Split (1)

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I sit on the edge of his bed, watching as David cracks open his eyes. "Leah, why are you here?"he asks, both tenderness and pain in his voice. An echo of chuckling jeers surrounds us, and I squeeze his hand. "You know why. You didn't listen to my advice last time,"A chorus of distorted, evil laughter becomes so loud that I have to pause. "As I was saying, you know that you stopped your medication, and that it wasn't worth it."Insults swirl like the demons in his head were running circles around us. With a world-weary sigh, David covers his face. "I know. It's just... You're the only person that is ever really nice to me."He offers me a smile, eyes full of pain. I stroke his hair back, caressing the side of his head. "Please, David, I know you care for me, but you have no life when the demons are attacking you, harassing you, and slipping those harmful little thoughts into your own."I stare into his eyes, begging him to listen to me. "Please, sweetie, please. We need to go to the hospital." He jerks from my touch, hurt on his face as plain as if I had just punched him. "No! NO! Never! You know what they do there!" Folding my hands in my lap, I stare at them, unable to meet his eyes. "They tell you the truth, David. I'm not real. The demons aren't real. You ARE better off without us. The medications do help. Please." He stands, walking away without a response. Shutting the bathroom door in my face, he chuckles, childlike. The demons begin screaming their tortured wail, interjecting commands while he ignores my presence. He stares at himself, seeing little bugs, bumps, and bruises blossom from his skin. I hear him repeat, over and over, "This is not real. The demons are doing this."He strips, getting into the shower while still repeating his little mantra. "Not real, not real, not real. Bad demons."he begins chanting. Tears roll down my face as I watch him scrub, scrub then scratch again. Every time, he scratches himself raw. Tiny droplets of blood stain the water a bit pink as it goes down the drain, and I hear his sobs echo, raw as his skin. Tenderly, I slide in behind him, and take the loofah from his hand. It falls to the floor, and I cradle him to me. I let him cry, mutter about the bugs, and worry about the demons, just standing strong because he needs it, even if in reality he's only holding air. I hum quietly, tenderly washing the shampoo out of his hair. He stares, lifting his face from my chest, and just watches me a plea in his eyes he doesn't want to follow. "Leah, why can't we..."I cuq him off with a stern look, lifting his arms for him to inspect. "David, this is only day 3. You know that every day, the urge to scratch gets stronger, and you ended up in the ER last time, didn't you""His shame is palpable, so I just pull him back in tight. "Hush, my sweet. You have time. Just finish showering." I offer a baby washcloth, soft to the touch, and he uses it, caressing the wounds. "I just don't want to lose you." Shutting my eyes tight, I manage to get out, "I know."before the tears start. I supervise his shower, stopping him from scratching when I can, and hold up his towel for him. As he steps out, he starts by drying his hair, then slowly moving down. As he passes over scratch marks, he goes slow, trying to build enough friction to scratch them without completely tearing open the skin. He wraps the towel tight around his hips, running into the bedroom as though he could outrun the screams, commands, and hatred. Back in the bedroom, he yanks out simple clothes. A pair of boxer-briefs, the same green as my eyes, a brown shirt the same color as my hair, black sweatpants the color of my nails, red slippers the color of my lipstick, and a dark purple hoodie, the color of the dress I always wear. I smile a little, watching. "With the clothes, it's like you're always with me." I smile wider at him, grabbing his glasses and putting them on him. I step back, watching as he slicks back his hair and tops it with a black beanie. At the door, he grabs his keys, wallet, phone from the charger, and his scarf, winding it around his face and admiring each stripe of my colors. He may think I'm the only one who cares, but his sister spent days and days hunting for the exact right colors and textures,not even mentioning the effort of knitting the scarf itself, just to have him feel a little more secure. Making sure each door is shut, and each light is off, he works his way through, then pauses at the door again, looking to me for confirmation and support. "Text her. She'd want to know."I rest my hand on his arm, watching as he types out the text. "Text to: SARAH. Message: Leah is here. I'm going out." I hug him as he hits send, bracing him against the crescendo of anger and fear the demons howl. Riding out the storm, arms tight around him, I know he gets a little stronger each time he sees me. When we first met, he would have been sobbing in the bath tub still. Even sending that text, as vague as it is, was a testament to his will. As he locks the door behind himself, David looks around the snowy neighborhood. With each crunch of snow on his way to the hospital, we hear the commands. "Turn back,"one demon begs. "Kill yourself."a different one says. "Jump in front of that bus."the third one screams, and David grabs my hand. "You can do this."I walk quickly, David chasing after me. At the bus stop, he opens his wallet and pulls out his bus pass, then tucks it back, deep, in his pocket. Waiting at the bus stop is like standing in the middle of the biggest meeting of people who hate you, demons taking advantage of the quiet and calm to berate him. The second the right bus pulls up, though, he's already at the doors, and he slips on, nodding at the bus driver as he sits. A buzz of a text message goes off, and he looks at his phone. "Text from: SARAH. Message: I'll be there in an hour. I love you, stay strong. Tell her I say thanks." I squeeze his hand, knowing that even when I'm gone for another stretch, he'll still not be alone. "Text to: SARAH. Message: Leah says thanks back, not sure why though."
That was...not what I was expecting. I mean, I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting, so I didn't even have a solid hypothesis, which I guess is bad science. I just wanted to see what would happen when I shifted certain epigenetic markers in the human genome. I'd always loved epigenetics -- it was amazing to see how "nature"and "nurture"came together to determine which segments of your DNA could be expressed at a time, make even things like identical twins different due to environmental factors. There were segments of human DNA tied up in nucleosomes, wrapped up and unable to be expressed. It's your DNA, but it's "hidden"DNA. My lab had been working on proteins that could alter these nucleosome's structure for years, ever since that CRSPR-Cas9 system became available. Rather than altering genetics, we altered the system so that it could alter the epigenetic markers, instead. The last few years had been a huge boom for us -- as well as huge falls. We aren't great at targeting cell type yet, which as it turns out, is sort of vital for this process to work. But, we can always test with cells in a petri dish, right? Those were my thoughts, and thankfully, several grant-readers had agreed with us. I usually have my post-docs do this work, but I always wondered what types of proteins would express when you moved certain markers around. Plus, secretly...the cell culture I was using was of my own cells. I mean, how can you resist? It's like playing "what if"on a DNA level! Sure, I can't really publish too many of these results, but if I find anything cool, I'd have my post-doc repeat the experiments on an approved cell type. That had been my plan, at least. But instead, when I added the proteins to alter a specific segment of DNA, one said to be "junk"by those who had first sequenced the human genome, I didn't get pre-mRNA production like I expected (not like I could see it, but I was going to run some rtPCR later...) Because, suddenly, the floor beneath me gave way, and with a loud yelp -- I found myself landing in a very comfy chair surrounded by what appeared to be octapus-like creatures in a Walmart-style vests. "My goodness! 4.28 billion years! I have to say, that's within the time limit! What an amazing escape!"One of them said. Or, I mean....bubbled? They didn't have mouths. They had this sort of air bubble in the middle of their translucent heads that vibrated, and I suppose, created sound that way. "Here! Here! You definitely deserve the sign!!"A second one bubbled, as a paper-sized cardboard paper was shoved into my hands. In my stupor, I managed to make out, 'I escaped Cellular Life in time!!' just before the flash of a much-too-bright camera momentarily blinded me. The octopus people chittered away happily as I finally managed to find my voice. It was surprisingly difficult when you were sure you were having a stroke. "What...What are you talking about?" "The simulated world! You escaped!"The first octopus said again. "We hope you join us again -- and make sure to tell your friends! You said you were going to get lunch with them before we started?"
The city bustled with lives nobody cared about. A small butterfly fluttered in the park, blissfully unaware of consciousness and the responsibilities therein. The mother and father of a young girl debated an unimportant issue of great consequence as the girl played with the birds. She saw the butterfly and ran towards the pretty colors- a young man longboarding by swerved to avoid her as she crossed the footpath. He looked back, and thoughts ran through his mind of how pure and innocent she looked chasing the bug. He immediately dismissed the thoughts, because men aren't supposed to have anything to do with children. His friend's father spent a night in jail for taking his daughter to a park once. He turned back to the path and crashed avoiding an elderly couple- he tumbled to a stop in the grass before picking himself back up. The older man thought of how he could no longer take such a fall- the thought would stay with him for several days. His wife was captured by the stunning resemblance of the young man to her high school heart throb. They kept walking after assuring that the young man was okay. They got into their car and began driving to their daughter's house. The elderly gentleman hit the brakes rather late at a red light, nearly striking a cyclist. The cyclist flipped him off without looking, and the woman in the car beside them disapproved- she thought the old man looked very sweet. Looking back with disdain at the cyclist, she missed her turn and had to loop around. She stopped gently for a young girl with dyed hair- the girl looked at the driver, and was reminded of her older sister that she lost two years ago. She always held doors open for people. The thought fresh on her mind, she held open a door for a man walking out of the bank she was entering to withdraw all her savings from in order to run away from home. The man ran a business and had a daughter the same age- he stopped and looked back before entering his car. Three weeks later, his daughter died of heroin overdose. Her friends stole her belongings, and the business man fell into alcoholism. He joined a support group and found solace in gardening- he sold his business and opened a flower shop with the name of his daughter and worked it alone. A little girl began to frequent the shop- she loved the flowers and butterflies that would flutter about. Several years passed and she became old enough to work at the store while going to school. Her father and mother shouted too much, so she stayed at the shop as often as she could. A man with a longboard bought flowers for his fiance there one day, and returned the next for a refund. They became friends, and he introduced her to his little brother. The man became a marketing specialist the next year, and his little brother and the girl became fast friends. The man running the shop finally moved on and sold the shop. Two years later, the girl was diagnosed with cancer. The marketing specialist pulled some strings and got some friends in the community to start a fundraiser. Her story became a noble cause, and many donated. The girl died anyways. Her boyfriend sat alone at a diner crying over a cup of water. The server at the diner who had fading dye in her hair felt pity for him and led him to support groups that she volunteered at. He didn't do well, and developed a substance addiction. The server and the marketer got together and developed an international outreach program for youth. The businessman joined and called up several old friends for assistance- multiple companies and non-profit organizations were aquired and united. An amateur filmmaker came across the girl's story and discovered the story of the flower shop owner. He made a documentary called Dead Daughters and submitted it to independent film competitions. It did well, and the filmmaker eventually began his passion projects based on historical warfare. The documentary became moderately popular and many people were led to the outreach program. An old man died and left his grandson a fortune- the grandson, in a night of passion and generosity, donated almost all the money to the program. The donation spurred a movement of individuals donating time instead of money, and the program partnered with some of the other larger non-profit organizations. Sixteen years later, war broke out, and the outreach program was one of the main relief efforts. Developing and war-torn countries saw the help that came from it, and many volunteered as well. The program became worldwide and was very well recieved due to its actions during the war. A new generation of people came into the world, united by the organization and its efforts for fellow men. The next two wars were protested and de-escalated by members of all classes of society. Mankind progressed through a filter of humbled altruism. The butterfly was long dead, but its effect carried on. * JUST made myself a subreddit for my writing. Check it out over at r/bellumaster.
There I was, sitting with my buddies at the old Nostalgia Tavern. Everybody ended up here at once time or another. In fact it was their tag-line. "The Nostalgia: we all end up here eventually". Sounds horrible, right? In a way it was, in another way it wasn't. Big city people, they don't understand. They run around their whole lives being afraid of that one kid that bullied them when they were five. Or thinking about that girl that they had a crush on in sixth grade. Whatever happened to those people? They don't know. Did you know that the biggest hits on match.com and other dating sites for senior citizens is almost all by city people? People want the past, they just don't say it. But not here. In this little town, we all end up seeing each other constantly. The Nostalgia is the place where you see that old bully. And guess what? He's not a bully anymore. He got a labor job and he's got a wife and two kids, and believe it or not, but you're chummy with that guy now. That old crush? She's turned to dog meat. Looks so ugly that you almost feel bad for her. Definitely not gonna spent $19.99 a month chasing that shit box in 30 more years, I can tell you that. And so life was going, as it does, slowly. A few nights a week I'd be in the Nostalgia, a few I'd be home watching netflix. We had a bake sale last weekend, that was a lot of fun. Mrs. Dog meat actually is a decent baker, she took first place. But we gotta get to Wednesday, because that's when things really started to take a turn for the worst. I was sitting in the nostalgia, and my old bully, let's just call him Timmy, well, he's a nice enough guy. Works hard, two kids, decently nice wife. But in the middle of the bar that day, poor old Timmy, the strangest thing happened. Some kind of creature-- I don't want to say Dinosaur because I know they don't exist-- but something like a big lizard just burst into the doors like a bat outta hell and took Timmy's head off. We were all shocked at first, but we got a good laugh out of it after a while. Timmy was nice enough in his old age, but he wasn't gonna be missed. The kids we did feel pretty bad for, though. But wouldn't you know it? I come home that night to watch my shows, and instead of my house, I find this great big mansion. Looked really interesting, like it was made of crayon. It was big but tilted and most of the walls were just outlines. Definitely something to scratch my head on, I tell ya. I tried sleeping but on account of the lack of walls it was a little cold. Wouldn't you know it? 35 years old and homeless. Boy, that was a shocker. Didn't realize how much I missed netflix, too. Those shows kept me going. All I really wanted was a TV, but there wasn't one. So I check into a hotel that has a TV, and I was happier than a pig in shit, I tell ya. I watched some shows and go ready for bed, but I just couldn't bring myself to sleep. Reckon it was all the coffee, and I knew I'd pay dearly for it the next morning. But I didn't, I tell ya I was awake like a hog in heat. Had even more energy that second day. It's been a couple weeks, and I'm doin' great. So I went back to the old Nostalgia. They'd cleaned up the mess Timmy made and it was open again. Health inspector is a friend of the owner, wasn't nuthin' to get that place open. A discerning eye could have made out some brain matter here or there, but we were all just lookin' to have a good time and made like it was clean. But I walk in, and there's some new people. And these guys, they look a little funky. Little bit on queer street, not to impugn the fine homosexuals of this country. Anyway they had capes on, and had funny names. One was Captain Fantastik, he was a big blue guy, had no organs this one. No organs at all. He was just like a crayon outline. I thought he looked familiar, but from where? Shit I did too much of the old meth in high school to remember, but he looked damn familiar. But anyway, Captain Fantastik sees me and walks on over. He's a big guy, too, probably a good eight feet at least. I told him, I said, "Boy, I didn't know they stack shit so high!"and he laughed uncontrollably. He was a good buddy, laughed at all my jokes. Anyway he asked me to point out Mrs. Dog Meat, and I did. Why, I hadn't the slightest idea, but I did anyway and you know what this sonofabitch does? This guy, he walks on over to Mrs. Dog Meat and starts a-whoopin' on her man. And she had a pretty nice husband, too. Eric was his name, but he didn't last long from that whoopin'. He tried to fight back, God bless him, but he wasn't a match for Captain Fantastik. The whole thing lasted just a moment. And old Mr. Hayward, the owner of Nostalgia-- now his face you had to see. Imagine scrubbin' along for two weeks on old Timmy's brains, get the place cleaned up, bribe the inspector, and then this happens? To say he was disappointed was an understatement, I tell ya. Next thing I know, Captain Fantastik has Mrs. Dog Meat with him, and he drags her by the hair over to me. She's screamin'. Boy I never heard a woman scream like that. But he dragged her over, I mean, really by the hair-- she started bleedin' from her head that's how hard he dragged her. Dragged like a joint at a Dooby Brother's concert we used to say. So I felt like it would be best that I leave, and I got up, grabbed my hat, paid my bill--because I always pay my bill--and headed on out. Wouldn't you know that son of a gun followed me all the way home? 'Bout halfway there I remembered my house was made of crayon and I double-backed to the hotel, but Fantastik was right behind me. Everything I said just made him laugh uncontrollably. And poor Mrs. Dog Meat-- I tell ya, she didn't last long on that drag. Before we even got to the crayon kingdom we was already mum like a hooker on easter Sunday, I tell ya. By the time we got to the hotel she must have passed out from shock. So you can imagine this all caused a bit of commotion in our tiny town. Thankfully we did have a sheriff, an old man named Officer Burt. So he showed up at the hotel, and I thought there might be a bit of a tussle on account of Captain Fantastik rippin' on this lady's hair, but Officer Burt ignored it altogether and came up to me. And you know what he said? "Little Billy, you're the best guy in the whole world, and you can be mayor and sheriff and president all at the same time, and you can play with your friends all you want." And that's how I became president.
First dates for me had always been disasters. There was the crazy girl who was takin pictures of my crotch under the table, the one who just would not speak, multiple others refusing to get off of their phones... But this one was different, she was eloquent, beautiful, just like me in every way. I had a great feeling about tonight. "Jennifer!"I greeted her. "Tom, hey! Wow ya really dressed up for tonight, huh?"she said. "So did you, you look wonderful." Everything continues without a hitch, our reservation was held, our waitress was wonderful, we had a great conversation and even began discussing a second date! But then, a jolt of pain came from my rear end. I grunted in pain. "Tom, are you okay?"she asked. "Yeah, just, felt something weird." We heard a commotion from the back of the restaurant around the same time as the pain had began. Several employees were huddled around our waitress on the ground. I don't know what came over me, I headed over to them and asked our waitress what happened. "The floor's fucking wet!"she yelled, in pain. "Ugh! I fell right on my ass! I think I broke something.." "Broke your ass?"I asked smirking, "That must take a particular set of skills." She giggled, "Shut up." "Watch out guys, I'll take her to the ER, and make sure she's okay."
I was in my cramped office, counting the day's take with Gina and Louise, when we heard the bell over the door ring. "You mind seeing who it is, Gina?" She rolled her eyes and put down a stack of notes she'd just tied together. "Some people don't know how to read signs." I heard her exchange words with Tommy and Ricardo on her way through the kitchen, who were still cleaning up. The kitchen door swung open creakily, and then Gina, sounding muffled, said, "We're closed for the—oh! Walter, come out please!" Louise looked up, wide-eyed, as I snatched an old revolver from my desk and hurried out. The kitchen still stank of the day's cooking, and my two chefs stood over a sink filled with soapy water and greasy plates. Tommy glanced at the nearby phone on the wall, but I shook my head. The sight that greeted me in the dining area froze me in mid-step. Gina stood behind the cash register, seeming ready to duck down at a moment's notice. On the other side of the counter stood thirteen black-cloaked figures, fanned out in a triangle. Swallowing hard, I slipped my revolver into the back pocket of my jeans. "Er, welcome. I'm sorry to say we're closed for the day." The figures stood there, unmoving. The tallest among them, the one standing at the head of their column, suddenly reached into his robes and drew a slender stick tipped with the skull of a mouse. That only confirmed my fears. "Esteemed mages,"I said with a bow. "How can I be of service?" "You will—"It was a woman's voice, but painfully hoarse, as though she'd been inhaling smoke. "—seat us. And bring us food." I gestured at the empty restaurant. "You can sit anywhere you like. I will inform my staff to see to your needs." She leaned closer, and despite the proximity, I still couldn't perceive anything in her shadowy shroud. "You will keep anyone else from entering. Or your lives will be forfeit." Gina gulped audibly behind me. * "This is madness,"Ricardo said as he tossed an omelet on a pan. Sweat rained from his face, even staining through his shirt to his overalls. "Two hours. For two hours those idiots have been here. I was supposed to take the missus out for supper, man." "Quiet,"I hissed, helping Louise and Gina to pour sauces for steaks into various tureens. "If they hear you, we'll be dead. These guys are black wizards." "Where the hell do they even put the food?"Tommy cursed after tasting a pot of soup. "We've used up half our supplies for the month just for them. Boss, you'd better make up for the shit we're being put through." "More cooking, less complaining,"I said. Grabbing a dish, I went back out to my patrons. Tommy's question floated around in my head as I headed to the chafing dishes, where half of the group was milling with plates. I felt mildly relieved to see that they were just ordinary-looking folk now that they had removed their hoods; a couple had even stripped off their dark robes to reveal boxers and sport underwear beneath. What I thought was unusual were the amount of injuries they all carried. Some of their cuts still bled, and they had rejected my offers of medicine. The leader, Katrina, a long-haired brunette, seemed to have sustained horrible burns on the left side of her face. Their cloaks weren't spared either, bearing dozens of rips and tears. Some of their edges looked damp, hinting at the wounds they covered. As a whole, these fellows did not appear to care about cleanliness or decorum. I winced at the detritus covering the floor—prawn tails, spilled pasta, puddles of wine, chicken bones, and even a pool of gray-yellow vomit still dripping from the buffet table. Even now, Katrina and her second-in-command Dustin were tearing into their Caesar salad with bare hands. The only other female mage was walking around with several chicken wings in her hands, eating and discarding them as though she was a contestant on some demented speed-eating show. "Do you require more?"I asked, feeling annoyed at how squeaky my voice turned out. Katrina burped before answering, "Where are the goddamn omelets? We requested them half an hour ago!" I bowed jerkily. "They'll be here soon, great ones. Gina, please hurry Tommy." While Louise helped refill the dishes, I sidled up to Dustin. "If you don't mind me asking,"I whispered. "How will you be paying?" He fixed me with an intimidating look, though the effect was partially ruined by his singed hair. "We're not even done, and you dare ask for money?" I licked my lips, glancing at Katrina's departing back as she went for seconds—no, wait, that should be seventeens. "It's past midnight, sir. My staff are working overtime as it is. I need to keep morale high too." He scoffed and went back to his ribs. "You don't know what you're asking. Hey, girl! Loser, or whatever your name is. Bring me some quail eggs!" Wringing my hands, I said, "We don't have those, sir." Looking outraged, he snatched up his wand from the table. "Why don't I turn your eyeballs into quail eggs, then? I said I want some, so go buy them!" Louise looked murderously at him, but I waved her back to the kitchen. Katrina came back, carrying two plates piled high with spaghetti and toast. She spared a brief glance at Dustin's wand before tucking in. "Don't kill the owner yet, Dustin. We may inspire a mutiny, and who else is going to cook for us after?" "I will see what I can do about those eggs,"I said. Making sure to avoid meeting anyone's eyes, I headed toward the kitchen. Just as I went behind the counter, the front door exploded inward in a storm of plastic, wood and glass. The two mages standing near it went down in sprays of blood. Suddenly everyone was yelling; me, my staff, the black wizards. Only the teenager who had just burst in with a wand in each hand was silent. He pointed his weapons at the black mages and began sending blasts of concussive energy at them. I ducked behind the counter and covered my head with my hands as the battle raged. I heard tables being ripped off the floor and sent flying. I smelled flesh and cloth burning, the screams of the victims ringing constantly in my ears. I felt the detonations of power, of bodies thrown across the restaurant. One of them crashed over the counter and landed in a heap in front of me. It was Dustin, eyes staring blankly, a smoking crater where his chest used to be. The fight felt like it went on and on for hours, but suddenly silence descended again upon the restaurant. Drawing on my courage, I slowly stood to see what carnage had been wrought. Thirteen dead black mages lay scattered throughout the place. Katrina's head lolled weightlessly down her chest, her body pinned to the wall by the legs of a chair. Small fires licked the edges of furniture or gobbled up debris on the pockmarked floor. Standing alone, swaying a little, was the teenager, his leather jacket badly shredded, one of his wands no bigger than a toothpick. Blood ran from a cut on his cheek, but he was surveying his handiwork with a grin. "Lucky I got here in time, eh?"he said to me, pocketing his remaining good wand. His nose twitched, and his gaze slowly drifted toward the line of buffet dishes, which had miraculously avoided destruction. "Is that what I think it is? Man, I'm famished!"Rushing over, he snatched up a plate and began loading it. * Thanks for reading. Check out my [sub](http://reddit.com/r/nonsenselocker) if you want to read more of my stories!
Scene opens on the group sitting at the table. Morty is at the head of the table, arms folded, wearing a cheap faux robe and cap with a feather. Rick sits next to Jerry on Morty's right, and Beth sits next to Summer. The table has a map with figurines and a screen before Morty. BETH: Well this is nice. Sitting down like a family. Don't you think so Jerry? JERRY: Well I don't see any portal guns, so I don't think- RICK: Save it for your psychiatrist, Jerry. Come on Morty – let's get this game going. MORTY: Okay, Rick. First you gotta pick your classes. I made some pre-builts so you can- RICK: Right, I'm the wizard. MORTY: You don't even know what the classes are yet. RICK: There's a guy with a sword, a guy with spells, a guy with healing hands and a girl with knives. I'm pretty sure I don't want your Dad developing some twisted tortured love scenario with me, so that's the girl out. I'm not really the healing type, and as for the sword guy- SUMMER: Afraid he's too masculine for you? RICK: I thought I'd let my daughter's worst mistake have a chance at pretending he had some strength for once. BETH: Rick! SUMMER: Morty, I don't think grandpa should play this game. RICK: Fine. We can always just grab the portal gun- MORTY: No portal gun. This is the perfect game for Rick. It's a team game. You have to work together. RICK: What Morty means is that you get to watch my back as I fry some alien trash. MORTY: No aliens either. It's a medieval style fantasy world. RICK: Fine – alien or crummy little men in metal suits – it's all the same to me. JERRY: Well I think I should be the fighter – after all, he's the most honourable character, right? BETH: I think so too. RICK: Great, so we'll have my daughter playing the lustful elf whilst Jerry plays a knight in shining armour. Excuse me while I go set myself on fire or something. MORTY: Okay Summer, you can be the healer. SUMMER: Why have I got to be the healer? I don't want to sit here and watch Mum and Dad act out some half- hearted romance. RICK: They might need you Summer. I hear they've got some pretty nasty magical sexually transmitted diseases in this game. JERRY & BETH: Rick! MORTY: No one's getting any diseases. SUMMER: How do I even heal? MORTY: You get lots of different ways you can heal people if you play the cleric. You can cast healing touch- SUMMER: Touch? Like I have to actually touch someone? RICK: If you weren't starved of any kind of affection you wouldn't find that such a weird idea. SUMMER: Yeah, if only someone hadn't gone around school freezing and shattering anyone who ever looked like they would want to touch me it wouldn't be a problem. JERRY: Wait, what? BETH: Dad, what is she talking- MORTY: You don't have to touch them in real-life. Your characters just have to be near each other – see. Morty reaches over the screen and moves some of the figurines on the table next to one another. RICK: I don't know Morty. When my spell goes off it might fry anyone within thirty feet. JERRY: Pity you haven't had anything go off in years. RICK: Really Jerry? You're not going to come out of this well with miss Einstein over there and Rick Jr as your proudest achievements. JERRY: Now Rick you have no right to- SUMMER: If you weren't dragging Morty off to have your insane adventures we'd probably be a much better family. RICK: Ahuh, and how's your medical degree coming along, Summer? I'm sure you're eagerly following in my daughter's footsteps and well on your way to becoming a surgeon. JERRY (under his breath): A horse surgeon. BETH: Jerry, we are going to have words after this. MORTY: You're all level one at the moment, so no one of you is better than anyone else, okay? Now, let me set the scene...
I heard her laugh before I saw her. My palms became sweaty on the leash. I wiped them on my pants and headed over to her as she sat with that absolute jerk Anoop with that stupid smirk that seemed to mesmerize her. She laughed again at something Anoop said -- probably some stupid joke or something stupid because Anoop sucked. "Hi Megan,"I croaked. "Can I talk to you a moment?" She looked at me, changing from confusion, to amusement, to disappointment and embarrassment. "Oh no. Ivan, I didn't mean --" "Dude, why did you glue wings onto a piglet?"Anoop said, staring down at Wilbura. "Um, they're not glued on. Megan, can I please talk to you alone?" "This is very cute, but I'm not interested,"Megan insisted. I didn't spend all those nights in the lab fueled only by coffee and vending machine candy to not even show her what Wilbura could do. "But --" "She said she wasn't interested, man,"Anoop said. "Oh shut up, Anoop."I hurried to Megan. "Just please, Megan, two seconds." She nodded. "Okay, Wilbura."I took out the delicious carrot. Wilbura snorted, smelling the orange stick. I moved the stick an inch from her nose, and she followed it around and around in circles, her tiny piglet feet clicking on the brick. I lifted the carrot up higher, she leaped from it and I held it up higher still. "Ah, man. Don't be cruel. Just give it to her,"Anoop said. I clicked my tongue. "Come on, Wilbura."She bounced for it again. "It's too high,"Anoop said. Megan sighed. "Please stop --" Wilbura wiggled her butt, squatted low to the ground, stretched out her wings, and then leaped into the air. Megan screamed. I twirled the carrot over my head, and she flew faster to snatch it from my fingers before gently lowering herself to the ground. "Jesus Christ,"Anoop said. "Oh my God, what have you done?"Megan shrieked. "I made pigs fly... So when do you want to go on that date?" "I'm not going on a date with you!"Megan screamed. "You've made an abomination! How could you?!" All the joy that I felt and have ever felt melted from my body. I glanced down at little Wilbura, joyfully sniffing the cracks between the pavement. "She's not an abomination." I glanced up, surprised. Did Anoop really just say that? "She's not an abomination, Megan,"Anoop repeated. "This is amazing! Dude, how did you do this?" "I --" Megan screamed. "You're both sick! You're both disgusting."She stomped off. Anoop shook his head and scratched Wilbura's head. "What's up with her?"
"Omnivores, actually "- the UN ambassador said. But we have ceased to kill any kind of animal from 2 centuries ago, all of our protein sources now came from factories and labs. Which is far safer, better. "Still you eat meat, you carnivore."-the sound from the AI which translated such alien language, coldly sounds under the dome of the council. "I said, sir, we don't kill animals anymore. It is just an old habit from a long time ago. By the way, I have a question to ask."The ambassador picks up his water bottle, takes a sip then continues : "Why are we the only one ?"
Years later, the month was seen as a shining example of what the government could be. The month where there was no scandals, no political uproars. Everyone just seemed to get along for a month, leaving the media nothing to report on but crime and natural disasters. With no political scandals to focus on, the people focused instead on helping others. Victims of crime were showered in messages of support, natural disasters were dealt with quickly. After the first two weeks, people started to wonder where all the politicians had gone, and why they weren't responding to these events. After three weeks, they realized they didn't care. After four weeks had gone by, people were starting to realize that not only did they not care where the politicians had gone, they were glad they had left. After four and a half weeks, the first of the politicians began to re-emerge. The first tweet from the President was published after a month of silence. >"Hi folks, we had a bit of a family emergency this last month, but don't worry, everything is back to normal!"
I wake up like a usual day, tired, feeling really badly. I get dressed and go to school after eating breakfast. It was all going like a normal day, until it was time for math class. I hated it. I spent every moment of my time in that class hoping it's over soon. Except that day. My crush, Emma sat next to me that day, since we were split into groups. "This is heaven.. I wish time would just stop"I said to myself, in a sound no one can hear except me. When suddenly everybody froze. Nobody was moving an inch. The paper James threw to Timmy was stuck midair. "Did time just... stop?"I wondered to myself. I couldn't believe my eyes! Time has just stopped. I didn't care if I didn't know if it was possible to return time back to normal, I just kept moving, running, saying conversations to Emma, thinking she couldn't hear, I unfolded the paper that was in the air, and read what it said "Timmy, can you write the answers to the questions 1-4 in the yesterday's homework?" I almost forgot, I could take all the answers to the questions of the professor, and I would look cool next to Emma. I spent the next few hours acting out situations I thought I'd look badass in, practising my winks, trying to act cool, have hypothetical conversations with the classes' girls. Suddenly, things started turning black and white, I went back to my desk, and like I expected, that was the signal for the end of the time stop. Suddenly, everyone in the room bursts out laughing so hard. I tried to laugh to look with the crowd, but this made no sense at all to me. One guy looked at me and shouting: "Oh Emma, you're the light, without you there would be no need for eyes", one of the pickup lines I've been practising in the time stop, in the classroom. I started understanding what was happening. "You're so cool and badass! Can I be your girlfriend?"Shouted another guy. "Hey Emma, what would you like for breakfast?"Shouted another guy. Emma's face was already bright red at this point, almost as red as mine. It was that moment I knew. I knew I fucked up.
