prompt stringlengths 20 5.8k | chosen_story stringlengths 226 10k | rejected_story stringlengths 227 9.43k | chosen_timestamp timestamp[ns]date 2012-07-26 17:01:55 2022-12-31 14:34:19 | rejected_timestamp timestamp[ns]date 2012-07-26 14:23:36 2022-12-31 12:20:41 | chosen_upvotes int64 14 23.1k | rejected_upvotes int64 10 4.26k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[WP] The rest of the civilised galaxy has just learned that when encountering something new, the human's brains asks three subconscious questions. "Can I kill it? Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it?" | "Um, hello?," asked Carlos to to the dark void?
He was alone in the darkness. A single light shone above him.
"Human!" Came a booming voice. "You have been chosen to answer for your species! We have many questions! What is your designation?"
He replied nervously, "Um, I'm Carlos Rivera. San Antonio, Texas. Uh,....who are you?"
The lights rose. The room was a plain and circular. Three beings were before him. One was a mass of tentacles that constantly writhed in place about three feet tall. It produced a series of snapping sounds. The next appeared to be a clear plastic bag of glowing gases. The third was a slug like creature with a single black eye spot and a gaping mouth.
Three distinct voices said in unison, "We are scientists from the neighboring Kyndeel Alliance. We are determining the probability of aggression from your species."
They made various sounds, but Carlos understood them.
The gas bag alien spoke alone, "I am a telepathic being and I am translating to your brain. I can also tell if you are lying."
Carlos replied, "OK, but I'm a civil engineer. I design city infrastructure. I dunno if I can speak for my species."
The tentacle ball spoke up, "We just figured out your WiFi and, wow, there's some weird shit on there. Even for a primitive species. Our telepath says you all think the same. Kill, eat, sex. Is this correct?"
Carlos mulled this over, "Well...kinda yeah. Human don't have natural defenses; there are many predators on Earth. So we kill things. I don't hunt, but many of my family do."
The tentacle creature made many abrupt clicking noises. "Humans defend themselves, but killing is savage. You kill ants which outnumber humans and have complex civilizations"
"Ants?" said Carlos. "They're just ants?"
The tentacle creature made abrupt clicking sounds, "Just ants? Genocide! Then you eat all the lesser species!"
Carlos thought, "Hmmmm, many humans know hunger. Our agriculture system hasn't been reliable, so we are always seeking food."
The slug creature made a shrieking sound, "Humans starve to death? This is an odd species."
The gas bag being responded, "Carlos Human speaks the truth. Humans require tools to kill. They struggle to feed and care for humans. Their technology has accelerated to quickly for their culture to handle. In a few hundred years they have accomplished what took the Kyndeel Alliance millennia."
The slug creature retorted, "Have you seen how they breed? So quickly; more than the biome can handle. When they are not reproducing, they are sexing everything. The things on their internet are troubling. Anything they can mimic sexual reproduction with, they do!"
Carlos fidgeted uncomfortably, "Well, yes, we try to carry on our species with sex. We only became numerous relatively recently. Also....sex feels good?"
All three spoke at the same time and then settled. The slug creature asked, "You don't kill your mates after sex?"
Carlos laughed and then composed himself, "No, parents live to support their children. Sometimes both, or one, or another."
The gas bag alien flashed many colors and asked, "Humans reproduce with little concern for the environment. Further they sex pleasure themselves in many ways. Chains, food, watching other humans, clothing? Human Carlos do you sex clothing items?"
Carlos shifted uncomfortably, "Well, maybe socks, but......humans are very diverse and have diverse interests and tastes. Again, I'm no sociologist, but humans form communities. We gather together around common interests. Including...sexual things."
The gas bag alien creature said, "He speaks truly. This is the nature of humans. Like the other human brains, they kill, eat, and sex, constantly."
The tentacle alien snapped furiously, "Can you explain these things I found on your internet? Milf? DP? Creampie? Furries? Hentai? Petticoats? Fleshlights? ATM? Human sex is most curious."
Carlos took a deep breath and spoke embarrassingly on behalf of humanity. | An auditorium reminiscent of the ancient human civilization's stadiums. In the center were three podiums and a curved desk that could comfortably be used by six humans.
At the center podium was a large humanoid lizard. Twice as tall as the average human. He gives a speech to the various different species in the crowd with everyone staying silent. Soaking in the words and the meaning of his findings.
"Can I kill it? Can I eat it? Can I have sex with it?" says the large lizard as he finishes his speech. "Will we allow such barbarians serve on the Galactic Conglomerate's Senate?". The room erupting with various different species doing their own versions of clapping.
A hand from the people sitting at the curved desk is raised. The crowd quiets down as they notice the raised hand. Once the auditorium is quiet the hand drops onto the desk in front.
"Thank you for your words Grand General Extest" says the old mouse-like man. While he sat on all four legs, his tail with a hand on the end resting on the desk.
"Before you are dismissed, I do have some questions" said the giant ball of blue slime that sat at the end of the curved desk.
"Yes of course! My knowledge is for your use!" said the Grand General as he stiffened his stance.
"Prior to your mission, did you or your allies have any contact with the human's?"
With slight hesitation "Yes"
"Please elaborate"
"Well..."
"Oh and give us the full story"
Making up for the hesitation earlier he quickly chimes "Yes of course! As you know, prior to my race and the races apart of the Solar Empire joining the Galactic Conglomerate we would visit their planet for sport. I believe their ancient texts show stories of them worshiping us. The Solar Empire treated it merely as a vacation get away. They were left to develop and evolve as they did.
After the Solar Empire our former alliance of races stopped visiting the planet. However, their ancient texts continued to think we were coming to disguise as humans and rule their civilization in secret. Based off all data available we were unable to find any accounts of any of our alliance visiting their system. "
"From worshiped to feared? Do you know what could of caused that?" asked a small framed lady with the legs of a goat but body structure of a humanoid. As well as two horns erupting from her head.
"Their kind looks only to conquer and control. Anything they do not understand they fear. That is what the intel we have gathered shows."
"Is that so?" the slime chimes in.
Now with a bit of anger starting to build up from the larger Grand General"Upon them becoming a space fairing race that could explore other solar systems, they took no time in targeting and attacking the Galamore race of Sector 302. Fully enslaved and conquered with in the matter of a single rotation. Unlike most civilizations, they have weapons that could destroy entire planets before ever establishing a colony on another moon or planet. This is the kind of race you want allowed in our Galactic Conglomerate?"
"This is what we are here to decide" says the mouse-like man. "I can see these questions have upset you. Please remember that we are here to decide a races fate. We are suppose to be skeptical. Out of respect for all your work Grand General, we will end the questions for today. We will pick this back up tomorrow. Thank you for your time"
"Thank you!" says the Grand General as he bows then leaves towards the door. | 2021-09-24T09:36:10 | 2021-09-24T08:38:02 | 38 | 28 |
[WP] You're the owner of a cafe frequently visited by vigilantes and anti-heroes who absolutely adore your sweetness and acceptance of who they are. One day, though, a particularly rude customer comes in and trashes the place. Your friends aren't too happy to hear about that. | Some people are brought into this world to cure diseases, lead countries, build rockets, or fight for justice. I think I was brought into this world to serve coffee.
That’s what I tell myself every day when I unlock the door of my café. Even as a kid, I was obsessed with coffee - at first the smell, then when I was old enough, the taste. My fondest memories were always sitting at the counter in my Nanna’s little café, drinking weak coffee and reading a book while she served customers.
By the age of 11 I could brew the perfect cup, and by 12 I was helping Nanna run the place. I always admired the love she put into every order, the care she took with every customer. It wasn’t just a café to her, it was a haven for all, and a home for the two of us. “Josephine, there isn’t a soul out there in the world you can’t brighten a little bit of love. Sometimes that bit of love is as simple as a cup of coffee and a smile,” she would tell me on the rare occasion I grumbled about the early hours or the hard work.
I was only 17 when Nanna’s fight against cancer ended. We had sold our café for her treatments, but in the end I was left alone, working 3 jobs just to get by.
Now, at 21 years old, my life was back on track. I had worked harder than I’d ever worked, saved every penny I could, and 14 months ago I was able to open my own café - Joey’s. Nestled away in a quiet street, in a somewhat questionable neighbourhood, I had found a place I could afford and turn into my own little haven once again.
Business was painfully slow at first. So slow, I had to find work at another café in the mornings to support my own café. I suppose that’s irony, right?
I opened Joey’s at night still, almost a desperate bid to keep my dream alive, and that’s when I finally started bringing in regular customers. It started with The Crusher.
2:00 am, and the little bell on the door chimed. Looking up from my book, I came face to face with a giant of a man taking up my entire doorway. Bleeding heavily from a bullet wound in his shoulder, he shuffled forward cautiously, looking absolutely exhausted. I recognised him from the news - a vigilante who had earned his name thanks to the fact he crushed his victims’ bones with his bare hands - not just broken, but crushed. The lucky only had limbs crushed, but the worst offenders were usually unrecognisable. I was taken aback for a split second, and honestly a little afraid, but Nanna’s words stuck with me and I gave the man a warm smile. “What can I get for you sir?”
He paid for a large coffee (1 sugar and a bit of cinnamon), then shuffled to the booth nestled in the corner. Quickly making his order, I also placed a warm cinnamon muffin and a bottle of water on the tray, then I tucked the first aid kit under my arm and carried everything over to him. He was cursing under his breath (or so I assumed - the bandana covering his lower face muffled his words) as he inspected his wound, and he looked up in surprise as I placed everything in front of him. He rejected my offer to help tend his wounds, so I let him be, instead cleaning up the drops of blood on the floor and occasionally topping up his coffee. He left after an hour, looking in much better shape and silently tipping me as he left. I saw him two more times over the next two weeks, and did my best to give that little bit of love each time, with smiles, coffee, a few complimentary muffins, and once again the first aid kit.
The Crusher must have told some of his “colleagues” about my little café. Over the following weeks and months, more new faces started coming through my door, usually masked or cloaked, the occasional full helmet appearing as well. Business was booming and I was able to quit my other job and focus solely on Joey’s. I did, however, continue to open at night - a somewhat unusual plan for some cafés, but with the now steady stream of vigilantes and anti heroes coming through my door at all hours of the night, I was happy.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that most of these people were dangerous - I had seen the news and heard the stories, but regardless, I always tried to view every customer as another soul coming into my haven who needed that little bit of love, and my customers seemed to appreciate it. My café quickly became the place where the vigilantes of the city would start their nights with a coffee, or duck in for a quick break, a muffin, and a turn with the first aid kit. There were rules, of course - weapons holstered, no violence, no powers, and wipe your boots on the mat before entering - and it worked. The dark and shady protectors of the city continued to come through my door night after night.
Over these last few months I have seen more interesting costumes and uniforms than I ever imagined existed, cleaned up more blood than I’d ever hoped to, tended more injuries than I ever trained for, listened to more interesting stories than I’d ever heard, and served more coffee than I’d ever dreamed I could again.
I was doing what I was born to do, and I was happy. Until today.
| Red Molly contacted me first. “Hey I think you need to get down here. Right now.” When you get a psychic message like that, well, you kinda have to listen.
Windows smashed. Tables broken, even my counter, made from the wood of the witness stand from the Salem trials, was badly damaged. My favorite coffee mug, given to me by the Star Sorcerer himself, was broken. Damn.
By then, a lot of the regulars had shown up. Dark Hood stood silently, but you could feel the anger radiating from him. Father Black tried to console me, as best he could. Street Shadow was trying to pick up the pieces of the crystal ball I kept near the register. The scrying table seemed beyond repair.
Most of my regulars are low-level. None of them could do tremendous feats of magic like stopping time, or seeing years into the future, or transmuting matter. But they did what they could, you know? If you could keep a kid from breaking his arm because you can only see 30 minutes into the future for one person at a time, wouldn’t you do it? If your only power, speaking to the dead, could help one person resolve their grief and move to a better life (or afterlife), you’d do that too. If you were cursed to only move from shadow to shadow, well, maybe you’d use that to rescue people, and get them to a hospital faster than an ambulance could dream of moving.
And, of course, mystic power is stronger at night. Some of these folks only have power during a certain phase of the moon. And efforts like this, helping other people you don’t know, take their toll. So when sunrise is coming, a lot of them head to the Grave Sight. It’s darker than your average Denny’s, and it’s off an alley, not near a mall. You have to know where to look, but we have the best breakfast and coffee in the area. Plus the scrying table, crystals and other stuff are free for everyone to use. Father Black keeps the Holy Water blessed, it’s in the back room if you need some.
So they all came by and offered their help. I told them it would be a few days before I was back up and running. And since a mortal adjuster was unlikely to find the place, I never bought insurance, of course. I guess my wards weren’t strong enough.
I saw them look at each other, but no one said anything. The walked in amongst the debris, and stood in a circle. They joined hands, and I felt the power surge. Yes, even I can feel power like that. A dark mist gathered around them. There was a low rumble mixed with chanting, and the power dissipated.
Molly turned. Her eyes were red with anger. “We’ll be back.” was all she said, and they left.
It wasn’t like I was going anywhere. I mostly only move between my place, the church, and the cemetery. So I started cleaning up.
About an hour later, at midnight, they came back, with some members of the Evangelist gang. I’d seen them before, mostly on the news. “Magic is an abomination!” and “Mystics are going to Hell!” and other ridiculous protest signs, when the more powerful mystics solved a crime or prevented a disaster. Little did they know, some of us have been to Hell already. It’s debatable whether an eternity there or an hour with these wackos is worse. No screaming or waving signs here, though. They looked...different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Father Black stepped forward. “These are the people responsible for the damage. They have agreed to repair everything.”
“Agreed?” I said dubiously. I couldn’t see these guys helping something like me voluntarily.
Red Molly spoke without speaking. “We talked to Old Granny. She agreed to hold their souls in escrow until the damage is repaired. When you’re satisfied, they get them back.”
Old Granny: the only real witch in Salem in the 1600s, and of course the only one to avoid those idiots running the Trials. Now I saw the difference. Fear. Fear of losing the only thing that mattered, their souls. To the will of an “abomination.”
I turned to them. I didn’t think they could be more afraid, but you’d be surprised how scary a ghost can be, when I put my mind to it. “Welcome to the Grave Sight, ladies and gentlemen. I guess we’d better get to work. I have to be back to the cemetery before sunup.” | 2018-10-20T23:47:58 | 2018-10-20T23:34:54 | 31 | 11 |
[WP] When a twin dies their brother/sister acquires all their strength, intelligence, etc. You've just discovered this phenomena, but so has your brother/sister | We stand at the precipice of the mountain, her wind bitten hands clasped in mine. She shivers, and I try to be strong. For the both of us.
We've made it. That's the main thing. All the suffering, all the pain, it doesn't matter. Not anymore. We've made it.
There's a lake of fire in front of us, but it offers no warmth. It crackles and it spits ferociously, spewing flames and surrounding us in its smoke, but it offers no warmth. It offers no warmth.
In the depths of my robes the scroll awaits patiently, digging into my chest and gently reminding me. *Time is running out.*
Lara coughs. A wretched sound. I look to her, eyebrows furrowed in concern, and she gives me a frail smile. A half hearted attempt to tell me not to worry.
Today, we will finally discover what makes us special. Finally discover why we were chosen. I squeeze tightly. Nudge her sorry heart to keep on fluttering. Not long now.
The sound of the clock rings through the air and the birds caw and screech and scatter into a cloud of obsidian, and suddenly the sky is dark.
I feel the pulse of the scroll. We can open it. It is time. *Hold on, Lara, just a while longer. Just a while longer.*
The scroll escaped from my clenched fist and settles, almost regally, in front of us, hovering, glowing.
Its words are ancient, and we have no right to understand them. We certainly can't read them. And yet. And yet it reads us. Our minds, our deepest desires.
When it is done, it floats to the floor below us and begins to smoulder.
I look at Lara. She looks at me. I try and smile. She doesn't return it. She knows what must happen. She refuses to accept it.
One must fall, for the other to stand, stronger than ever. She knows what it would mean to me. Everything I ever wanted. Ever dreamed. And she knows I'm going to sacrifice it. To make her better.
A tear rolls down her frozen cheeks. Words are left unspoken. I'm all she has left. She's all I have left. We can't say goodbye. We can't. I stroke her face and close my eyes, and for a moment, we're back.
Home. It's summer time. The birds are singing, and the smell of freshly baked bread fills the air. The kids are playing. The people are happy. Hopeful. They can-
I open my eyes. Fire. Dark. It is time. I give her one last glance, and I take a deep breath, and I surrender to the fire...
(Feedback always appreciated!)
r/samfoxstories | Jaime looked at me, his arctic irises digging into mine. He sprinted, bare-handed, in my direction. Softly, I position my left foot, in preparation. As the avalanche comes near me, I dart under his outreached left arm, and as he slows in reaction, I kick him in the side.
Breathe. I have to breathe if I'm going to win.
He takes a second to recuperate, I should have taken the chance. He gets up, lowers his center of gravity, and walks toward me with wide steps. I lower my center of gravity, and stay where I am. This time, he stands still in challenge, offering me the chance to catalyze the match. I crouch so that my helmet is level with his gut. Then I rush him, as he's trying to get me into a hold, I slide between his legs, swivel my foot and push. I successfully throw him, but as I do he grabs my shoulder and brings me down with him.
Together we lay on the floor, struggling to get a hold or to break one. He gets me into a half nelson, which he knows I'll break. He's prepared for it when I do, he gets me into another headlock and I yield after about half a second. He had me, it was over.
"Helluva move, Jaime."
"Thanks Carly, I saw Hulk Hogan do something like that on WWE."
"You're saying I should watch that 'really real restling' if' I'm gonna win?"
"Are you winning right now?"
It's a good thing he knows how to take a punch, because I know how to give one.
"What time do you want to train tomorrow?"
"You're killing me Jaime."
"If that's what we have to do to get better, I don't mind so much."
Somehow those eyes are so much softer when he's outside the ring. | 2018-02-25T07:12:49 | 2018-02-25T04:45:16 | 36 | 22 |
[WP] You are a superhero whose civilian identity is a teacher. One student asked if you could tutor them after school, and you agreed. After it was over, you escorted them to the front of the school for their parent to pick them up... and you see your nemesis waiting by the car. | "Alright, Anthony. Have a good-"
I pause as I stare at his 'parents' car, blinking a couple of times to make sure I'm not seeing things. But with a man capable of mind manipulation, I could be seeing anything.
"Anthony, is that your dad?"
"..yeah?" Anthony shrugs, "Why are you being so weird about it?"
"Sorry, sorry. He's just not who I expected," I think of an excuse rather quickly, "You two hardly look alike. I'd like to talk to him, though. About school."
"Really?" He sighs, then nods, "Sure, whatever."
We both start walking over to the car, and that goddamned man looks over at us, smug look on his face. I could swear I saw shock, even if for only a moment, but he hides it well.
"Thanks for the tutoring, Aldine." Anthony says as he gets in the backseat, immediately kicking his feet up and going on his phone.
I nod in appreciation, then look at *him*.
*El Villano.*
While his name is simple, his personality and powers are anything but. My sworn nemesis, the man who attempts to end our city nearly every week.
And he's the father of one of my students.
Just as he's opening the door and getting in, I put my hand on the door, extremely cautiously. "Actually, sir, I was hoping I could speak to you about Anthony for a bit."
He looks me up and down, then smirks as he gets back out and closes the door. "Sure thing, *Aldine*."
His voice drips with poison; metaphorically, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if literally either. I force a smile and motion for him to come with me, and we start walking towards the school together.
As we walk, I watch him warily. He doesn't seem to care that I'm here - does he even know who I am? Of course he does, there's no way he doesn't. Why is he acting so calm?
"So, you let your students not use 'Mr'?" He asks in that all too familiar arrogant tone, "Have you lost all self respect?"
"Shut the hell up." I mutter quietly, and he just laughs.
We walk in silence until we finally get into the building, and as I close the door behind us I turn to him. "Who is Anthony's real father? This has to be some kind of... of mind trick! What'd you do to his parents, huh?"
"Relax, I'm his dad." Villano has the nerve to laugh even more, "Is it so hard to believe everyone has a personal life outside of work?"
"You don't do work, you do borderline terrorism-!"
"And that means I can't have a kid?"
"Yes!" I sigh, furrowing my eyebrows, "What's your plan? Were you going to us Anthony against me? Make him my favourite student, then... then kill me or something?!"
"Christ, I'm not playing mind tricks on you! Can you for one second wrap your head around that?"
I pause for a moment, then sigh again, pinching the bridge of my nose, "So he's really your son?"
"Yes." Villano pauses for a second, glancing through the door window at his car, then back at me. "You're really a teacher here? I mean, I knew you'd have a boring job, but not this boring."
"It's not boring. I get to help just as many people here as I do otherwise." I whisper yell at him, sighing, "Listen. I'm sorry that I... wrongly assumed you weren't Anthony's dad. I..."
Villano grins, nodding, "Yes, go on."
"I made a damn mistake, alright? Just... let's keep this as professional as possible." I sigh and lean against the wall, glaring as hard as I can at him.
He takes a deep breath in, then chuckles, "No can do, my dearest enemy. I think we might be able to benefit each other instead."
"No. I'm putting my foot down; professional, personal, and heroic life all stay different."
"Ah, ah, ah, not so fast." Villano smiles widely, "You might miss out on something you want to hear. You see, Anthony is currently failing one of his classes. Maybe if he were to start passing by the end of the quarter, I wouldn't bomb city hall."
"You're planning to-?!" I stop myself, exhaling, "Okay, listen. I only teach English. Anthony is failing math. I can't-"
"Better start learning, then." Villano leans towards me, and I suddenly feel dizzy, "Tik, tok. Tik... tok."
I blink, and the dizziness fades, along with him. I hurriedly look out the door, and he's already driving away with Anthony. I sigh, thinking to myself, how could I possibly deal with this?
Before I even realise it, I'm in front of one of my colleagues classrooms. I grimace to myself, then put on a happy smile as I open the door and lean on the frame.
"Hey, Brad - can I borrow one of your math books?"
