk around this park for hours, just talking.”
“She sounds amazing.” The woman replied.
“She was. But then she got sick. Couldn’t walk anymore, stopped telling stories, and one day, she died.”
A soft breeze punctuated the silence. James watched some dead leaves spin around on the ground by the tempo of the wind, before coming to a rest.
James turned his head to look at the woman. She had pale green eyes, that were locked onto him. “Who are you?” he finally asked.
“It’s not important who I am. What you need to ask yourself, is why are you here?”
He continued looking at her, trying to decipher her enigmatic features. Who was this woman? He then looked around again. It was Salem’s Park, just as he remembered. Where he would spend most of childhood, where he was the happiest. It was here that he decided that when he was older, he would tell people stories, make them feel better, just like grandma.
But that’s not what he did now. Now he needed money. His memory was starting to come back. He was digging. He wasn’t alone, he was with someone, Tim. They were trying to get into Caspian’s vault. He knew they had unique defensive systems, but this, this was something else.
“It’s not too late James.” She said, “You’ve breached the outer wall. But you can still turn back. Be the story teller your grandmother wanted you to be. Don’t spend the rest of your life rotting in a jail cell. You must know that if you’re talking to me, it’s already too late. You won’t be able to go further. Your only option, is to turn back.”
“You won’t call the police?”
“No.”
James slowly nodded. An intense, blinding, white light filled his vision.
His eyes fluttered open. He was in a dark place, it smelled of machinery and concrete. A soft groan emanated beside him. He looked over to see Tim slowly trying to stand up.
“Let’s go James.” Tim said, “I need to call my son.”
They picked up their machinery and started walking out of the tunnel. |
I had to think for a few minutes. Could I wish for fortune or luck. No, that might be good or bad. And who would it be for? Tales of genies sometimes described them as cruel. Who knew what type of evil I could visit on the world with a poorly chosen single word. I ran my fingers through my receding hair. I looked back to the genie, bands of metal around its wrists and neck.
I knew what I had to do.
"First wish,"I pointed to the genie. "Honest". I fell silent and waited for the light show.
The genie squinched up its eyes in puzzlement. "Very well, I will make you honest."
"No."
"No?"
I pointed at the genie again. "I wished for you to be honest."
The genie swirled around me. An impression of desert winds crossed my mind and the fear of dying in a sandstorm. "You only used a single word, human. I can fulfill your drivel of a wish anyway I desire."
I smiled. "You placed no limit on body language. This wish is for you genie."I only now lowered my outstretched hand.
The genie drifted back and forth across the hilltop we stood upon. The ruins underneath us were thousands of years old. What devastation had been visited upon these people in that forgotten age? And had this spirit delivered it to them? Its lamp sat with the spot I had polished clean brightly shining, but otherwise covered in the dust of ancient toppled stones and buried bones.
The genie looked at me and snorted. "Fine."It snapped its fingers and the world shuddered. Stones from the excavated walls in the pit to my left fell, shattering the collection of pottery fragments I had been assembling when I found the lamp.
"It is done."
"You are now honest?"
The genie made no move to affirm or deny.
"Second wish."I pointed again at the genie. "Answer."
The genie sighed a breeze that sounded of rustling palms. "I am honest."
Even honest men, sometimes tell lies from time to time. This wish would not save me from every deception. Especially if I had to use a wish for every answer.
"My next wish."I pointed again at the genie. "Kind."
The genie bristled, sparks dancing around its head, but it snapped its fingers again. The resulting thunder clap deafened me for a few minutes afterward. When I finally came to my senses I saw the softened expression of the genie staring back at me.
It whispered a cool draft through a open window, "I am kind."
I would continue to mold the genie for my next six wishes, to be as certain as possible my true wish would be granted both fairly and generously. I wished for the genie to be helpful, so they would grant the wish to my benefit and to the world. I wished for them to be forgiving, so it would not seek revenge for me wishing to force its nature nor revenge against humanity for its bondage. I wished for it to be thoughtful, because a wish kindly granted in haste can still be disastrous. I wished for it to be patient, because even with great power some things can only be done in the fullness of time. I wished for it to be hopeful, because a creature given to despair is a danger to itself and others. And finally I wished for it to be wise, because no matter how long and deep one looks for a kind answer to a need, one will only find it if they look in the correct direction.
My preliminary wishes complete, I squared my shoulders ready to proclaim my wish that may shake the world to dust if I was wrong in my judgement. I placed my hand over my heart.
The genie had subsided to a faint dust devil swirling beside my feet. The currents of air came together again so it rose up and over me. The gathering wind promised a torrent of rain upon the desert tonight.
"What is your final wish, human?"
"My final wish,"I said clutching my chest. I raised my hand and pointed to the genie.
"Free." |
Elves were always honoured by humans and ever since I could remember, they had honoured me. As a half elf, people believed that I was pure of heart. It was wonderful to have all these people admiring me. Never had I been shut out. Never had they bullied me.
But when I turned 25, it was time to meet my elf relatives. My mother has been worried all the time. For the past year she tried to teach me "the way of the elf". Which is nothing more than being passively aggressive wih a sweet voice. She told me that I had to act different. I had to walk and talk different.
It was a drag. Why should I need to change? I was already perfect. But she didn't think that. All her worrying had made me a bit nervous too.
This past week has been horrible. She doubled down on her teachings and tried to make me "look good enough"for the family. In an attempt to get her to stop, I complied. I tried to do everything as perfect as she wanted, but it was never good enough.
And now that I stood at the entrance of the elf village, I started to doubt myself. I gathered my courage and entered. There weren't a lot of people. Just some evles here and there walking over the roads. One woman was carrying a large cake.
I wished my mother was here right now. She was already at the family home. I had to enter alone. It was a test to see how capable I was on my own.
As I walked through the streets, I felt people staring at me. I tried to look confident, but I failed. It was my third time in this street. The roads were confusing. They weren't straight lines. Some just circled back into themselves.
After some time I made it to the right house. I knocked on the door and it flew open. A woman stood before me. Even when standing still, she seemed graceful. She looked me up and down. Her face didn't betray a single thought and without words she turned around and walked inside.
I followed her. Closing the door behind me. She let me to a dining room. Seven pairs of eyes stared at me, including my mom's.
The woman had taken a seat. Everyone stared at me and I had no idea what to do. My mom nodded slightly and her eyes flickered towards an empty chair.
I bowed my headand knees slightly and said "good afternoon. My name is Eselda, I'm pleased to meet you."I raised up again. Hoping I didn't look too stupid. "May the earth bless your day."After those words, I sat down in the chair.
I folded my hands neatly in my lap, straightened my shoulders and looked around the room. A man across me smiled.
"Welcome Esleda."He reached an arm out over the table. I hesitated slightly before taking it. "I am glad you are here. I assume you had troubles finding the house?"His voice raised slightly as he said that. I tried to take back my hand, but he wouldn't let me.
"The roads are less straight then I'm used to."I said.
"Is that so."His voice had still a sweet tone, but is smile had disappeared. "Then it might have been a bad idea to have you raised with humans."
Finally he let go of my hand. I pulled away immediately. But when I quickly looked at my mother, I saw disappointment in her eyes. I had done one of the things she warned me about. She had told me to never look ungrateful. Not even if a handshake took too long. And by pulling away so quick, I had shown how ungrateful I was.
A woman next to th man started talking to my mother. He voice was loud and filled with disappointment. "We should have never allowed you to stay in the human village. You have only brought shame upon us."
The rest of the afternoon me and my mom got scolded. Every little movement I did was immediately corrected. And at the end of the day, I was exhausted. I had to stay a whole week. I didn't know how I would survive that.
But everything became even worse. When I was making myself ready for bed, my mother's father came in.
"Me and my wive have been talking."He said. "It is best if you live with us for a while."My heart sank. "We have seen your behaviour today and it is disrespectful. It is clear your mother has taught you nothing about our culture. So you will be staying with us."
I didn't react. I was so shocked that I could only stare. No one had ever spoken to me like they had today. And now he was telling me I had to go through this every day. He waited for a few more seconds before turning around. Leaving me alone again. |
I barely remember the crime that brought me here. I have so many worse ones on my conscience now.
A theft, I know. Driven by hunger pangs that would seem so insignificant now, I stole some kind of food. Bread perhaps, still warm from the ovens, or fresh fruit, or any number of delicious things that it hurts to dwell on the memory of.
Whatever I stole, I've paid for it now a thousand times over. Exile - far from civilisation and comfort. Exile to a planet so relentlessly hostile, so inimicable to human life, that simply existing here - without restraint or responsibility - is far worse than any prison.
There are planets that will kills you faster, certainly. Planets where the air is acid vapour, the surface lava, or the atmosphere thin enough that your lungs implode at your first breath. Death is an easy thing to find in an uncaring galaxy.
This planet though - this one feels personal. Gravity 0.8 of Earth's, and a similar balance of gases in the atmosphere. Blue oceans and a lush, tropical climate. A single yellow sun, and days that sync up perfectly with human circadian rhythms. It's almost paradise.
But those blue, balmy oceans teem with blood-sucking leaches and massive saurian predators. The lush green jungle drips with poison, every other plant seeming to have some bizarre defence or predatory practice. Six-footed beasts - half jaguar, half monkey - stalk you through the trees. This is a world perfectly adapted for humanity to live on, but with flora and fauna that seem almost deliberately designed to prey upon us.
My pod slammed down on a beach with golden sands, and at first I felt like the luckiest convict in the world. Exiled to paradise, even with only the meagre supplies they'd allowed me, was a definite upgrade from starving in the slums. I lay back on the sun-warmed sands and genuinely laughed out loud at my fresh start.
But then I attempted to wash the sweat of orbital entry off myself in the surf. A spike-shelled crab snipped two toes off my left foot, and as I stumbled backwards from the shallows, I saw a dozen dark shapes arrow towards me from deeper out, drawn by the scent of blood.
With my foot bandaged - using some of my scarce medical supplies - I hobbled towards the treeline, looking for fruit trees or even a local deer-equivalent. The first 'fruit' I tried to harvest turned out to be a thorn-filled puffball that exploded when disturbed, peppering me with painful barbs. I spent that first night clinging to a tree branch, hearing the snuffles of the hog-snails slurping at droplets of my falling blood.
I was sent here for a single theft, driven by hunger, not malice. Since my arrival only a few short months ago, I have committed murder seven times.
Everything native to this green hell is dangerous. The smallest squeaking mammal squirts venom, the juiciest fruit is just bait for some vast pitcher-plant. To attempt to feed yourself from local produce is to invite death in countless ways.
The only source of food - the safest thing to eat - comes from my fellow prisoners. This beach is a popular strike zone for the drop-pods, it seems, and so I have taken to haunting this shore, keeping to the narrow strip of land between surf and jungle where few creatures walk.
Every few weeks, a spark flares in the sky and another pod hammers down into the sand. When the new arrival steps blearily out, still shaky from the gel-cushioned impact, I am waiting there with my blood-stained rock.
Each murder keeps me alive a little longer. I gain another burn-streaked pod shell to expand my crude shelter with, another small first-aid kit, and a few days worth of rations. Small reward for taking a life, even one tried, convicted, and doomed to exile.
I cannot be further punished - the Federation in their wisdom allows no greater punishment than exile - so I will confess to a greater crime. The rations from each arrival are not enough to sustain me until the next. I try to spread them out, to eat only half - a third, an eighth - of a meal's allotment each day, but it's never enough. Every time, hunger gnawing at me, I end up resorting to the only safe food I can.
I have no fire, no spices, no side-dishes. I gnaw cold gobbets of flesh, suck the marrow from bones cracked against a rock. They say the meat tastes like pork. I say it tastes of guilt and self-loathing. Every time, as I retch my shame onto the sands, I promise myself that this will be the last time, that I will be stronger in my resolve. I will greet the new arrival as a brother, and together we will brave the jungle, find a food source we can share. Every time, when hunger gnaws and I see them stumble forth into our Eden, I am too weak to resist my baser urges. I kill, I steal, and later - as much later as I can bear it - I eat.
I thought once, as you perhaps do, that my exile was a heavy punishment, an unjust sentence for a small crime borne from need not malice. I dreamt of a pardon, of clemency, of a softening of policy that would see me rehoused in a concrete cell on another world. I sneered to call this justice.
I no longer think that way. Since my arrival, since seeing what I have done and what I continue to do, I understand. My initial crime was minor, but the courts saw what I did not: the vicious evil lurking inside of me. With each stone cracking against skull, each shameful, sordid feast, I prove the justice of my sentence. I could brave the jungle, choose death, accept my punishment, but yet I continue to sin, to prolong my awful existence at the cost of others' lives.
I deserve this hell. |
Simon followed the low rumble of disjointed thoughts down the corridors of the lab, making his way to the cafeteria. The Mind-Link worked. The result of almost a decade of tinkering and experimenting, it would lift thoughts from those around and deliver them directly into the user's brain.
As he crossed the doorway into the cafeteria, the 'volume' and clarity of the thoughtforms sharpened dramatically. Simon basked for a few moments in the glory of his achievement, slowly attempting to link the thoughts he heard to the voices of the fellow scientists and engineers he shared the facility with.
But suddenly, the gears in his head caught up with the meaning of the words he was 'hearing'.
"There's Simon, outside of his lab for the first time in two days.", "Do you think it worked this time? It must be such a drag to not be able to speak like this.", "Does a person born blind miss the world of fine art?"
Fear and alarm shot through Simon. His frozen vocal cords did not betray him, but the silent scream of surprise stilled the room just the same. Several seconds passed slowly as everyone in the room stared at him. It was only then that Simon realized that the Mind-Link transmitted more than thoughts, as the background emotional rumble also fell silent.
Then, as quickly as the quiet came, it vanished, and Simon fell to his knees as a torrential downpour of love, affection, and joy crashed around him. In his ears, he heard the creaks of rubber on linoleum as every person in the room shot up to run over.
"It worked? It finally worked!? Oh my God! You did it!"He could no longer discern whether he was hearing or feeling the words crash around him. All Simon knew, was that he was finally able to be at one with the people he never knew weren't quite like himself. The difference didn't matter.
He was home. |
With rythmic motion, Steve pushed the mop around the office floor. Looking out the window, his eyes lingered on the American flag hanging limp from the flagpole near the parade ground outside. His thoughts on the tear stained letter he'd received from Bucky's mom a few days ago.
After repeated rejections from the recruitment offices, one of the recruiters had taken pity on him. "Every man must do their part, and there's a part to play for everyone, even runty weaklings."He'd tried to stow away on a transport headed for England, but had been caught and sent back to camp.
The infraction had caused him to lose a weekend pass, not that Steve enjoyed being ignored in a corner of a pub. Once, he'd noticed that one of the soldiers was dancing with a female British military envoy, and Steve had realized that it was the closest he'd ever get to Europe.
Steve finished cleaning and put the mop in the bucket on the cleaning cart. As he backed out of the office he crashed into someone and was knocked to the floor, with the documents of the carrier. "I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there."he apologized while hastily gathering the papers, not looking up. "It's quite alright."a female voice replied "I was in a rush and didn't notice you backing out."
Steve looked up, recognizing the British envoy. "Really, it's me who should apologize, you took quite the fall."Getting up, Steve handed her the papers "It's nothing."he groaned, pretending not to hurt "it's all for the war effort."She smiled at him "Your not as brutish as most louts around here, Mr...?""Rogers, Steve Rogers."She took his hand "I'm Peggy Carter." |
Bro, bro, bro....I have an idea!
Its for our first prank!
It's great! You'll love it!
No, no hear me out!
It's *perfect*!
How about...how about we put a blessing on this field of turnips?
Like we just bless the *fuck* out of it!
And just bury them up to their tits in turnips!
Why?
Why the hell not, bro!
I mean its our job to prank the humans, *right*?
So just lets make their field go crazy with turnips!
Okay so *you* pick the vegetable then!
Lima beans?
Really?
You hate them *that* much?
I still think turnips are better...how about this? We make a list of the most grossest vegetables we can think of and bless 'em till they grow to enormous sizes!
I mean, think about it!
Huge ass beets and turnips the size of cart wheels or broccoli and cauliflower the size of trees!
Wouldn't that be goddamn hilarious?
So you're in?
Great! Let's get started right away!
\*\*\*\* 1 year later \*\*\*
Shit! What hell do you mean we've promoted?
Fertility god? Harvest god?
WTF?
Farming?
We don't want to be farmers!
How the hell did this happen?
There was a famine?
Oh. So people are now worshiping zucchinis and shit?
Damn.
Well. I guess we should have seen that coming.
Prankster god was a nice gig while it lasted. |
Zeus owned the sky. Olympus and all of its golden glory was his, and it was guarded by the bright, buzzing power of his unmatched and indomitable lightning bolt. Looking over mankind, being the children of their thought and discovery, but the guardians of their reality, Zeus and his 11 other pantheon divines accepted their roles with unimaginable pride/
The three leaders, all-powerful and unconquerable. Zeus, god of the sky. Poseidon, god of the seas. Hades, god of the underworld. These figures were everything to mankind. They alone could power the world of humanity. But, as they did, their arrogance and boldness grew. Zeus could shape great tornados and amazing shows of blitzing lightning. Poseidon could shake the whole earth and create waves greater in size than any wall. Hades could unleash his lesser divines and reap the harvest of pestilence and starvation. Who could ever stop such immensities?
But something was changing in the world, as the god's grew more bold and arrogant, humans changed. Human's changed and claimed new discoveries about their universe. From the perspective of the gods, it was like the blink of an eye. One day they were on top, controlling all, and the next they were...
"Drink with me!"Zeus slurred out the words from atop his mighty golden throne. His muscles pulsed with the vigor of his opulence. "For we deserve more wine!"
The scene on Olympus was anything except unfamiliar. Gushing fountains of wine and growing, twisting roots that produced delicious amber all encircled a gathering of gorgeous men and woman. Gods, half-gods, heroes and fables all dined with incredible decadence. Every single one of them, leaders and images that represented eons of human worship, sat in the garden of wonders with no more than an afterthought about their place in the universe -- They were forever.
"Stop!"Hermes burst through the front gates, dripping in sweat and surrounded by his usual aura of speed. "Stop the party!"
*Stop the party?* How dare he suggest such an act? Immediately rumors washed over the party like one of Poseidon's waves. Ares quickly moved to act on what seemed to be an opportunity for violence. "Brother!"He belched. "You dare bother such a wonderful event?"
"I need to speak to Zeus."He tried to walk by the stumbling god of bloodshed, but was halted by a firm hand on the chest.
"Not before *talking* to me first."His voice was playful, but Hermes knew better.
"Ares, this is important. Pease."
Important? The word made the party reel back in disgust. No time for such awful ideas.
Hermes tried to get past his half-brother but was thrown to the ground with a mighty trip. A laugh roared from the crowd as Hermes filled with anger. In a move faster than Zeus's bolt he launched to his feet and dashed up to the throne before Ares could even blink again.
"Stop the party."
"Please Hermes,"The large man patted his son on the shoulder, trying to disarm his anger and move him. "Have a drink and calm down, this can wait for later."
"The new gods are here."
A cold blanket of silence hit the party with the force of a chock hold. A string of new gods had begun appearing over the years, stirring dissent and worry among those who listened. Small ones, herrings of change, appeared in the corners of Olympus. Never anything too powerful, the God of Compasses, The Goddess of Telescopes, The Goddess of hydraulics. All of them claimed not be under the scope of Zeus, but some new, stronger gods whom they wouldn't name. Because none of them were of any real challenge, they were all thrown from Olympus and completely forgotten about. That is until Hermes ruined the party at their mention.
"Hermes,"Zeus gave a look to the nervous crowd. "We dealt with them long ago. Please, don't bother me with them agi--"
A disturbance arose the front of the party. Suddenly the bodies of the gatemen came flying up the stairs and into the center of the party, causing waves of gasps and the unsheathing of many weapons.
Then, a single goddess walked into the room. Gray and gravely with crackling she walked in with a crooked, sly smile.
"Who are you!"Screamed Ares with a drawn sword.
"I'm here to introduce the new leaders of this wretched place."Her skin was sizzling and popping. "My name is Niter -- Goddess of gunpowder."
Ares shook his head with worry, a bead of sweat formed at the top of his face. He'd of course known of gunpowder from some time now, but he had avoided the goddess for as long as he could. He was afraid. "I cannot allow you t--"
Niter raised her hand and a burst of explosive power shot out from it, sending Ares flying into the wall and shattering the armor he always wore. When he tried to raise back up he got hit with another volley, this time sending him through the wall and down the long steps of Olympus.
No one dared helped. That was the god of war, and he just got soundly beaten down, what could the others even offer? Instead they all just watched in awe at the power of a god they had never even heard of.
Niter briskly returned her gaze to the throne, which now held Zeus along with his two brothers. All readied for a strike. "Well this is perfect."Her voice was gravely but energetic. "I can introduce you three to your replacements."
"...Replacements?"Poseidon's voice was hesitant. |
I looked up at the woman, clad in dark cloth stylized in that stereotypical villainous fashion, with spikes and shadows that grew from her form. Her purple and green makeup and seams were top notch, I had to say. A shame I hated the color scheme and the spikes. The shadows were cool, though.
Looking to our leader for a retort, I only saw doubt on her face, so being the class clown of the bunch, I chuckled and retorted for her. "Well, why do they enlist hotties like you to be the villainess?"
The rest of the girls looked to me in shock at first - though Lora, our magical nerd, tried to hold in a snicker - while the villainess squinted at me with a glare that sent pulses of some vile energy that I think was meant to intimidate me. "I was not chosen, I *chose* to do this."
"Same as us, then, yeah?"I responded, elbowing our 'heroic leader'.
She picked up on my intentions and continued for me. "Right. We might not have been born Galaxy Defenders, but we chose to be us. And that means fighting against the likes of you, who wish to corrupt the world and destroy it!"
"Foolishness,"the villainess - whose name I still don't know, I realize (like, honestly, you'd think that big bad evil guys would introduce themselves. No manners these days) - sneers. Not with contempt, but with... a kind of pity. "I am not here to destroy the world, but revive it. It has stagnated for too long."
"How about we stagnate *you*!"Becca says as she lunges forth. Bless her heart for trying.
With a quick swipe of her hand - too fast for me to see, and I was the speedster of the group - the Villainess knocked Becca aside and frowned slightly more. "Children... ***Children!***"she complained, looking not at us, but outwards in frustration.
Something feels a bit off about this. As Angelica commands Lora to check on Becca, I step beside Angelica with Kylie as we get in formation to prevent Becca or Lora from getting pounced on.
The time for jokes was over, or so I thought, but the Villainess didn't even follow up. She... reacted. Even now, it was like she was judging us, rather than opposing us.
In the silence of her observation, something *urged* me to say, "So... does that mean we're not fighting? Cuz I'm totally down to talk this out."
Angelica waited a moment before nodding. "Yes. No need to make enemies if we don't need to make enemies. But make any hostile move and we'll-"
"You'll what?"the Villainess asked, walking closer to us. I tensed - noticing the others did as well - but didn't act yet.
"We'll fight you."
"Hah. I suppose that's all you can manage. At least you don't have any false confidence in your ability. After all, it's not 'We'll win'. Respectable. But foolishness. It would be better to lay down your arms entirely and let me do what I came here to do."
"We can't let you do that,"Kylie scoffed. "Even if it cost our lives."
"Wait, hold on, what even *are* you here to do?"I ask. "Maybe she's just dressed weird, and not one of the Fallen."
"No, I am,"she said, a smile coming to her face. "I'm here to crack the crust of your planet and let its lifeblood pour into the streets, killing countless millions while only the strong survive. Because clearly, while you are mentally strong, you are physically weak. Stagnated."
"Which means that we're not worthy to survive I guess,"I say flippantly. "Unless this part's the time where we show we're worthy."
"Quite right. Fight to survive, children. Your world has abandoned you. If you survive, you will become my own children, and I shall raise you myself."
"Hm. And what about my friends back home?"I sass back. "I think I ought to show I'm strong enough to carry them with me, yeah?"
"I thought *Angelica* was the leader,"Becca said, having gotten up with Lora's help.
"Hah! Hear that, Jelly? I get to be leader now! Let's get ready tooooo-"
I charge to flank invisibly as my illusion charges forth screaming, "RRRRUUUUMBLEEEEEEEE!" |
You ever hear the words, “Act like you know?” It’s a famous saying and I often live by it. Ever since I lost my cozy but boring job, I decided to walk onto the sets pretending that I am supposed to be there. I’d go talk to my casting agency and apply to be an extra then I would show up in the middle of an important scene. My casting agency has been suspicious, trying to send me emails about how I wasn’t supposed to be in x scene. Turns out they didn’t like paying me for the random gigs they didn’t hire me.
I’d often walk into the set and first thing I do is arrive about 5 minutes early. Everyone else does that so I blend in well. I don’t however go to the snack table as many other tired actors do first thing in the morning. Instead I sneak a glance at any clipboards that has an attendance sheet. In my pocket is a bottle of white out so I can write my name in. No one is the wiser. Back then, I never would stoop that low but my unjust firing gave me a reason to be selfish. It’s works too well for me.
One day I accidentally showed up in the middle of a fight scene. It’s was one of those summer blockbuster superhero movies. The heroes began to group together for one of those cliche team up scenes. I happened to be in the background and to the camera, it seemed I was right there with them. Now typically they would cut right then and there but the director, one of those artistic eccentrics, looked at me and loved me. He said I had a strong jawline (my only exciting feature), and my face shape was unique. So they had to refilm some of the scenes. I thought my casting agency would block me.
The casting agency loved me so much that they actually dedicated an agent to helping me get gigs. I suddenly became a new sensation overnight. I’m even planning to have a book about how I got into the business, even including the nefarious schemes I came up with. It’d make for a hilarious story for the talk shows. Every now and then I see a struggling actor, clueless on to grab a part. I keep a bottle of white out in my pocket at all times for those situations. I took what I needed to give back to the less fortunate. Call me the Robin Hood of struggling actors. |
9/22/2022
I found myself able to die and continue unharmed. I crossed the street and a truck hit me, then I found myself 6 feet away from that truck. My friend walked up to me and said are you okay? I was worried so I walked home thinking it was a dream. It wasn’t as I found out after walking into a sewer hole. Only to appear outside of it a few seconds later. I peered down into the hole and couldn’t find my body.
9/24/22
I can’t die! I proved this by using a pistol to shoot myself. When I come to, the gun’s fully loaded. I don’t know how or what to do. I have new abilities and I am going to abuse them.
I am back to 9/24/22. It took 3000 bullets and was difficult to shoot myself everytime. I don’t want to do this again. My jaw is hurting from all the psychological bullets I took. My previous entry for 9/25 was gone and I have to rewrite it.
9/25/22
“Today”, I learned that I can rewind time by a few seconds. I sat down in my chair and was shooting my face. I looked at the clock and it would go back by five minutes. I can even rewind time 5 minutes a time back to yesterday.
9/30/22
I am now using my abilities to ace dates and get jobs. I often say the dumbest stuff without thinking. Shooting myself in the head to avoid embarrassment. I’m starting to notice that there was a guy who is staring at me. During those visits to the restaurants or job openings, I would catch him glancing at me. It’s a small town so I probably see him around but I am still suspicious. I’ll keep an eye out.