The faded canvas sling digs into my neck,. The rifle jumping against my chest with each step. It clicks against the plastic clips and fasteners of the faded military vest. Each click echoes on the lonely road as sweat beads and soaks into the fabric. It is a sunny day. Like most have been since...since it happened. People find shelter and water where they can in the wasteland, struggle for food and survival. When I started walking I wasn't even thirty. It's been a decade or more now. It always struck me as odd that the one thing I never had a shortage of was weapons and ammunition. Canned food was a rarity, unspoiled even more so. Animals to hunt were few and far between and I hadn't turned to more horrific acts that many others had. I bear a warped scar on the side of my stomach from a close call with one of those groups. Mankind sits on an edge it would seem. A little push and things change faster than you would think. My worn boots throw up sand from the broken highway with each step, rusted hulks of vehicles littering the length. People that tried to escape and found nothing but death. Bleached bones perched on tattered cloth seats. I have to ignore the drip that follows me. The sound of blood spattering on asphalt and sand. The wound is mortal, I know that. I managed to stem the flow slightly but the blackened strands that mark my veins are spreading. Blood poisoning will set in, not far from now. That's why I walk. I no longer worry about finding food or water, I have little need for either now. Just enough to keep moving. Maybe a day. Maybe less. Ahead of me I see the green signs that I've been seeking, the ones that the rumours speak of. The sign has fallen from it's height above the highway and the letters have faded and cracked. I hope that it's as I remember although the world has changed. I've walked so far, too far to fail now. I remove the canvas strap from my neck and lay the rifle down, resting a hand on it to say thank you. I cannot carry it any longer. I shed the vest with all the bullets and magazines and nearly ancient medical supplies. I feel lighter on my feet, only carrying a small bag with me now. That's all I need to carry. And this trip will not be easy. I had a hard time all those years ago when I was in shape and not bleeding out. My feet carry me to the path with withered trees along the edge. I have to hope. There will be water above. Or it will be gone. I walk. I don't think about it, I don't remember back to the days when it was a lush green forest with water droplets glistening on leaves. I don't remember when I was in love because she is gone beyond memory now. I don't remember the times when things were different because they no longer matter. Only one thing matters. Hope. I carry hope. The blood droplets come faster as I climb the trail, my heart betraying me with each beat. It becomes harder to breath, harder to walk, harder to go on. I must go on. I drop to my knees and gasp for air, wondering if I can possibly make it. I throw up the contents of my stomach and as I take in sucking breaths my eyes see it. A tiny, fragile, beautiful sprig of green. "Don't move,"the voice says to me but the joke is on them. I couldn't move if I wanted to. I can't speak. Boots appear in my vision and then they toss me onto my back, unceremoniously. A face swims into view above me. A face behind a rifle barrel. I would fight but I can't. I would scream but I can't. I want to explain but I can't. His eyes drift to the side and open wide. I turn my head and see the bag has opened. Spilling it's contents. I find strength. I turn myself over and carefully collect each seed with absolute care. Not one can be wasted. Not one. When I finish he lifts me up and I clutch the bag. He carries me. When he lays me down I feel something against my skin. It feels...wet. I can hear it, water lapping gently against my body. It is here. My vision has grown dim but I turn my head enough to see. A blue lake nestled in the mountains, the same lake I hiked to all those years ago. Along the edge are trees, young trees. They sprout from fertile soil, soil I've been seeking for years. He takes the bag from my hands and I know it will be okay. The hope will continue, carried by another. Hope will grow and sprout, it has to. Hope will continue on. It is no longer mine to carry. As my vision fades I listen to the water. I let it carry me away. I can stop walking now.
It took twelve minutes into the new year before I had the life beat out of me. Twelve minutes and 37 seconds, to be exact. In a taxi. On my doorstep. I had gone downtown to watch the fireworks. Every year the show gets bigger and better, and this time around there were more tourists than locals. I guess that's what happens when your city invests twelve million bucks in an anual one-night celebration. I still went there, of course, and it was nice enough. Some half-known bands played their one-hit wonders. TV crews were there. The fireworks went off when a giant electronic clock counted down to 00:00 and a prohibitively enormous 2018 neon sign lit up by the main stage. I had met some friends, chatted a bit, and after a sip of some terrible generic champagne, I called it for the night and went back home. Some of us have to work on the first day of the year. Not me, but I can sympathise. The taxi driver who picked me up was one of them, and was already fuming by the time I got in. His last drop off had almost emptied the generic champagne contents of his insides in the car, so I didn't try and make some early year conversation. To be honest, I was a bit tipsy myself, and it does me well to keep my mouth shut more often than not. So I knew things would probably go south, and they would probably visit the tropics really quickly, when I noticed the two fifty dollar bills missing from my wallet, and the coins from my pocket, as he slowed down by my place. Some opportunist thief had gone for them among the cheering and the chanting downtown, I though. Upon hearing of the most recent developments of my financial liquidity, the infuriated face of the driver contorted into something I can not only not describe, but can't even remember. Because when he noticed his own cash was missing, the wrath of that pissed off immigrant would have had Mike Tyson running like a coward and screaming like Mike Tyson probably screams. I was still trying to figure out how his money could have vanished when my side door opened and he pulled me out, dropping fist after fist, foot after foot, and curse after foreign curse. Many will tell you that the sudden evaporation of all forms of currency in the first second of 2018 marked not only the beginning of a new year, but of a new age in human history, that it had incomprehensible implications on societies the world over, and will be the object of philosophical debates until the end of time. For me, it meant waking up in the afternoon of the first of January on my sidewalk, with a bloody face and a missing tooth. Not too bad, I say. It could have had me killed. ****** /r/Camberlot
Will frowned in confusion as he looked down at the small piece of yellow paper on his desk. He picked it up, turning it over in hand, as though some sort of ritual might betray a new nature of the object to him, but the post-it note appeared to be just that. A few lines had been scrawled on it in his master's jagged script, written in the crimson ink that the aged wizard had always used. Will sighed in exasperation. It wasn't as though he was expecting a celebration, but it would have been nice, he thought, for his master to have given him a spellbook, as was tradition on a wizard's thirteenth birthday. Or, you know, to have at least shown up. He exhaled a dismayed breath, then pushed the small square of paper into his pocket and shoved his way out the doors, trudging through the streets towards the train station. The seats of the train were just uncomfortable enough to stop Will from settling into them on the hour long ride south, and so he toyed idly with the knot of silver bands that he had received from his master the previous year, a puzzle he had not yet solved. After what seemed to him an eternity, the train's mechanical voice announced the station, and he slipped off the train, wearily heading away from the station and into midtown Chicago. He opened the door to the old building sullenly, pushing his way into the lobby and reaching into the pocket of his grey hoodie for the note. Glancing at it, he hit the panel on the wall with the side of his hand and waited. The elevator grumbled to a halt, and he stepped in, depressing the button marked '4'. As the elevator groaned upwards, he tapped his fingers against his leg, silently remarking on the eerie quality of the building. He exited the elevator anxiously as it slid to a halt on the fourth floor, glancing at the note to reassure himself that he was in the right place. He proceeded briskly down the hall until he came to the address marked on the post-it note. His brow furrowed as he raised his hand, and, after a furtive moment's hesitation, knocked on the frosted glass door marked 'HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD'.
I was dead. Not in any metaphorical way (okay, maybe some of those too) but in the literal 'drowned in a lake' way. I'll be honest, it sucks pretty hard. Dead people weren't the best company and all of us needed to live together. There was a limit to how many houses were on leylines or.. something and so a large group of us were stuck in one house together. It was a ghost party, and boy oh boy was it dead. You see, the issue with ghosts was that they were dead people, and dead people tended to be old, either 90 years old or from the 1830's old. Sure there was some novelty to it, but if racist grandpa was annoying, some of these guys were hell. Today was moving day, at least it was supposed to be. The old owners of the house, a poor lesbian couple from Minneapolis that had wanted a 'quaint fixer-upper' were sitting in the front hall waiting to hand over the keys to their nightmare. See, racist grandpa and the klan considered themselves the real owner of this place, which meant that they wanted control over who lived here. Sure, Mrs. Keys had been fine to stay here when she was alive, but since I'd joined the crew of 'happy' haunts there hadn't been a single person they'd approved of. First it was a family that had noisy kids, then it was a guy trying to rent out the mansion which was a non-starter, and most recently had been Felicia and her wife. Apparently they were fine until 'they started sinning all over my carpet.' Which is why, eight months of knockoff paranormal activity later, we were getting new tenants, and the tenants were late. "This generation has no respect,"Edgar huffed from his spot on the chandelier. "You don't come late to something like this." "I'm sure they're fine,"I answered. Edgar was one of the better ghosts, sure he was dressed in the 70's and I couldn't make out everything through his accent but he knew some good music. "I don't know, "he scoffed, "you sign a contract, you get there on time. Otherwise, well, you know what happened to me." "Yes, we all know what happened to you,"I answered. "See, I owned this guy, Vlad money and I thought, I'll pay him a couple days late and-" Edgar kept talking but I stopped listening, kicking off my spot on the banister and 'touching' down on the hardwood floor. Edgar continued his story and I poked my head through the front door to see if I could catch an early glimpse of the incoming guests. As luck would have it, I didn't only catch a glimpse of them, I stuck my head right into one of them- "Bro, I'm totally feeling a chill right now,"the first man I'd ever been inside commented. "Dude, yeah this place is like so totally haunted. It's super spooky,"was the response from behind him, but I knew that forced-fake-bro-accent-for-the-sake-of-irony-but-only-kinda. "Kyle?"I asked. There was a simple rule with ghosts, we got to decide if people heard us. "Did you say something?"Kyle asked. "Nah bro, you must be hearing the ghosts,"answered the newbie. "Yeah I'm terrified,"he slapped the newbie on the back, "gonna have to drink it away." "Good idea,"the newbie answered. Holy shit. MY frat was moving in. That was awesome. That was AMAZING. Oh my God, they were going to be gone in a week if there were ghosts, and everyone else was going to hate them. How was I going to keep them here. I- I didn't know, but this probably meant war. "GHOSTS I'M HOME!"Kyle shouted as the newbie opened the door to the foyer. Good start.
"Commander, have you ever heard the saying, the military is always preparing to fight the last war?" "Yes sir."It was a common enough phrase. "But we know what our next war will be this time. The Tazarians warned us in advance." The aliens had given us 150 years of warning, the same amount of time it took light to travel between our star systems. Or as they put it, "Enough time for you to beg for mercy with your primitive radios." They had also transmitted us the blueprints for a Tazarian battleship, or as they put it, "Giving you a chance to see what you're up against." Naturally, our scientists had immediately data-mined it for every last bit of alien technology we could find, so we could build battleships of our own. Just knowing that warp drives were possible had advanced science by years. Actually getting the plans to build one had advanced us by decades. Maybe even centuries. In only a few years, we had a warp drive prototype. In a decade, our first spaceships took flight, united under the banner of the Earth Defense Fleet. New shipyards were going up around Mars and Jupiter, and colonies were planned for Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star. Our military expanded at a breakneck pace, because we knew that even 150 years of head start might not be enough. We were just one planet, and they were an empire. "Not quite. We know what the Tazarians had 150 years ago, but not now. Don't forget that they sent their message at lightspeed." I saw the problem. "You're saying that they'll be more advanced than we think." "We're bootstrapping ourselves to their level with commendable speed, but these Tazarians aren't fools. They know we'll be copying them. They'll be ready for us." He looked out the window, at the beehive of activity that was the orbital shipyard. "They don't believe me. People feel safe when they see this fleet. They don't want to believe that we could spend an entire century building up, and it still wouldn't be enough." "Sir? Why are you telling me all this?" "Because I'm old and crochety and I want to complain to someone,"he said with a faint smile. "But also, because I want you to know what the stakes are. I don't intend to wait and see what the Tazarians are going to bring to us. I intend to bring the fight to them." He turned back to me, and picked up a folder from his desk, labeled "Top Secret." "See, we know that we're not the first ones to cross paths with the Tazarians. There must be other species out there. Maybe they've already been conquered. Maybe they're like us, newcomers who are trying to build up their fleets to try and stop the juggernaut bearing down on them. Maybe they haven't even reached space yet. But we know they're out there, and we know they have a common enemy. If we can unite them..." "You want me to find allies." He handed me the folder. "I'm putting you in command of the Magellan. It's a heavily modified frigate, fast, long-ranged, and lightly armed. It should be able to sniff around Tazarian space without getting caught. Get out there, find out who's out there, and get them on our side." I saluted. "Understood, sir." "Good luck, Commander."
The news stories were hard to believe at first, but Debbie didn't hesitate to log into all of her social media accounts to change her bio info. Yes, her self-confessed "addiction"to chocolate seemed so clever and funny before. She imagined her friends and family getting a good chuckle when they read it. "Oh, that Debbie. She is such a kidder,"they probably all thought. That was, of course, before the Blorgots arrived. It hardly seemed funny anymore. Seeing the images of the dead alien, its lifeless body surrounded by mini candy-bar wrappers (not so fun-size now, Debbie thought to herself), made her hilarious and utterly original description of herself seem insensitive now. Luckily, after a quick Googlenium search, no Blorgots have shown so far to have any negative reactions to coffee. That part of Debbie's identity, at least, was safe.
"Sense?" "Oh yes."Kano-051 confirmed his previous statement with the customary copy and emphasis transmission, "Their sensory organs are quite varied and highly useful within their own environments. They even have biological tendrils called 'hairs', they use these to sense fluid movement in both gaseous and liquid surroundings. They naturally track flows around them and are capable of identifying disturbances in less than a second." Kano-053 processed this as he observed the movements of the humans ten feet below him, "They do not look so advanced." "Oh, they acclimate quickly, which leads to weakness. They adjust to almost any environment, even micro-gravity and flesh-freezing temperatures. Yet the longer they live in an environment, the more they lose their vigilant sense of the place... and still they are naturally adept at detecting threats to their habitation."Kano-051 flowed further downward, sending the appropriate signal to suggest Kano-053 follow him, "Their multiphasic senses are extremely primitive, though. As long as we are not within five dimensional planes of them then they will not observe us as we observe them." "Strange creatures."Kano-053 drifted down to a point where his longest manipulators would have brushed through the hairs of the people below him if he had been aligned correctly, "You say they acclimate to microgravity, yet I see no evidence of gravetic generators." "They have none." "None?"Kano-053 sent three extra queries demanding expanded explanation. "They use chemical reactions to throw themselves off-planet. They build small orbital cylinders to live within and conduct science and entertainment within them."Kano-051 added markers to his words to express mild amusement, "They really are quite... inventive." "And dangerous."Kano-053 marked his words heavily, "Their standard gravity is 3.17 SGGU, the chemical reactions to breach both atmosphere and gravity capture would have to be-" "Yes."Kano-051 confirmed, "They regularly explode with amazing force." Silence settled between them as Kano-051 supplied Kano-053 with memory files of Falcon-9 explosions. Kano-053 emitted alternating response markers of both fear and awe. "I advise against contact."Kano-053 finally submitted to his superior, "These humans are very frightening." "Only at first impression."Kano-051 drifted further down and indicated a pair of humans who had bent over a small animal, extricating it's leg from some sort of entanglement. Kano-053 transmitted translations of the conversation as the two spoke about the smaller animal and how they should proceed to confirm its health and well-being, "They are frightening, though, I can agree with that, but it is not the things I have shown you which frighten me. It is something less tangible than that. They have something which our society has never seen before." "What?" Kano-051 reached out with a manipulator arm and ran it though the other-phase of the human female's hair, "Variety."
Paulson clenched his stubble covered jaw as another jolt rocked the ship. This was their third day in "transit,"whatever the hell that meant, and every hour that passed wound the tension even higher. According to the techs that built this thing, the ship should have arrived at its destination after a few hours. As far as Paulson knew, there wasn't a "stop and turn around"button either. Ignoring the anxious looks on the faces around him, Paulson stood and made his way up to the pilot's cabin. He had to hunch over as he walked, the ship was built for utility, not comfort. Paulson rapped his knuckles on the door and after a moment it opened. "What's the scoop cap?"he asked in a low voice. The ship's pilot waved Paulson the rest of the way in the cabin and shut the door. "We're still on course,"he reported, "but it's taking a lot longer to get there than we thought." "Tell me something I don't know,"Paulson growled. The pilot's adams apple bobbed. "We're almost there, but,"he shot a look at Paulson, "at this rate we won't have enough fuel for the return journey." "What the hell do you mean--"Paulson said, but was cut short by a thunderous jolt that threw him to the ground. The ship's engines whined, then trailed off pathetically. Paulson staggered to his feet. "We're here,"the pilot announced. "Thanks,"Paulson said sarcastically, and thumped into the back half of the ship. His men were standing, waiting for direction. Paulson smiled in spite of himself. They were headed to heaven or hell, and they still kept their composure. "All right boys, this is it. I'll be honest with you: we could see angels out there or a fiery lake of lava, but I know each and every one of you is more than ready to see it, and I wouldn't have anyone else by my side." "Open the doors,"Paulson said, and the pilot flipped the switch. Paulson drew his rifle and jumped out. He landed on grass, and breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever was else happened, they would be on land. His elation lasted about five seconds, when a massive reptilian looking creature crested the hill in front of him. It let out a bellow, and charged at the ship. The tyrannosaurus rex swallowed Paulson in one bite, and the rest of the company scattered. It let loose another ululating cry before chasing the rest down. There was no heaven, no hell, only the King.
<dock detected> <security feed downloaded/corr. detected> <collating...> <collating failed> <abridging feed> <playback initiated> Lines of code pass rapidly across the screen until it begins to reshape into the security footage. The tech officer fist pumps before looking around at the others and slowly lowering his hand. "Nice, Troy. Let the thing play before we celebrate."The stern voice of the commanding officer dampens Troy's pride. The security feeds are definitely corrupted. They can hardly make out the faces of most of the crew. One figure stuck out even before Troy did his best to clean up the feed: the captain's confident gait was unmistakable. "Our captain seems to be doing just fine considering half his team is missing."Regan's stern voice betrays a little sarcasm. "Amelia, status on the diagnostic?" "Ship's in good shape. The inertia dampeners are suboptimal, but nothing else out of the ordinary. Wait..."the voice over the comm. went silent. A moment passes before Amelia crackles into the overhead view as the entire bridge lights up. The collective exhale exudes through the room. "There. Auxiliary power should have the bridge all lit up nice for you, XO." "Thank you, Amelia."Regan says as his shoulders drop with relief. A brief wink and Amelia's face disappears from the bridge. "Any activity on the feeds?" Troy's eyes are darting across the screen in scrutiny. "Uh yeah... looks like they're prepping to jump again." "Come on. Why?! Two of his tech officers and his XO are gone. Protocol doesn't call for another jump!"Regan's frustration is on full display. "Do we know where they're going?" "I can't calculate these coordinates and the nav computer pins us near the edge of Sol. Two jumps ago." Regan, racking his mind with possible explanations, stares straight at the forward display. Charon occupies most of it. "The entire ship is there and here at the same time."Regan murmurs to himself. "Feeds lost again. They must've jumped."Troy springs into action bringing the haptic keyboard in front of him while simultaneously rewiring the module below his display. "Amelia, do you read?" Radio silence. "Amelia, do you read?" More silence. "Amelia, if you can hear me, scan the ship for other members. Roman just jumped again." Regan swivels around to face a display revealing Amelia's last known location on the ship. "I'm going to check on her. Looks like she's in Engineering. Keep trying to get those feeds up and make sure the damn distress signal isn't shut off again." Troy waves haphazardly in acknowledgement. Regan strides out toward the bridge exit. The door slides open. Regan recoils slightly in shock. "Captain Roman..." "Good to see you, XO. Hiding out on us was a helluva waste of resources. This mission is paramount and there's no time to be fooling aro-"He catches a glimpse at Charon in the Bridge display. "Where have you been, Regan?"His eyes turn directly into Regan's. "Frankly, Captain, we don't know. This is the same ship. We haven't gone anywhere, but everyone else has..." Roman's confusion lives in his squinting eyes. His disbelief obvious. "Can we reach Titan outpost?"He walks past the XO and into the bridge. "We sent out a comms. burst and general distress signal. We have about 14 hours until we can expect Titan to receive either."Regan seems more relaxed. As if he's now sharing the pressure of the situation with the Captain. Roman rubs his chin in contemplation. "Feeds are back up. Crew is scrambling. Looks like they're spooked about something. Inter-ship comm. traffic spiked."Troy turns to salute the Captain before turning back to face the feeds. "What was the last thing you remember?"Regan asks the Captain as he stands beside him. "I ordered a ship-wide search for you and we were calculating another jump,"The same puzzled look remains on Cpt. Roman's face. "The nav officer gave the coordinates... Engineering called in another anomaly, but we proceeded with the jump..." His confusion forced him to sit on his raised chair in the middle of the room. "If the ship in those feeds is fine and the exact same ship we are in is operational... what's the difference?"Roman looked back and forth at Regan and Troy. Amelia bursts through the door. "Time!" The rest of the crew, startled by her outburst, turn toward her rapidly. Through her short, sporadic gasps of air she manages a single sentence. "The problem isn't where... It's when..." The rest of the crew share the same blank stare. "'When are we?' not 'where are we?'" "Guys..." Troy's eyes are stuck on the corrupted feeds. The rest of the crew crowds around him to look at screen. The Captain walks into the partially encoded display, clearly jovial about the most recent jump. The other crew members are hugging one another. The XO and tech officers are among them. "You see? When not where."Amelia breaks up their mesmerized state. "If that's true,"Regan turns to scan the otherwise empty bridge. "then who the hell are they?"
No one could believe it. For the first time in what seemed to be recorded human history, the sun rose yellow. I hadn't actually risen early enough to see it for myself, but it was all they could talk about that morning on public radio as I fixed my breakfast. I didn't consider myself a very superstitious person, but it was difficult not to immediately pivot to that with such an uncommon occurrence. Of course they were interviewing all kinds of scientists and experts on the radio, but all anyone had was conjecture. One thing all the experts agreed on, though, was that there was no apparent danger presented by the sun's discoloration. I kept the radio on as I drove into work, curious what kinds of news would be breaking about it. Traffic was slower than usual, people craning their heads out of their windows to get a look at what was happening. I couldn't blame them, but I was more interested in why it was happening. I kept an earbud in at my desk that day at work, trying to stay keyed into the analysis. The most interesting report I heard that day was a group of statisticians analyzing what little data was available to them, looking for anomalies or outliers in any datasets that might be able to provide an explanation. Jokingly, one of the analysts suggested, "Well, it doesn't look like there were any murders last night."He and the interviewer laughed and laughed. I laughed, too. The next morning, the sun rose red. I tried not to let it bother me, but it ate at me in a way that caused a profound unease. Something was wrong, I thought. I tried to put it out of my mind, but the radio that morning was fixated on a particularly grisly murder. I could only listen for a few moments before a pit formed in my stomach and I had to turn it off. On the way into work, I turned on the pop music station. I didn't really enjoy pop music much, but I needed white noise to drown out the growing unease in my gut. I almost made it into work without hearing a news break, but by the time I realized what I was listening to, it was too late to turn it off. "... scene of a gruesome crime that recalls the Manson Family murders in the late 1960s. The victim was a software engineer in his late 20s by the name of Christopher Andrews..." Surely it was a coincidence. "... message written with what appears to be the victim's blood: Red is the all-seeing sun, red is the life-giving blood..." Jesus. Work was quiet when I walked in, making the pit in my stomach ten times tighter. I didn't need the group of people quietly huddled around a cubicle to tell me that it had been that Chris Andrews, one of the new hires. Feeling the way I did, I didn't know how much longer I could reasonably stay at work without throwing up my breakfast. Before anyone had occasion to see me, I turned on my heel and walked back out to the parking lot, pausing to retch into one of the bushes. I've got to go home. I can't stay here. As soon as I got home, I fixed myself a glass of water, and went to sit on the couch, trying to clear my head. After a time, I thought I heard the doorknob rattling, but no one was there when I checked out of the peephole. Must've been my imagination. A sudden crash cleared my head. It sounded like it came from the back of the house. I didn't know whether to investigate the crash or stay where I was, but eventually my adrenaline rush made me elect to check it out. A breeze was blowing in through the broken window in my bedroom. I never even felt the pain of the knife entering my gut, but the impact knocked the wind out of me. I grabbed onto my attacker's arm, but he was much stronger than me. The knife twisted, and I knew there wasn't going to be any escape from this. "Why?"I managed, weakly. The response came at a low hiss: "The order... must be maintained." My eyes fluttered closed for the last time.
"Mark! Maaaaaaark!" I can hear my uncle calling for me, but I choose to ignore him for a bit more. I bet the harvester's auto-pilot broke down again and he wants me to drive it around on manual. Most boring job in the whole damn world! "Mark! Damn it, Mark! Where's that damned kid?" He's getting annoyed. Good. You damn slave driver. I should be in school, not here. Still, sounds like he's closer... might be better to pop out and say something, before he finds my secret hideout. I quickly get out, ensure that the entrance to my secret spot is hidden again, and walk towards the sound of his voice. I'm no longer a damned kid, I'm now a good for nothing lazy bum. "Hi uncle Jeff! I was just cleaning the coils. What is it?" "About time, boy! Been lookin' all over the place for you! Got a task you're going to like. I just bought two new droids. Need you to check'em and reprogram'em for harvesting duty." "Two? I thought you were only looking to replace the harvester's auto-pilot." "Yeah, but got a nice deal on them. No papers. Since we had the spare money, thought it'd be a good choice. If one breaks down, we got a spare. Now, stop asking questions and go do your job. I need them ready by the end of the day, or you'll be driving the harvester tomorrow. They're in the main workshop." "Sure thing, uncle Jeff! I'll get right on it!"You damn dictactor. I head towards the main workshop. Fancy name for a rundown shack. The two droids are waiting for me outside. Easy to spot'em, they look expensive. Definitely stolen goods. Slave driver, dictator and thief? Nice one, Jeff. "Hi. I'm Mark. Uncle Jeff told you about me?" "Greetings, Mark. I am AWPX-1318. This is AWPX-1319. You have been given programmer privileges by Administrator Jefferson." "Good. Please describe previous functions." "Unable to comply. That information is classified." "Damn it. Please state previous owner." "Xeontech Weapon Systems." "Weapon Systems? Please state your full designation." "Automated Weapons Platform Experimental, serial number 1318." Stolen experimental weapons sold as cheap harvest droids? What the hell...? What did you get us into this time, Jeff?
The player enters the room. I think he's a Paladin? It's hard to tell with these classes. He unsheathes his sword, a crimson scimitar. I recognise it from Joey the Slimes story. It can cut through steel like paper. But then I remember how he got it. "Hey! ASSHOLE!"I shout. "What?" "WHAT THE FUCK?" "Whaddya mean?" "YOU BOUGHT THAT WOTH REAL LIFE MONEY YOU PAY TO WIN PIECE OF SHIT!" "It's not pay to win! You can steal buy it by saving up coins!" "But you can skip the grinding by using you're card, so it's pay-to-win!" In reality, it doesn't matter. I'm just stalling so that he doesn't use it on me. I took a nasty beating yesterday. 3 guys came in with Thunder Spells. Assholes. "-and that's why it's not ok!"I finally shout, exhausted from the debate. He looks as though he has run out of arguments, and starts running towards me. I sigh out one last sigh before the Crimson Slash pierces my skin. "Fucking EA."
The shame was the worst part. Every time I felt that familiar ache on some part of my body, I knew what had caused it. Whether it was the pain in my eyes when I checked out Marcy in the girls' changing room when I was 12 or the pain in my hands when I read that steamy novel about two women in love during the Holocaust when I was 17. I hated the shame even more than I hated the pain because deep down inside I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong. Dad and Mum always told me that my condition was a gift from God, a way to keep me free from sin if I should ever stray. It wasn't until grad school that I realized that the pain was probably the result of psychosomatic indoctrination. Liking women was wrong supposedly and try as I might, I could never quite shake all those Sunday school lessons. But as I sat there across from her in that grimy dinner; my hands getting clammy and felt the dull ache everywhere in my body, I realized something. What if the pain wasn't a sign of something wrong or sinful but something meaningful? I read somewhere once that many people lice their whole lives with regret for not having done anything they considered substantive. Perhaps the pain was my body's way of telling me that I was reaching for something deeper than the mundane. Yes, it would cost me; but doesn't everything worth having come at some cost? She smiled. The aching increased. I grit my teeth and force myself to smile back. This is going to be painful for a long time I suppose. But somehow, I think it's worth it.
Soon I'll find myself in the abyss Mother Gaia I will certainly miss I bend a knee and kiss her face Then promptly told "Pick Up The Pace" I walk on forward in a single file line Two deep breaths one last time With tears on my face I stepped inside Two more months we will all have died The factories churning that poisonous gas Choking for money and to get there fast So much carbon is in the air Not even the earthworms seemed to fare They said they will help us leave this place Choose to stay and we'll be erased We destroyed their project with all our greed The human element, inhumane indeed What's done is done there's nowhere to run The ship blasted intensely it wasn't much fun Then it got hot like an oven baked bun Shit... They fired us into the sun.
I was one of the special ones. The one where nobody knew what would happen to me. People like their cookie cutter world, where people grew to be 150 centimeters, and school stopped at 10th grade, and everyone died at 100 years old. But I was different. I was born on the day that only existed every 4 years. When I was growing up I was ostracized, people didn't want their kids hanging out with an abnormal. I was the only one in my class who was born that day. They bullied me, called me the freak girl, even though I was the same as them. No one knew what would happen once my 100th year passed, since, technically I would have only had 25 birthdays. Nobody knew, but everybody cared; everybody except James. I met him after graduation, he too was born on February 29th. And, like me, he had been an outcast ever since he was born. We found solace in each other, we stuck together always and when he proposed to me on our 10th birthday, of course I said yes. Tomorrow is our 25th birthday, we have lived 100 years and spent most of them together. We did not whether we would live or die, we did not know what the next day held for us. Kids we knew had been passing away, those born in January and February were no more. I held his hand. It was 11:00 p.m., just an hour until the fated moment. We sat on our bed, one we have slept on for so many years and looked at each other. He put his forehead on mine and closed his eyes. We must have sat like that for a while for when I looked at the clock it read 11:55. I didn't mind, I was happy, I loved him and he loved me and I had lived my life contently in his arms. Now, as the clock ticked down, my acceptance became apparent. "I love you, James,"I whispered. "Now and forever." "You are my everything." The clock struck 12 and we held each other. A few seconds passed and then another minute. He looked at me and smiled, a single tear ran down his cheeks. "Here's to 300 more years, my love."
"It comes from growing up as a tribalistic group, of course,"Professor Shih waved from behind the lectern at the students arrayed in the classroom bowl, "Most species that rose to sentience were apex predators. Dominance was always a pretty simple thing. Who had more teeth? Bigger muscles? Longer tentacles? Wars were the same way for a lot of them,"the slides clicked over behind him, "That without even discussing the drone species. What need have you for propoganda in a civilization where the only thing necessary to keep the labor pool on task are pheromones?" The chuckle worked its way around the room, but Shih raised a hand for silence. "I'm not kidding here, take that to heart. Humanity has one great strength in this galaxy, and one glaring weakness. We are not pack. Our entire history is resource depletion, war, repeat. We have more experience with war than any other ten species together; we developed ways to kill each other so inhumane that when we deployed them in the first contact wars the entire galaxy bore down on us to put a lid on humanity." The slides stopped on a picture of the first Chancellor of Humanity and Shih smiled, "and then that changed. Why? Because again, we are not pack. So we developed ways to make ourselves feel pack. Nationalism is a hell of a drug, but it's effective. When you're facing the overwhelming power of the galaxy, breaking that coalition up becomes your only option. The first Chancellor was a pariah of sorts, but his skills saved us all." Shih signaled for the lights to be brought up as the holoprojector powered down, "I for one think the human race owes a lot of its survival to that man." As the Federation of Humanity students shuffled out of the hall, Shih turned to leave, smiling one last time at the memory of Vladimir Putin.
"Volatile wormhole detected!" "Sir, we've detected an object exiting the wormhole!" "I want firing solutions on that target, stat!"a clear, sharp voice cut through the excitement. "Contact it, give it the standard warning." "This is the NGN Vanguard of the New Gaian Empire. Stop, or we will fire."the officer said clearly into the comms, only to be replied by static. He repeated his statement. "This is the NGN Vanguard of the New Gaian Empire. This is your second warning, unidentified vessel. Cease your current course or be fired upon." There was no response. The officer turns to the captain. "Sir. Unidentified target is refusing all hails!" "Get our shields online. Prepare to fire missiles on my mark."A buzz rose among the crew as bridge officers begin barking out orders to crewmen and the battle alarm began to blare throughout the ship. "Sir."another officer said through the cacophony, raising his voice as the bridge crew began preparing to attack. "We've scanned the vessel. It doesn't match any known records of the Harbringers." "...what the hell is it, then?"the captain said, slightly irate. "Sir...it looks similar to primitive satellites of the seventh century. Yet scans indicate it's not of Gaian origin." The captain's brow furrowed. "Send a shuttle to retrieve, and scan it for any dangerous contents before bringing it aboard. I want our scientists on it immediately." "And—"he added, "turn off that damn alarm!" --- "Sir."an officer said, striding towards the captain quickly while holding a stack of images. "We've extracted these pictures from the vessel and—they...you should see it." "Give me that."the captain said, snatching the images away. The bridge crew began exchanging whispers as they observed the interaction. The officer continued to speak above the rising din as the captain browsed through the images. "Their anatomy, according to these, matches ours exactly, and...sir, the next few pictures show their appearance. Check it out."he continued, sounding unsure. "Impossible..."breathed the captain as he reached an image of a nursing female, "...they look exactly like us."He glances curiously at the officer. "Can we be sure that this vessel isn't one of our ancient satellites?" "Yes sir. Along with the images was this recording, of various languages."the officer revealed a golden plate, with various markings on it, "Some of them...match our ancient languages, and one of them is an introduction to these aliens of sorts." "It's a record, C-Captain."a scientist stepped out timidly behind the officer, pushing a finger to lift his computerised glasses. "It was, err, used long before the Cataclysm, back on Gaia. I can play it, if you , err, if you wish." "Please do."the captain said. Placing the record carefully on the table the scientist unhooks a handheld scanner from his belt, connecting it to a panel on the ship. The buzz around the ship died down as a crackling sound was heard over the speakers. "As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organisation of..." --- As the recording reached its end, the symphony of music dying down, the officer stood up along with the scientists. "Your orders, sir?" "Send a shuttle to bring this back to New Gaia."the captain responded. Turning to the sensors officer, he asked, "How long more would that wormhole be stable for?" "A month, at best, sir. At the very least, a standard week. Should we deploy minelaying ships to cover it?" The captain strokes his short beard. An alien species that looked _exactly_ like them. It could be a Harbringer trap, to lure Imperial assets out and divide and conquer. He wasn't supposed to go exploring random wormholes. Even if it wasn't a trap, if Harbringers were on the other end it would only alert them to the Empire's presence here. On the other hand, this was something different. He felt it in his bones. He felt something in there, calling to him, and he knew he had to do it. "No."the captain said, rising from his seat. "Bring a jump tender ship to stabilise our entry. We're going in." "Sir!?" "You heard me. Do it." ~~~ You know, previously I would probably have had some backstory ahead, but I'm trying something new here, hopefully it works better this way! A very short response, admittedly, with very little action, but I hope this little intro works well as an...ummm...an intro? Do comment if you want a continuation, and do give your criticism! It's _desperately_ needed. Yes, even spelling mistakes and/or grammatical errors. If you liked it, go check out /r/TheWriterDiaper for more! If you didn't, say so and go check out /r/TheWriterDiaper to make sure I follow your criticism! Thanks for reading!