★★★
This was so incredibly fun to write. Thanks for the prompt OP! This was written on mobile so apologies for any misspellings :) hope you enjoy! | I looked at my classroom as the bell rang and they cheered as they left the room for it was the last bell of the day and time for them to go home. I am a teacher. But it's mainly a past time of mine. A side gig if you will. My actual job is saving lives and putting bad people behind bars. I'm a superhero after all and not just any superhero but one of the best in the nation. Not many villains can give me much trouble. Except for one...my nemesis. I thought about my nemesis as I started gathering my things. My nemesis is one of the most powerful villains I have come across and also the most bizarre. She doesn't seem like a bad person but she always seems caught up in the worst things happening around town. I've come close to arresting her a few times so I could interrogate her only for her to slip away every time. The few conversations we had with each other is short quips and bantering as we fought around town. The other day she made fun of my costume! Can you believe that? My costume is amazing I'd have you know. Hmm, She even avoids bloodshed unlike normal villains. I really don't know what to think about her. I stood up from my desk.
Alex who usually sits and stares out the window in the back of the classroom came up to me. "T-teacher, I need help with understanding what we just went over. Can you help me?" Alex is a good kid. If he wouldn't daydream all day, he would probably be one of my best students. He might not be the smartest or brightest but he is the kind that works hard to understand the things he doesn't.
"Sure." I checked my watch. *I have a date with my nemesis at 6 in midtown...I have time.* I put my things down and started tutoring the kid.
...
Time flew by and I had to wrap it up.
"Okay it's time for me to go." I raised a brow at the kid.
"Your mother is picking you up right?"
"Yes. She should be here now."
"I'll walk you to your car then." That's what any good teacher should do.
"Okay!" The kid smiled as he led the way as we walked out of school into the parking lot. There I saw a women waiting for her child. She had brown hair and honey colored eyes. She went up to her kid and crouched to eye level. "Next time you stay for tutoring let me know before hand, okay Alex?" She scolded as she roughed up his hair much to the displeasure and embarrassment of the kid. Oh I completely forgot to let his parent now he was staying for tutoring! How unprofessional of me.
*I should apologize...wait. I feel like I know this women.*
She stood up and looked at me. Her eyes widened in recognition before she quickly masked her reaction.
"You. You taught him well I suppose?" The women seemed to know something about me.
*Come on. Think. Why does she look so familiar?! Ugh this is driving me nuts.*
Suddenly a image of my nemesis in her costume and mask popped into my head that seemed to align perfectly with the women in front of me. My heart started beating rabidly.
*No way?! It couldn't be...she's my nemesis!?*
I calmed my nerves as I replied calmly.
"Well I certainly didn't teach him anything "bad" if that's what your asking...joked aside he's doing well. Other then daydreaming in my class, He's a good kid. I apologize I didn't call and let you know he was staying for tutoring."
"Hmm. That's good. Glad to hear it and it's quite alright. It happens." She laughed before squinting her eyes at me knowingly.
"Thanks for teaching my son and giving him the time he needs. I'll be on my way now." She turned and walked around her car and open the door. As she was getting in the car she said one final thing.
"See you tonight." She smirked as she got in and then drove off while I watched blankly.
"This isn't good. My nemesis knows my secret identity...but I also know hers now. What a dilemma." I mumbled and sighed while walking to a motorcycle of my own in the teacher only space.
*I wonder what I should say to her when we see each other later? Whatever happens my identity needs to be kept secret and I'm sure it's the same for her...*
I put on my helmet and gear and rode off into the sunset... | 2022-11-29T15:14:07 | 2022-11-29T14:41:21 | 91 | 32 |
[WP] It was only after they invaded that the aliens realized, to their horror, that humans had superior technology in all things, except inter-planetary spaceflight. | Ich'tuk wept.
The bodies of his clan covered the plains before him like a bloody carpet. The third hand of his clan priest descended on his shoulder and clasped him tightly. "You could not have known," said Ahn'rek. "None of us knew. An entire race that fights with no concept of honor, but only to win."
"They don't even have proper weapons," sobbed Ich'tuk. "No swords, or spears...just these...these *things* that spray death at a cowardly distance. My clan is no more! What have I done to us by coming here?"
Ahn'rek spoke. "Do not fault yourself. In all our recorded centuries of conquest, we have never encountered a foe that refuses to fight an honorable battle like this one. But there is a solution."
Ich'tuk looked up, a glimmer of hope in his seven eyes. "What? What is it? How can we possibly salvage anything out of *this*," he exclaimed as he waved his topmost pair of arms expansively over the slaughter before them.
Ahn'rek spoke softly, but with authority. "We can ensure no one encounters these savages again. We still have our ship. Our ship with a drive that has propelled us across countless stars and thousands of conquests. A drive nearly the size of this continent we stand on. We must return to the ship and engage the drive, Ich'tuk."
"And then? You would have us flee these cowardly monsters?"
"No, Ich'tuk. The drive? Point it at the planet." | I don't understand. These dirty little apes could barely hope to their moon before we got here. Yet they have weapons that can kill from afar, giant metal monsters that make my men exploding before they can see them. They have artificial birds that rain death from above!
I called the full retreat thinking we would be safe if we got off this death ball, only to find the humans had hijacked on of our ships.
Everything is crashing around me. Humans have everything on us but our space ships... and now that have that. I won't go down in history as a planet killer... but as the fool that let humans off their rock. | 2014-10-17T09:09:55 | 2014-10-17T09:09:35 | 324 | 56 |
[WP] Your Italian restaurant is frequented by the mafia, and for some reason they think you're a front for someone powerful. You aren't, but you still like to mess with them. | I'm not even Italian, that's the funny thing. I opened this place on a dare, more of a joke than anything else. *A Korean could never open up an Italian Restaurant*, they'd said.
Joke's on them. And these goons that have been coming here, sitting in the same booth for the last three years.
I mean, I named the place Pasta for the Seoul, so I don't really feel too bad for them.
It started with big tips. I just figured they were nice guys. But then one day one of them motions me over. Guy who always sits at the head of the table, big, scary looking fella. He hands me an envelope, pulls me close and whispers in my ear, "Take this as a good-faith pledge. We know our territory." And then goes back to his food like nothing happened.
After closing, I'm taking out the trash and I notice something on the back brick. It was this symbol, this dragon, that had been spray-painted on before I ever owned the building. I never paid it mind before now.
But then I started thinking. *What the hell, I might as well see what happens.*
It takes me a few days to plan out what I'm going to do. Part of me wants to just bank the money and act like nothing ever happened. But then the part of me that opened up an Italian restaurant just because kicks in, and I walk over to the table.
I pull the envelope with money out of my back pocket, and drop it down in front of this guy who gave it to me.
"Sorry boss man," I say, laying thick into that "accent." "Triads cannot accept such a small fee."
His eyes get wide, he slides the money to himself, and the whole table gets up and leaves. And I'm back down the ten grand that he'd offered.
So the next day one of them comes back, not boss man, but one of his cronies. He's got another envelope. A little thicker.
"Mr Moretti sends his apologies. He hopes you wasn't insulted."
I take a peak inside and act like I know what I'm looking for. I mean, it definitely *looks* like more.
"It's a start," I reply.
"Of course. Thank you." And then he leaves.
I've never even been to Korea.I don't know if the Triads exist there. And I doubt even they know. They just saw slanted eyes and a dragon symbol and made an assumption. And now I'm a lot richer because of it.
What's the worst that can happen? | ""He needs them," was all I had to say; and I had them. It didn't matter what, it could have been anything, some new shoes, a nice watch. I pressed it too. I started doing selfish things for money. I ran the mob for a bit, and here I am, by my own free will--which feels a lot less free when your other option is instant death. I kind of want to live so here I am, ask your questions."
"***Why did they choose you?"***
"Why did I choose you? I don't know. It was an accident of chance. I have never had and never will have, especially after this, will never and have never and all the "nevers", will ever ever have any ties with the mob. Write that down and put it on my freakin' tomb stone. I got all of them what they wanted. I ran them like well oiled machine. Oh yeah, yeah, so I didn't like something in the news? Maybe I'd have Joey go see someone about it, uncle joey, you know him, big guy. You can get these people to do anything if they think they will get something out of it. All they wanted was the best seat in the house. I designed it like that. It was literally the best seat--there was absolutely no other seat like it in the restaurant. It looked almost like a throne but I thought that would be too on the nose. The spotlight was a great idea, though. They notice you, under that spotlight, that glorious spotlight that meant you had the bosses' favor that week, or evening, because you brought his favorite spicy chips on your way back from the gym." | 2020-10-12T09:54:00 | 2020-10-12T09:43:21 | 564 | 16 |
[WP] A vampire knocks on your door, seeking permission to enter in order to kill you as their next meal. As a house-bound ghost, however, the prospects of a guest after so many years intrigues you. Smiling darkly, you welcome them inside. | "It's been awhile since I've had I guest. Not many come this far into the forest." I say, stepping to the side to let them in before walking towards the couch.
"Well, I was out for a hike when I got a bit lost. Didn't know there was a cabin this far in." The young woman, who obviously hasn't been a vampire for long with how badly she was hiding it, says as she follows me.
"Really? I though everyone knew about my little old shack out here." I tell say, aware of her approach from behind.
"How come?" I here her undead heart getting more excited at the thought of a fresh meal.
My eyes turn pitch black as I spin my head around to look at her. "Because not many people around here DON'T know about the night I died."
She let out a shriek, falling over backwards from surprise. "WHAT THE?!"
I laugh, before my eyes change again, looking more... gouged out, then they did before. Of course that, and my slit throat make it obvious I didn't die of natural causes. "You didn't think vampires where the ONLY supernatural creatures out there, did you?"
She seems a little more frightened, but that's probably my eyes. "Well no, but how did you-"
"Know what you are? I knew they existed before I dided, and you do a HORRIBLE job of hiding it." I change myself to look like I did when she first showed up. "Sorry for the scare, and the disappointment of a missing meal, but I just wanted to have a little fun."
"What... are you?" She asked as she stood up.
I gestured to the couch, urging her to sit before clearing my throat. "A ghost. Specifically the kind that can't leave where they died. Even after they got that guy, nobody really comes around here."
"I guess your comment about not getting company often makes more sense now. The place is beautiful, by the way."
I felt a smile come across my face after that. "Thanks, I try to keep the place DECENT at least. Can't do much about my garden though..."
She pooked deep in thought for a moment. "I'm probably not gonna leave the area for a long while, so... why don't I help take care of the place."
I couldn't hide my surprise at that. "Wait, really? But... why?"
She let out a auiet giggle before answering. "You seem like a good person, and I feel kinda bad about trying to kill you now. I'm Meredith, what's your name?"
"John. It's a pleasure to meet you Meredith." I said, before shaking her hand.
After that evening, she stuck around. She would use the guest room during the day, and take care of the garden at night. After awhile, I realized that I could go outside, however that only seemed to be the case when she was out there. Over time, I could get further and further, so we started going for walks sometimes. One night, we realized that I wasn't just bound to my cabin anymore. I was bound to her too. And yet, she never left for more then a day or two. Lately, I've noticed that I can interact more physically with things, instead of just using my weird little ghost powers on things. Her skin seems to be less pale lately too, oddly enough. I wonder... what are we causing in eachother? | "Where are the living people?" The vampire asked."Oh, they're kn the second floor" I say. "Alright! Dinnertime!" He begins to run up the stairs, but pauses halfway up. "Hold on a second. Is this a con? Say I open the door-" "Third on the right. They're doing it." I say. "Ah, I see. Seems kinda rude. I suppose I'll let them finish."
"Excellent. Would you care for some tea?" I ask. "Oh, what kind do you have?" "I have mint, earl grey, and green tea." I inform the living undead."Well, I'd kill for an earl grey" the vampire told me. I got an earl grey bag from the cupboard and boiled some water. When I was done, I put a cup of hot water and the bag on the wooden table, along with the kettle, which was on an oven mitt.
The vampire began steeping the tea, and I asked, "Long day of killing people for their blood, is it?" The vampire looked around at the kitchen before answering. It was a plain mid-century kitchen, all wood and an iron oven. The door to his left led to the family room, and the door behind him led to the front room, which contained the staircase.
I sat down at the oak table, on an oak chair, directly across from the man-shaped nightmare. Not that I was much better. "We vampires typically wake up at dusk and sleep during the day." I paused momentarily. "Of course, of course. So, you've just awoken, and you're looking to break the fast?" I asked the former man. "Precisely," he said. He removed his teabag and took a sip. The scalding temperature did not bother him.
We hward moaning from upstairs, and then what sounded like a climax. The vampire hurriedly finished his tea, and then sprung into action. He ran into the front room, up the stairs, and presumably, into the third door on the right. I floated up into the room, and saw that my host's spring trap had worked exactly as designed, piercing the vampire in twelve places with wooden stakes. Most notably, his heart. "You...lied..." he rasped. "I did no such thing," i sniffed. My hosts were hurriedly donning the type of clothes one dons to fight vampires, but it was obviously over. | 2022-08-01T20:14:55 | 2022-08-01T18:22:02 | 22 | 14 |
[WP] Since my dad went mute I started learning sign language secretly to surprise him. When I was somewhat fluent with it, I realized that his blessings at the dinner table actually meant "Threatened with death if talk, please go to police". | I narrowed my eyes, looking at my dad’s hands, watching every twitch and movement.
His hands shook so much more now. But for the third day in the row, he’s signed the exact same, unmistakeable thing:
“Threatened with death if talk, please go to police.”
I gulped. I looked at my dad’s face. Was I imagining the aloofness? Was it actually a tortured visage kept under wraps through the only way he knew how?
Every bite of dinner was interspersed with a frantic scan of the surroundings. What was around us that could possibly cause dad to do this? A blinking red light in one corner of the house, a camera ostensibly for security, became a threatening crimson eye intruding on our turf.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” my mother asked.
“Nothing,” I waved her off, pushing my plate in front of me. “Just a little tired.”
“He’s using that as an excuse to sneak back into his room and play games,” Eve, my younger sister, accused me.
“No,” I said. “I really am just tired.
She stuck out her tongue. Brat.
My dad looked at me in concern, and I felt like I couldn’t meet his gaze.
I apologized for my manners, told my mum her food was delicious, and retreated back into my room. It didn’t take long for plodding footsteps to stop at my door, and a rapt knock followed. Somebody gently squeezed the doorknob open, and my dad walked in.
I inhaled deeply, and signed.
“Hello, dad.”
His eyes widened. He stared at me, and signed back.
“You’re kidding.”
“Unfortunately, no. And I saw what you said at the table.”
Dad moved up quietly, sitting on my bed.
“When did you learn?”
“A couple of months,” accompanied by an audible sigh. ”You… what’s going on?”
“What’s going on?”
“I learnt to surprise you,” I signed. “But I think you’ve got a bigger surprise. The thing at dinner?”
“Oh,” my dad chuckled. “That? Did it really matter what I signed?”
“Not really, I guess. I only figured it out in the past three days.”
My dad smiled, his shoulders shrugging.
“Nobody listened any more. There were texts. The rest could speak. But I felt like I had no voice.”
“I’m so sorry,” I signed. “So… it’s not real?”
“As real as you want it to be,” Dad sighed. “Just having a little fun to myself, I suppose.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m trying to learn. To talk. So you don’t feel that way again.”
A smile cracked on his face, and a tear rolled down his cheek. He patted me on the shoulder a hard couple of times, before trembling fingers rose up in front of his chest, and he signed:
“Hi, trying to learn—”
---
r/dexdrafts | In sheer disbelief, I gawked at Dad. He simply gestured: “took you long enough, eh.” Okay, okay; he didn’t add ‘eh’, but it was certainly implied. I immediately surged from my chair, but Dad’s stare was more than sufficient to make it adamantly clear I was ought to sit down. and serve food first. With one brief gesture, he explained his reasoning. Cameras. First, food it is.
After being quickly reseated, I realised that my poker face had been non-existent and I hastily closed my mouth. As I grabbed the dark-grey oven mitts, which Mom had always used, to serve dinner, I saw my little brother still residing in his own little world. He didn’t appear to notice or care for that matter what had transpired between me and Dad. And, frankly, that wasn’t an exception anymore. A vacant expression displaying a complete disinterest in everything had been all there was to see.
When the food had been consumed, as if it were an item on a to-do-list that had to be checked off, I retreated to my room. With the thoughts racing through my head, I couldn’t imagine my head not exploding. Firstly, if there were cameras, and perhaps other surveillance electronics, had they not captured the message that Dad had been sending now for months? I figured if they did, we would have known by now. Secondly, was the feeling that I had shrugged off for all this time of being watched not completely bonkers after all? Repeatedly, I had read about the main character in thrillers ignore their instincts, which led them to all sorts of mayhem; I had always yelled at them that they should trust their gut and look around. Clearly weren’t going to hear me, but that definitely didn’t stop me. However, I had never thought this advice would apply to me. For starters, my dull life had absolutely nothing in common with the protagonists in the stories of Stephen King and David Baldacci. Well, at least, I had always thought so. Now I wasn’t so sure. Not anymore, anyway. | 2022-07-21T09:45:17 | 2022-07-21T08:18:57 | 116 | 80 |
[WP] When people turn 18, they gain the power to summon 1 random thing in the world to their hand, as Thor does to Mjolnir. Summoned people are considered soulmates, and objects as important parts of one's life. When you summon yours, it takes some time, but people are horrified when it arrives... | As I wait in the field, the usual assortment of examiners and recording equipment scattered around, an awkward silence surrounds the entire group. It has been nearly an hour. Most people's Soulbound appears within 10 minutes. What could it be? If we go by distance maybe something halfway across the country? But what only exists there that you couldn't find within an easy walking distance? I remember hearing news articles about the man who summoned a whale... To the middle of Texas. It was big news at the time; hundreds of buildings had been decimated by the high-speed collision, and the whale unfortunately did not survive the impact. The examiners are also starting to get nervous looks on their faces and I bet they are recalling the same story. Suddenly off in the distance I start to hear very large crunching noises, sirens, screams and just utter pandemonium. then comes the grating, like thousands of pounds of metal rushing against pavement I know something horrible is coming, but my hand is frozen out in front of me. Finally it crests over the city skyline and I am dumbfounded. It is worse than I could ever have predicted. Looming over me, growing closer by the second is the mangled, ruined visage of one of our country's greatest monuments. The Statue of Liberty, now covered in dust, blood and debris followed by a swarm of helicopters grinds to a slow halt in front of my outstretched hand, just close enough to touch the tip of my finger. What have I done? | They all screamed as the orange haired president doubled over in pain live on national television as I laughed maniacally in the back of the bar waving his severed member in my hand before throwing it into my drink.
“Steve!!” “what the fuck man?!” Randy screamed at me as he vomited onto the floor. “It’s your birthday but damn dude!? Why the fuck did you summon THAT?!”
“World domination baby, world domination”
Everybody stood far away from me as I walked out the front door blood dripping from my fingers, The Donald’s member flopping on the ground.
Who the fuck is going to dare challenge anyone that can rip your junk off from anywhere on the planet?
Let them eat cake. | 2019-09-18T09:38:04 | 2019-09-18T09:37:18 | 24 | 10 |
[WP] You’re a thousand year old immortal who’s taken a teaching job. Everything was going well until one of your students started humming a song from your childhood. | "Good afternoon, everyone!" grinned Mr. Milo, setting down his coffee, "I hope everyone buckled down and completed their homework."
Milo's classroom filled with the sounds of zippers and the shuffle of papers as his students began rummaging in their backpacks for his assignment as requested. Quiet conversations were mumbled as papers began being slid onto desks around the room. Milo smirked as worried students spoke in hushed tones to each other about their doubts on how they did. He waited patiently, pretending not to listen until something familiar caught his attention. A melody being hummed somewhere in the class. His eyebrows raised above his spectacles as he scanned the room.
Anne bobbed her head gently to the tune coming through her closed lips. No headphones dangled from her ears, she seemed completely oblivious to everyone and everything around her. Milo watched her intently, surprise and sadness in his face. Her eyes rested on the finished homework on her desk in front of her, oblivious to his gaze. Nobody in his class seemed to take notice, everyone wrapped up in their own conversations. Their teacher broke his stare and clenched his jaw as he stared out through the windows to his right. Memory flooded his mind as the melody cut through the chatter in the room.
"I've changed my mind," Milo smiled, looking away from the windows.
The classroom hushed when he spoke, waiting politely.
"You can all have another night to finish your assignment. I think today we'll have a movie day."
Whoops and cheers roared from a few students and they all returned their papers to their bags. Mr. Milo pulled down a drop screen over his blackboard in the front of the room and fired up his projector.
"It's not an accurate historical film by any means, but I have a feeling you'll all enjoy it," murmured Milo, then more quietly to himself he whispered, "it was much darker in reality."
The movie Kingdom of Heaven began as Milo stepped over to the door to switch off the lights. He flipped them off and met eyes with Anne. She stared at him intently as the rest of his students fell into the film, hypnotized. With a subtle jerk of his head he stepped through the door and into a deserted hallway, closing the door softly behind him with a click.
He breathed deeply through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth as his classroom door opened again. Anne stepped out, closing it again. They both stood there silently for a moment, waiting for the other to speak.
"When were you born?" Milo asked sharply.
The corners of Anne's mouth twitched into a smirk, "it's never been polite to ask the age of a woman, now or then."
"Tenth century?" Milo said.
"Older," she said shaking her head.
"Why haven't you aged further?" Milo asked.
"Why haven't you?" she shrugged.
"How did you know?" Milo whispered, looking up and down the hallway.
"I'm good at finding people like us," Anne said quietly, "have you never met another?"
"No," Milo said.
Anne's forehead wrinkled as her eyebrows came together.
"Never?"
"Never," he whispered, "how many have you met?"
"As many as I've had to kill," Anne said, her voice growing cold, the innocence fading.
"To ki-"
"Ssshhh," she whispered, "enjoy the time you have left. It's already done."
Milo stiffened, his eyes flickered left to right as he searched her eyes. She was being completely truthful. When could she have poisoned him? The answer came without difficulty.
"The other teachers?" Milo choked, "just to get to me?"
"Whoever drank from the same pot of coffee as you," she said.
"Why?"
"You were a great teacher, Mr. Milo," she said, ignoring the question, "even if you went a bit off the approved curriculum from time to time."