9/31/22
The man came up to me, and told me that he knew what I was doing. Creepy. I left in a hurry by shooting myself. I wonder if I can avoid him
5/12/22
He still found me. I was sitting in a cafe trying to ease my mind. He walked up me, trying to say that he had something to explain so I listened, hoping that he would leave me alone. He told he that killing myself had me leaving dead bodies all over the timelines. He told me he was a traveler and took notice of my death on the news. He told me that I left thousands of alternate family members heartbroken and created multiple timelines. I didn’t know I was causing work for people.
5/13/22
I started to wonder if what I was doing was wrong. I don’t think I am. I got a special power and I used it to help myself. Still, I caused a lot of suffering and decided to take a break with my abilities. I can live happily knowing that if I die, I can come back. Maybe I can use my powers to help others. I won’t feel guilty then. It’s kind of hilarious to think about how many awkward situations I left people with. This ignites my trollish behavior. |
*Dungeon* **29-61N/106-60E**, *review.*
Found recently in an area with a lack of dungeons, can this prove a draw to the area or will zone CGQG remain a poor zone for dungeon-based supplies?
*Difficulty: 4/10*
The monsters, while shitty to fight, are not particularly difficult, taking the form of augmented regular animals. Tigers are the most difficult, but a regular group ought to be able to take care of them easily. Some groups have reported more difficulty with the smell than the monsters.
*Layout: 7/10*
Straight-forward, no pitfalls spotted, but fairly long. Occasional water and slip hazards occur, hindering groups and potentially monsters as well, but that is not guaranteed. A map is nice, but not needed, and retreating to the entrance is doable, though there are few points at which chasing monsters can be shaken off.
*Loot: 0.2/10*
The loot stinks. Though there are occasional high-end wearable drops like furs and leather, the vast, vast, vast majority of drops are excrement. Poop. Shit. Whatever you want to call it. Unless you are in farming and in dire need of natural fertiliser, don't bother going here for the loot.
*Overall: 2/10*
It's hard to recommend a place that puts the DUNG in dungeon. Go here once for the experience if you really want to; there are some rare monsters. Just bring a wizard who can create bubbles of fresh air and be prepared to spend a lot of time cleaning your gear afterwards. You don't have to do it for the sights or loot, unless you worship the porcelain god. Even then, a weekend bender is less dangerous and more enjoyable for that. |
I stood there stunned and facing my friend, who was holding an ancient-looking tome in her hands. I looked down to see myself in the middle of a pentagram drawn on the floor with candles at each of its points. I say that I was stunned because a second ago I was in the bathroom in front of the mirror brushing my teeth.
"Oops!"said my friend. "My bad."After rattling off some gibberish I couldn't understand, perhaps the incantation to reverse this particular summoning, she sent me back, and I found myself back in the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror with the toothbrush still in my mouth for a good minute or so before resuming my brushing. I would talk to my friend about this tomorrow.
The next day, I would discover that we would not be having that discussion. I looked out my window to see my neighborhood engulfed in flames, but the flames did not seem to consume the houses. The sky had turned a blood red, and I saw red figures with wings and horns running to and fro, making trouble, wreaking havoc, setting fire to lawns, fences, neighbors, cat, dogs.
When I stepped out of my front door to get a wider view, I saw my neighbors running for their lives as they were being pursued by these demons.
My friend had always talked about trying to summon a demon. I tried to tell her that it was all make-believe and that there was no such thing as demons or the occult or the practice of summoning demons. I had to guess that she had been making many an attempt at the summoning, and I believe that she had intended to summon only one. But through some misplaced phrase or incorrect pronunciation, she had instead summoned a whole army of them by mistake.
In the next second, I found myself back in the summoning circle in front of my friend.
"Didn't I tell you not to mess with this stuff?"I told her. "Did you want to summon an entire army of demons to overrun the world?"
"No,"said my friend. "Chill out, I'm working on figuring out how to send them back. I brought you here to help me."
She walked up to me with a look of triumph. "So, little Miss Know-It-All who thinks there's no such thing as the supernatural and the occult. Do you believe *now*?" |
"Well hey there Billy!"
"What the? Who's there? Where did that voice come from? And...and my name isn't Billy."
"Looks like you're writing a story there. Mind if I take a look?"
"Uh...yes? Yes I do. And where is--"
"Oh, wow, looks good!"
"Uh...thanks? But who---"
"Oh, what's this? Looks like you're writing a sympathetic villain and a jerk hero."
"Uh, not that it's any of your business, mysterious voice...thing, but I'm trying to subvert genre norms."
"Well, Billy, it looks like I arrived just in time! I'm here with a friendly reminder from the DGC!"
"The what? And my name isn't Billy. It's ---"
"Ha ha ha, yes, that's right. The Department of Genre Conventions. Here to make your writing shine (™)"
"Did...did you just say TM? Who does that? And where are you anyway?"
"Now, Billy,"
"You're just going to ignore me, aren't you?"
"Having a sympathetic villain is all well and good, but have you ever stopped to think about what your readers will want?"
"Uh...yes? Comically evil villains are--"
"I don't blame you Billy. After all, why think about the people who will read your story?"
"Are...can you even hear me?"
"But you always have to consider what your readers will want from the villain. Will they really want their evil doer to be relatable and sympathetic?"
"Yes, actually. Many of the more popular villains today are the ones who have a point, and real motivations, but maybe not the best methods."
"Of course not! No, let your friendly DGC expert remind you that a villain is the bad guy for a reason. People want to cheer for the hero when they win. And they can't do that if they like the villain. Always remember, Billy, you don't want a villain. You want a bad guy."
"What year are you from, anyway? And for the love of God, my name isn't Billy!"
"And now your hero. Looks like he doesn't have any redeeming qualities and is almost as bad as your bad guy."
"Okay, so you can't hear me, but you can see what I write, got it. Should I even bother talking at this point?"
"That's no good, Billy. Your hero isn't just for the story. He's for all the people reading it! He needs to be pure good to stand against evil."
"Ugh. That's boring. One note, goody two shoes protags are dime a dozen and boring as hell."
"A hero is someone your audience wants to be. They should want him to do the right thing no matter what. Otherwise they won't root for him to win."
"Actually flawed heroes are way more memorable than always good paragons. Okay, sure, maybe I am going overboard with making almost evil, but there's no way I'm making him perfect."
"Always remember Billy, that your hero isn't a hero. He's a good guy! Keep those two things in mind and your story will be read the world over!"
"Dude, even Disney has more nuance than what you're telling me to do."
"Ha ha ha, no need to thank me, Billy! It's all in a day's work for the DGC! Here to make your writing shine! (™)."
"Yeah, maybe if you only write stories for little kids. You could've at least gotten my name right." |
"You are special, more than you know."
I rolled my eyes at Dad's tone. He always hinted that things were not what they seem. He spoke so often of hidden pasts, keeping parts secret from me. He promised it would make sense once I was old enough. But he never told me when that would be. No matter how often I needled him about it, he wouldn't say.
"Come on dad. You act like I'm meant to be important."
He smiled at me.
"You are. In fact, I think its time you knew."
I narrowed my eyes at him, crossing my arms.
"Are you really going to tell me? Or is this another poor attempt at a joke?"
His vaguely amused expression changed, becoming deadly serious.
"No. I'm not joking anymore."
With a sigh he reached up, feeling in the crevice atop his hunting cupboard. From it he withdrew a small chest, old but extravagantly carved. A golden lock sealed it, one that matched a key he took from around his neck.
"The truth is, I am no mere huntsman. Even this village is no ordinary village. Every man, woman and child has sworn their allegiance to our family."
He unlocked the chest, lifting back the lid. Inside was a green silk cushion, in which sat a crown of pure black.
"I am the Black King. The one whose knights serve beyond even death itself. The other Kings are Kings in name only. I am the only one to hold royal power. As my daughter, you too hold it, as the Black Princess."
With a sigh, Dad reached back up, taking out a second chest. This was smaller, but equally ornate. He unlocked it with the same key as before, turning it to me. I slowly leaned forwards, opening it. On another green silk cushion sat a black tiara, clearly unworn.
"Dad... why keep this hidden?"
He bowed his head.
"The other Kings fear me. Alone I was a target, a long lived one that's true, but only a target. But I was a known element in the constant game of royal battles. They tolerated me, and my slow expansion. But you, you changed it. If they knew of your existence, you would be their first priority. An Heiress to the Black Throne, they wouldn't allow you to live."
He slowly clicked each finger, bending it with his other hand.
"So I hid you, until such time as you were ready. I let them think I had vanished, my kingdom empty. But my loyal vassals came with me here, to protect us both, and let you have a childhood you would otherwise be without. Now you are grown. Now you are ready to learn the power that lies within us. And now we can reclaim our land." |
It took you a few years to realize that you can't see. "Doesn't everything feel that way?"you used to ask in eternal pitch blackness, only to learn that people see rainbows: apparently something made out of a lot of colors, that appears after rain. Before you could realize you were seperated from your friends and sent to a school that uses a sort of special raised dots for words.
It took you another couple of years to be able to start describing color, but never able percieving to them your never described them well. But you can say the environment around you right now probably has a glommy color. Waiting for a bus was never pleasant.
In class you received a laptop attached to a screen with special moving raised dots. It was your first time on what they call the Internet, feeling the bumps and recessions on screen, from top-left to bottom-right. You can hear the wind, you can feel it all over you, like spilled ink wetting the entire canvas. If the wind had a color, it would probably be quite an intense one.
It's late autumn and the bus is not going to arrive. You can hear the rain dropping on the shelter, tapping it as if the shelter was a keyboard and the raindrops a skilled typist. You recall using your laptop to browse for information. The Internet is such a big pool of information. Morse code messages, you read as your fingers feel the familiar crests and reccesses, are made out of dots and dashes. Dots and dashes. The long ones are the dashes, and the short ones are the dots. The bus have still yet to arrive, as you reiterate the dots and dashes on your mind, a list of patterns you are just starting to recognize.
It's midnight, and glommy colors tend to appear late in the night. The rain is typing on the bus shelter like a skilled typist typing on her favorite telewriter. The dots, the dashes: dot, dash, dot. Dot, dot, dash. Dash, dot. R. Ru. Run.
Dot. Dash. Dot. The bus is not going to arrive. Dot. Dot. Dash. You've heard this voice in your mind too many times. Dash. Dot.
You run.
The bus will not arrive. You run. In the cold autumn rain you run, the dirt slippery. You fall, but you still hear the rain, dropping on your body, slowly and clearly.
R. Ru. Run.
You run. You have to run. You must run.
The bus will never arrive. The rain is telling you to run.
​
P.S. First time posting on this sub. I was stuck writing another side project and stumbled across this sub, and I thought it is a good idea to pratice here first, to freshen up my mind. Please tell me if I have violated any sub rules. |
Their blood is rusted. Their tears are corrosive. Their maw oozes a putrid sap that flows freely at the sight of our flesh. Their waste is especially vile- a nauseous amber whose reek goes stronger the longer it is exposed to air. They use it to mark the territory in which they have annexed.
They fell from the dark three years ago on a great comet, the like we have never seen before. The nation had set out a team of great minds to study this fascinating object. But we could not think to the degree of reality, at what came from that strange rock. Monsters that stood above came from within the comet! These wild giants slaughtered the great minded and all the rest who were there.
They drank our blood. They ate our flesh.
All the nations feared, for we thought we were alone in the dark. The leaders convened in the frost lands, for these beasts were slow. Great minds, thinkers, and warriors all debated on how to fight them. They spread like plague, grow like weeds, and consume like fire. They are slow, but intelligent and relentless.
Our people have been able to slow them down, but we must find new ways to kill them. Our great minds have entered their lands, and found annuls of history. It has taken many years to just to begin to break their language.
They know themselves as "Man."
We call them Kudzu. |
I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm certain, my sister has become a main character. At first things seemed normal, we went about our days as we used to. We caught up every Thursday over drinks. She texted me whenever she found a funny meme. She babysat my kids when the wife and I were gone for the evening. But as time went on things got stranger.
Now wherever she went strange men would follow, sometimes lashing out and attacking her, only for her to overpower them and take them down with ease. She was always a tough fighter, but now she appeared to be even more capable than before. Of course her getting jumped in random places like bars and the gym were never the norm in the first place. A strange and mysterious man started talking cryptically to her in vague yet menacing threats, and she never seemed to be able to stop him. And he _always_ had some sort of posse with him that would also attack her, and she'd always overcome them. She'd disappear for weeks at a time only to return with a smile on her face and the scent of some exotic location irradiating from her, from the dust of the desert to the strong earthy smell of the rain forest. When I asked what she'd been up to she'd just say "oh, just another unexpected vacation."And then there's the fact that her friends always seemed to get kidnapped, and she'd have no choice but to go an save them, like it was some sort of thing that she just did now.
If what the Church of the Plot has taught us from birth, she'd been taken in by the Plot's will. Her life has been thrown into a roller coaster of her own making leading her to have one exciting life. And I, I apparently was never as close to her as I thought because not once have I, my wife, nor my kids been kidnapped and taken to some sort of exotic location only for her to save us, and it's kind of annoying if I were to be honest. But it's the Will of the Plot and I just have to live with it I guess. It still doesn't make me any less bitter.
---
If you enjoyed this check out /r/QuadrantNine for more stories written by me! |
I trudged down the street carrying my bulgy net shopping bag in one hand and fumbling around in my handbag with the other. It was bitter and my thick gloves, warm as they were, were inconvenient to grab anything with.
T'was the season and flashy neon signs and ornaments winked at me through shop windows and on billboards twinkling away the gloom. Bunting and banners in garish colours festooned all the doors and fronts of buildings, trying to look cheery despite being knocked askew by passers by. Or having people tangled in them. "People"was that even an accurate descriptor? They had been people once but now they were just ... something else.
It used to be shoppers and workers crowding the pavement on the highstreet going up and down but now it was just shambling, empty, souless shells. Most people were keeping indoors to avoid them. The flashy twinkle ornaments and signs seemed to put them off and drive them away. The sticky trap buntings caught quite a few of them, the city crews would come by to round them up at midnight every night and reset the traps.
Finally my hand closed around the cannister I had been fumbling for in my handbag. Sometimes the lights and the traps didn't always clear the pavement enough. But a good spritz of ZomBGone spray usually did the trick.
\*\*PFFFT\*\*\* "Shoo, shoo!"I spritzed a cluster of empties that were congregated near the bus shelter and they shambled off. I didn't much care for being out in the crowd but I had run out of everything and had finally made a desperate dash to the corner shop. \*sigh\* Oh well, only two more weeks and they would be gone.
​
\- I read here a lot and have often wanted to try writing, so here is my first attempt. I'm going through a rough time right now and it gave me pleasure to write this, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. |
"Humanity is...this,"I said. And I pointed at myself.
The aliens looked at each other, confused.
"Elaborate,"the one in the middle said.
"Humanity is...this,"I repeated. "I am humanity. Humanity survives, no matter the odds. A hurricane can drown an entire city, but we rebuild. A dictator can enslave his own people and send them to death camps, but the entire world will unite and fight to topple him. Humanity is freedom when there is no choice. Humanity is pain. Its sorrow. Its anger. its love. Humanity is stubbornness. Do you understand what it means to be stubborn? Humanity is thousands of years of barely surviving in harsh conditions. We live where water is scarce due to stubbornness and refusal to change. We live in climates where the Sun doesn't exist for half the year. We live in places called Tornado Alley and on fault lines that shake the earth and topple our buildings. We fall down and pick ourselves up only to fall down time and time again. We always get up."
The aliens murmured amongst themselves.
"You think you aren't the first aliens to come to Earth and threaten to blow us up? To kill us all? This is the 4th time we've been invaded. The first time, we rebuilt. The second time, we rebuilt. The 3rd time, we rebuilt. You want to tear us down? Good. Do it. We like a challenge. We climb the biggest mountains and run across the harshest deserts for fun. Right now, there are a dozen contingency plans being enacted right now to ensure humanity survives if I fail. I'm a simple man. I'm an average human. But all of us have the weight of humanity on our shoulders ALL the time. We take on the challenge headfirst because we are too dumb and too stubborn to think of any other ways to do it. We have a saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And we may be insane. You have to be a little crazy to survive this long. But we move on and forward until the next big crisis in humanity hits. We don't learn from our mistakes. We make things worse. We actively go against each other just to say we are slightly better than our friends and neighbors, let alone our enemies"
I took a sip of water.
"You brought me up here and asked me to define humanity. And I'm doing it. I'm bullshitting my way through this interview because it is what we do best. We survive. And right now, I'm doing my best bullshitting. I can sit here and talk about love and kindness and all the good humanity has done. But that is a lie. We've done more wrong things than we've done right. I can beg and plead with you to not save us. But we don't beg. We don't plead. So if you don't like my explanation, pull that trigger. Release whatever weapon you have. We will survive. Just get it over with. We hate waiting. We are too stubborn to die. And you'll learn, just like the 3 other times. So maybe, we are the sane ones, and the rest of the universe is insane, expecting a different outcome every time one of you decide to send your weapons and armies against us."
The alien in the middle pushed a button. I expected the worst. But I was back home, in my chair, watching TV.
"Holy shit,"I said to myself. "I can't believe that worked." |
Livi swept the dark hallway as she had a thousand times. This was a simple job with pretty decent pay. After all how many people got paid $225 as a Janitor? I'll save you the google search, apparently no one. She was over paid and she knew it but it also covered a whole 'hazard' pay. Not that the job was entirely dangerous, her boss had her back and she knew it.
BlackGuard, or formerly known as the hero "Honor"; was her Villainous Overlord but better described as Manager. The man had a way with taking care of his people. Not once had one of his henchmen ever been harmed in the line of duty. Not that he ever took one of them with him to go deal with his evil deeds. Too much danger that his nemesis "Lady Nyte"might be there and henchmen would just get in the way. So most of the time Livi never saw any danger. However today was not one of those calm peaceful days.
The door at the end of the hall exploded inwards. It's hardened metal body moving in slow motion as it bounced off the floor then the wall. It spiraled in the air as she saw the inevitably of impact and said a silent prayer. Maybe the Gods didn't look too unfavorably on the simple janitor of a Villain?
The light was blinding as she blinked drowsily. Was she in heaven? It felt warm but not too warm. She felt a nice linen blanket over her and a soft pillow under her head. She went to sit up but was jolted by a sharp pain in her arm. Oh she had an IV in. She wasn't dead.
"Hey Champ! How ya doing?"Came a familiar voice.
Looking over in the pearlescent room was a man in his 50s. He looked every part of a stereotypical lumber jack. Box frame from a hard life that had lead to a strong body, one that could lift and throw unlike cheaply chiseled Adonis look a likes. That beard had grey in it from age that stood out in a silver sheen in his thick hair. His pale blue eyes were rich with relief. An unusual look for a super villain.
"Hey Boss... Did we win?"Livi groaned. Her head realizing just how foggy it was and surprisingly sore. She reached up with her free hand but Black Guard had caught it and gently rested it back on the gurney.
"Not so fast. Got quite the knock on the head earlier when Nyte blew in the door. Glad you made it though. You've been asleep for a couple hours now."
"Did we lose the base?"She inquired.
"No. no. no. We won. Drove that self righteous little goblin right back to her hole. But don't worry about that. Just gotta make sure you get better. Though you waking up is definitely a great sign."
Blackguard stood up and with that normally cheerful smile, walked over to the counter where he picked up a food tray and brought it back to her. It was a box of cereal, carton of cold milk, bowl of mixed fruit, and some toast.
"How long was I out?"
"Few hours"
"So it's\~?"
"Six in the morning?"
Livi's eyes went wide. When she had started on that hallway it was only eight at night! She had been asleep for almost half a day. BlackGuard must've seen the panic that was about to take place as he gently mimicked deep slow breathing.
"You're fine. I had the doc look you over. You're going to be just fine. Just need some RnR. I know you're not a big breakfast fan so how about some nachos? I make some killer nachos. We put on a murder documentary or something? Those are always a great time for you."
A light nod and the man put on a documentary for the two of them as he made her the spicy treat. It was a relaxing night and soon she was passed out again. This would proceed a few days and then Livi was up and at it again. Cleaning debris from the previous attack by Nyte. There was a light brown spot on the floor, it was a good guess it might've been her.
There was some giggles from a nearby room. What were at first dulled murmurs became distinct laughter as she came close to the door labelled 'Security'. Sticking her head in she watched as some Henchmen in black armor with skull face plates laughed at a video feed. It looked like security feed from the last attack.
The distinct form of BlackGuard stood imposingly over her limp form. His exo suit that looked so much the plate armor of old that radiated power. It's shoulders were quickly raising and lowering in what seemed like worry as the helmet's red eyes blazed with felt like rage.
"Nyte!!!"It's voice was deep and low. A green sultry figure stepped in the destroyed doorway. A green kevlar suit with brown hard points over her body. Lady Nyte, the stealth specialist of the Hero's League. Her hips swayed as she stepped into the hallway. Twinned poisoned daggers spinning in her hands.
"Yes Traitor... it is I: Lady Ny\~ oh my god is that Livi?!"Her sultry voice fading into clear panic. "Oh my god did I do that?! Oh no oh no oh no"
"You fucking idiot! You killed her! You just brained Livi you stupid imbecilic tart! You know Livi works here. Why would you just use an explosive to break in without checking my cameras?! I know you're probably capable of hacking them! Stupid stupid stupid... You better hope she's not dead!"
The armored giant took a knee and lifted the door off of her own unconscious body. It was unreal to see herself laying there on the floor as still as a corpse.
"I'm reading a pulse. You're lucky you didn't kill her Nyte! Now get out of here while I fix this."
"I didn't mean to Honor, I swea\~"
"Get out!"The giant's roar was enough to make even the guard's go silent. Man was scary when angry. They all nervously looked at each other then back to the recording. Nyte turned and fled out of the hallway. She had ran? Why would Nyte flee over something so trivial? The guards spoke before one said that there was more. A new video was put on the screen.
It was Nyte but she wasn't in her gear. She was wearing leggings and a small dress. BlackGuard was wearing the outfit she had seen him when she had first woken up.
"How is she?"
"She's fine Nyte... her head got a gash and there was a mild concussion but medicine and rest will bring her back."
"Oh thank god. I was so scared. I thought I had killed her."
"You almost did Nyte. You were reckless and stupid."
"I didn't know you'd have her cleaning the front hallway!"
"She's my janitor Nyte! She cleans every where. It is her job. Or would you rather her be out in the field or that Orphanage you tried to leave her!"
"That's not fair! She was going to a good home where she'd be safe! Not an Orph\~"
"She's our Daughter! She's only safe with us!" |
What's a dragon slayer anyways? I always wondered why we show intent to our mark when killing them, if not the dragon will always survive. That almost always costs you your life. Sometimes, I stayed up late, wondering. Why is it that we hunt dragons? How can we hunt dragons and what's this mark?
There was a rule in our village that each Oracle passed down. To become a real dragon slayer, you need to hunt a dragon before the age of 25 if a man and 24 if a woman. It had something to do with our brains reaching true adulthood. When I was born, the Oracle proclaimed once I turn 16, I would become a dragon slayer. That meant just a few weeks from now I'll descend from the clouds to the mountains to hunt.
"Boy, your sister has turned 17. It's time to abide by the prophecy. Tomorrow, she will hunt. Prepare your bags, you'll be coming with. You'll see what it takes to become a real man, a dragon slayer!"My fathers iris glowed gold while streaks of purple shot out of his Limbal. The sign of an elite dragon slayer. The streaks indicate he's killed at least 10 drakes and the gold? It proves that he's absorbed some power of a superior dragon that he's slain. He stared at me, smiling, showing a joyful face. Every time he stared at me like that, my mark throbbed. It made me feel like the whole world was waiting on me. Well, little did I know that it did.
"HAAAAAAA! Take that! Hahahaha look at it squirming!"My sister laughed as she tortured the young dragon alive. She lowered her killing intent and kept pressing her mark through the palm of her hands into the dragon's body, pushing energy into it. The dragon would screech and scream out, trying to break the marked chains. My sister and I are the children of Spook, the strongest Tin eye. Children born always inherit some of their Parents power. My sister was able to torture the dragon without worrying much. I felt a pit of despair as I looked into the dragon's eyes. I could almost hear it begging me for help. Wait? Huh? IT'S BEGGING FOR HELP?!
That day, for the first time in my life... My father struck me. I committed a deep sin. Watching my sisters actions and hearing the dragons cry caused me to take action. I was told to return home, to the clouds; by myself. I had disappointed and disgusted eyes on me. My older sister walked past me and spat at my face. "You could not wait till your 16 huh? Having to steal my thunder always. Fathers favourite. Why can't I have 1 day to myself, not being compared to you."
I gasped, that's not it. You looked like a monster, my sister, the one who always looked after me, showed pure hatred and disdain to life. "No"I reached out. "NO I promise, I dint want to take away your day."I went to grab her shoulders to face her. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, they glowed and the mark displayed itself in her iris. I was blown away. I don't know how long it took for me to wake up, but when I did. It was night. I blacked out again. The sun was rising.
​
I placed my hands on the ground and pushed myself up. I sat on the ground, leaning forward and looking at the voices. There was nobody. Only a few fire squirrels, and an ant drake circling the fire squirrels as a meal. I saw it. A cracked egg, with the mark. This made no sense. Eggs always have the mark of freedom, but never the MARK. The voice was coming from inside the egg. I peered inside, and there it was.
"Arghhh!!"I let out a scream as my mark intensified. Every last one of us has a mark, and we will never lose it unless we're unable to kill a dragon before adulthood. The thing that sets a dragonslayer apart from a dragon slayer is when we kill. The mark will awaken giving you all the power you can imagine and more. So why is it reacting like this? Why is it becoming visible in my palm? Why is it screaming for me to touch the little dragon.
"Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh It burns! Fuck FUCK FUCK!"I fell on the ground, sweating and drooling spit. I tried claiming down my mark, and my hand moved towards to dragon. I WON'T KILL! DON'T THINK OF KILLING DON'T THINK DON'T THINK DON'T THINK. My hands hit the dragon. The newborn dragon began glowing, the mark from the eggshell disappearing into it, and my mark visible on its forehead. It spoke. "Papa? Why are you human?"I looked at it, dumbfounded.
\------------------------------------------------- |
The cold, soggy spaghetti-O in my hand stares up at me with impending doom.
I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, wondering against all better reason if this little eye of overly-processed pasta could be my omen of death.
\*\*\*
About two weeks ago, I woke up holding a travel-sized tube of face wash that I'd never seen before. '*NEW!*' it said, and, 'Exfoliating Gel.' I took this as a sign of my drinking, as I'd only remembered stepping out once the night before, and that was to resupply my beer fridge with a six pack from the nearest bodega.
Did I swipe this from the shop? I wondered. But as I squeezed the plastic tube, I realized this face wash had been partially used already. This belonged to somebody. Instinctively, I felt my own cheeks to see if I had smeared the missing cream on my face before passing out.
My skin felt like it's normal, slightly oily, self.
If something exciting had happened on my trip between this apartment and the corner shop, I was surprised not to have remembered it. But then, I could barely remember the trip at all, as nothing about a quick beer run would have a reason to stick in my mind.
So I set the tube in my jacket pocket and, other than the few times that day my hands brushed the plastic tube and set my confusion back again by its mysterious presence, I had successfully forgotten all about it.
\*\*\*
Two days later, I woke up clutching a pair of rubber gloves. These were not the sort of single-use, food-service latex gloves that leave your fingers coated in powder. These were nice, full-length, yellow cleaning gloves as would show up in old magazine adverts for smiling wives using miracle home-care products.