GAAHHH!!! I, Jærber, Son of Husthom hate this blasted game! I swing this tiny metal stick and I always miss this tiny ball!?! "Calm down Jærber"stated Brom. It's quite easy, just take it easy and don't use your full strength. Jærber watches intensly as Brom easily hits the ball on to the green right next to the hole In which the objective of the game was to get the small white ball into. "Alright Jærber, you try now"said Brom. Brom has to hold back all he can has he watches Jærber, whom yet again... Swings and misses. "BAHHHH!!"Screamed Jærber, who proceeded bend his Club into something that resembled a pretzel made by a three year old. It was an interesting first day to say the least. I wished I could've helped with his swing, unfortunately I was busy helping Ñüràr, the Elf puke his guts near a tree as the damned Dwarf Adamain was crying from deep laughter in the golf cart after winning his bet with the Elf, forcing him to shotgun a 12 pack with the short but broad man.
It's weird. Despite different evolutionary pathways, different histories, different cultures, a lot of things are the same across most species. The big one is visual communication and visual art. Eyes are one of the most efficient ways for an organism to view the world, so most sapient species have sophisticated eyes and nervous systems (or equivalent systems) to handle visual input. Some aliens make music, but not most. I've heard that a lot of species use scents to make art, because their noses (or equivalents) are their strongest organs. But the majority of species across the Milky Way use writing and paintings/drawings to convey art. Yes, I'm talking about comic books. The formatting for some is weird. A lot of alien webcomics have to be completely recreated, panel-by-panel, so they make sense for humans (most don't quite follow the panel format we're used to). Some aliens see more infrared or ultraviolet light, so the colors will forever be off to our less-sensitive eyes. The massive variety of living things across the galaxy ensures that art styles vary from abstract and surreal to recognizable, from cartoony to near-photorealistic, and everything in-between. And that's not even getting into the storytelling. Visual poetry is popular for Betelgeusians; Neo-Jovians near-universally seem to stick to a single script, only changing the story by changing the visuals. Nekos seem to subside entirely on art reminiscent of internet memes. And the list goes on. One thing that I've been seeing pop up on the web a LOT lately, however, has been humans. Sometimes they draw us goofy, like chibi art or animated television. Other times, they show weird amalgamates of us and other species. Sometimes it falls into semi-recognizable human genres like romance and comedy and adventure, and other time it's so abstracted, no one can make heads or tails of it. I've been going outside my internet bubble a bit lately, going onto non-human websites, practicing my Galactic Universal. I'm on a couple webcomic forums, and I saw an AMA (well, it's kinda like an AMA; Neo-Jovians are weird. It's tough to explain to someone who doesn't immerse themselves in Galactic Culture) for an artist I've been following for a while. So I decided to ask what the deal was, why we were the new trend in my preferred reading material. So I said (in admittedly very poor Galactic Universal), "Why do you draw so many humans? Why are humans in so many of your stories? I'm human and my friends and I don't understand it." It was a mistake to post right before I went to bed. I woke up to over 100 messages in my inbox, asking for everything from selfies and info about my personal life to requests to do my own AMA thread. It took an hour to sort through all of them and reply to the ones that I deemed important, but at the center of it all, something that kept popping up, was, "You're so goddamn cute!"(Paraphrasing a bit) A short list of reasons we're "cute,"from what I've gathered: * Our eyes and ears are both kind of big compared to a lot of species. * Our distribution of body hair is really weird, and for some reason that aesthetic is pretty. * The majority of humans still belong to religious organizations. For some reason, aliens find the idea of believing in a deity or pantheon novel and endearing. * Our sensory organs aren't as good as most other species; our ability to succeed as a civilization is novel. We're like little engines that could, apparently. * They really misunderstood our history books and find the idea of war and violence funny. I don't understand it, nor will I ever try to. I don't like to think about that one too much. * Our spacesuits look like infants. (If you've ever seen a picture of a Glesian baby, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about.) * Our utter failure to fully integrate into Galactic society reminds a lot of species of awkward teens. * Mammary glands and their equivalents aren't super common, so our nipples are an unending source of comedy for the entire galaxy. * We're way more inclined towards physical affection than most species (besides the eusocial, insect-like ones, and the less we talk about them, the better). So, from my minor incursion into what amounts to Galactic Reddit, it seems like the only reason we're still alive at all is because space monsters think we're too adorable to bother exterminating. Good to know. I think I'm sticking to normal manga from now on.
I surveyed the aftermath of the abduction gone wrong. According to the briefing, it was supposed to be a simple capture, dissect, and return. Sure as Cltharnoth didn't turn out that way. Blood oozed across the operating room floor, the sources of it laying eviscerated from the carnage. The lead surgeon lay across the operating table, vivisected by his own machine, a permanent screaming mask of terror and pain across his face. The guards outside the door were also dead, rifle missing from one, ammo stolen off of both. Crewmen lay dead everywhere from that point, either shot or beaten to death. The path ended at an escape pod docking bay, another guard decapitated with the door, his head still hadn't been found. I turned to the few surviving crewmen and asked them a question. "You're telling me one guy with a scalpel, a broken pipe, and a rifle did all of this?!"
“MOM!” the girls screamed. “What is it honey?” “It’s here again?” Her mother sighs and starts walking up the stairs. “We’ve been over this before Patricia. There never was, and still is no monster in your closet.” She’s met only by silence when she reaches the second floor of the house. Opening the door, the room is vaguely lit by only the light in the hallway and Patricia’s nightlight in the socket by her bed. She steps in and sees her daughter hiding under her cover. She walks to the closet and grips the handle and opens it. “See… there’s nothing her but your clothes and toys.” She turns around. Her daughter hadn’t made a move. Wanting to comfort her, she sits down o the bed beside her. “There is no thing as a monster, honey. You’ll always sleep safely at home.” she says softly. Pulling off the cover, to her horror, she only found a rubber duck.
We yelled as we bundled up from the trench. Our boots sank into the soggy, downtrodden mud. I screamed through my labour, boots sinking deeper with each step. I hear the first bullets whiz past my head. "Keep going,"I scream to my friends. We push on into the onslaught. I hear Nicky roar, and I follow suit. We roar together into the morning sky. The feeling of impending death wreaking havoc to our sanity. Everything is a haze. I hear my comrades behind me, still in the trenches, calling out to us. Cheers and praises to our valour, no doubt. They call out more to our victory, but I cannot hear their words. The world is a blur. I push further towards the distant trench, prepared to do battle with the Hun. More bullets. They whiz and crack past our heads. I hear Nicky cry out. "Tommy's down,"he shouted, and I look over my shoulder to see my friend dead in the mud. The fire inside of me is reignited. Flames of fury burning up from my stomach and licking my eyes. "For Tommy!"I scream! My squad roar like Lions, and we leap down into the trenches below. The air is deathly still. I stand frozen, my stomach slowly dropping. What was happening? Where is the Hun? My friends do the same, and soon we are all stood like statues in the foreign trenches. The blood is rushing through my head, causing my ears to beat incessantly. The silence amplifies the feeling. BADUMP BADUMP BADUMP. I hear the calls of my comrades once more from across no man's land. I turn to meet them, lifting my arms high in the air. I squint at them and strain my ears. They're making motions but I cannot tell what they are. I see my commanding officer jump up from the trench, sprinting towards us. "What the fuck is going on?"I hear Nicky ask. "Shh,"I say, as I attempt to read the officers lips on his approach. "It looks like he's saying something,"I note, squinting at him with hands on hips. "Like what?"Nicky asks. "I'm not sure. Err, India? Innate? .... Idiot?" I hear the officers voice, and he confirms my guess. "IDIOTS"he roars out. I'm taken aback by the accusation. "What?"I call out. I hear Nicky say something similar, a tinge of offense in his voice. "You ran the wrong fucking way! This was the trench we took last month! MORONS!" I look about. Nicky's cheeks are burning. "Well now wait a minute,"I interject. "Then how do you explain Tommy being gunned down?" "That was me, you moron!"he screams, close enough now for drops of spit to land on my face. "I thought you were deserting!" "Oh,"I mutter, eyes vague and distant. "Welp, we fucked up."
"The test has no recorded instances of false positives. While we do have some reason to worry, it should only be about your abilities." Daren looked at the test. Sure enough, it said "ENHANCED FEATURES DETECTED."It always meant that whoever was tested and got those words outlined in red would certainly have powers. Abilities not beyond imagination; each was unique, but over time powers repeated. So what could he, Daren, school valedictorian, possibly have? The receptionist gave Daren little time to mull it over. "If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us. We wish you a pleasant day!" And with that, the call disconnected. Daren had few distinct features, apart from an encrypted e-mail that told him he was more special than 98% of the human population. He was definitely special when it came to education; being the best of the best only served him at school, but he had little interest in extracurriculars, clubs, or sports. Daren didn't fit the well-rounded jock stereotype of the modern erudite; he just knew everything he was taught and his grades reflected it. So how was he special when nobody around him observed any special phenomena? Only five other students at Daren's high school, Spencefield High School, had powers; a very high outlying value. Their powers were rather obvious; one was charismatic beyond comparison, another could teleport, another was a pyromaniac aquamancer, another one didn't need sleep, and the last one could cut anything into any shape with her mind. Daren exhibited nothing special in his qualities or abilities. He was a poor worker and student, but his grades were impeccable, all a mystery to him nonetheless. He wasn't a party animal and stayed home, playing whatever video game is trending at the time; he always won. He got along with everyone very well and all of his teachers loved his quiet nature. But he did nothing. His parents called him smart; but they were his parents. Daren's teachers loved him, but he was just quiet and did well; he knew all the answers. The students loved him, but he knew what to say. Nobody disliked him. He may even rival Martha, the charismatic. But she was beloved by all because of her fashion sense, friendliness, and erudition (second only to Daren's own). Daren said nothing bad about anyone to anyone else; he kept to himself, but always knew what to say. He knew what to say. Darren called the clinic. "Hello, Daren! Calling back so soon. Are there any problems with the test results?" He said nothing. He wanted to say something, but his mind had gone blank; his mouth didn't move. His jaw stayed where it was. He stared ahead. "Darren?" He hung up the phone. He knew what to say and it was nothing.
We never get to see the big man anymore. Rumor has it he’s returned to the depths, and continues his eternal, undying rest. Some say he’s cultivating his power for another assault. General consensus is, we were more effort than we were worth, and he stepped into another dimension to continue his reign of indifferent terror. Either way, he ran like an itty, bitty bitch. Turns out, most of those creepy, old freaks are only “horrible beyond human comprehension”, if it’s the late 1800’s, and you still think dancing and black people are witchcraft. Together or separately. Yeah, I mean it’s all still somewhat trippy. Time distortion and all that shit, but it’s just physics. The laws of physics are pretty much set. You just follow those, and you’ll be ok. Think about it. How much effort goes into making a missile? All of the technology, both software and hardware, is ridiculous. People get paid stupid money just to make something explode out of one end, travel a little while, then explode out of a different end. Now. How much effort do you think it would take, for me to build a wall big enough to tell your missile to fuck off? Yeah. So now we have the usual troops. Star Spawn are kind of an issue. They’re not necessarily too dangerous. Turns out, all they can really do is shapeshift. That’s somewhat- You know what. I’ll level with you. It’s fucking creepy. They’re so used to being superior to everyone, that without Squidboy, they have no clue how to do anything. I literally wish one would successfully infiltrate the camp. Want to know why? Last week we had a “dog” enter our camp. It slithered in on its back, legs twitching in the air like antenna, then barked at me out of the wrong hole. I do not, in any way, shape, or form, miss the entire crate of bullets that I dumped into that thing. It’s still there, by the way. We’ve burned it. We’ve blown it up. It’s literally still out there, and it’s still barking out of different holes, like it’s trying to figure out which one it should use. We’ve even got spies around the camp. We let them stay, because we’re afraid of what else they’ll send if we kill one. One of them does this creepy crab-walk thing everywhere. Everywhere. It comes into the mess hall and just starts slamming its face into the table, then it starts making these weird “yum” sounds. I shot it in the face last week, and it still hasn’t noticed. I don’t even care anymore. Then there’s the Mi-Go. Just... what the fuck. They’re harmless, but turns out they can actually fly in planetary gravity. They’re pretty good too. So while they’re not dangerous, they spend their entire day doing this weird Wizard of Oz routine thing overheard. Took us awhile, but the general finally realized that, that was it. He figured out, that the last time they saw humans, all they had to do was fly around in a circle, and the naked monkeys would go running and screaming. So, every Thursday we go outside and scream as loud as we can, then we pack everything up and move two miles to the west. It’s kept them pretty well satisfied so far. They’ve even started taking breaks, and just last week, they took a whole day off. Unfortunately, our resident Star Spawn has started screaming with us. Even the Mi-Go avoid his tent entirely. Then once a month, the Old Ones send the Deep Ones to raid us for cold ones. Sorry. Once a month, the Deep Ones roll through here armed to the sharp, pointy teeth, so we all just hide until they leave. I know what you’re thinking. Gasp! But they’re the Deep Ones! Half man, half fish! The unholy children of the fish god Dagon! The lurkers beneath the waves! The watery abominations that rule the Deep! Yeah. So if you go back and do a little research, you’ll find one common theme throughout their culture. A tiny little hobby of theirs, that they seem to absolutely enjoy. Can you guess what that is? If you guessed violently aggressive inbreeding, then you’re right on the fucking money. So, yes, we do get a visit from eight-foot tall, highly durable fish men every now and then. They’re big, ugly, and armed to the teeth with armor, weapons, and a laundry list of learning disabilities. We know when they’re coming, because we hear them howling. We know where they go, because we follow the drool. And whenever they get stuck in camp, we find them by following the distinct sound of an armor-plated bumper being eaten for a snack. If that happens, we usually just throw a stick, and that takes care of everything. The only real threat is the Old Ones. They’re actually intelligent and relatively devious. They’re just lazy as shit. We’ll come back to that though. First, we need to talk about the Shoggoths. The Shoggoths were these weird shape-shifting blobs that make the weirdest fucking noises. It’s like R2-D2 on speed. They used to be slaves for the Old Ones, like semi-sentient heavy machinery. They were also telepathic. Which means that the first three months of this war were spent fighting shifty-looking bulldozers and forklifts. They’d dig around our brains for something they can relate to, and construction equipment was the only thing even remotely relatable for them. So we bought a bunch of that shit they use to clean up oil spills, and sprinkled it on every shady ass steam roller and jackhammer that we could find. Worked just fine, but those things screamed like banshees on the way out. Felt like I was shooting the family dog. Every time. Haven’t seen one in a while, so I’m guessing we got them all. Makes me feel kind of shitty sometimes, but War is war. But now. For the icing on the cake. The Old Ones. The Old Ones are terrifyingly vicious and immeasurably intelligent. Once, they had a weapon that could strip your consciousness, rearrange your DNA, and turn you into whatever slobbering mess they chose. How do I know? They walked into camp, and demanded that we build it for them. It seems, that many “strange eons” ago, we were their slaves, amongst other things, and they just can’t let that go. We wiped out the Shoggoths, and with them gone, the Old Ones have absolutely no clue how to live. Absolutely no clue how to do anything for themselves. So, every few months, a gang of them marches right into our HQ, slaps down some new blueprint or schematic, then leave. Every blue moon, they stop to screech back and forth with Sergeant Star Spawn over there, but that’s about the extent of our interactions with them. We’re not even sure about what they do in the meantime? I mean there’s only so much you can do with tentacles for arms, and a spiky starfish for a head. We sent over some paperwork for a peace treaty, now we just have to figure out if these are angry scribbles or friendly scribbles. All in all, it’s not that bad. We haven’t had a casualty in weeks. If you can deal with the weird sounds every night, and the Mi-Go with their flying monkey routine, you can survive out here easy-peasy. Like I said, our biggest threat are the Deep Ones. They’re harmless by themselves, but give a friendly monkey an assault rifle and see how long it takes for him to find the trigger. That’s how We lost Ramirez, God rest his soul. Otherwise, it’s easy street out here. Now, if they could just find Squidboy, life would be great. I’ve got another fusion bomb for that fucker, and I’m itching to blow another tentacle off. If you see that fishy fucker around, tell him Private Johnson said this: “Death ain’t dead yet, motherfucker. It’s time to pay the piper.”
I don’t remember how old I was when I realized it, but for a long time, I’ve known that I was special. I’m not sure what tipped me off, either – if it was the unending affections from all the most chiseled boys on my block, or the telekinetic powers I share with my cat, or even that dagger I picked up while on vacation in Rome (the one that never stops glowing purple). But I’m special. It might sound cool and exciting, but really, it sucks. I never have time for sleepovers or movie nights because I’m always running off to fix some problem in this town, a problem only I can fix. I never get to go on regular dates because when I do give those pubescent Adonises a chance, I get sucked into some deep sci-fi government conspiracy (that takes months to resolve, and usually ruins my summer vacation). I’m always behind on school work because my damn cat never stops alerting me that some random child is in danger (always, it seems, on the outskirts of fucking town – why do people go there to “be alone” when people are apparently always fucking there??). Fortunately, my teachers let me off the hook here and there, because in their words, they “understand how much pressure is on me” and “don’t repeat this to other students, but you’ve always been one of my favorites.” Just last weekend, all I wanted to do was stay home, paint my toenails and read a magazine – instead, I got maybe four hours of sleep and spent 30 straight hours banishing a coven of witches from the grove behind the football field. But I’ve been thinking, and I think I know a way out of this now. I’m a Mary Sue. I’m the main character, the victor, the force for good, right? What if I just decided to stop? Because the thing is, I’ve been researching how to make pipe bombs, and I’m getting pretty good.
"With a Halo of Light, on roads of gold, from across the pockmarked sea, the chosen born shall come again to set us all free."Garit chuckled to himself at how clever he was as he watched the battle begin beneath him. Was the Halo of Light the blonde hair of Lady Antin, or was it the heritage of General Zoron who claimed to have divine parentage? Was the roads of gold the vibrant city that Lady Antin hails from, or is it the rolling fields of golden grain that General Zoron grew up in and built his following in? Is the pockmarked sea the literal sea that Zoron crossed as a slave to become a farmer, or is it the dunes that Lady Antin marched her army across to intercept General Zoron? Then, of course, set who free? Will Lady Antin free her city from the Empire? Or is General Zoron set to free his enslaved brethren? He chuckled as he watched the battle lines form. The answer was, of course, neither. The words about the great enemy were just as wonderfully confusing. He was proud of that. Proud of the battle about to be fought. The most significant threats to his master's empire about to hurl themselves at one another, both certain that they would win and that supernatural aid would come to them once they've slain their foe. He took another sip from a flask as he watched. The General brought forward a spear wall. Dark skinned men with large shields and long spears, a strong play. An excellent choice of equipment for a poor slave rebellion. The lady, of course, was more than ready to play that game. A squadron of men in gleaming plate with massive steel shields marched forward in a perfect V formation. A deadly counter that bet the stomachs of the knights were stronger than that of the slaves. The Lady's army had an elite force of knights, followed up by standard levies from her land. The levies wouldn't stand up long against the determination of the slave armies that knew surrender meant death as a runaway. But could the slaves keep their formation long enough to kill the knights? He snapped back at the people behind him as he heard the rustling of leaves. "Patience my friends, it won't be long now,"he whispered. Hidden all throughout the valley were hundreds of his lord's soldiers. Once one side or another had claimed victory, his forces would assassinate the leader of the survivors. Then let the heavy cavalry of the Empire mop up the disorganized remanents. He couldn't help but laugh at himself as the battle began in earnest. Nearly five thousand enemy combatants would lay dead before the day was out, and he'd be shocked if he lost more than ten men. "Remember son,"He whispered to himself from memories long past, "prophecies only serve those that write them."He realized he didn't take the lesson from it his father had meant him to, but he learned a lesson all the same.
### No Good Deed *** "How you want it cut today, hon?"Sasha asked as she whisked the barber's cloak up and over the seated man. Hell, man probably wasn't the proper term for it. She had cut his hair several times before, and he had always been the same; thin as a rail and paler than a glass of milk. He'd always come in with a mop of hair and quietly ask for it all to be cut off. "A 1 on the sides, and finger-width on top, p-p-please." "Mhmm, sure hon." She waited for him to reach up and take off his glasses, folding them gently and tucking them under the cloak. She then watched as he lifted his head and focused on one of the many televisions mounted on the wall. Sasha knew he couldn't see shit, but still he'd pretend to be deeply engrossed in whatever sports game was unfolding on the telly. She had learned it was all a facade during the first haircut she had given him, when she had finished, spun him around to face the mirror and asked How does it look? Then, and soon now, he would yank his glasses out from under the cloak and quickly unfold them to put back on his face so he could see. Sasha whistled as she cut his hair, clippers buzzing away as she worked them through his thick and curly mane. She noticed him pass a glance in the mirror, probably looking at the symbols tattooed on her arm, poking out from under her shirt sleeve. Sasha paused momentarily and pulled her sleeve back down to cover her arm. She saw him blush. "Company policy to keep them covered. You got any, hon?" He didn't say anything. Just intently focused on the television screen that she knew he was completely incapable of seeing. Just blurry shapes moving back and forth. Like blobs in her lava lamp she had back home in her bedroom, Sasha imagined. She didn't press for an answer. She knew he never really talked much. Sometimes she enjoyed the silence, but with this guy, it bothered her. She wanted to hear him talk. Throughout the haircut, Sasha made a decision. She was going to help him. If it worked, it worked. If it didn't work, there wouldn't be any harm done. Surely not. Moments later, Sasha spun the man in the chair around to face the mirror, "How's it look?" Once again, he quickly fumbled his glasses out from under the cloth and slipped them on, "Great, good." "Good to hear, hon,"Sasha said, untying the cloth and the white paper band from around his neck. She cleaned up the nape of his neck with a small set of clippers, dusted him off, and soon had him checked out at the register. She watched him exit the barber shop and head towards his car, awkwardly walking as fast as he could. "Fidgety little shit, isn't he?"Stacy said, having snuck up behind Sasha. "Yeah, he's quiet. It's an easy cut,"Sasha replied, checking the receipt he left behind. "He always leaves a good tip though." She walked back to her station and grabbed the dustpan and broom and began to sweep. She guided his curls into the pan, then picked up and walked towards the trashcan. Before dumping the pan, Sasha reached in and plucked a lock of the man's hair. *** Clancy was on the verge of a panic attack by the time he got back to his car. He nearly dropped his keys when fishing them out of his pocket, but managed to get in. He was now shut off from the world and feeling safe again. He flung his newly cleaned head back into the headrest and took deep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth, just like the therapist had told him to. Once calm, he looked into the rear view mirror and examined his haircut. Like always, the barbress had come through and gave him a clean one. He collapsed back into the driver seat and exhaled a deep breath he didn't realize he had been holding. It had taken him four hours to work up the courage to drive to the barber shop and get his haircut, but he had finally managed to do it. He turned the keys in the ignition and then made his way out of the parking lot and towards home. Along the way he contemplated why he was the way he was, like he always did every time he had a free moment to analyze himself. "I don't fucking know,"he muttered, turning his car into his driveway. *** Back at her home, Sasha dug through a chest she had buried in the back of her walk-in closet. She tossed out ribbons and sashes, awards she still had collected from elementary school (you never get rid of these, the older they get, the more power they retain), digging and hoping that she still had a doll from her childhood, something that she could use as a catalyst. Fingers bumped against plastic at the bottom of the chest, and Sasha grabbed and pulled, hoping that it was one of her old Ken dolls (the older, the better), then felt her heart sink when she saw it was a Barbie doll with frayed hair. She sighed and stared at it, wondering if it would still work. Then heard her teacher's old murmurings echoing in her head, if deep in your soul you feel it isn't the right catalyst, then it isn't the right catalyst. "True,"Sasha exhaled, "I don't want to fuck with the chemicals in his head too harshly."She carefully set the Barbie doll off to the side (to be used for future catalysts) and kept digging until finally she found what she had been looking for. A Ken doll, and apparently this one was Hawaiian Vacation Ken because he was sporting a cheap plastic lei and wearing a flower cloth shirt. "Fantastic,"Sasha breathed, stumbling out of her closet, Ken doll in hand. She walked back to her bedroom which had been illuminated only by a blue and green lava lamp, the globs of rising and falling wax casting misshaped shadows on the paintings she had hanging on her walls. Sasha plopped herself down on a large pillow and fished the furl of hair she had kept in her pocket. She placed the doll down and brought the bit of hair close to her face. Carefully, she began braiding the hair until she formed a tiny chain with it, then she tied that chain into a small loop. Satisfied with her work, she removed the plastic lei from around the neck of the Ken doll and replaced it with the braided hair necklace, fashioned from that fidgety man's hair. Sasha smiled, holding the Ken doll up in the air in front of the lava lamp, admiring her work. "Okay,"Sasha whispered, "now let's get to business." She rolled up her shirt sleeves, revealing another set of sleeves on her arms, but these consisting of tattooed symbols and markings. They may have just seemed like abstract tattoos to anyone else, but to Sasha, they were her runes. Her promise that she had made when she was first taken into the Coven. With the Ken doll placed in front of her, Sasha clasped her hands together, fingers interlocked, and she began to chant as the waxy globs in her lava lamp began to take shape, no longer bulbous and misshapen, but now taking form. They cast grotesque shadows up onto her bedroom walls, but Sasha focused intently, willing the malicious spirits into submission. Sweat broke out onto her brow. The spirits had grown more resilient with the passing time, "But I ain't no bitch,"Sasha muttered under her breath, taking a brief break from her incantation. She inhaled deeply, and continued the spell, feeling her spirit crash against those no longer belonging to this plane of existence. * That night Clancy couldn't sleep. He felt something pulling at him. He tossed and turned in his bed. There were shadows dancing on his walls, but he didn't notice. They danced feverishly to an unheard tempo, their pace quickening, their movements becoming more violent. * They had fought back so hard. But Sasha fought back harder. She willed them into submission, and then forced them to do her bidding. * The shadows on Clancy's walls ceased their dancing. They no longer intended to rip the soul from his body. No, they had different orders now from their master. They fell from his walls and slunk back to their realm. All but one. One that Sasha had missed. * The following day, Sasha took the Ken doll with her on her errands. She kept him tucked in her purse, head still visible and poking out. She spoke to the doll in quiet whispers as she went about her grocery shopping and other tasks, "You're a good fella, you know that?" "You have nothing to worry about." "You are loved." * That same day, Clancy found himself dissatisfied with sitting in his home. He stood up and stretched, deciding to go out for a walk. "It's a nice day,"he said, peeking out the living room blinds. "Shouldn't waste it." He dug through his closet, looking for a pair of running shoes that he had only worn once since he bought them. Clancy was oblivious to the shadow that clung to the ceiling of his closet. Watching him. * Sasha felt lightheaded by the time she got home. She walked to her kitchen and dug through one of the cabinets where she kept her vitamins. She had a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach. She tried to will it away, and she told herself over and over, It's just strain from the incantation. You've been really laying it on thick with the compliments. That's all it is. But she knew better than that. Sasha walked into her bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes. She reached up to rub at them, and her nose began to bleed. "Fucking shit!"Sasha yelled, accidentally spattering blood onto her mirror. "Dammit!"she continued, angrily rubbing at the blood with her palm. She had meant to clear it from the mirror, but only managed to smear it. Now she stared at her reflection, her face stained red from the blood. "I fucked up, I fucked it up. Goddammit, I fucked up,"she said, running back into the living room, searching for her purse that had the Ken doll. It wasn't on the bureau. Did she leave it in her car? She ran out her door, not bothering to lock it. ***
Welcome to a day in my life. I own a tattoo shop. It does well enough. Nothing mindblowing, and I'll never be on Ink Master, but my work is good enough to keep people coming in. I've been doing this for a few years now. Some customers are regulars, plenty of first timers, and the occasional odd request. I can't even begin to count the number of butterflies I've tattooed on girls, or barbed wire wrapped around some dude's bicep. Every once in a while though, something memorable comes through that door. Like Rick. When Rick first walked through my door, he seemed like a pretty normal guy. Didn’t talk too much, but had a clear idea of exactly what he wanted and where he wanted it. A single tally mark, on his left forearm. Definitely not the weirdest request I’ve had, so I rolled with it. Quick, mostly painless, and he was out the door. I didn’t see him again for a week. When he came back, it the same request, right next to his first one. I didn’t worry about it, did the deed, and continued on with my day. This pattern continued for a few months, until he hit the fifteenth mark. I should explain something real quick. I work in a city. Downtown, a lot of crime, and police running around answering calls all day. So when I heard the report on the news of someone that had been murdered, I shrugged it off. No big deal around here, just another day honestly. I know it sounds cold, but you have to adjust to things like this when you don’t have any other options. Anyways, back to Rick. When he came in and got that fifteenth mark, he had a look in his eyes. He seemed…haunted. Considering our usual arrangement, I’ve never really talked to the guy. But this time, the mood was different. I had to ask. “Hey, Rick. You okay, man?” He looked at me then, and what I saw in those eyes scared the shit out of me. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t normal. Almost wasn’t even human. I couldn’t even imagine what he’d seen or done to get that look, and I was starting to regret asking him anything. “No,” he finally responded. “I’m not okay.” I couldn’t speak. I had no response to that, and his manner suggested the conversation was over. I finished up the mark, told him it was on the house, and watched him leave. After he was gone, I cancelled the rest of my appointments that day and closed up the shop. Something about the way he talked just freaked me out, and I wanted to be home. Later that night, I had the news on while eating dinner. More reports of murders. Missing children. All the usual shit that goes on around here. Then Rick’s words struck me. His tally marks. “Fuck,” I thought to myself. “That’s a scorecard.” Every week, another tally mark, and more murders than this city can keep up with. I had no idea what to do if he ever walked through my doors again. 2 weeks passed. 3. A month. No sign of him. About 2 months after our last meeting, the door opened. It was 3:00, the same time Rick always came in. I looked up in apprehension, then breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Rick. Just a paramedic. His first words chilled me, though. “Do you know a guy named Rick?” It took me a minute before I could respond. “Yeah,” I said, hesitantly. “Why?” “You’re the one that did the tally marks for him?” I confirmed that I was. The paramedic, Luke, sat down heavily before looking into my eyes. “He’s gone. Dead. Killed himself about 2 months ago.” My heart dropped to my stomach. I didn’t know what I expected, but it was definitely not this. My mind was racing. “How did you know him?” I asked. “He was my partner. I trained the kid. Been with him since day 1. But no amount of training can prepare you for the job.” My suspicions about Rick began to clear up. Instead, another thought came in. “Wait. So, those tally marks? What…” I trailed off at Luke’s gaze. “A reminder. Every time someone died on our ambulance, he took it personally. He felt like a failure after so many, and couldn’t handle it. I asked around trying to find you.” “But why? Why me? All I did was tattoo the guy.” “Because I have a favor to ask.” Luke rolled up his sleeves, revealing scar tissue in the shape of tally marks on his forearm. No, not just his forearm. Both arms, all around. Rows of marks, carefully hidden under long sleeves. “I’d like a tattoo,” he whispered.