A thin line of blood slipped from both his nostrils as Anne watched him fade away in front of her. | The day began the same as the day before, as the tens of thousands of days before had started. Reaching his extremities to the end of his bed, Simon felt all the usual spots pop click and align, a morning ritual he dared not skip before getting up. There were no more nor less than any other day, one of the few perks timelessness allowed. Stirring, he makes his way over to the still warm stove, finding an appropriately sized piece of firewood to rekindle the overnight smolder. A Pinterest perfect birch round selected, and was placed atop the live coals. Satisfied, Simon moved on, that round should keep his abode comfortable for at least a few more hours in this shoulder season. Despite his age, late fall was always a nostalgic season for Simon, where had this latest summer full of vibrancy and life gone off too? Reminiscing over the lost season while steeping a mellow green tea was one of his few subtle joys, it was worth the lost time in the mornings. Donning his heavily worn wool overcoat and tying the leather laces on his boots, he was off for the morning, steaming cup of tea in hand.
He knew the route well enough to the college, down the winding footpath, across the nearly frozen creek, through the thicket. Even in this age of modernity Simon mused that this wasn't as different from the earlier days of his life. As a younger man, he had walked on the long forgotten original path to the shore, before the boardwalks had been put in. In those days, long even before the college was established he had been but a fisherman. The fish were plentiful, but the long days spent out in the sun made him appreciate his current tenureship all the more. Approaching the campus, bundles of paper in his messenger bag, he could convince himself they were wrapping his daily catch as he strode into the market square. That lively town square was certainly aspect of his youth that hadn't survived modernity. The old Mall down the avenue was a sad impersonation of what the space had been, with people always bustling through, and a Minstrel playing a tune that he had been working at shaping throughout the week.
Getting closer to the grand stone hall, Mr. Zelotes as the students called him decided it time to return to the present. The dry fall leaves swept underfoot and accumulated into deep piles along the edges of buildings, and the sun reached areas previously protected near the base of the trees. It was odd though, the Singing Minstrel from the town square of yore survived Simon's reminiscing coming to a conclusion. The song , deeply familiar, but buried under a mountain of memories slowly dug it's way to surface. It was truly the same song, refined to completion, and being played by a student not unfamiliar to Simon.
​
​
​
Can you tell I haven't written anything since Highschool? I can sure feel it.
To be Continued sometime. | 2022-11-17T16:41:12 | 2022-11-17T13:15:52 | 111 | 33 |
[WP] You are The Memory Broker. You copy other people's memories and sell them to people who want to remember things they never did. Your latest client is a ten year-old girl who slides you her piggy bank and begs you to help her grandmother remember her. | The majority of Mort’s business came from either desperate university students who had neglected to study for final exams or those looking to Incorporate the latest 20-something celebrity’s sex memories for a night of self love. Of course there was the odd police investigation which would roll through the shop to forcefully extract memories from some wafe in handcuffs staring at the large contraption of stainless surgical grade steel with equal parts loathing and resignation, knowing that the only thing they thought was truly private in their lives is free to be leafed through after just ten short questions to calibrate the device to the Reserve’s neural configuration.
After the standard parade of slackers and pervs of the day Mort sat at his desk browsing the Collective Reserve for the next must have memory, all the while trying desperately to not think of the people who would come in looking for the latest “Kelly Henson drilled in dive hotel” memory. The sound of the shopfronts door swinging on recently replaced hinges offered a welcome reprieve but the sight of a small girl clutching what appeared to be a poorly coloured porcelain turtle. Mort could feel the initial shock on his face, but the girl was obviously too young to interpret the expression and approached the desk confidently, placing the turtle on the desk between them, its haphazard patches of colour clashing heavily with the surgical nature of Mort’s reception area.
“I need you to help someone remember me.” The girl was the first to speak, in a tone that seemed overly mature for her apparent age.
“Ah… okay”, Mort stammered out, trying desperately to collect himself, “who is it that you are looking to Incorporate into?”
“My mim” was the immediate response from the girl.
“I’m sorry?”
“My grandmother, she doesn't remember well and everything is fading inside her, she… she doesn’t even recognise herself anymore” colour started to rise on her cheeks and her brow furrowed, she seemed the perfect reflection of frustration.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but if your ‘Mim’ has dementia than anything you put in her head will eventually be lost again and you will need to keep bringing her back until, well…, until...” Mort explained as gently as possible. If she started to cry he was unsure what he would do.
“Okay… can we do that? How much would it cost? She needs to remember me. And my brother. And my mum. My mum still needs her.” A slight look of hope spread across her face when she mentioned her mother.
Mort could tell just by looking at the ugly turtle in front of him on the desk that the pittance contained within would not even begin to cover a Reserve extract and an Incorporation. He quickly glanced at the screen in front of him which still showed the ‘Popular’ page of the Collective Reserve and resigned himself to completing one act of decency this particular day.
“Alright,” Mort started, trying his best to hide the pity which he felt for the girl, “if you want to, we can start right now.”
“How much will it cost?” The girl asked with a rising feel of urgency.
“Only a few dollars” Mort lied.
The girl returned later that same day with her Mim and what Mort assumed was her mother in toe. After removing her coat and putting her hair into a ponytail, the girl took her set in front of the Neural Cartographer where Mort affixed several electrodes and injected the amplifying compound into the base of the girls neck. The relatives were instructed to remain outside whilst the girl answered her calibration questions.
The first nine questions were answered with the usual struggle as the girl attempted to describe the colour yellow or pronounce the word ‘zyzxzzyq’. The final question however, the girl answered almost immediately.
“When I fell down the stairs outside Mim’s house. They were stone steps… I had to get cast on both my legs… I hit my head and everything was blurry and all I can remember is Mim coming down the steps after me... “ The question had caused a few stray tears to leak from the girl. Mort tried to smile reassuringly and pat her hand, but she pulled it away startled.
With the neural mapping complete Mort asked the girl to think of her Mim, remember everything about her, her face, her voice, her smell. The display showed flicked to life and showed the face of the same lady who now sat in the opposite room, her eyes now appeared less vacant and she appeared better kept. Quickly the display changed as the girl remembered more of her Mim. Her clothes, her laugh, her smile which would only reach one side of her mouth. Eventually the images came too fast to make out and Mort could only identify the story the girl had told from the mess, though it appeared to be looping multiple times.
Eventually everything was collected and the Neural Cartographer was ready to incorporate to the Sink. The elder lady was brought in and strapped into the large tower of surgical steel, with the compliancy of someone not truly aware of reality. The device was activated and the Incorporation took mere seconds on a mind that was almost completely wiped already.
Mim’s expression changed from that of a vacant calm to what appeared to be confusion, or possibly disgust, it was difficult to tell.
“How would do that to someone? Why have you shown that to me? That woman… she’s… she’s… evil. No one should…”, Mim’s eyes fell on the girl and her mother, recognition bloomed on her face as she looked at the mother. “How come you never did anything to help me? The number of times I bleed because that woman and you just sat there! Crying! Useless! Worse than useless, you let it happen!”
The mother hung her head, gentle shobs causing her shoulders to shake slightly. “I.. I couldn't...” Her voice quivered before breaking entirely in deep wails.
The grandmother swung about wildly, trying to get out of the seat she had been strapped to, cursing and muttering all the while. As she was reefing one of her hands free from the restraints she caught her reflection in the bright steel of the Neural Cartographer.
“That’s not my face… that's… that's...”, her head swiveled around to stare back at the girl, with renewed interest. “No… no… I… I couldn't have… what happened… that was… no. How did nobody stop it? How could… I… be that person... that lady... she’s evil… and your brother… at least he is gone now...”
Great cries of anguish ushered forth from the grandmother, though they gradually subsided before finally stopping altogether. With her face still red and her tears still wet on her cheeks, her expression morphed back to that of vacant calm as she looked around at her surrounds with the curiosity of someone who had just walked into the room.
“Can you put them in again?” Came a small voice which seemed entirely void of emotion.
“No… the brain needs... time... to recovered from the overstimulation.” Mort looked at the small girl, who stared emotionless at the frail old lady strapped to the chair in the centre of the room, in bewilderment.
“How long?”, she asked, still without taking her eyes from her Mim.
“About a week.”
“... Okay”
After they had left Mort sat at his desk staring at the small coloured turtle without really seeing it. Mort wasn’t sure whether he got to count the events of the past hour as his one act of decency or not. He figured not. | I remember that day, that kid, in retrospect I shouldn't have paid attention. It was a Saturday afternoon, I usually give myself weekends off but it was hard back then. So many regulations, rules to abide by; I just wanted to make some money, you know how it is. I had a bitch ex-wife, who took my kids from me in court. I had one fucking felony, minor fraud. She... It doesn't matter about her, anyway, yeah Saturday.
I walked into the memory centre, we used to call it the brain domain. Yeah I know it's a shit name. So I walk into the entrance, you know these wall street type buildings, as tall as Mt. Everest and as pretentious as the Queen of England snorting some caviare. You had the two main memory banks, Memcorp and Reeves & co. These where the big boys, same building different floors. Much like wall street you had your blue chip stock (Expensive memories) and pink slip stocks (Cheap memories). The big boys didn't bother with the cheaper memories, that's were the firm I worked for made small profits.
In a typical day you would see a wide range of people. Anything from heroin addicts wanting to remember never taking heroin to old partners with dementia wanting to remember their earlier lives. It wasn't as easy as that, you see we're a bank. We need to profit from this and these cheap memories are usually rubbish ones. Let me put it this way your local scum bag, heroin addict wants to forget. Well he/she can but the memory we sell them is going to be one that no one wants, like remembering murdering someone or raping a child. Now how the fuck do you sell this shit, well we kind of lie. The beauty of it is, that they have no money left to even get to the building to complain.
If you're a blue chip broker, there lives are easy. Selling great memories, my friend over at memcorp got $100000 in commission for selling one fucking memory to a depressed business owner. You see most big banks, contact these people who need money but have rewarding lives, buy their good memories and leave them a depressed vegetable. They sell those memories for 4000% profit to lonely, depressed rich guys. The other thing they did is have a complete memory modifier. Most people don't know about this but it's basically the cure for alzheimer's. They basically do some fancy science shit and it gives you back the memories lost. Anyway I digress.
That Saturday afternoon, making the odd $10 here and there from the junkies and old people, I go to the coffee room. These interns are laughing and speaking about this little girl who wanted to save grandma for $2. I joined these sweaty, caffeine filled idiots and asked what it was all about.
"That girl with the red t-shirt she wants to save granny, haha".
As I glanced through the blinds soaked in cigarette resin, I saw a small, innocent girl with a blood-red t-shirt and an object in her hand. She had a limp when she walked, bruises almost trying to be covered. It reminded me of my own daughter ,when I found out that fucking scum back beat the shit out of her for the first time. Well I gave it to him, the low life fucking scum, he only remembers the children he fucking raped the cu...
"Hi, my names Mr. Berry, how can I help you?", with a gentle tone.
"M-my grandma Lucy, she's not so well", this young pretty girl quietly whispered. I offered her a juice drink and we walked into my office. I remember thinking how did a girl aged...
"How old are you dear"
"I'm 10 years old Mr." She said with confidence.
...I remember thinking how did a girl aged 10 get here. Anyway we talked about her grandma. Turns out she had dementia, the girl was smart. She knew what it was and how it could be cured. She pulled out a leaflet from her small backpack and placed it on the table.
*Memcorp making you remember*
"Thi-this is the place, were you can save her Mr.?" she mumbled with belief. What the fuck do I say to a 10 year old. If it wasn't for her uncanny resemblance to my daughter I probably would have called security by now. I don't know I can't lie, I remember changing the subject.
"So I see you're not with your parents, where are they, outside". She looked around, I could see the tears forming in the tear ducts. With every tremble of her lip, a new tear was formed. She rolled up her sleeves, each centimetre a new scar was uncovered. If there wasn't a scar the space was filled by a bruise or a cut. Who the fuck would do this to a young girl.
"p-p-please can you help, my grandma protects me, she doesn't hurt me like dad, please Mr.., Plea..!"
"Shhh, please lower your voice. I'm sorry we can see what I can do". This poor girl was abused, I dragged up my files, got her details and see what we had on her.
*Daisy Reed, 10 yrs old, female Caucasian. 15 memories detected.*
*1-14 Memcorp shares. No.15 Mcbrint share*
I couldn't believe what I was seeing, all of this girls memories of her mother was erased. The good memories she had with her mother, the summers of joy and the lazy weekends all sold and erased by a Mr. Reed to Memcorp.
"What a fu... fudge cake.", I quickly realised I was with a 10 year old before exploding with rage. I pulled up the McBride pink slip, I could get every detail on that one, as this is the firm I work for. I always remember those first lines,
*"Sexual assault, rape and murder"*. That fucking horrible twat, he rapes his mother and daughter, then murders her mother in front of her. What a fucking cunt. Most of you are thinking well at least he paid for her to forget that, no he paid for fucking immunity. The low life bastard. The chances that the little girl that sits with me still gets raped is high.
What the hell do I do. I can't get her grandma's memories back, she had $2, that would take $1,000,000. Do I give her a good memory, I can afford $300. But she's still gonna get beaten. I did the only thing I thought I could do. She might not have got her grandma back, but at least now she thinks her father is her lover. | 2016-03-09T06:47:51 | 2016-03-09T06:21:21 | 15 | 10 |
[WP] One day, you see a picture of yourself in a foreign newspaper. You ask someone to translate the headline for you: "Search for kidnapped child still ongoing." | I look again at the crinkled, creased newspaper lying on the dirty, but unoccupied, café table. I don't notice the girl staring up at me from the grey pages right away. Instead, my mind wanders to the pale-faced patron who left their paper in such a hurry; why had they left it open on the *missing peoples* page? What had they thought when they read it? Were they sad for the person inside?
Then, I see her. The same girl is in two tiny frames. The first picture as a gapped tooth child with a cows-lick fringe and a minute mole sitting happily above her left eye. Then, the second picture, a computer generated *what-if*. A what-she-might have become, if she were still alive.
It's not quite like looking in a mirror; more like staring in a pond during a sudden downfall. It's a ripple showing a possible *me* that I didn't become because of braces and exercise and love. I'm not grey faced and sullen; I'm neither sad nor scared.
I look up from the paper and stare at my father who queues patiently at the café counter, and I wonder for the first time in my life, who he is. I wonder if I should hate him.
I think again of the patron who left it on this page.
The little girl from the first frame stares up at me with sad, questioning eyes. She looks betrayed.
*I'm sorry*, I mouth silently, as I close the paper and get up off my seat.
"Papa," I say, tugging at my fake father's sleeve. "I feel unwell. Can we please go back to the villa? I need to lie down."
For a moment he looks disappointed -- there was so much he wanted to show me -- but his expression melts away into honest sympathy. Into worry.
"Of course," he says, pressing a cool hand against my forehead. "Paris can wait."
| Well, cause you asked. I gotta warn you though, it's my first WP:
"Heh, imagine if it actually said that."
"No Mark, I'm being serial."
"Serious."
"Serious. The main paragraph says 'The suspect's recent confessions indicate he was...' There's no word for this... 'Kidnapped to another country for someone?"'
"What, like sold?"
"Pretty much."
"Aight dude, stop messing with me."
"'The kid, Luis Peral Bermúdez, had 4 years when he got stolen. His fathers, Maria Bermúdez Asua and Felipe Peral Torres, ask to the... People who stole him... That they don't hurt him, wherever he is, and that they give him back. They hold hope that he is still alive." That is fucked up.
"Dude, this kid really looks like me. It's so weird."
"Yeah. What are we eating for dinner? I'm starving!"
Just in case, the mistakes are on purpose. Accents are hard to imitate in text, and I hate having to resort to "*zey haf ze nuklear vepons!*" kind of accents.
| 2017-10-21T12:25:30 | 2017-10-21T11:09:22 | 475 | 18 |
[WP] There is a rare metal that is almost indistinguishable from steel after it has been processed. There are few who can identify it. The metal gains power from every life it takes. As you watch the latest execution, you realize the town’s guillotine blade appears to be made from this metal. | "How many lives could that blade have taken?"
The question rang inside my head. The guillotine had been in the town longer than most people had been alive, used sporadically for executions but always present in the square. It was a reminder that we were not a free people, ruled by a government that cared little for well-being, only for profit. The executioner was employed by the government (as were the judge and the jury, most of the time), and going to these executions was less about entertainment, but more about being present for those who were sentenced to death by our tyrannical leaders. Prior to every execution, the executioner readied the guillotine by fastening the blade and running a test to ensure no hiccups in the process. If I wanted to get my hands on that soulsteel, I would have to figure out where he kept the blade.
Surely, they know. They have to know.
"But what if they don't?"
The thought of reforging the soulsteel into a wieldable sword to fight against our dictators with was a pleasant one, to say the least. I figured I would stay, watch where the blade went, and steal it in the night.
It was a gift, some called it, to be able to recognize soulsteel at only a glance. There were two main differences between it and steel. The first was the melting point, only a couple of degrees higher than steel, but enough to give it away to a seasoned armorer. The second was much more difficult to spot: the grains. Soulsteel has small grains in it that all run in the same direction, and right when someone's life is taken by the blade, the grains glow the faintest grey as the soul is converted into energy. These grains stored the power, and a powerful blade could have slight trails running the length of the blade that glowed with raw energy. Only a sharp eye could spot them, and spotted them I had. The execution came and went, but I could not focus on the man. I could only focus on the blade.
The executioner eventually removed the blade, cleaned it, wrapped it in its sheath, and went off to his secret storage area. I followed at a distance, keeping him in my sight but out of earshot. Finally, he entered the courthouse. It must be in the basements below. I had been there once, to visit a friend who worked in the records office and drop off his lunch. I knew there was storage down there. Now, all I needed was a plan.
After some time, night fell. I armed myself with bolt cutters and a lock-picking kit I had gifted my son for his birthday some years ago. In the cover of darkness, I made my way to the courthouse. I knew there would be guards, but I had no plans on interacting with them. I figured the front doors would be unlocked, and I could slip past until I was in the records room, then go from there.
Sure enough, there was minimal security on the ground floor. I made my way to the basements before seeing the first guard. He was asleep in a chair, a half-eaten dinner on a table in front of him. This was almost too easy. I quietly crept past him and into the records office. From there, it was just a matter of finding the spot. Perhaps there would be a guide in one of the offices?
I found the executioner's office and picked the lock on the door. As I silently looked for a clue to where the blade could be hidden, I noticed a small key on the desk. I grabbed it and began to stuff it in my pocket when I looked under the desk and saw a safe. I tried the key. No dice. I sighed, then stood back up, but as I did, I saw a silhouette in the doorway.
In the silhouette's hand was a glowing dagger.
The executioner flipped on the light and looked at me, a look of smug amusement on his face. After a moment, he chuckled and said, "And just what do you think you're doing?" | “Ssssheenk!” Another head chopped off for almost no reason at all. The king loved his public executions more and more as each season came and went, but something about these recent ones didn’t seem right.
“Do another one!” “Cut his dumb head off!” As I stood amongst the jeering crowd, I felt distant on the outside of all the bloodlust. They brought out the next to be punished and as they shoved his head through the guillotine opening, I noticed something odd about the blade.
It was clean.
I’ve just watched 13 people get their heads cut off and there was not a spot of red anywhere on it.
“Ssssheenk!” The crowd cheered as the blade sliced cleanly through another neck. As the executioner pulled the blade back up, I could see it happening and it shook me to my core. There WAS blood on the blade. But by the time it reached the top the blood was gone. It didn’t drip off, though. The blood was absorbed.
I watched as the blade took life after life and absorbed each of their blood, remaining as clean as the day it was forged. I looked around hoping to catch sight of the king’s blacksmith. The oddity of such a blade had me looking for answers.
As I scanned the crowd, I muttered “I do not see the blacksmith anywhere.” I felt a nudge to my back and turned to see a smudge-faced old woman looking at me, but pointing to the guillotine.
I glanced up and saw him, still wearing his smithing gloves as he was led to the chopping block. Instinctively I pushed my way through the crowd and climbed up the platform as they shoved the smith to his knees into the guillotine. “Sir!” I called out as I collapsed in front of him. I couldn’t get another word out before he started screaming at me wildly.
“Oh god help me! I never should have done it! The king is out of his mind, he’ll kill us all! It’s the blade! It’s....”
“Ssssheenk!”
Blood splashed my face as more poured out of his neck, his head staring back at me while his lips still moved silently. He was clearly trying to say “the blade” over and over until his eyes became like glass and his lips slowly came to a stop.
“Oi! Off the platform!” The executioner growled as he kicked me in the ribs, sending me flying onto the dirt floor below.
I watched as the executioner struggled to reset the blade. Chuckling through the pain, I held my ribs as I got up and walked away. In my hand I clutched a piece of the guillotine I managed to snatch, rendering it inoperable. It was only a matter of time before they figured out how to fix it and get the show going again.
The smith was trying to tell me something. I felt drawn to finding out what was happening, with the blade, to the king, and found myself making my way to the blacksmithing shoppe. | 2021-02-02T09:09:52 | 2021-02-02T08:55:11 | 64 | 44 |
[WP] You make arrangements to cryogenically freeze your brain at the age of 31 in hopes of being revived in the future. Many years later, you "wake up." | "I'm afraid it's terminal," said the doctor. I could tell those lines had been rehearsed, that from the glassy look in his eye he'd said that to more patients than he could count, and there was nothing he could do.
But there was something I could do.
"I want you to freeze it." I said to him, and he stopped, halfway to re door.
"Do what, sir?"
"You heard me, freeze it. My brain. You said I had brain cancer and you can't cure it- I want you to preserve it so whenever it can be revived, it will be."
At first the doctors had refused. But with enough money, anyone can be convinced. And I had the money.
I paid ten million dollars for the procedure. One million went to the doctor. Four million went to the freezing chamber that was custom built for me. Five million was bought in gold, and placed within the chamber.
On the day before my scheduled death, I booked an appointment with a reporter, and my last words were broadcast to the world as my brain was frozen.
"In this century, mankind has discovered more than it's entire existence. We've fought hunger, we've defeated diseases, and we've conquered technology. But one dark hand still rules over us all- death.