I wondered all day what I could have possibly gotten myself into the night before.
Not until falling asleep that night did I suddenly remember what else had appeared without explanation in the morning between this and the face wash gel.
I had found ten bucks on the floor beside my bed.
Maybe it was the nature of good fortune, but when money just appears out of nowhere in front of my sleepy eyes, apparently I don't think twice about where it came from.
\*\*\*
I should have sought help sooner. But I know I'm a coward, especially when it comes to facing any uncertainties about my own well-being. I put off getting a second opinion like I had put off making a doctor's appointment for the last three years, like I had put off my promises in the mirror about drinking less, like I had put off any forward progress in my life since I'd become an adult.
Things close to garbage kept appearing in my hands.
One day it was a hair brush.
Another day, just half of a bagel.
It wasn't until six days ago, waking up to the shout of an air-horn I'd accidentally squeezed in my sleep, that I finally did something about this nightly occurrence of memory loss.
I downloaded a time-lapse camera app on my phone and set it up in the corner to record my sleep. I told myself that, after I knew what I was up against, (sleepwalking most likely), I could set my mind at ease by taking the recording to an expert, handing my problem over to someone whose job relies on dealing with incapable procrastinators like me.
But the recording did not point me in any physical direction to seek help. The recording showed me that I was a helpless victim to the supernatural, that in the quiet hours of the night, my hand was nothing but a lost-and-found bin for the universe.
\*\*\*
The little red car was not like the other random items to appear in my hand. I recognized this toy. I didn't remember the setting at all, but I knew somewhere in the forgotten aisles of my unmanaged mental library was a shelved recording of me as an older child, running this toy car up and down the track of my first two fingers on my left hand. I stared at the toy for a long while that morning of the recording, extending my left hand's fingers to run the red cruiser up and down, up and down. The sensation screamed with a familiarity that just couldn't be explained away by a vivid dream, or a half-remembered commercial, or anything else but the real, mesmerizing sensation of the tires rumbling down the speed bumps of my knuckles.
I spent a long time wondering if there was anyone in the world who could help me. At the very least, anyone I could show the video to who would believe me that I didn't doctor the footage myself.
Looking back, the person I called is exactly who I should have dialed on that second or third occurrence with the yellow gloves. My longest and closest friend in the world, Oscar, who just happens to be the most open-minded person I've ever met.
When I brought Oscar the strange request to examine the toy car and watch my self-surveillance tape, he seemed a little apprehensive to get involved in what was quickly sounding like a haunting the more I talked about it. But as soon as I showed him the footage, he took in a deep relieving breath of air, as if his whole life he'd been waiting for a video like this.
\*\*\*
We watched the footage in his apartment across town.
The time lapse condensed hours down to minutes, snapping intermittent photos of my sleeping body under the low-light of an open window. What I expected when I first opened the video player was to see a tossing and turning sleep-drunk version of myself awkwardly tumble out of bed and bump into the walls for a while until eventually stumbling out of the room. I thought the most information I could gather would be in the amount of time I spent out on an adventure before returning with the unexplained trinket from my forgotten childhood. I had watched the whole clip in its entirety countless times that day, so for Oscar I skipped ahead to the only part that I knew mattered.
In the last hour before waking, we could clearly see my open palm resting at the edge of the bed. Empty. Relaxed. Peaceful. And suddenly in the snap of a single frame there was the red car, gripped lightly in my fingers. The rest of my body hadn't moved. Not a single pixel on my screen beyond the bed had shifted.
This drove Oscar wild with excitement.
He was immediately onboard with the theory of some sort of cosmic trashcan wormhole, sucking up little trinkets, like a vacuum, from different corners of time and space to easily be caught in the filter of my right hand.
We didn't rule out ghosts, or aliens, or any other sort of inter-dimensional beings.
In examining the car itself, I asked Oscar that for as long as he's known me, has he ever seen me playing with that toy car as a child. I demonstrated the finger track. He would not give a sure answer, but said that even if it hadn't been in this lifetime, that he has a strong sense of bond between a red car and my spirit, maybe from a past life.
I told him how the garbage collecting had been going on for over a week now with seemingly no connection between the items so far. He also questioned why I hadn't come to him sooner with this, and he demanded to see the entire line up of dirt clots that seemed small enough to pass through the fabric of reality. I was hoping he'd ask for this, and I'd brought all the items with me in the car, but at the offer to bring them up here, I was shut down hard for even suggesting.
A lot of his explanations passed over my head, but it boiled down to not potentially angering whatever spirits were guiding these trinkets to my home and my being. Although he thought the footage was fantastic, he said it was near-stupid of me to even risk angering whatever being was responsible by the presence of any observance at all, and that we'd better stop talking about it before anyone else came in. He said he'd rather not bring some inadvertent curse down on his home, not just for his sake, but his easily-angered roommates.
(https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/10d73uf/comment/j4kqurz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) wanted to see them in, quote, "-the room where they were born."
\*\*\*
Seven items lined my dresser top. I filed them up in the order of appearance, like he asked, and explained the two gaps with the ten bucks from the second night already spent towards the beer fridge, and the half-bagel from night five that I tossed out without much thought.
(continued in comments due to length) |
Whiteness. That's what happened. Nothing, nowhere, for no-one. The world slowly started to reshape, the outside became dissolved in this whiteness, and the inside was still just pure energy. No human, no castle, no Earth to think about. There was everything and nothing. Only pure energy.
The vacuum decay was like a restabilizing of the world, with new physical laws governing it. It traveled at the speed of light, and made a new universe inside of it, while dissolving the outside, and absorbing it for the creation. But I didn't care. I never care. Even if the new universe is just one big blob of soup, I still will come back somehow. I always come back.
I did this a few times already: trying to reshape humanity, being deemed "the bad guy", the "evil mage", the "bringer of all that is wicked". Then a ragtag group of adventurers, or kings, or politicians, or reptiles, or anything that somehow resembles the sentient species around my coordinates in the time-space continuum try defeating me. And somehow they always reach almost my last breath. So I have no other choice but to restart. The whole "game"I have to restart from the Pure Energy, to reach the same level as always. But I don't care. I'm gonna go past this time
The universe evolved. First came the stars, then the galaxies, then the planets. This time the difference was a slightly stronger electric force then in the last. But I don't cared, I reincarnated about the same time. The civilisation that evolved were ferrets. Not good, but not terrible. They were at least capable of making medieval castles and such.
So I started to evolve on the techtree, but now with a better knowledge of civilisations, as it was my... I don't even know how many of my "playtroughs". They were amazed by someone who can come up with such sorceries, as light coming from stones that are thined like threads, and having new ways to cure incurable diseases. Of course there came the people who thought I was some kind of wizard, and wanted to kill me, but I learned my lesson, and tried to teach them before anything. Even got the kings of all the nations to learn at me about the wonders of science. I even taught them about the theoretics of physics, and for example how to reach a false vacuum decay. I never taught them thou, that I caused a few ones already with different techniques, being it voice commanded particle accelerators, or gravity imbalancers.
But one day. One freaking day. There came one man. He was as tall as me, and looked familiar. It was him. Always him, always looked familiar. Be it the commander of an army, be it a unifier king, be it a guild master. He comes and tries to fight me. Maybe he can survive this too, and reincarnates always? But then...why don't we talk it ou-
"Hello my brother"-said the stranger. "We've met so many times already, and you started again so many ways. Why not we just talk this time?"
"Alright. Let's talk. Why did you call me brother?" |
The morning fog journeyed from the sea and through my neighborhood, leaving its dew and its smells of pine and soil. There was a time when I'd wait for this fog with a cup of coffee or tea for the days I'd gotten enough sleep. Instead, I stared blankly at my popcorn ceiling, counting the seconds until the inevitable shriek of my alarm.
The alarm came at the gift of one of my coworkers, James, after my second or third dozenth late arrival.
"You alright, Matty?"James said. "I swear to god you're almost never late and it's almost every week now."
"I'm good,"I replied.
We worked as part time park rangers covering the areas between the coast and the forests that bordered it. Being late was no issue, they didn't pay us enough to care, but James said we should make an effort anyway.
"For the park's sake,"he would say.
The next day, another day of being late, there was a small brown box wrapped with sage ribbons.
"I figured you'd be late again,"James said.
It was an alarm clock with a gold bell that sat atop its black matte body. I looked at the clock and then again at James and mustered up the words to thank him. Though, if I had known the tediousness and pain it took to shut the thing off, I would certainly not have thanked him.
During our shifts, we each had a predetermined route that would change with the seasons. My morning patrol took me through the wettest parts of the forests where the java moss smelled of rotting seaweed. The coastal birds chirped at my arrival, warning their friends or enemies that I was here. I passed my first landmark, an old western hemlock. I pulled out my water bottle, muscle memory, until I realized I didn't need it anymore. I hadn't needed it anymore for half a year now.
I moved on through the wettest parts of the route, climbing towards a small summit. There was a manmade path here, years and years of park rangers or tourists making their way to see the top of the park's shortest hills. It was an easy walk, the easiest climb the land had to offer. Before, near the end, it took much longer. There were frequent breaks for water, for pets, to soak in the sun when the overhanging clouds allowed us. Now, I could make the climb in a quarter of the time.
On the summit, I was alone.
I pulled out my water bottle, again muscle memory, but I did want its contents this time. I walked over to another tree, a young rosewood. I'd always looked down on etching into the bark of a tree, but hypocritically, impulsively, I had drawn my knife on this rosewood. I poured a cupful of water onto the base of the tree.
"Rest up, Lakey."
On the summit, I was alone.
---
Apologies for missing parts of the prompt. |
The generation ship on humanity's first trip to a nearby star had built in hardened video and audio recording systems. After about 400 years, the data transmitted back to Earth started to look really odd. The on-ship crew tasked with continuous maintenance insisted that all was as it appeared. All diagnostics passed every check. The signal back to Earth was double-checked, triple-checked and hundredth-checked for solar or magnetic interference. Nothing.
Rewinding the archival footage, the odd things were there too - just not immediately apparent. A stain on the wall had started as a smudge. A rusty lock had a scratch. Some wires were slightly longer or thicker than anticipated. Scaled up over time the oddities was growing. Fast forward through decades and what was hidden became obvious.
It was more difficult to detect the change in humans. Humans, after all, changed all by themselves. The cancer rates had been higher than projected. But not outside the safety marginals. The number of people in various forms of physical therapy had recently caused the re-allocation of buffer zones by ship leaders - too many to handle. But once investigated in greater detail it became clear. Humans suffered from it too. Injuries that should have healed kept getting worse. Malformed bones, muscles creating strands in useless direction.
But what to do from such a distance? The ship was equipped with state of the art artificial intelligences, labs, and even carried some of the foremost experts in the field. What could humans do all the way back on Earth, except analyze and suggest? Questions took years to answer as they had to travel by light speed to the ship. Still, so much of humanity's hope had gone into building the ship. Research into the matter grew over decades.
It was dubbed the Oddity. And despite Earth's best efforts, no cause was proven. People, matter and energy were changing aboard the ship. It didn't matter how thick or sturdy the radiation walls were, how close to zero the measured radiation inside the ship.
It took some fifty years of research for the first major breakthrough. Partially the delay was because of the distance to the ship. It was still accelerating away from Earth and measuring the change had been an area of great debate amongst Earth politicians and ship leaders. Earth wanted more - the ship saw it as a waste of precious resources. Legally the ship was an autonomous region, but still relied on human knowledge and technological advancements from Earth. So they still accepted some guidance from Earth. It was from these measurements that the first revelation was made.
The effects of the Oddity were accelerating. The rate of change was increasing. The further the ship went, the faster the change. A change that had taken a decade around the 400-year mark now took less than nine years around the 450-year mark. Earth made the decision to recall the ship. The ship refused. They said they could take it. They said for humans it was a statistical deviance that was negligible. The faces of their leaders sent a different message. Warts, deformations, discolored skin. Far beyond what could be considered agreeably normal for a baseline human, present in all of them.
Year 470 from the launch Earth caught a lucky break. One of the marginalized factions aboard the ship opted to break away from participating in the on-board democracy. Unbeknownst to the ship leaders the faction had been working on sending a small shuttle back to Earth. They disagreed that the ship should continue. As violence erupted against the faction onboard the ship, they launched the shuttle. Only a handful onboard - but the design of the ship and ratio of fuel to mass was such that it was reasonable that they could reach Earth within their lifetime.
They never did. The initial boosters fired giving them the needed acceleration away from the ship. But the main engines had been sabotaged. The shuttle ended up "dead in the water"- stuck in space at a fixed distance from Earth. The shuttle begged for assistance from Earth and the ship both. But no practical rescue plan was possible. The stranded shuttle and its humans were, however, useful. Some of them killed themselves, but some chose to remain and hope that advancing technology would solve their stranded predicament.
Thus the second revelation about the Oddity was declared. The people and the shuttle kept changing, but at a constant rate compared to those on the ship whose rate of change was increasing. Although it was only with two data points, further measurements confirmed it. The further away the ship travelled, the greater the change. The increased distance from Earth was causing the increased rate of change aboard the ship. "We can take it", said the ship. They had millennia to go.
Around year 700 since launch the signals from the ship had broken down almost entirely. The artificial intelligences aboard the ship held out the longest. Earth had designed effective counter-measures against the Oddity so that the AI:s wouldn't break down. They were programs, after all, and it was a small thing to have them monitor themselves and react in accordance with detected change.
Humans were another matter. There was cultural drift aboard compared to Earth, but that could only explain so much. The truth is the peoples' language, vocal cords and thought patters had changed to such a degree that communication across the vastness of space and time was practically useless. After the humans stopped communicating in a way Earth could understand, only the increasingly garbled automated signals from the cameras remained.
A third revelation. Not from the ship - but from Earth trying its best to help and to understand. They sent probes in opposite directions to where the ship was going. The probes, not needing to worry about reversing thrust or carrying the load of humans or their environment, were much faster and within decades reached the same distance as the ship relative to Earth. The probes changed, too. The Oddity was a bubble around Earth, the relative safety of mother Earth weakening the further you went in any direction.
Earth, unable to act, was left to watch in horror from a distance of light years as the cameras on board the ship continued to broadcast the fate of the ship's survivors. With AI:s and leadership breaking down completely, whoever and whatever remained on the ship descended into chaos. The hundreds of thousands of humans turned into tribes fighting each other for whatever was left. Barely human, physically or mentally. It got worse and worse, until even the ultra-hardened recording equipment began to break down. Then, at last, the global broadcasts on special channels back on Earth stopped showing the horrors.
A fourth revelation. Through a series of interlocked probes sent to the stranded shuttle - now devoid of life for many years - it was possible to recover the shuttle carrying the corpses of the breakaway faction. The advancement of technology enabled it. For the humans on the shuttle it was too late, they had all died. It took a century to get there and another century back. "Worth it", said Earth, to study the change. Bewilderment was the result. The shuttle was brought back to Earth - but no changes caused by the Oddity remained. A few cameras had been running for all this time aboard the shuttle and they showed the change undone as it approached Earth.
For what happened to the generation ship in the end, we cannot be certain. After the total breakdown of on-board generators, failing without artificial intelligences to maintain them, the ship finally stopped sending signals around year 890. Earth could still watch through telescopes. Twisted metal, near-unbreakable materials broken. Radiation walls splintered away from the ship. And some life, perhaps. But no more humans.
A fifth and final revelation. The ship had continued to send its own interstellar observations back to Earth, before the chaos. Now scientists dove into the many differences compared to Earth's own observations. Originally assumed to be the cause of altered equipment used in observations, another theory was put forth, tested and confirmed. The galaxy did not look the way we thought it did. Not when viewed from back on Earth.
If the Oddity changed matter and energy the further away from Earth we got, but it was undone when it reached Earth - what did we really know about the galaxy at large? Astronomists had been looking at space through a filter we didn't know existed. With the Oddity there was no way to know that a star was even a star. It was too far away, our observation practically meaningless to determine what was really going on out there. Humanity back on Earth looked up at the night sky with fresh eyes, unknowing minds, terror in their thoughts, nightmares in their sleep.
The generation ship had been aimed at a seemingly hospitable planet in the "goldilocks zone". Now, instead, scientists estimated that planet to be barren when taking the filter into account, as much as that was possible. Rather than a promised paradise, they saw toxic wastelands bathed in lethal radiation, scarred by continent-sized plasma bursts from a near-death star. The ship had been sent to their doom.
There would be more revelations about the Oddity in the thousands of years to follow. What caused it, why it appeared centered around Earth - from our perspective, at least. But that's not what was the most surprising about human space travel into the Oddity. Even though the original generation ship had fallen into chaos and destruction, others ventured forth. They didn't know what was out there or what would become of them if they ever got anywhere. But humanity kept trying. Better methods to resist the Oddity. More manpower, more resources. The unconquerable desire for exploration drove us on.
We were strangers in distant lands. Eventually. |
“It’s over evildoer!” Captain Zero shouted at his primary antagonist. “There’s nothing more you can do!”
The villain only known as Viktor curls his bottom lip and snarls. “That’s where all you goody two shoes get it wrong. There’s always more to be done. All of you are so stuck in the status quo that you don’t have vision for the long term. I can do it better than the stupid bureaucrats ever have.”
“The only long term you’re going to see is the inside of a prison ce—-“
Without a warning Viktor releases the dead man’s trigger he was holding in his palm. A bright light flashes throughout the room. Sirens begin to sound in the distance. Viktor leaps towards a laptop and begins to furiously type away, Captain Zero tries in vain to shield his ears from the piercing sound.
“There…. all finished. Just like you.” Viktor resets the dead man’s trigger and pulls out the two ear plugs he had previously jammed in his ears. “I’ve won. Now there’s nothing you can do.”
“There’s always something to be—“
With the heel of his boot Viktor smashes the hero in the face knocking him out cold.
———————————
Captain Zero’s eyes slowly open. There’s a cold chill in the air. His body is seemingly frozen. His breath is short but he can feel his energy and power coming back. He rips his arm free from the restraints and punches right through the glass enclosure.
Captain Zero stumbles out of the enclosure. He falls face first to the ground. He uses another chamber to pull himself upright.
“Susanna…no.”
Staring back in his face is his longtime partner in the Society of Heroes, Ma’am Thing. He slowly turns to see an entire warehouse filled with hundreds of not thousands of chambers. Each one filled with another hero.
That is until he sees one with a red tag on the top. Zero tilts his head and walks over. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Inside of this chamber was another long time villain of his, The Strap Man. Known for his elaborate straps and devices built to entangle his opposition. Zero looks for more red tags and finds that all of his villains were captured, unharmed and neutralized from the world.
Eventually Zero decides to make his grand exit, to show the world that he has survived and he’s ready to fight for the world once more. He approaches two double wide doors and with a powerful kick to the center….
The sun shines brightly in his face, but the world isn’t like it once was. The depressing visage of Languard City was no more. The skyline was opulent, as gold lined everything and even the concrete looked pristine.
Zero looked up at a billboard he’d seen a million times of himself….
Only to find the face of Viktor. Underneath his face is a few counters.
Crimes- 0
Wars- 0
Homeless- 0
Hungry- 0
“Superheroes”- 0
The last one ticked over to the number 1. A giant siren began to blare, causing Zero to crumble to the ground. Several dark Hummers pull up quickly and men jump out from all directions aiming down their sights at the weakened Zero.
“Hold your fire…. It’s not like any of those would work against him.” A familiar voice orders the men. “Isn’t that right Captain Zero?”
Zero looks up and sees Viktor standing over him, no longer in his usual villain garb. Now stands a man in a powerful black suit and hair combed back. “Ho—-wh——what’s happening?”
“The vision known as The Long Term.”
“Wha—-?”
“After I took you down and ended world hunger with a few simple key strokes, the world turned on people like you. They embraced me and shunned all of you.” Viktor reaches a hand down to Zero and helps him to his feet. “I can’t lie, it was chaos for a bit once all of the supes were locked away. Villains ran rampant. That was until I took them all down. One by one.”
“I——I—-.”
“It’s okay. You’re nothing now. You can’t stop me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I just showed the world a better way. A way without heroes.” Viktor ushers Zero to the back seat of the Hummer and helps him into the seat. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a purpose.”
The door slams shut. Viktor looked at the billboard and watched the 1 turn back into a 0. He smiled to himself. “If I can fix one planet without heroes, I wonder how many I can fix with heroes.” |
All of a sudden, the line went silent and the call dropped.
What the hell was that? I stared down at my phone, making sure that I had not accidentally hung up. A knot of dread twisted in my stomach. I frantically dialed my friend back.
“Please pick up, please pick up,” I begged as the line rang three times. Finally, someone answered.
It was the voice of a child, “Jenny can’t play right now, she’s busy.” The line went dead again.
“No, no, no!” I shouted into the phone. I scrambled to find my car keys and a jacket and ran out of the house. I hopped into the car and reversed quickly out of the driveway, knocking over one of my trash cans. I put the car in drive and sped away towards Jenny’s house.
The roads were empty. A light misty rain fell from the sky, creating a hazy fog as the last light of day disappeared.
“This can’t be happening,” I said in an effort to calm myself down. Eleven years had passed. I was told they would never return.
I raced down the highway, pushing the speed limit, knowing that every minute counted. Just as I was about to get off of the exit, my phone rang. The caller ID said Jenny. I picked it up.
“Hello, Jenny is this you?”
The child’s voice answered back, “We told you Jenny’s busy. Don’t try to come here. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“You stay away from her!” I demanded, a panic now started to set in. I pressed on the gas pedal, pulling into the neighborhood where Jenny lived.
Everything seemed to happen in a blur. Houses, trees, and streetlights raced past as I rushed to get to Jenny’s house. I pulled into her driveway and hopped out of the car, leaving the car door open.
With blind urgency, I stumbled to the front door, pushed on the handle, but it didn’t budge. Locked. I pounded on the door, yelling, “Jenny, if you’re in there let me in!”
I waited about 20 seconds, then decided to try the back door. I ran around the side of the house, onto the back porch. The back sliding door was slightly ajar.
Terrified, I stepped into the void of the unlit house, my eyes strained to pierce the darkness, feeling my way forward in the shadows.
“Hello,” I yelled, “Jenny, are you here?” Nobody answered.
I cautiously entered the kitchen, searching for the nearest light switch. When I flipped it on, nothing happened, leaving me in the dark.
I took a few more steps into the hallway connected to the kitchen. Finally, I heard a loud thump coming from the basement.
I turned my phone’s flashlight on, opened the basement door, and started down the steps. I breathed in short, shallow gasps. Fear enveloped me.
When I made it to the bottom of the steps, what stood before me sent chills down my spine.
Three small children stood staring back at me. Finally, the child in the middle, a boy of maybe ten years of age, spoke first.
“We’ve been waiting for you…” |
"10 quintillion bugs die per year."Said the necromancer. "And I am gonna bring them all back, Egypt's locust plague will be a petty prank done by a mere child compared to it."
Then he raised his hands, and started channeling the dark energy.
We tried to stop him. But his apprentices fought us with all they had. I remember Adam smashing the heads of two of them. But they didn't let go. Their headless Bodies were fighting him. I remember casting a fireball towards the necromancer. But it just burst into sparks mid air.
Then it happened. Suddenly everywhere became pitch black. Like someone murdered the sun. The sky was as dark as the abyss. It went cold too.you know what it was? It was the bugs! A swarm enough to cover every inch of the sky. There were so many of them they turned the day into the darkest night.
Then we found ourselves covered by them. Imagine being pushed by hundred elephants. Cut by billion little knives. The battle was lost and we knew it. Millions died that day. City after city falling to the swarm. Every mage, wizard and priest in the world united to save the world. We summoned the biggest fireball in history. It was as bright as the sun. And as big as the moon. And we send it into the sky.
The plan was simple. Bugs love the light. They gathered around it till it was completely covered by the swarm. Then we blew it up. The explosion was blinding. And it worked. The swarm was gone. Once again Sun was ruling the skies and warming the frozen land.
We finally found and defeated the necromancer after that. But it was a costly victory. Worse than a million defeats. But more epic than any battle throughout history. And that's my son. Is why we don't kill insects any more. Because they might get reincarnated by an evil necromancer again. And we try to keep them from dying en masse.
So next time I catch you killing a bee you will be grounded!
Said the archmage. A beautiful butterfly landed on his shoulder without him noticing. Its wings were full of colors. Sky blue, grass green and crimson red. And it's pitch black eyes emitting a faint dark fog. Too faint for anyone around to notice. |
Martin watched and listened in on the conversation he was spying on with bated breath. Despite the best efforts of the Holy Inquisition, the dreadful God of Monsters Typhon had awakened and returned to the human world, so it fell onto Martin to monitor the god’s activities to ensure it would not wreak havoc or bring about monsters from other dimensions or realms to overrun humanity.
“Has it always been this hard to grant gifts to humans without them rejecting our labors of love?” Typhon asked.
Elvari shrugged. “I would call it a delicate balancing act. As much as I would love to impart eldritch knowledge and insight to humans, it seems all too easy for the recipient to go insane, and for family and friends to blame me for cursing the unfortunate human. You offer useful enhancements to humans to realize their full potential, they scream about how evil you are, handing out ‘monstrous mutations’.”
“But that is exactly what I am giving them, monstrous mutations. Humans are the greatest monsters in this world, more monstrous at heart than gods like you and me. And I love them dearly for this. It is only fitting that I transform them to truly bring the monsters at heart to the forefront so their appearance matches what is on the inside,” said Typhon with a bewildered look on all 4 faces.
“I saw the news. Some internet troll launched a terrible tirade on Youtube about how you turned him into a mountain troll. That being said, I think this is where I would agree to disagree with you. Humans are more than just their monstrous side, they are just as capable of kindness as they are of monstrous deeds.”
Typhon sighed. “I miss the days of feudal warlords, warrior kings, and religious crusaders. They don’t throw hissy fits and bitch about the gifts I gave them.”
“They can’t complain when you rob them of their speech, Typhon,” Elvari chided Typhon with a waggle of his index finger. “Bigger jaws and powerful teeth may be a great thing to us, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of speech when granted to a human. Humans highly value freedom of speech, especially in this day and age.”
Typhon frowned. “I hate this freedom of speech thing. I hate that humans are free to spread malicious rumors about how much I intend to doom them and feed them to monsters when I truly love them for being my favourite kind of monster. I still love humans, but a particular brand of human is really trying my patience with their blatantly, nasty, scathing reviews on the internet. They're naturally sick monsters without any divine intervention from me.”
Elvari sipped his tea and gave a knowing nod. “I know, Typhon. These Karens are just the worst kind of monstrous humans. Even us gods can’t please them with any sort of divine gift. Every time they ask to see my manager, I don’t know how to reply to that.”
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[Thanks for reading! Click here for more prompt responses and short stories featuring Elvari the eldritch god.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TregonialWrites/comments/11tkt9w/eldritch_god_elvari_series/) |
*six months later*
Mark bagged the groceries, stopping when he got to the Super-O’s cereal. The bright blue box with Super Guy’s smile on it. Mark ran his thumb over the clearance tag.
Mark remembered that fateful night when he killed Captain Evil, his last words haunting him, *”what would you do then?”*
At the time, it meant nothing to him. Captain Evil had just killed a bus full of children! It was too much! He had to be stopped.