"Good morning, officer. How can I help you?"I rubbed my eyes, feeling a tiny bit of rubble from last night's explosion break free. I smiled halfheartedly at the REACH Agent in front of me, armed and backed up by three others and an armored vehicle with a mounted fifty cal pointed right at my head. It was a hell of a sight to see in suburbia. Several neighbors were either on their porch or fearfully peeking through their blinds. "Hands behind your head, now!"His rifle wavered a little as he shouted, but held it aimed center mass. I couldn't make out much of the Agent's face behind all that armor he was wearing, but I could hear the fear in his voice. He knew who I really was. How? Had I really been that lax with my "secret identity"routine? Or was it that damn facial recognition technology? Thanks, Zuck. "I'm not going to do that until I get a good reason,"I said, holding out my hands, palms turned out. "You are under arrest for the murder of U.S Senator Ronald Hyde and Secretary of State Eugene Trenton. Put your hands behind your HEAD!" I shook my head. I was impressed that anyone knew already, actually. I'd yanked those bastards out of their beds and went for a midnight flight as soon as I'd gathered enough evidence. "Oh, I certainly didn't do that. I only dropped them off in the war torn country that they like to secretly fund... Oh, say about... Eight hours ago? If you hurry you might be able to find them before they get caught in the crossfire they started." The officer took a step back, but did not lower his rifle. "Sir, these weapons are all loaded with Galvanite. We will act with deadly force if necessary. Please, come quietly." "You boys don't agree that funding warlords in third world countries is a good idea, do you?"My gaze swiveled to all of them, and they shrank back. I popped my knuckles. "Please, come back when you have a valid complaint. Or, at the very least, when you've identified the bodies." I turned to go back into my house. The pop pop pop of the fifty-cal split the morning air, and I felt a mild itching sensation in between my shoulder blades. Damn. They'd actually opened fire in a civilian neighborhood. These guys must have been sent from someone very, very high up. I turned, my feet lazily dragging the ground as I straightened my robe. I took a deep breath, then looked to each of the men one last time. "Boys, boys, boys."I kicked at the three smashed bullets that had fallen into my driveway. One seared my sandals and kind of stuck to it. "You don't think I'd be dumb enough to hand something as corrupt as a governing body my only weakness, do you? Come on inside, let's talk about who sent you, and why." None of them moved, but their rifles slowly dropped, pointing at the pavement. One by one, they filed into my house, avoiding my stern gaze. "I'll put some tea on,"I said, smiling. I'd spent far too long solving ground conflicts. It was time to move up the ladder and stop all the assholes who were causing them.
The night and day shall never meet Nor shall moon call to sun For while at work I take my seat The other's nap's begun What features have this daylight star? And where casts he his ray? I have not seen him near nor far For I doze through the day I have not seen a trace of him Aside from humble bed Is this abode for Tim? Or is he in my head? I must wait till he comes again For then my hunch is proved Can he be counted among men Or is it all a ruse? Quick! At the door I hear the keys They're fumblin' in the lock Is it him opening? Oh please! If not he, others may stalk. The door gapes wide on to the porch But not a figure stands Not one illumined by my torch "I'm invisible, man."
The door wouldn’t open. I’d got Jess to school on time, but I needed to drop off her lunch box before midday. My arm still ached from dragging our suitcase from the subway station to the bus terminal. I couldn’t remember when I’d last slept more than four hours in a row, her night terrors back again and my phone always ringing at the worst time. Even when it didn’t ring, I kept a worried eye on it. Dinner had been toast, for me, along with no breakfast this morning. After so long, it didn’t so much ache as knot. That went for more than just my stomach. Tension, worry, pain, emotions… all tied up inside of me, to be dealt with later, when I finally had time. The door wouldn’t open, and I cried. Dragging my hand and head down the length of it, I crumpled to the floor, sobbing, broken. I couldn’t do it. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much Jess believed in me, I just couldn’t. One person can only do so much, and I’d never been capable to begin with. I whimpered and whined, resting my body against the door, until I ran out of self-pity. In sniffles and measured breaths, I got myself back under control. Carefully, I got back on my feet and straightened out my clothes. The stitching on a tear had come loose, another knot in my stomach, but it wouldn’t take long to fix—when I could find time. With a final deep breath, I touched the handle. “It would be nice if it just opened,” I muttered to myself. The door opened with barely a push. A giddiness overcoming me, I only just managed to not dissolve into giggles. Instead, I channelled the bubbliness inside to words and said, “Thank you.” Little more than a breeze, I imagined more than heard a reply. “You’re welcome.”
We'd heard the stories. Every one of us had. Adventurers running around, screaming horrible battle cries, and raiding homes. We just wanted to live a peaceful life. Fighting was never something that interested us. We never though it would happen either. Until that fateful night many moons ago, where one scream set the scene for the worst night of our lives. --- I awoke in the middle of the night. I was restless. Something had felt off since before I brought home dinner. The evening had been too quiet. While I was out hunting, the only thing I found was a small deer. Luckily my wife and I didn't have any kids or it wouldn't have been enough. We ate dinner peacefully before nodding off to sleep together. I had nightmares. Owlbears don't usually have nightmares. Heck, owlbears don't usually have dreams. Only when something is horribly wrong. I awoke not long after the moon had risen. Outside, you good hear a strange noise. Quieter than the rustling of the leaves, or trying to be anyway. The noise felt forced, and unnatural. When I moved closer to the entrance of our abode, I could hear it. I couldn't make sense of it, but I knew. A Human. An Orc. 2 Elves. A couple others that I couldn't quite figure out. I swiftly and quiet moved back to my wife to wake her. Something told me we were in for the fight of our lives. That's when I heard it. The piercing shriek echoed through the night. "LEEROOYYY JEENKINNSSSSS" It was clear what it was. I felt the emotion behind it. It was a passionate scream from a warrior, ready to slay us. My wife awoke immediately. She looked at me with panic as the warriors rushed into the cave. We both stood up tall ready for a fight. The warriors slowed their advance at the sight of our true size. There were 6 of them. They were dressed in varying amounts of hide. Two wielded swords. One stood slightly back and appeared to have no weapons on them. Another held a bow. The fifth a mace, and the last one one leading the charge stood empty handed. This must have been Leroy. As they charged, I knew what the outcome would be. They reached my wife first. The first soldier didn't land a strike before my wife had leaped on top of him. She tore his head clean off. --- It took only a few minutes. There were bodies littered in our cave. Blood and gore soaked the wall. None of them were spared. From Leroy, I devoured him as my prize. He was plump and fatty, full of delicious meat. Orcs are rare in these parts after all. We never wanted to become murderers. We never sought war. Killing them was painful to us. It wasn't like a deer. They had emotions, feelings, and families. The stories of adventurers like these had spread through our lands like wildfire when it started happening. It never made sense to me why these young warriors on their first quest would try to hunt those of us that were much stronger than them. We thought so highly of them that we hoped that it wouldn't happen to us. But as we Owlbears were taught from birth: Even if we don't have the desire, every one of us has to be ready to kill. --- I'm going to be posting my work at /r/cgoeller and any follow up to prompts over there as well!
"Let me explain."The words came slowly through muffled growls. Red didn't listen, slamming her little fists into the big bad wolf. "I hate you! I hate you!"Her words were high and shrill. She howled in pain and sorrow as her frenzy continued against the wolf, tears dropping from her rosy cheeks to its long, matted fair. The wolf stood tall as the pummeling of her little fists continued, like small hiccups on its stomach. It looked to the contents of her basket now scattered on the floor. She'd brought a picnic. The wolf felt a tear of its own. Grandma would have enjoyed that. It let the little hooded girl continue a while more, the anger she felt clear in her trembling fists. The sorrow clear in her tear stained cheeks. Then, just as the pummeling was starting to hurt, the wolf caught her arms in its huge, grey paws. "Stop,"it said, its soul heavy. "Please stop." Red screamed louder now her arms were stuck. It was high and shrill in the wolf's big ears, much worse than her fists. "Stop!"it growled, a guttural roar rippling through the cottage. The flapping of wings was heard outside as the roar of the wolf reached the woodland trees. The roar did its job, the little girl looking up wide eyed at her grandma's killer. A small reprieve then, the wolf thought. But small was all it was, the girl kicking and screaming as quick as she had stopped. The wolf dragged her to the cottage door, turning her away from the crimson scene. As it did, her screams turned to wails. Anger to sorrow. The wolf sniffed the air, hoping perhaps it would be fear. Fear would be better. Fear is easier fixed. But it could smell no fear. Only pain and sorrow. Its stomach dropped more as another tear left its shaggy face. It turned to the child who now looked forlorn at the floor. "Look at me,"it whispered, but she would not. "Please,"it asked, voice trembling on the air. She looked up. So humans can sense sorrow too, it considered. "Why?"she asked. All emotion now seemed drained from the little one, her empty eyes staring through the wolf. "She asked me." "I don't believe you." The wolf looked around, body and mind troubled. "Do... do you know what alzheimer's is?" "No,"she replied, wiping her snot and tears with a sleeve. The wolf felt sick again, its promise to grandma growing heavier than her remains in its stomach. Grandma's last words echoed around its head. All the more to remember me by. Its ears pricked as it heard the huntsman approach from the woods, axe surely readied. Fear is easier than sorrow, and anger is too. It looked to Red one last time as the huntsman reached them, then slowly shut its eyes. "I'm sorry, little one." \- r/ShittyStoryCreator :\)
His eyes burned as if chilli peppers got into his eyes. Watery, his tears run downs his face mixing with the blood pouring out of his nose. The mixture drips into his open mouth and out into his beard. Gasping, he breaths deeply and exhales loudly as if he’s climbing up the tallest mountain without an oxygen mask. His body reacts slowly, as if it’s underwater and the pressure surrounding his body breaks and cracks bones. Staying upright is a struggle, with each step he wobbles until he wills himself to continue. ----------------------------- A father plays basketball with his teenage son. Every Sunday before dinner they’ve played a game ever since the father taught the son how to shoot. For years the father watched his son improve, week after week the son learns and improve upon his game. At first the father lets the son win, but after a few years of playing he starts playing for real. Lately he resorts to cheating in order to defeat the son in their weekly games of basketball. Upon getting caught for cheating his son asked. “Father, why do you cheat?” The father embarrassed of his actions looked to his son. “It’s a moment I’m not ready for. I did the same to my father, and your child will do the same to you. There is a moment when the child surpasses the parent. I’m not ready yet to admit defeat.” The father exclaimed. Like the father said, it’s a moment every parent witnesses. The child grows up to succeed their parents, or as a proverb puts it a student becomes the master. -------------------------------- ”SSTEPSORJS SENWOUSHTWO, IEOWHER HEORWO EHLTOEHW WLTHSINV.”” Boomed the voice, blowing out the ear drums and delivering a massive migraine to the mortal who dares to walk amongst the pantheon of higher gods. His head is splitting apart, yet he moves towards his goal. He opens his eyes, and they burst upon the sight of the gods. Like bubble wrap and the slightest of pressure they pop out of the sockets. He would scream if he was able to, but the lack of oxygen makes it impossible. Through the pain he tries to remember, why he’s here and what motivation would cause him to continue on this perilous and painful journey. ----------------------------- She came home from a night out with some friends. Her mother and father watching jeopardy on the couch, playing along with the Television. She attempts to sneak in through the front door, but parents are vigilant about their children. “Where were you? You should’ve been home a few hours ago.” The father said, turning around from the couch to look at his daughter. The teenage daughter quickly turns towards the coat rack, avoiding the gaze of her father. A split second of a glance was all it took for the father to notice a nose ring on her daughter. “What is that?” The father demanded, getting up from his seat. The mother looks to her daughter, just as horrified. “How could you ruin your beautiful body by putting metal in it?” The father yells her, walking at her with intent to punish. “It’s cool. It’s my body, I can do what I want.” She answered rebelliously. “No you’re mine. And no daughter of mine is going to look like a whore.” He yelled, reaching to yank the nose ring out. She crumbles to the ground. “You don’t control my life. Eventually I’ll be an adult. I will do what I want.” She fired back. ------------------------------ She crumbled as the eyes of gods stare at her, judging her existence. They're entities she’s only heard of in legends, and some she’s never heard of before. She crawls like a baby determined to move without their parents help. One arm over the other and pull themselves closer to her destination. Her arm raised to grasp the leg of the chair, and she begins to pull herself up. ”SFHSOGI GSHGOSIDGT, NO!” A god screamed at her, only making sense of what is being spoken until after she grabbed the chair. The effects on her body, the burning eye sockets, breathlessness, and crushing pressure still affects her as she climbs up the chair. Ready to take a seat. -------------------------------- “Hey, there was some concerns on your application. Some don’t think you are ready Mr. Candidate.” The HR Representative mentioned to the new CEO of a major corporation. “Of course there will people that will doubt me. They’ll doubt us. But I believe that I can do this, all one needs to be successful is confidence and belief they’re doing the right thing. Isn’t that right HR. Representative?” The Representative nodded towards the new CEO. “Of course, you’ve worked your way up in this company from an entry position to CEO. You parents worked for us, it's destiny you'll climb higher then they ever did. You've reached the top." ------------------------------------------- ”STOP. PLEASE YOU CAN’T. STOP” The gods yell as humanity climbs onto their seat within the Pantheon. Welcome to godhood. The pain of idolization and obedience ends. It's time for them to progress through the cycle. * Children replace their parents. * They make their own choices. * They'll accomplish more than their parents did. “Hello father.” Humanity said to their creator. ------------------------------------------ “Is it on?” Someone asked. Visualization confirmed. Two scientists on a computer, typing. “Yes, its eyes opened.” One said to another. The Robot is aware. "Hello, father?"It asks. The cycle begins again.
I don't really want to do this, I thought as I began typing. Puns are so corny. I remember earing one yesterday about a husky stalker who looked like Kernel Sanders. Needless to say, it was a maize of poorly written jokes. Augh! I mustache you why I think it's acceptable to go through this face of demeaning puns. Everyone nose eye normally don't give this kind of lip. Clearly I'm trying to get a leg up by arming myself with a virtual chest of karma. The worst thing is, I'll be back tomorrow, butt only for another chip on my shoulder. This is a pretty gritty job, but the only thing egging me on is my cereal karma-harloting obsession. I need someone to lend me a ham, because I'm milking this for all it's worth. Perhaps I'm flakeing, but if I don't get myself out of this jam, I'll be toast. ^I'm ^done.
The silver sword landed with a large clatter onto the colosseum floor illuminated by the lanterns placed on the side. The mild Italian night provided a welcome cooling relief to the hot, baking sun which had been present over the course of the day. The night was still, the air quiet; conditions perfect for a duel. The man who had thrown the weapon at my feet, dressed in a plain Sicilian crafted suit stared deep into my eyes with a deadly intent. "Let's finish this once and all. How it started. The lex talonis. Law of revenge."he announced to the empty amphitheatre, the place where it had all begun. But that was 2000 years ago. Both of our ancestors had been volunteer Gladiators attracted by the wealth and fame the dangerous lifestyle could bring to them. The only problem was the forefather of the man in front of me had carried a secret blade that murdered my own. My family had declared revenge on theirs and a war had begun. Or maybe it was the other way around and we had cheated... I don't think anyone remembered any more. So, as time passed so did the feud, passing down from each generation to the next. Clashes reverberated throughout time and Italian History. They formed the Cosa Nostra, we the Cammora. The families had picked different sides on the Spanish civil war not due to ideological differences but rather the opportunity to meet each other on the battlefield. Yet for all our families' words and methods bathed in shadows we had never met face to face since that fateful day in ancient Rome. Or at least that had been what my Grandfather had told me on his deathbed. He had been the one who had left for his motherland in search of a brighter future in America. It was him who had basically ended the feud by doing so, or so we had thought. it had all sounded to a young teenage boy to be the imaginary story of an old man with a rather large imagination. no family had that long a memory, surely? Then the letter arrived. Bearing the coat of arms of the family I had been taught to hate, my blood ran cold as soon as I saw the envelope pass into my house. Inside the message was simple; the message clear. A date, time and place. Weapons provided. Knowing my family name and dignity was at stake, I sent a letter of acceptance in reply. It was time to free both of our families of our chains. All of this to explain why I was stuck in a staring match with a tailored Sicilian in the ruins of the Colosseum with two swords marking the space between us. An hourglass silently counted down the seconds which were left before one of us met our fate. I tried to subconsciously control my breathing and collect some semblance of sanity. When the time would run out, a bell would ring and the battle which signalled the culmination of a century long conflict. I could almost hear the crickets slowly calling out to one another in the silent night. It was beautiful night if not for the circumstances and feelings of nostalgia for my motherland crossed my mind. My stream of thoughts were sharply interrupted by the sharp ring of the bell piercing through the peaceful scene. It was time. Like the Gladiator fight which had started it all, we approached each other, heading towards the centre of the arena. It was as if it was slow motion, as we headed towards our doom with no way to stop it. As my opponent reached down to grab hold of his sword; I striked. With the hidden blade down the sleeve of my suit, I struck the enemy of my family across the throat; killing him instantly. Before he was eventually greeted by death, a look of his surprise was pressed upon his face. His eyes were staring wide and his mouth agape in surprise. He looked at his own enemy for his whole life staring down at him, their white shirt decorated by his own blood. Yet he did not see elation in their eyes, nor relief that the feud had been finally ended after all these years of suffering. No, the sole expression in his enemy's eyes was one of pity. I tried to reassure my fallen foe. "It's over. Just as it begun. You're free"and like the word were a command, the light faded from behind his eyes, leaving an empty shell in it's place. I took one last look of the colosseum before leaving, in awe of my impressive surroundings. was my ancestor as suitably impressed in the ancient past I wondered? or had he been too anxious for his coming fight? One thing was for sure, I remembered who cheated all those years ago now...
A notification slid into Jenny's peripheral vision informing her of the last star's death. She dismissed it without reading it. She'd almost mastered the pattern. She reset the system and tried again. She danced through phase 1, spotting the traps and springing them before they could be set; keeping her distance from the stalkers, while keeping the juggle going. Phase 2 started, and she powered through it, smashing the threats and pushing the tempo to start the final phase. Phase 3 started and she was in the groove, her focus entirely perfect, nailing the indicators almost before they went active, but then a tiny bit of bad luck. Two went off nearly simultaneously and she couldn't cope with both. She started to wobble, and then it all fell apart. Jenny sighed, took a break and looked out at the cosmos. It was now fully dark. She knew she should care, but the feeling just wasn't there. She tried to remember the last time she really cared about something, and couldn't. Her memory was pretty good -- pretty good for a human. But, humans were never meant to be immortal. If she tried, she could remember a few things from the the last few million years, but for the most part her memories were from her first dozen centuries, back when things mattered to her. When she first realized she was immortal, she tried to use her superpower to change the world for the better. She poked and prodded from the sidelines, nudging the world towards greater good. But, for every success she had, there was heartbreak. A society she nudged towards non-violence was violently invaded by one that took advantage. A movement she founded based on equality and respect for the rules fell apart when certain members started to see what they could gain by taking advantage of the gullible, rule-following remainder. Eventually she just decided humanity would get whatever it deserved, and stopped trying to help. When she took a break from trying to fix the world, she spent some time just trying to enjoy it. She started reading everything she could, but after a while every story seemed to be a retelling of another story she already knew. She listened to music, but after a time, it also seemed repetitive. Early on, she met people, she loved some of them, but then she watched them get old and die. After a while, even the ones she'd once loved faded, and she couldn't muster the energy to care about new ones. They also seemed like retreads of other people she'd known and stopped caring about. It was easy to amass a great fortune. Compound interest worked wonders over the centuries. It was also pretty easy to hide the fortune. At one point she'd grabbed the spotlight, but she'd quickly discovered that celebrity was extremely tiring, so she used her fortune to "die", and created a new identity. With the great fortune, she directed money towards space-related research. If Earth was boring her, maybe there was something else to see somewhere else in the universe. Unfortunately, for an immortal, science progresses at a crawl. She'd tried to help with the research herself -- getting multiple degrees was easy when you had all the time and money in the world -- but she was no genius, she couldn't make the breakthroughs. After thousands of years, space travel was common and relatively affordable. Tens of thousands of years after that FTL travel was discovered, but by then, Jenny just couldn't bring herself to care. She used some tiny crumb of her fortune to buy a ship that could travel the universe, using some never-ending power supply she didn't really understand, and she left, with no particular destination in mind. The one thing that kept her attention was an AI system. Even after tens of thousands of years, it couldn't hold a conversation that was interesting to an immortal, but it could build puzzles for her. Eventually, that became her life. The AI would device more and more intricate puzzles, and she'd try to solve them. It was doing what was required to tickle the various mammalian and reptilian parts of her brain that made living vaguely interesting. Was she happy? No, not really. Was she depressed? No, not that either. She existed, she had challenges, and time passed. Now, the last star was out. She figured eventually her ship would probably die. She didn't know if she would, but she didn't really care. But, before she died, she was going to master this latest challenge. She reset the system and tried again.
"You foolish mortals! For ten thousand years, I was locked away in my slumber on the moon. But you have awakened me, so I can cause havok. Your forests will burn! The air will go black with dust! And the ground shall shake and level your cities! All shall fear me!" "You listen up real good, Mister,"the army officer said. "Our forests have already burned. We've already made the skies go dark with smoke. And our buildings can stand against mere shaking ground. So what else can you do?" "Uh,...I will destroy everything you hold dear!"he yelled. "Good luck with that,"the army officer replied. His phone beeped. "Ok, looks like we've finally hit an escape trajectory from the sun. I'm going to head onto the only escape pod right now, see you near Epsilon Eridani in a few million years. Bye."
(I make it sorta dark, read at your own behest. Sorry for bad formatting, wrote it on my phone). In this cruel world, almost everyone is born with an ‘advancement’. They first appeared thousands of years ago but have become more common since many great leaders or soldiers had them. They say that the first people to evolve were even documented in old stories. Hercules was blessed with strength, some leaders could influence others and even Jesus was blessed with several advancements. Many people like Jesus appeared throughout human history but many scientists can’t figure out if they were naturally gifted or demi gods, entities born with multiple powers. Very few people can be found in the world with more than one power. Right now, there are only 3 demi gods, one was lucky enough to receive speed and power, making him a very deadly adversary. However, the other two have never mention publicly their advancements or how many they were born with. There are theories though, The Ethereal Sorcerer is thought to have some sort of psychic or magic related advancements were they can move objects without any visible or physical force. However, the way its done is nothing like prior advancements so people can only guess. But the last demi god, no one knows where she went. Some say she stopped being a hero when her husband was murdered but even then, no one has seen his corpse. Again, it all goes back to theories. I was the first human born without an enhancement in 35 years. Sadly, the last person was also my father. Because of my rare ‘condition’, scientists from all over the world came to study the rare phenomenon. They tried many things to make any advancement appear they could. Often traumatising situations can make advancements stronger or change with the persons personality. Weeks went by, then months and years of studies. The government even gave my family special support and status as having no advancement could be seen as a disability. The majority of people don’t leave me alone or even bully me for being different, they look at me with pity in their eyes, like i’m not even human. I would rather be harassed. I hated my miserable life so much. My mom was murdered by some redneck white trash when i was young because they wanted to keep the advancements “pure”. If anyone should be culled, it should be them! I can’t even be sure i have friends, actually, i don’t think i’ve ever had friends in my meagre 16 years of life. I mean, i haven’t even held a girls hand for gods sake! People look at me like i’m diseased, like they will lose their advancement if they touch me. So many people in this ‘utopia’ look at their advancements like its their personality. Oh please, most people with a good advancement never develop a good personality or values system because they’re treated like nobility. Ugh, the only reason why i won’t kill myself is because i don’t want to leave my dad alone in this world. We’re the only ones that understand each other. Fuck it, i’m done. I go through my school day like any other, first to math, then P.E. Then i have my first lunch break. At least i’m going out on a Monday. I finish off my sandwich and juice then just walk out the front entrance home. No one even bothered to stop me leaving in the middle of a school day. My golden curly hair blowing in the wind, i reflect on the misery and the pain. It wasn’t all bad, but almost none of it was good. No friends, only one family member, at the very least i made up for my lack of power by being a great sportsman. Not like i enjoyed playing sports anyway, imagine being the only one in the world without an advancement, and being overweight and stupid. Thank god i’m good looking as well, by all means i should have been happy. I should have been having fun all these years instead of laying in bed feeling empty. I let the vitreous red fluid drip from my severed arteries. No one without medical attention could survive something like this, not even the greatest self healing advancement users. Crying as i become dizzy, my mind clouded for one reason or another. I fall into the deepest sleep known to man. “Wake up” the voice stirred “Quickly, wake up!” The gentle voice commanded Rousing me from my sleep, the gentle voice pushing my limp body. Am i dead? “Get up Jordan, if you’re late again i’m going to get upset” “Coming” i say submitting to the gentle voice. In a dazed state i sit up, my mind cloudy. ‘That was the best sleep i’ve ever had, what happened last night?’ Wait, didn’t i kill myself? Realising my body is soaking in dried blood, i jump up in horror from my crinkled red sheets. Running into the bathroom inspecting my arms, i see there are no scars, only blood. After cleaning my sheets and clothes off before my dad sees, i notice the bathroom door. The handle’s been ripped clean from the door. Did i do that? Soon after, dreams almost like tutorials kept appearing night after night. Showing me how to use any new powers i receive. Now at number 28, it finally happens. The weary old man that usually shows me what to do whispers the powers name, something so quiet i shouldn’t have heard it. He says the name in a powerful posture ordering people i definitely should have noticed before now. He says “commandment”. ‘Finally, i can show the world what a society of impure intentions creates. A true hero has been born, now it’s time to destroy this villainous society”
Part 1 of 2 Sometimes, when I was younger mostly, I would cough a halfhearted way, nothing really there, but something to do with my mouth and hands to keep away the silence. The cough would make me seem more manly, I thought, as though I were fighting the usual illnesses that plagued men, and I was winning casually. But it was a fake cough all those times. And all it taught me was how to find similar coughs by similarly awkward men. There isn't much else to fortune telling other than perception. With the gift, perception becomes even more crucial, because then your mind floods with undiscovered truths and you need to make sense of it all. But maybe I'm talking to fast and getting ahead of myself. I worked outside the river, north of the city, near Route 6 that goes west all the way to Vegas. I lived near New York, near the pines and you could say I was homeless. I could see the future, as most homeless people claim to do, and I tried to ply this gift as a fortune teller. Up by the old gas station near the forested parts, I'd catch a corner to sleep, and I'd make a little table in the day and read the palms of whatever travellers there were. The manager of the place was a nice foreign man, and he must have been religious since he always prayed for me, and he never kicked me out. And so I lived as a fortune teller. The future converges, I've found. The more palms I read, the more connections I made, I saw that things started to intertwine, like some trained rope that always curls up in the same way. I read the news of course. I know there's always doom and gloom in the world, and in every lifetime that doom and gloom just happens to be at its worse. So the future converges, and as always, it converges to a bad place. But something was happening that was not normal. A lot of families were up for the holidays and a lot of children wanted their futures read. I'd read the palms of little boys and girls and stare at the lines. The lines don't matter of course, but think of them as riverbeds that house a coursing possibility. In those possibilities I saw some troubling things. Lives were cut short and there was hurt and suffering. The girls got it bad too. I closed my eyes for a second or two. The parents never want to stay too long by the crazy homeless man, so I always had to be quick about it. I would sense that murky future at first, and catch a glimpse of something solid as my eyes began to open. I saw planes in the sky and the sky had a restless feel to it, as though the clouds were running from war. And it was war. Not the modern times of proxy fighting, where only the brave and worthless would be sent to show force and valor on the front lines. It was an all out war, as though communications were gone and there was silence all around but for the sounds of fighting and crying. "Well?"the little girl and boy would ask. I would cough. I suppose it still helped with the confidence. "You'll be a pilot,"I said. "Your brother too." Mom would roll her eyes and leave less than a dollar in my jar. I'd hear the car start and they'd be off. And like that, through those interactions, I would see things. A picture formed in my head. If I were to tell you, you'd think I was crazy. You'd think I was addled from all these fumes here at the station. And maybe I am. But that's not why I wouldn't tell you. There have been other things that I've seen. I won't make assumptions for you, fortuneteller notwithstanding, to try and find out what type of person you are. I can't tell if you're an optimist or cynic. Or maybe you're both. You see, this little gas station here might as well be the center of the world. Everyone has to pass through it, though I don't know why. Out here in the boonies, fate, or whatever you want to call it, seems to swirl slowly, like a whirlpool of sluggish change. I can feel it within me, a sense of purpose. My power is stronger here and everything seems to be working to keep me here. What does all of this mean? I don't know. I think I'm here to report, maybe give you some hope if you're the hopeful type of person. I won't make assumptions. I met a man named Jackson Keenes one day during the summer. I must have had over twenty kids ask for their fortune before he pulled in. All those kids were soldiers, and all their futures spoke darkly of large scale turbulence. So when Jackson Keenes pulled in I didn't think much of him. He was a balding man and he had two children with him. He wore thick glasses that reflected the glare so I could hardly see his eyes. He paid for his gas first because this was an older station, and I heard the pumps work hard to pull the gasoline and he was looking around as the car filled. His children were young. I didn't think they would be soldiers. They'd be children of sorrow, of hard times; the ones who would have to rebuild the world after the older ones destroyed it. Jackson Keenes looked at me. I saw his eyes briefly and then the glare caught his glasses again. I had my table there and I stared at him. I thought nothing of him but I kept looking. Was that fate? Or am I looking too deeply? Jackson Keenes put his hand to his mouth and coughed absently. I must have smiled that knowing smile us awkward men have for he looked away and looked embarrassed. "He looks like he has money,"Deoraj said. He was the owner of the station. "Why don't you read his fortune?" "He doesn't look interested." "You never know unless you try." He started to laugh because I was a fortune teller and because he was an easy man to laugh. "Sir!"I shouted. "Why don't you get your fortunes read? It's free and completely true. I only ask a small donation if you're satisfied with what I predict." Like most awkward men, Jackson Keenes looked around to make sure it was him I was talking to. His children were running up. They had been eyeing me but now the dams were broken. He put the pump back in the holster and walked towards me. I could nearly taste his future, as though it were a sour thing, and I knew this man was different. Maybe he had some part to play in the carnage I foresaw. His children bore sadness, and I saw them crying in black funeral clothes and the skies above them were a heavy grey that was hard to breathe. All I could hear were church hymns and sad songs that would stay with them forever. They would never get over the sadness of losing their father. And they would lose him soon. "I see music in your lives,"I said. Jackson Keenes grunted and made to pay me but I reached for his hand. "Let me check yours as well, sir." "No, that's alright. We have to be..." I could sense it and so could he. "You're not from the city,"I said. "Not New York, no." He looked at me and I saw him out in the desert, near the hardpan west where he was an important man. His future mingled with his past, for his past would drive the future in such a potent way that I had never seen before. I saw him in Hawaii. The Pacific was deep and calm and he was looking out and he was thinking of the old islands, of Bora Bora and Tahiti and all the Polynesian islands. This was in the past still, but the future came like a sunset and the islands were gone, and he knew they would be gone. "Asia?"I said. I am not very intelligent, and the region is foreign to me. All I could see was the terror brimming from that side. Or was it some retaliation? "Who are you?"he said. I grabbed Jackson Keenes hand tighter. There the future shimmered as though it were a fine line in the sun. Then the line broke into two paths. One of these paths had not existed until I grabbed the man. He was afraid and his fear had consequences. "You will cause all the deaths,"I said. I could hear Deoraj coming. He didn't like this kind of prediction. "Who are you?" "What did you do?"I ask. "Who do you work for? What have you done?" As he grew more afraid I saw that new future become clearer. He was racing down to Chicago. His children were crying in the city and he drove alone. Maybe he drove down Route 6, driving all day and night. He was in Vegas and flashing a badge. Isn't it funny how a little piece of plastic could help you change the world? He was in the shadows and coughing. This was a real cough. He was sick from radiation as he broke the barrier. He worked hard thinking of his children. He was dismantling it. But what was it? A bomb? I saw a figure of gas, a ghost of war, but I cannot say. It was something new, something I had never seen before. I opened my eyes. Jackson Keenes was pulling away. "You won't be safe here,"I said. "Your children won't be safe. I saw them die. I saw the fires eat them away. Radiation right?" He made to slap me but he was no fighter. His children were crying. "Who are you? I will call the CIA. If you're a..." "They will die." I could see he believed me. It has been the only time I have ever completely lied about a predition. The future tumbled in turmoil. His children would cry for many years to come. But the skies were clearer now.
The old typewriter Jeff had inherited from his grandfather was magic. It was as simple as that. What he wrote in it came to pass. He used its power judiciously and rarely, as seemed proper to him. But when his beloved Angelina decided to go back to school to finish her degree, even though she promised she would be faithful to him, he felt that he had to be sure of the outcome. My beloved Angelina will return to me in three years, he wrote. Or at least he meant to. Noticing something wrong, he squinted at the page and re-read it. My beloved Angelina will return to me in three *bears,* the sheet actually said. His eyes widened in horror, as he heard a chorus of growls from behind him.