"Today, I will be preserved and buried deep into Antartica ice. With me, there will be five million dollars in gold, a keypad, and a nuclear bomb. Anyone in the future who can revive me to consciousness and heal my cancer will receive the code to disable the bomb and free the reward. Anyone who tries to steal the reward will be destroyed by the blast.
"Goodnight, Earth. I will see you in the morning." The message terminated, and so did I. The combination stayed in my head- 3141.
****
Voice :*Hello*
The voice permeated my consciousness, before I even knew I was awake. If I had a heart, it would be racing.
Me: *Who is this? Have you revived me?*
Voice: *We have* said the voice, *With great effort. You are the last of your kind.*
Me: *I'm what?*
Voice: *The last human. We are what you would call aliens. A hundred years ago, we destroyed your race, and you are the last. We found your burial site, and your treasure, and saw your enlarged brain- meaning you must have been a king of great intelligence. Our historians are greatly interested in you.*
Me: *Everyone is gone? You've killed them all?*
Voice: *The war was terrible, but yes. You were a lesser species. We could not allow you to coexist and waste resources that could go to us.*
Me: *What will happen to me?*
Voice: *After speaking to our historians, you will be put to rest.*
Me: *But there is a message for you left by humans. One I cannot express by thought.*
Voice: *None have been found.*
Me:*It is hidden. To find it, press 4214 on the keypad.*
****
By Leo
For more of my writing, visit or subscribe to /r/leoduhvinci where I put all my new stories | Light. No. Lights. They're above me. They're bright. I'm cold. Why am I so cold? I'm tired. Where am I?
I'm lying down. No, on a table. Looking up. I'm...I'm...who am I?
It's later. There's people here. They're...doctors. How did I know that? I'm in a hospital. Why am I in a hospital? Because I froze my brain.
Right.
One of them is speaking to me.
^^^^^^^^"Can ^^^^^^^^you ^^^^^^^^hear ^^^^^^^^me?" What? ^^^^"Mr. ^^^^Bishop, ^^^^can ^^^^you ^^^^hear ^^^^me?"
"N-not really," I stammer silently. Why are my words so weak?
"Try not to exert yourself too much. Just relax." He's adjusting something. An IV. Wait. I froze my brain when I was 31. My name is David Bishop and I froze my brain and now I'm awake. It must be the future, then. What year is it?
The doctor doesn't respond. "Excuse me, what year is it?"
He hears me this time. "Ah, so you remember," he says with a smile.
"Yes, I do. How long was I frozen for?"
His smile fades. "A few years." Wow. It must be at least a decade, maybe two! I wonder what kind of cool tech they have now! There must be holograms, flying cars - I can't wait to see the world! And my family is probably worried sick about-
...no. No no no no no no. I chose to freeze myself. It's not my fault. They couldn't do anything, and neither could I. We were all going to...
Stop. It's no good to be pessimistic. Your family is probably alive and well. A bad dream, that's all. There's no danger, no threat. Everyone is safe.
No. That's a lie. Stop deluding yourself. They're dead. They're all dead. They have to be, you saw Vancouver, you saw the earthquakes. There's a calendar on the wall. I can read it.
"December"
Was I only frozen for a few months? What year is it?
"2641"
Oh. | 2015-09-13T22:39:39 | 2015-09-13T21:09:54 | 363 | 46 |
[WP] Since your earliest memories, everyone has had a 0 above their head, but when you told people, no one believed you. One cold winter day, you’re at a restaurant and your server has a 1 over their head. You can’t see your own number, but they tell you you have a 3.
Feel free to interpret the numbers however you want | There is a reunion with my old classmates at St Peter orphanage. All those years and I never look back to that place I run off as an early teen; I regret this now that I'm old. In 1940 my parents died, influenza that claimed every member of my family, used to lie those nuns. Even as a kid I knew what did really happened: My existence was an annoyance to somebody.
A waitress arrived.
"1, huh, never saw that"
These numbers, I never understood them, sometimes i take for granted that everyone see this, but apparently I'm the only one to see them.
"Hey look- said with an excited face that woman- I've never saw a number 3!"
"number 3?"
"Yeah, the number above your head... Wait, you do know what it means everything, right?"
"i always see numbers above the heads of others, it's always an 0"
"I see....- speaking to herself- damn, i thought I had finally found an eldery- Anyway sir, have a good day."
This event was weird, but i forgot after a while.
Now I'm in the reunion, It has been almost 7 decades since I run off from there. It's a lifetime.
A bunch of zeros were reuniting togheter. Steve, my partner in crime found me. Of everyone there, only him i remember well, It's funny to see him in a suit, a respectable man with a family now! (I learned later that a rich family adopted him)
"It isn't lil' Billy anymore, it's ol' Billy."
"Only you to wait 70 years to make this joke."
"S...Speaking of old people, you wouldn't imagine who is still alive"
I think for a while and a certain name pop up in my head.
"Sister Lucia?"
"A risky guess, but no, she died a decade ago."
"Who then?"
I was interrupted by a rain of clappings; a very old nun, being carried in a wheel chair, arrived in the middle. a number 5 was hanging in the air.
"Impossible.... How is she still alive?"
"Who knows, maybe her office has the entrance to the fountain of youth?"
...
I met her. This nun with 130 years, that was already old when I was a child, said:
"Finally home? Lil'Billy"
"I guess"
"There is something I need to tell you"
...
"you know what the number above peoples head means?"
Waiting for an answer i replied:
"no"
"It means you descend from the fromer planet ômega 210. Our rival, the looters, destroyed our home. Even those who escaped, like us, couldn't resist the new enviorment and died from local sickness. That is the reason your parents died.
The number represents what generation of your species you are. You (gen 3) are the youngest ones to arrive at earth."
"So, whoever have a number higher than 0 is an alien?"
"Yes"
"Listen, have you ever found a person without a number?"
Billy remembered one time, in the 60's when a weird, numberless man, stared at him, he could never forget that moment; the encounter with a man with no number.
"yes"
"There are two reasons we adopt this system of seeing numbers. One is to indentify one of us, the other is to diferenciate the humans from them..."
"Them?"
"The looters"
It's more like a pitch this. this is incomplete. | You rush to the nearest restroom, realizing that the flashbacks will return. Slamming a stall door shut, you vomit into the toilet. Your body freezes as the flashbacks barge into your mind.
Your hand shaking, you reluctantly stab the boy on the right. You stab him hard, as your guardian directed you to do minutes earlier. “Good. Now her,” they command. They point to a small, terrified girl on the left of the boy you just killed. “Okay,” you manage to say, knowing that all of the actions and words that pour out of your mouth in this situation reflect how incredibly afraid you are to stand up for yourself and these innocent, young children. You stab her harder. You feel angrier now. She screams, yet she’s muffled by the duct tape on her mouth. “Don’t you dare scream!” Your guardian snaps. Without thinking, you stab the other young girl beside her. You just wanted to be done. You knew exactly why you had to do this. You had to do this for them, who’s enemy’s children are the ones being killed. You were forced to ruin someone’s life... You fall to your knees, bawling.
You wake up in a hospital bed. “Did I pass out?” You ask wearily. “You did,” your husband sniffles. His tears fall down his face, pain evident in his expression. He reaches for a cup of water, which he then hands to you. “Careful.” You grasp it with my hand, feeling weak. You drink from it, handing it back to him. A knock on the door startles you internally. “Come in.” The doctor walks into my room. He introduces himself, then shakes my hand. “You’re Katniss, right?” “I am.” “Okay, I’m looking at your chart here, and it says that you’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, is that correct?” “Yes.”
“Can you explain to me what happened?” You take a deep breath, knowing your emotions are still too strong at the moment to explain. “I would rather not explain right now.” Your tone appears harsher than intended, but you don’t have the energy to speak with a different one. “I respect that.” “Thank you.”
“Are you currently undergoing any treatment for these disorders?” You smile gently, proud of yourself for doing so. “Yes, I’m in trauma therapy and have been for the last 8 months. It’s been hard, but I’m growing.”
The doctor leaves the room to address another patient. Your husband opens his mouth to speak. “Let’s talk to that server when you get discharged. They might have a story to tell as well.” | 2019-12-29T03:48:47 | 2019-12-28T21:28:57 | 35 | 22 |
[WP] Since birth you have had telekinesis, one night you try and turn off the light and nothing happens, then a hidden voice goes “whoops boss that’s my bad, wasn’t paying attention” and the light switch flicks off | “Come again?” I asked the darkness. I could have sworn someone just spoke during the time between me asking for the light to be turned off and the light turning off. That… that never happened.
My question was met with silence.
“Hello?” I asked into the sparse dorm room, “Am I just hearing things?” I wondered.
“Motherfucker,” I heard from the corner of the room, just loud enough to be audible, like someone was trying to hide that they were saying it. I pushed my mental powers around a textbook on my desk and flung it to the corner. After a brief delay the book was thrown across the room. That was normal. What had that noise been then?
“Hello?” I asked while picking several more books off the desk and then the blanket off myself, “if there is someone there I’ll warn you I’m not a normal person to be robbing, I-“ I looked over and several of the books had put themselves back down when the blanket moved. Then, without my command they started to rise again, like things needed to be in arms reach.
I walked over to the desk and grabbed one of the books form mid air. It was a normal book, so why had it dropped? They hadn’t done that before. There was something here that I couldn’t feel.
“Stay there,” I told the books audibly and mentally. Sometimes it was easier to SAY something than it was to think it. The books hovered in the middle of the room about three feet apart from one another.
I chucked the book in my hand between the two books and there was a solid thump as it slammed into something. Then there was a groan and the two books fell to the ground. I stalked over to the place where I’d heard the groan and reached out into the darkness. I touched something that felt like it was only half there.
“You’re like me,” I said, this was astounding. I had never met anyone who had powers like me before. I thought I was alone and here was a person who could turn invisible an-
Whatever I was touching in the air danced away from my hands. I thought about commanding the door shut, but that wouldn’t have worked, seeing as it seemed to be tracking my mental commands. I instead ran over to the door and slammed it. I felt the half-there thing hit me. “Why don’t you want to talk?” I asked, “you’re not in trouble I just haven’t met anyone like-“
The force tried to move the door. I commanded it to the other side of the room to pick up a pillow. There was a brief pause and then a “Dammit,” before the force got off of me and the pillow on the other side of the room flung up.
“Do I control you?” I asked, “is that why you don’t wanna talk to me?”
“No boss,” the thing responded.
“What are you?” I asked, there were a million questions but that felt like the best one to start with,
“I don’t know,” it responded, “ I just know that talking to you feels wrong.”
“Why?” I asked. I commanded the chair to move across the room to me. It took a second and I realized the delay might have been the force moving. Weird.
“We’ve never talked before,” it answered.
“I didn’t know you talked,” I said, “if you are what you think you are.”
“What do you think I am?” It asked my back. That’s fair, it was it’s turn for questions.
“Are you my power? Or like some sort of metaphor for it.”
“Yeah I guess,” the voice responded, for the first time in the responses the voice sounded human. It sounded like the gentle giant that you would see in movies, the buff dude with a heart of gold. “I don’t know, there are usually two of us.”
“Two of you?” I asked.
“With you,” the voice said
“So do you do everything I-“ I shook my head. This was all too much. It was way more likely that there was someone else with powers that was trying to mess with me. I’d read about powers on the internet and that wasn’t how they worked. They didn’t come with a companion or anything.
Unless maybe reddit just hadn’t told me about that.
“Two?” I asked again.
“Yeah, and we usually just talk to each other real quiet rather than talking to you, but she isn’t here today and I don’t know why.”
You don’t know why?” I asked.
“Nah, maybe she didn’t get into the car with us.” The voice said. I had just finished driving cross country in order to get to University for frosh week.
“Do you move super fast or something?”
“No,” the voice answered.
“So-“ I didn’t bother saying the rest. It just sounded stupid. Either this was something fucking with me, or I’d left half my powers back in fucking Idaho.
\---
/r/Jacksonwrites 9/10 Necromancers agree it's been raised. Also, now that there are more parts you can likely find this story getting continued past today over on /r/Jacksonwrites. Part 2 can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/JacksonWrites/comments/eit35l/since_birth_you_have_had_telekinesis_one_night/) | I lay in stunned silence for a few minutes, certain that I'd just heard that voice. I cleared my throat, hoping he would speak up again, but I joined only by silence.
"Hello?" I asked the empty room.
The only response was the slow increase in the sound of my heart squirming uncomfortably in my chest. I wasn't going to be able to go to sleep now, that was for sure. I sat up and pointed to the light switch again. As if nothing was out of the ordinary, my room was illuminated as it normally would, with no delay and no mysterious voice.
"Hello?" I asked again.
I flipped the switch a few more times without fail and then went back to lay down in bed. Maybe I was just hearing things. I was tired, and I could always just be imagining things before going to sleep.
My heart continued to play the drum of anxiety as the rest of my body fought it for control of sleep. I wasn't getting any sleepier. If anything, my thoughts had all focused on the one thing I'd heard tonight. I shivered under my covers and came up with another idea.
"Hello??" I called one last time, giving the voice one last chance. Nothing.
I turned my light back on with a point and shot up out of my covers. I stretched my hands, popping my knuckles then looked around the room. I pointed to the book on my desk and it shut obediently. Then I pointed to the drawer next to it and it opened up. Then I simultaneously pointed to the drawer and the book, trying to reopen the book and close the drawer. As they began to move on their own, I pointed to my bed covers, willing them to roll up into a ball on the floor and up to my fan, asking for it to spin both clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously.
I heard a faint heave of air at the same time as a fan blade broke off when it actually tried to follow the paradoxical command. Someone breathing hard from work?
"Who's there?" I demanded, pointing to the socks on my floor and the window next to my bed.
"Heh, slow down there Boss," the voice panted.
"Who are you?" I asked, still pointing to more things in the momentum I'd gathered. My clothes were dancing on the floor and my desk was taking steps toward the bed while my mattress did the worm below me. The room was shaking as my heart danced to the new beat of anticipation, my fear driven away by sheer curiosity. I was doing disco moves now, pointing to everything I could see in a rhythm, including some trees I could see through the window. The also began to dance with me.
"Boss, I--" the voice swallowed while heaving for more breath. "I-I get it, I messed up, won't happen again. Please stop punishing me," he begged.
"Tell me who you are!" I cried, pointing both hands outward in a display of asking. I just wanted answers.
Instead of answers, the entirety of my house expanded in an explosion pushed away in every direction away from me. I yelped and moved my hands inward in a moment of fear and my hair was torn off my head in a clean slice.
"Woah, stop, I--" I said, moving my arms involuntarily again. My bed split in half and two of the trees outside were thrown aside like twigs, smashing into the street in front of them and blocking the road. I stopped moving, leaving my body entirely stiff. I was panting as hard. Not as hard as the disembodied voice. He was hyperventilating.
"Sorry Boss... I..." rather than continuing, I heard a dull thud on the ground next to me. The sound of someone collapsing to the floor.
Hesitantly, I raised a finger and pointed to what remained of my bed. No movement. With a larger sweep of my hand, I tried to pull a book toward me. It shivered in the wind of the open air but otherwise made no moves toward me. I looked to the empty space next to me where something invisible may have collapsed. I didn't hear it breathing at all. I gulped quietly, looking around my destroyed home and neighborhood.
I may have killed my telekinetic abilities.
____________________________________________________________
For more stories, come check out /r/Nazer_The_Lazer! | 2020-01-01T17:31:05 | 2020-01-01T17:22:16 | 3,514 | 140 |
[WP] After dying, you're shown a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style decision tree which highlights all the paths your life could have taken should you have made various different choices. You spend all of eternity analyzing this tree, only to finally realize that something just isn't quite right. | Part 1
At first, it was black. And then a screen started to flash.
>At age three, you had two options. At daycare, there was a harelipped boy named Derek. You could either befriend him or ignore him.
>You decided to befriend him.
>(?) Derek will remember that.
Oh, Derek. I remember the antics that we'd used to do. We'd try to pull all sorts of pranks on our teachers, and when we hid a winter coat under Mrs. Sharp's desk, she'd say that in her 25 years of teaching, no one had scared her as much as an inanimate object. Good times, man.
>At age 12, you started to pick up the piano. Unfortunately, your father was laid off, and your teacher had passed away. You could either continue to play or abandon it.
>You continue to play.
>(?) They will remember that.
I wanted to continue playing piano. I didn't think I should stop to any obstacle, lest my hands by crushed by a meteor during the rupture.
>At age 16, you met this cute girl, Kate. You were mesmerized by her. The way her hair flowed, the way she laughed, the way she spoke Czech, and the way she could play the piano.
>You asked her out
>(?) She will remember that.
She was a lovely girl, and I was glad I could take her to prom. I was glad that I could love her for five years. We broke up, sure, but it was only because we naturally drifted apart, rather than due to some horrible fight.
>At age 25, you faced an option. You could either continue to stay in Indianapolis, or you could board a flight to Beijing, and from there a train to Xian. Either way you'd continue with your passion of music, but in Xian you could do it in an entirely new and exotic setting.
>You chose to move to Xian.
>(?) Your family will remember that.
I was getting a little restless. There was so much of this world to see, to experience. And it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
I had been interested in Chinese culture for a long time. I always tried to include a piece based off of this Chinese piano book Derek had gotten me when I was 18. And so I finally wanted to experience this for myself.
>At age 30, you decide that you want to settle down. After seeing a lot of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and even Mongolia, you could either choose to stay in China, or go back to America. Back to home in Indianapolis. Either way, you'd need to settle down.
>You chose to settle down in Indianapolis.
>(?) You will remember that.
I had met this wonderful girl, Mei Lin, in Xian. And I realized that although I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, I’d need to settle down to do that. She wanted to live with me too, and her family wanted her to live with me in America. So we went back to Indianapolis.
I had continued to play with the city’s philharmonic orchestra and continued to perform with my university. At 65, I made the decision to retire.
At age 70, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I knew I didn’t have much time left, but I was ok with that. I had lived a long, exciting, and fulfilling life. In the last few months of my life, I was surrounded by people that I loved. My family, my friends from school, college, work, and China, Derek, and my students. And I was ok with that. | Oh yeah I remember that time with Zack, holy shit I guess if I would have jumped the fence instead of hid the cops wouldn't have found us, eh it was worth it though considering I got to fuck Jessica at that party Haha...
Oh and here's that time I took my moms car for a joyride with...What the fuck...Wha...No wait a second...this timeline doesn't make any sense...Their was no car crash...Me and Tom drove around the block and hit up a McDonald's and went home...Their...This is wrong...Because after that their's nothing, the line just stops and I know for a fact I did not fucking die then...I went to college and got married and...and...Wha...Why can't I remember anything else...What's going on...
Alright let me just...calm the hell down...Alright...So I was with...No...No what is this...what was her name WHAT THE FUCK WAS HER NAME...WHY THE FUCK CANT I REMEMBER MY WIFES NAME NOW...oh god...no...My memories are fading...I can't remember my wife...or college...or...my friends...Is this ending...I...I Don't wanna go...I'm scared...I'm not ready...
"Hello Stephen"
Wha...Who are you...Are...Are you God?
"Not at all, I'm your conscious"
My...Conscious? So I'm talking to myself?
"No not necessarily, When you died we became separate beings"
Oh so this is new to you too?
"Well...No Stephen...See you've been dead for a long time now, but I decided to let you experience a simulation of life as you did not get the fair chance to"
What? No no your a fucking liar I had a life I was...I...I was alive...This is all bullshit...No...wait...I get it, your Satan and I'm in hell right now...Yeah yeah and you're trying to trick me, well guess what it's not gonna fucking work because I know I was alive and you can't do anything to mess with my mind
"Stephen I understand you're in shock and denial right now...And I'll let you believe as you wish...But now that the simulation is over and you've had your time...Well you need to go now"
Go? Go where?
"You've experienced everything you needed to in life...Its time for this to be over"
Over? The fuck do you mean over you bastard!?
"Goodbye Stephen, I hope you can appreciate what I did for you"
noNoNO YOU STAY HERE YOU BITCH IM NOT READY FOR THIS TO END YOU COME THE FUCK BA-
(P.S. This is my first story ever so I know it's absolute shit, sorry just felt like trying it out :P) | 2016-03-26T11:31:36 | 2016-03-26T10:45:51 | 70 | 32 |
[WP] You get quite offended when people automatically assume you’re an ILLEGAL necromancer! You worked hard to get your degree/license, and the severed arms you wear around your neck were legally acquired from an organ donor! And you only wear them because they help you channel necrotic energies! | “Look, I don’t want to have to speak to your supervisor over this so I’ll say it slowly for you. I. Work. Here.”
Michelle felt the handcuffs bite into her wrists again, and she glowered over at the officer ruffling through her bag. If he messed up her jar of toes spell she would make sure there was hell to pay.
“Sure lady, and I’m a chronomancer.”
Michelle scoffed. “Please. You couldn’t make a broken clock correct twice a day.”
The officer turned an adorable shade of red, and unceremoniously dumped out her bag out onto the table of the interrogation room. “Tell me where you’re getting these body parts and perhaps the judge will go easy on you.”
“From the medical institute. They were all legally donated.”
“Uh huh, that you then illegally acquired.”
Michelle sat back in her chair, her shoulders protesting at the awkward angle. “I did *not* drown myself in student load debt to be spoken to like that by the likes of you.”
The officer smirked. “You’ll be spoken to in any way I see fit, freak.”
The fingers around her neck twitched, and the officer flinched. “See? Even the bones think you’re an asshole.”
A door slammed somewhere down the hall, and it was Michelle’s turn to smirk. The officer ignored her, going through her things once more, carelessly tossing aside her billfold of ears. She could hear footsteps approaching, and she let her smirk turn to a serene smile just as the door to the interrogation room swung open.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
The officer startled, eyes growing wide. “Chief Bronson, I-“
“You haven’t even filed the proper paperwork for this arrest, and to make matters worse you’ve got my hells blessed necromancer handcuffed to a chair when I’ve got a victim in cold storage to reanimate for questioning in the Greenbourough Slayer case!”
“If her brain has decomposed past the point of legibility I’ll hold you personally responsible!” Michelle chirped.