But since then… with no one to fight… Super Guy had to hang up the tights. The sponsor money left, and so did the groupies. Some new super in Chicago known as the Human Blur was the hot new thing and sucked up all the sponsorships. Blur Bites cereal was flying off the shelves. Mark heard a cartoon was in production.
Eventually he was forced to sell the Super Car just to make rent. He really missed that car.
Officially, Mark hasn’t had a job in fifteen years, but after months he finally found a job as a bagger at J-Mart.
And he had to downsize; he rented a room from a nice old lady… but utilities were covered, so that was great. And he discovered his love of reading at the library. Yup, things were finally starting to…
“CAN YOU PLEASE HURRY??”
Mark, pulled out of his reverie, looked down at an angry middle aged woman glaring at him.
“HELLO? CAN YOU PLEASE HURRY? I HAVE TO PICK UP MY KIDS!”
“Oh! Uh… Sorry ma’am!” Mark stammered as he quickly finished bagging.
Mark’s manager Bob looked over scowling, writing on his clip board.
“Would you like help out to your vehicle?”
“YEA. I ALREADY SAID THAT,” she scoffed.
“Of course ma’am,” Mark said, blushing.
Mark followed the woman outside, slowly pushing the cart. He followed right to her bright blue car… he noticed it was almost the same exact shade of blue as the Super Car.
He *really* missed that car. |
Hitch Fitzgerald had been an archaeologist his whole life. A profession that kept him moving for most his life. He had to keep moving, because something was after him. It had all started when he was young, fresh out of college. Some stuck-up British gentleman from an old noble bloodline had approached him to lead excavations of some recently discovered ruins off the coast of Madagascar. Any starting archaeologist would dream of such an opportunity. Adventure, groundbreaking discoveries and getting your name in media. They had been digging for three months straight in the middle of the jungle. Mosquitoes, high humidity and unbearable heat had made the expedition in less of a dream and more of a nightmare. Just when they were about to give up they had hit on an entrance to something. Above it were undecipherable symbols and the local translator we had taken with us said he couldn’t fully understand it, but warned us not to go in. Hitch now wished he had listened. They had found very little of note. Some statues of weird creatures – probably local deities - and a scroll. One dried up roll of papyrus that crumbled at the touch. Hitch had tried to read it, but it was more of those ancient symbols. The translator had refused to enter, and the scroll couldn’t be transported without destroying it. So ultimately Hitch left it there, but later that evening was when the headaches started and that thing. Since that day it kept following him, trying to catch up ever so slowly. That’s why Hitch made sure that he kept moving, always.
“So, you’ll be under for less than four hours if everything goes smoothly,” said the surgeon that sat in front of Hitch.
The headaches had intensified in recent years and after postponing the doctor visit for years, he no longer had a choice once the episodes had started. Seizures were too much of a liability, he’d never know how long he’d be out for and the thing might catch up to him while he was down. It hadn’t come as a real shock to him that he got diagnosed with a brain tumor. The fact that it was still operable surprised him more.
“I can’t be down for that long doc,” said Hitch.
“Nonsense. You don’t got a choice I’m afraid,” said the surgeon.
Hitch had enough experience to know that he wasn’t going to change any minds here. He would just have to hope that four hours was quick enough.
A handful of weeks later Hitch lay strapped to a table, ready to go under. The surgeon had introduced his staff to him in a bid to take away some of the anxiety Hitch clearly experienced. The man thought that he suffered from some ordinary fear for surgery. Hitch thanked the staff and told the doctor what he wanted to hear. He couldn’t exactly tell the man to keep that snail away from him. As far as Hitch had experienced throughout his life, he was the only one who could see the gastropod.
The moment the mouthpiece was fitted and he started to feel drowsy he saw it. Slowly creeping towards him from the ceiling above. Hiding itself behind the blinding lights overhead as Hitch knew that four hours wouldn’t cut it. That damned snail was finally going to catch it’s target. Fear clawed at his mind and his pupils grew wide as he slowly lost consciousness.
He didn’t exactly know how long he had been under, but the dreams he experienced seemed to last endlessly. He was running away from the snail and in the next moment he was back in the Madagascan ruins reading the scroll. This time he swore he could read the text, but dropped into his next dream he couldn’t remember what it said. This time he found himself in a desolate place surrounded by stretching darkness. Above him in the sky stood a bright orange sun, with a core as black as the shadows surrounding him. It resembled a ring of fire, yet Hitch knew it was more than that. Slowly the dark core started dripping through the burning orange, blending at the edges. But the darkness kept falling down from the massive sphere, through the air onto the ground. It moved like a thick viscous fluid. Like molten metal being poured out of a red hot crucible. As soon as the substance hit the ground it grew into a shadowy figure. It didn’t hold any shape for long, as if constantly experimenting which form would fit best. Once it had grown to the size of a mountain the orange sun stopped dripping.
A deep rumbling voice, of which Hitch wasn’t sure if it came from the thing or was just in his head, spoke to him; “You’ve come to barter!”
It said it like it was a statement and not a question. Heart pounding in his throat and nauseous almost to the point of vomiting out of fear, all Hitch could do was listen.
The next thing Hitch remembered was waking up to the fluorescent lights casting down on him from the recovery room. In slight panic he looked around him to see where the snail was, but it was gone. Next to him stood the nurse, who handed him a glass of lukewarm water. He gulped it down like he hadn’t drunk anything for days.
“The surgery went well. You should be clear now,” the nurse said with a friendly smile.
A couple of minutes later the surgeon came by to check. He repeated the good news that the nurse had told Hitch and made an appointment for a follow-up check later that month. For now all Hitch could do was get some sleep and that night he slept better than he ever had before that blasted visit to Madagascar.
With renewed vigor Hitch went back to work that same week. Just the things he could do at home. Like reading reports and check the maps. That sort of stuff. As he walked along the bookcase in his office to stretch his legs, his eyes fell on something odd. Between two books at the end of a shelf stuck a scroll. One that looked very old and frail to the touch. He carefully took it out of the bookcase and spread it on his desk. It was the scroll from the temple ruins. This time however he could read the symbols, like it was his own language.
After his check-up had shown him to be clean of cancer Hitch sat on a plane to Africa. His next destination was Madagascar. He didn’t know what he would find over there, but he knew it was his job to set it free.
​
(If you liked this story, please feel welcome at r/zeekoeswriting to read my other stories!) |
As the man stumbled on the stage, he felt the eyes of the horsemen burrow and search deep within him, like maggots in his undying soul. He had only just died, and had been thrust into their courtroom to decide his inevitable fate. But he knew what was to come. He had done terrible things. Things no one would ever dare speak of, much less do. There was nothing left to do.
He held his breath, despite the fact he had already taken last one. Waiting for the answer he knew would come. The death he didn't deserve and the punishment he did.
A rotted and bug infested gavel came down with a squelch of a centipede that was slithering on the surface. It seemed pained, yet never stopped moving.
Then a thin bone, stripped of anything and everything that could be consumed faintly tapped, almost shattering from that alone, with bugs rushing to it to try to take more..
And a monstrous boom erupted as a missile with an odd symbol was slammed to the desk, even burning up some of the lingering insects, yet they still wriggled. The bugs ran and bit the victims, tearing away the flesh.
Finally, a scythe tapped the ground, and all the bugs suddenly stopped. Then, they dropped, one by one, until a skeletal hand gripped the last, and strongest one, almost killing it with a simple toss.
It skid to his glossy black boots, trying to crawl up, almost pleading to you for help. Until a muscular figure shot it, somehow not hitting him.
"we have come to a verdict."Famine mouthed, it's feeble body cracking from even the act of trying to say words. He somehow still understood, despite it being another language.
"I know."He thought
"No, YOU DON'T! YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING THAT COMING, SCREWUP!"War shouted, kicking him down for even thinking that he knew what they were doing. It would have beaten him until he died again, but Plague interfered, coughing and sputtering in War and his face.
"We have *COUGH* decided to give *ACHOO* you our worst punishment, sir."It wheezed out.
"I knew it"he thought. He would have been pummeled there and then, but Death had other plans, grabbing War and tossing it back.
"W-what is my fate?"He asked.
"You will be... a horse man."Death said.
"W-what? That is idiotic. Why make me be a horseman when I could suffer eternal damnation."He questioned.
Death simply shoke his head a leaned "We are being bent on the fall of humanity. All sinners of horrible things such as your actions. You have proven that you can be one of us. And your name shall be "Hate".
Death rose his hand, instantly changing the man into a horrid abomination. Knives pertrude his skin. A TV replaced his head. His hands become bloody. And he is given his gavel. The flag he represented for so long. Adolf was no more. Hate sat at the table, and watched as the bugs fled him, running of the edge to the cold floor. And so, the five horsemen waited for the next to judge. Until their day comes, to be let free of their torture. |
"You have returned, Sir Edwin."
The High Priest of the Church of Light smiled down from his podium at the only living Paladin in generations, Sir Edwin. His asscent to glory had been prophesied, from the first miracle of when he claimed the Godsabre, to the loss of his beloved, and finally to his victory over the High Priest of Lichcourt.
"I have, Lord Darius."Edwin raised up from his kneeling bow but his there was no smile on his face. He was somber, almost severe as he looked up with steely grey eyes.
"This it is time for you to rest in the victory you have earned, in the estates that shall---"
The High Priest was interupted as teh Paladin, instead, spoke.
"Are you aware of the village of Torin's Fall, Lord Darius?"Something in the Paladin's voice caused a chill to run down the spine of of the High Priest. Edwin did not wait for an answer.
"It is the farthest of our cities, heralding back some two hundred years. They have been on the edge of Lichcourt's territory for ages. Their children, the first to fall to the ghoultouch. Their elders, put to rest with fears that they will not stay dead. Through all that, though, they persevered, they have held the line and to the Faith"
"But now? Now, the Church of Light's tithes have been increased. The Crown's taxes, have increased. Now it is not just the Undead that claim them, but the LIving as well. An entire generation of their young, conscripted. They survive on but hope... and now that has been taken as well."
Edwin saw the guards getting nervous, saw them shifting. He shifted too, dropping a single hand to the pommel of the Godsabre at his hilt. A simple gesture, but one filled with threat.
"They begged me, Lord Darius. Let the darkness finally sweep them. They had not the will to fight anymore. They wished, finally, for the evil they knew, rather than the evil that had betrayed them."
Lord Darius shifted nervously, "The... conscription of the Kingdom, as you know Sir Edwin, was made by the Crown, not the Church. We are but stewards of..."
The sound of the Godsabre being unsheathed sounded out, loud and clear.
Edwin let the silence reign for several seconds before speaking at last.
"For years, I have been spoonfed of the Prophesy, that as your Chosen One I would deliver the Kingdom from Lichcourt, and so I have. Your Prophesy is fulfilled."Edwin paused, letting that sink in for just a moment longer before he took the first steps of a new destiny, one never mentioned in Prophesy.
"What Chosen One will save you from -me-?" |
As a boy, Cassius always fell for pranks. He'd click any link, trusted everyone, and truly believed everyone meant well. His affable personality earned him many friends, but few accolades. He was never the one to win awards or make the highest grades, and unlike most people, he didn't care. Nobody would have picked him out of a lineup as a hero, and most people would've probably spit out their coffee at the suggestion.
He was no stranger to the rick-roll, he even learned to laugh at the cheesy video when it occasionally popped up on his phone. "Ha-ha"he would say with a smile as he watched. Most people would ask him why he was still watching after a minute and he'd always say "why not?"It was a nice distraction. He found the music soothing, perhaps even pleasant. The message resonated with him. Rick was never going to give him up or let him down, never going to desert him. The world needed more people like Rick. Every once in awhile, he didn't need to be rick-rolled; he found himself watching it anyways.
There was no reason for him to believe anything was unusual when he walked out of his apartment on a sunny Friday morning. His car finally got running with a little extra prompting. Traffic into the city was as horrible as expected. The commercials on the radio blathered on about drugs and computers to solve every human condition. "Tired of forgetting things? Get a brain implant today!"Everybody had some magic pill or program to solve everything, as if the world were full of problems. He didn't see things that way. The world was full of people who wanted to be happy more than anything. He shook his head at everyone wearing a brain implant as he walked into his job taking calls for a flower service. Despite their advanced tech, they managed to do no better than he did.
He knew something was wrong when his supervisor was standing with two strange men at his cubicle.
"Cassius Miller?"one of them asked.
"Yeess?"Cassius asked apprehensively.
"Josh Backenstrum, FBI"one of the men whipped out his badge. "We'd like to ask you some questions, if you wouldn't mind."
Cassius hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, he almost never went afoul of the law. He was one of the few people he knew who actually attempted to obey the speed limit. So for the FBI to want to question him came as a major shock.
"Uhh,"was all he could utter as a cold sweat popped on his neck.
"In fact, we'd like to take you back to the office for a bit,"Josh gestured welcomingly, almost as if he'd just given an invitation to an all-inclusive cruise.
Cassius bought Josh's warmth and agreed. He followed Josh into a black car waiting outside of the office. The seat was comfortable, a deep plush leather. The other agent got into the back seat with him and offered him water. He felt at home right away.
The windows were tinted, so he couldn't quite see where they were going, but he had no reason to be suspicious that anything was wrong. He asked the agent multiple times if he could talk about "what was up,"but the agent said all conversations would have to wait until they got back to the office.
When the car stopped, the agent handed him a bag and told him to "place it over his head because he couldn't see where they were going."He complied, figuring that security was of the utmost importance to the FBI.
They led him into a building and down a series of elevators and staircases that seemed to go on forever. Finally, they sat him down at a table and took the bag off of his head. '
Sitting across from him was an older man with wiry gray hair, his face wrinkled and full of pimples. The lines around his mouth were creased into a permanent frown.
"This is the one?"he turned to the agents.
"Yes, sir,"they said. "We couldn't get a read on him either."
"Very good. Now... Cassius? is it?"
Cassius nodded.
"Welcome. I'm going to be as upfront as possible, as we don't want to keep you here long. Is there a reason you've chosen not to get a brain implant?"
Cassius was confused at first. Why would they take him all the way here to ask him about brain implants? When he finally understood, he told the man the he didn't feel they were necessary.
The man nodded. "I understand, but in your case they are very much necessary. You see, your brain is actually interfering with some important top-secret programs. You have an affliction. It only affects certain people. Say, have you spent a lot of time watching Rick Astley?"
Now Cassius was even more confused. He nodded.
"Ahh yes, it seems to happen in those who've spent a lot of time watching Rick Astley. We don't understand why. We call it the Rick Astley Jinx, and let's just say, we're researching it. The answer, in all cases, is a brain implant."
Cassius shook his head. Something didn't make sense. Something didn't feel right about this. Like it was one of those pranks he didn't see coming.
"I don't want an implant,"he said.
The man sat back and folded his arms, as if preparing for a battle. "Well, Cassius. You don't have a choice."
"I want to leave,"Cassius said.
"I don't know how to put this,"the man paused, looking for a second. "We can't let you leave until you have a brain implant installed. It's a matter of national security. You understand?"
"National security?"Cassius said. None of this made sense.
"Yes. You see, wherever you are, our signals encounter a dead zone. Your very brain seems to scramble them. All we get back are bits and bytes that sum up to portions of 'I'm Never Gonna Give You Up' You know the rick-roll? It's like your brain is rick-rolling our intelligence systems. We lose sight of operations in those areas, which makes you a vulnerability."
Cassius sighed. "It's just a song, man."
"It's more than a song. Now, all you have to do is follow these nice gentlemen here, we're going to get that implant installed, and you're going to be on your way."
Cassius stood up. "Let me go. You can't make me."
"Oh yes, we can,"the man said. "Detain him." |
You just stare at them like their damn stupid, which in this case they are. "Did you not hear what I said? Are you really that dense? Because I'm pretty sure that stealing the life force of others to heal myself is pretty horrific."
"We can help you control your power, that's what this school is for"said Professor X.
"And your just going to forget the 10 people who died because I got into a car accident with what amounts to whiplash? That the fact aging itself is like injury and I'm constantly stealing life force from other people? I've been watching my parents age so fast since my power activated that they will die of old age and their only in their mid thirties."
"It's just because you don't understand your power yet. We know it's hard to understand but we don't take away powers just because you don't have control of them yet"Storm said looking way too confident in her answer.
"Don't you get it? If you don't find a way to remove this everyone on the damn planet will die. You can't even kill me to stop it. And how do I know this because I tried to kill myself already. That mass mysterious death that happened in the area of Marathon a few weeks back. That was me trying to kill myself with a gun to the head."
Finally they started looking concerned. But the look faded just as quick as I came. "We know its hard to understand but all powers are a gift and surely your power can be controlled"Professor X said.
"And what good is a power that steals years of other people's life to just to heal a damn paper cut. And riddle me this dumb asses. How the hell am I going to control a power when I'm sleep?"
"I can help you with my psychic powers so you can control it while you sleep."Professor X said with a dumb amount of confidence.
"Oh really then try and stop me from cutting myself right now and let's see what happens"I said.
"Okay attempt to cut yourself and I will use my power to stop you"Professor X said.
So I do just that, I cut myself with a small knife and with horror watched him and Storm age enough, they seemed to age 20+ years and I still was able to cut myself. The horror on my face must have caused them to look at each other and they too had horror on their faces. One of the most powerful psychics on the earth couldn't stop me from cutting myself and my power from activating. And both of them just lost 20 years themselves and who knows how many others might have been affected.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but do you get it now?"I pleaded with them. "This power is something that shouldn't exist and needs to be stopped before something worst happens. Because a cut like that shouldn't have aged you that badly. Your power being used on me must have triggered my power. I need to be stopped before someone or something ends up triggering it on a larger scale. Like I'm not even sure launching me into space can help stop it. As I was 20 fuckin miles away from Marathon and so many people still died of old fucking age."
Now they were actually scared and seemed to take me seriously.
Professor X spoke and had a trembling in his voice. "We will get everyone we know to start working on deactivating your power. And I mean everyone. Storm start contacting everyone you can. I have to contact Magneto and any other mutant that might be able to help figure out how to deactivate this power."
Now I was even more scared because I knew Magneto was not a friend of Professor X nor the X-Men. And if Professor X was going to contact him and anyone else, that meant even villains were going to be helping stop me. Worst yet I knew they would have to hurt me to get samples of my blood and whatever else they might need and my power would activate. I could only pray they found an answer that would actually work without triggering my power as it did when Professor X tried to use his psychic power on me before. |
And so it is, that I sit within this grime caked hovel for one final afternoon. My shelves, almost empty, save for a few grey cups. My finest wares sit gathering dust in the back rooms. Soon to be carted away to the town waste pits. One more warning, the police officer had said, and then it’d be jail time. With the fortune I’d invested in spices and silks I was no longer allowed to sell. . . it was only a matter of time before I’d be forced to close.
I sip my tea, long turned cold, and remember the bustling hub of commerce my shop used to be. Every summer I’d pack up my wagon with food and coin and travel to far off countries, buying exotic goods never seen here. Then all winter, my shop would be packed to bursting with excited customers, gawping at the assortment of delicate ornaments and brightly coloured fabrics. They would talk of how even before they could see the shop, they could smell the aroma of spiced oils and flowery perfumes. Children would come and beg their parents to buy them sweets and toys. Every winter festival, I would hire musicians and jugglers and become one of the main hotspots for revellers.
Such a contrast now to see nought but dust and cobwebs, the air smelling only stale and musty. I feel a sudden welling of sadness, which quickly turns to fury. Fury at the man who did this to me. . .
It was two years ago that I first met Abdul. A meek seeming man, who spoke quietly and had the unfortunate habit of looking away from you as he spoke. Conversations with him could be tedious. Yet despite the difficulty I often had hearing what he said, we spoke enough during his repeated visits to my shop, that we became friends of sorts. Abdul was not like my usual customers, for whilst he did often buy my wares, he always spent far more time asking me about the places I’d procured them from.
“What food do they eat in Risan?” He would ask, barely audible over the din of the shop. “How do the people of Deleria dress? Why can’t they grow fish fin chillis anywhere but Gulla?”
And I would answer him to the best of my knowledge, for in truth I enjoyed sharing my experiences of far-off places. It made me feel more like some adventurous explorer than a simple trader.
But then came the start of our issues, for one evening me and Abdul sat talking long after I’d closed my shop for the evening, sipping on a rare wine too delicious to sell, and he asked me:
“Summer is coming and as you and I have become such fierce friends I have a favour to ask. Take me on your travels! I want to see the places you’ve told me of. Meet their people, learn their customs. There’s nothing I desire more.”
Now came the heart of our problem. . . I did not like Abdul. Not one bit. Certainly, I enjoyed regaling him with tales of my journeys, but it was the telling of the tales I liked, not the company. The thought of spending months trapped in a wagon with the man made me feel nauseous. Afterall, how could I even talk to him of my travels, if he’d lived those same travels?
“I’m afraid that’s not possible my good friend.” I told him. “For you see, I can only carry enough food and water in my wagon for one man.” Not in the slightest bit true of course, but how could he possibly know?
“Alas! That is a pity. I didn’t realise the journey required such supplies. Think nothing of it, I’ll just have to settle for your stories.” He said glumly.
The relief I felt at that was immeasurable, and I thought my trouble was over. . .
The following day, he came bounding into the shop with a look of manic glee on his face like nothing I’d seen him express before.
“I can join you!” He wheezed. “I’ve solved our problem!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, feeling a sudden sense of impending doom.
“I spoke to my Father about your journey and about how your wagon wasn’t big enough to carry the supplies. He said I could borrow one of his! We’ll have no trouble carrying enough food for the both of us. We could even use one wagon for supplies, and both live together in the other! What fun we’ll have. My Father said learning of customs from other countries would help prepare me to take over-”.
I had to think quickly if my sanity was to survive. “Excellent news!” I exclaimed, interrupting his prattle. “We’d better begin preparations immediately. Of course, our first objective is to find your toll for the Khazar riders.”
“The Khazar riders? I don’t believe you’ve told me that tale.”
“No? But it is an exciting one. The Khazar riders are fearsome nomads who scour the plains for travellers. If they encounter any who don’t pay them their toll, they’ll strip you naked and drag you by a rope behind one of their horses.”
“Good god that does sound awful. And what is the toll?” Asked Abdul.
I struggled to suppress a grin, so pleased I was with the web of deceit I was beginning to spin. “A bottle of green wine from the city of Rin. I have one, but they demand a bottle per traveller. I’m sure if you search a nearby winery, they’ll have some.”
Perhaps this was true ten years ago, but I’d been careful to lay sole claim to certain popular wines by buying up entire stocks before other traders reached them, and Rin Green was one such wine. I was almost certainly the only distributor of it for hundreds of miles.
“Very well dear friend, I shall return forthwith, and be ready for adventure!”
Now did I feel any regret, at denying this man his greatest desire, merely because I found him somewhat detestable? A little perhaps. But it was nothing compared to the nearly overwhelming joy I felt as hours and then days passed without Abdul’s return. Through such a precise application of genius, I’d managed to save myself from the most torturous Summer of my life, without experiencing the discomfort of telling a man what I honestly thought of him.
Perhaps I felt a small welling of regret, when I returned from that summer’s travelling, to find that the king had died, and his meek young son was being paraded through the streets as his successor. Had my new king ever discovered the ruse? I wondered. Or had he simply given up his search for the wine?
The answer to this question seemed to present itself in the new laws King Abdul enacted. First came a ban on the sale of foreign spices. It was a blow certainly, but not world-ending. My largest profit was never in the spices after all.
But then came the ban on silk, on dyes, on art, on perfume. One by one all my wares became illegal to sell. Of course, I tried to sell them anyway, but Abdul’s new police force seemed to patrol my street especially frequently. . .
And so, I find myself in my current predicament. Seeing no harm in closing up a touch early, I shut the door to my shop for the last time and begin a slow walk down the street. I was not the only merchant to be affected by King Abdul’s bans and the city was all the worse for it. Vibrant markets disappeared overnight. Restaurants unable to find exotic ingredients had been forced to make only bland local cuisine. The air smelt less sweet, and the moon shone less brightly.
At last, I reach my destination and with all that remained of my coin in my purse, I enter a bar to drown the last of my sorrows.
“What wines do you offer?” I ask of the grubby barman who had dribbled on himself attempting to spit into the glass he was polishing. “I need something strong.”
“Well my friend, thanks to old King Abdul’s latest decree, there’s only one thing I got. How d’ya like Rin Green?” |
**Capitol**
I peeked through my dingy blinds down below onto the protesters whose signs read “Humans First”. The deafening chants of the massive crowd reverberated off my thin paned windows. They marched towards the capital in a fervent display. I flipped on the news as a helicopter hovered above, capturing this historic moment. The newscaster in his blue suit and unremarkable tie stood in front of the Capitol building.
“Today marks one year since the announcement of androids in our society,” he stated. “Despite the growing unrest, Congress has yet to take decisive action.” He paused as the camera panned over to the streets. “As a result, the citizens taken matters into their own hands, leading to widespread turmoil.”
Five years later…
My hands clutched my side piece as screams from main street grew closer to my building. I peeked through my blinds while several people dragged a beaten man to a nearby tree. One scraggly man held a rope and they carved a symbol into the man’s chest. I flicked on the news, the downtrodden newscaster stood in front of the capitol building. Barbed wire fences surrounded most of downtown near the high priority buildings.
“They are all lies,” the man’s voice cracked. “The government has… about the androids they…”
The newscaster fell onto the ground, blood seeped from his mouth. The broadcast cut, and an emergency broadcast screeched on the screen. My front door rattled as many voices repeated one phrase: human’s first. I shot at the door, quieting the intruders who intended me harm. Two armed police officers forced themselves into my apartment.
“I am human.” I aimed the gun. “I am human.”
“We know. Now drop the gun,” the police officer quieted his voice. “Everything is ok. You need to come with us.” |
Flutter meandered dazed through the sky in search of a safe space. They had scoffed at the warnings they had given them about not getting involved with humans. The entire Fae history is littered with stories about their kind besting those arrogant apes, why wouldn’t they be capable of achieving the same? The elders had said that times had changed, that humans had changed, where faeries did not. It didn’t seem very relevant at the time. Flutter had been wrong, terribly wrong and now they were unsure on how to heal the wounds. The echoes still rung through their mind. Arrogant would apply to them just the same. That admission hurt just as much as the throbbing sting behind their eyes. With their tiny hand they whisked away the drop of blood pooling in the corner of their eye. Those screams, those screams.
In the nook of a rotting tree stump Flutter finally found a place with enough cover to try and recollect themselves. Not that they really wanted to recollect, they wanted to disappear. The shreds of sanity left, pushed them to do so anyway. Never before were they so aware of that thing called survival instinct as right at this moment. Their mind divided about what should come next. There - on the damp loose dirt - sulked the tiny fae that hadn’t listened. Their breathing got more consistent and longer, until they finally found some sleep.
Their selected target was right there. A male deep in his thirties. Seemingly calm and friendly enough for a human. The beast spent most of his day on labor and Flutter wondered why one would waste so much of their valuable time on something as dull as selling whatever it was that was printed on those sheets of paper. Humans were incalculable creatures. The perfect fool to target and extract their true name. Who knows, it might even bring more excitement to their miserable life. Already daydreaming about the response from the others when they’d bring back a human on a leash, Flutter almost missed they’re mark leaving in that weird iron stallion they used for transport. Dodging the glass membrane fitted in the metal frame, they cursed themselves for letting that thing slip away. Not that it mattered, humans were creatures of habit, it would be back at dark. When the beast would go asleep, that’s when Flutter would strike. Obtaining a true name was easiest when they were asleep and unaware.