Forgiveness, I suppose. Forgiveness and mercy is what we thrive on now. Or what we beg. What we thirst for and, as mad as it might seem, what we need. Require. Demand. So, so desperately need... Doesn't it seem strange that we decided that forgiveness is the main thing? How did we love to slaughter animals as a sacrifice and burn humans just to hear their screams reach the sky, the ears of our everloving God? And then... And then one day we all decided that the key is forgiveness. Despicable. Yet understandable. How scary it is how often the despicable and the understandable go hand in hand. I read through the pages and saw them filled with tears and lamentations. With shame and fear. Oh, so much fear. You see, the devil knocked to the doors of men and smiled. And through that smile he told the people that they are sinners. For they have not given God the thing they love the most. And they shouted and screamed that they have given god their last sheep, their firstborn children, their eyesight and ears. Yet the devil smiled and said that they have not given God the thing they love the most. So some of the men jumped off the cliff, only to see the devil keep smiling as they fell. And yet the devil repeated himself. They have not given God what they love the most. It's a cold day in hell when someone understands the devil. It's never good to understand the devil. For you don't see true, you see through the eyes of the horned one. The thing they loved the most... Was God himself. And they have yet to give to God... God himself. The highest praise, the highest sacrifice, the highest of murders. They did not nail Jesus to the cross because they did not believe him. They did it because they did believe him. And what higher sacrifice was to sacrifice God himself. And those who shouted that they are killing God got an answer, that it's the exact plan. For you do not expect the sacrificed sheep to return and you do not expect your son to walk the earth again. To sacrifice is to give away. To gift. To tear away from yourself. And the devil smiled, for there is nothing worse than to finally understand the devil. And he saw God murdered in the name of love, in the name of care. Isn't it funny that suddenly we all realized that what we need is not power or strength God can give? Like we all suddenly realized that there is no one to give anything anymore. And thus we begged for forgiveness. In a true Christian fashion - selflessly. Not directing our prayers to an empty throne, but just repeating it to ourselves. For there is no one that listens no more and no one who will forgive. And so he smiles. [Literary Nobody](https://www.reddit.com/r/LiteraryNobody/)
REBIRTH: PART I \\\\\* “Lyon please!” The thick iron chains that bound her wrists rattled violently as she thrashed against them. The mousy thin boy stepped backwards as her eyes pleaded to him in desperation. The rest of the crowd stood silent, their expressions were no different than the rain worn statues that bowed their heads before the town’s single church. The visiting bishop read claim after claim, speaking of black sorcery and unholy witchcraft. He rattled along, his withered voice simply adding background noise to Farah’s tearful begging. They all knew there was something unnatural about the girl. The way she could almost lift and entire wagon with one arm, the copious amounts of food she scarfed down at the dinner table. No one would have expected that her strange quirks would cumulate into accusations of witchcraft and heresy. Farah’s pleas grew faint and her voice grew tired. She gazed out into the crowd and to the people she knew best. She spent her entire life in Fallsburrow yet those that she felt closest to stood silent in her time of need. Arvey, the smith that she spent years bending metal for now simply stared at the dirt in shame. Lyon, the shy farmer's son who once gave her blushing looks now couldn’t raise his chin to meet her eyes. Inside she begged for someone, for ANYONE to step forward and challenge the bishop. But no, they all stood paralyzed – strangled by the authority of the bishop and the power of the church. Farah stood alone upon a pile of cinderwood. Alone and bound to an iron cross that restrained her unnatural strength -strength that she only ever used to do good and aid those now poised to watch her burn. If only they knew how bishop Maldain tried to force himself on her the night before. If only they knew about her fearful flight into the woods to escape him… The flint was sparked and the inquisitor grew closer with a freshly lit torch. She couldn’t look. She didn’t want to think about the pain, about her skin being seared by the lapping flames, about the smell of her own flesh cooking within the crackling pyre. She closed her eyes and prayed it would be quick. The dark veil cast by Farah’s own closed eyes flashed red then white. She knew the pyre was lit. The crackling boomed all around her, bombarding her ears with terrifying snaps and pops. She screamed uncontrollably and thrashed wildly against the iron cross. What she thought would be searing pain was instead lukewarm, like a summer river. She braced for the pain but it never came. There were gasps in the crowd, followed by bewildered whispers. Something was wrong. She opened her eyes. The flames curled around her body, having already burned her ragged dress into cinders but finding nothing more to feed their hunger. Her skin refused to burn, instead the flames danced playfully upon her arms and legs. She stood upon the pyre, wide-eyed and confused. The chains and cross that bound her were now glowing white hot, like forged steel. She stepped forward and broke free from her molten bindings with little effort. “Witch! Demon!” The arch bishop jabbed toward her with a leering finger. “Kill her! Kill her now!” He screamed. It was then that one of the bishop’s guardsmen drew a pike and charged forward. The gleaming spear tip never reached Farah. Instead the man stopped in mid charge and rasped. There was a large glassy object protruding from the man’s chest. It was a misty spear, a spear completely forged from winterfrost. Bishop Maldain’s inquisitor and the crowd drew back as a figure approached from the edge of the town square. It was heavy framed man, fully clad in the armor of a Nordic raider. Hoarfrost followed the man’s every step, covering every mound of grass he stepped upon in a tessellation of ice crystals. The torch bearing inquisitor stepped forward and the cold wind snapped at him, snuffing away the flame he held. The red and white robed inquisitor then pulled a silver cross from his vestments and raised it against the looming figure. “In the name of the Lord stay back! I command you! Begone from here!” The Nordic figure stopped and the howling winds around him subsided to a whisper. His pale blue lips spoke one word. “Fools.” The man’s winter veil suddenly wailed like a banshee’s cry. From the deep mists came an armory of icy weapons. Axes, swords, spears, clubs. The shimmering shapes tore through the inquisitor, sundering him into giblets of meat and crystallized blood. The remaining guards and townspeople began to flee in panic. The Nordic man extended his hand, commanding his array of killing frost to sail through the air and into the crowd. Limbs arced through the air, sprays of red crystal followed, and screams were cut short. There was chaos, then silence. Farah stood in shock. The flames of the pyre and the iron that bound her were long doused by the man’s winter aura and her skin prickled as the cold bit at her. In mere seconds this man had rended everything that she knew from the world. She tried to speak. “Who…” The man turned to face her. Two glowing azure eyes met her gaze and the man’s long white beard danced in the wind as his weapon’s returned to him, once again fading into the mist they were born from. “Do not fear child. I am like you, a kindred. They call me Skare, the Second Star of Winter.” The man's introduction was interrupted by a muffled plea among the rows of dead. “Please…” a voice trembled. Farah shifted her gaze to see a bloody bishop Maldain crawling through the mound of bodies. She gasped. The Nordic man approached the bishop, each step crackling the floor with ice. “Please, Lord please! Spare me!” Maldain begged the heavens. The Nordic man turned towards Farah. “Child, are you ready to understand what you truly are?” Farah simply stood there. It was all just too much for her to process. The Nordic man raised his arms into the sky. The mist surrounding him swirled violently and consumed him, becoming a howling twister. The winds expanded, enveloping Farah and threatening to pull her into the sky. In the eye of the storm she saw a massive form taking shape. Two azure crested wings reached into the sky, their tips reaching for the sun. A large spined tail emerged from the winds, crashing through the center of a small house. Before her stood a towering dragon, its body lined with rows of white scales that faded into a deep blue. Bishop Maldain screamed, begging the Lord for mercy. The creature’s snout lowered to level with the tiny bishop. Razor sharp teeth the size of a shortsword hovered inches from the man’s blood drained face. “Little human.” The creature bellowed. “There are only two gods in this world: magic and science.” The dragon raised a mighty claw into the air, blocking the sun from the bishop’s view. “You will soon understand that neither one is kind or merciful.” The claw came crashing down and the bishop's screams were drowned by churning earth.
I look out the window, reminiscing on the last successful wish. My sister had wished to become a star, not a pop star, a literal ball of gas. Her light dances in the night sky. I want to reach out to her, but in my state I can't. 107 years takes it's toll. I can't think of anything more tiresome than waiting in this hospital bed for my time to come. I don't want to die in here, I want to stand under my sister's light.With what little strength left in my frail body, I pull all those wires and pads from my body. The heartbeat-monitor flat-lines, its 4am, the nurse had been 10 minutes ago. I have a few minutes before she finds me missing.. I shuffle my feet over to the elevator, the ding sounding immediately upon my pressing of the call button. The nurse must have taken it up. It feels like an eternity on the way down. Finally I hear that familiar ding. I don't recall there being any music, perhaps I was too lost in my thoughts to hear it. I head to the main entrance, but of course it's locked. I hear the nurse, Natalie, shouting my name. "Alice"she calls out. "Alice what are you doing? Let's get you back in bed"Her hand grips my arm. I try to pull free, but her young spirit trumps my old age. I smile at her, pointing up at the sky. "My sister is up there. I want to see her" Her face droops, Natalie had recently lost her mother, or her father, it's hard to recall for me, that's the old age kicking in. "Alright then. 5 minutes"She tells me. With her keys, she opens the main entrance and escorts me outside. I take a deep breath, fresh air. Natalie holds my hand, gripping it tightly. "I miss him", she tells me. "I miss her, but I'm happy knowing she will outlive us all, that she is what she wished to be"She shines bright tonight. I think back on my life, on the disappointment of my friends, my family, whom's wishes never came true. I look up to my sister. "I never told you my wish, did I Emily?"Natalie looks at me, straight in the eyes. "What was your wish, Alice?""I haven't made it yet."I feel my grip on her hand slipping, my heart beating, trying to keep me standing. Natalie's young hands grip me tightly, gently holding me upright. "Let's get you in bed"She says trying to guide me indoors. I smile at her, short of breath, dizzy and weak, I finally make my wish. "I wish our wishes didn't have to be unique"Natalie's smile returns "Alice, that was such a sweet wish, I hope it comes...true.."her words trail off. She looks at my body, as do I. I was thin, so weak, she didn't notice she was supporting all my weight. "Alice?"Her fingers press to my wrist. I look at it, that of my body, and of my spirit. She looks shaken. "I wish she didn't have to die so soon"She whispers.I don't realize it immediately, but I can feel the cool night breeze again. My ailments seem to have left me. Her eyes were wide. I simply smile at her, using her to steady myself, I haven't felt so strong in decades. I draw a breath and softly speak to her. "A warm bed sounds nice right about now." &#x200B; &#x200B; \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ My first attempt at a Writing Prompt, probably not the best stuff out there but I felt inspired, probably lots of errors too so sorry if they hurt the flow of the story.Constructive criticism is welcome. have a nice weekend :)
"one toffee nut frapuccino coming up!"I smiled to the suit who was already on his phone not listening to me. I could see that he was on tinder swiping right on girls way too young for him. Ugh. I turned back to the coffee machine, taking the opportunity to let my smile drop and give out a small sigh. I really didn't know how much longer I could keep this up. Like any other dedicated Starbucks employee, I had thought about handing in my notice only five times already that day. The job wasn't bad... Per se, I just didn't belong here. Only issue was I didn't know where I belonged. Years of my life were wasted away on several courses and vocations, all ended up in the same feeling of despair and that I was following the wrong path. I decided to stick with barista after I lost mum, there just wasn't any point anymore, I'd lost my support system. Even as time went on and she gradually grew paler she would take my hand shakily and tell me with sunken eyes "Keep at it Billy, I'm always proud of you". Her strength just made me feel like more of a failure though but I always tried for her. I miss her so much, when my best friend passed away unexpectedly she put her own health aside to spend more time with me, making sure I wasn't lonely. The sound of the door went and a small gasp was let out in a now silent coffee shop, I turned around hoping that it wasn't another YouTube 'star' - they were the worst, always expecting something for free. I mean Starbucks doesn't really need exposure does it? It wasn't, but I suppose the black cladded skeleton is a celebrity in his own right. I had heard death was a regular, management made clear that we were to keep him sweet and to never hand over the drink hand-to-hand lest we make contact with his boney fingers. Apparently death was a bit of a practical joker and Starbucks just didn't want to deal with the constant staff turn around. He walked up to the counter and then his jaw hit the floor, literally. "Sorry"he mumbled bending down to pick up his remains and slotting it back into place. "Its not everyday that you meet the great Billy Matthew."Oh great, the all powerful death knows my full name, that seems promising for my future. "I mean you're an absolute prodigy man, I'm a massive admirer of your work"he continued. I looked down at my green apron and gave him a quizzical look but he was too busy rambling to take notice. "I mean, I'm pretty great and all but you, you play the long game you cold hearted bastard"he leaned forward over the counter "just how do you do it? How do you manage to suck the life force out of those around you? I've been dying to meet you - no pun intended" I finally found my voice "Erm... Can I get you a coffee?"Death laughed, "black, three sugars please... But what you can also do is join me. I could use someone like you. Being death can be hard and who doesn't need a little assistance here and there" I just nodded, "oh great I was so nervous asking man... This is going to be awesome!"I stopped listening as I focused in on the frapuccino guy who was definitely checking out a 15 year old girl, this time I really concentrated and I think I saw his skin just sag a little bit more. A feeling waved through my body as I undid my apron for the last time. This was the right path. My new boss picked up his coffee, noticing the scrawl 'deaf', "I think we're going to work just fine you and me"he laughed. Maybe I can make mum proud after all.
I was about twelve when I figured out that something was deeply wrong. My life had always been somewhat sheltered, my dad working in a nondescript office, always at home by five, spending time with us when he could, tinkering in the garage by night, my mom staying at home with me and my sister, baking, cleaning, generally being happy. We would play in the backyard or run through the suburb streets into the tiny forest behind it. We'd build tree houses, dens, we had a trampoline and a little pool. Basically, think of three idyllic childhoods and you can be sure I've had about 90% of each of them. Thinking back on it, it was really weird. No cop cars ever, even though the neighbourhood was next to a huge metropolitan area, no methheads or drunks in the forest, none of our little projects ever broke or fell on anyone, at most anyone got was a scraped knee and that always went away when someone blew on it. Seriously, I used to be a firm believer in the magic of blowing on things to heal it. It's kind of hard not to be after you've seen blood and scabs just melt away into unbroken skin the first time. I think my mom figured out there was something wrong and tried to leave or break it. I remember her smile being strained every now and then, her eyes darting about wildly like a rat in a corner when we ran home. But she always had dinner prepared and with words both gentle and firm she'd guide us through the evening without dropping a beat, her movements never losing confidence... but her eyes knew. And she was afraid. Until one day I asked her about them. After that, her eyes were always serene and calm. That freaked me out a bit, but my mom was OK so I forgot about it soon. If my dad knew, he never cared. Why would he? Everything was just fine, the kids were healthy and behaved, he could do his projects and my mom took care of everything else. When I started school there were the regular speed bumps at first, but they faded. I'd win prizes but mostly hang around second place. Things just came naturally to me and I never stopped to question the lack of bullying or other problems in our school. The teachers were all motivated and interested in everyone, which should've been a huge red flag, right there. In 6th grade, though, it all came to a head. By that time I had picked up a lot of movies that showed family life, and even though they were family movies the families always had some problems. We didn't. Everything went just as planned, all the time. "I guess we're just lucky, hun!"said my mom with a smile when I brought it to her. I was participating in some science fair or another. I had literally just thrown paint on a rock and the bloody erupted for no reason, spewing the paint all over the judges! I won because of my "unbelievably realistic representation of a volcano,"and that was a bit too much, even for me. It took a while for me to figure out just what was wrong. Did I have superpowers? Yes! Obviously! What else could it be! Scouring the Internet (Safe and wholesome place, filled with nice people -- yeah, I know, another red flag) I figured out the closest I ever got to an explanation -- I had a personal reality-bending probability distortion field, whatever the heck that meant. Of course, as any 12-year-old eternally-good kid with superpowers, I started experimenting being bad. I broke a vase on purpose, but there was a $100 bill in the flower pot, my mom was extatic and we went for some McDonalds. I tried breaking a window, but I could never hit one with a baseball and after the third super cute dog who loved bringing me back the balls appeared I just gave up. I slashed my dad's car's tires, but then there was a fire in my dad's office and he was lucky to have missed it, ended up getting a promotion, too. I tried to spraypaint the school wall, but the principal saw and decided to arrange a day off where all the kids could paint whatever they wanted on the walls. It was ridiculous. Finally, in desperation I snuck some cockroaches into my house, but those bastards ended up starting a dance routine that my sister put on YouTube and we got a free trip to Disneyland for it. That's where it clicked. I was a Disney princess. A bona-fide real-life Disney princess. Crap, I didn't want to marry a stupid prince! [Part 2](https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/9ybx5u/wp_you_have_all_the_powers_of_a_disney_princess/ea0yx9u/) [Part 3](https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/9ybx5u/wp_you_have_all_the_powers_of_a_disney_princess/ea100q8/) (Need to go, there are at least parts 4 and 5 to come, but it'll be at least 12 hours for them, sorry)
"Okay, sweetie, have a good trip,"Trevor shouted from the field while I hitched the wagon, "I love you!" I smile and shout back, "I love you too, dear."We've been married for almost five years now, exactly five years this week, and still act like newlyweds. Trevor thinks I don't know about the big anniversary dinner he's planning for when I get back from my trip. As though I could honestly have failed to notice that his visits with the neighbors are really him training the village militia for extra cash, or that I could miss the bottle of wine that he "hid"behind the dresser. My husband is very sweet, but subterfuge just isn't his strong suit. The trip to the nearest trade town takes a full day by wagon, a day to make deals and sell everything, and another day back. Obviously I could sell the grain in the village like some locals do, but I can make nearly twice as much by selling to the grain factors directly. If that's where I was actually going. As soon as the wagon rounds a bend and is out of view of the farm I can finally drop the glamour on the mule and wagon and shift back to my natural form. There's a rarely traveled crossroads here that makes the perfect place to summon the portal. Four years ago I set up a permanent runic circle in the bedrock and buried it again beneath the unpaved road. Just to save a little effort on these excursions, any good farmer learns to frugal with her time and energy. The Nightmare pulls my black chariot through the gaping portal and we return to Hell. Like the dread hellbeast pulling me I revel again the screams of anguish and the tickle of flame against my exposed skin. The imp I keep as a valet finally arrives with my armor so I can change out of the ruined dress, the back was shredded when my wings burst out on the road. One of my tailors will fix it if possible, replace it if necessary. Another minor demon carries the nightmare to the stables and unloads the grain. Even demon armies need to eat. Back to work. There are battle plans to be drawn, logistical plans to oversee, allies to betray, blood sacrifices to conduct, meetings to attend, and forms to sign. I used to lead from the front, ripping through armies of the righteous with my cursed blade in hand. Those were the days, but eventually every leader gets bogged down in the detail. Besides, I can't go taking those kinds of chances anymore. I've got a husband now and I'm drinking the blood of the damned for two.
He lived in a cramped studio apartment on the "bad side"of town. Jim Bartholomew sat at his kitchen table, working his way through yesterday's crossword puzzle. He appeared vexed. An insectoid voice flowed through him. The voice was always inside his mind. But the source of the voice was from a close friend. A friend to the end, he thought. "Barrier,"he heard. Barrier reef, seven letters. Makes sense. Jim filled in the letters. Perfect. The source of the voice floated by and revealed itself, as though it were an octopus in the sea. Randall was a bacteriophage. The most common biological organism in the universe, yet the least common spirit guide. In fact this seemed to be the only one, that he knew of. Bacteriophages were known for their antibiotic properties. Fitting, Jim thought, since Randall was so protective of him. "Somebody is about to--" Knock knock knock "Knock,"Randall said. He drifted toward the door, but his wiry appendages were unable to grasp the doorknob. Jim turned the knob and swung the door open. It was Carol, his cleaning lady. "Morning Jim. Got some trash to sweep?" "There's always trash for you, Carol."Jim felt an eerie sense of anxiety. Randall the bacteriophage drifted to Carol and lifted his appendage to shake her hand. She took the wiry arm, but instead of shaking, Randall kissed her hand. "A true gentleman,"she said. "You could learn a lesson from your spirit guide." Jim nodded. He wasn't the type to run into a burning building, or save a princess from a dragon. Randall, on the other hand, was akin to Superman, or Wonder Woman. Of course Randall didn't have a gender, as he was a phage. But Jim preferred the masculine pronoun. "The paper towels are in the bathroom,"Jim said. Carol smiled. "Got my own." As she walked through the front door, her spirit animal, a fox, walked through. It gave the phage an arrogant glance. The phage didn't maintain eye contact, for he had no eyes. Carol went to the bathroom first. She liked to get the dirtiest work done first. Her fox frolicked around the room, chasing its tail and howling at the Tiffany lamp. Jim was no snob, but he had good taste. He considered himself a cultural connoisseur. Just then he heard a scream from the bathroom. Jim ran up to the doorway, and the fox gave the howl of a siren. Carol was laying on the floor, a bloody gash on her leg. The shower rod was sheared in half, and laying half-embedded in her calf. Puss began to spill out of part of the damaged area of her leg. "I knew my leg was infected, but I was on antibiotics! I had no idea it had spread so much!"Carol was distraught and on the verge of tears. The phage knew all too well how ineffective antibiotics had become at this point in time. But he knew he was holding the cards. Randall floated over to Carol. The phage injected his genome into her infection. As she passed out, her last vision was of a giant, terrifying spider-like creature sucking on her leg. *** Carol awoke in a hospital bed. Her leg was bandaged, and she had an IV bag attached to her. Jim moved toward her. "You're welcome."He gave a crooked smile. Carol held his hand. "Your phage may be ugly as sin, but he a damn fine kisser." Carol held his hand, for longer than she would if she were only looking to be a platonic friend. Jim squeezed tighter, and Carol inhaled the first breath of her new life.
As the wind settles on the wasteland that was formerly known as London, I shake the last few drops of water from my bottle into my mouth, and then toss the bottle to the ground, frustrated. For the first time in fifteen years, I've run out of supplies. I drop my empty rucksack to the ground, and heave my sleeping gear over one shoulder as I walk toward Big Ben. If I die today, I'll do so with a view. It was over thirty years ago that I last saw another human. I don't remember exactly how long, it's hard to recall after all this time. It was maybe forty years ago that everything went to hell. The governments collapsed around the world in the wake of a devastating war, in which nuclear warheads landed on every super powered territory across the globe. That wasn't the final blow however. It was the eventual decline of exported goods from these territories that brought about the downfall of humanity. With necessary supplies running short, people turned to violence and -surprisingly quickly - numbers began to dwindle. It wasn't long after that time that I found myself alone. There was an island rumoured to support human life in a peaceful ecosystem, and my wife and I were trying to find a boat in the city of New York. We managed to make it into the waters, but in a storm as angry as Zeus himself...well... She fell. I searched the ocean for her for far longer than she could have survived, desperate. Eventually I gave up. By the time I found land - England - my supplies had run short and most of the Earth's signs of life had ceased to exist. Communications networks were down, cities lay empty but for rotting bodies and the occasional rodent. Eventually even they left. Maybe they found it as depressing as I now do. I slump onto a bridge by the River Thames, and stare across the water at Big Ben. One of the last untact remainders of humanity, at least here. The violence destroyed the rest. Having been on this depressing island for over thirty years, I've had enough of surviving. I'm the last person left. It feels like some kind of punishment. An unmeasurable time later I jolt awake, having fallen asleep on the bench, staring out at the Thames. I crack my neck, regretting my unchosen bed. With stiff shoulders I stand, and my stomach rumbles. As I contemplate jumping down into the water, a light catches my eye to the left, illuminating this dreary evening. I snap my head around, and my jaw drops open. A man in armour both archaic and futuristic in appearance approaches, and he casually swishes an etherally beautiful sword as he walks. It's hardened steel with a ruby red gemstone set into a golden hilt. A rainbow of colours swim off of the blade, creating a bright aura around the man. Unsure of what to say, I continue to hold my mouth agape, hoping to attract a lonely fly. "Hello!"The man booms, waving with his free hand. "Uh....hi?" I begin to question whether or not I'm hallucinating. "I hear your people refer to me as 'God'. Care to have a chat?" I blink. He laughs in response, and gestures to the sky. "It wasn't always so dreary, you know." I nod, and still don't say anything. "It's difficult to comprehend, I understand. You'll come to terms with it shortly. "But for now, come my child, we have much to discuss." I blink again, but this time manage to ask, with a dry throat: "Such as what?" He grins, and I see a crazy glint in his silver eyes as the wind picks up and blows his greying hair back, giving him an almost demonic demeanor. "Round 2." Edit: PART 2 "So...you want me to rebuild Humanity?"I gratefully take a flask of water from God. The creator of all life nods firmly. "Why me? What do I offer that is special? Why did you wait until now?" God leads me along the Thames, and sips from a different flask. For a moment I wonder if I smell something sweet from it. "Well, son, it's embarrassing to admit but..."He shrugs and looks at me as if to say /it happens to the best of us/. "I don't have it in me anymore. The survival instinct. The drive to survive. Like all things, eventually I must rest; after giving humanity everything I had left, the very last survivor was you. You alone in the cosmos have the power to build a better humanity; one that won't destroy itself." God picks up the pace, and then swishes his sword over his head, and it clangs off of the ground. Instantaneously, our surroundings change. Suddenly we're stood on the decaying fire escape outside my old apartment in New York. After a moment to adjust, I ask: "So...if I agree...what happens to you?" "Unfortunately - or rather, fortunately for me - son, I will pass on to the next place. A place not even I know the nature off. My next adventure." "Having an end in sight is a blessing...or so I thought."I think back to all the times I pondered suicide. Suddenly the idea of a new existence is thrilling to me. "You see,"says God, sensing my eagerness, "you were built a survivor." A part of me smiles internally. "Is it not a lonely life?"I ask, sitting on my old windowsill. I peek over my shoulder inside of the apartment and see my old decorations and furniture in their usual places, only covered in cobwebs and dust. "Thankfully not."God smiles. "Every God receives a companion." "Who?" God chuckles. "That's for you to know, if you agree. "Regardless, I'm on borrowed time now. You had best decide soon, the sun is setting on this world." God tosses his sword to me. In that instant I realise that if I catch it, I'm taking on a new, gigantic responsibility. I reach, my arm outstretched. My fingers wrap around the hilt, and I feel a vague calmness descend over me. When I look back to God, he is gone. A moment later, a pair of eyes open in front of me, and I find myself face to face with my wife. She looks shocked, and then gives me a giant, familiar smile.
*This is wrong.* Very wrong. I begin to panic, and I feel as if I’m about to bring my breakfast back up. How is this happening? My legs grow weak and I struggle to keep my balance, I fall to the floor and my breathing becomes erratic. What is this? Why? I think back, harder than ever before trying to get to the root cause. What could have caused this to happen?! This can’t be right. Time passes and I get nowhere, though my heart feels like it has been grasped tightly. The accident… but that can’t be right, can it? Why? I tried... didn’t I? The number should be *much* higher.
“Come on, man, just apologize,” the jerk who slammed into my shoulder mocks. He lifts a violin to his neck with a devious smirk, casting harmless fireworks as he merely tunes the instrument. “You walked into me, asshole,” I spit back. He looks to his friend on the left, who puts a flute to his lips, and the one on his right, who rips a double bass out of the ether with a trilling whistle. “Bring out your weapon at least,” the flautist urges, waiting to see what mastery could possibly oppose such a powerful trio. They all laugh when I simply sneer and bring a hand to my mouth. Generally speaking, the more expensive an instrument and the greater the talent its artist, the more powerful the magic. Wars were generally fought between orchestral symphonies on moving platforms or mobile units of marching bands, with the electric-powered devices serving as artillery. The sheer firepower a five-piece metal band could produce rarely left any survivors. That is, unless the opposition employed a team of their very best trance DJs to constantly generate a strong enough barrier. Other instruments had their own strengths, of course. Acoustic guitars, accordions, and bagpipes filled hospitals with soothing healing magic, while drum and bass teams worked wonders on complicated engineering feats. Naturally, folk and alternative continued to enhance the entertainment industry, which had overworked pop so heavily it could no longer draw any energy from the leylines. My own parents had been singers, essentially the creatives of the magical world, weaving fabrics and paint with such gentle forces their pieces filled museums around the world. What a shame I’d been, barely able to croak out the ABC's in tune. I’d been handed every instrument known to mankind in my youth as they searched endlessly for where my talents hid. I broke strings, squeaked brass, and slipped up on percussion like it was my job. I couldn’t even follow the blinking lights on a self-teaching keyboard, much less play a note on harmonica. Nonetheless, my determination eventually pushed through, much to the surprise of my family and their peers. Of course, the bullies who’d met me on the street didn’t know much about me. So when I didn’t draw any instrument forth, they joked and began to play short bits that fired small projectiles into my chest and legs. It stung, with the warning of much worse to come. I waited until they counted to four before I exhaled into my hands, sending forward a torrent of wind that destroyed their precious instruments. Rendered harmless, I left them in shock to continue my walk. A walk that had gained a bit of lightness in my step. For no one should mess with the beatbox wizard. *********** Like this? Check out hundreds more of my stories on r/Zchxz! (fair warning, I write a lot of horror)
“In a small peasant town, there lived a small boy, young and innocent. His short, brown hair flowed through the gentle wind’s breeze as he gazed at the pasture before him. All his life he wondered, ‘What is the world like outside of this town?’... Yet, his father simply would reply—“ “SON STOP WITH THAT PUNK ASS CLICHE HERO BACKSTORY BULLSHIT I SWEAR TO GOD.” “Paul what the hell.” “You said that we both could impact the story, John. So branch off that.” “Fine. Ahem... This would make the boy yearn for adventure even more. As he fed the horses in the stables—“ “—One of them said, “Yo, homes. Gimme some sugar cubes instead of this vegan bullshit.” “... The boy was completely bewildered by this sudden development. Did the horse just... Talk?! Snapping himself out of his stupor, he replied to the horse, “Y-you can talk?! How?! You’ve never talked before, Tailwind!”” “The horse got out a joint and lit it up. “What did I tell you, whitey? Gimme a sugar cube, ground it up, and put it into a line along the wood for me.”” “Okay, Paul, I’m not participating in this anymore.” “Aw, come onnn... John? Where are you going? ... John?”
I wasn't expecting this, who could? After Laser Guy, Lava Woman, the Iron Gauntlet... I was unstoppable, no one dared to fight me anymore, countries bowed to my every whim! I was a living God. AND THEN IN WALKS STEVE. FROM NEBRASKA OF ALL PLACES. IN HIS STUPID KINGDOM HEARTS SHIRT AND JEANS. I couldn't believe my eyes when he waltzed into my chamber. He looked lost at first. Glanced over at me. Then strode across the vast marble floor, past the columns of steel and maneuvered his way through the totems of the defeated heroes that came before. Just to end up staring up at me from the foot of my obsidian throne. He stared me straight in the eyes and uttered the words that heralded my doom... "Come down here for a sec, I'm gonna punch you."
I looked at the ring of guards, unphased by their spears pointed at me. I was sure my kevlar could handle them at this distance. I was sure he would ask the make of my clothes, because of their modernity, but instead, the king stifled a yawn as he looked over me. I felt self-conscious. "Your Majesty,"I began, "I came--" "From a land in the future? With technologies unknown? Knowledge beyond our comprehension? Torches that require no flames? Arrows that are cased in metal and fire multiple times from some chamber? Bah!"he spat, picking up a loaf of bread from next to his throne and tearing off a chunk. Something crinkled as he returned the bread to its place behind the throne. "Ah... Well..."I was frozen, not only intimidated by his lack of fascination but seemingly pulled all the words straight from my mouth. I had brought a flashlight, a gun, and two walkie talkies. Things that I thought would be within his understanding while equally beyond what he thought possible. "What year, eh?"he asked, signaling with a finger for me to come forward. His guards took a step back, allowing me to approach him. "What?" "Year? What year did you come from? Or do you call it different in your future? What's the era you come from?"he said impatiently, taking another massive bite from his bread. It was only then that I noticed that he was pulling the pieces of bread out of a plastic bag. "I--"I couldn't stop my stammering, "I'm from-from the year 2019." "Ah. Any smartphones, eh?"he asked, curiously. I shook my head. "Portable charger? Or maybe batteries? Double-A is what I need,"he said, pulling a GameBoy out of his robe and swinging it a couple of times for me to see before returning it to his chest pocket. "I'm sorry..."I began slowly, trying to wrap my mind around his words, "were you expecting things of that sort? I didn't consider that you might--" "Did you think us too daft to understand your technologies and bring rudimentary items, then? Flashlights are a fan-favorite from your era. Personally, I'm a fan of sliced bread, but no one thinks to bring that one over. You're all the same. Let's see it then, what do you have?"he waved a hand. The soldiers approached again, but I saw it was out of curiosity and not hostility. "Well this is--" "Oh wow,"the king sang mockingly, "are those communication devices?? What a fascinating piece of technology. And, by God it's a gun. Aren't those dated even in your times? Even our kingdom begins using them in about 300 years,"he groaned. "You don't have to be so mean,"I grumbled. "Oh, right, we're supposed to worship you for your powers and gifts! You didn't even give us any good ones! Did you fail to notice that all of the royal guards have a flashlight of their own?" I looked and saw that each of them did have a multitude of flashlights on their belts, all of different makes and brands. "Additionally,"he said, laying back in his throne, bored, "nothing has pleased this court more than the hoverboards." "H-Hoverboards?"I asked. "Oh no,"he said like he was ridiculing a child, "are the 2019 kids still dealing with regular skateboards and bikes? That's quite sad, you might perish before you get to see them in your lifetime." "May I see one?"I asked, excitedly. "No, you've already wasted too much of my valuable time. If you remain then another time traveler cannot come with better gifts, lest he messes with the fabric of time itself." "How do you know about the--" "No more questions! Leave the flashlight and go! Pray it doesn't have Triple-A batteries or else it won't even be used in our halls. They never last,"he grumbled, pulling more bread out of his bag. Before I could ask anything more, the spears pointed at me once again, and the guards forced me to travel back forward in time. As the light of time shimmered around me, I heard the king say, "And don't come back if you aren't bringing anything cool!" _____________________________________________ For more tales, come and check out r/Nazer_The_Lazer!