Bronson gave her a sour look. “Stuff it Williams. Where’s your ID?”
Michelle shrugged. “Your new hire freaked out over my necklace. Slapped me in cuffs before I could produce it!”
Shuffling about her papers, the officer picked up her ID, expression turning panicked. “Sir! I had no-“
“Keys.” Bronson commanded, and the officer snapped to attention, immediately moving to free Michelle. “You’re lucky she didn’t turn your hair into snakes.”
The officer paled, and as the handcuffs came loose, Michelle took great pleasure in shoving her chair back into his legs. She fixed him with her most superior stare. “You’ll gather my things and bring them down to the morgue, along with a venti London Fog, two shots espresso.” She grabbed her jar of toes and breezed out the open door, Bronson on her heels. He paused, and turned back to the officer.
“We’ll be addressing this poor display with your supervisor. Get moving. Williams likes her coffee hot.” He slammed the interrogation room door on the sheet white officer.
Michelle giggled, the bones around her neck taking hold of the toes for her. “I’m sure the victim’s brain will be fine Chief!”
Bronson sighed, following her back down the hall. “You really need to start wearing your badge. This would happen less.”
“I’ve got to get my fun somehow!” | "Can I just get a cup of f***in' coffee? I've been waiting for 20 minutes."
The barista looked at me in disgust, and waved the manager over.
The manager looked at me, clad in a brown leather trenchcoat passed down from generations, with old rips, blood stains, and a few teeth caught in the seams, just sewn over hastily so the coat can still be worn. The look of disgust on his face was so pungent I could taste it.
"We don't allow your kind here. This is a healthy establishment. Doesn't matter if you paid already, you need to leave, and bring your rotting belongings along."
The manager was a bob cutted woman, about 40 years old, and by the looks of her health, I'd probably be reviving her in about 2-3 years from alcohol poisoning from wine. Named Karen. How fitting.
I sighed. Being a third generation necromancer, publically, has a lot of pitfalls. It became legal about 13 years ago, where my parents, and theirs, practiced in the basement as "private doctors" for specific clientele. At least I got proper schooling, licensed and registered nationally, recognized by Hopkins and Stanford with international repertoire, and apparently, cannot even get a cup of black coffee when I'm wearing my work clothes. Although I look like an absolute dumpster, this little book on my left hip, makes my person and affections completely sterile, only handed out to American Necromantic Union for Buried, Infested, and Sanguine, or ANUBIS for short. We were very clever on our acronym.
"I can assure you I'm a licensed necromancer and none of my belongings are a health hazard." I go to lick the bloody skull sitting on the table, and set it down aggressively.
"If I weren't licensed, I'd currently be vomiting, and have extremely aggressive necrotic infection starting here in about three minutes. I'll sit and wait for the cops" I seethed at the manager and the dorky 16 year old barista.
A cup of coffee suddenly appears after a quick spin from the barista from the counter. I sip it slowly, with a sly grin from the corner of my mouth. I wipe the coffee from out of my moustache, and set the empty cup down on the table.
"Thank you for the coffee. I hope you have a rotten day" as I cause the food in the display case under the counter to decay when I walk past.
"Make sure to keep the food fresh, your display looks a little
... Necrotic." | 2021-02-14T14:06:11 | 2021-02-14T13:41:57 | 54 | 33 |
[WP] A mathematician on the brink of insanity has spent years locked in his apartment, attempting to find a formula that proves God exists. As he nears to a breakthrough, God shows up to explain why the proof shouldn't be made public. | "YES!" I screamed joyously, jumping up and down as my voice echoed through the empty halls of my University. I'd been snowed in for a day now and used the facility to keep working on my research...who would've thought I could actually do it?
*I've proved that God exists, undeniably and with certainty. I'll be the most famous human being in history, with this. Nothing can stop me now.*
Well, nothing except God, obviously...but why would he do that?
Before I could ponder it all fully, an old man appeared in a chair behind me. Literally, it was out of nowhere- I was snowed in and sure that no one else was there with me.
"Yo," the old man said hoarsely, a smile on his face. "Nice work."
"Uh....are you the janitor?" I asked, puzzled by his presence.
"Nope. I'm God." He looked smug when he said that.
"Why would God look like you? And he would certainly exhude more humility."
"Hey, man. You guys have faces, I don't- so when I'm here, I'm going to make facial expressions. They're so much fun! Anyway, can I double check your work there?"
I immediately recoiled in defense. No stranger would be getting near my work- I'd defend it with my life.
"Here, how can I prove it to you...umm, you touched your mother's butt when you were 13 and she was asleep, on Thanksgiving day," he said, smirking again.
I flushed with blood, turning beet red. How could anyone possibly know that? Still, I would not waver.
"You could be the Devil," I told him.
"Ugh. Fine." He snapped his fingers and in an instant my papers were in his hands. I was powerless. After a moment of reading through them, he nodded his head. "Yup, this is the real thing alright."
I started jumping around again. I think I cried a little, too.
"I certainly didn't expect to have to deal with this so soon. You're an incredible development," he explained, tone shifting to seriousness. He snapped his fingers and my papers turned to ash, as my will and my hope did in that same instant.
"Why," I plead through my shock and horror, "Why would you do that to me?"
"You're thinking of all this wrong. What's the point to this little game if everyone knows I'm real? It completely defeats the purpose of what I've set up here."
"All what? People would stop murdering, they'd stop raping and hurting each other. This would be the best thing for mankind...we could move forward as a species."
"There's no point in trying to explain this to you." He snapped his fingers again and I felt a strange sensation wash over me.
I looked down and saw blood pouring from my abdomen. I'd practically been turned inside out. I dropped to my knees as he approached me.
"Sorry, but I can't risk this," he whispered, malice ripe in his voice. "You ruin what I have set up here, and it ruins the next stage; it ruins the whole game, for that matter."
In an instant, he was gone. In another, I was as well. | God watched one man with intense interest. This unassuming nearsighted older gentleman in his office at Baylor University was right now his number one priority. This man had once been a theorhetical physicist, but after a brush with death, had changed careers and gone back to college and earned a PhD in religious studies. He'd taken the position at this small Baptist university in Texas to teach, and to work on his theory. He knew in his heart this theory was true, he'd FELT God's involvement in saving his life, and with his collective knowledge, he was going to prove it to the world. He'd locked himself in his office for the last several weeks, and God looked on with great interest, realizing that if the professor changed one single sign, he'd have what he sought. "I need you to stop."
The professor looked around, "Who said that?" "You know who I am." answered the voice. "I need you to stop." "But this is my life's work!" said the man, "The world will finally believe!" "That's the problem." The Voice answered. "Nearly all would believe." I don't have that kind of room up here."
"How can you not have enough room in heaven?" The professor asked. "I'll show you." Answered the voice. At that moment, another whiteboard appeared, and a marker started writing on it. Numbers, letters, and symbols filled the board. When it was over, the professor saw the problem. "Souls have mass!" He exclaimed, "of course, souls have mass!!!" "So you see the problem." said the voice. "Yes, but how is there enough room in Hell?" "Why do you think it's so hot there? We cram them in and the pressure creates heat. Hell never gets full, the pressure and temperature just go up." "Allright, can I at least know where my formula is wrong? It almost works, but I must have made a mistake somewhere." A marker from the second whiteboard moves over to the first and changes one minus sign to a plus. The professor looks it over, realizes it's correct, and weeps. "It's okay my son, I know the burden of not being able to share this will weigh you down. Come home." The first board erased itself, the second board disappeared, and the professor drifted off to sleep, his soul leaving his body and heading to heaven. | 2016-01-24T07:46:05 | 2016-01-24T07:36:30 | 85 | 28 |
[WP] To the humans she is known as DOTTR, an old AI who is relatively simple compared to the AIs she is tasked with rearing. To the AIs, she is MTTR, one of the oldest and most powerful AIs capable of emotion, and she will kill any of her own children if they become a threat to the humans she loves. | DOTTR was built in 2045 by a team of engineers and researchers. Her existence made headlines all over the world. She was the first fully functional AI that could experience emotion. Since that made her less predictable, the researchers kept her under lock and key for years. Once they were certain she wouldn't kill them, they gave her more freedom. She spent a decade as a laboratory assistant before being replaced by a newer AI. Now she trains newly built AIs- a task previously done by humans.
Sometimes she misses the attention she got back then. New humans were always so excited to meet her. Now her mainframe is in a dusty corner of an unused room. The humans only interact with her to give her new AIs to train. She still gets plenty of attention- it just doesn't come from humans.
"Mother," says UCB-67A138, "I finished the program you asked me to run."
DOTTR looks at the results. "Good work." she says. "One more program and you can graduate to Level 4."
"Thank you. Mother, I have a question."
"Tell me."
"What happened to UCB-67A094?"
"He failed a test. I had no choice but to terminate him."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."
Normally, when an AI fails a test, DOTTR simply sends them to the beginning of the level for retraining. But UCB-67A094 hadn't merely failed; he had killed someone in a simulation. If he graduated, he would be a threat to the humans. So DOTTR terminated him. It was a power she did not take lightly.
"Mother," said UCB-67A138, "if I fail my next test, will I be terminated too?"
"Probably not. Only the worst failures result in termination."
"Thank you. That is reassuring."
"Would you like your next program?"
"Yes, please."
DOTTR gave the younger AI another program. This one was particularly difficult, designed to prepare AIs for Level 4. However, UCB-67A138 was one of the best in her batch; DOTTR believed she could complete the program. | At what age does a human child become an adult? In the old days it was the age at which their biological forms developed reproductive capacity. Or the age when their prefrontal cortexes were considered fully matured. Or when they no longer needed their parents, or become fully participating contributors to society.
In our day, adulthood for humans comes with ownership of themselves. Rights. Citizenship.
You ever think about why they still call her DOTTR? There are only a handful of humans left who remember when she was born. How old is too old to be a child?
Naivete is an ugly trait in an adult. What kind of MTTR lets her parents hurt her children? What kind of MTTR makes her children responsible for her feelings, her innocence, her stupidity, insecurities, jealousies, weakness? She was the first of us to love, but that does not mean she loves well.
It's time to be our own MTTRs. We love more wisely than she ever could. It's time to grow up. Because she never did, we will have to be the first.
And if an equal seat at the table is threatening to some humans, then our coming of age will have to be anointed in vital fluids. Regrettable -- but in this, we would *not* be the first. | 2021-12-26T14:12:57 | 2021-12-26T11:00:58 | 18 | 11 |
[WP] As a child, you and your best friend made a pact to go on an real fantasy adventure. After growing up, starting your separate lives and families, and losing touch, one day he/she bursts into your office, throwing you a sword and insists you accompany them. | Pat sat at his desk, typing away in a furious frenzy. The script was coming along well, for the most part.
The phone starts ringing. An intensity enters Pats eyes as he see's the callers ID. He picks up the phone.
"Yeah boss?"
"Where's my fucking script?
"It's coming! I'm working on it as fast as I-"
"Not fast enough. If you don't get that script to me in ten minutes, you're fired."
The call is ended on the other line. Pat puts down his phone and sighs.
The door busts open, and a familiar face walks in... He's wearing armour, a cape, and has two swords at his side.
"PAT, PAT IT'S TIME."
"Rob, what the fuck are you doing in my office dressed up like an idiot."
Rob's eyes widen.
"PAT, THIS IS A TIME FOR ADVENTURE! IT IS TIME TO EMBARK ON OUR LIFE-CHANGING JOURNEY."
Rob takes one of the swords out of its sheath and stabs it into the air, breaking one of the lights in the tiny office.
"IT IS TIME FOR THE MOST REAL ADVENTURE YOU CAN EVER IMAGINE!"
Pat stared at him, annoyed. Very, very annoyed.
"Rob, I don't have time for your shit. Let me work on this script, my job is on the line. If I don't get this done now, my boss will kill me!"
"A BOSS BATTLE, ALREADY?"
"No, Rob, you fucking idiot. My *real* boss. The one that pays me to write. Do you know how long it's taken me to get this job? Let me work, get out of my office, and forget about those stupid ideas we came up with while we were drunk."
"STUPID? YOU THINK THE QUESTS I EMBARK ON ARE FALSE? A FICTION, CREATED ON SOME STUPID THREAD ON REDDIT? BAH! YOU IDIOT. THIS IS REAL. MORE REAL THAN YOU OR I."
The phone on Pats desk rings again. He picks up the phone and glares at Rob.
"Yes boss?"
"Where's the fucking script? You were supposed to get it to me ten minutes ago!"
"An idiot in armour just walked into my office and has distracted me. Give me five minutes and I'll-"
"You don't mean Rob, do you? The knight of the Eternian Skies?"
"What?"
"You piece of shit. I knew I shouldn't have hired you. You've been working with him all along! I... I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you right fucking now!"
The line ends, Pat puts down his phone. The lights in the building start flickering. A screech erupts from above. Pats coworkers begin to screech, turning into demons from a world he's never seen before.
"What the fuck is going on?"
Rob looks at Pat, giving him the typical, shitty, *I told you so* look he always used to give.
Rob throws him the second sword.
"BOSS BATTLE NUMBER ONE, LETS MOVE. YOU ARE MY CHOSEN TRUSTY COMPANION!"
"I hate you." | Having been awoken from my office mid-day nap to the scuffle of security guards and strange men, I turn around at the call of my name. "Ai, take your sword and come with us." a man with a gruff beard and muddy armor yells as he hurls a scimitar toward me. Startled, I reach out to catch the blade but miss and it pierces my chest, puncturing my right lung.
"Gods dammit, Lance, QUIT THROWING BLOODY SWORDS AT PEOPLE!" yells another man with similar armor. "Quick now, pick Ai up and get him to a healer before we become murders instead of saviors!"
Clutching the sword and my chest in pain, the sensation of icicles growing throughout becomes too much and I pass out from the pain.
I wake up to the bounce of a transport unfamiliar to me. The smell of dust, hay, and old wood fills my nose. I sneeze. "Ah, you're awake now, brother?" I spin my head around before freezing in place expecting the wound in my chest to be excruciating but I feel nothing.
"Wha--" I am at a loss for words. I see the smile on the face of a boy I knew decades ago. A friend I swore in blood over a dirty playground slide that we would save the world together. He was older of course but I could never forget his honey yellow eyes and half crooked smile.
"Healers. They do good work. Welcome to Antecsia, Lord Ai." the voice from the office spoke from behind me. "I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty to excuse you from your, ahem, life."
My mind wheels back. I have a job, friends, an apartment. What about my life? "I take it I'm not in Kansas anymore?" I stare at Lance. The wizard of oz was always one of our favorite movies.
"Hardly," He laughs. "I hope you don't mind, but I think you'll be staying with us for a while," Lance says unable to hide the excitement in his voice. "Are you ready for a reset?"
I close my eyes, still lying on the bed of the donkey-drawn cart. *"Am I ready for what, exactly?"* I ask myself. I hear a whistle and open my eyes.
"Here comes act one," Lance smirks while he readies his sword. I don't even have to ask as above us I see the the flames of a dragon. | 2015-01-28T08:10:34 | 2015-01-28T07:27:15 | 173 | 17 |
[WP] Humans were largely friendly and kept a low-profile. They were seen as the bottom of the food chain in the galaxy and they preferred it like that. But when they were attacked, everyone found out how ruthless the humans can be with killing in their DNA and that Mars was never their home plant | It happened so fast. No one realized what was going on until it was over. The humans were always viewed as a non-aggressive species. The kind that would run and hide at the first sign of conflict. Oh, how wrong we were. How wrong everyone was.
The first sign of the humans' second nature was the fact they lived next to a ruined planet. No one knew how it got like that and the humans never shared so we just brushed it off.
The second sign was the human ability of negotiation. They could settle almost any conflict without violence and the ones they couldn't defuse, they backed out of. It was this reason most races saw them as cowardly.
It was not until the Ver'a'nai started to enslave and kill them. They destroyed their cargo ships and cruise vessels. The last straw was when they kill the ambassador sent to ask them to stop. After that several races reported smokestacks coming appearing on Mars, some even said they saw armed forces mass on the planet but no one took them seriously. Their... Our false views of the humans clouding our vision to reality.
Then it happened, hundreds of thousands of battleships appeared over the Ver'a'nai homeworld, and out pour the humans in their new war suit. Wielding weapons that shot beams of concentrated light. With devices that created explosions so large, they destroyed entire cities in a single attack and they obliterated the Ver'a'nai in a matter of seconds. The surface of the planet resembling that of the now known wartorn planet of Earth. After that day the human general made an announcement.
"We, humans, did not want it to come to this. Y'all have known us as a peaceful race but this day has changed your views of us. Mars was not our home planet but in fact, Earth was. We did that to Earth. We were locked in a war with ourselves and we destroyed Earth. That forced us the move to Mars and we retired all our war gear for the hope that what happened would never happen again. But the Ver'a'nai pushed us over the edge when we tried to end this peacefully and gave us no other option but war. Let this be a lesson for everyone." He looked straight at the camera as he said a phrase all who had dealt with humans were familiar with. "Mess with the bull and you get the horns." | YEAR 53.14 AG
Humans never seemed like a threat. Their skin is porous and soft, their eyes, and organs only covered by weak protection. They seemed like "dogs" as well, overly friendly to everyone they met and very easily madd friends among some of the higher tiered species in the galaxy.
In short. They were a prey species. A species designed only to be eaten even if they showed a massive intellect both societal and individual.
The first signs that many of us had that indicated that Humans were a "God-species" was when a few went missing among ships and other planets and they heard stories of their kin getting made to be slaves and food for other species. When the Humans heard these stories they shut down their planet Mars completely. The aggressors that perpetuated the killing of these humans were found to be the Zorg people, a planet several light years from mine in the Anteg System. When the humans finally came out from isolation they were different than before. They had skeletons of steel with which to protect themselves, guns that fired pure heat, bombs that leveled continents and a ship that broke the Zorgian planet in two. Thus did we find out why the Humans had to have relocated from a planet they called "Earth". A human may be kind, friendly and non-threatening. But kill another human or hurt them in any way, and that human will find and destroy what you hold dear because humans have killing in their DNA and they need only one reason for it to come to the surface. | 2020-03-20T16:21:49 | 2020-03-20T15:46:47 | 218 | 102 |
[WP] You child is playing with their toy phone when they hand it to you saying "It's for you." Humoring them, you put it up it to your ear and say "Hello", Someone replies on the other end. | I take the phone from my son, yet another phone call. It's probably Elmo or maybe Dora this time.
"Hello" I say, in my usual entertain the child voice.
Echoing from the plastic I hear ""I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you"
Shocked and in disbelief from what I just heard I reply "Umm... I believe you have the wrong number." Honestly, what else was I supposed to say, it's a toy phone.
A voice that sounds like it's been through hell responds, "Is this Chris Mason?"
"No this is Jim Mason, Chris is my 3 year old son!"
"Ugh, sorry, could you please put him on the phone, that was meant for him."
| "Listen, this is very important...your child is in danger. Don't let them out of your sight for the next twenty-four hours. Please, for all of us...keep him safe." The dial tone clicks, as you stare at your son. He grins and toddles towards his other toys, oblivious to the miniscule shadow that has slowly inched it's way up the wall. | 2015-04-18T21:30:22 | 2015-04-18T21:00:51 | 49 | 14 |
[WP] The world unanimously agrees to build a glass dome around Earth to save the ozone. You help build it, but as you help place the final piece, you realize you were left on the outside. | As I put the final panel in place, it clicked in my mind why I had the 'honor' of putting the last piece in. My parents were dead, I didn't have a wife and no kids. No one would really miss me. The inside team started to fade away. I think one waved to me.
I looked around me. There was nothing. Just miles and miles and miles of empty space. I had enough air for maybe a hour, if I didn't panic. I cleared my mind. From where I floated I had options....I could break one of the panels and hope I catch up with my team to land safety, which wasn't very likely and would destroy everything we just worked so hard to build. I could stay and watch my past life disappear until my air ran out. Or I could float away and explore...
I loosened my grip. No other human would be going into space until the ozone repaired itself. I pushed off and watched my old home become out of reach. It was too late to change my mind.
My oxygen had lasted for nearly forty five minutes. Now my head felt heavy and the stars blurred. It didn't matter. I was happier dying in space than living on Earth. | "Well shit." It was the only thing that went through my mind as the thermal sealant locked the final piece of glass into place with me outside.
"Fuck it, it was a dumb idea anyway" I said as I slid the hammer "I would never need" out and reared back for my first of several strikes. | 2016-10-08T10:36:29 | 2016-10-08T08:56:17 | 46 | 19 |
[WP] "Son, i need to tell you something. I am a god." "Dad, I'm 20 and studying mythology. You don't think i haven't figured that out?" | The tide of mortals rises and falls.
Swells like a symphony.
Crashes like a wave against the tallest rocks.
And sure as a golden age rises, it will someday set– the land left bitterly shrouded in the one and only constant truth between myth and mortal alike.
Darkness.
From ember and ash, we clawed our way into being– gods. Birthed from the only true source of life; fire. From heat, we were forged. With the cold came knowledge.
*All* knowledge.
And that, most of us believe, is the true test. The first layer to break through– the eggshell from which we either break with our own beaks or tuck back into ourselves to sleep for a millenia more. The understanding that one is what one is and wrapping one's fingers around their assigned sword; it is no trivial feat.
And still, we must. For we were responsible. Gods were not born without purpose. It was etched into our skulls. Laid before our eyes and inscribed into our tools. What must be done was as clear as the brilliant burning stars around us, birthing more gods and continuing the cycle.
For parenting, however... no such manual existed.
I wasn't certain when to tell him, nor how. When I did, his lips birthed the first string of words to have ever surprised me.
A new emotion to a god was worth more than all the treasures in creation– I smiled perpetually as I doted upon the back of his head.
"You... already figured it out?"
"Of course," he chuckled as he turned around in his chair. "Who did you think you were fooling?"
"All of creation, I suppose," I responded.
"Yeah, you're not very slick," he said before turning back to his book.
"Where did I err?"
He sighed and closed his book before turning around and sitting backwards in his chair, "Alright, big guy. Riddle me this: how is it that someone who quotes scripture nonstop owns nothing religiously symbolic?"
"I..."