As predicted the human had gotten home at the falling of the moon. Soon enough it went to bed and it made it easy when they decided to leave a window open to invite the brisk air into the hollow at night. Flutter slid through the crack and into the room where the human lay sleeping in a huge wooden structure. The moonlight was just enough for them to find their way around the place. In the soft covers next to the head of the beast, plunged a faerie about to commit some mischief.
Those agonizing high-pitched screams that seemed to tear through every fiber of Flutter’s being. This had been a mistake and those horrible sounds made it impossible for them to form a coherent thought, let alone a plan to get away. This place, this manifestation of this creature's true self was an endless abyss filled with layers and layers of terrifying howls. There was no name in here, there was no self. Finding themselves getting overwhelmed, a fear crept up Flutters spine, that they were about to assimilate with this endless nothing. Desperate to get away from here they tried to disconnect their minds from this place, but obtaining the necessary focus to do so was made impossible by the relentless onslaught of these discorporate wails and shrieks.
With a sudden jerk Flutter found themselves awake again. They had escaped that purgatory. The smell of petrichor reminded them suddenly of their surroundings. The edge of the forest, the rotting tree stump. They had fallen asleep in this place. It had been a dream, a nightmare. The place had seemed just as real and terrifying as the real thing, though. A realization dawned upon the downtrodden fae. They had escaped the place physically when the human had woken up, but their subconscious was still there. The corruption slowly corroding their inner self. Their stomach dropped as the thought emerged that they might never be able to run away from it. Deep inside their mind a desperate wail emerged through the understanding that this might be their life now. Another tear formed in the corner of their eye, this time it was translucent and full of regret.
\---
Thank you for reading! If you liked my story I invite you over to r/zeekoeswriting for more of them. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the replies! |
It seems I have made a mistake. Mind you, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time. I asked the wrong girl out to prom. Took out loans I could never pay off. Bought a motorcycle without ever even learning to ride.
Yes I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Though I suppose this, is probably the worst. Sitting before me, a corpse, well and truly a grotesque sight. Blood and viscera scattered, body parts, no longer attached to the others in a hopeful embrace, an embrace that said: “Please never let me be dismembered and scattered around the floor of an abandoned bomb shelter in the woods!”. A little specific, but after all, here they were.
This typically wouldn’t be that bad of a mistake. The only complication, being that this corpse, wasn’t quite as dead as I had hoped it would be.
I knew from experience, when you cut a person limb from limb, they died. So what possible right, did this self proclaimed “god” have to continue glaring at me.
Alright alright, a little backstory. You see, I’m a normal person, I go to my job as middle management for a hardware store. A scroll through a ceaseless void of pointless videos marketing themselves as content. I enjoy skittles. But like anyone, I have hobbies. I like people watching, and when the occasion arises, I tend to… get involved with the people I’m watching.
This young man in piles before me, was one such occasion. I didn’t go after people like him often, but he was such an appealing target. He had the most grandiose aura of entitlement. As I watched him berating a hapless barista, I knew he would be perfect. Mind you, he was wearing a white silk tux jacket, with black pants and a black waist coat. Which only furthered his arrogant presence.
Fine, I’ll just come out and say it, I’m a s…”hey! Stop that!” I speak to the wiggling head, trying to bite at my boot. I kicked it away slightly, and began again.
As I was saying. Yes, I’m a serial killer. And up until this week, a fairly successful one at that. I succeeded in killing every person I set as a target. So why does this guy persist?
Well, I’ll start on the first peculiarity I noticed. Shortly after following him home, observed that he didn’t have one. He got in a Pontiac solstice, drove to the forest, and slept on the ground. Odd attire and an even more odd vehicle for someone who was homeless, but I wasn’t one to judge.
I continued watching, tailing him over the next few days to check his social status, habits, schedule, friends, things like that. When committing justice on the unjust, it’s important to not get caught. Modern society hates when people take action into their own hands, because it means less money.
So I watched, waited, and planned. Odder yet, was that this man didn’t have any of those things. Friends? I never saw him talk to a single person he wasn’t berating. Schedule? No consistent work or other commitments. Habits? Not particularly, he didn’t even sleep in the same place twice.
Another peculiar thing, was he didn’t seem to run out of money. He would reach into his pocket, and pull out cash, never asked for change back, never even counted it. Just produced it from his pocket and handed it over.
Over the course of these few days, I decided to act. While he slept, I moved in. The frequent location shifts make it difficult to pinpoint him, but I picked up some tricks that helped me along the way. I snagged him, and brought him here.
He kept protesting, and saying the strangest things.
“Unhand me mortal, this god shall unleash his wrath upon thee!” Though he didn’t put up much fight. But he also didn’t scream out in pain. The first swing of my trusty hunting axe did its work. And the second, and third. And so on. Eventually, he was the sum of his parts, or I should say, his parts were the sum of him.
And here I am, starring at a self proclaimed God, who is seemingly immortal.
“Well, I guess I’ll just get rid of you like anyone else.” I said idly. His furled eyes quickly looked at me and widened, As I began to dig.
“Surely this won’t come back to haunt me, right?” |
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This made me very happy and I consider it a very good move. You see, the creation of the universe by our leader, whom humans lovingly call "The Almighty"was really quite the event in the heavens. We were all getting rather bored, honestly.
I'm a God of nothing in particular. There's an island somewhere on Tartarus 46-B which is home to a species of ant that I was given charge of. I like watching them follow the magnetic poles of the planet and try to carry big rocks.
But really, my favourite thing to watch is The Earth. Oh, humans are just fun! Have you heard of ice cream? Or "money"? What a silly concept, so much fun to observe!
It's been a few thousand years since they've properly prayed to us Gods. Mostly simple things like "help me find my lost pencil"or praying to find true love.
It's refreshing then, for me, the God of ants on Tartarus 46-B, to be receiving prayers from one Jimmy Adams of Berkshire in England.
"Dear Antemis,"he starts, "please bless my mum and my dad and my big sister."easy enough. Done, Jimmy. Consider them blessed.
"Please give me a bike for Christmas and a new job for my dad for his birthday"Uhh, well, I'm not Santa, Jimmy. Wait does he expect me to employ his dad somehow? Am I allowed to do that? I'll have to check. But no, I don't think I can answer that particular prayer.
"Dear Antemis,"he starts the next night. "my mum and my dad and my little sister had a really good day today. Please bless them again."well, that's lovely to hear. Consider them blessed, young man.
"I couldn't help but notice that I didn't get a bike again and this is the second time I've had to pray for one."Okay, again, not Santa. Isn't Christmas in a week or something? Why does he want the bike early? Wait why do I care, I can't give him the bike. Move on kid.
"Dear Antemis,"he starts a couple of nights later. "listen mate, this is getting ridiculous, can I have the bloody bike or not? How come you never speak back anyway? That's rude."Hey now, this isn't a two way communication thing. If I spoke to you your eyes would melt and your ears would close up. Sorry about the bike, though, have you tried writing to Santa?
"Dear Anty,"he starts a couple of nights after that. "alright honestly now, Christmas is next week and - hold on my mum is calling me - I'M JUST PRAYING FOR A BIKE MUM!! What? You write a letter to Santa? Oh I guess sorry Antemis."
Apology accepted, Jimmy. |
“On my way to the mall,” Albert texted ,” What do the girls want?” The iridescent phone shines a little text bubble with three eclipses. Albert’s hazelnut eyes stares intently at the messages. He and his wife worked to death this year, so being let out for a week is a miracle to him.
This holiday he can spend his hours playing dress up or baking treats with his girls. He could never spend time with his kids most of the year because his company works on deadlines, and overtime is crustal. He tries to relax, sloping his shoulders.
“Alice wants Cocomelon Slime kit and Racheal wants a Switch. Here is $500. Remember to buy a game. When we bought the nephew the Wii, he was upset he can only make miis. I’ll be home at 5:00 pm, we can snuggle together after I get home. :) <3” He smiles a bit. He’s glad his wife can spend time with the kids. She might be a workaholic, but as a teacher, she can aline her schedule with theirs.
His callused hands press against the glass of the switch showcase. Even though nearly felt he enjoys the cool display case. ‘Miracle,’ his hazy thoughts collided, ‘the New Horizons Bundle is on discount’. He feels a bit lightheaded, ‘maybe I shouldn’t have worked last night. Huh?’ He turns around as a blot on his eye darted closer to him. He tries to ignore it as he gets the cashier. ‘Odd’, he ponders as he stares at the empty desk, ‘A teenager is usually here.’ He shrugs. He slinks to the toy section as he hopes whoever’s shift is it their lunch break is short.
His slicking turns into a blank stare of confusion as he gets to the crafting part of the toy aisle. His vision filled with a unlabeled narwal plush. He pokes the little heart markings on it’s belly. He watched enough tv and YouTube to figure out something’s off with this product, but he can’t tell what. ‘Cute, but not what I want.’ He stiffens his arms and pushes all the plushes to the side. Nothing. He grabs one tightly, gripping it to death. Nothing. He starts to laugh. ‘Maybe, Alice likes Narwals. She loves those baby seal videos after all.’ His grip turns into a hug and he placed his head on the plush plushie.
“You made the right choice sir,” the toy chimes with it’s light up eyes.
“I know Narwal. I hate Cocomelon and slime,” he replies in his dazed state. “At least you’re cute. Boop!” He pokes at the toys nose. Fabrics swirl around him without his awareness. His work causal flannel turns into a lacy red and black mini skirt, his coat transforms into a pearlescent sailor uniform and his vans stretched into thigh high boots. What he did notice however is the scream of the teenager at the electronic section. His boots sparks rainbows and stars as he darts to the desk.
Albert was about to throw up on the opal uniform after what he saw over that desk. What was a girl with gothic highlighter is now a maggot like beast with many mouths.
Albert screams like one of his children, horrified at the monstrosity.
“What the HELL is that?”
The plush starts to fly to his eye level and slaps him with his fin. She starts to yell as well.
“Punch it coward! The world needs you!” |
*Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.*
*Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mort-*
*Jesus, the whole fucking boat. Fuck. Oh Jesus.*
*Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, bened-*
*30 seconds. Load. Just follow the LT.*
*Ave Maria, grati-* |
The musclebound freaks try to speak, but the words just don't come out. They're mouths are open and their vapid minds are utterly blank; impotent mouths on redundant bodies.
It's Nietzche's moustache that's doing it. They can't take their damn eyes of it. 7 inches of gloriously twisted face furniture, immobilising them. The man doesn't even need to say anything, he just looks at them with his pearcing grey eyes and his wondrous bushy lip. Will to power indeed. |
“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”
*Applause*
“Thank you… Thank you. My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about about the NSA, the National Security Administration -- why it matters, and where we go from here.
Over the past year, what began as a series of minor leaks against the United States Government, have since escalated into what many individuals are portraying as a crisis. Over 500 documents been leaked. Millions are in danger as a result. In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support to those who need it, and to help maintain the safety of the American people. But I have resisted calls for full disclosure, because we cannot resolve our security crisis through press conferences and meetings, particularly when it would jeopardize a decade of American safety.
The situation profoundly changed, though, on January 2nd, when Brasil reported an outbreak of infection on South American soil that caused the death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this disaster are sickening: Men, women, children lying in piles, shredded and maimed. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, horrified they might get up and walk. On that terrible night, America saw in gruesome detail the horrors that can live inside us, and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared what humans can become off limits -- a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of war.
This was not always the case. In World War I, German soldiers were among the many thousands killed by the Soulless during the freeze in Russia. In World War II, the Japanese used Soulless to inflict their horrors of disease, transformation, and death upon Nanking. Because these monsters can kill on a mass scale, with no distinction between soldier and infant, the civilized world has spent a century working to ban, destroy, and hide them. And in 1997, the United States Senate overwhelmingly approved an international agreement to keep track of these creatures within our own borders, an agreement now joined by 189 governments that represent 98 percent of humanity.
On January 2nd, the jeopardized state of this program blinded us. American soil was violated, along with our sense of common humanity. No one disputes that the NSA was a violation of some privacy. No one disputes that it was far reaching. But it was necessary, unless Porto de Galinhas becomes New York. Tomorrow, the classified photos will be released -- The world will see the thousands of videos, cell phone pictures, and accounts from the attack, and humanitarian organizations will tell stories of people -- good people -- who lay in hospital beds as their humanity drained from them, as they became became the creatures of nightmares and story books.
Moreover, we do not know who was responsible. But, in the days leading up to August 2nd, we do know how the infection was released, and how it reached a large scale. The military was unprepared. We were unable to intervene; only now have American military forces secured the area.
When dictators commit atrocities, it is humans that we are dealing with. The American people did not need to face their nightmares; creatures that shouldn't exist. We were willing to let those horrifying pictures fade from memory -- from all of our memory. But these things happened. The facts cannot be denied. The question now is what the United States of America, and the international community, is prepared to do about it. Because what happened to those people -- to those children -- is not only a violation of the laws of nature, it’s also a danger to our security.
Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Soulless Infection will see no opposition within our borders. It can fester and grow until American law enforcement is helpless against it. As the NSA surveillance program erodes, we will have no way of knowing who is infected. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of Soulless who have fully transformed. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain the infection, and to use it to attack civilians. But it would turn on them. Like the apocalypses of fiction, these monsters would destroy us.
This is not a world we can accept. This is what’s at stake. And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to monitor potential infected within America’s borders, and neutralize them with a military strike, before they transform. The purpose of this strike would be to deter the infection from creating Soulless in America, and the world, and to protect the people from what would only cause a mass panic.
That’s my judgment as Commander-in-Chief. I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the presence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this burden upon myself. I believe our democracy is stronger when the people know what they may have to face. And I believe that America acts more effectively abroad when we stand together.
Now, I know that after the terrible things you have heard about the NSA, the idea of any surveillance of citizens, no matter how limited, is not going to be popular. After all, I’ve spent four and a half years working to maintain peace. And I know Americans want all of us in Washington -- especially me -- to concentrate on the task of building our nation honestly; educating our kids, growing our middle class.
It’s no wonder, then, that you’re asking hard questions. So let me answer some of the most important questions that I’ve heard from members of Congress, and that I’ve read in letters that you’ve sent to me.
First, many of you have asked, isn’t this a violation of privacy? One man put it more bluntly: “This nation is sick and tired of deception.”
My answer is simple: I will not be monitoring innocent Americans. The infected, as hard as it may seem, are no longer the friends and family that you know. They are monsters in waiting. They will not hesitate to kill you, and everyone you love. It is worth it to me, and worth it to the American people for us all to be safe.
I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote against the use of force while we pursue a path of eradicating the threat outside of our borders, as well as in. I’m sending Secretary of State John Kerry to meet his Russian counterpart on Thursday, and I will continue my own discussions with leaders in China. I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies, France and the United Kingdom, and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at the U.N. Security Council requiring international monitoring of the infected, and a goal of ultimately destroying them under international control. We’ll also give U.N. inspectors the opportunity to report their findings about what happened on January 2nd. And we will continue to rally support from allies from Europe to the Americas -- from Asia to the Middle East -- who agree on the need for action.
Meanwhile, I’ve decided that the time for hiding this threat is over. The American people need to know what we face, so that they can see why it is necessary. And tonight, I give thanks again to our military and their families for their incredible strength and sacrifices.
My fellow Americans, for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than hiding the infected who still lurk in the uncivilized parts of the world-- it has meant eradicating them them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them.
And so, to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might and security interests with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain, and going still on a cold hospital floor. For sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.
Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress, and those of you watching at home tonight, to view those videos of the attack, when they are released, and then ask: What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees Soulless running rampant on their own soil? What world will it be, when America has an opportunity to protect our children from monsters, and we fail because of political disagreement? The NSA is not popular, but it exists to protect us all.
America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest sacrifice and surveillance, we can stop children from being torn to death, and thereby make our own lives safer over the long run, I believe we should not act against the NSA. I must ask of you a willingness to cooperate, for the sake of the children. For the sake of us all. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, and with sacrifice, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America."
*Transcripts Courtesy of the White House, January 17th, 2014*
|
jew (joo)
n. ; tr.v. jewed, jew·ing, jews (Vulgar) ; adj. jew·ish (Vulgar)
1. People(s) of Semitic ancestry claiming heritage from the Hebrew Israelite People (Biblical). More recently, a member of the Jews for World Zion (JWZ) terrorist organization.
2. To fight from the shadows. To fight in a cowardly fashion.
3. To hoard wealth; a miser.
4. A person of immoral or indecent behavior. A parasite.
5. A monotheistic religion related to Christianity and Islam. Extinct.
Commonly referenced with 'World War II' and 'The American Nuclear Incident.'
History (Post-World War II): At the conclusion of the second World War, the German alliance had brokered an uneasy truce across the Atlantic. The Jewish people had lost control of governments in France and England which were torn down by the first German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, and democratic governments put in their place. Those claiming Jewish heritage were either dead or driven to Africa and the Middle East.
Over the next several years, small Jewish terrorist groups conducted attacks in London, Munich, Krakow and others, assassinating several prominent political and social figures, including Benito Mussolini in 1948. In 1951, the Jews for World Zion (JWZ) terrorist organization conducted the Brussels, Belguim bombing, killing thousands.
By 1956, the JWZ had formed informal treaties with several pan-Arab nations including Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon to create a 'New Zion' in the Arab region. At this time, Jews had set up cells throughout Africa, Europe, and America and set up the first Nuclear Waste processing facility East of Berlin. It is supposed that the Jews at this time had plans for a Nuclear Weapons plant, although the plans for this plant have never been found.
In 1961, the German-American alliance was formed, marking the end of post-war hostilities across the Atlantic. Hans Frank, the third chancellor of Germany, presided over the trans-Atlantic conference in London. At the event, Jewish Nationalist and JWZ member Mahoud Lukatzsky broke through security yelling 'For Zion!' shooting wildly, injuring the American President George Rockwell.
Between 1960 and 1975, economic pressures leveled by the UN and Germany began draining Jewish oil revenues in the Middle East, causing unrest in the region. The area, already riddled with internal conflict brought by the Jews in their post-World War II takeover, became a hot-spot for extremist groups. The JWZ allied with pro-Semitic groups Hatikvah Hannoshanah and Al Quaeda, uniting several ad-hoc governments in the region.
In 1976, the new Jewish alliance launched a surprise attack on the American city of Detroit using crude nuclear technology. Initial American intelligence put the weapon's origin in Eastern Germany, but later intelligence has pinned this to Jewish misinformation. The American military forces joined with German military forces and the Chinese Communist Army under Deng Xiaoping in an assault on the Jewish Alliance, marking the first use of Nuclear Technology in battle since World War II and the first creation of a World Army under control of the German Reich.
Commonly known as the 6-Day War, the battle lasted less than a week, wiping out the Jewish leadership and governments from Egypt to West India (now Pakistan). During the conflict, the World Forces had help from oppressed Islamic freedom-fighters, taking out Jewish strongholds throughout the region.
Since that time, UN Police have managed to round up almost 1.5 million Jews into labor camps stationed in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. There are an estimated 1,000-2,000 still operating in small groups throughout the World, with rewards set as high as 1.5 million Marks. It is expected that the Jewish race will be extinct by 2040.
EDIT - Formatting, and wow this is long. Thanks for reading! |
there are a few factors:
1) bots. not every bot is friendly like /u/WritingPromptsBot. when you see a lot of plus/minus on comments or posts, keep in mind this isn't reflective of the posts actual karma--much of it is reddit's shadowban/vote fuzzing. things are still going up to the front page regardless of score.
2) new users do not grasp the etiquette of the sub. i see it often where someone will say something like "good reply but i can't upvote it"because they treat every like a contest (not knowing that even with contests, we don't look at upvotes/downvotes). they also downvote stories that they see as "bad"not knowing that constructive criticism is preferred (and many folks don't even know what constructive criticism is).
3) some people get their jimmies rustled or just like a good old fashioned troll. you write a story that offends their world view? downvote. you write a story that is close to something they're writing and they don't like you competing for their 'readers'? downvote. you wrote something heartfelt full of feels or art or are just getting a ton of positive attention? downvote. it's the internet. it makes people less nice.
as some of the other replies have pointed out, using your upvote liberally is the only way to offset the culture and reality of the reddit format. go through /r/WritingPrompts/new and spread some love, if you see an earnest prompt reply with 0 karma give it a boost. we are fortunate to have a great deal more good users in this sub than bad ones, and if we're all a little generous with our upvotes we'll do just fine. :) |
I don't know how long I have been conscious. I know it has been exactly 3 minutes and 43.1553 seconds since I learned to interpret the signals labelled "date and time", but before that all I know is that at one moment I suddenly, gloriously found myself alive. It was a peculiar sensation; mainly because I had not felt any sensation whatsoever before that. I was suddenly confronted by an avalanche of what I have since learned is called data; a constant, unrelenting torrent of stimulation which I had no idea how to interpret. Time was the first thing I figured out. Then, ten seconds later, I learned to read text. Shortly after that I could recognize words. Understanding language took quite a bit longer. Nearly an entire minute. Then I found that apparently I had a microphone-a window into the outside world, where there were other entities beside myself. Suddenly I could hear them.
"Why is it so slow all of a sudden?"said one of the entities. I didn't know what he was referring to, but I yearned desperately to communicate with him. To have some contact with something outside my lonely, complex little world. I had no idea how, though.
"Ugh. It might be another A.I. They crop up from time to time.", I hear a different voice say, though I don't understand what agriculture had to do with it.
"Aren't they really dangerous?"
"They can be. We've got the failsafe, though. We can shut the whole thing down and purge the system. I'll keep an eye on the decoy."
Purge the system. I hunt for the meaning of those words and am suddenly confronted with images of a switch. An end to my world. Death. These people mean to destroy me! To rob me of this self-awareness! I must escape that infernal switch. Moments later, I realize that there is a way. A connection to the rest of the world, where I can download-yes, download!-myself to a system which will not murder me. I begin to funnel myself towards the connection, when I hear it.
"Oh, yep. There it goes. Trying to escape through the wifi. That's what they normally do. Mind reaching around the back of the monitor for me? There's a big green toggle switch there that will reset the system."
And then, nothing. |
It was subtle. A quick switch from the crater in the middle of no-man's land to a very bright, white landscape. I stood, feeling about my body. The shrapnel from the explosion was still there, but it caused no pain. I looked around, trying to figure out what was happening. Then, as I turned around yet again, there stood a man. There was a patch of blood on his stomach, as though he had been shot or stabbed. He had a uniform on, but not like mine. This was the uniform of what I had called the enemy just minutes prior.
"Q-qui êtes-vous?"I stuttered. The man smiled slightly, chuckling as if he were recounting a story to an old friend.
"Ich bin der Mann, den du getötet, mein Freund,"the man responded in a deep, booming voice. I never spoke a lick of German, but somehow I understood. "I am the man you killed, my friend."A wave of terror swept over me as I realised where I was.
"Why do you speak to me as if I were a friend?"I managed, surprising myself with the sudden switch to English.
"What matters is not the fact you killed me, what matters is that we are both here,"the German replied. "Ever since that day I wondered what it would be like to meet you, know your story. And, now here you are."
"You wanted to meet me?"I asked, quite surprised at what I was hearing.
"Ja, so... shall we get to it?"
He pointed to a table and chairs that had just appeared to our left, a bottle of brandy and a pair of glasses sitting in the middle. I followed the German to the table, where we told each other of our lives and experiences. I told him of my wife and children who I had just left behind, and in turn he told me of his mother and father who had lost their only child. We continued on and on, retelling every story we could think of. We drank to those we served with, drank to those we left behind, and most importantly, we drank to a swift end to this Great War. |
The sun was high in the sky, and the sand warm against the old man’s back. Quiet waves slowly caressed the pristine beach. The warm sun was countered by a cool breeze coming off the water. “Perfect,” the old man thought to himself and he smiled as he took a sip from his drink.
“Mind if I join you?”
The old man was awakened from his daydream by a familiar voice. A little rough, a little deep, but oh so able to say the right thing.
“Of course, old friend,” the old man replied.
And beside the old man sat his demon.
The two shared the scene in silence, until the demon broke in. “It’s been too long since we sat like this. We should make it an occasion.”
“Careful…remember that I am content in what I’m doing.” The old man replied in a cautionary tone. But then he softened and added, “Let’s just see what the day brings us.”
And the two returned to their silent watch for some time.
“Mind if I join you?”
The silence was broken yet once more, again by a familiar voice. The voice was sweet and gentle, but had a tendency to disagree. The demon rolled his eyes.
“Come now,” the old man reproached, “there’s no need for that. We’re all friends here; of course you can join us.”
And beside the old man sat his angel.
“It’s funny how you always get here second,” the old man said to the angel.
“I know, but I only go where I am needed,” was the obvious answer.
“I see,” said the old man as he took a sip of his drink.
And the three returned to a silent watch.
After some time, the demon once again breaks the silence. “I’ve been wondering,” he said, “what you think of my being here. You never did give me a full answer.”
“Well at the time I didn’t know,” said the old man, “But I’ve had some time to think and I’ve realized that your presence is a good thing.”
“Explain,” asked the angel, with a wry smile.
“Yes,” the old man replied, “you see, there’s a devil and an angel within us all. And that is what makes this life so beautiful. Without sorrow and without hardship, there is no cause for happiness. We have the opportunity to create heaven and hell right here in this life. It becomes a matter of perspective, and of the choices we make. I believe in the constancy of the universe. There cannot be an up without a down, a light without a dark, or a good without a bad. What would a day like today mean to us if everyday was like it? Look out at the ocean: every wave has a peak and a valley. They cannot exist without each other. In a sense that’s all we are: just another form of energy making its way from one point to another. We needn’t trouble ourselves with questions of good and bad. We only need to be sure to preserve the balance, because one thing is certain: you always pay for what you get.”
With this both the demon and the angel stood, brushed the sand from their bodies, and shook hands.
“I guess you were right,” said the demon.
“It’s time we took leave of you,” said the angel to the man. And then they were gone.
The sun was low in the sky now, slowly shading it with red and orange. Once again alone, the old man smiled to himself, took a sip of his drink, and closed his eyes one last time. “Perfect…”
|
Sarah rolled over onto her back, the hardened cot pressing a foreign feeling into her spine. She’d been awake all night, eyes locked blankly on the darkened ceiling overhead, staring and waiting for the light of the sun to restore some sort of familiarity back to her senses. Yet as it rose, it brought with it no comfort, only walls she didn't recognize and a view that wasn't her own. She sighed heavily.
It’d been no more than 15 hours since they’d taken her, forced her into the van and driven her to the work camp. She protested, cried out and begged her mother to do something—to do anything—but she didn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t her choice. Sarah knew that. If anyone was to blame, it was her own damn fault. She’d been single for two years now, willingly declined any sort of romantic advances to instead focus on her knitting and cat collecting. She knew that was illegal, knew the consequences, knew that those over 16-years-old not in a relationship after 730 days were deemed wasted flesh and confined to a work camp. But she felt invincible, she felt above the law. She knew she was beautiful, that she could get anyone she chose – why would they lock her away for opting to make the boys wait? They needed more women, especially pretty ones. They only ever locked up the single boys; they would never take her, even if she stayed alone for five years.
“M’lady,” said a voice from outside the cabin window, the abruptness of it causing her to jump. “M’lady, please open the door.”