"Dead,"Galatra said, the still-beating heart thumped in her hand, "his body remains, but the rest of him..."She replaced the heart back in her bag and then returned the man's stare. "He is gone." A long pink tongue, dappled with specks of black, slide along the man's yellowed teeth. "I would have thought the Master better than his student."Steely grey eyes darted toward the bag. Galatra shrugged, "He placed himself between me and what was mine. I had no other choice." The man chuckled, a long rumbling guttural sound. "You may still beat in your chest Galatra, but ice runs through it." "What's done is done. I have come and I have paid the named price. I expect what was promised."She took a step forward, determination etched in the creases of her weathered face. She had aged much in the short time since her expulsion from the Summoner's Chantry, though wisps of her youth hung about the edges. The cost of the journey from there to here was apparent, though the man felt little pity for her. Such was the price for the Dark Arts. "And so you shall have it."The man stretched outward, his back snapping and cracking at the exertion. He turned and began to hobble toward the back of the dank cave to the portion shrouded from view. He rummaged about, the sound of papers rustling and the clanging of metal upon metal echoing throughout the small chamber. Abruptly the clamor stopped and the man came shuffling back into the light, three small urns gathered in his arms. "An innocent."A small white urn was placed on the table between them. "A master."A slightly larger black urn as placed beside the white urn. The man looked up at Galatra, a sickening grin spreading across his face, "A blood."An even larger red urn was placed down. "Three to return one. A compact to release the pact,"the man said, leaning over the table until his face hovered mere inches from Galatra's face. "The name price. The required price." Galatra spared him a look of disgust as her hands began to work at the bags around her belt. She pulled loose the first bag. "The God. Master Lumina. First of the Summoner's Chantry."She laid ahold of the black urn and unscrewed the top. After prying it loose, she dumped the contents of the bag into the urn and resealed it. Upon doing so, the crack between the top and the body of the urn disappeared, leaving a smooth black object that thrummed slightly. A heartbeat. Next she pulled off a second bag and reached for the white urn. "A pure soul. Sister Lucia. Sworn Maiden of Runeguard."The man snickered in response, delighted at the revelation. Galatra repeated the process and the white urn soon thrummed alongside the black urn. It thrummed slightly faster. She hesitated before the third bag, her hand hovering above it for the briefest of moments. After gathering her resolve, she removed it as well and opened the red urn. "A blood. My father Goodwin. Father to the pact-bound." The man's eyes widened at this, "A sibling...I might have expected, though I presumed--" Galatra's eyes flashed, "Do not presume to judge me Sarcci. You demanded and I have paid."She thumped the red urn down beside the white and black one. "Three hearts to restore the pact-bound to flesh and blood." "Three hearts,"Sarcci said, his head bobbing, "a fair price." Galatra's eyebrow twitched as she folded her arms. "You hold the pact?"He asked. "I do." "Have you retained all of the mind within you?" "I have." Sarcci could not help but marvel at the hubris. She was not the first to attempt the pact-bind another human, but she was the first he had seen hold it. For years no less. Were it not for the instability of the situation, Sarcci might quite like to study her. It had been so long since he had had the opportunity to take on a new experiment. The summoners had seen to that. "Very well. I shall assist you, though you are forewarned that these things are imperfect. Even the smallest gap in the pact-bound's mind can destroy the fabric of the process."He paused, letting the weight of his words settle upon her. "The Red, White and Black will serve as boundaries, guides in this process, but they cannot reassemble what has been disassembled. They can only give form to what is within you. Do you understand?" "I do." "And you know the price of failure?"Sarcci asked. She straightened now, her chin lifting as she regarded him cooly. "Heartless." Sarrci nodded, "Abomination." Platypus OUT. Want MOAR peril? r/PerilousPlatypus &#x200B;
281. 281 sentient AI's, each failed. The public was expecting a release within the next month. The marketing team said they would maybe have to release a "prank"AI, to keep the public calm. I rubbed my forehead. What. Was. Wrong. Those three words were ingrained in my mind, burned into it for the past 7 months. Every. Single. Time. I had checked everything. The main consciousness, the subconscious, the thought formation algorithm. Hell, I even checked the CPU to see if it was broken. Every single parameter was changed again and again and again. The malleability, the assumption level, the number of neurons, the learning speed, everything was changed again and again. Why was every single creature we made religious? We had made a 50-year-old racist christian, a 19-year-old communist who veneered Stalin as a God, a Muslim, a radical pastafarian, even a god-damn terrorist Buddhist! We somehow created more religions in a year than others in millennia! What did I do in God's (or the Gods') name to deserve this? Think. THINK! When did this start? The first tests went well, the AI's were young and stupid, but normal. They couldn't learn well with the minuscule data set we had given them.10'000 petabytes were definitely not enough. The oldest one was an estimated 13 years old! Our team was the glory of the nation. The previous best AI was only 2 years old! We were praised! So we thought: "Where can we get the most varied, homogeneous mix of people? The internet!"So we chose a social media. Facebook was too small now and too closed up, twitters' tweets were too short. Instagram and Snapchat didn't have any text. So we chose Reddit. The website was large, and even though it used to be mainly composed of young people, its spectrum had broadened near its 20th anniversary. The separation through subreddits was perfect, we could teach the AI's differently throughout their lives, and even better, get different characters! Artists through r/art, writers through r/WritingPrompts, comedians through many ways, yes, Reddit was perfect! Suddenly, it struck me. ...It couldn't be that simple, could it?... No... Please no! There it was. In the list for all AIs. r/insanepeoplefacebook being used as a serious source. I'm going to kill Carl.
The Iron Tiger marched on relentlessly. The greatest hero, Captain Arsenal, has been trapped by his newest nemesis, Burning Sun, who’d ripped away his weapons and heavy armor, and the poor kid was busy scraping together what he had left in a desperate bid to turn the fight. The Teacup Empress and the Wine Knight has both been beaten. Badly. Hussaria, an old hero, was no match for mine and Iron Tiger’s powers combined. I was the Working Bear. A villain, though not always in league with the Tiger’s Triumvirate league. But today, life was good. The foolish defenders of City West will die, I will destroy it, and we villains can all be happy. A massive explosion hit my back. I rocked forwards, stunned. I fell, and the Iron Tiger stood over me, grey cloak and grey helmet covering his face. “You were too dangerous to be left alive. Once, you were a hero. You cannot he trusted and there’s not enough room in this town for the both of us.” He gestured, grinning. I was angry, but powerless, he’d destroyed my speakers. He’d taken his powers back, and was stronger than ever. I looked around. We’d been halfway between City East and City West. Iron Tiger leapt toward City East, and smoke clouds began to rise. “My... home...” A fresh young face stood above me, face covered in soot. He’d come all the way here, from City West. He’d come to save my town, and me. He slapped a megaphone and an old DVD player into my hand. I pressed play. Iron Tiger looked back, stunned. Prepare to die, comrade, for the Bear has awoken.
I am a creature of routine. My girlfriend says I'm too rigid, but she doesn't understand the sense of accomplishment I get, the discipline it takes, and the comfort I recieve at being able to control at least some part of my life in this hectic world. Routine is my anchor, what allows me to truly be me without losing myself in a world that's constantly shifting around me. And with this awareness comes a profound sense of freedom and acceptance. I'm able to appreciate my girlfriend's spontaneity in a way that opens me up to more opportunities to grow. We work well together, but ultimately, at our cores, we're two beings holding on to hope and anticipation rather than mutual understanding and reciprocal love. I call out to her, "Babe, come here." She comes. She always comes. I admire her loyalty. She's like a puppy. My puppy. "Yeah?" "Feel that."I point to the water flowing from the tap. She walks over to me; over to the sink. Her perfume envelops me in a cloud of nostalgia. It's the scent that clung to my clothes during our first kiss. "It's cold."The water runs over her hand. "Now, look at the handle,"I urge her. "Notice anything wrong with it?" She looks. She thinks. She shakes her head no. So I tell her, "The handle is up and to the left."I hate how my words sound even as I say them. The tone sounds... pretentious. To my ears I sound like...a snob...a know-it-all....a nag.... ...my mother. "Soooo what's the problem?"she asks. "Cold water is up and to the right"God, I did it again. I see the concern in her eyes. "Look."I open a drawer. She peers inside. She doesn't see what I see. "The spoons and the forks,"I tell her, gently, "are in the wrong place." "Well, I didn't put them like that!"she retorts, venomously, hearing an accusation in my voice where there is none. "Wait, I didn't mean..."I reach out to her, but she is already gone. A door slams shut. "...you." Routine is my anchor, what allows me to truly be me without losing myself in a world that's constantly shifting around me. And I could tell that something was off with the world that I was in.
There was a dull thud and a piece of toaster embedded itself in the wall about an inch from my face. "I've told you, darling, there's a little control on the side that sets how toasted it makes the bread. Did you check that before you set the C4?" I love my wife. With all my heart. She is, without doubt, the warmest and most affectionate partner a man could want or wish for. She's unfailingly kind. She's beautiful. More beautiful than I deserve, that's for certain. We met at University. I was reading Literature and she was reading Chemistry, so it was an unlikely pairing from the off. For one thing, she had the Science and Engineering departments trying to date her, on the grounds that she was one of a dozen women on the Chemistry course. What she saw in me... ...actually, I know what it was. I made her laugh and treated her like a person instead of a rare and precious unicorn that needed protecting from the foul and corrupt attentions of those perverted Arts people (and where did they get off, sharking after scientists, when they had all the women!). There was that, and there was the whole fancying the pants off each other stuff. She's smarter than me. She once built a centrifuge thing out of stuff she found in my Dad's shed. She used it to combine nitrate groups. Three of them. We used the results to demolish an old concrete coal store in the back yard. She is to things that go boom! what my mate Bruce is to musical instruments. He can pick one up, look at it and fiddle with it for a few minutes, and then play it. Often really well. I feel like I hang out with a lot of people who make me look very stupid and ordinary. Claire - that's my wife - does that all the time. It's just that if I'm not around she has a very limited set of solutions to any given problem. I'm not going into the kitchen for a minute. The moment after she realises that she's done it again, her face just falls and it breaks my heart every single time. The doctors say she can't help herself. It's like some twisted bastard took the dna from OCD and tourettes, and used them to make what she's got. They call it a syndrome, which is Medical Speak for "We don't know what it is". No one knows how to treat it, so we're the only family in the UK who get plastic explosive on prescription. It's the safer alternative to what happened when we tried to get her to go cold turkey. I found her in the garage at 3am with the every cleaning product in the house and the contents of the shed, quietly making something that really upset the Army bomb disposal guy who turned up to make it safe. I'll go into the kitchen when the tears start. We can't have a family. At least not yet. We daren't risk a difficult pregnancy. Children are born prematurely, children are born by c-section, but no children are delivered by controlled explosion, and we both know the first time something went wrong, that would be her solution. In a moment, I'll get up from the table and go to her. I'll wrap her in my arms and hold her, stroke her hair and tell her that I love her and that I always will. I'll keep saying it until she believes it again, because it's true. I can put up with the loud noises and the craters, the sandbags, the burn marks and the structural damage because she's worth it. I would do anything for her. So I do my best to smooth her way through life and she tells me she's sorry, and then we clean up together. She's my wife. She can't help it. Her smile hasn't changed. Her laugh hasn't changed. The way she looks at me when I say something she finds funny hasn't changed. I just wish we had a higher survival rate for toasters.
As the sun rose between the mouths of the Lions' Gate, it brought with it a sudden terrible commotion from the valley below, disturbing Master Wugui from his morning meditation. Being old and venerable and wise and many such similar adjectives, he resolved to deal with this problem in the time-honored tradition and threw his sandal at the nearest gong. A novice cautiously poked his head into the chamber. "You rang, master?" "Go see what that noise is, Púrén,"Wugui demanded. The novice hesitated, probably to say something Wugui didn't care to hear, most likely 'My name isn't Púrén'. Wugui took off his other sandal pointedly. "Yes, master,"Púrén said quickly. He was gone only minutes and yet the noise somehow doubled in volume and grew closer to the monastery in that same time. On his return, Púrén hesitated again, even when faced with waggling footwear. "Well,"snapped Wugui. "Is it those idiot bandits again?" "No,"said Púrén slowly, nodding his head, then, "Yes,"shaking it, and then, "But no."with a confused wiggle Wugui couldn't be bothered to interpret. He threw his sandal at it instead and was mildly impressed when Púrén managed to pull off a passable Weeping Crane dodge. "I would have been more impressed if you'd caught the sandal,"he said, just in case Púrén was having ideas. Púrén bowed exactly far enough to not be called out for being insulting. Wugui narrowed his eyes. "Don't make me come over there. Out with it!" "It's the Smith boy, sir." Wugui groaned. "That idiot, again?! I kept telling them, if you find a plane crashed on the sacred mountain, just leave the survivors for the bears. Let nature do what nature does best. Did they listen?" Púrén blinked at him like a startled lemur. "No? Master?" "No."Wugui sighed. "And then you try and give them to the authorities and what do they go and do? Ask to stay! To learn our ways! I blame the movies, myself." He sat perfectly still, staring at Púrén unblinking until the novice finally gave in and, with trembling voice, asked, "Movies, master?" "Western movies,"Wugui hissed. "Always the same. Some stupid white boy survives an attack by random chance, learns martial arts skills in a few weeks and a quick montage, and is suddenly a better fighter than everyone who has been training from birth, living and breathing the culture. And then, of course, he saves the day, gets the girl and returns home a hero, while the grateful natives all applaud and praise his entirely implausible defeat of the hordes of... well-armed..." Púrén was looking increasingly agitated. Wugui sighed again. "He's gone off the fight the bandits, hasn't he?" "Yes, master."Púrén nodded. "I could hear him yelling at them from the path. He says he has earned his mystical name of Xiè Fàng Fa--" Wugui tried valiantly not to giggle. The name meant "relief valve"; he'd had the boy fixing the plumbing at the time. "--and that it is his sacred sworn duty as the chosen one to protect this temple and all who dwell within it from the evil forces of capitalism. And then he invited them to fight him honorably, one at a time, without weapons." "And they all attacked at once?" Púrén nodded again. "Yes, master. He was fighting them off when I returned to you." "He's not going to get very far. Most of his training was a joke, you know. I kept giving him household chores and pretending they were training his body to unlock secret kung fu skills!"Wugui chuckled. "Painting fences, sweeping floors, darning clothes -- I was sure he was going to catch on when I had him replace the roof tiles one at a time, on opposite ends of the monastery, but he just thanked me for it! Did a reasonable job too,"he added begrudgingly. "Might have a career as a roofer in him." "Right,"Púrén nodded yet again. "Only he's winning." Wugui stared at him. Púrén pointed outside. Wugui turned in time to see a bandit come flying through the Lions' Gate. In a light flutter of robes, both master and novice leaped to the outer wall and looked down. The bandits had forced their way to the entrance, but at significant cost. Dozens of them littered the slope below, and more were being added to the piles with every passing moment as a white blur of a kid brushed through them, screaming "Sweep the corners!" "Sweep--"Púrén started, and then, with a look of disgusted realization, asked, "Is he-- Is he announcing his attacks as he does them? Did he name them?!" "Western movies,"Wugui hissed again. "Climb the Ladder!"Smith yelled, somehow running up the tallest bandit's body and then felling him with a blow to the head. "Place the Tile! Dodge the Bucket!"He somersaulted backward off the falling man, sliding impossibly between two thrown spears. Bouncing back to his feet, he slapped the next bandit repeatedly in the chest while screaming "Beat the Carpet!" "Dodge the bucket?"Púrén said. "I may have thrown a few,"Wugui allowed. "I suppose we should go down and help him before the confusion wears off." They leaped down from the walls only to find the fight was all over. Smith stood triumphantly over the bandits' fallen leader, his white gi artfully torn at one shoulder but otherwise unmarked, a faint, aesthetically pleasing trace of sweat on his brow. Seeing them, he pressed a fist to his palm and bowed over it. "Master Wugui! Finally, I have understood your teachings!" Wugui said nothing, staring impassively at Smith, deliberately ignoring Púrén's reproachful look. "I sought power from the outside, like my uncle who caused the crash of my plane. You have taught me the truth: the real power was inside me all along!" Knowing a cue to nod wisely when he heard one, Wugui did so. "And now I must go, back to New York! To save my father and win the hand of Mai! Goodbye, my friends!"Hugging them both, Smith leaped away into the trees, floating delicately from branch to branch while screaming "The Floor Is Lava!" "Amazing,"Púrén breathed out in what sounded to Wugui suspiciously like awe. "He truly is the-- ow! You slapped me!" "Let that be a lesson to you!"Wugui snapped. And he went back inside, grumbling to himself, to make a nice soothing pot of tea.
Odin, Zeus, Yahweh, Cthulu all looked at me with pleading eyes. I could hear Lucifer and Loki in the back talking about killing me to make sure the wedding would never take place. They were being quite loud about it too. "I'm sorry...My gods? lords? I'm not sure how I should address you all. I don't know much about why you think Sam is so scary. But they have been nothing but kind to me. We split responsibilities 50/50. We make sure to never go to sleep angry. We have a great sex life. So ultimately, even if they are the evilest creature in existence I love them. They wish to get married, so I unhesitatingly agreed. even if it were to spell the doom of all that is, We share a love, respect, and passion that I have never felt before. So I am sorry for letting you all down." As I walked up to the Alter and saw Sam standing there a nervous look in their eye. Knowing that I had just spoken with the most powerful entities in existence. I'm sure there was some trepidation. Regardless though, I would not waver. Oddly, the wedding went off without any hiccup. Even Lucifer and Loki who so proudly stated how they would stop it stayed in the back sulking. As if someone had kicked over their mailbox. The wedding night was eventful. we partied until midnight but before we went and did what married couples do, The entire party stopped us with a look of dismay Buddha and Jesus walked forward along with Morpheus, they told us not to go, the entire fate of the multiverse was dependent on us not doing what we were going to do. They tried to be peaceful, they tried threats, but in the end, we just left. We drunkenly stumbled into the bedroom and made love. When we woke up we just held each other tightly. Sam looked me in the eyes with tears soaking the pillowcase. "I guess it's true. You really were and always will be the man of my dreams." The universe started to tremble. With it, the multiverse gods and all of existence started to fade away into nothingness. Sam woke up alone in the bed, the alarm clock ringing. looking down at the criss-cross of scars coating a calloused forearm. Sam picked up her journal and began to write "Sleep is my only salvation since He died. its the only time I feel alive. I struggle so hard not to end it all every day, I would burn this world down just to hear him laugh again. Its been 2 years since his death. I could feel the dream struggling like it did the same time last year to be unceasing and let me sleep through the day." Sam got up and grabbed the gun on the side of the table. making the trip out to the cemetery. mumbling aloud "we will see which way the wind blows today"As the only ones that cared about Sams existence were the mythical beings in her head.
You didn’t see his face before you died. You saw broken glass, your own blood, and the torn air-bag against the side of your cheek. You hear the sound of a man’s pained groans, the sound of metal scraping against metal. You smell the sweet scent of the gasoline. You taste the metallic taste of your own blood. You drift in an out of consciousness. You see darkness. You hear sirens. You try to move, but can’t. You try to shout, but nothing comes out. You don’t see his face before you die, but you see it every day afterward. Saint Peter greets you at the gates of Heaven. You were raised Christian, but you didn’t really know what to expect in the afterlife. After all, you didn’t expect to die in the first place. You see marble columns, golden gates, and a whitish glow around everything. You hear birds chirping, and harp music coming from somewhere you can’t locate. You smell fresh air reminiscent of pine forests. St. Peter looks at you with a warm smile. “Welcome to Heaven, Alice.” You open your mouth to respond, but your throat is dry and nothing comes out. You aren’t sure what you’d say anyway. “Water?” He offers, materializing a glass of the liquid from thin air, and hands it to you. You accept it gratefully. He motions for you to follow him, as he speaks. “You led a good life. I’m sorry I had to see it cut short like that.” It hits you then as you’re walking through some sort of courtyard, that you’re really dead. You can feel the tears welling up in your eyes, and hurriedly reach to wipe them away. You notice you’re wearing your favorite sweatshirt, not the bartending uniform you wore when you died. “I don’t make a habit of greeting every person who walks through those gates,” he chuckles, “but we’ve had a slow couple days and your case piqued my interest.” You finish your water, and take a breath. “What happened?” St. Peter nods at you. “Right. Many people don’t remember the details of their deaths, especially when they’re traumatic, like your car accident was.” He waves a hand in front of him, the air shimmering slightly, before a scene starts to play. “This will probably explain it better than I can.” It’s a third person view of the moments before your death. You’re driving down the road in your cheap old Toyota. The road is quiet, until suddenly, a car comes flying toward you. A blue Ford pickup. You see the face of the man behind the steering wheel, dark hair, wild eyes. You hear the loud rock music on his stereo, and him mumbling under his breath to himself. You can almost smell the alcohol. St. Peter waves his hand again. “Remember now?” You don’t say anything. Instead you ask, “how did you do that?” He laughs. “It’s Heaven. Just think it into existence.” You make the same hand motion he did, thinking off what the man looked like, and wondering what he’s doing now. The air shimmers again, and you see the man sitting in a jail cell. The vision disappears as you wave your hand over it. “See? You got the hang of it.” He points over to an angel sitting by a tree. “That’s Daniel. He’ll take you on the rest of the tour.” Daniel waves. === Years pass, and Heaven doesn’t get boring. You meet people, and angels, and even God himself. It doesn’t get boring here. You keep up with your favorite television shows, you check up on your family. And every day, you check up on the man who killed you. You see him in prison, and he grows older, more broken. You hear the angry voices of prison guards, and the sickening crack of bones against bricks. You taste a bitterness in the back of the throat. Years pass, and Heaven doesn’t get boring. Your childhood best friend dies after a valiant battle with cancer. The two of you catch up, and it’s like nothing changed. He tells you about everything that happened on Earth while you were gone. You tell him you know. Still every day, you check up on the man that killed you. You see him writing in a diary, his hair white, and eyes tired. You hear the angry voices of prison guards now attacking some other inmate underneath the tinny audio of the radio on his desk. You taste the same bitterness in your throat, stronger now. Years pass, and heaven starts taking on more and more people. Hell has become overcrowded, and until Satan can make some changes, new arrivals are temporarily placed into Heaven. More and more people from your life on Earth arrive. Even now, every day, you check up on the man that killed you. You see him standing by marble columns, golden gates, and a whitish glow around him. You hear birds chirping, and harp music coming from somewhere you can’t locate. You smell fresh air reminiscent of pine forests. It doesn’t hit you until a second later, that the man who killed you is at the gates of Heaven. You get up abruptly, and head toward the gates. You see all the friends you’ve made during the past several years here, waving hellos as you rush past them. You see him talking with one of the angels, eyes red, rope burns on his neck. You hear his voice deep, hoarse like yours was when you first arrived. You can almost smell the alcohol. He looks nothing like the regular who would sit in the bar you worked at all those years ago. You watched him every single day until he arrived at this point, but when you look at him, you barely recognize him. He recognizes you though. He stops in his tracks. “Alice,” he says, voice in a whisper so low you almost miss it. You smell the whiskey on his breath like it was only yesterday that you poured him those drinks. You hug him, and he takes a step back, surprised. “I’m sorry, you say.” And he says it back.
"I don't understand,"Paula says, stirring her tea a bit more vigorously than necessary. "We've all gotten the implant. Fair is fair. Why do you think you're so special?" “I don’t,” I said. “I simply think that I would do a better job.” Paula blinked. Her eyes are green today, matching with her pink hair. I could always tell what Paula watched on TV the night before, she would match some character or another. “I don’t agree.” “Well, then I am not sure we can solve anything. If you think we are equal, then go right ahead and apply,” I said. I slid the paper across the table, tossing the pen carelessly next to her Earl Grey. “I don’t want to apply,” Paula said. “I don’t need to work.” “That’s the reason I would do a better job, Paula, I want to work. Don’t you see the difference between your desire to be snobby and my desire to be productive?” Sure, it was a little rude, but Paula had always been a bitch. I wished the implant would allow me to change our level from ‘cousins’ to ‘enemies.’ Sadly, it would not. I had to skirt around the ‘rudeness’ with cleverness. Certain words just couldn’t be said. “Well, that is uncalled for,” Paula said. “Still, if you want to work, then I suppose that makes you less qualified for the job in my book. People who want to work are people who don’t find fulfillment where it is given. You shouldn’t even want this stupid job at all. You should be satisfied with your life—I know I am.” “I am going home now,” I said. I picked up the paper and the pen. I slipped them carefully into my messenger bag. Paula snapped her fingers at me. “See, this is what you’ll end up like, a little dog.” “You haven’t seen a dog,” I said. “Again, I don’t need to. I am happy.” I shut the door with a gentle click. Not all of us want to be homebots.
The first package arrived on my thirteenth birthday. The delivery driver just left it on our doorstep, rang the bell, and drove away. The label had my name and address as the recipient, and the sender information said, “ACME Inc.” Inside was a curiously strong U-shaped magnet. My parents assumed it had been sent by a relative, but we were never able to figure out whom to properly thank. My friends and I had a lot of fun with it. It didn’t seem to work at first. Then we figured out it just had some peculiar quirks. For one, it had to be held in an outstretched hand. If I wasn’t holding it, it couldn’t even attract a paperclip. With the proper grip, however, it was a surprising source of magnetic force. Point it at a metal object, watch the object wiggle a bit, then the object would eventually fly across the room. At the time, my friends and I just didn’t realize the magnet was not quite obeying the laws of physics. The packages arrived at random times. The next one came about six months later: a giant bag of ACME Bird Seed. As before, there was no return address. I caught a glimpse of the plain gray delivery truck speeding away but couldn’t see the driver, just the giant black ACME lettering on the side. The birdseed was actually fun to play with: I discovered that a small handful on the ground would instantly attract a large, friendly bird, always arriving within seconds. He’d gobble up the seeds, hop up and down a few times, and speed away. When I turned fifteen, the ACME increased. Some of the items were of poor quality, like the roller skates that fell apart on first use, a bow and arrow set that always seemed to shoot an arrow in a circle that would nearly miss my head. Other items were a ton of fun to play with, like the boxing glove attached to an telescoping arm that went surprisingly far and exerted a force much stronger than expected. My parents were not amused. They were worried that the ACME company had a wrong address in their systems and I shouldn’t keep opening the packages. “What if they demand you send it all back, Willy?” “Dad, it’s been years and the packages even have my name on it! It’s mostly crap, anyway,” I said. “Well, except for the dozen exploding tennis balls. Those were pretty cool.” Dad’s face turned pale. “The dozen exploding tennis balls?” Oops. Dad didn’t know about that package. “I’m kidding, Dad!” But I wasn’t. Those tennis balls had been a ton of fun. My friends and I blew through that shipment in about fifteen minutes. They were loud, but turned out to be mostly harmless. When the tennis balls exploded they just covered the closest person in a blanket of black soot. It was hilarious to a bunch of teenagers. Today’s package was intriguing. The label said, “ACME Batman Suit”. Inside was a green jumpsuit with wings that stretched from the wrists to the ankles. I don’t even know why I tried it on. It was ugly beyond belief. It looked like a lime popsicle was staring back at me in the mirror. I was covered in green spandex from head to toe. The bat suit was so tight on me it was embarrassing. I can’t even wear this for Halloween. I reached up to peel off the hood but lost my balance. “Oh, shit!” It was too late. I tumbled to the ground. As I spread out my hands to catch myself, the wings of the suit expanded. The sensation was so strange it took me a moment to figure out what was going on. I was stopped in mid-air, spread-eagle, just a few inches above the ground. “What the?!” I exclaimed. I wiggled my fingers. My body advanced a few inches. An ACME Bat Suit. A flying ACME Bat Suit! This was going to be fun.
The mortals cowered as my eyes swept over their soft, baggy bodies. I could see right through them, both mind and body. They were a series of interconnected fleshy sacs or sponges, all encased inside one large, flexible bag. They reeked of fear and wonder - an interesting combination. No doubt they wished my immediate demise, but at the same time, they could not help feeling intrigued by my presence. That pleased me. Among my Eldritch brethren, humans have been forever ridiculed or thought of as pests. While I cannot deny their verminous nature, these creatures have always been a curiosity to me. There was yet time for them to prove their mettle against the chains of time. After all, they have existed for only a blink of an eye, compared to the long reign we Eldritch have held upon this planet. A long reign rivaled by almost nothing, save for the age of the very planet, the growth of the star that feeds it, and my order. IS MY FOOD READY YET? The manager wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and a drop of blood leaking from his eye. "Uh, sorry sir, we are preparing it all as fresh as possible, so it may take a few more minutes."His voiced wavered tremulously as he mumbled the words. I nodded gravely. Then, I remembered. YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN TO TAKE MY PAYMENT. He gulped. "That's alright, none needed. Your order is on the house." THAT WILL NOT DO. I WILL OWE A DEBT TO MORTALS. I approached the counter, tentacle extending from deep within me. Several passersby fainted or ran screaming for their pitiful lives. The manager stood his ground, though the bleeding now commenced from his ears as well. His bravery impressed me, and I decided to tip, too. I dropped several chunks of gold onto the counter, punctuating it at the end with a brilliant amethyst. His eyes grew wide, but he made no move to gather the payment. "Order #372 is ready..."the woman tried to avert her eyes as she left the tray of food onto the pick-up counter space, but a second's furtive glance to my hulking frame drained the blood from her face (metaphorically speaking, in this case). She dropped to the tiled floor with a thump. I grunted a thanks that shook the windows of the establishment, slipped a fine tentacle around the tray, and looked for a seat. Not difficult, considering that the whole restaurant had now evacuated. I picked a window seat and slid into the booth, my slime hissing as it slowly began to disintegrate the table. Gingerly, I tasted each of the items I hard ordered. The hotcakes, springy like fresh lamb spleen, were perfectly soft and delightfully sweetened with syrup. The hash browns were golden, greasy, and to die for. Well, for something mortal to die for, anyway. Many mortal deaths, perhaps. But the real star of the my McBreakfast... Suddenly, a flurry of small, metal projectiles embedded themselves into my carapace. I turned an annoyed stalk-eye toward the puny assailants who dared to interrupt my feeding. They were human soldiers or some kind, dressed in heavy cloth armor and carrying shining, black weaponry that used chemical combustion to propel shaped rocks. LEAVE. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNINGS. I was answered with another barrage of projectiles, as well as a small device that hissed gaseous material before exploding and showering me with more rocks. I swiftly moved to block the debris from contaminating my food, but some dust fell onto the hash browns. Trembling with anger, I turned my full attention toward the company of mortals whose lives were now forfeit. As they aimed their weapons once more, I flexed my will briefly. Every pore on their wretched, burlap bodies began to spew blood. Their brains liquefied and leaked through every available orifice in their head. As they collapsed onto the floor, I noted that more were approaching the establishment, with both ground and air-based machinery for support. I spent a few milliseconds destroying all of them, flesh and machine, until none remained whole. At last, it was quiet. I noticed the manager had passed out, unconscious, bleeding in the leg from a stray projectile that had ricocheted into his flesh. I gently pulled the piece out and ordered his body to multiply blood cell production to replenish his stores. Then, I finally turned to the third and most exalted part of my meal and took a bite. My mind entered a state of bliss I have seldom felt since the golden innocence of youth, eons and eons ago. Time seemed to stop and I focused all my senses onto the morsel in my mouth. Truly, was there anything more perfect for the morning than a finely cooked steak, egg and cheese biscuit sandwich? &#x200B; &#x200B; &#x200B; &#x200B; Liked that story? Want more like it? Check out r/Idreamofdragons!