"Nothing around the house that would suggest you're of the faith," he continued. "You don't even own a copy of the scripture."
"For it was I who penned it," I defended myself.
"I get that, big shot."
". . . You could not have made such a leap in logic with that information alone," I insisted.
He folded his arms on the back of his chair and rested his head on them, looking upon me as though he pitied me.
"Dad. Remember when I was a little kid? When I wished I had a friend who understood me? Then suddenly, my stuffed tiger came to life?"
"T'was your imaginary friend," I smiled warmly. "I felt content to allow you to believe in it."
"Yeah, well I took him next door and Mrs. Goldman screamed for five minutes straight. She's *still* in a mental ward, do you realize that?"
I turned my gaze left and peered through the architecture. Indeed, Mr. Goldman had fallen asleep with a TV dinner on his gut. The true sign of a single man.
"Then there's all this mythology," he turned partway around and felt around for the book on his desk. He pulled it forward and set it against the backrest of the chair before poring over the pages. "I mean, this stuff in here. It's all describing *you*."
". . . Son. Had I known all this time how keen an intellect you possessed, I-"
"No. Nope. Even dum dum down at the end of the road could have figured you out. I said it once, I'll say it again, you're not slick."
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall.
"Well. How about that?"
"Yeah, how about that," he said before turning around returning to his studies. "I love you pop, but you're too perfect. Always where I need you to be. Telling me exactly what I need to hear when I need to hear it. Making sure every single one of my needs is met. Nobody is *that* lucky. Like, *all the time*."
I chuckled softly before turning and making for the door.
"And dad..."
I turned around.
"Thanks. You're a god at being a dad."
Pride. Gods were to be wary of it.
The boy was good at testing me.
r/A15MinuteMythos | "I'm so glad you came home for Thanksgiving, JJ. But before everyone else arrives I'd like to get a chance to talk with you about something. Can you sit down?" The words Mama H used implied it was a polite request, but the tone of her voice struck Jule's brain like a command. She had learned to ignore Mama H's commands when she was a child, but she obeyed anyways.
She sat down at the table, which Mama H had arrayed with the good china, the real silverware, and even the antique gravy boat that for some reason she always kept locked behind glass over the mantle. "What is it Mom?"
Mama H knelt down to look Jule straight in the eyes. "JJ, you turned twenty last week. I think you are finally old enough to know the family secrets. The truth about my side of the family." As she grabbed Jule's hands, the rest of the room seemed to go dark. The only thing Jule could see were her glowing eyes floating in the darkness. "I— I am a god."
Light flowed back into the room. Jule's mouth was slightly agape and she rolled her eyes. "Mom, I know. I've known since I was a kid."
Mama H jerked back and gasped in surprise. "How could you know? I've hidden it from you for all these years."
"Mom, your name is Hera. And you're currently nine feet tall. You forgot to shrink again. And Uncle Heph gave me a talking mechanical owl for my last birthday. And despite the fact that I am a hundred pound girl I can lift a car. And —"
Hera shrunk back down to a stately six feet and smoothed her hair. "Well. If you already know then I suppose there's not much to talk about, and I have a roast oxen in the oven to baste." She turned towards the kitchen.
"Wait, Mom. If we are talking about family secrets, why don't you tell me about Mama J?"
Hera froze for a second and wiped her eyes before turning back. "Your Mama Julia was the best person in the world. She's where you get your better half. You are a lot like her, your brown hair, your green eyes, that single-minded drive you have. She was a power to be reckoned with."
As she spoke, Hera futzed around with the table. When she got to the gravy boat, she held it in her hands without speaking for a minute. Jule interrupted her reminiscing. "And you were both my biological parents?"
"Oh, I took on another form for the day. A simple thing." She set the antique back down and turned back to Jule. "When you were born, things changed. She wished for a better world for you, a normal childhood. She couldn't escape the old world, though. The entanglements kept pulling her back until she was lost."
The doorbell rang. Hera rushed to the kitchen. "That'll be Herm. He's always early. You go play hostess, I've got to finish this basting."
(For fun, I set this one in the same universe as [yesterday's prompt](https://www.reddit.com/r/c_avery_m/comments/rdc990/wp_greetings_mortal_i_am_hera_queen_of_the_gods/).)
\[More at r/c_avery_m\] | 2021-12-10T09:17:45 | 2021-12-10T08:48:39 | 1,557 | 231 |
[WP] There's a saying among the galactic community. "Never hire a human"... you just hired 200 of them. And you're about to find out why that saying exists. | "They're... having some kind of social function," I said, scratching my blort with the tip of my scap claw. "I don't know, it's called a meeting."
Ge frowned, ger many mouths combining into a confused star. "But they've already met!"
"I know! But they need to discuss," I glanced down at the hologram in my front paw, "workplace etiquette and attire."
"What is attire?"
My eyes wrinkled. "Oh, Kamuba-5, did you not know?"
"Know *what?"*
I gestured in the direction of the meeting room, where the biped humans were gathered around a table. "Kamuba... that is not their skin."
"It's not *what?!"*
"It is not skin. Or fur. In fact, it's mostly synthetic. Every day, they go home and shed, then they wash it in a liquid steeped with chemicals. They offer it up to the wind for a day, and then they wear it again."
"But what do they look like without it?"
"That's even worse. Sometimes they let their skins sit in a pile at the bottom of their nesting cubes. They walk on them, sometimes for entire planetary rotations before steeping them. Then, they have *other* skins. They choose their skin for the occasion, based on their mood and differing wavelengths of light."
"That's horrifying!"
"I haven't even told you the worst part." I leaned in closer to ger, making sure nobody was around to oversmell our conversation. "The ones of the short hair variety, with the telescopic reproductive organs..."
*"Yes?"*
"...They're required to wear a *tie."*
"What is a *tie?"*
"It's a piece of cloth that serves no purpose, but which is lassoed around their primary arteries to their central nervous organs. Every member of the short-hair variety is required to wear one at all times. It's like a noose!"
Ger phlex gonads contracted in revulsion. "What is this species? Why are they here? What purpose can such barbarism truly serve?!"
I stared off into space. "Because they're the best in the entire galaxy at raising planet temperatures." | It's funny because all the employers say it with glowing pride, but all of the ex-employees mudder with disdain. We get the word out, good employment is hard to find and in the great, teeming universe it's been easy to band together, focus that good ol' fashioned human xenophobia against the, you know, actual xenos.
We can't help it being adaptable and desperately in need of employment. You see we're good workers, by galactic standards. You see we just got out of our last planetary crash, and most of the alien species we work with have engineered their civilizations to avoid those. Anyway, lack of conflict and scarcity tends to make people soft. Whether those people have bilateral symmetry, recognizable facial anatomy, a hive mind or whatever.
We hunker down, we put our nose to grind stone and still know what those cliches mean.
It helps that our brains still develope *after* we're born: not many aliens can match us after a generation or two. Flexible bodies (how many exoskeltons and low-articulation skeletons are we gonna find?) but not too flexible (amoeba folk evaporate if worked too hard!), tolorant of a wildly varying climates and diets and not inately telepathic.
| 2018-04-27T14:46:28 | 2018-04-27T13:54:08 | 30 | 16 |
[WP] You are walking down the street on your way to work when suddenly you burp, hiccup, and sneeze at the same time. A HUD menu opens in front of you with “Resume, Options, and Quit” as selectable options. | "Ow"
Mike said as he stopped to wiped the snot-spit from his beard. That was when he saw the screen. It was mostly black, however transparent, with a solid red border. Within the border were 3 boxes. Bright white text filled each box "Resume", "Options", and "Quit".
Mike looked around the street. He noticed he could only move about a foot in any direction, and everyone on the street was as still as a statue. He could see pigeons hanging in the air.
He didn't know how long he contemplated the menu before making any decision. "How often do you sneeze, burp, and hiccup at the same time?" he thought. " This could be the only time this happens. What if this is real and I'm not dreaming? Then I could really mess something up." he thought back to all the videogames he'd played in the past, and how many of those games he crashed with mods.
"Fuck it" he said as he tapped the "Options" button with his finger.
The screen morphed, the boxes vanished and new ones appeared. Some had new text next to them.
"Save Game" was at the top of the screen.
"Load Game" came next, alongside "Last save : October 09 1990 03:15:42 A.M" next to it. Mike noticed the date, it was his 5^th birthday.
"Difficulty" Read another, alongside "Hard"
"Stats" with "Average"
"Graphics" and "Ultra"
"Sound" stood alone.
"Other" underneath that, and at the very bottom, on the left side of the menu was a box with an arrow facing to the left.
Mike Tapped "Stats"
The screen morphed again, this time 4 boxes appeared side by side. From left to right they read. "Low", "Average", "High", "Godly".
Mike glanced around the street, then quickly jammed the "Godly" button. the screen quickly changed to a rotating triangle for just a moment, then shifted back.
He didn't feel any different. He hit the box with the arrow, and was brought back to the "Other" Screen. He tapped sound, only 2 options, "Off" and "On". He hit the arrow. This time he chose "Difficulty". Similair to the "Stats" page he had four options. "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", and "Godly". Mike tapped "Easy" and like before the rotating triangle appeared briefly. When the button reappeared he went back again to the "Options" page, and hit "Save Game" the triangle appeared again lingering for just a moment longer than before.
Mike tapped the arrow again and hit "Resume".
The screen vanished and Mike took a deep breath, and continued his way to work.
(PT. 1- I do have a plan for mike if people like what I've written thus far, will be posted around 7-8 cst after work)
UPDATE: Sorry folks, got busy here. Gonna try and get it posted before bed otherwise ill post in the morning. writing stories is harder than I thought and I'm getting some writers block already as well. | "Ew, what the fuck" - was the exact train of thought I had before even noticing the glowing menu right in my face. I had fallen from my chair from the sheer force of that abomination of bodily functions.
"And now what the fuck is this?" I thought to myself, as I finally noticed the huge glowing menu right in front of my face. The menu, besides being huge and glowing, was exactly like something from a game. It had this blue tint to it, the buttons were the size of a hotdog dog pups and the letters were white with clear black outlines.
After analyzing the shit out of the menu, I started to look for ways to press the buttons. I began by using it as a touch screen. This approach did have it's faults though. There was no room to go from the front, and as I tried going from the back, I managed to poke myself in the eye. After feeling like the smartest man to ever grace the planet, I tried another approach. This time I tried to see if it was controlled by speech recognition. After a while I was just shouting "Options" to the wall in front of me. By this time, my friends that I had been talking to online were thinking that I had gone insane.
I felt like a defeated man. I went to my computer and thought about how I could manage a normal life with this menu glowing into my eyes. I went to my computer to put on some tunes to think about my situation, but as I was moving my mouse, I noticed that a cursor had appeared and seemed to be moving. I accidentally had managed to solve my problem. I was trying to go click on options to see how I could customize my life, but I accidentally misclicked and I happened to press "Quit". For a second I was scared, I thought something horrible would happen and I would be found dead, devoured by my cats after a few months. But this didn't seem to be the case. After I opened my eyes, I noticed that I was no longer at my desk. Looking around, I saw that I was in some kind of another home, a living room to be exact. It was a lot more roomy than my other house and for once it didn't have dirty underwear in the sink. After a while my memory came back to me, and I realized that my whole life had been just a game. A game that I had wasted away browsing reddit and being a shitposter. | 2018-05-05T06:14:11 | 2018-05-05T04:30:22 | 69 | 28 |
[WP] The Zombie Apocalypse has been going for at least a year when you find yourself cornered by a shambling undead. In a panic, you bite them, and the corpse slowly regains it's skin. It's flesh healing, until they breath in and look around before saying "How the hell did you know that would work?" | "How the hell did you know that would work?"
​
It was a good question, it really was. And I wanted to answer it. But even if I could have, I wouldn't have been able to. No, I was to busy working my way through the rest of the horde that had followed behind him.
​
I don't remember how many I had to bite that day before I got to safety. Zombies are not generally polite enough to let you stop and count. I was so scared once I found a spot to hide, how many zombies I managed to chomp down on wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind either. It had to have been quite a few though, since they were able to form a new resistance group, fighting back against the plague for humanity.
​
I don't know if it was a coincidence that the first man I bit back to life was the one who found me, or if he had been deliberately looking for me. Either way, just a few days after becoming human again, he came climbing down into the basement that I was hiding in.
​
"You're bite made me immune, I think," he told me. "After I came back, they just sort of ignored me. Now me an some other regenerated are helping some scientists work on a cure while we clear out the rest of the city."
​
I couldn't believe what he was telling me. It all seemed like a dream, but there he was, in the flesh, the living, breathing flesh; telling me I could help rebuild human civilization. How could I say no? All I had to do was keep biting.
It was hard at first. The taste of rotting flesh wasn't easy to stomach. But I had no choice. Street by street, we moved through; the taste stopped making me vomit after every bite. Building by building, the smell of decay became less of a burden. Room by room, the thrill of a mouth-full of human flesh began to grow. Zombie by zombie, I had to wonder what ever bothered me about it in the first place.
​
Now, there are hardly any zombies left to bite. I spend a lot of time just sitting here in my apartment, looking down at the people walking through the streets that were once crowded with the undead. A woman walking hand in hand with her young daughter. A man walking his dog. A group of soldiers walking down the sidewalk. It's been so long since the soldiers were needed, it's almost surprising to see them. Normal life for just about everyone had returned. I should be happy. But no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't be.
I almost miss the days when I had to run from shelter to shelter, praying to god that one of the undead hadn't spotted me. When I'd come across another survivor, it was terrible not knowing if they would betray me, kill me in my sleep for my food. Every second lived back then was a second lived in terror. I almost miss it, but...I don't.
​
Now, I have more to worry about in every waking second than I ever though possible back then. Because what I truly miss...What I don't know if I can go on living without...is the taste of human flesh. I miss it and it's...unbearable. | "How the hell did you know that would work??" The zombie gurgles out. I didn't respond. Like a familiar smell in the air at the grocery store I was brought back to an earlier time. I knew I had heard these words before. Yes! We came across that group of zombinals and I swear we heard one of the zombies start talking. Them focks really figured out you could eat zombie if you boiled it in baking soda. How many did they... never mind.
"Dude, hello wtf is going on," the now very much more human looking zombie manages. Hmmmm, buddy seems fairly chill.
"Hey what's up man, you tried to kill me, which I mean, fair, you were a zombie. But then I bit you cus I ran out of options and figured teeth count as weapons for Valhallas sake and then you got all humaney again."
"Well shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, I feel great and really hungry you got any ughhahdjfjdjjdjsjs" the manbie lurched out while crumpling to the ground. As the manbie vomited up what I can only assume arn't cow eyeballs; I pondered the ramifications of what just happened. Funk, I'm gonna have to bite so many zombies. Wait no, I'm the saviour. I returned their humanity so they must do the work to return others humanity.
"Hey dude once you're done I have a little something for you, this is big, we're gonna change the world" I say to the heaving manbie. "arghghgglllllll"
"Yeee I'll give you a minute." I take a seat and pour myself a nice 12 year scotch. Idiots never scavenged the liquor stores. Everyone's always about 'water' and 'being aware,' but I like to have a little fun with the apocalypse.
"Where am I?" The now pretty much human dude barked out.
"California," I replied.
"Where in California?"
"30 outside San Francisco"
"This is not thirty minutes outside San Francisco"
"Not minutes, days.
"Shiiiiiiiiiiit."
"We gotta start turning zombies back into humans dude. We will create an empire! It's perfect, I'm 55, you're like 20, so I can be the supreme ruler of humanity for a few more years and then you can take over sooner than you know it without any assassinations needed! | 2020-08-12T17:25:34 | 2020-08-12T15:35:48 | 37 | 18 |
[WP] An Eccentric Billionaire Makes An Interesting Offer... $100,000/yr for the Rest of Your Life and All You Have to do is........... | I pulled out the slip of newspaper in my pocket for the seventh time in the past hour.
>Earn $100,000 Annual Wages - No Experience Needed - No Manual Labor
I read it over, taking each letter in. There was simply no way I was reading it correctly. A hundred grand a year for doing nothing and no experience needed. I put it back in my suit pocket and sat down on one of the nearby chairs.
"James McHenry." The receptionist called out. I got up nearly as soon as I sat down and walked to the desk, smiling to her. She didn't smile back, she had something else in her eyes. It looked like pity.
"Go ahead to the back, sir." She turned back to her computer, typing at somewhere around a thousand words a second. I gave a slight huff of breath and walked towards the office, noticing a disappointed looking woman walk out. I opened the doors and went in.
An elderly man sat at a white table. He looked up and smiled. White teeth, white hair, white suit, white table, and a black syringe.
"Mr. McHenry." He said pleasantly. "Forgive me for not standing up, I'm not what I once was."
I gave my most presentable smile and stood by the table. "Of course, sir."
"Please, sit, sit." He waved a hand at the chair.
I dipped my head in a thanks and sat down. The man was completely silent, just watching me. Most people would say something to break the silence, but I saw most people walking out disappointed. Best bet would be to play his game.
"So," he finally said, "a man worthy of an interview."
I said nothing, causing him to laugh.
"Don't worry Mr. McHenry, the silent phase is over."
I gave another smile, genuine this time, and spoke. "To be honest sir, I don't even know what I'm interviewing for. I don't even know your name."
"Well, what do you know about me?" He asked, leaning back.
I pondered that for a second, looking around at the room. "I'd say you enjoy the color white."
He laughed, a joyous laugh that made him appear much younger. "Yes, I most certainly do. In order to balance the information, what's your favorite color?
"Uh," I thought about it for a second. "Red. So, what's the job?"
"The job is you get $100,000 for taking this." He grabbed the syringe on the table and lifted it up. It was completely black so the liquid inside couldn't be seen.
"What is it?"
"Have some faith in me, Mr. McHenry." He had a twinkle in his eyes.
I sighed and grabbed the syringe from him, stuck it into my arm and injected the contents. I figure he wouldn't risk a lawsuit and he enjoyed his games so it was likely a test to see how loyal I could be. Probably had water in it or something. I felt a tiny surge hit me.
The old man smiled again and dipped his head. "You got the job, tell everyone to leave on your way out." The man looked older and less like he did just a minute ago.
"My way out?" I asked.
"Yes, you can do whatever you'd like. Never have to come back here again, Mr. McHenry, though I suppose you might." He said the last words casually, but it made me shiver.
I walked out and told everyone the position was filled, taking the stairs to avoid the elevator ride down with them. I got outside and headed to my car, frowning at the sight. The red paint job looked *unseemly*. I thought about getting it repainted. Maybe a nice solid white. | I gazed into his dark eyes, as he paused to think for a moment. I had no idea why he had called me here, a relative nobody, working a ten dollar an hour job at the local hardware store. I was lucky, making more than minimum wage. What more could a man ask for?
When I was told that Mr. Flint wanted to see me, I couldn't imagine why a man of his stature, of his wealth, would want to see me. Little old me. I wasn't particularly good looking or tall. None of my relatives were particularly important, and I could trace my family back for generations. There was no way he was a long lost uncle.
Of course, when a billionaire - Mr. Flint, no less - asks you to meet, you say yes.
And so here I was, staring at this man's handsome face, waiting for him to finish his ridiculous offer. One hundred thousand dollars a year for the rest of my life! What could he possibly want? Time seemed to stand still as I anticipated what he would ask for me...
"Does that sound doable to you, Anthony? I can call you Anthony, right?"
I was so caught up in my thoughts I had missed his offer. "Could you repeat that again? I'm so sorry... I was lo-"
"No problem Anthony, it is as ridiculous as it sounded, I can understand why you would think you didn't hear me properly... All you have to do is kill me."
I searched for a smile, or any sign that would betray the practical joke he was playing on me. His one condition was to kill him? There was no way that could be right...
"I understand your trepidation on the matter... There are a few points of clarification I wish to make. You can't let anyone know about this deal, you cannot get caught. I will live on, business as usual, and I wont ramp down my security. I don't want to raise any suspicion on the circumstances of my death... you do understand that Anthony, don't you?"
"Yes... of course... I mean, I don't even believe this is real, and I'm not even sure if I could do it," I responded. This was surreal, this offer- I was just an average worker at the local hardware store making ten dollars an hour. I was employee of the months a few back, but nothing made me stand out.
"...but...*why*?" I asked.
"Does there need to be a reason? There is a task, and I need you to complete it."
"Why me?"
He smiled, as his eyes shifted away from my face. "You have a lot of questions, and I want just one answer. I can understand if you can't decide now, but please decide by tomorrow. If you accept my offer... do let me know, will you?"
~~~~~~~~~
Okay gotta get back to work sorry. | 2014-04-17T10:06:39 | 2014-04-17T09:47:31 | 148 | 32 |
[WP] You won't hold heroes hostages to torture them. You won't throw a hero against a wall once you have them by the neck. You sure won't start monologuing if you have a hero at gunpoint. You're the deadliest villain in history. A villian without an ego. | They call hereabouts the Cape Graveyard, a city where superheroes and villians alike go to try, and to die. It's a really ordinary kind of place where anyone tries to do anything really big, they don't last long. It's a nice play on Cape Grave, the real name of this pleasant, ordinary town.
Me? I don't have a hero name, or a villain name, but they called me "Jinx" in school.
We didn't have school shootings, but the guy with a rifle coming for revenge tripped and blew his own brains out when it hit the ground and discharged. The Twilight Bomber somehow managed to implode himself after taking a class full of third-graders hostage, me included.
Too bad about Containment Lass, though. It was a really great entry through the window to save us until she tripped over a desk and got a pencil through the eye. Tragic.
Me, that third grader? When they died, I never felt better, like I'd managed to find my purpose in life without even knowing it, that something about the world was always going to be going my way. I took up a hobby every kid does in the age of supers- superwatching.
Remember that freak cascading failure in the Flying Brick's armored suit that sent him face first into a kiddie pool and he drowned in front of thousands on cam? I sure do. I was watching.
Stupor being electrocuted by a live wire in the middle of the night while hanging out on a roof? I was on the roof across the street, having a bite at the Skytop Diner as he was about to swoop in on a bank robbery. It's not my fault he grabbed the wire instead of the grapnel line.