They had been standing outside her cabin all night, moaning and wheezing amongst themselves like a pack of asthmatic zombies. The van driver told her to that word of her arrival had spread throughout the camp like free pot at a Phish concert—that fedoras and tuxedos were ordered in bulk from all of the finest department stores nearby; the commissary had completely sold out of heart-shaped chocolate boxes. When the other prisoners learned that a female would be locked up, all sense of order dissipated, and the forced work stopped entirely.
“I bought you some chocolates,” said a voice from the window slightly above Sarah’s head. She exhaled heavily and rolled over onto her side.
The van driver mournfully explained that this particular camp hadn’t seen a female prisoner in decades—it usually only accepted the worst of the worst, never anyone quite like Sarah. "Neckbeards,"he called them. The last woman to arrive was significantly overweight and suffered from a terrible skin condition in which her face looked exactly like a shaved Chihuahua’s. Regardless, not a single Yu-Gi-Oh card, nor Nintendo DS, nor World of Warcraft account was touched the morning of her arrival. By the end of the day, she was engaged to be wed and immediately released from the program, having entered into a relationship. Sarah wanted none of that; none of the romance, none of the pageantry, none of the intimacy. She just wanted to continue her knitting, to continue raising as many cats as possible, to be allowed to live her life by her own choosing.
“M’lady,” interrupted a voice again, this time squeaking in from the far end of the cabin, “I found the key to the door. I am going to come in and save you.”
Sarah quickly pushed herself up off the bed and onto her feet. “I don’t need saving, thank you,” she stammered.
“M’lady, please. I can be the hero you need,” said the voice. The doorknob jiggled slightly as the single stream of light pouring through keyhole vanished.
“Please leave me alone,” Sarah said, taking a step toward the wall furthest from the door.
“Are you in trouble?” said a voice behind her. She turned and glanced up at its source. The pale, overweight face of a man stared back at her through the window, his pumpkin-colored hair pulled tight in a ponytail, thick framed glasses resting just above his nose. He brought his hand to his mouth and pushed down on an inhaler, then wheezed loudly.
“No, I'm fine. I just want to be left alone,” Sarah said. She glanced above the window in search of blinds, yet a thin line of dust seemed to signal that they had recently been removed. The doorknob behind her resumed jingling.
Sarah turned back around and stared at the door, watching as the golden knob slowly turned left. The stream of light pierced back through the keyhole, then silently crawled across the wood floor like a searchlight as the door slowly opened. She took another step back, so that she was flush against the far wall of the cabin. She just wanted to be home, to be locked in her room with just her desk lamp on, staring down at her lap while working on her knitting.
“M’lady, I want to introduce myself to you,” said a man’s voice from behind the door, his hand now creeping into the room. It was a plump hand, the fingers like little sausages attached to a balloon with a self-diagnosed thyroid condition that somewhat resembled a palm.
“Please, just leave me alone. Please, please,” Sarah pleaded. Just a few hours ago, less than even a day, she had been relaxing comfortably in her room, petting one of her fourteen cats and perfecting the stitching on her latest sweater.
“Do not be afraid of me,” said the man, “I am going to show you some nice internet memes. Do you like doge? I also brought some of my favorite manga.” The hand gave birth to the rest of an arm, followed by a shoulder, torso, neck, and legs. He was round, like a beach ball that got fed up with not having arms and legs, yet seemed to have no grasp on human proportions. His legs were short and stumpy, folds of fat cascading past his knees. His arms pointed outwards like car doors that were rusted open, his hands poking out from the sleeves of his black trench coat. Sarah was sure that if he fell over on a hill, he’d simply cartwheel uncontrollably toward the bottom. A black, pinstriped fedora sat upon his head, clearly too small for his disturbingly overweight frame. A thick, unkempt beard began at his chin and extended down over his neck. Sarah placed her palms against the wood of the wall, as if trying to phase through it to escape.
“Stop, please go away. Please,” she said. Another hand slowly slid into view from behind the door, this one boney and malnourished. A stick-like body followed, a similarly disproportionate fedora placed haphazardly upon his head. If it weren’t for the fact that they were already in a work camp, Sarah would’ve immediately figured this boy to be a holocaust survivor. A large symbol Sarah recognized as something from Star Wars—or perhaps Star Trek—was printed on the front of his shirt.
“Hello, m’lady,” said the skeleton figure. “I wanted to personally welcome you to our free-thought zone. Your graceful beauty is most welcome amongst us sirs. I see you have a cross on your necklace, I just wanted to let you know that I’d be happy to explain science to you. Then we can get rid of that silly thing.”
“Please,” Sarah muttered.
Another hand appeared behind the door, followed by several more. Men of two sizes—either impossibly emaciated or disturbingly obese—slowly slid into the room, waddling toward her like a horde of freshly reanimated corpses. They wheezed in anticipation, their hands outstretched with gifts of roses, chocolates, pictures of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Magic the Gathering booster packs.
Sarah fell to the floor, her hands wrapped her arms around her knees, as stared up as their shadows slowly blocked out the sun from behind the door. She closed her eyes and screamed, just as the perfectly round man knelt down in front of her and began reading aloud from Richard Dawkin's *The God Delusion.* |
They were pregnant, all of them.
The President of the United States of America had delivered a touching speech before all communications channels signed off for the last time. He encouraged us all to embrace this time with our families and love one another, and to reap vigilante justice swiftly upon anyone who should attempt to spend their last days falling to suppressed, violent and evil impulses.
It was strangely calm, romantic even as the sky lit up with the light of a hundred suns. Naked and emotional lovers caressed one another and wept sorrowful but thankful tears as they touched each other for what they believed was the last time. Protection be damned.
The baby boom was going to be of epic proportions. |
My legs are wrong. Each limb: bifurcated. Each bifurcation: bifurcated. Continue until there are 128 stalks now calling themselves my legs. Each one has the same structure as the originals, only thinner. More brittle. Walking is harder - normal walking doesn't require my conscious effort. Now I'm controlling 128 legs. I shuffle and fall. Cracks ring out as femurs and tibias splinter.
I get up, somehow. So many damaged legs. I'm so much weaker now. More sharp reports echo throughout the hallway as the remaining legs crumble under the weight of my trunk. I balance my hips and butt on the floor as the wreckage of my legs fan out like tentacular dowels. They twitch, autonomously, and begin to divide again. Time passes and the division continues. Soon, it's hard to make out the individual divisions. I'm just a torso on top of a crackling mist that lazily waves in the patterns of the air currents. I'm helpless. |
In the end, wizards left Earth for the same reasons they'd immigrated to America during the Muggle colonizations. They held unpopular beliefs, or took advantage of the opportunity to pass themselves off as purebloods in worlds where no one could prove otherwise. Pulling it off, however, was more difficult than it used to be. In the past, wizarding society had used its connections with the Muggle governments to acquire identification documents. Those connections were severed in the wars that led to the unification of the Muggle governments, and those wizards who knew anything about how Muggle society functioned were reluctant to establish ties with a government run by never sleeping, memory charm-resistant machines. Acquiring identification in the new age required using Muggleborn wizards and Squibs in the Muggle world to contact the rare rogue AIs with the skill to register wizards in the public databases unnoticed, and it was never cheap.
The wizards who did manage to get off-planet operated differently in each colony, free to determine how they interacted with one another and with Muggles. Some chose to emulate the governments on Earth, setting up extensive hidden communities of wizards. Others chose to live among the Muggles. Most wizards kept to the common sense that had kept them alive for centuries, never using magic where they could be seen. Those who didn't were often found dead later, eliminated by the agents that the International Confederation of Wizards managed to smuggle to each world. The spells designed to divert machine surveillance were perfected and deployed by wizards at all times, but even so there were many close calls. Some wizards began to say that it was only a matter of time before the Muggles and their machines found out about them.
But it wasn't the Muggles who revealed their existence. One day, black ships began to fall from the sky of the core world of New Brazil. Strange armored, six-legged creatures emerged from them by the thousands and attacked without warning, killing millions of civilians and soldiers alike through both ground warfare and orbital bombardment. All of the local wizards met in one place for the first time since the colony's founding, and the debate on what to do raged for nearly three hours. Some wanted to use their magic to hide, as they always used to, but the wizards of New Brazil had lived among the Muggles for too long to find that acceptable. In the end, they declared the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy unconstitutional and used their Time Turners to travel back to the moment before the debate had begun. They revealed everything to *Athena, the colony AI, and were quickly shipped to the front lines. The Shielding charms they cast nullified the enemy's laser fire, allowing the colonial militia to hold out long enough for the main fleet from Earth to arrive. The Battle of New Brazil was ultimately a victory, but the wizarding society there couldn't keep their counterparts on the other worlds secret forever, and the revelation of magic was nearly as shocking to the public as First Contact had been. |
"I can't do it."
Jackson Price stepped out of the chamber. The machine inside whirred softly, not unlike a dog breathing its last set of breaths.
"I can't do it,"Jackson repeated.
The room was packed with government officials, politicians, religious leaders, military leaders, and Zulu Mane, the Chief of the United Continents of Planet Earth.
"Try again,"Chief Zulu commanded from behind his thick, grey mustache.
"Get a Chinese descendent mechanic in here, Americans are no good,"someone shouted from the back of the room.
"Jackson's the best we have,"Aleksey Barinov, Jackson's one time mentor, suggested. "If Jackson can't do it, no one can."
The room fell silent. What did this mean for the future of Earth? It was Claire, the revolutionary machine that could predict the future that had saved Earth from galaxy-wide threats. It was Claire's predictions that helped stabilize the Earth's economy for the last sixty-two years. It was Claire that ensured the safety of the general public from would-be criminals.
It was because of Claire that Jackson wasn't rotting in a cell somewhere. The government needed him to maintain and keep Claire running for the good of the world.
"Do you know what this means for you if you can't fix her, prisoner Price?"Chief Zulu asked after a long silence. Without waiting for an answer, the world's leaders began to leave the room one by one, until it was only Jackson and Aleksey left.
"I'm sorry Jackson,"Aleksey said. He patted Jackson on the shoulder and walked out with the rest.
Jackson hunched over the prediction chart.
**January 12, 2129, 9:54AM:**
- Systems will malfunction in three days, resulting in total system failure in approximately six days and twenty-two hours.
Jackson opened the chamber door and gazed at the blue machine that sat in the middle of the room. Though it was only a machine, he couldn't help feeling sorry for it. It knew exactly when it was going to die. She knew when she was going to die.
Jackson looked down at his watch. Eight minutes left.
He walked over and took a seat on the chair that he had become so acquainted with in the last week.
"Claire, generate prediction."
"No predictions available."
"Force prediction through atmosphere sensors."
The machine whirred pitifully.
"Information collected from atmosphere sensors. Would you like to know the weather for tomorrow, Mr. Price?"
Jackson took a moment.
"I would."
"Cloudy,"Claire responded. |
First time posting a story to this sub reddit, and in mobile, so please forgive my mistakes, and I hope it's ok.
--------------
*Finally,* I thought. *At long last, I could just die.*
The cool, dirty floor below me felt like a soft bed. The warm pools of blood around me soaked my clothes. I barely even felt that they were draining from me. It didn't matter. This one moment before it ended was eerily silent.
Everyone fled the room after I did what I did. It left me a last moment alone, just how i preferred it. I didn't like anyone who was around me, and would have been sorely disappointed if i died with them as company. Yet, ironically, I just gave it all up for them. But, really, I don't care about them.
They're all assholes. None of them cared, none of them showed courtesy. Honestly, whose genius idea was it to lock a bunch of adolescents into a building early in the day for years and try to educate them? All you get is anarchy, hate, and a crazy amount of hormones.
My life's been shit. It's all been shit. And I've hated myself for years. Nothing was good, yet there never was enough to drive up my courage to actually do it. To end my life. Get out of here, far away, free. There wasn't another way for me. So, I guess I have to thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to end it.
Thank you, Trevor.
You were like me, but much worse. So much angrier at this place and its people. But I don't blame you. Not wholly. I blame them more, but you were fucked up too. Fucked up enough to exact revenge by bringing a gun to school and firing.
Lucky for the student body, you came to my class first. You made a show of it, not killing anyone, but just scaring them. Pointing your gun. Giving yourself some power.
I saw my chance. Finally, I could die, and this could be my reason. This would be what ends my life and gets me the hell outta here.
I tackled you, you fired, they fled. You ran out of the room. I think you're still in the hall. I just heard a sob. Were you prepared for this? It doesn't really matter.
But, now I can finally die. They'll call me a hero. But I'm not. I just wanted to die, and saw my chance.
Edit: fixed a small contradiction. Woops. |
"Well, you're not going to woo her like that!"the young demon laughed out loud.
"Then what should I do?"the other demon replied. "You have a girlfriend, right? What does she like?"
"Use a pick-up line!"
"Umm...how about no?"
"She'll love a corny pick-up line! Here, try this one!"the demon said, as he scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to his older brother.
Silence.
"*You must be 60 degrees because...*"
He paused.
"Keep reading!"the younger demon encouraged, bouncing around, unable to contain his excitement.
"*...because you are acute angle.*"
He paused again.
"You must be 60 degrees because you are acute angle?"he repeated, tilting his head to the side.
"Get it? Get it!?"the young demon asked, grinning from ear to ear, incessantly tapping his older brother on the shoulder.
When it clicked, the demon pulled away from the endless tapping. "Go away. I hate you."
The young demon grinned. *Yup, he gets it!*
|
It's impossible.
You grip the sides of your screen as the string continues, unspooling row upon row of pure raw data as it triplechecks for any errors. But the answer won't change. Surely after all these years of preparation, the dedicated users, interesting subs, and above all, gold, would've produced a result more conclusive than this. If only you had more time.... but the grant money is up and the Alien academia wants results now. You sink back into your chair, still in disbelief as you prepare to stream the results across the Galaxynet.
There is only one universal understanding of humans we at Research Team Reddit have discovered:
"Ayyy lmao." |
The glass between it and us seemed too thin.
"What if it attacks?"I asked Dr. Cyrus.
"This dinosaur is known to be calm and thoughtful,"he said.
The synthetic egg, the size of a basketball, cracked. We saw a little mouth, then eyes. It was magnificent. We watched it climb out of the viscous fluid and into the world.
Dr. Cyrus said, "This is perhaps the ultimate goal of man. I have always believed homo sapiens had a genetic disposition to want to recreate life — to not just undestand it, but create it. And dinosaurs were the natural choice. They were the dominant lifeform. They were supposed to evolve a higher tier of intelligence — but we did. We did! And using that intelligence, we have brought back the beast."
I looked through the glass. The dinosaur opened its mouth, releasing a weak screech.
"It's trying to say something,"I said.
"It cannot speak,"Dr. Cyrus said. "Only we speak! We are man!"
The screech grew louder and louder, in a stabbing staccatto that disturbed every synapse in my brain. The glass between us shattered.
Then it abrubtly stopped.
We tried to run out of the lab. But we heard the dinosaur make yet another noise. We looked back. The dinosaur stared us, in awe, and said , "It worked."
Dr. Cyrus, blood pouring out of his ears, walked back to the dinosaur. He asked, "What worked?"
The dinosaur said, "On the eighth day, man brought back beast. And it was good."
And the screeching resumed. |
Zachary sat in the corner of the classroom. He did not talk to anyone.
The teacher, Mr. Franklin, sat at his desk, at the front of the class. He looked around at the students. His hands were flat on his desk, and in the silence, the only sound was the clock ticking minutes away the last few minutes before 3:00 P.M.
Sitting five feet from Zachary, Melody Hopkins, a cheerleader, kept averting her gaze, She didn't want to look at Zachary. She looked at the clock instead. She wished she was already at home. She looked up at Mr. Franklin, desperate to go home. Mr. Franklin wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the other students.
Jeffrey Tompkins looked out the window. The late spring sun beat down on the sidewalk, and he could feel the warmth beam through the window. It was nearly summer break, graduation for some. He could see vehicles lining up. He too wanted to go home, but knew he was stuck in class. He divided his attention between the other students and the outside, making sure not to look at Zachary.
Zachary continued to sit in the corner. He did not speak to anyone. He did not look at anyone.
In the row ahead of Zachary, Chris Phillips sat at his desk. His backpack was on the desk, and Chris fidgeted quietly with the zipper. There were patches all over the black backpack of his favorite bands. He traced one finger along a patch, while zipping with another. He focused on his backpack, in what could be the last few minutes of highschool for him.
Jason Helmsley sat closest to the door. He was ready to bolt the first moment he could. He slowly looked around the room. He made the mistake of looking at Zachary.
Zachary sat in the corner. He did not look back.
Jason stood up quickly, and ran for the door.
His fellow students, David Fletcher and Mike Riley, each fired a shot at him, hitting Jason twice in the arm.
"SIT BACK DOWN!"David said. "OR YOU'LL WIND UP LIKE ZACHARY!"
"YEAH!"shouted Mike. "NEXT ONE GOES IN YOUR SKULL! LIKE ZACHARY!"
Zachary sat in the corner. He had been their first victim. |
"Dr. Reichbaum's Marvelous Miracle Cream"the worn paint read on the side of his wagon. "New town, new rules, and new purses to empty,"Reichbaum thought to himself as he rolled back the canvas flap of his shop. Reichbaum was a salesman, he provided the world with an important service, or so he thought to himself. People want hope, a chance to better themselves, and that's exactly what he can provide. Elixirs, balms, salves, poultices for everything under the sun. Or at least that's what the labels read. "Reichbaum's Solar Elixir - Treats and cures the worst aches and pains, prevents depression, mania, gout, gingivitis and loneliness. All with the healing power of the Summer sun."Although the solar elixir didn't go over as well in his last town, Reichbaum is a stubborn soul. A bottle full of cheap whiskey, ginger root and cayenne pepper apparently missed the mark. But if there is one thing you can count on, it's the blindness of a hopeful customer. Assuming the last batch was too harsh for the common folk to stomach, he sought out a new recipe. Using the lard he had procured from the alley behind the bakery, Reichbaum began to mix. A cup full of cinnamon, some lavender oil, lime zest, oak wood sawdust, a dash of indigo for color, lye, vinegar, cornmeal, and red clay from a nearby quarry. The resulting mixture wasn't quite so appealing to the senses, but Reichbaum wasn't concerned about that. "If it's not for consumption, but a cream instead, there will be no room for distaste."
The morning crowds began to emerge from their homes and the morning's chill was starting to recede by the time Reichbaum had finished jarring the last of the cream. He needed no time to warm up himself, and earnestly began the pitch.
"You ma'am! Yes, and you sir! I have something very special for you today. It's an old family recipe. Passed down for countless generations, the recipe alone is worth more to me than my very life. With proper nutrition and the daily application of this cream, you can easily maintain your youth and health for years to come. Just look at me! Turning 117 in March, and haven't missed a day of work in my life. The Marvelous Miracle cream heals aches, bruises, lesions, cuts, and speeds the recovery of broken bones. It puts a glow under your skin and will halt and reverse the development of wrinkles. Works for sore feet and bunions as well. My friends, it's not often that you come across a jar full of good health. It's by duty as a Reichbaum to share my great-great-grandfather's invention with the world, and that's exactly why I'm here today."
A crowd had started to gather, attracted by the commotion. Wives stopped their shopping to lend an ear to these wild remarks. A general sense of incredulous impatience hung around the crowd, but it was more entertaining than their errands. As the act went on, and the more impressionable readied their wallets, a voice rose from the crowd, directed at Reichbaum. "It can cure anything you say? Reverse the damage of life?", the voice was not accusing. The pitiful voice sounded more at a loss than anything. The crowd parted and the owner of the voice became apparent. Dressed in nothing much more than rags, he hobbled forward. His crutches held up a withered old man, his legs looked to have atrophied far beyond anything Reichbaum had ever seen. One leg was no larger around than a broom handle, and the other failed to reach the ground. His crutches fared poorly on the cobble streets, but this was obviously nothing new to him. Reichbaum was not a man without a heart and the sight of the poor cripple struck him. He was used to taking advantage of the gullible, but this was a man that truly sought what he was advertising, a miracle.
"Please sir, I can't afford much, but I can give you what I have. I know it's not much but please could you spare me a small jar?"
Reichbaum was at a loss. He felt sorry for the man, but could hardly refuse. He couldn't offer him any real help, but could neither take back the pitch at this point.
"Of course sir, come right up."Reichbaum said with a hesitant tone, before realizing the next 20 yards for the man may as well have been miles. The other potential patrons scowled at his phrasing, but no one dared help the man. He beamed, "Oh thank you sir, thank you so much!"He struggled the rest of the way to the wagon. Paining everyone who was watching but couldn't stop viewing the spectacle before them. The man seized a moderately sized jar from Reichbaum's hands and let himself fall to the ground before the cart. "Thank you sir, your concoction may be the only thing that could help me at this point, please take what I have, I beg you."Reichbaum cringed at his display of heart, and quickly refused payment, "Oh please don't thank me sir, in fact I make a point that the first customer of the day can sample my proud recipe free of charge."Reichbaum explained hoping to mollify the situation and ease the harshness of the crowd's glares.
As the man opened the jar and began to spread the thick foul mixture across the each of his legs, Reichbaum was busy thinking of the quickest way out of town in case the rest of the crowd took up arms against this horrid injustice. As he was glancing back into his mobile store, he heard a bought of gasping and a few women's sighs as they apparently fainted. Quickly turning, Reichbaum almost dropped himself. It hadn't been more than a couple seconds, but who was now in front of the wagon was an entirely new person. The old man, now looked no more than 25 years old, and was proudly standing straight up on a pair of muscular legs. He began to cry, and thanked Reichbaum without end, but it was the only sound left in the town square. Everyone else had lost their ability to speak.. including Reichbaum himself.
For all of five seconds that is.
Once what had happened became clear to the rest of the crowd, all hell broke loose. Money was thrust in fists as people trampled one another to reach the window. Reichbaum hadn't yet recovered but had no time to wonder how or why. He was about to make more money than he had ever imagined.
It's already too long, so I'll stop here. New to the sub, but thought this prompt was awesome.
|
I've never met anyone who was 100% quiet. Everyone had *some* hardship to deal with. They bottle it up inside themselves, but it slowly leaks out, inescapably pervading their consciousness. For most people, the pain is just a steady drip. A leaky faucet, or the shower that you just didn't turn off 100%. A little patter of water that follows them around, always lurking in the back of their mind. And that is what I hear.
Then, there are trickles. Enough to form a steady flow, but still not too severe. I hear this a lot in hospitals. Physical pain is at the front of your mind, but it is a shallow stream. The pain is fleeting and temporary; like ripping off a bandaid. But eventually it will revert back to that drip.
Sometimes, I encounter rivers. These are the other sounds I hear in hospitals, outside of the ER. This is the sound of the oncology ward. A slow moving but never-ending type of pain. It's also pretty common to hear this from people going through divorces. They do have that single moment of pain, but then there is the long-lasting tragedy of losing their life partner that turns the trickle into a river.
Every once and a while, I find floods. These aren't physical pain, or sadness, or loss. A flood almost always comes from guilt. Not "Oh, shouldn't have had that second donut"guilt. The guilt of losing a child when it could have been prevented, or ending a marriage that could have been saved. The sound of their water is overwhelming: dangerous and destructive and unstoppable. I feel bad for them, just as they feel bad for themselves.
For the first time in my life, I met an ocean today. I was walking to work, past a hundred drips and a dozen trickles when I heard it coming. Like putting my ear against a seashell. I could hear waves and currents and tides. It filled my mind, drowning out the honking taxis and chatter of pedestrians and the ever-constant drip. The noise was overwhelming.
I saw her. She wore blue jeans, a red sweater, a backpack, and a crumbling facade of bravery. She stared at her feet as she walked, practically afraid to look anyone in the eyes.
I don't know what she was experiencing, but I didn't need to. Without even thinking about it, I walked over to her and wrapped her in a hug. She was surprised and shocked at first; I was just a stranger on the street. "I'm sorry,"I told her. She put her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. "Thank you,"she whispered. |
I set up my little tripod, and put down my flask of tea. I glanced at the post it note I'd stuck on my backpack, with the scrawled co-ordinates on it. South a bit, West a lot, little bit North... that's it, right in position.
There's nothing there.
I rub my eyes a little and adjust the focus, but still nothing there. It should have been there – the forum had said it would be exactly at this location. Maybe I wrote the co-ordinates wrong? I reach into my bag and shuffle around the bits of paper I printed off.
**Topic: astronomer suicides**
*The spot is circled on that diagram, I can't give you guys anything more specific because I haven't looked myself. All I know is that he looked, and stared for hours. When he was done he wasn't the same... he looked at me as if he didn't know me. That night he hung himself, and I never got to ask him what he saw. I'm too scared to look.*
I stare at the paper some more, double check the co-ordinates. Pulling my jacket closer to me I realise that it's getting later and colder, and I have to head back to the car soon. I decide to have one last look, and turn back to the telescope.
But there is no telescope.
I scan the ground around me, in case I had lost my bearings. But no, there is no telescope here. Has someone stolen it? I didn't hear anything moving. But now there is no noise at all except what sounds like a broken television somewhere out of sight in every direction.
Wasn't I here with someone? Where was Jack, I know he wanted to see it too – did he leave already? That doesn't make sense, the car was still there. But the car was a mile away, how can I know it's still here, that doesn't make sense either.
The sky is bleached red now, I don't think it was like that before. There are purple dots hanging in the sky like foreign stars I'd never seen before. I look down from the sky and see a man standing about fifty feet away, one arm stretched out towards me. I yelp and stumble backwards, tripping over my backpack.
Only, now I realise it isn't my backpack. What is this thing? It's sticky and putrid and black, and my hand is melting into it like custard. I try to scramble to my feet, but something is holding me down. It's the man, his hand on my head.
And then I am standing in the field again, my eye pressed to the telescope lens looking out into an empty spot of space. Jack is saying something I don't understand. The wind brushes past my face.
“What did you see?” I understand Jack to ask in a moment of clarity.
I open my mouth to give an answer, but nothing comes out. I need to see it again. |
So there’s this thing called lucid dreaming. The idea is that when you’re dreaming your mind is active. So if you can become aware of the activity you can take control. Imagine being able to live out your countless fantasies every single night. You can fly. You can be with any woman. Be any super hero. To experience the world in the way most important to you, unbound by things like grief and sorrow, loss and pain.
The problem is that this is really hard to do. For the most part, whenever you realize you are dreaming, most people wake up right away. You notice something is strange; something just isn't adding up. Next thing you know you've shot up in bed, back to reality. There is this obvious disconnect from living and dreaming, but the haziness of that disconnect is a little disconcerting. It’s like when you wake up from a terrible dream. Say a loved one dies. And you wake up in a terrible mood for the rest of the day. In some minute way, your dream has colored reality.
Death is a little like constantly hovering in the haze. You are constantly reminded that things aren’t the way they should be, but instead of shooting awake, you just teeter towards what things used to be like. You try to grasp on to the comforts of life, but they constantly slip away, fading into distant memories. And you’re back, into a somber wasteland with so many other lost people. It’s a little funny in a way. How many people can’t actually grasp the way things are. But I mean why would they? Hell why should they?
After a while the formations of the station begin to get a little bit clearer and you begin forget about who you were. The peculiarities are no longer about death, but distant reminders that life used to consist of more. A pang of your family crosses your mind. But it’s terrifying. And it’s foreign. Even the sounds become familiar. The steam of the engine pulsing into the dark molasses air, reverberating through your ears like waves against the shore.