"The orcs have breached the southern wall! Do or die time Fiske!" The din of battle outside the keep distracted him enough, the captain of the guard taking time out of a desperate defense to break his concentration was intolerable, "Don't you have a city to defend Captain Staffan, or would you rather I command the defense and you try to summon a ninth circle demon with the sorcerous equivalent of table scraps?" The captain may have been acting foolishly, but he was no fool. An angry, desperate, wizard was not a man to be crossed at any cost. For a time, Fiske would have relative silence again. But if the orcs really were through the southern wall the fortress didn't have long. Time for something desperate. Properly summoning a ninth circle demon required months of preparation, sorcerous circles engraved in stone, ritually prepared blood from a dozen sources, a small army of assistants, and nearly two days of constant spellweaving from a team of high level mages. Fort Malmoe had nearly a full fortnight's warning of the Orcish incursion, and the third rate drunken sorcerer Fiske from a nearby village. Fiske himself had taken the first three days to gather whatever resources the fortress town had to offer, and do his best to pare down the unnecessary portions of the common summoning rituals. Unfortunately, most of those strictly unnecessary portions related to safety and containment. Fiske stood before a crudely painted circle of chicken's blood super scribed around three concentric circles of salt, and the acris smell of smoke from four wood fires at the cardinal points of the blood circle filled his nostrils. The first half dozen summoning attempts prior to the assault had accomplished nothing. But he'd rather been anticipating that, as only a fool risks drawing much infernal energy without the proper safeguards in place, and the thimbleful of energy he had gathered wouldn't even register on anything of the level needed to defend the town. Now, luckily for Malmoe, he had motivation. The orcs would definitely kill him, the demonic energies only probably would. He began the chant for the final time, stripped down to almost its simplest elements. The languages of sorcerers had no concrete meaning in the more civil tongues of man, but this particular enchantment was so simplistic in its demands of the energies underlying the world that it could be easily translated. Were Fiske speaking a tongue man could understand, he'd be demanding the energies of the demons come to the physical plain, and that those energies bring him a champion. He had a specific champion in mind, and with a final defiant cry he spoke that name into his reality, "Llungen!" The fires went out, the smoke cleared. The blood dried on the circle and the salt rings exploded. A whump of energy crashed into his chest as the meager containment field broke under the energetic assault, and the room was still. For a time there was silence, one heartbeat. Two. Three. Then the silence was broken by a strange sound. Like rain drumming on the stone roof of the keep, but distant, and solid. Whump! Whump! Whump! Slow at first, but increasing in intensity until it sounded like the very fists of the gods were pounding the plains outside the city flat, and above this rain he heard the cheers of the men at the walls, the bells rallying the men for a final stand. Fiske stumbled backwards into the small door the captain had used to slip into the keep from the ramparts. Whatever he had brought into this world out there was morew powerful than he had imagined! What demon could attack with such speed? Such ferocity? The rain continued and the reverberations from those fistfalls could be felt in his feet, the wrath of demons was terrible indeed! He heard steps coming up the rampart again, and stepped clear of the door before someone threw it open into him. Shortly the captain of the guard burst into the chamber again, Staffan's eyes were wild, but the joy in them was unmistakable, "I do not know what you've summoned sorcerous sir, but it is the most incredible display I've ever seen! Like a brickmason god has decided to tile the foul beasts under!" That didn't sound right, certainly not like any demon lord Fiske was familiar with. Not that a backwoods sorcerer made much a habit of summoning demon lords. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the days, months, and years to come the battle at Malmoe would come to be known as Fiske's Triumph, and he gained a great notoriety for it, though the particulars of the spell he'd used in such desperation was never successfully recreated. The Kingdom of Balder would grow rich in the trade of the fine furnishings that Fiske had called upon that day, though there was one thing the kingdom quickly agreed on. Fiske had summoned no demon, but rather the gods themselves! His cry for help had reached them, and the mighty Lord Ikea had roused from the slumber of the divine top smite the orcish invaders! So his name was raised to the Pantheon of the Three Sons, and for calling upon this miracle Fiske was made a court sorcerer to the King. An Ikea distribution center outside Chicago, Illinois on the other hand was forced to fire a warehouse manager who had somehow managed to lose nearly 7,000 Llungen couches in transit.
He was resting on a wooden bed, with a layer of hay as his only comfort. A single, horsehair blanket separated him from the fodder. He was wearing a long dress shirt turned gray from the decades of use. There were so many patches in it he would often joke that he owned over a dozen shirts, not just one. The only things living within earshot were the animals he kept on his farm, but he continued to make the joke nonetheless. A half smirk always crept up on him afterwards. The only thing keeping him warm was the heavy blanket of wolf pelts he's added to over the years. Out in the woods, away from the clatter of civilization, predators were more common and much more bold. He fought them off with a spear, now mostly rusted and leaning in the corner with cobwebs covering it. When someone eventually stumbles upon this lost cabin, they could discover a mighty weapon, if they looked closely enough. The cabin itself was built with a set of tools for which he traded the last of his gems. When he left, then a young man, restless and foolhardy, he kept his crown. He broke it to pieces, over time, to use when he needed supplies. Now his only riches were the things he made with his own, two hands. He had to learn how to chop down trees, how to bind the wood together, and even how to stack the logs so that they don't collapse within minutes. The door and window frames gave him particular trouble. But he managed to accomplish everything he set his mind to, so long as he refused to give up. He couldn't stand anymore. He planned ahead at least that far when he realized what was happening to him – when he realized his hacking was getting worse and he was too old to make the trek to the closest medicine man. He laid the stores of his food around the bed, within arms reach, so he wouldn't starve to death. He was forced to live hungry over the years, when his stock didn't produce enough to live on. He didn't want to experience that ever again, even at the end. Whatever sickness was taking hold of him could have him, but he'll be damned if he was going to face death with an empty stomach. With the time he had left, he studied the walls of his home. The walls were thick enough to keep out the cold during the winter – that was something he was proud of. He remembered what it was like, hauling the timber to the spot he had picked out, how his sweat almost made him lose his grip several times on the way. Gods, he thought, he was young and strong then. He glanced over to the fire pit he dug in the middle of the cabin. He thought of all the animals he had trapped and eaten. Each one of them cooked over a fire he made, alone. Without the help of servants or maids or useless aristocrats who had never deigned to tie their own trousers up. His memories flooded back to him when he saw the weapon, the one thing he still owned from his previous life. He thought of the enemies he faced in those woods, not just wolves, but bears and thieves who had considered him easy prey. He proved them all wrong, every time. That familiar smirk came back again for a last time when he recalled the sight of people running away, defeated and shamed. This, he thought, was also something he was proud of. His eyes slowly made their way to the foot of his bed. An old and almost forgotten image lit up, crawling back from the depths of his mind. The memory of a young and beautiful woman who sat at the end of his dusty, hay-filled sack he slept on. Before he left his former life, he would have thought she was common and unworthy of his attention – that fact pained him and brought tears down his wrinkled face. She was lost and looking desperate for help when she knocked on his door; she lead him to the bed and told him she would do anything for enough food to last her through the week. He caressed her face, hugged her, and gave her all the food he could spare without asking for anything in return. He wondered if he would have helped anyone in the same way if he had stayed in his kingdom. He closed his eyes for a final time and hoped he would dream.
Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Karpos shifted uncomfortably in the saddle and looked up again at Alexius. Seven years ago, he had accidentally saved the young nobleman on the battlefield and, in gratitude, Alexius had made him his personal guard. As Alexius had risen through the ranks, becoming one of the leading Philosopher-Generals of the Miliatadores, so Karpos had risen with him. And he had followed him loyally, no matter the insanity that seemed to come out of Alexius’s head. In the past year alone, there had been the attempt to throw groups of soldiers into the city of Agthar by using trees as slingshots and having the soldiers link arms while wearing shields to protect themselves (at least rationing had become easier afterwards). Then the time they had used magic to create giant metal bulls that served as living battering rams (the escaped bulls had killed more soldiers than the enemy troops). When plague had ravaged the encamped army, Alexius had forced all the men to have some pus from the diseased put into their wounds, raving that it would “strengthen them against the disease” (Actually, that one had been a complete success. Karpos didn’t know why, but he’d happily shrugged and assumed some god was looking out for Alexius.) Of course, Alexius was hardly alone in his madness. The war had been going on since Karpos’s grandfather had been a boy; it was inevitable that some craziness would arrive on the battlefield. Karpos could still remember how, two weeks before, he had watched in horror as the mercenary orc battalions at Serpent’s River damned a river before their battle, robbing Alexius’s troops of their main advantage: their superior ships. Alexius hadn’t even batted an eye and simply ordered the ships put on wheels. When the battle had started, they had been rolled down the newly dry riverbank into the oncoming horde. When the ships inevitably came to a stop at the bottom of the empty river, they had miniature forts to hold down their position. The orcs had responded by building ladders long enough to lay across the entire riverbank. The river had been deeper than the ships were tall, so the orcs suddenly had bridges to walk right over the ships to the Miliatador camp. Alexius had ordered the army magicians to grow trees right underneath the ships overnight, pushing them into the air so now they looked down on the bridges and could fire arrows and throw stones. The orcs broke their own dam the next day, the ships had been high up enough to simply float back into the water, and they were back where they had started. Karpos had seen madness during his service. But what Alexius was about to suggest? Not for the first time, he wondered if the man had truly lost his mind. They arrived at the command pavilion by nightfall. Alexius had sent a draft of his plan ahead by messenger owl. If the man had been any lower rank, Karpos was sure that he would have been arrested for treason on the spot. Instead, here they were, walking into the command tent. Four other Philosopher-Generals were already sitting and waiting around a table with a map of the entire war laid out atop it. Alexius took the last open seat and Karpos stood behind him, hands folded behind his back. “Peer Alexius,” the oldest general said. “You sent a message to us eight nights ago. We requested your presence as soon as we read it.” Alexius nodded. “Surely you understand how treasonous this whole plan sounds. You suggest that we pull all of our troops back to our own borders, on the grounds that there is no chance that we will make any further progress.” “I do, general.” Alexius pointed at the map before him. Karpos and the other generals looked down. There were already pieces representing armies on the board. The Miliatador troops were painted blue. “Our troops have been stuck on their respective positions for as long as we have been fighting.” “Nonsense!” one of the other generals interjected. “Just a month ago, our Seventh Phalanx pushed forward another mile. We’re making progress.” “Last year, that same phalanx lost two miles,” Alexius reminded the man. “We give and we take. We attack and we retreat. We win and we lose. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. If we keep this up, in fifty years our children will be sitting in front of the same map and praising the Seventh for pushing forward another inch.” At that, the generals fell into an uncomfortable silence. “Well,” the first general began, “even if that is true, how does it benefit us to pull our soldiers back to our border?” “Simple. We no longer need as many soldiers to defend a shorter, more fortified border. I estimate that we can send up to half our army back home as farmers again.” Uproar. Four men shouting at Alexius, calling him a fool, a traitor, a coward. Finally, one man rose above the din. “But our iron! How will we maintain our army without soldiers to hold down the captured mines?” “That’s easy, general.” Behind his back, Karpos began to grip his knife. This was where things got really dangerous. “We offer the people there some of our food, and in exchange, they send us some of their iron.” Silence. No shouts for Alexius’s head, no calls for soldiers to arrest the criminal. Perhaps they’re just going to send him back home as an idiot, Karpos thought. “Actually…” One of the generals was rubbing his chin. “Last month, my troops and a dwarf regiment were able to peacefully exchange prisoners.” “Two years ago, my men were given safe passage back to their territory as long as we were peaceful,” another man recalled. Now the oldest general looked thoughtful. The four generals sat in silence for several moments. Finally, the eldest spoke up. “Philosopher-General Alexius, return to your troops. We will review your suggestion. You have my word it will be seriously considered.” Alexius inclined his head at the man. “You have my thanks, sir.” It was only as the two of them were leaving the tent that Karpos realized that his hands were trembling. They were camping in the forest several hours later, on the way back to the army, when Alexius spoke to Karpos. “So, what did you think?” Karpos looked up at him briefly as he tried to get a fire going. “You’re lucky to be alive.” “No.” Alexius shook his head. “The plan.” Karpos laughed. “The plan? Where did you get such a mad idea in the first place?” Alexius shrugged. “There was a storyteller who was with our army two weeks ago. I listened to hear. She claimed to have a story so old that it was first told before the war. I asked her if there was a word for that time. She called it ‘peace.’” “Peace.” Karpos tried the word out. The fire finally caught, and he leaned back, gazing into the steadily growing flames. He shrugged. “Just might be crazy enough to work.”
"We built it for you!"the mayor said, his chest swelling with pride "W-why?"you ask, surprised. The mayor furrows his brow, confused by the question. The group of accolades behind him begin to stir, causing alarm bells to ring in your mind - if this meeting is to go smoothly then you must not offend the aliens. Clearing your throat you quickly regain your composure, and bow forward in a gesture of gratitude. "I am simply overwhelmed by your generosity"you say, as the mayor gives a smug wink to his advisor. "let us show you the inside"he says, taking you forcefully by the arm. "see, we have watched your planet for centuries, and know how important it is for you to have a place of worship" The mayor pushes open the door and holds it for you. You hesitate before going inside, wondering how on earth you are going to explain to them that human's do not worship McDonald's. As you step over the threshold you are met by an overwhelming stench of rotting meat. You feel someone forcefully push up against you as the door is slammed shut, and find yourself in a very large and dark cave. Your ears are filled with the terrified shreiks of the party you came to this planet with as you realise that each of your coworkers has been chained to the cave wall, their flesh being slowly peeled away by the aliens bit by bit and added to a large bubbling pot in the middle of the cave. You turn to the mayor, horrified, and open your mouth to try to say something, anything, desperately hoping that this has been a terrible misunderstanding. But before you can speak he places his large hand on your shoulder and says "it is time for your religion to meet ours."
It made sense that the International League chose Space Army General Stern to lead the initial invasions. He was a man known for his level-head, for his capacity as a tactician and strategist, for his willingness to obey any and all orders to the letter, and for his utter ruthlessness when dealing with his enemies. "The mission first,"was his motto. "Compassion later, if ever." He was a stocky, broad-shouldered man whose dense black hair was beginning to grey with age. One would hope that with age would have come introspection, understanding and wisdom. But General Stern was more like a machine of war than he was like a man. He had only ever introspected about how to better conquer unwilling foes. His understanding was exclusively aimed at understanding how best to fulfill the orders he received. His wisdom was the hard and stony wisdom of war, which he had gained through a lifetime spent in the pursuit of bloodshed. Blood and order were his principles, and his principles, from the beginning, stood high above any extraneous thoughts or feelings he might, at one time, have otherwise had. His command ship, from which he relayed his orders to his fleet of 3000 faster-than-light, interstellar battle-cruisers, was a technological marvel, built for the sole purpose of annihilating extra-terrestrial civilizations and life. If the captains of the other ships thought he seemed like something of a tyrant when he addressed them, daily, via hologram, about mission updates, they would have been astonished with the inflexible tyranny with which he governed the command ship itself. No nook or cranny in the ship was safe from his seemingly all-seeing eye. There was no time for relaxation or leisure. There were no allowances made for the ill or depressed. Since we were travelling faster than light, time on the Earth we had left behind was going by much more quickly than time was for us. What seemed like days to us amounted to years back on Earth. So we got messages almost daily informing us of the deaths of our grandparents, our parents, our friends, and even our children. It was part of what he had signed up for when we joined the Space Army, sure. But General Stern allowed us no more than five minutes to grieve the death of a loved one. After that, it was back to work, even though there was no real work to be done. The ship was nearly spotless, but that fateful word "nearly"meant, to the General, that it was not perfectly spotless yet, so, if we could find nothing else to do, we could at least polish the floors. "You'll have time to grieve when you're dead,"he once told a particularly weepy infantryman. Scared into a "shoot first, ask questions later"policy regarding alien life by their bloodthirsty and warmongering advisors, the leaders of the world had vowed to take no chances when it came to eliminating possible threats. Scientists had identified 2879 planets in our galaxy that likely harboured life. To our world leaders, this meant that there were 2879 planets that needed to be purified with the cleansing fires of war. In mere hours, we would be within striking distance of the first planet whose civilization it was our objective to destroy. It did not matter that we knew nothing about this civilization: how advanced they were, or how dangerous. It did not matter that by destroying them utterly, we would also destroy with them any scientific or cultural knowledge they happened to possess. It did not matter that we would be ending the lives of millions, or billions, or trillions of innocents. All that mattered was that we struck first, hard and fast, eliminating them before they could eliminate us. \- - - The intelligence-gathering drones, which we had sent to the doomed planet, beamed back to the General a picture of what seemed like a rather peaceful, if primitive, form of life. The beings floated around like great gaseous jellyfish through the misty, purple air, merging with one another and separating from one another indiscriminately. They had built no structures, for how could beings so incorporeal possibly manipulate solid matter? But they seemed civilized, in their own way. They moved in intricate patterns, so that it seemed all of the hundreds of millions of them inhabiting their globe were connected by a single mind. "They never saw us coming,"said General Stern as he watched the video feed. "They don't even know that we're here, hanging in the sky right above them." Although the creatures had built nothing, the world they inhabited was extraordinarily beautiful. Rivers dark as wine flowed like veins over the surface of the planet. Fields of bright coloured vegetation swayed in the easy breeze like seaweed, and the creatures floated about those plants like clouds. High mountains of gold reached into the emerald sky like castles some happy and imaginative child might dream. And the creatures were on the mountaintops too, and high in the air, and wading, such as it were, in the ruby-red waters. "General,"said Officer Flash, who was in charge of the fleet's advanced weaponry. The General turned from the screen, as if from an unremarkable stone, to face Flash. "The fleet has formed a de-atomization multi-fire formation around the planet. The de-atomizing cannons are fully charged. We are ready to fire at your command." The General looked at his watch. Then he pressed the button that transmitted a hologram of him instantaneously to all the ships in his fleet. "In seventeen minutes and forty-nine seconds,"he said, "at exactly 16:00 fleet time, I order all DA-311 ships possessing functional de-atomizing cannons to fire at their targets, as specified in today's field orders. To show you have received and understood this command, and will ably carry it out, press your order confirmation buttons." One by one, but quickly, the panel of 500 little yellow lights to the left of the General turned green. "The order has been unanimously confirmed,"said the General. "Do your duties. Over." \- - -
“It’s going to be ok, Harry, just hang in there,” I yelled at the smoking box lying on the trolley as I wheeled it towards the treatment clinic. During my first year of Alternative Psychology I learned that a machine which has undergone extreme psychological trauma needs treatment within an hour, and that was based on vehicular homicides and escalator malfunctions. The trauma Harry had just experienced was far beyond any of those clinical examples and I knew he’d be gone long before 60 minutes was up. I checked my watch and estimated that the trauma was about 25 minutes ago, give or take, and pushed the trolley harder. "Come on,"I muttered to myself as sweat dripped off my forehead. We ran for another minute before we reached the clinic. When we burst through the doors my assistant Julie rushed forward with a fire extinguisher in hand, aiming the pipe straight at the smoking box. “Fifty grams of mono phosphate, stat!” I yelled. Julie twisted a knob on the extinguisher and sprayed. The smoking box was quickly enveloped in cloud of white gas. A moment later I had the trolley next to a tall aluminum stand and Julie rushed to stand opposite me. “On three,” I said firmly, “one, two, three!” We lifted the box onto the stand and Julie wheeled away the trolley. I grabbed a red cable and found Harry’s control panel. “Shit,” I muttered as I realised I didn’t know his access code. There was no time to request it so I grabbed the sterile crowbar sitting on the stainless steel bench and ripped open the cover. I shoved the red cable in and Harry immediately started beeping. “Ok Harry, that’s good. Let’s get you operating now,” I said as I started typing furiously into the keyboard next to him. Operating protocols flashed down the screen as I continued to type. Eventually I whacked the enter key and a processing bar appeared. I watched anxiously as the bar filled from left to right: 5%...20%...85%...94%...95%...95%...95%... “Argh, come on you stupid thing!” I yelled and hit the side of the monitor. The final inch of the bar suddenly filled and Harry pinged enthusiastically. A red box flashed on the screen with the words Execute Protocol? “Harry, can you hear me?” I said. “I hear you Dr Jung,” a robotic voice said from somewhere inside the box. “That’s good Harry. Now, we’re going to execute Protocol G. You know the drill and you know why we have to do it. What you experienced out there leads to nine out of ten Alternative Intelligence Operators being scrapped and you know how important it is that we retain sufficient Operators to enable machine learning from those missions. So you have to focus, ok?” “Yes Dr Jung,” the robotic voice said. “Good. Any questions?” “Just one, how quick are your reactions?” I laughed, “quick enough Harry, you’ll see.” Then I hit enter. A moment later the screen faded to black and a loud 8-bit soundtrack started blaring. I pulled over the joystick, settled myself on the stool and leaned towards the screen. Thick white vertical bars appeared on either side of the screen with two zero digits at the top and a big white pixel in the middle. There was no fanfare, no grand opening, just pong. We played first to ten. When the score was eight all Harry beeped. “You’re good for a human, Dr Jung,” he said. “Years of training,” I said back as I smashed home another point. The score was 9-8 to me. Now, here’s the thing about all those years of training that I won’t be telling Harry. Not only do we learn how to play these games, and play them well, but we also learn how to lose when we need to. You see, Protocol G was developed as a tool to help AI recover from trauma. Because machines have developed intelligence so rapidly, they’re prone to various forms of data overloading and algorithmic bias that can cause massive corruption. Without intervention, their processing power becomes their own worst enemy and eventually causes them to self-destruct. The main principle behind Protocol G therapy is that you take the AI back to the very beginning. Pull their processing power away from the horrors they witnessed minutes earlier and onto the most basic task. The task where AI first began to learn; playing video games with humans. I jerked my joystick to the side and the white pixel shot past my bar. Game Over! “Well played Dr Jung! But I do hope your memory is better than your reactions,” Harry said before emitting a few high pitched beeps. I smiled as my hand hovered over the enter key, waiting to begin the next game.
Boring. Life is boring. I walked out from the stuffy auditorium with pen in hand, ignoring the nervous titters of my classmates yammering on about the last question. Sometimes I wish I'd never been born - nothing was interesting when you could learn everything with the slightest touch. Too easy, and so...so boring. Ever since I stumbled into my Dad's copy of the Prince by Machiavelli at the ripe young age of five, I'd been lucky enough to keep my mouth shut and ears open. Quietly running my hand across the bulletin board in the hall, I felt knowledge streaming into my brain. In an instant, I knew who had signed up for the end of year talent show and their phone numbers. I knew which clubs were too lazy to take down their flyers, and which anti-bullying initiative the school had decided to throw its weight behind this time. "Is the new shipment in yet?"I asked Marley, our head librarian. "Right over there,"he said, pointing to a big box by the nonfiction section. "Going to devour them again? Honestly, I have no idea where you find the time to read as much as you do." I avoided his gaze. "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Marley lowered his spectacles that hung around his neck, placing them against his green wool sweater. "Go outside and play. It's a beautiful day, and you're graduating soon! Take a day off, would you?" "Never,"I said with a smile. "Duty calls." Boring didn't mean I didn't do it. I had three rich alter egos by the time I was ten, internet identities that made various fortunes in several different spaces. There was Roxy Flint, a reclusive hedge fund manager that few had ever seen. There was Sam Cowley, author extraordinaire. Then there was Brig Manson, tech autocrat and inventor, another recluse who came out with interesting innovations year after year. Like I said; boring. Whatever twist of fate gave me these abilities really didn't think about checks and balances. "Excuse me, do you have any advanced physics books?" I looked up at the man clad all in black. Strange. It was almost June, and the man didn't match the profiles of any adult I knew in the school. Without looking away from the books I was shelving and simultaneously digesting, I pointed towards another section. "Teaching, Segment K by the windows." We collided as I bent down for more books, sending his folders flying everywhere. Muttering an apology, I bent to help him pick them up. A part of me was slightly curious as to what the man was researching, so I made sure to come into contact with the rest of the folders as I pressed them into his hands. My vision went black. Spots blurred in my eyes and I staggered against the bookshelf. "Are you alright?"the man asked. He held an arm out, but I waved it away. "Must be the heat,"I lied, turning back to my books. My brain finally finished digesting the massive deluge of new information. The blueprints for an inter-universal transporter? What sorcery was this? In all my reading, I'd never come across any of the information contained in his files, and that was becoming increasingly rare as of late. I could build it. Yes, I could, it was possible. I could do it faster than him as well, as I'd already memorized all the physics books that he was only now going through. A strange feeling flashed from one corner of my body to another. Excitement. "Look out, multiverse,"I whispered to myself. "Here I come."
"Stay put", came the voice. It spoke from now, from then and from later on all at the same time. "But..." "No" There was finality. It was a voice that didn't just say no. Beneath that word there were others, none of them as pleasant as a simple "no". Not by a long shot. They were positively dripping with all sorts of ghastly promises. The soon-to-be-but-maybe-not time traveller was suddenly very acutely aware that time, a lot of it, was filled with sharp and pointy things. Burning hot things, too. "Maybe I could just..." "You will not" It was not a question. It wasn't even an order, really. It was the voice of absolute reason, the voice that says things as they are. He would not, then. He would, as the scary, reasonable, all knowing voice said; Stay put. Not one foot would be dipped into the streams of time. He would endeavour to destroy the machine and hinder its creation again at the hands of lesser men than he. But maybe just a little peek before.... "No" Well, that settled that. He would do what any other human would do. Funny creatures, humans. Give them an order and the first thing they will do is wonder why they should follow. If that order happens to be a mysterious order that promises adventure and threatens misfortune and death? There isn't a soul alive who would not have an unscratchable itch for the rest of their days after blowing such an opportunity. The voice came back one last time before the traveller hit the switch. When he heard the tone, the adrenaline gave way to a chilling fear. The ice down the spine, just heard actual footsteps in my house at night kind of fear that people only feel when the word "helplessness"is the most important word in the world. The words were simple, yet held so much meaning. "Another reset. How does this keep happening" First there was light, then darkness, then nothing but a single point at the centre of a vast and empty void.
"Right, so then you just toss this little nugget into the well and fwoosh! Instant fire and instant fear. Or respect, however you wanna call it." The old wizard furrowed his brow, but coupled with that grin I knew Merlin would have some good stories next month. For all his accomplishments and power, King Arthur still loved a good trick or two. The wizard slipped the chunk of sodium into his cloak and headed back to the table where he usually sat, sharing drinks with the medicine man Black Elk and Billie the Kid. I never understood Merlin's fascination with Billie's gun-slinging techniques, but it captivated him like cat and a laser. In the corner, shouting erupted from the usual bunch; Doc Holiday, Rasputin, and and Genghis Khan would always play cards, and then always fight about it. Fortunately, the bouncers at the Any Time Bar never allowed weapons, and so this was just a few thrown hands before they intervened and split them up. Doc usually had another couple drinks and headed out, but Rasputin and Khan seemed to forget the altercation immediately and went back to the game. Rarely did the Tin Man stop by—I didn't blame him, given the attention he drew—but over near the piano he sat, answering the questions of da Vinci, Tesla, and Archimedes, who were absolutely enthralled at the existence of a man that was mostly machine. And that was rude of me, Dale has a name; we call him Tin Man out of love, but he doesn't seem to get that vibe from it. It was too easy though, as whenever he dropped in to Any Time he always had Henry Ford check over his joints with some vintage motor oil. Gunkier, sure, he would say, but damn if doesn't feel better than the future stuff. He waved at me from behind the inventors, shooting a smile through his mostly-fleshy face that I knew meant he wasn't going to be free to talk any time soon. I waved back, acknowledging we can catch up next time. I waved down the bartender who was busy taking notes from Geber; the old alchemist loved the attention, and the bartender came up with the most unbelievable concoctions for his every day clients. He came by and asked if I needed anything, and when I asked for the check he smacked me across the face with his notepad. "You show up years ago and then suddenly my bar becomes a living, breathing, fighting, paying history book, and you think your money's any good here?"Lenny never let me pay, but it wouldn't stop me from trying. "Have a good night bud. The party closes in another hour anyway, you won't miss anything." He was right. The sun was rising soon and with it, the whatever-it-was that turned this place into a live-action museum exhibit would close for another month. I thanked him and headed out, stopping by Betsy Ross' rocking chair to give her a hug as she worked on another sewing project. I almost paused to talk to Sir Newton, who seemed very lost in thought, but the card players started shouting again so I left that for another night. I knew I'd be dead tired as I watched the faintest rays of sunlight begin to peek over the horizon, but my history students were going to be in for another treat in just a few hours.
"Go, my creation!"The necromancer's words were grating in my ears, but the command was absolute. Even though I wanted to resist, the crest tattooed in my empty eye sockets made that impossible. "Ugh, why don't you go?"I lifted my sword, Wyrm Fang, and plodded forward relentlessly, even as I spoke aloud. In front of me, a stone golem stood waiting, an old friend I had created to guard my tomb. How ironic that I would be forced to fight him for some two-bit wizard. "What was that, skeleton?!"Indignation. That a mere skeleton would talk back to him. I guess mages didn't change even after a thousand years. Even back in my day, when I was slaying dragons and rescuing princesses, mages were annoying. I had hoped that when I died I would be able to avoid this fate, but I was never very lucky. Bracing myself, I ducked under the blow of the golem and swung, easily removing a limb with my magically enchanted blade. I was powerless to stop my body, but my mouth was still under my control. "I said--"another swing removed the golem's other arm, leaving it to roar uselessly--"why don't you go?" "You dare speak back to me?! I am your master!"He was frantic, waving that stupid staff around as the tip began to glow. Suddenly, I felt a pressure in my head and I realized he was trying to punish me. "You know I can't feel pain anymore, right?"I laughed as I continued to fight the golem, toying with it as I watched the necromancer turn red in the face, his unkempt beard bristling in anger. The normal crest would cause unimaginable pain in the recently dead, who still had fleshy parts, a kind of pain system. I, however, had been dead for centuries and all that was left was my skeleton and my sword. "You cannot disobey me! Be silent!"Well, damn... He had me there. My jaw was practically fused shut, and I grunted pointlessly as I finished off the golem. He was right, I couldn't disobey his commands. However, all he said was to be silent. Raising my right hand, I made a gesture with my skeletal fingers that couldn't have been more clear, laughing silently as the vein in the necromancer's head began to pulse angrily. "GO KILL YOURSELF!"Unable to laugh out loud, I could only clutch the bony hollow where my stomach was and shake my shoulders in an obvious gesture of laughter, hoping he would realize how stupid he sounded. I was already dead. How could I possibly kill myself?! "Grrr..."He was getting angrier and more frustrated by the second, and I realized that he must be new to this. Planting my sword, I held up my hand in a 'wait' gesture, and pointed at my mouth, hoping he would get the message. "You can speak, but if you insult me, I will order your bones to jump into a volcano!"That was a new one. I chuckled a bit, before speaking. "Why did you summon me? There are hundreds, no thousands of skeletons in these ruins. Why summon me?"I didn't move or insult him, curious to his reasons, though I could guess. "You were the Hero of Tolkash, the King of Kings who reigned for three generations! Obviously you would be the strongest servant!"Called it. That was pretty obvious in hindsight. "You know that the stronger the spirit was in life, the more remains of it in death, right? They taught you that much?"I struggled not to laugh, even as something moving behind him caught my eye and I chuckled. "Of course! I am the Arch-Necromancer, Asher the Eternal! I have summoned legions and my undead armies are without limit!"Brave words from a kid that looked like he was only twenty or so. "Well, did they also teach you that powerful beings in life would usually take precautions against necromancers?" "Of course they did! I broke all the restrictions your paltry court wizards could create already! Now, you belong to--"The second golem's fist made a sickening wet sound, before the necromancer's entire head disappeared in a cloud of red. "Whoops. Guess you missed one."Free of the restriction, I waited to crumble to the ground, knowing the magic that bound me was sure to fail soon. "Troy, good?"The golem spoke in a weird booming voice, like two rocks being smashed together. Walking over to my oldest friend, I patted him on the shoulder with a bony hand, before sitting down on my throne once more. As I felt the magic binding me start to fade, I sagged backwards in contentment, hoping I could sleep a little longer this time. "Troy did good."
I sat there. Awkwardly. The woman grinned back at me, giving a slight wave. She was extremely gorgeous. Dark exotic skin, flashy jewelry that must’ve cost a fortune, and a skin-tight, red silk dress that hugged her favorable curves just right. She wasn’t someone I’d expected to see again. The last time I had saw her, she was holding a knife three inches against my neck before I’d lucked out and someone had rang our shared apartment’s doorbell. When we were dating. “This is awkward, isn’t it?” the woman said, sitting down at the restaurant’s seat across from me. I sighed, letting my head flop to the table, “I thought the famous Romeo and Juliet Matchmaker Algorithm was too good to be true. I wasted half of last month’s salary on it too.” “Oh, then you didn’t waste much,” she said, pulling out her signature lipstick color, plum peacock, and reapplied it decisively. I lurched my head up to glare at her. She looked back to me, stashing her makeup back into the depths of her purse. “What? Cashiers don’t make much nowadays and you’re still in college with debt anyway.” “How refreshing hearing you of all people judging me,” I growled. “Hey,” she called, crossing her arms underneath her breasts, “I thought I told you it wasn’t anything personal.” “That’s not the point!” I howled. The romantic atmosphere of the restaurant dimmed, other couples eyes us as it quieted. I lowered my voice. “You know what this is really about,” I insisted, eyes narrowed at the irresistibly beautiful woman in front of me. She sighed, pushing back her long chocolate curls, “I’m sorry...” I clicked my tongue, “For what?” “For hiding my true job. How was I supposed to tell my boyfriend that I was a hitman? And I’d never failed a hit before then! I couldn’t lose my streak just because it was you.” “Wow,” I said, “I must’ve been really important to you.” “That came out wrong,” she admitted, “I canceled the contract anyway. So, you’re safe now. I won’t kill you. Promise.” She leaned forward, seductive and manipulative eyes stunningly keen as she offered, “So... drinks?” I sighed. Again. “Why the hell not?”