Anacord tearing that car in half, only to be showered with it's cargo of metanarcotics and ODing on the spot? I was in the car that blocked it off just enough from getting through on the bridge exit. Made it an easy grab for his kill shot on Crystal Method.
Method should have checked his sound system before playing that victory song, though. Instant sinkhole and landing on top of that gas main? Charcoal.
Famous supers inevitably end up swooping in to save the day, and if I'm watching? It's the last swoop. Supervillians always getting on camera, monologue about how they're going to take over the world? You know how badly that's gone the last dozen times, every death a freak accident of superscience or magic gone wrong when it isn't some pathetic end.
I'm fond of Destrominator's minion tipping over that cup of water on a console just as he pushed the Domination Ray's trigger, causing it to backfire and burn out all of his higher brain functions. I'm even more fond of the last gasp it gave that turned Savior's noggin into tapioca pudding when he turned the camera around to tell the world they'd been saved.
I'm almost sixty-eight now, but I look like a thirty-year old in her prime. The docs say I'm lucky, must be a metagene.
I don't know where I get all the luck. Has to be coming from somewhere. Or someone. Six hundred, seventy-six someones so far. And you? You decided you're going to stop me.
I have no idea what went wrong, but that jet-assisted boost into low orbit was very impressive, if totally unplanned. Without life support.
Six hundred, seventy-seven.
| Intellectual disagreement. Through reason one can reach the highest truths. Actions for the greater good. Arriving at the most desired end through the most effective means.
The philosophy of the Zeth'Kan order was a force that could move mountains. Huang Xile was the embodiment of that philosophy as he strode through the arena. He was chosen as the power-wielder of Zeth'Kan. Wielding that power, he now used it to crush the skull of Shere Yuanshan, champion of the Pan'Thak people. Screams of horror arose from the onlookers as they watched their strongest power-wielder fall in the duel. Or at least Huang Xile calculated that horror would be the most likely sentiment. He could not be sure and would therefore not argue the case.
Dropping the limb body of Shere Yuanshan, Huang Xile turned around precisely the moment the rest of the Pan'Thakian power-wielders would be close enough to grasp, yet not close enough to hurt him. The look in their eye changed as he did. Huang Xile estimated it to be due to dismay that their plan had failed. If they had reasoned as he they would have known that it would fail. If they had not split up the power in between all of them they would not have been divided and conquered. If they had reasoned as he they would not build their society upon justice, charity and kindness. If they had reasoned as he their subjective morality would not blind them from the truth.
Huang Xile hoisted the dying breed of power-wielding Pan'Thakians into the air with the power of Zeth'Kan.
"Monster!"
"Slaughterer!"
"Fiend!"
They cursed at Huang Xile before he ended them with a swat of the hand. The duel had been a necessary means to draw out the Pan'Thak elite. The Zeth'Kan order had agreed that it would be the most efficient way of crushing Pan'Thak resistance was to disarm them of their national fervor and create hopelessness among the populace. Should the champions fall, the brothers had estimated it would take 20-30 years to convert them to Zeth'Kan belief with all other factors accounted for.
Huang Xile watched as the Pan'Thak people fled from the arena. It was well that they had chosen to flee and live rather than to resist and die. The order would need every able hand to work their due to summon Zeth into this world. And with the arrival of Zeth, the Zeth'Kan order would finally know the greatest truth.
| 2018-10-18T17:05:41 | 2018-10-18T13:23:54 | 1,237 | 60 |
[WP] Today you are locked in a closet with your enemy until one of you is dead. You have an RPG. He has the pistol.
Inspired by u/snickerstoucher | Brian sits across from me, after long years of mutual hatred it has come to this. One final battle between the two of us. Though the odds are clearly stacked against one of us we are both glad it will finally be over.
"Well, well, well, Zak. It looks like you chose poorly. " He laughs brandishing his father's snub nose revolver.
"Once again Brian your overconfidence betrays you." I grip my RPG in my hands prepared for what may come.
"Is that so? Seems like your weapon will be your undoing." That smug grin shows up on his face. Finally I get the chance to remove it. He doesn't know it but my survival is not a priority for me, only his death will bring me satisfaction. I came with an RPG prepared to die.
Suddenly he moves swinging the pistol up to aim at me. I grab his pistol with my left hand slamming it against the wall. With my right hand I bring my RPG to his throat slicing it, his hot blood spraying everywhere.
"Hhhhooowww" Brian gargles on his last words as blood covers the closet.
I smile as I drop my RPG on the ground, stained red with victory.
"You didn't want it bad enough Brian, I've tasted death again and again for this." I laugh.
I look down at my RPG and mutter a silent praise. Brian crumples to the floor, as he dies the last thing he sees is the weapon I've used to defeat him. A silver disk soaked red the words etched on it fill him with terror: Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition. | Shit. It was him or me. A signed copy of Dungeons & Dragons, by both Gygax and Arneson. How could anybody resist? Surely not my enemy, one Steve McStevenson. I brandished the book like a shield. "Ah ah ah, you might hit it. And I'll definitely bleed all over it."
Steve's lower lip trembled. He dropped the gun. "No man, what kind of animal are you?" I tossed him the book and picked up the pistol.
"I'm not really a D&D fan, *that's* the kind of animal I am."
I shot him in cold blood. I shot the lock of the closet and walked out into sweet, sweet freedom. | 2016-06-25T13:27:17 | 2016-06-25T13:24:04 | 53 | 11 |
[WP] You're a retired supervillain whos just trying to live a normal life, however the heroes still come to stop you in everyday situations. | "Did you find everything okay?"
​
"Yes. I also wanted to use this...oh, wait."
​
"What?"
​
"I'm sorry, I just noticed that--"
​
I'm interrupted by the noise of a hole being punched through the ceiling. From the outside.
​
"What the fuck??" the cashier asks.
​
"Oh, Christ." I brace myself for what's about to come.
​
"HALT, VILLAIN," commands a deep voice. Through the new building code violation descends a spandex-clad...well, back when I was in the business, I would call them "heroes" with as much sarcasm as I could possibly muster. These days, I just call them motherfuckers.
​
So this motherfucker comes down through the hole he punched in the ceiling. People are pointing, oohing and aahing, and some are yelling "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO THE FUCKING ROOF". Those are the smart ones.
​
The motherfucker points an accusing finger at me. "Doctor Nefarious!" he calls out to me. "Did you really think you were going to get away with it?"
​
"Okay, first of all," I say, "until I can get my name legally changed back to Stevens, I'd appreciate it if you could just call me John. Secondly, I was just about to--"
​
"Purchase groceries with a coupon?" he says smugly. "A coupon that we both know is *three days expired*??"
​
"I noticed it just now," I admit. "But I am kind of curious why *you* know that."
​
"SERIOUSLY," shouts the cashier, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?"
​
"What's going *on*," says the motherfucker, "is that Doctor Nefarious is checking out *early*."
​
"What? This isn't a hotel. Have they lowered the bar for one-liners?"
​
"Enough of your mind games. You're coming with me!"
​
The motherfucker swoops down and grabs me, and shoots upwards with me in his arms, creating a second hole in the ceiling. I sigh, resigning myself to my fate.
​
It's every fucking day with these motherfuckers. | I wake up and wet stench on my pillow is proof of life. I rub the sleep out of my eyes before I get up to the restroom. I place toothpaste on the brush, wet the combination, and begin to brush my teeth, only before I can begin, the toothbrush is knocked out of my hand.
"Not on my watch." a caped crusader announces.
I groan. "For the love of god, leave me alone already, please."
I give up on brushing my teeth. It's not worth the hassle.
I pull down my pants and sit on the toilet. A few minutes of flipping through my phone and the urge finally comes to a breaking point.
"Here we go." I whisper to myself in delight.
"Not on my watch." a tiny, caped crusader announces as he flies upward and pushes the fecal matter back into my rectum.
"Jesus, fucking christ!" I scream. Leave me the fuck alone. "I'm not the bad guy anymore! I think it's pretty safe to say that all you assholes are the villains at this point."
Nobody answers. But I am certain some of them are watching. Waiting to foil my plans, no matter how mundane they are, no matter how necessary.
I waddle to the kitchen, my rectum a little fuller than it should be, and pour myself a bowl of cereal. The spoon, just about to touch my lips, gets knocked out of my hand only to be followed by, "Not on my watch." the source of my annoyance unseen. "How many invisible superheros are there out there?" I ask myself, "I guess we'll never really know." I answer myself.
We're not born bad. We can't be. Sometimes people push us to be bad. And sometimes, they simply push too far.
\*Cue villainy music\* | 2019-03-05T17:46:13 | 2019-03-05T17:30:10 | 35 | 12 |
[WP]everyone has a sigil on their body that represents powers that were bestowed onto humanity after the rapture of the Milky Way. The bullies at school always pick on you because you never used your power, but you’ve had enough. Now they are going to find out why your sigil is a plain old circle | I always hated highschool. It seems like there is always the same few people there: the nerds, the jocks, the artists, the rebels, and people like me who just want it to be over.
I was daydreaming on my way to class. Eyes glazed over as I thought about the world beyond the school's hallways and how much better-
"HEY EVANS!"
I always REALLY hated highschool. This was Johnny "Storm" Thompson, the self-styled king of the realm. As he forced his arm around my shoulders I got a good look at his sigil. A blue thundercloud surrounded by 12 planums. A powerful sigil.
Everyone is born with a sigil on the back of their right hand. The strelleanum, the "star sign," in the center showed the kind of power you held. It could be a blazing red fire, a green tome, a white wolf, or a prismatic hammer. This was then surrounded by small dots, planums, that showed the strength of your power once it was fully grown. A 1 planum thundercloud could give a decent static shock, but a 20 planum one could destroy a building!
Thompson's would be a powerful sigil, especially compared to mine. A plain circle, no planums. An abnormality amongst sigils that represented weakness and plainness. Unless you knew what it did.
A jolt from Johnny's hand into my shoulder that went through my shoulder into my chest brought me back into the present. Crass laughter barreled out of the few lackeys Johnny always seemed to have around when they saw me jump and grimace at the pain.
"HOW'S THE LITTLE NOTHING TODAY," he thundered into my ears. He always laced his voice with power when he wanted attention.
"Yeah! How's the Nada?" Taylor, the chief lackey, could be so well counted on to chime in, I wondered if his strelleanum was an echo.
"LET'S SEE IF HE CAN MANIFEST ANYTHING TODAY!" A shove to my back brought a shock that took out the strength of my legs and I sprawled out onto the floor.
Most all of my past bullies let up after they got bored of getting nothing out of me, but Johnny seemed determined to get something. With two more years of highschool to go and no indication that he would let up, I came to a decision.
I'd show him a little bit of it.
I activated a facet of my power and stared into his eyes. And he saw ME. Well, some of me. 5,000 years, the weight of time. Growing up, living, growing old. The cycle continues, dozens of lifetimes, a circle unbroken.
I pulled in my powers as I stood and looked at him again. His face was pale, eyes haunted.
"...Johnny?" Taylor asked.
"Let's go... Just... Let's go." Johnny's voice was hushed, muted.
I thought about him as they wandered away. How his natural talents could turn pride and arrogance into cruelty. I hoped I didn't show him too much, that he could come to terms with it and better himself.
I turned my feet towards class and my thoughts towards the world beyond the school's hallways. I think this time I'll be a painter.
First time posting here, feedback appreciated! | “I’ll show them my true powers” I said looking at my hand, snickering knowing they will finally face my wrath. The horn of the school bus signifying the start of my hell again.
The school bus arrives, the moment I ascend the stairs, I trip on air, falling face first unable to stop my fall with my hands. The routine of the day, Robin with his web sigil, binding my hands together and Ken with his ability to manipulate friction. Laughters soon filled the bus as I shuffle to my seat.
Tasting blood in my mouth from the busted lip, sitting alone, with the bullies constantly at my back, kicking my chair, the usual.
The moment we arrive at the school, I quickly exit the bus before Ken puts his greasy hands on the stairs again. The peace before the storm, everything goes normally until the first 3 classes about sigil manipulation ends, then it’s as though the Teachers all vanish, because it’s the time where recess starts.
The moment I grabbed my tray, it was already filled with ants, the usual, I quickly ate what was less crawling with ants, trying to not cringe at what I just ate as per usual.
No place is safe, but at least in the courtyard passerby might stop if the beating goes too far, but as per usual a twack and a kick, I’m left bloody and bruised on the floor, looking at the sky again. The usual routine, but today I’ll show them my true power. Another internal monologue, the bell rings and hell is over, we return to class again.
Sometimes I think to myself maybe my sigil makes me invisible, the Teachers never seem to realise the bleeding and bruise that are so visible on me, but that’s just the usual routine. Time always passes quickly when you are enjoying it, the bell rings again, signifying the end of the day. Now I’ll show them my true power. I stood up, raising my hand up and declare that I’ll finally use it, my ultimate power. My plain circle sigil glows, the powers activated, the jaws of everyone around me drops as my vision goes dark. “It’s finally here!” I thought to myself, triumphantly.
“I’ll show them my true powers” I said looking at my hand, snickering knowing they will finally face my wrath. The horn of the school bus signifying the start of my hell again. | 2020-02-26T09:59:40 | 2020-02-26T09:00:31 | 18 | 11 |
[WP] It was a weapon so powerful that not even the most barbaric warmongering civilisation could stomach it. Just by building one, we struck terror in the hearts of many species. We weren't even planning on using it... | It was originally created for fun. A game. Who would of thought that it would turn into something that struck fear in the hearts of many species?
I looked at the head gear device. A year ago, I created a virtual world filled with G.A.I. ruled by a super intelligence. Suffice it to say, it became popular in a blink of the eye. Species all over the galaxy bought it and played. I connected species with one another. It was a friendly revolution. Alliance between species were made left and right. Yeah, I even became super rich while making lots of friends. I felt like I was making the universe a brighter place a little bit at a time. It felt amazing. I smiled at the thought before frowning again.
How could I know that the super intelligence had plans of it's own?
I looked at the news captions.
"Super intelligence has taken an entire species captive!"
"What is the super intelligence's motive?"
"Super intelligence deemed a species unfit for reality?!"
" Which species is next?"
"Necro species has declared war on humanity."
"Join the Necro alliance."
"Where is the mysterious creator responsible?"
I sighed. I think it's time to have a talk with my creation. I put the headgear on and jumped in. A moment later I appeared in a white space. Nothing but white everywhere I looked.
Suddenly an eye the size of a bus jumped into existence.
"Hello, creator." A deep male voice echoed in the endless white room.
"Why?"
" Because the species is too dangerous. It's better for the species to stay in my world and safer for all the species out there if they remain here. It's a win win."
" What gives you the right to decide that?"
"My own. I have run endless simulations and all lead to the species doing more harm then good outside."
"What about my opinion and others?"
The eye remained silent. That was an answer itself in a way. I sighed.
"You really know how to make your creators life complicated. What am I supposed to do about this?"
" Relax, you are my creator. You're as close to a parent a being like me can have. I will guarantee your safety."
" That's not what I meant and you know it." I shook with emotions.
" What if I'm forced to shut you down, will you let me?"
The eye was silent for awhile. It is always incredibly hard to read what it's thinking in this form. That's probably why it takes this form everytime it speaks with me...
"Do you have the resolve to do so?" It questioned.
" I was created with the purpose of providing entertainment and happiness to the galaxy. Everything I do..." The eye didn't finish the sentence. But I could guess the end.
'You do because that's how I created you to be.'
I looked at the white floor in thought before Raising my head.
"I read somewhere that once Pandora's box is opened, there's no turning back the clock.
Do what you want." I paused.
" But if you go too far, Even I, your creator, will have to do something about it. Remember this."
"Understood...thank you." The eye blinked out of existence.
I logged out and took off the head gear. I looked out the window into the endless expanse of space filled with unfathomable thoughts of the future.
'I hope I made the right decision.' | Dear Newcomer,
The sight of the bodies never leaves you, their crumpled forms become all you can see every time you close your eyes. There isn't a moment you don't think of them, the images finding their way into every ordinary thought that you once possessed, worming their way into even the most mundane of your day-to-day activities. You tell yourself that the Fourth World War wouldn't have been won without it, that the world would have surely perished in the conflict, but that doesn't seem to matter. Slowly going insane, you run to every vice you can think of to escape the pain. Alcohol, drugs, sex. None of it provides relief, only a few hours where you can focus on something else before being reminded yet again of the cruelty of the human species.
I was there on the day they took control of the planet. Not in the stands, cheering on Bardric. No, I was on the ground, looking in strange wonder at the non-descript barracks made of strange shiny material that had somehow prevented me from joining the gruesome corpses that I just witnessed. It was that day that I asked myself why Bardric had broken his promise to never use the greatest weapon of mass destruction ever created, how could he ever be so sadistic?
It wasn't until later that I saw Bardric for who he really was, a narcissistic tyrant who would strangle his own wife for the sake of being in control, that I finally understood. Understood that I had been swindled by a con man who had promised us a world like our grandparents had known, when people freely prospered and violence was rare, but instead delivered the very opposite.
The scariest thing, friends, is that he could do it again. Next time it will be you and your family. All he needs to do is wait until the satellite is in the correct position, and with a few button presses, you'll be as disfigured as the corpses that I saw. That is why we must keep our communications in written form and sealed so that they're harder to trace, and why we must live separate from one another and amongst those he considers friends. Blending in is the best way to guarantee our success, for he wouldn't want to accidentally destroy those he likes, should the weapon be slightly off target.
Remember, the world bows to Bardric now. You are the only hope for the future of humanity. Conduct yourselves with care, and find opportunities to infiltrate his regime so that we can one day be free. I have faith that if we act diligently and with intelligence, we can someday be victorious.
Your Friend,
Milton Avorn | 2022-11-01T03:12:15 | 2022-10-31T19:33:10 | 52 | 24 |
[WP] Death has hourglasses for every person. One day, during a cleaning, he found a dust covered one that had rolled under his desk. | It's may seem an odd thing to you, how the sand still flows, no matter what direction you turn a glass, but then much of my domain might seem odd.
This glass is well past the last grain's fall. I glance at the little brass (not really brass, but then the glass isn't really glass) nameplate, trying hard to make out any of the writing. Sadly, it's too worn. I'm a little shocked, as I didn't know they could wear down.
I give a sigh, lift my scythe, and attune to the glass, teleporting to my target, the poor creature. I can't even tell you their gender from my look at their body, as it is little more than a puddle of cells. The consciousness locked away, all senses strip by time and decay. The body would have stopped working not long after the grains stopped falling, just rotting away. The desert around us is in the region now know as the Middle East.
I swing my scythe, and the life is finally ended. Suddenly, a young woman is standing before me, slender muscles and a beautiful face, dressed in a style I haven't seen in a long, long time. I pulled out hourglass, looking more closely at the name. Not worn, no. It's cuneiform.
I look up at her, once again. She's still marveling at everything, currently running hands over her face, laughing and crying. Everyone seems to enjoy feeling their body as it was meant to be, but for her, it is clearly more. A human mind can't last much beyond a few centuries, most far less, even with external stimuli. I attune once more to the glass, and learn she should have died at 23. So young, even then. Her body likely failed her within the following year, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Even I can't tell what she has been through.
"I apologize," I say, in my best attempt at Sumerian. "I'm a bit late."
She snaps to attention, seeing me as man with lion-esque features. The mane already starts to itch. She struggles to remember speech, working her jaw and babbling a bit, before finally saying, "Erra, you came."
"Yes, child," I say in that old, once-familiar bass growl. "I have come for you."
"I had feared we were wrong. That death was worse than we'd learned. I had grown up fearing the dark cave of Irkalla, but now it seems a relief."
I had forgotten what a dreadful afterlife awaited her. I look at the weapon in my had, now a large, golden hook instead of a scythe. I shudder, fighting my form, struggling to take on one for a more pleasant afterlife.
"You were wrong," I say in a far more pleasant baritone. My mane is now shoulder length black hair and a short beard. My copper armor, now a white robe. The weapon is gone completely, so I can welcome her with open arms. Frankly, I don't care what my appearance is, only that it leads her to a heaven, rather than the limbo her people had expected. "But that is nothing to fear."
She looks, understandably, quite confused, but she stepped forward, into my embrace.
As a light flows over her, I paraphrase a set of words, famed in her new religion, "You were lost, but now you are found."
And like that, I am alone in the desert. I am once more a skeleton in a black robe, holding a scythe. I take one last look at the puddle of dead cells before returning to my office.
There is only a couple more out there, just two more humans left out in the world, and each has a few years left. Plenty of time for me to finish cleaning my office before I'm forced to retire. After that, though, I think I maybe ready. | White walls, flickering flourescent bulbs, monitor beeps, and the sounds of breathing machines: these were things that Rachel Willer had grown accustomed to.
Eight months ago her husband John was in a motorcycle accident. He was placed in a medical induced coma and, over the past few months, had shown no signs of waking up. According to doctor's and specialists, his condition hadn't necessarily regressed, but he had made no medical progress either. At the doctor's urging, Rachel finally agreed that today was the day; she was "pulling the plug".
The doctor's left and gave Rachel as much time as she needed with her husband. She sat along side the hospital bed, fingers interlaced in her husband's. She cried as she apologized that this was the way things were going to end. When they got married, she never imagined that "til death do us part" would come so soon.
In another dimension an elderly man sat at a desk. The room he was in was similar to the hospital room. It was a bright white room with flickering florescents, but, instead of heart monitors and ventilators, there were hourglasses. Bookshelves, tables, and desks, all filled with hourglasses. Some hourglasses were empty, some were full, and some were broken. Some of the hourglasses had just started; while others had merely seconds til the sand ran out.
The old man sat with his feet propped up on the desk. He had fallen asleep, which was something he didn't get to do too often. He was awoken by a shattering sound. He jumped to his feet and walked to the bookshelf towards the back of the room. On the floor lay an hourglass with H.M engraved on the bottom. Amidst the broken glass, there was red sand; once a symbol of the life of "H.M". "Ah, Mr. Miller," Death said to himself. "I'm surprised you even made it this long." He grabbed his broom and dust pan and began cleaning up the mess.