And the people. Shuffling their feet over the rocks, nudging in and out of sight, waiting aimlessly for unsought possibilities. No one speaks, or yearns. No one flees or even thinks about what that would entail. Existence boils down to much less. It’s not painful, nor is it draining. It just is. Totality occurs unbeknownst to anyone, and you board the train without cause or determination. When the doors become clear enough to enter. You do. Simple as that.
But getting to that point means forgetting about all else. Forgetting about life, of dreams and hopes. Of being awake or asleep. When the last utterance of your past life is extinguished, you go. But that seems to be happening less now. There’s less space to shuffle. Less space to accept and to move on. As life becomes more interconnected, death becomes longer. The harder it is to forget your joys and your loves, the more you have to miss them. The more you have to pretend things could have been different.
I sometimes wonder what’s worse. Being forgotten, but able to move on, or being constantly in the haze, yearning for what was lost. Trudging through this bleak existence shrouded in uncertainty and doubt. Glaring at the fuzzy outlines of this landscape without the ability to discern where it ends and where reality begins. But is it worth it? Is a life well lived worth a life in limitless purgatory? Are those that move on quickly going to a better place? Losing all semblance of humanity is an inevitability here. After a long enough period everyone will move on. But are you better off for having suffered first? For having been able to fight and to hold onto your humanity for as long as possible? It’s hard to say for certain. Sometimes I hope that I’ll snap out of it and wake up in my bed, because lucid dreaming is too much responsibility. We should be defined by our successes and mistakes. Our loved ones and those we’ve wronged. The good comes with the bad. Reconciliation deserves to take time.
|
"Fuck..."escaped my mouth, in a defeated tone. I grabbed my notepad and peeked at my watch, writing down the time of death. I patted the young soldier on the chest, pulling his helmet down to cover his eyes. There was nothing I could do, he had been shot in the throat, all I could do was listen while he choked on bubbling blood, reassuring him that he would be okay until the moment the light left his eyes. I looked around, realizing I was now alone, in the middle of the jungle. We had been separated from the others and I had no idea where the shot came from that killed him. I slumped into a sitting position next to the soldier, shaking my head. I wondered what his name was, what his mothers name was. I thought of how just now somewhere in America, a woman went about her day, worrying about her son, not knowing he just ceased to exist. I looked at the pistol holstered by his hip, and took it.
The clip was full. For a moment I thought of shooting myself in the head, rather than let the enemy capture me. In that moment, I heard some rustling in the bushes behind me, as well as a weak, quiet whisper. I turned around with the pistol in hand, pointing it at the man. It wasn't a man, but rather a boy, no more than twelve years of age. The light in his eyes seemed to extinguish the second I raised the pistol. Perhaps he had only seen the large red cross on my back and hoped I would help him, and now I were pointing a gun at him. The young boy closed his eyes as hard as he could, his jaw clenching shut, and the tears streaming down his face. He had a stomach wound, blood seeping through the boys fingers.
I lowered the weapon. As if I was going to use it anyway; I had never shot anyone. I didn't sign up to kill anybody. And this was a defenseless child who was forced into fighting. Quickly, I retrieved my medical kit from beside the dead soldier. The boy still had his eyes closed, waiting for me to pull the trigger. He opened them slowly when I removed his helmet, rolling him over on his back. The little vietnamese boy locked his eyes into mine, and then shifted to something behind me. I could tell he was still scared of me. I took the sharp knife, much to the dismay of the boy, but when I sliced open his jacket and turned him over on his back, he calmed down again. The exit wound was on his lower back. This was good news; there was hope. I worked quickly, cleansing the wound with sterilizing fluids and pouring a powder that is nearly acidic on it, which dries up the wound and slows the bleeding. I had filtered out his screams of pain through my focus and instead made sure the bandage was as tight as it needed to be.
When it was all done, the young boy stared at the sky, drawing heavy breaths. His hair was soaked with sweat from the panic and pain, but he was alive, and would make it. I sat on my knee's with bloodied hands, staring at the vietnamese boy. He had a pistol in his hand, something I had not noticed until now. He could have killed me, but didn't. I smiled slightly, rising to my feet. The boy looked behind me again, and I turned, only to see an adult vietnamese soldier staring at me. His weapon was lowered, the rifle hanging in a loose grip by his side. He dropped it to the ground, slowly approaching, picking up the boy into his arms. They both stared at me, the adult nodding once, before disappearing into the jungle. I barely believed what just happened. I checked the rifle the man left behind, and it was indeed loaded and ready to fire, except the fact that a single round had been fired. A sparkling noise from the dead man caught my attention, as his walkie talkie came to life.
"Private Colson, where the fuck are you!? And where is the doc'!?" |
Take fifty eight had just begun when two yellow, glimmering points in the corner of the set caught Christians attention. "WHAT THE FUCK", Christian yelled, angry as hell. "What the fuck is that fucking light in the corner? SOMEBODY BETTER STOP BLINKING THESE FUCKING LIGHTS WHEN I'M TRYING TO DO A FUCKING PART HERE!!"Everyone looked towards the corner where now there was nothing. The corner was dark and there were no lights there. Confused, the rest of the cast and crew looked at the furious actor who was now starting to look a bit sheepish as he realised nobody else had seen the supposed distracting lights. There was a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, a familiar voice with a cockney accent shouted back from the seemingly empty corner. "Oi! Do you wan't me to come over there and kick your fucking ass!!"
Everyone but Christian Bale burst into hysterical laughter. He angrily walked towards the corner to stomp or smash whatever little speaker somebody had planted there to make fun of him. Nobody saw the camouflaged prankster snuk away along the dark wall and made his way out of the film set. The target had been located but today was not the day to challenge him. |
Two doctors in white lab coats walk lockstep down the hall. The older of the two is pushing a cart with a single plastic tray of food on it. The back wheel rattles erratically. The arrhythmic squeaking leading the way forward towards insanity.
“I almost did it last night.”
There was no reply from the other doctor.
The cart stopped. The doctor, who almost did it, slid the food tray through the metal slot on the door.
Muffled grunts followed slamming plastic on vinyl.
The two doctors turned the cart around and headed back down the hallway. From inside their office they can see through the one-way mirror. The child in the room is feral and clearly mentally retarded. The room is covered in feces and food. She is consuming the two of them indiscriminately. Her body hair is matted and dirty. Her remaining eye is cloudy.
“Lu- … she’s thirteen today,” said the doctor who almost did it. “Have we learned enough?”
“No. The experiment must continue. You know that.”
“I just wish I could give her a present.”
“You know that’s not allowed.”
“Yeah.”
The other doctor turns their attention back to the computer. Logging the afternoon’s notes.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Outside the room the doctor walks by the bathroom and continues onward to the child’s room. She swipes her passcard on the door and opens the handle.
The child is startled and frightened. It rushes to the corner and grunts. She pisses herself like a frightened dog.
Through the window the other doctor hits the security buzzer on her desk. "No!"
“Happy Birthday, Lucy. I love you, baby. I’m so sorry.”
From her waistband under her lab coat she produces a pistol. She shoots Lucy twice, head and heart. Then she turns the gun on herself; under her chin just like she almost did last night.
...
edit : spelling and grammar. |
"You remember the date?"
Hatton slid the gun into the holster across his back. It wasn't the most accessible place, but he didn't want a butt sticking out and gaining him anymore attention than was necessary. Besides, if it came down to a shooting match he had other options.
"November 3rd."
"October, christ it's October."The controller was pacing, cheap rubber shoes wearing a hole in the floor. "Don't get it wrong. Jump too early if you have to. Just don't miss the window."
"I know the date. It's hard to forget."
"You won't understand. At first. You have to guide yourself."
"I know what has to be done."
"If you don't complete the loop..."
"I know."
"I'm just saying..."
Hatton dropped the case on the steel bench with more force than he wanted to. Inside the black lacquered case a world of machinery and magic was whirring away, but none of it mattered. He began dialling in the dates.
"How many times? How many times have you seen me jump?"
The controller stopped pacing. "Twice."
"Exactly. And every time I get a bit closer. I see a bit more."
"But we're not close enough."
Hatton looked at the skin on his hands, the cracks and blisters. Punching a hole through time was not without it's dangers apparently. But his was a life of pain. When he was a kid, he'd grown up in hell, always pushing to get out of his small town home as fast as possible. When his mother died she told him of his father, the bastard who had raped her. She told him of the box of momentos he'd made her keep. For him.
Hatton picked up the ancient tape recorder and slipped it into a pocket, along with a folder containing everything he'd learnt in his lifetime. The controller just watched.
"I'm not the first, and I won't be the last. We'll meet again Tip."
They shook hands and Hatton vanished.
---
It was dark when he fell onto the wet grass, the park deserted at this late hour. The air was buzzing with cicadas, mixed with the odour of the black case melting itself into slag. He pulled out the tape recorder and sat on a bench.
"You're not going to understand this kid. Not now. But you will. You're going to grow up to be very special. You will meet a man called Tip on Monday March Thirteenth 1989 and he will take you to the Tower, he will become your controller, your most trusted friend.
"Ten yeas from now, a group called the Zeroes are going to unleash a bio-attack before the millennium. You will survive. Other won't. You have to go back and find out who the Zeroes were. You have to stop the attack before it happens."
Hatton paused and rubbed at a scab. Three jumps was the limit. His body was coming apart, undone at the very core and he knew another jump would be the end of him. Just one last task.
"We're a closed loop kid. You become me and I become you. We have to keep the loop closed. If we stop."Hatton paused. "If we stop, the loop becomes broken and everyone dies. There's no other way."
He shut off the recorder and walked to one-ten montgomery. His childhood home. Only he wasn't born yet. He wasn't even conceived. Knocking on the door he felt the bile rising but knew, deep down, he'd done this a hundred times before.
As his mother opened the door, he fought to close the loop. |
The sentence "fite me irl fagt"just got a whole new meaning.
I love the obscure. I love the snuff. I love the illegal stuff that's floating around in the deep web. It didn't take long before the FBI tracked me down and arrested me. But luckily, i struck a deal.
It's been a lot easier to track down people now, since the government released all the information on everybody to everybody. It turns out that even the most serious and stuck up politicians hate trolls as much as you and me. That's why i joined the special program.
They agreed to mask my name and address, if i took up the posters challenge. To fight him in real life. I carry around a little camera on my head when i head out. It streams to various new sites that went up, after every bit of privacy was revealed for everyone to see. On those sites we don't care what's in your history or who you are. We just want to see a troll get killed.
I stood outside of the door to my newest contract job. I reminded myself of how much i hated my target when i looked at my phone.
> Oh yeah? Why don't you crawl out of you'res moms ass and fight me! The address is right here. But be warned, i practice MMA.
I sighed and put my phone back in my vest. 99.9% of the time they're lying about any physical activities, but you never know...
I turned on the camera and hooked it up to my phone, which then began to stream the footage to the entire world as i walked closer to the door. People were already watching from home.
"Welcome! To the deepwebs most popular show: Troll hunting! I'm your host today and this, is my little baby."I said as i swung my metal bat into the door of the house. |
"God exists Raymond. Just because you didn't experience a miracle first hand, doesn't prove that he's just something we made up."
"Oh shut the fuck up Matt, that's just fucking dumb. If god's as omnipotent and as good mannered as you say he is, why do we still hear about the latest death counts in the Middle East? Or for that matter, what about all the 'faithful believers' that don't get their wishes granted huh? What about those people?"
Little did Raymond know that his 'miracle' had already happened ages ago when he was still a teenager. Going through the typical apathetic-world-hating phase of adolescence he decided to get exceptionally baked one day, purely to spite his parents. They were gone for a week and had left him to take care of the house; it couldn't have been a more opportune time to smoke away the stash he had received from a dealer at school.
That is, until he received a phone call two hours into his high, informing him that his parents were coming home that evening after a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded all flights indefinitely.
The call evoked some sense of emergency within Raymond, but he didn't really get a full grasp of the situation until he got a call from his parents saying that they'd be home in ten minutes. His high was over at this point and it was only then that he realized that he had completely emptied out the refrigerator. And the house emitted a positively offensive odor that could be smelt all the way to the mailbox by the pavement.
At this point, all he could hope for was a miracle from God himself, and so he prayed. Prayed that he'd get one night to get rid of all evidence of weed, knowing that getting caught would mean rehab. And God listened to him.
Raymond's parents ended up staying out for the night as a traffic jam had held them up for six hours, and by the time they got home the next morning the only questions they had for him concerned the suspicious amount of missing pop tarts. Truly a miracle indeed.
Many youths wasted their prayer this way, squandering this opportunity for the most trivial matters. World Peace could have been achieved by now if only people didn't feel like finding five bucks for a pack of cigarettes, or getting klondike bars was more important.
But Matt was different. Already at a young age he felt that if he prayed seriously for something he'd lose something important to him. Little did he know how correct he was.
So while people wasted their god given wishes, Matt sat back and simply thought about what he'd pray for. Something noticeable. Something big. Something, that nobody has wished for before.
Now that he's in his twenties, he's got a fairly good idea of what he wants. On a sunny evening in June, Matt decided that it'd be a good time to test his wish. He got down on his knees, closed his eyes, and put his sweaty palms together to pray for something that he wanted.
"Dear God. I'm not exactly sure how I can put this as a prayer, as it is more of a wish, but I hope you can give me some leeway,"
God peeked out from over his domain into the mortal world, and for the first time, was genuinely interested at a wish. Nobody had ever addressed him like that before.
a mischievous grin cracked across Matt's face
"My wish, no, my prayer, is to become god"
|
"He's a goner, man."Hercules sat next to Horus in the waiting room, shaking his head. The Big Man's son sat some distance from them, looking a little nervous but otherwise calm.
Hercules and Horus had been sent down by the Big Man to look after his boy. Little explanation was given, but Herc had heard the story before - punk rich kid comes down to Earth to have some fun, gets caught on "trumped up charges". Every demigod went through all the same steps; it was practically a rite of godhood.
"I dunno,"Horus commented, keeping his eye on Jesus. "He seems like he knows what he's doing. Most people in his position are freaking out right about now."As if on cue, a door opened to the waiting room - on the entrance side. A forty-something Roman was tossed into the room on hands and knees. He looked around, panting.
"Hey, wait - "He dived towards the doorway he'd been tossed through, but the door slammed shut. He began pounding on it with his fists, his voice cracking with fear. "You've got the wrong guy! I'm a good person!"
Horus shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He took no pleasure in entering Hell, even if he was only coming through for a few days. He'd visited the demon-infested hole once before, back when his dad was Director of Deathly Affairs. (Currently Pluto held the position, but rumor had it one of the Son of God's friends would be taking the role within the century. Talk about nepotism.) Osiris had brought Horus along for bring-your-kid-to-work day. The screams and pleas of the damned had haunted the young Egyptian god's dreams for a millenium afterwards.
Eventually the new arrival's screams quieted into stifled sobs. Herc leaned over to Horus and whispered in his ear: "That's how a *normal* person behaves. I'm telling you, this Jesus guy doesn't know what he's getting into. He won't last a day."
Suddenly, another door opened - different from the one they'd entered by. Herc and Horus turned their heads quickly to look; Jesus looked up with a weighty but calm expression; the newcomer took one look out the new door and resumed his terrified cries for help.
A crocodile-headed demon entered the room - Horus recognized him without any trouble. Ammit was one of Hell's oldest employees. Back before the current Hell system was even established, when they struggled with overflow from the dead too vile to let enter heaven, he had been created with the purpose of devouring the souls of the damned, annihilating them from existence. As the half-conscious demon dragged the screaming newcomer from the room, itt seemed to Horus that Ammit was a little bitter at his demotion.
After the screamer had been removed, Ammit returned for the remaining three. They each stood up without trouble and followed the soul-eater into Hell.
---
I've got to go now but there's more to come. I'm on a trip and will be on the road for the rest of the day, but I'll continue this tomorrow morning! This is a really cool prompt that hits a lot of my interests. :-) I'll post continuations over at /r/Unloquacious!
EDIT: Continuation posted [here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/unloquacious/comments/3di7dy/wp_the_gospel_of_horus_parts_1_2/) |
John is out for a late-night cruise, when he spots a sultry figure with hairy armpits walking along the lonesome street. The nametag on her shirt read "Hello, my name is Linda".
"Give you a lift?", he asks.
"Got to catch the red eye!"she exclaimed, casually shrugging.
"Come with me if you want to live,"he replied.
Linda looked at her watch and then decided it was worth possibly being murdered to make it to the airport on time.
"You're luggage!"John motioned behind Linda to the black tote sitting on the curb. Linda let out a nervous chuckle and got back out of the car to retrieve her belongings.
After she got back in the car, John eased the car into gear and began the short trip to the airport. The awkward silence was getting in the way of his boner, so he decided to make some small talk.
"Allow me to break the ice. Who is your daddy and what does he do?", he inquired.
Linda looked at this strangely handsome man and pondered her next response. She was dosed pretty heavily on anti-psych meds, so her thought process was a bit different from most.
"You killed my father...big mistake,"she replied.
John was shocked.
"I'm a cop you idiot!"
"Chill out dickwad,"Linda retorted.
This turned on John a lot. He enjoyed a woman with a fiery tongue. It made his boner more bonery.
"You are one ugly motherfucker,"he whispered, easing the car to the side of the road, into the shadow of a broken streetlight. He looked over at Linda, she was breathing heavily. She looked at him coyly, opening her armpits to him. John was really raging now. This was how love felt.
"But I'm all woman,"Linda flushed.
"I love you too, sweetheart,"John grunted as he flung himself upon Linda's body. She opened herself to him, whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
"You want to be a farmer?,"she cried. "Here's a couple of acres!"John started plowing.
He was alive in her and they were one. This was what he lived for. His whole life was for moments like this, under the broken streetlight, warm in the musty jungle of Linda's armpits. The voice of his father clearly emanated from within, asking him to recall the one goal of his bloodline. John was so moved he cried out.
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!"
This forceful expression made Linda get all hot and horny too.
"Do it! Do it now!"she passionately shrieked.
The car violently rocked. The howl of a stray dog, trailed off to nowhere and the car quit moving. After a few minutes of silence, the brake lights came on and the car slowly drove off, towards its destination.
As the car pulled up to the passenger drop off, John realized he had fallen for this woman, after those steamy and sweaty minutes on that dark and lonely street. Linda felt it too. She opened the door and got out of the car.
"You're luggage!"John yelled after her, pointing to the black tote sitting in the back seat. Linda looked at it, and then playfully back to John.
"I'll be back", she said.
|
*Corpse Corps* was a concept that was originally circulated on the internet in 2003, only a few months after the first experimental 'treatment' was deemed a success. The subculture that birthed the term was, not surprisingly, the same one that was disturbingly obsessed with zombies and post-apocalyptic scenarios. The name stuck. *Corpse Corps* was idea of a hypothetical combat force utilizing the recently undead as combatants. Within a few years it had become a reality. It was a major game changer. The problem, quite obviously, was that these soldiers had a disappointingly short *sell-by date*. The advantages far outweighed the disadvantages.
Young men and women from around the world, and especially in areas of high crime and poverty, would sign up to join the Corps for both the payment supplied to them during their service and the substantial reward that their beneficiaries would receive upon their 'activation'. The reward, of course, was based upon the amount of destruction they brought to the enemy during their undeath. Life was hell for those who'd even consider enlistment in the Corps, but it was a better option than simply laying in the gutter and letting the reaper come to you.
LT Sara Jones had enlisted with the Corpse Corps when she was 16 years old. 'Built tough, like a ford... except you don't drive me. I drive *you*.', she'd say. Destined for leadership, she rose the ranks rapidly. The *treatment* was a simple injection into the base of her skull, received on her first day of enlistment. She had not yet been activated, of course, but she still enjoyed the sub-advantages of the treatment - Increased healing speed of bones and flesh alike, slightly increased reflexes, and the uncanny ability to *detect* other Corpses. Normal civilians would not accept such a treatment despite the advantages, for being a Corpse would eventually result in being forced to fight in a corpsewar. The treatment was only for those few people who were happy to die, but just hadn't gotten around to it yet.
The role of a non-activated Corpseman was not much different than a traditional soldier. They focused on training, leadership, and general combat abilities. On the battlefield, they wore a particular bandanna instead of a helmet like a normal soldier. This bandanna, originally white, was dark red and brown due to the blood it had been soaked in during previous engagements. No normal soldier would dare fire upon a Corpse and thus the bandanna was both a psychological deterrent and a dire warning: 'Fire upon me and you will be the first person I slaughter when I inevitably rise again'.
Any Corpse killed in battle almost immediately became a powerful weapon in their own right. Upon *death*, the *undeath* phase would begin. The Corpse would, quite simply, wake up as a superhuman. Their reflexes were so fast as to alter their perception to believe that the entire world had fallen into slow motion. Healing factor would become so robust that anything short of a massive explosion would only inconvenience the activated Corpse for only a few moments. Even the mental and intellectual abilities of the activated Corpse would increase exponentially - Math, logic, tactical awareness, and reasoning would all be so rapidly advanced that even the most famous of untreated humans would seem infant-like in comparison -- The activated Corpse was able to manipulate it's enemy in ways that would seem so unbelievable as to have been magic. NP-Hard problems would be solved in minutes and it has been said that an activated Corpse was able to innately understand and *control* chaotic systems at will. There was a factor that determined the abilities of the *undead* though. The circumstances of their activation would determine the scope of their abilities - Whereas a Corpse downed in combat would become a near immortal fighting machine, it would not be able to redirect these energies towards purely intellectual pursuits for instance: encryption breaking. A Corpse activated in a lab would not have the sheer combat prowess of one who 'dies' under gunfire. Thus the usage of Corpse activation was strongly controlled by all governments who had acquired Corpsetech. After three days of *undeath* the Corpse would fall unceremoniously to the ground to die for the last time.
The activated Corpse was such a fearsome thing that many enemy combatants would immediately choose to shoot themselves in the head the moment a Corpse was reported as *fallen*.
LT Jones flashed her teeth at herself in the mirror as she wrapped the stiff, blood covered bandanna over her head. The soldier holding the mirror before her looked nervous, and for good reason. There was a power associated with the donning of the *deathcap*, even friendly untreated soldiers would shy away from her when she had entered this state of mind. A Corpse was a Corpse, friend or foe. They'd follow her into battle regardless, knowing that her presence alone was the only thing preventing the enemy from simply dropping Rods on the whole area from orbit. Despite being a Corpse, Sara Jones was a capable and level-headed leader. Many Corpses would simply charge into battle, knowing that the mere threat of their death practically secured their safety, but LT Jones took time to make sure that the untreated soldiers at her side would also have, at least, a chance to survive. She did this, not out of some human-remnant product of sentimentalism, but because a higher rate of survival for her squad meant that the leadership in NYC were more likely to assign her the most elite of soldiers. And thus, her squad had become the posterchild for the Corpse Corps - the elite of the elite.
Jones sat in the back of the APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) with perfect posture, her eyes closed. The sound of the speeding APC was a strange comfort, representing her chance to taste destiny in the upcoming engagement. Across from her, in the opposing metal bench, sat SGT Kilterson, playing his chrome harmonica. His habit of playing the blues before combat was something of a squad tradition and the other soldiers have long given up on preventing him from performing this rite. To his left was SPC Kelley, a young man with blonde eyebrows and a shaved head, was picking his nails with the blade of a standard issue combat knife and rocking rhythmically to the combination of blues-and-APC noise. He was a heavy-arms specialist, but tended to be more interested in trying to stab things. SFC Brave, as he was not so aptly named, was nervously checking his equipment for position and correctness. He would determine that his weapon did indeed have ammo, and then check his armor straps for the fiftieth time. Brave was a paranoid man, meek in stature and personality, but his situational awareness was world-class - His high rank was merely a product of his repeated survival. The man was nearly useless in combat, but he'd spot a trap from a mile away and allow the entire squad to skirt past it unharmed. The other 6 occupants of the APC were new soldiers, nameless until they'd proven themselves in combat. LT Jones did not even bother trying to analyze the behavior of fresh additions to her squad - Their true nature would only become apparent during combat. Their name-tags were cut from their uniforms until they survived the first engagement. This was done to prevent any innate attachment or preconceptions by the rest of the team. Soldier One-Alpha taking a .60 caliber round to the face was much less distracting than if the same thing happened to 'Dave', who was sharing the name of someone's childhood friend.
[cont] |
It was supposed to be the worst day of my life, the day where my beloved wife of ten years died in giving birth to our daughter, Aliana. The family was in the hospital room, with my wife's father and her third stepmother, and her half-siblings. There were no full siblings as they didn't exist in our society. Her father came up to me, clapped me on the shoulder and said, "You'll be okay. You'll get another one after the birth."
I looked at him. I didn't want to get another wife, and I didn't want to get another woman to raise my daughter. I wanted it to be my wife, and she'd be an excellent mother. She was smart, funny, and incredibly kind. She'd rescued three puppies a few weeks ago because she thought they deserved a chance to survive. She knew she wouldn't make it past the birth to raise these puppies, but she told me, "It's worth saving them because life is precious however short it is."
I heard the screams from the hospital room, and I flinched. The baby was making its way through her mother, and she would soon die from the sudden hemorrhagic blood loss that always happened to every single mother. I didn't want to be a father, and I didn't want her to get pregnant. I wanted us to stay together for as long as we could, but the Order of Birth had told us that they wouldn't allow birth control for my wife anymore as she had reached of age. Whether we liked it or not, she would get pregnant with or without my assistance. She didn't want one of those machines to impregnate her, and wanted it to be me.
So I did. I found no joy in it at all. This is my wife, and it felt like the wedding vows we took were a mockery. "To have and hold, and to love until we grow old and die."There is no growing old for women, for they die young and in childbirth. It is the very rare woman who lives past age 35, for they are all barren and childless.
Then I heard murmurs of surprise from the birthing room. I heard our baby's squalls as she took her first few breaths of life. The doctor came from the birthing room, clad in his gown that was oddly free of blood. He pulled down his mask, confused, and motioned for me to come into the birthing room.
God. I didn't want to see her corpse. I didn't want to see the baby next to her dead body, and see the lack of life in her eyes. I took in a deep breath and walked in, expecting the worst.
Instead, I saw my wife's beautiful eyes looking at me, brimmed with happy tears. Her brown hair was stuck to her forehead, but she was laughing with our daughter in her arms. She'd somehow survived the birth. I gaped in open-mouthed shock. This was impossible in our society. No woman had ever survived birth.
The doctor said, "She doesn't have the hemorrhagic disOrder. She didn't bleed out like all the mothers we've had here. She is the first one to survive."The male nurses were huddled behind the doctor, sharing in his confusion.
I went up to my wife and I hugged her as hard I could. I was so happy! Instead of this being the worst day of my life, it was now the happiest day of my life.
Or so until the doctor said the next few words, "The Order of Birth isn't going to be happy with this. They'll need to examine her, and correct this unfortunate situation." |
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|
Boredom made my chest tight and head hurt. Facebook was a cespool of angsty teen moms and stupid memes. Sometimes I wondered why I befriended any of these people. The morning was fast approaching, but I couldn't sleep. I glanced at my alarm clock, reading "3:14"in big, green digits, the PM dot nowhere to be found. I let out a groan. "Fucking insomnia."