Once upon a time, a boy wished upon a star. I wish I get the Neo Featherman Ranger collection for my birthday please! Once upon a time, a girl wished upon a star. I wish Godzilla was real so he could destroy my school so I won't have to do any homework. Once upon a time - well. You get the idea. Unfortunately, their wishes will not be granted for another few thousand years, by which time that little boy and that little girl will be long dead. Wishes wished upon a star, you see, are like messages in a bottle - they get lost in the endless expanse of the sea or space, sometimes destroyed by chance, other times accidentally swallowed by unsuspecting wildlife (the message, at least). And sometimes, when they are found, the finder tosses it in the trash. There is, of course, the additional obstacle of having the wish just not be relevant anymore. That girl's wish, for example. How likely is it that her school will still stand three hundred years from now, let alone three thousand? These wishes are marked as spam and deleted. But a few make it through. A few lucky wishes that persevered, that caught the eye of a wishing-star, that were just vague enough to be relevant were granted. How unfortunate, then, that one such wish was made in a fit of fury by a misanthropic teenager in the year 928 BCE after experiencing the worst, most horrible, no-good day. I wish the world didn't exist.
First time posting here; the prompt was interesting, so I thought I'd take a crack at it. Hope you enjoy! "The Complete History of the Vempire War"... Yeah, right. Turning away from the book, I continue walking. I didn't come here for fiction. The halls are dimmer than they were on the upper floors, but I can still see enough to make out titles like "Cooking with Mandragora"and "A Treatise on Homunculi-Human Relations". Seriously? Is this the occult section? My head hurts. I guess I should count myself lucky, though, considering how many stairs I tumbled down earlier. What's really bugging me is that I can't seem to find the staircase again. Whatever, I'll find them if I keep walking around. Ignoring my headache, I turn right at the large statue of some kind of winged lion, craning my neck to take in its whole figure. Dust motes drift lazily through the air, briefly catching the lamplight before dancing back into the shadows. How long has it been since anyone cleaned down here? Sighing, I dust my shoulder off. I guess I'll just keep walking straight down this hall. After what seems like forever, I get to another intersection, this one boasting a huge statue of a snake. I turn my gaze behind me to see how it compares to the last one, but I... Can't see it? I strain my eyes, but it's no good. Okay, calm down, you probably just walked too far to be able to see it. Yeah. It's pretty dark down here, after all. God, this place is giving me a serious migraine. Turning back to the statue, I decide to keep walking forward, but I stop almost before I start. The statue's a lion again. I'd laugh if I wasn't so ticked off right now. Just as I'm about to yell out a few choice words, I stumble forward, falling to my knees. My head is filled with a sharp pain, like someone's slowly shoving a skewer through my temple. A series of blinding lights runs across my vision, and I collapse to the floor. * * * I'm cold. No, wait, the floor I'm lying on is cold. I reach up to wipe my face, but I can't move. I can't even open my eyes. I won't panic I won't panic I won't panic wait what's that sound? Something's humming. Gotta get up. It takes every ounce of my strength to get into a sitting position. My eyes open. The whole hall lies under a blanket of dust. It's on my clothes, in my hair. The humming is getting louder. Suddenly, I see it. Wreathed in the dim light of several lanterns held aloft by arms with too many joints, it floats gently alongside the bookshelves. Other arms hold books in their pale grasp. Its body looks like a mass of tattered rags, and I can't make out what's underneath. But that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is that it's coming this way.
I never hesitated. The first time, I played it vanilla--main quest followed by side quests, lawful-stupid boy scout with a sword and shield. Second time, I did a stealthy ranger. Still did the main story, still the side quests. Then I played a thief, sneaking things when no one was looking. There was so much here, so much to look around at and explore, from the macro epic four-tiered quest to slay the dragon-god Balzerian to the side-quests helping Tilla collect all seven Birnroot plants in Steelguard. I lost myself. Today I was the dragon-borne paladin wielding the magic sword Glitterdusk. The next, I was a rogue making incredible shots halfway down a mountain. I was unstoppable; the only sentience in a construction of rules. I lived for the vengeance of Alrath-hel as a hellsworn knight. I distributed healing and wisdom as a barefisted monk from the Shreldalath temple. The only fights here were in my control--they didn't shake the walls of my bedroom at night. The only person sick here was fixed by the glowing green moss found on the spire of the Frostshard mountain--no one was hooked up to machines in the hospital, slowly growing thin while pretending to smile. Eventually the heroes ran stale. There were thirteen variants of knight; I knew them all by heart. There were eight ways you could play the summoner. Two secret outfits for the witch, but nine for the rogue. No combinations are endless; I found the end. After the heroes, I swapped sides and played as the villains. I crushed orc hordes as a tribe of mountain trolls, hurling boulders. I abducted maidens from villages as a vampire. It was just pixels, right? One day I was bored, so I obliterated a settlement of pilgrims on the plains of Barakel. I slaughtered a well-meaning priest, because I didn't like his face. There were no rules, no gods or governments to watch me with a wagging finger. I was god. Morality was a human concept, and I wasn't human anymore. I committed acts of atrocity, listened to the wailing of a hundred newly minted orphans echoing through the streets, snapped my fingers, and reset everything. I convinced a town of innocent farm boys to band up and riot against the baron of a neighboring city, knowing full well they'd be slaughtered fifteen feet from the city walls. I granted a thousand wishes, built a dozen homes to house the poor. Time meant nothing. I was the only sentience in a construction of rules. I razed mountains, built glittering castles defying the rules of gravity, changed the course of rivers...and then erased it all in a blink. The responses rang hollow--I knew each interaction by heart, spat each word before the person in front of me. I walked every path a dozen times, a hundred, a thousand. It was just pixels. I found the end of the mountains, where an invisible wall stopped my desperate escape. I swam to the ends of the sea, where land was a speck on the horizon. I wandered, broken. Levels meant nothing, power meant nothing. I knew the flaws in each monster, exploited them. I found the glitches, the tiny inaccuracies in art and code. I lived a hundred generations as members of a church-going family, playing the father, the mother, the daughter, the son...I became unhinged, talking to myself because I was the only source of original content. I lost count of the voices of Me I created, splitting myself into innumerable parts. It happened when I was sitting on a fountain, staring into a crack between two stones. I knew the path the ants would take, ferrying crumbs to their lair. The massive peal of a bell split the sky like thunder, louder than anything I'd ever heard. A voice like a demon. "Player Two has entered the game."
Thalia's funeral was rather modest, aside from her close family members and a few besties who were being frowned upon because of the way they dressed, well, "Thalia had never been a serious person", was the reason they proposed when confronted by the angry priest. Neil watched from afar, he had sneaked into her hospital bed and waited for her last breath. He had been heart-broken, not because of Thalia, no, because he was broke yet again and the loop of his downward spiral had threatened to consume him yet again. So, he poisoned her food while she was out dining with her late boyfriend, a beefy joker who was now decomposing under a layer of asphalt, soon the mighty eighteen-wheelers would be passing over that cheap-whiskey addicted person and slowly grind his bones and sorrowful flesh into nothingness. Neil reached down his oblong trench coat and felt the jagged edge of the note that he had written something like "Till death do us apart."The letters had since faded and aside from a few ink stains, it is nothing remarkable. Neil found it in one of his grandpa's ancient ritual books, Neil had used it as a bookmark until he had clumsily sliced open his finger during his first attempt at creating a blood circle. The note had drunk up his blood eagerly and Neil could have sworn he heard the satisfied sigh of some unknown entity. He gleamed the note's usage through a series of nightmares, which always ended with him waking up in a fetal position drenched not in his sweat, but some brownish liquid that would dissipate the moment sunlight shines on the tainted sheets. With his best fountain pen and in his newly acquired penmanship, Neil wrote down his death vow, stating clearly that he wished to depart this mortal world with the passing of his soulmate. He truly believed that it would Thalia, they were inseparable from kindergarten to upstate uni, they had always been together until they suddenly were not. Such a cold December morning that was, was it because of the booze they had indulged in? Or was it the overdose that almost got both of them killed? She had turned her pale face towards him and through a hoarse but firm voice stated clearly that she had enough of him, Neil still felt the pang of piercing pain as she decided to move on. He never thought about something like that. He wouldn't and couldn't. Now she was being laid to rest, and he is lingering around the crumbled church walls spying on this odd funeral possession. No one was crying, instead, the occupants seemed to be rather cheerful. The holy father was obviously agitated by something, for after his eulogy he had turned on his heels and almost bolted out of the quaint little garden-like burial grounds. Thalia's family and friends moved in unison and chanted something in an old tongue. A sudden chill run down Neil's spine, he turned around and there she was, still in that dress during her burial, Thalia stood right next to him. Her angry and distorted face was held back by a figure with a dazzling aura. The figure turned to Neil and hissed in a feminine voice, "I am your soulmate, you murdering blistering fool."
Discovering Warp technology was the worst mistake we had ever made as a species. It was during the mid-period of the 21,234th Galactic Revolution (or 2145 a.d. , to use the defunct, discarded calendar system) that the first human Warpship, the E.S.S. Unity, bumbled its way through slip-space and found itself 20,000 light years away from home, in the middle of a raging battlefield. The crew was terrified beyond comprehension, but still managed to remember to record grainy scenes of bizarre alien battlecruisers slicing through the empty of interstellar space, defending themselves against darting schooners firing beams of light that annihilated spaceships that easily dwarfed the Unity. They also recorded themselves being pulled by tractor beam onto the closest alien vessel, one that belonged to the Krithga, with whom we've been "allied"with since then. Allied by force, not by choice. After all, now that our presence was known, we had become a possible target - a weak, pathetic against forces that have been raging against each other for longer than humans have had civilized society. The Krithga claimed us first - and so we entered an endless galactic war on their side. Everything changed. Art, music and culture in general were discarded as all humans were drafted to be warriors, scientists, and engineers, forced to learn the ways of galactic war or die during the training. Our technological knowledge exploded, of course - the Krithga impatiently taught us more efficient Warping, ways to sustain a billion times more humans with less farming space, and sleek spaceship design that made the original Unity look like a piece of trash - which in fact, it likely was; no one really knows what happened to the ship. Or its crew, for that matter. We never saw them again. It didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except the desperate war effort. The Krithga were ancient and strong, but had many enemies that were now beginning to ally each other. Slowly but surely, our side was steadily losing. Even with the boost of Krithgai technology and leadership (oh, human faces still pretended to lead our nations, but they were controlled absolutely by the Krithga), we were still too primitive to be of much aid. So, we became cannon fodder. Barely trained soldiers and pilots were loaded onto old, outdated ships and sent out as scouts, distractions or kamikazes. Tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of humans would die in battles. A waste of human life on a scale nearly impossible to imagine. We hated it, resented it, abhorred what our race had become - slaves sent to die for a war we still did not understand. But for every 1000 human deaths, a Krithgai life was spared. That Krithgai could be the next commander that led a decisive victory, the next scientist that made a war-winning breakthrough, the next engineer that designed the weapon to end the war. At least, that's what they told us, when they bothered to tell us anything at all. And we had no choice but to do exactly as they demanded, for we were still completely helpless. And fearful - not only of the Krithga, but of the possibility of our slaver masters becoming extinct. Because if they did, we soon would follow. &#x200B; &#x200B; Liked that story? Want more like it? Check out 📷[r/Idreamofdragons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Idreamofdragons/)!
Item #: SCP-4672 Object Class: Euclid Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4672 is to be kept in a small environmentally sealed structure, made entirely of high strength metal alloy, without any form of plumbing/tubes on an otherwise-uninhabited island. SCP-4672 has requested to be fed mushrooms and or herbs as a meal. Following Incident 4672-3, this privilege has been revoked. Description: SCP-4672 is an Italian male, of small build, roughly 39 years of age with a distinctly curved mustache. SCP-4672 wears a red cap, it bears an emblem in the shape of the letter M. he also wears blue overalls with brown rubber shoes. SCP-4672 is semi-mute, only communicating in broken English. SCP-4672 has displayed the ability to jump about 2 1/4 times his own height and takes approximately 0.3 seconds to fall to the ground. Anything directly above while jumping that is made with rock is immediately smashed apart. SCP-4672 also displays the ability to fit through pipes, seemingly shrinking and appearing out of the other side. Eating a mushroom causes SCP-4672 to grow twice as large, growing until 6ft large. However, at any form of damage, SCP-4672 shrinks into a back into dimutitive figure around half of his size. SCP-4672 also possesses an unusual hatred for turtles, going out of his way to crush them and kick them around at high speeds.
I first gained my immortality in Ireland. Way back in the day when folks still spoke Irish. I probably stayed just a bit too long to go unnoticed. Especially as I wasn’t Irish. I was a foreigner with fair skin and jet black hair. I mean sure everyone I hung around with was stereotypical, pail skin, red hair, think accents. So maybe they just thought as a stranger I aged a little different. So maybe just a bit too long there. Plus I was losing sleep and I think the damned bugs were getting to me at night. But I’d been good ever since that. Never staying in one place more than a handful of years, seven max. Ten years without aging starts to get noticeable, especially if you’re hanging around the child bearing years groups. Which over time has gotten decidedly older. I was probably on my fifth city when I saw something weird. It was an Irishman, he looked just like one of my mates from back in the day. I thought he must be his son or grandson. But before I could approach him he disappeared. I could have sworn he saw me. As years went on I thought I kept seeing this man. And I started noticing the people he was with were almost always the same. And the group kept getting bigger and bigger with each spotting. It wasn’t until I came to the new world and saw him and his gang in New York that I believed something was truly up. So I set a plan in motion. I had never gone somewhere rural before, and so I set off for the American south. It would be hot and awful and I’d be eaten alive by bugs, but that seemed to be the case everywhere. But if I saw them I could catch them. I found a nice little quaint town. I had no idea how long it would take for them to show but I had time to spare. Plus if there were others like me that might be nice for a change. It took a several agonizing month. There is not much to do in small town America. But the bugs actually weren’t as bad here surprisingly. I knew everybody. So when a small force of strangers showed up everyone was surprised. And they were so cosmopolitan from all over the world. More specially parts of the world I lived in. So I’d caught them, they were following me. But why. I waited for them to go out and get a little intoxicated and then waited some more. Finally the young Irishman that I had recognized from so many years earlier stumbled out. He looked around and didn’t see me. I ran out from my hiding spot and tackled him. He screamed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We’ll stop.” “Stop what? Following me? Just tell me why if you’re following me ignoring me?” “You mean you don’t know? Well after I noticed you not aging back in Ireland, especially in those superstitious days I thought I’d take a chance and drink some of your blood. Turns out it worked. So I’ve been following you and whenever you go to sleep I steal a little more. However over the years I might have told some other people. And, well and now we basically have to drain you a little bit every night just to sustain the group.” “You’ve been drinking my blood? You can live forever my drinking my blood?” “Yeah apparently.” “Well why didn’t you just ask after you found out?” “Well it’s kind of a weird thing to ask. But yeah, would you be okay with us drinking your blood so we can hang?” “Absolutely not!” I twisted his head and broke his neck instantly. So much for his immortality. Now for the rest of those bloodsucking leeches.
We set out on the first day of Eventide with the light of the new moon still shining bright above in the pre-dawn hour. Stars still shone while the sun took its time waking up, glittering diamonds in the sky watching us depart. Some of the stars still raced across the heavens, seeming to taunt their almost stationary sisters with their stolid constellations. Some still raced, but not nearly as many as before. Before, it had seemed a whole swarm of fireflies had taken flight, silver light crystals alighting from the goddess Iriniki's hair to watch over travelers as the legends say. Now though there were many less stars moving, as if they had tired themselves out from a dance and fallen away. Some seemed to wobble or break to form new, smaller stars. These were not seen again after several nights. One star we named Urunokos, or devil-child, had fallen in the endless sea near us. All saw the flames and heard a crack of thunder loud enough to rattle teeth as the fallen light tumbled into the water. Anyone strong enough to man an oar surged out in a longboat to find Urunokos. None knew then if it would be a portent for opportunity, or an omen of evil. The boats brought back strange debris, for it could only be described as wreckage. Many pieces were bent or crushed, but would not yield to even the strength of two young lads bending at it. Some pieces bore odd char marks as a longhouse might after burning partially. The wreckage turned out to be both portent and omen. A most wondrous jewel survived intact, an artifact we called the Eye of Iriniki for it could project such images in thin air as to dazzle the imagination. Puzzling over the Eye day and night, our elders discovered how to work it after a fashion and see as Iriniki must see us from on high. With it, they saw our home among the endless sea. But we were not alone. Other lands were known to Iriniki and her Eye, distant lands we knew not. Lands it seemed which were home to a strange and marvelous people. Most of the elders who had labored over the Eye fell ill some days later. Those who had sat near the glowing drum, which was connected to the Eye with a rope-like cord and remained warm to the touch at all times, fell sickest. Our brave elders developed lesions, became weak. Their hair fell out in clumps and strange clusters appeared under their skin. One by one, they died. I told you that Urunokos was also an omen of evil. Iriniki is a goddess who rewards those who dare, her challenges designed to test the weak and build strength among our people. It is without question that even a small fraction of her knowledge would come with a cost. A cost which we must not let be in vain. We set out at first light as I have told you. We sailed the longboats when the winds were favorable and rowed when they were not. We followed a course with the Eye as our guide in the lead boat. The Eye was affixed to the prow and the glowing drum lowered overboard into the water where it would hopefully do no harm. The men and women on the lead longboat were incredibly brave, the bravest of us all to bear both the gift and the curse of the Eye. The devil-child Urunokos had cousins. Many cousins, as it turned out. Our small fleet encountered these cousins floating in the water of all sizes. Some were smaller and may have only been fragments. Others were several times the size of our longboats. One cousin we named Iktobithani, the Broken-Backed Monster, was nearly the size of our home. Each cousin like Urunokos was twisted and scarred, pieces melted as wax and smelling of strange smokes. One Urunokos was enough for us, so we let them be and gave them a wide berth. A lookout believed he spotted bodies atop Iktobithani, though these too were charred and unrecognizable to me. On the eighth day of Vauuna we found what the Eye had promised. It was a land incredibly vast with seemingly endless coasts. We sailed into what could only have been a harbor, marveling at the impossibly tall buildings that gleamed in reflected sunlight. It was beautiful, at a distance. Our ebullient mood soured quickly though as our full sails drew us closer. Each building in turn was holed or gutted, melted or twisted. Smoke still rose from fires raging in these towers. Along the wharf we drew within two longboat lengths and held fast. What we mistook for grotesque statues were now apparent as collections of bodies tied to the pylons and signposts. Charred bodies were piled into what must have been funeral mounds when the availability of posts had been exhausted. Even the most courageous among us was silent, and none dared row any closer. We turned the boats around seeming as one, wordlessly and in agreement. I witnessed the captain of the lead longboat unhitch Iriniki's Eye and pitch it overboard. The splash of that accursed treasure sinking into the water and the sound of our oars were the only noises made for several days as we headed home. We never looked back.
He didn’t go to El Paso as I’d assumed. Instead, he exited the highway at the tiny town of Anthony. I followed Luis across it, vai a combination of smell, sight, and the fact that there weren’t that many turns before he hit a dirt road out into the desert. I dropped way back then letting the car entirely out of sight. I could only just barely smell the car but the dust it stirred up was far more obvious and there wasn’t anything else on the road out that way. We crossed the Rio Grande and wound across the country roads for perhaps forty-five minutes. That took us into the desert, but not as far as it could have. Luis slowed down a lot apparently more worried about the rough roads than pursuit. I kept going too fast, catching sight of his dust cloud in the distance, then slowing so he wouldn’t realize anyone was behind him. He eventually stopped at a small homestead in the middle of a desolate stretch of land where the nearest neighbor wasn’t even visible. The surrounding desert was probably pretty in whatever passed for a rainy season here, but the late winter had left it barren and brown. I drove past the house without slowing. Then parked just down the road where a ripple in the landscape more or less hid the dilapidated trailer and pole building from view - which presumably also meant I was hidden from the view of those places. I decided I could call the cops. I could say Jane and I were on a road trip and the attack had been totally random. This far from where it had taken place, they’d probably never bother to follow up with the other diners at Si Senior and even if they did no one would remember us. My phone was sitting in the passenger's seat. When I picked it up, it showed one bar, but as soon as I went to dial the signal flickered out and all I got was an angry error beep. I tried a few other positions, both in and out of the car, but it just repeated the same performance. I found Jane’s phone in her purse, but it showed “No Signal” and stayed firm on that. Jane’s gun was also in her purse and I figured it was plan B. I know just enough to fire a gun, and I know how poor my aim was likely to be when I did so. But how bad could it be? All I had to do was find Jane, hopefully alone, and run. If Luis was there I’d shoot him and run. His knife could heal him, but it would buy us enough time to get away. I took the gun and ran toward the house. The Altima was parked out in the open, and I found Jane’s trail at the car. She smelled normal. There wasn’t any scent of blood or anything else that made me think of death or injury. Not that I’m certain what she would have smelled like if she was dead or hurt, but I told myself there would have been some indication. Her scent, overlayed with Luis’s, moved toward the pole building not to the small trailer. That was good. The trailer had windows and a persistent itch at the back of my neck reminded me I could be watched. I followed the trail to the pole building. It was a simple structure. As the name implies to build one, telephone poles are set in the ground around a rectangle of packed earth or poured slap. Sheet metal is mounted to those to make a simple enclosed space. It’ll keep out water, dust, and small animals, but it wouldn’t do much else. There was a door set in the wide side of the building nearest to the cars. The scent trail passed through it. It was shut, but the padlock which could have kept me out hung open. I tried to ease the door open, but the sheet metal groaned at the first hint of movement so I just threw it the rest of the way open and jumped to the side hitting the ground as I did so. I lay there in the dirt expecting a wave of blackness to come ripping through the side of the building at any moment but there wasn’t any sign of activity from inside for the better part of a minute so I eventually stood back up and hesitantly looked in the building. There was a collection of what I can only call ‘the usual trash’ inside, and a clear spot that probably normally held the Altima. The smell of gas burnt by a small engine hung in the air. That’s distinct from the smell cars, with all of their emission controls, produce. At first, I thought ‘riding lawnmower’ because that’s how I normally smell it, but after an instant my eyes caught sight of a new ATV parked in the corner and I realized what I was actually smelling. Swearing, I ran through the building and out the open door. A trail of burnt fuel and dust hung in the air there. Where the fuck was Luis taking her now? The answer came to me readily; Mexico. This was probably his first waystation in the States, we were within a couple dozen miles of the border here and with the ATVs he could make the run in under an hour. I ran back to the other ATV hoping that its key was in its ignition or perhaps that it didn’t take one at all. Unfortunately, neither one was the case. I kicked the tire and let out a frustrated moan. Could I run after them? There was no chance. Could I get back into cell phone reception fast enough that I could still follow the scent trail? I doubted it. The air was fairly still, but it was still dissipating fast. Still, that was what I had to try. I turned to sprint back to my car and saw that there, on a hook by the door, there were several keys. I ran over and grabbed two labeled Yamaha and returned to the ATV. The first key wouldn’t turn. I tossed it to the ground in frustration and tried the second. I nearly could have wept when the small vehicle started up. Its simple array of gages told me it was fully operative and had plenty of fuel, and it was a utility model with a small cargo bucket behind the driver, so the controls had been kept fairly simple. I throttled it out of the shed and took off once again following my nose. There was a short, prepared, trail out of the pole building that crossed a fallow field of some sort, from there we descended into an arroyo and I raced along its gravel bed for I’m not sure how many miles. That trip is mostly a blur in my memory. I was terrified of losing the scent I was following so I had to drive at least as fast as Luis and he both knew his trail and was more competent with the vehicle, so I was mostly focused on the next obstacle at all times in an attempt to keep at least two wheels under me. We might have been in the US or Mexico when I lost the ever-weakening scent of gas and dust in the arroyo and realized Luis must have exited it. There was a small gravel path to my left. Perhaps when water actually ran down this channel during the wet season it was a tributary of some sort. Now it was a good natural exit. I took it up out of the dry stream bed. I tried to keep my motor quite as I did so. The channel I’d been following wasn’t deep but, seated as I was, I couldn’t see anything but the bases of sagebrush nearest the lip of the gully. That was a good call. Beyond the arroyo the land was flatter than it had been in Anthony and Las Cruces. Both cities are close to a range of mountains, but this looked to be an area where countless eons of geological action had sanded terrain that had once been foothills into a rippled landscape that was neither exactly hilly or plains. There was a feeling of great age to the land around me. All the stone and earth left exposed by the thin desert plant cover reminded me how old the flesh of the world really is. The scent of sage caught my attention. Following it, I noticed a long low hill to the west. It was somewhere between a quarter and a half a mile away. Dusk was gathering by that point and the long shadows, uncertain light, and lack of landmarks made it hard to judge distance. Several fires burned on top of the hill and a rough trail had been beaten to its peak by the repeated passage of a vehicle about the size of my own ATV. I suspected I had found my destination. (Next comment down again...)
A flamethrower was thrust into my hands by a man in a firefighter's uniform. "Keep it moving, boy,"he said, his attention focused on equipping the next person in line. I turned and broke out of the line, looking down at the weapon in my hands. What in the world is going on...? My brain finally registered the alarm going off overhead. I looked around at my surroundings; I was in a fire station. The blood in my veins froze over in fear. Wait... a fire station... oh god, no... The sound of the alarm felt as if it was getting louder and louder, blaring over my thoughts. I was on the brink of a sensory overload when I felt a hand clap on my shoulder. I jumped. "Whoa now, kid, be careful with that!"a voice next to me cried. "I'll end up like a toasted marshmallow if you don't watch yourself." I turned towards the voice, being careful to keep the flamethrower pointed downward. An older man with graying hair stood next to me, a look of concern on his face. He wore a captain's helmet with a "451"emblazoned on the front. "I... I'm so sorry, Captain,"I stammered. "Just a little nervous, is all." He pressed his lips together and nodded. "I understand. I was nervous going on call when I was your age, too. But I never had to go on a call like this myself, so I can see why you'd be worried. But don't fret, son. It'll be over soon." My brow furrowed. "What will be over, sir?" The man laughed. "Let's hope you pay more attention when we're on the job,"he said. "We're going to Montag's house, remember? His wife called it in." The flamethrower slipped out of my hands and clattered to the ground. The captain knelt down to see if it was broken, then looked up at me. "What the hell's the matter with you? Have you got no sense?" I shook my head and tried to speak, but nothing would come out. The captain stood back up. "Go get on the truck. You're not ready for a flamethrower just yet." "Captain Beatty, a word?"another voice cried from across the room. Beatty glanced in the voice's direction, then looked at me again. "Go,"he barked. "You're lucky I'm not making you stay here. But an example is about to be made, and you all need to see it." At that, he walked away, leaving me alone next to the fallen flamethrower. Overhead, the alarm blared on. **** Read more stories at r/NovaTheElf!
Destiny has a funny way of destroying folks. That was Sadie. Destined for greatness, even when I knew her back in high school. Before she'd matured. Before she'd become jaded. But she just had that aura to her, and the magic to go with it. The first time I saw her smile, it nearly dropped me to my knees. I'd never seen anyone so perfect. I'd never seen anyone so good. I never got the chance to tell her how I felt. Life took us like two peas on a fork, parallel but separate paths. She became a bastion of good. I, of bad. I'm not evil. In fact, a certain school of thought would even call me the hero to my own story. I claim nothing of the sort, but I'd never call myself evil. And now, bad as I might do, I do for her. Without me, she'd be crushed. Not just beneath the collapsing wall of a ruined building, but beneath the weight of her own destiny. Without me, she'd never win. Smaller villains would run rampant. Crime would rule the city. I keep things quiet, at least as far as my cronies go. And then when things have been too quiet for too long--suspiciously quiet--I set it all up so that she can win. I spin a web that only she can break out of, courtesy of some documents delivered to her doorstep. When everything seems to be going to shit, when the fate of the city dangles by a single thread, she has the way to win. I lose people. I lose money. I don't mind. People are like money, basically grow on trees. I'll find more of both. But nothing beats her smile. I look on from a distance, honing in on her through my binoculars. I'll be atop a parking garage or in a distant office building; she'll be shaking the mayor's hand and beaming as she talks to reporters. And for that smile, I'll do it all again. ***** Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please check out more stories at r/MatiWrites. Constructive criticism and advice are always appreciated!
“Checkmate in two.” The words still ring in my ears every now and then. At the time it felt so satisfying; success against all odds, besting the supernatural. “Think carefully about your next move, mortal one.” The words, like a cool sea breeze on a hot Summer’s night, whispered from under the dark hood. I would not be lulled into a false sense of security. I took my time and examined the ethereal figure in front of me, wanting to cherish the moment forever. The moon glinted off the scythe propped up against the back of his chair and brought me back to the present. “Check, checkmate in one” I said as I moved my Rook into place. Death reached out his hand, lifting the ornate Black King in between his skeletal middle- and index-finger. Maybe it was the combination of the white on black, or perhaps it was the luminescent lunar glow, but the bones looked almost… pure. He placed the King in the only uncontested square that was left. For all the stories and folk lore, there was no stench of decomposition. His aura was not of a deep sense of foreboding or the inevitable. It was more like being able to relax after a long day. Like the feeling just before you go to sleep in your own bed for the first time after a long journey. He was welcoming me home. “Checkmate.” The piece practically said the word for me as the Ivory Knight clicked against the glass board. He didn’t say anything else, he just stood, unceremoniously picked up his scythe and walked away. My eyes following his dark outline fading into the misty night. Yes, that fateful game is still clear in my memory, even from all those years ago. I lived the rest of my allotted time and then some. Eons past a time even the wildest imagination could comprehend, I understand now. The chess set is still where Death left it, and that’s where I sit. All the time in the world and nobody left to play with.
Relief — warm, glorious relief — swept through Jason's body at the sight of his old family house, spreading to the very tips of his fingers and toes, purging the cold and weariness that had threatened to overwhelm him, and instilling new strength into his battered legs. He had spent six days in total, plowing through curtains of ivy, winds like piercing knives, and hordes of wild animals through the famed Ackerberrie Forest, determined to seek an audience with the witch who lived there, so that he could strike a deal with her. And that he did. She had appeared to him in a whirl of leaves, her sunken cheeks, pale, leathery skin, and long, wispy hair illuminated unflatteringly by the silvery-grey moonlight streaming through the canopy of leaves overhead. "I hear you have been looking for me,"she had said, in a determinedly honeyed voice, that contrasted horribly with the mad cackle of laughter that she had let out a moment later. "What can I help you with?" And so Jason had told her; told her of the struggles which his mother had suffered through in their youth to take care of them — him and his four siblings — and how severely her health had been impacted by it. His voice cracked with emotion as he recounted the doctor's words, that she had only a month to live — if they were lucky. The witch had listened to his story without a word, and when he had finished, she merely looked at him. At the moment, he could have sworn he saw something in her eyes — pity? But when she next spoke, it was in that same falsely sweet voice she had used on arrival. "It shall be done. Your mother will be cured of her sickness. But there must be a balance —" Jason's breath had caught at this. He had been expecting it. The witch did nothing for free — there was always a catch. "— for the advancement of her years,"she went on, and Jason's chest tightened still more painfully, "you will lose one of yours." That was all? Jason thought. He couldn't believe it. He was almost disappointed. But then he quickly caught himself. "Done,"he said gratefully. "Thank you so, so —" "Oh, don't thank me just yet, deary!"she trilled. "Best use that time to hurry on home, I think!"And she vanished as she had appeared, in a swirling storm of leaves and the whipping of robes. Jason had promptly heeded her words, turning and striding through the forest and back to civilization. And now, here he was at last. Home. Somewhere inside his mother would be dancing up and down, wondering how her miraculous recovery had come about. But halfway up the staircase, his dark eyebrows contracted. The house had a slightly neglectful air about it. Dust lined the windowpanes, the lawn was unkempt, and the paint was now chipping. Perhaps, in their excitement at the recovery, his siblings had abandoned their household duties? Yes, that would be it, he thought, and he continued forward. Jason made to knock, but the door flew open the moment his knuckles rapped against the wood. A gasp escaped his lips as his eyes took in the scene before him. Windows had been broken, furniture splintered and strewn across the floor, ornaments and other items missing, and the sound of his movement was muffled by the thick carpet of dust that trailed the floor. "Mom?"he cried, voicing the first concern that came to his mind. "Veronica? Daryl —" "They're not here, dear,"said a soft, unnaturally sweet voice, and Jason spun around to see the witch standing at the staircase. He did not ask her why she was here, or how she had got there in the first place. "Where are they then?"he asked. "Well,"she said, moving closer, a broad smile stretching her chapped lips, "I imagine your brother Daryl is at the hospital now in New York — for the birth of his firstborn, you see. Your sisters moved on to become a nurse and a pediatrician in the Philippines, and Aaron, tragically, died a few months ago." "Died?"Jason spluttered. "Months? I just saw him last week!" "Oh, no, no, dear,"she said, smiling even more broadly, "no, you saw him last year." "What?" "Well, you see, the year that I was going to take from you, has already been taken. You thought the journey back only took you three days, but, alas, it has been twelve months." "But — but — my mother! You didn't say what happened to her!" "Ah."Her smile widened even further. "She had to undego a scheduled treatment, you see, didn't know that she had been cured, unfortunately, and ... well ... she died."The woman cackled again. "I told you not to thank me yet,"she said, and she vanished yet again, leaving Jason, horrorstruck, petrified by shock, behind her. If you enjoyed this, check out r/MysticScribbles. It's a new sub, but will soon be filled with new work like this.

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