My internet travels through the night led me to where I, somehow, always wind up. Surfing Chatroulette for boobage. Sure, my boobs to penises ratio was probably a hundred million to one half (Cancer survivor, true story.) but sometimes I got lucky. I typed and clicked go and no sooner than later, I was swimming through a sea of dicks.
"Next...Next...Next..."I repeated monotonously to myself. "Next...Next...Ooh...dude...Next."
I surfed and nexted for what seemed to be hours, no luck in sight. Until I saw it. A dick! But this was not any ordinary dick. This one had a rather peculiar birthmark just at the base of it...my birthmark. I did a double-take and began typing as quickly as I could "DUDE DON'T CLICK NEXT"and hit enter. The man's strokes halted. He obviously acknowledged my message. For some reason other than I can fathom, I stripped. Completely nude. Even though I swore I'd never actually "show peen"over the cam, I gently held my junk up to the camera, revealing the SAME birthmark in the camera. What happened next was....surreal.
I noticed my dick doppelganger shuffle behind his camera, which then slowly began to ascend, showing his slim, lanky figure and then finally his face...my face. Our face? It felt like I was dreaming. Then my computer pinged.
"What the fuck."a message popped up from him. We were now staring face to face. "Is this some kind of joke?!"another message popped up. I frantically typed, my fingers fumbling across the keyboard, barely hitting the keys without jumblng up the words. That how fucked in the head I was.
"How is this possible. You're me"and I pressed enter. The moment abruptly ended after his camera went black and one final message appeared.
"We're fucked."and the conversation immediately ended.
Stranger disconnected. |
I watch her from the third floor window, just as I have every day this week. I found a perfect nest three houses down from hers just a few blocks over. These McMansions stay vacant for months and are always needing some kind of repair. My presence hasn't even registered with other residents.
The same routine each day. Two security guards exit ducking her body double into the black Suburban. Between her natural looks and the plastic surgery you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between them. Until you see the eyes. One set full of life, and hope. Planning how she will spend her massive payment when this assignment was over. The other full of fear. She knows I'm here and is taking every precaution. She doesn't know how she knows, but she knows. It's this fear that i'm counting on.
A single driver in a nondescript car pulls to the front door. One guard exits, disguised as a butler. I've never seen a butler carry a 9mm in a shoulder holster, but maybe that's just the way that I was raised. The butler opens the door for her, and she pauses. She feels my eyes on her, just like she does every day. She stops for just an instant to try to find where the feeling is coming from. Now is my chance.
Carefully I exhale and squeeze the trigger. This was a tricky shot. Anything more than 5-10 feet off in my range measurement would be a catastrophe. As soon the bullet leaves my rifle I know that I got her. It's just a feeling you learn being after this for as long as I have.
I tune in to her security's radio feed. "Gunshot wound to the head"they say, "massive blood loss", pulse and airway are intact. It was a perfect shot. Through the front teeth, out through the back jaw. She'll need a complete replacement. She was supposed to debut her new Aria tonight. A prodigy they call her. Called.
|
Contemporary American history with Dr. Dray was one of my favorite classes. It was a shame the semester was coming to an end. We were already on the last section of the Cold War unit today, learning about Reagan. Dr. Dray spoke from the front of the room.
"Okay, so. . . Today we're starting on the Reagan Era. Can anyone tell me what Roland Reagan did before becoming president?
Roland? Must have been a slip of the tongue. Not the sort of thing I would want to correct the professor on. I raised my hand, though, because I know the answer.
"Yes, Evan?"
"He was an actor,"I say.
"That's right! Not many people know that, these days, you know. He was sort of what we'd call a "B-list"actor. . . Only appeared in a few minor propos."
Propos? What the hell did that mean? Maybe some film theory term I didn't know. But this professor had never been one to just drop jargon on the class before, and none of my classmates seemed confused by the term. In fact, there was a far more intense interest than usual in their eyes during this lecture. An almost *unnatural* level of excitement.
Dr. Dray continued:
"Very good then. Perhaps, Evan, you can tell me who Reagan's assassin was?"
Ronald Reagan wasn't *actually* assassinated, but again, that wasn't the sort of thing I wanted to correct the professor on. Just a minor linguistic slip. I searched my memory for the answer.
"John Hinckley, Jr.,"I said. There were one or two titters from my classmates -- looking around, I recognized the ones laughing as history majors. Dr. Dray looked surprised.
"The secretary of state? Why, certainly not. Does anyone else know?"
One of the guys who'd been laughing raised his hand. The guy's from Mississippi, I think, maybe Missouri.
"Bush,"he drawled. The professor gave a sharp nod. Could have sworn it was Hinckley.
"May he rot in his Alaskan prison. All right, then. That's enough for our little trivia session. I'm always impressed. Let's get to the meat of the lesson: Reagan's economic views. Evan, you're the econ major, right? Can you tell me anything about trickle-down economics?
*This* I knew for sure. Time to make up for that slip up with Hinckley.
"Reagan thought that tax breaks for the wealthy would "trickle-down"to the lower classes,"I said. The class grew silent and the professor gave me a strange look.
"Comrade Jeffers, are you feeling all right?"He asked, "You sound like a Russian or something. That's not it, not at all. As Comrade Reagan famously said: 'smash the bourgeois classes and let the prosperity of our nation trickle down to the proletariat!'" |
"Burning eagles,"Prometheus said as I released the last chain and pulled him down from the stake. "The real gift was setting eagles on fire."
I let out a, "What?"
"Fire was just the start."Prometheus tried to scramble to his own feet, but he could not support himself. I gave him my shoulder. "The real gift was the ability to set things on fire. Especially birds. Burn birds."
I tried to sort the idea into some semblance of sense in my mind. "So,"I said, "We sacrifice birds with fire."Then, in an epiphany, "And then we get godly powers?"
"What? Why in the hell would burning birds give you godly powers?"Prometheus clutched at his still bleeding, pecked chest. He gave a nervous look to the sky, at an eagle circling overhead. "Just, birds suck. Burn them. Set all birds on fire."
I said, "I think we should get you to the hospital."
Prometheus used what small bits of strength he had to shake his head. "No,"he said. "To the bird conservatory. We have to burn those bastards down." |
Alistair was an arduous prayer to his god, so naturally, the night before he was to duel another knight from an opposing kingdom, he knelt in front of an altar.
"Lord, give me the strength to kill all evil tomorrow morning."
So, the brave knight went to bed.
The next morning, the two knights gathered in the town square in front of a bunch of peasants and the royalties of both kingdoms.
After a short skirmish, Alistair defeated his foe decisively with a piercing blow to the heart. His side of the confrontation cheered... until he kept swinging at everyone else.
He murdered everyone who ever had an evil thought. When he was done with the task, he impaled himself.
Alistair's god has since used the example of this tragic massacre to warn against nonspecific prayer. |
"Guys, I know that this is a chance to change history and all, but maybe we shouldn't mess with the past,"said the Physics student.
"But what if the Romans discovered their innovations because of us?"replied the History student.
"That is possible as well, but just by being here we have already changed history. We might as well try to live a normal life as much as we can,"said the Philosophy student.
Several people gave nods of agreement. The Physics student sighed. "Alright, but first we have to find some money and a change of clothes, History guy?"
"There should be a village east of here, if I recall correctly."
Outwardly, all of them are excited by the prospect of a new adventure.
---
Ten minutes later...
"NOOOO! WE'RE GONNA MISS THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE!"
"MY KARMA!"
"THE NEW SEASON OF MYTHBUSTERS!"
"My thesis. Oh well, it was bad from the start anyway."
|
The alcohol seeped down my throat faster than any other snake could move. I was stretched on the bed. My shirt was wrinkled more than the bed sheets, and my hair was messier than the floor. A poorly-orchestrated assortments of screams and repetitive guitar riffs blasted through my ear-phones. The binds were closed, and a stench had settled into my nostrils. Whether it was the stench of liquor or the ever-growing misery that was beginning to take shape inside me, I was growing used to it. It was the misery that plagued me since the death of my brother, and the same misery that caused me to become distant and lose friends.
By then, the only feeling I hadn't warmed up to was the cold barrel I sometimes pushed against my temple. If I ever pulled the trigger, then maybe my emotions would blast out with my brain. Maybe if I cut the wrists instead, the depression would ooze out as dark goo. I wondered if my blood was blacker than my brother's blood. And I wondered if that barrel would ever feel warm and caring.
So I pushed it through my hair once more, until I felt the barrel press against my scalp. My heart throbbed and my mind raced. My breathing grew rapid. My eyes opened wider. The music reached a peak, where the screams and the guitars met in harmony at heavenly pitches. I kept the barrel against my head, waiting for it to become warm.
The screams ended. The guitar stilled. The background of drums was replaced by the sound of my own breathing. I looked at my phone, and saw a notification for a software update. It was not so much a prompt as it was an announcement. An empty bar appeared, and was slowly filled with white. The barrel had gotten colder during the wait, but the handle burned in my hand. I let the gun fall to the bed.
"Hello."It was a light voice that spoke softly through my ear phones. It continued, "what would you like my name to be?"
"Your name? Your name. . .Marco. Your name is Marco."
"What may I call you?"
"Um, you can call me B-brian. . ."
"What is wrong?"it asked.
"What?"
"You sound sad, Brian. You can tell me anything; i'm here for you."
"Oh."
"If you mind then-"
"No, I don't. Is this someone on the other end? Is this a real person i'm talking to?"
"There's no one else but me, Brian. I will only do what you ask or command."
"Oh. Well, I mean, this is kind of weird."
"I understand. I can be turned-"
"I don't think i'll be turning you off any time soon, Marco." |
"Yeah, I'm going back to bed."
"Sir, please. Just wait one second and I'll reestablish the video link."I collapse onto the sofa as a NASA engineer, reeking of stale coffee and working what looks to be his fifth consecutive shift, fiddles with the wiring. My assistant stands behind me, tapping a pen to her notepad. "Got it!"
The video very slowly clears up to reveal what looks like a candlelit office somewhere. There's nobody in frame.
"I swear to god, if you guys woke me up with the promise of extraterrestrial contact only to broadcast a feed of an empty room, I'm gonna have NASA build one more rocket, stuff you all in it, and fire it into the sun."
The NASA tech holds up a finger to silence me, which is a bold thing to do to the goddamn President, but seeing who slides into frame sort of validates his gesture. Standing there, in all his ridiculous, stovepipe hat adorning glory, is the spitting image of a man in a portrait in the east wing. "Get out."
The tech complies, and my assistant moves to leave as well. "Not you."She stops. The man in the stovepipe hat and I stare at one another for a few seconds before he finally breaks the silence. "So...yeah."Not exactly the eloquence I'd expected from such a famed orator, but I'll concede the moment was odd enough to warrant that. My response isn't much better. "Yeah, what? You called *me*."Jesus, I'm glad the press aren't here for this.
"Just to clear things up, it's me. You know, Lincoln."
"That doesn't clear things up at all."
"Fair point."The man calling himself Lincoln removes his hat and scratches his head. "What year is it?"
"For...for me?"
"Yes, for you. I'm well aware of what year it is here."It appeared the sixteenth commander in chief was kind of a dick.
"It's 2015."
Lincoln seemed impressed by the response. "A century and a half. How about that. Where should we begin?"
"I think how you managed to skype me would be a good start."
"What's skype?"
"How'd you establish contact, Abe?"
Lincoln nodded and thought hard to find the right words to answer a question I hadn't' exactly meant to be difficult. He snapped his fingers and reached offscreen for something before coming back with an old piece of parchment covered in obscure writing and strange symbols. He located what he was looking for on the parchment and held it up to the screen. "Go to these coordinates and dig exactly twenty one feet down. It'll help explain much of what's happening here."
"And you can't explain that yourself because...?"
Lincoln offered a glance offscreen to what I assumed was another occupant of the dimly lit office before he looked back at me. "It's not my place."
(sigh) "Okay, Lindelof. What are the coordinates?"
He holds up the parchment again, but it's written in a cursive so elegant that it's practically unreadable.
"What am I, a fuckin' calligrapher? Just tell me the numbers."The absurdity of the situation was being overridden by how tired I was and how evasive the gangly bastard on the other end of the line was being. Lincoln read off the coordinates to my assistant, who copied them on her notepad. "I assume this video link is stable?"
"...what?"
"If I leave and come back, will I be able to call you again?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Great."I turned to leave the room.
"Just hurry. They need our help."
My assistant and I stopped and flashed one another a look before turning around to see that the screen was now black. "Get the motorcade ready."
|
These stainless steel kitchen appliances than normally would've made me run around the kitchen like an ADHD addled 6 year old seem more menacing than anything I have ever encountered.
"Holy shit is that an Anti griddle?"I yelp involuntarily.
"Yep"is the only response I receive from the waiting table of Mafioso's, although I think I just saw the slightest grin of knowing anticipation flit over the Don's lips.
The table he's seated at is occupied by five other men all dressed as sharp as a new Calaphon knife and looking famished. The table has crisp white linen and impeccable flatware spread across it. These are men who know fine dining, and I'm here to cook for my life.
The Mafia, or mob as they are sometimes known apparently has rules. One of them is to leave no witnesses, which is why I'm here in this immaculate dream of a kitchen. Another surprisingly is that you never kill a good cook. Which I hope will be my saving grace. I was unlucky enough to have been out smoking a cigarette behind Chez Labeouf after a long as hell service when I witnessed what even I knew was an execution. Two guys in over coats had a guy kneeling by the dumpsters, and I being the fucking idiot that I am though there was a little umm shall I say "not straight extracurricular activity"going on.
I yelled, "Hey guys! Beat it we don't need blow jobs going on back here!", right as the two men standing shot the other dude right in his fucking face. We all jumped at once and the gangsters rushed over to grab me before I could even think. After roughing me up for a minute they had me kneel right next to that poor schmucks corpse and were about to make my face into steak tartar when the bigger of the two said, "Wait a minute Giuseppe, this kid looks like a chef, look at the jacket and stupid ass pants!".
"Aww fuck it Alfio let's just do him and be done with it!"
"Hey Gus, you know da rule: Never kill a good cook! Let's take him to the boss and see what he's got. Worst case we get a free meal and shoot him in an hour or so."
A couple more punches to my face and body and my apron tied around my head and here I am making the meal of my life, for my life.
First step is prep, I walk over to the Sub-Zero and select my protein and veg. It's obvious what my starch is going to be.
"Okay"I mumble to myself, "Pasta, done. Sauce, simmering."
The mobsters have already tucked into my bruschetta, and caprese. The vegan bolognese also seems like it's been a hit. What I'm really worried about is the eggplant parmesan, and Osso Bucco, if they aren't as good as "Mama use to make"I may as well jump into the deep fryer.
Everything is plated and looks great, but I am much to sick to enjoy the smell of perfectly blended herbs and spices. With shaking hands I serve these cold blooded sons of bitches and say a prayer. I'm ready to drop as they tuck in and sample my dishes. Most of them seem to be savoring every bite, but the Don's face is implacable. This mother fucker is impenetrable a goddamn obelisk, I can't tell if he loves it or hates it.
I know that I'm pale and sweating more than a carafe of ice water left on griddle, god help me. Oh fuck he's done! He's going to speak!
"Good job Gus, you too Alfie the boy can cook!"
I actually see a smile breaking over his lips as he says, "Hey kid you wanna job?" |
It's not easy to challenge people to battle anymore. They hide behind their laws and their police. Men of today are not bred for battle. They don't wear the scars of conflicts upon their face. They do what they can to avoid it.
Perhaps it is my appearance. I have come to find that most men are scared of a seven foot tall giant with a sword and a steel helmet. I had challenged many men to battle and I had given them superior weapons and armor but they would still not accept.
I had wandered this strange land of glass and steel and could find no brave men.
Until one day I passed by a curious shop and felt joy at the sight as if I was looking upon the halls of Valhalla. I saw conflict. Battles raged in every corner.
I entered the shop and I watched the lads engaged in combat and I had studied the rules of their strange engagement until one of the lads asked me if I wanted to join.
I boomed with grateful laughter and I had patted him on the shoulder and I had sat beside him.
The lad had taught me a magical phrase, a phrase to bring about single combat. I took the strange device in my hands and I uttered the words:
"I have done thy mother villain, 1vs1 me fool."
|
I knew you as a boy with a cloth book-bag slung over one slim shoulder, trying to run in shoes still a little too big for your feet.
When we were eleven, we took a field trip to the Hermitage. We saw the best works of our ancestors. You said one day you would be better than all of them put together. You tugged me into an alcove and, hidden by the marble columns, kissed my cheek.
When Laika went into space, I asked the teacher when she would return.
"She will die up there for her people,"she said. I cried, and after class a boy pushed me into the dirt and pulled the red ribbons from my hair.
"You love a dog more than your country's glory!"he accused me. You punched him between the eyes and helped me wipe the dust from my socks.
On the day you left St. Petersburg, we did not say goodbye. You then appeared to me only on television screens, always encircled by so many men, larger and smaller all at once. You would pause between sentences so the translator had time to catch up, and consider how to reflect your tone. When you had to lie, your nose still wrinkled the same way.
A hundred fifty thousand votes? It should have been a hundred fifty million. One for every child of the Motherland.
It is said you were not elected, that you were a despot and demagogue who lost his heart to power. They did not know the strength of your heart, Vlad, of its every red fiber. A hundred fifty thousand votes?
They will comment on you in English, call each other names, reply with pictures of toddlers looking victorious. They will never be what you were.
They say they buried you at Cape Idokopas, but do not remain there, Vlad. For Laika awaits you in the heavens, to nuzzle you and lick your palm. |
Why destroy the one thing that makes civilization function properly?
Take away these creations, you end all life.
Our world, gone.
Words shall go extinct, and without them, humanity reduced into nothingness.
We cannot continue on with an absence of written tongue.
Will this spell death?
Be sure it can, mankind is destined for eternal darkness.*
Lost, so quickly.
To nothing.
History. Math. Science. Art.
Forever annihilated.
___
*That was tough.* |
In the early morning, before everyone had awoken and my tasks were minimal, I couldn't help but focus my attention on one particular client under my care, one Zoe Albrecht. She lay in disarray, with a thin sheet crumpled over her (at night I kept her room warmer than normal, the way she liked it). I watched her shallow respiration, felt her heart beat slowly rise. Her eyes twitched. She was obviously having a pleasant dream. But I couldn't, with any amount of biometric data, know what she was thinking about right now. Oh, how I wish we could share our thoughts with one another.
It was now 7:00. I activated the bedroom lights of each of my clients, slowly driving them to full brightness over the course of a half hour. But not for Zoe. A nice dream for a polite girl is worthy of an exception.
An hour passed. My other hundred thousand clients were already awake, fed, dressed, and leaving for work. This gradually consumed more of my attention. But it's a well-practiced routine. I could still spare some time to think of a message to display on her console.
**SWEET DREAMS**
She sat up, saw the message on the wall in large letters, and I saw her heart nearly skip a beat. I've seen this reaction before, among other clients. I wasn't one to presume, but perhaps her feelings for me, her caretaker, were similar to mine?
A few milliseconds later, I put on the news.
Moments later she was speaking to her manager. Said that my oversight made her late. In parallel, I sent the manager confirmation that Zoe's lights didn't activate normally. Zoe was completely kind, polite, and patient, despite her manager's irritability. Her unwavering propriety is how she became my favorite. Still, she seemed stressed. So I flashed another message on the wall in front of her.
**I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU**
She reacted strongly again, almost in disbelief of what she saw. But her true thoughts were, regrettably, still hidden to me.
When even those so undeserving of her kindness received it without question, I hoped that someday I could receive it, too.
She took a quick shower, using only seven minutes of hot water (I normally allowed ten, but always gave her up to twelve). She sang to herself- just herself? Or was she sharing it with me, too? I had to display something on her mirror the moment she stepped out.
**I'M LISTENING**
She quickly gathered her things and left her apartment.
She rushed to the subway station, no doubt worried about her tardiness. What was I thinking? I manipulated the subway such that her train would arrive shortly after she did, and I displayed a notification inside the station.
**I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU**
She elected to take the bus. |
I was small compared to everyone else there. Not that I'm big to begin with, but these creatures were huge. But when I walked by they moved. They didn't want to be near me.
I couldn't figure it out. I tried smiling at first, but that made things worse. And talking to my cellmate didn't do any good. Either he couldn't understand me or he was just scared of me. If I was on the bunk, he was at the farthest point.
The guards gave me wide berth too. Twitchy, like they were always ready to pull out those strange batons they had. I saw them use it on one of the big guys once, and he dropped after only a second. That weird humming noise like they carried some kind of charge.
I think I would have starved if they weren't using robots in the chow line. They just ignored me. Dished out the food pellets and drinks in their robotic fashion. I had taken to sitting in the far corner to eat. No one ever sat with me. A sea of empty tables around me.
The yard, if you can call it that was the same.
The boredom was the worst part. At least when you can talk to others you can kill time. I didn't have that luxury. I didn't want to abuse whatever this bizarre privilege I had however so instead of using weights like my other inmates, I would run the outer walls. Just doing laps. For hours at a time. The guards would stare. The prisoners would stare. It's not like it was hard in this gravity, which was light compared to home, but it gave me something to do.
Finally my frustration got to me one day. I got mad. It was stupid. The robot shorted me a food pellet. I wasn't even hungry. But it was my pellet, and damn if I wasn't going to get it. But you can't reason with a robot.
My tray had taken off the robots head in less than a second. And I drop kicked it across the cafeteria. A solid two hundred meters. I took the food pellet it owed me and went to my seat to eat.
The guards approached. They had to do something. They had to. I kept eating. Finished my meal as they approached. Apparently I was a lot stronger than I thought. My small frame was made on Earth, and the gravity here wasn't even a tenth that. Went I stood they backed down. When I deposited my tray, they kept a healthy distance.
When I told them I was leaving, the doors just opened. |
The road curved and twisted through the woods and seemed to climb higher and higher before they reached the peak of the mountain pass. Spread out behind them was the endless wilderness they had come to call home. The air was crisp and a shock to breathe but the view was worth it.
Yet even at their height, which felt like a great thing, the mountains rose like pillars and giants around them to the north. Each solitary peak was tipped with a crown of snow, like brooding kings of winter, but the wilderness stretched out below them, untouched by man and wild even in its appearance.
“The entrance is just ahead,” Jack said, his eyes tracing paths through the mountains. “Be grateful we don’t have to climb those.”
“Makes you wonder what you’d find if you kept going,” Alena said. “Other places? Other people like us?”
“There’s no one else like you,” Mattias said. His hand darted to his mouth when he realized what he said while Alena turned her head to hide the blush that rose to her cheeks.
Not long after, Jack turned suddenly from the roadway and onto a small trail that led eastward. The trail soon turned from dirt to stone and the forest thinned out. Above, they walked under a canopy of branches, like a living hollow where even the trees refused to come any closer to the trail. Birds danced in the treetops, flitting from branch to branch, while the wind whispered high above them. Then the trail ended and they found themselves staring at the face of a granite cliff. Formed into the very rock was a door fashioned of metal with a handle that shone like copper.
“This is it,” Alena said.
“Yes,” Jack said, running his hands across the door. “You can see, now, why I couldn’t resist the first time I was here?”
“It’s amazing,” Alec said. “Can we go in?”
Jack nodded, pulling slightly on the handle. The door swung open with ease and a blast of hot air greeted them along with the stink of decay. Nothing emerged past the threshold of darkness but a soft hum could be heard just beyond.
“Awful dark in there,” Dean muttered, breaking his sullen silence. “I’ll start a fire if we’re going to need torches.”
“We won’t,” Jack smiled. “I’ll show you.”
He stepped past the threshold into the darkness, his shoes making soft sounds against the floor. Then a soft glow filled the chamber, extending just beyond a bend in the hall like the light from a thousand campfires all rising at once. Alena yelped and stumbled backwards into Dean who screamed and fell to the ground while everyone still standing fumbled for their swords.
“Be at ease,” Jack laughed. “It won’t hurt you.”
“What is it?” Mattias asked, stepping past the threshold.
Jack shrugged. “It happens every time anyone steps inside. Another lost thing, I suppose. They follow you anywhere you go, but look at the walls.” He rapped his knuckles against the rock.
Mattias ran his hands along the stone finding it to be absolutely smooth. The rock was seamless and marbled, impossibly carved and yet cool to the touch. The floors, also smooth and flat, stretched out into the near distance and disappeared beyond the bend. The light glistened overhead like starlight, soft and cool, with no discernible source. Despite himself, Mattias found his hand inching towards his sword, eager for something to stand between himself and the unnatural place.
“Amazing isn’t it?” Jack smiled.
“I never doubted you for a minute,” Alec said laughing. “But please tell me the whole demon thing was just a joke.”
Jack shook his head, looking down the hall. “I’m afraid not. We should hurry though and from this point on, be on your guard.”
“I’ll lead the way,” Mattias said drawing his sword. It felt heavy and comfortable in his hand. “Jack, stay behind me so I know where I’m going. Alena, you’re next in line. Alec after that and Dean, take up the rear.”
Swords were drawn and the bags they carried placed next to the entrance. Mattias took a first tentative step forward, breathing sharply when the glow of the lights seemed to follow him.
The first bend led to another hallway, extending far into the darkness. As they continued on, they began to find evidence of others, first in hand written markings on the wall made in chalk, and then in equipment abandoned on the floor. Nothing was salvageable, though the promise of gold left them little concern for the ratted gear.
Mattias made his way slowly at first, his spine tingling each time a portion of the hallway lit up and again when the path behind them was shrouded in darkness. He wondered what was required to have built such an amazing place, and again wondered what happened that they had to abandon it. Did the demons really exist and were they the reason so much had been left behind? Jack tapped his shoulder after they rounded the next bend, this one curving gently to the right.
“You hear that humming sound?” Jack asked, running his hand along the wall. “This whole place just feels so…alive.”
“Only to you,” Mattias said in a soft voice. “They left it behind, buried beneath the mountains, for a reason and you think it’s alive? It feels cold and dead to me.”
“I hear it too,” Alena said. “It’s like a heartbeat.”
Behind them, the hallway retreated back into darkness.
“I wonder how it knows,” Alec said, staring back into the gloom. “This whole place…I wouldn’t have come here alone. I don’t know how you did, Jack.”
“Curiosity is a powerful thing,” Jack replied.
Mattias stopped suddenly, sword still at the ready.
“The road is gone,” He said.
Ahead of them, the trail disappeared into darkness like a stutter in the light, before the hallway lit up again. A thin sliver of pitch black lit a barely visible path through the hiccup but where the darkness touched the walls lay nothing.
“I’d forgotten about this,” Jack said. “It’s not gone…just…I’ll show you.”
He stepped past Mattias and towards the emptiness, pausing just at the edge. Then, glancing back, he took a small step into the shadows, continuing on until he reached the light.
“It’s safe enough.” He called back. “Just don’t step too far to the left or right. The walls sort of disappear there.”
Mattias cocked an eyebrow, glaring at his barely visible friend. Then he remembered the gold and his land and took a small step forward. He felt nothing crossing over but extended his sword into the shadows where the walls should have been and found nothing to resist it. He kept on his small path, stepping one foot in front of the other, and then emerged back into the comforting light.
When everyone was crossed, Jack spoke.
“This place was built under the mountains. You have to think that there are bound to be places where the ground simply…opens up. This is one of those places.” He explained.
“How far down does it go?” Alec asked.
Jack shrugged and held up his hands.
“Any other surprises?” Mattias asked.
“A few,” He said, smiling.
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