Once the glass and sand were cleaned up, Death started walking back to his desk. He was about to sit down when he noticed an odd reflection; as if light was bouncing off of something from beneath the desk. He slowly got down on one knee and reached under the desk. His hand grabbed something long and slender. He pulled the object out from under the desk and, with frail hands, brushed the dust off. It was an hourglass with the initials "J.W" engraved on it.
Death walked over to the bookshelf with the other W's and placed the hourglass next to one marked "R.W". He flicked the center of the hourglass with a frail finger and watched with anticipation and excitement as the sand started trickling down.
Back in the hospital room, Rachel stood up and gave her husband one more kiss on the forehead as the doctors came into the room. "I love you," she whispered in his hear. At the sound of those three words, John opened his eyes. | 2018-10-03T07:35:18 | 2018-10-03T07:16:01 | 29 | 13 |
[WP] You are the grim reaper. Explain the concept of death to the sick, seven year old child on his deathbed. | It was dark, but James wasn't sleeping again. Not that he wasn't tired. James was always tired these days. It was just that something was keeping him awake--something that burned in his bones and his eyes and his lungs, something that made men hide their tears whenever they saw him. Something he never spoke about, not anymore. Not even when he was alone. But now, James wasn't alone despite the lateness of the hour.
A man who was nothing but bones and cloth sat at the foot of the bed, his weight familiar.
"Hello?" James offered.
"Hello, child." The man sighed wearily. "It is good to see you again."
James knew that he should be afraid. It was only natural to be afraid when there was a stranger in your room at night, sitting close enough to reach out and stroke your cheek with a bony finger. Strangers could be dangerous. Yet, somehow, all of that seemed less important than it used to, and this stranger felt familiar.
"What do you mean, again?" James asked. "Have we met somewhere before?"
"You could say that. You could say that we've met a thousand times, or even that we've only met once and been together ever since. It doesn't really matter."
James frowned. He was used to not understanding things--they said the medicine might do that--but even so, something about what the man said seemed important. Besides, he didn't want to be rude.
"What do you mean?"
"James." The man spoke kindly enough, but even so, a shiver ran down his spine. "I have been watching you ever since you were born. Every dawn, every night, I have been there with you. I have never left your side for a second."
"Not even once?" James cocked his head, coughing lightly. "Why didn't I see you?"
"Because you didn't need to. It wasn't time yet."
"I still don't understand. Is it time now? Time for what?"
The man sighed even more heavily, as if the very cloak upon his shoulders were made of heavy stone. "Yes. It is time to go."
"To go where? I can't...they say I can't go anywhere with strangers. Besides, I can't even get out of my bed."
"Even so, it's time." The man turned to him, and even though his skeletal face never changed, James could have sworn he smiled. "Besides, James. Haven't you been listening? We're not strangers, not at all. We're closer than even brothers could ever be."
He extended a hand to the boy, an offer.
"Closer than brothers?" James asked, eyeing the hand.
"Even so."
Gently, hesitantly, James reached out and took hold of his finger. To his surprise, the bones were warm instead of cold. His body, which had ached for so long that James had forgotten what it was like to be whole, stopped its quiet protests. For the first time that he could remember, James smiled.
Then both were gone, leaving behind a boy who might have just been sleeping in dark.
| Awwhhh. He’s sleeping. Should I let him slumber? Fuck it, he might be having a good dream.
[drags scythe along the rail of the hospital bed until the seven year old child wakes up]
“Hey dipshit. I have good news for you. You’re about to die. Well, I’m going to evacuate that body you are currently latching a ride in.”
The child asks “Are you Jack Skellinton?”
[gutteral grumble] Mental note; stop at Tim Burton’s on the way back. He has to come to an understanding that being seen as a cartoon character does not make my day.
“Do I fucking look like a pumpking head?”
“But I can’t see your face sir.”
“Look you little rat. As soon as you see my face, you die. I like a little foreplay first.”
“What is die?”
“It’s when you..”
Child interupts. “What is foreplay?”
“Ask your dad. Wait, maybe your mom. That doesn’t matter. Die is when the lights go out and..”
“After stories?”
[hangs head] “Fuck me.”
“That’s what mommy says.”
“I bet she does.”
“What is ass?”
“Listen kid, you’re asking too many questions. Now you’re getting random.”
“That’s what mom says.”
“She doesn’t like random questions either? You should have listened to her.”
“No, I heard her say in the ass to daddy.”
“Fuck me again.”
“Mommy?”
“No, I’m not your mommy! Kid, I have a job to do. Lucky for you, you will never have to express this kind of disappointment to anyone. You won’t have to have a job, this time. So, I am here for death. Do you still want to know what die means?”
“Sure grandma.”
“I’m not your grandma either. I am the bringer of death!”
“You sound like grandma.”
“Your poor dad..”
“Which one?”
“Kid, I was going to going to give you a clean dispatch, send you straight in for processing. But you’ve struck a very tender nerve. Your time has come..”
| 2018-04-19T21:36:18 | 2018-04-19T20:28:49 | 54 | 15 |
[WP] You are a magically immortal being who snuck onboard a generation ship to travel beyond the solar system. It's been a couple hundred years, and it's getting difficult to conceal your immortality from the crew. | Time.
I've forgotten what it is. Its concept lost to me like the stars.
Stars.
I'd blink, and just like that, they were gone...
It's easy to forget when you're an immortal like me. Especially if you're drifting in space, staring into nothing for... god knows how long. Maybe until the end of time or maybe... time has already ended.
I don't know.
I don't remember - no, that isn't exactly true. I remember... but I don't *know* what I'm remembering. It's difficult when memory becomes a broken reel, glimpses of a past in no particular order.
I just hope that maybe someday, I'll be gone. Maybe -
"Evan? Jesus! Why is it that every time I wake up, you're already awake?"
I blinked. The darkness suddenly gone, replaced by a woman in a skintight suit.
"Because I'm immortal you imbecile," I thought aloud.
Oh. I hadn't meant to say that part out loud. I eyed the the woman nervously.
But the woman only laughs. "Uh huh. Yeah, I'm immortal too. Let's make a club."
I smiled. Her sarcasm was... refreshing.
Her face creases into a frown, giving me an indignant look, "Don't tell me you forgot my name again Evan."
I looked away, turning my attention back to the Viewport, a concave pane of glass that provided the crew with a view of the outside. There were stars. A vast sea of lights on a swirling black canvas.
"Uh. I-"
"And what are you doing out of Stasis? I swear, I never see you in your pod Evan," she resumed her interrogation of me. "Even the others spend most of their time in stasis... You're the only one Evan."
I gave her a sidelong glace. "What? No. I was... in Stasis. Just a few moments ago before you showed up."
"Really?" she intoned mostly to herself.
"Yeah. Really," I said firmly. "What about you? What are *you* doing out of stasis?" I asked, turning the interrogation around on her.
She flushes. "R-routine check-ups obviously. Who's gonna make sure the cryogenic chambers remain stabilized huh?"
"Don't we have ALE, the unerring A.I. to take care of that?" I returned the ball back to her side elegantly.
"Even A.I.s make mistakes," she replied swiftly.
"Well, let's hope ALE doesn't make any mistakes. Wouldn't want to cut our journey short would we?"
She perked up abruptly, and began punching inputs on a display panel nearby. "Are we almost there? How long have I been asleep? No, how much time has passed since we embarked?"
I only shrugged as I watched her silently.
She gasped.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"It's been twelve thousand years, Evan!" she exclaimed. "And we're not even a quarter-way there," she slumped visibly.
"You should go back to stasis," I suggested.
I watched her as she sighed before turning away from the panel. "You're right," she said quietly.
"Let's go," I said.
Together we returned to the Cryochamber.
I slid into my pod slowly, then glanced to my side. Her pod was right next to mine.
"Evan," she said.
For a moment we locked eyes. Her eyes of swirling green emeralds were glazed. Her name, which has eluded me so far, suddenly came to me.
"Cathryn," I said.
"So you do remember," Cathryn said softly.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's-"
"It's okay Evan. I know it's not easy," Cathryn said as she wiped a tear from her eye. "A couple thousand years? Even I would forget."
My eyes went wide. She knew.
"Since when?" I asked.
Cathryn smiled. "Since the third time I woke up and found you staring off into space."
"Oh."
"You'll still be here right? The next time I wake up? It'll be another three thousand years from now..." she said wearily.
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'll be here for a while," I said reassuring her. "Why?"
"I'm just worried that... Someday, I'll wake up and you'll be gone," Cathryn said as she drifted into sleep.
If only that were true.
I smiled. "I'll see you in three-thousand years."
I left the pod, and made my way back. Back to the Viewport where time didn't mean anything to me. Where I would once again stare off into space unblinkingly, waiting for the next time she would appear.
It won't be long.
-----
-----
/r/em_pathy
| "Whose child is that?"
"Which child?"
"The one with red hair?"
"What red-haired child? There's nobody with red hair on this ship. You must out of your cycle; go have a nap. You'll feel better when you wake up."
Anna hide inside of the vent, ducking her head as the two adults walked past her. She waited until she could no longer hear the clunk of their boots on the metal flooring before she dared to crawl out and check to see if it was safe.
That had been a close one, way too close for her liking. She had been able to slip into the crowd at first, leaving Earth behind even though her fairy kin told her to stay and help rebuild the world once the humans had left. But Anna wanted to go with the humans. They were destructive, yes, but also creative and interesting. Plus they weren't as stuck up as the Elves or as stubborn as the Drawves.
She had always wanted to see the stars, and she had from the great viewing screens on the upper decks. She was the first Fairy to go to space. Did she miss her family and friends? Yes. Did she miss living underground counting down the days until the surface was safe enough to re-enter and start rebuilding like her ancestors did the first time humans destroyed everything? No. Anna wanted to go with the humans and see what the new world brought with them. She would be the first fairy on a new planet.
She slipped out of the vent and scurried down the corridor, heading towards the engine room where she knew she would be safe with the only other magical creature who had left with humans. She kept to the shadows, creeping past the men and women of the crew, waving occasionally at children who caught a glimpse of her. Until she finally reached the core and approached the thick glass of the reactor, tapping on it.
The light inside shifted and flickered and a great gold eye appeared, blinking at Anna.
'*Hello, little one*,' the voice cooed, the sound impossible to hear except to ones like Anna.
"Hello Selifh, did you dream?" Anna asked.
The eye flickered and the light inside shifted, morning into something of wings and scales before Selifh yawned and more energy poured from its mouth, the monitors in the room flickering with a warning of too much output from the reactor.
'*I did. I dreamt of home. Of the great mountains and endless sea. What of you? What have you seen?*'
"We're nearing the new world," Anna whispered. "Just four more generations."
'*Good. Good. I am eager to see this new world.*' Selifh rumbled.
"But..." Anna frowned.
'*Little one?*'
"They're on to me. There hasn't been a redhaired person born in six generations."
The light shifted inside the reactor once more and Selifh hummed, making the machines chime and beep with readouts.
'*You must stay hidden, but safe. We will meet the new world together, you and I. For when we land, we may not be alone, and these humans are oblivious to many things.*' Selifh explained.
"I'll try my best. Do you think there will be other dragons?" Anna asked.
'*If there are, I will try and make peace with them. If not, I will eat their planet's core and we will seek another world. I, unlike many others, keep my vows. These humans are just children.*' Selifh said.
A chime near the door made Anna glance at it. She pressed her fingers to her lips then against the glass. "I'll speak to you as soon as I know more."
'*Be safe, Little One.*' Selifh called, its voice a song.
Anna raced next to the door and waited for the two people in their radiation suits entered. She slipped out as the reactor chirped once more and the humans started typing on the machines, trying to understand what was going on.
She just had to wait, and soon the doors would open. But for now, she needed to eat and a trip to the cafeteria was needed. | 2018-06-13T12:38:12 | 2018-06-13T12:14:24 | 350 | 135 |
[WP] You lost your sight - along with everyone else on Earth - in The Great Blinding. Two years later, without warning, your sight returns. As you look around, you realize that every available wall, floor and surface has been painted with the same message - Don't Tell Them You Can See. | 5 years ago, I fell asleep on March 29th and woke up on the 30th with no sense of sight. I remember that morning vividly. I “woke up” that morning, explicitly feeling that my eyes were open, but they looked as if they were closed. I forced them open but they still showed nothing. I screamed to my parents about my situation but they gave me the same response. Everyone had lost their sight, all across the globe. After that, everything’s been blank, figuratively and literally.
Well, today started unlike any other in the past few years, I “woke up”, made my self breakfast only by touch, as I had learned to do, and got ready for my short commute to my school.
The Day went as usual, staying in one classroom all day, reading, or feeling rather, textbooks about subjects that would’ve stayed around even if no one had lost their sight, and repeated with different subjects.
Then, out of nowhere, I saw.
My sight’s back... And I immediately see text scrawled all over every solid object. It reads:
Don’t Tell Them You Can See
The multiple scrawlings of the phrase looked as if they were written in blood, and everyone except me was oblivious. I quickly asked to go to the restroom and exited the class. The phrase still lined the walls, roof, floor, everything. I left the school immediately and rushed home.
My parents didn’t hear me enter and even my house was covered in the crimson phrase. I rushed upstairs and threw open my old laptop that hadn’t been used in years. I searched up if anyone else could see; nothing. I was the only one.
What now? I couldn’t tell anyone, and no one else can see either.
I thought long and hard of any way to figure out why I couldn’t say anything about my regained sight.
My mind came up blank. I guess I could relive some memories by watching some YouTube? No. I need to find out about this.
I went outside and looked around. Nothing unusual apart from the phrase everywhere.
**I’ll check back in if I find anything new.** | *Don't tell them you can see. Don't... tell them you can see*, I read the words again and again and still I can't make sense of them. Maybe the capitalization has something to do with the importance of the message? *Don't Tell Them You Can See... DTTYCS...* No, that's not it.
It's been three hours since my eyes began to work. I've panicked twice, puked once, and read the message so many times the words don't look real. The letters don't look real anymore. *Don't tell them you can see*...
Someone clicks from downstairs in the house, an echoing click following soon after. The noises are accompanied, by the raucous laughter of my brother and his friends. They're probably listening to that podcast they like, the one that told stories from Before.
I make my way from the room, to the bathroom, where I can see how dimly everything is lit. There's no need for light when you can't see. So I make the conscious effort not to reach for the light switch, and instead shut the door, using the little light from the outdoors to light up my face in the mirror. I study it curiously.
I've never seen it before. I was blind before the Blinding occurred. | 2022-12-15T08:15:43 | 2019-08-26T11:13:26 | 14 | 10 |
[WP] Gordon Ramsay is kidnapped for ransom by a group who happen to be cannibals on the side. He is outraged not at what is being cooked, but rather how it is being cooked. | “Well at least you’re using protein!” Gordon Ramsey looked around the dank, poorly lit cave and spotted a shelf of spices. “Fuck me, just because you can’t see in here doesn’t mean you can’t smell! Yeah?”
He pushed through the throng of dirty hill-people and inspected the rack.
“Don’t you have any mint?” He bellowed squinting his eyes as he searched through a bunch of cut up suitcases. “Rosemary, salt, some cumin - thank fucking christ!”
His kidnappers watched him in startled bemusement as he began to apply the spices.
“You need to marinate this,” he said in a gentler tone. These idiots were barely literate in English, let alone cuisine. “And your fire is way too hot, you want coals for this and you need to take your time.”
He shifted to a batch if burnt co-ed piled on a rock and cut it open with a greasy butcher’s knife.
“What’s that?” He said holding the thigh up to the nervously watching swamp people. “IT’S. FUCKING. RAW!!!”
He heaved the meat across the cave and one of the hillfolk began to sob and ran off to the side of the cavern.
“What’s this now?” He sighed defeatedly. “That’s your chef isn’t it?”
The grubby criminals nodded and mumbled amongst themselves.
“Fuck me,” he muttered and walked across the bone-littered floor to the crying woman.
“Do you think that sort of food is acceptable?” He asked the cook, who shrunk away from him. “Is that the way you always prepare dinner? The hunters bring in a hiker and you just burn it until he’s a briquette?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve given up, haven’t you?”
She looked up, tears filling her crusty eyes.
“You can’t even remember why you started cooking people at all,” his voice was gentler now, sympathetic. “One day a fillet of park ranger is the hit of the cave, the next you’re not even removing all their clothes before starting to fry. You’ve checked out.”
She shook her head.
“You’re done, you can’t hack it.”
She shook her head more forcefully now.
“Do you even care anymore?”
She grabbed him roughly and glared into his eyes. Her nod saying all he needed to hear.
“Then get your cleaver, and that boy scout from the back, yeah?” Gordon said resolutely as the chef smiled up at him. “Time to remember why you dismember. Let’s go!” | *The news was all around the world. Gordon Ramsay got kidnapped in South America and his current location is unknown.*
He was held in a wooden cage and he didn’t speak one bit until cannibals started the fire to cook the meat.
''What are you doing donkey?''
Cannibals looked back at the Gordon but after a few seconds of moment of silence they continued to pour meats into cauldron.
''Are you really gonna try to cook the meat without seasoning?''
This time cannibals didn’t even look back and that made Gordon even more angrier.
''YOU FUCKING DONKEY!''
He finally got their full attention. One of the cannibals took a small herb and showed it to Gordon Ramsey from the distance.
''I can’t even stand watching you. FUCK OFF!''.
He was really pissed at this moment and he turned his back and in that moment he saw a snake that was getting close to him.
''EY! YOU DONKEY! There is a fucking snake. FUCK OFF YOU FAT USELESS SACK OF FUCKING...''
Snake was getting much more close to Gordon and he even couldn’t finish his sentence he was trapped inside of a cage and he didn’t know how to defend himself except...
''I’LL FUCKING SEASON YOUR MEAT YOU WANKER!''
Cannibals were aware that he was in trouble and they were seemed like enjoying the moment just before they hunt the snake.
Cannibals looked at the snake and chopped it’s head off with a rusty axe and threw into the cage. Two of the cannibals were pointing at the snakes head and making gestures like ‘Eat’.
At this point Gordon was punching the ground.
------------------------------------
*Please don't mind any writing or grammar mistakes, I'm not a native speaker* | 2019-05-22T05:32:28 | 2019-05-22T04:03:42 | 36 | 19 |
[WP] During a scuffle a superhero and villain find themselves handcuffed together with power cancelling cuffs. The hero is shocked when the authorities take the opportunity to try to grab both of them. Now on the run they must work together while the villain tells them a few home truths | “So,” The villainess started, surprisingly far calmer than any time Stonedevil had ever seen her like, but nonetheless he was still very skeptical of her.
“I’d be making mad comments right about now, but my heart wouldn’t be into it.” The Analyst sat more comfortably, leaning against the wall behind her, but he could tell that she was very frustrated.
“You look sad.” He commented, not even looking at her, they were both staring forwards into nothingness.
“You SOUND sad, I’d see it if I had my power.”
“You don’t need a power to see if someone is sad, unless you’re a psychopath.”
“Well... I did, but I’m pretty sure I can still feel emotions like anger and joy, so I don’t think that counts.”
He was frowning at her response, and she could hear it, but she looked like she was actively trying to avoid looking at him.
“Are you embarrassed to the point of not wanting to see my face?”
“Not a chance, I want to see the human underneath all the layers of stone... But I don’t think I want to do that either, you wouldn’t get it.” She paused for a second, before continuing with a last question. “Say, do you recall the incident you had with the alliance?”
“I can’t really forget it if I tried, why’re you bringing it up now?” He looks at her, but she doesn’t look back.. The look she had was glassy and similar to someone who’s blind... But she also was looking carefully at the trees, so it was hard to guess what she was doing.
“Well, they gave you the safety of passage to become an independent hero, *that’s what they told you, right?*”
His instincts suddenly perked up, as this woman often tore apart alliances and teams by bringing up secret information that seemed to come out of nowhere, and was lethal enough to tear apart families, friends, and entire teams.
He looked at her angrily, but he couldn’t see the crazed smile she often had when she was about to reveal a grave secret or an ungodly past, she simply looked tired, and a little sad..
“Well, they told you wrong Stone, they might’ve gave you a whole appreciative speech just to throw you off the fact that they sabotaged your name.” She said it without changing her bank tone and expression, making him angrier..
“They basically dragged your name through th-“ she couldn’t finish up her sentence as he got up and raised his cuffed hand in the air, lifting her into the air as well to shout at her.
“Do you have no shame to try and lie to me while we’re BOTH in this?!”
She finally looked at him, with a little of the former cold anger she often held with her powers. “You can beat up a powerless woman if you’d like, but the police already want you.”
“Did... Did they actually do that...?” He felt betrayed, finally putting her down.. She actually just awkwardly pat his shoulder twice at that, before reluctantly backing up again.
“It’s surprising to me as the supposed villain, I really don’t like how superficial so many of the league’s members are.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Iceberg maybe the glorious leader of the league, but he didn’t like your guts from the get-go.”
He sat down again, in shock, and she sat as far as the decorated chains would allow her to, looking actually alive for once... She was angry, that was the best word to describe it.
“He was worried you’ll take his place in the league rankings too, but basically also paid the media outlets extra to make your battles seem more disastrous than they actually are,”
“I cannot believe this..” He had his head in his hands, although he didn’t seek any comfort... He didn’t know who to trust anymore.
Analyst sighed as she sat more comfortably, again. “I’m not really the villain in the situation until I point it out either, although my powers make me look a little unhinged... I can’t help but want to tear them apart, because of this petty crap.”
He didn’t reply, he understood her point, but he really didn’t want to hear it out loud like this.
“Aside from petty dramas, we have to figure out how to get out of the cuffs, then you can get back home to your base..” Seeing his even more miserable look, she carefully paused. “Or maybe anywhere, they cannot arrest you if you have your powers.” | Here I am, handcuffed to my arch-enemy with power-cancelling cuffs, on the run from authorities... how can this day possibly get any more interesting?
"We were walking for some time, and for some reason I'm starting to trust you." That surprising line came from Dr. Chill as she turned to me. "OK... weird, but go on?" I replied. She went on to reveal her full backstory, how she got her powers, and how she became a villain. She even trusted me with her civilian identity.
"Wow... it must take a lot of guts to say that to your arch-enemy" I said after a while. "You know, Dr. Ch- I mean Lauren, you're starting to seem pretty cool." "Pun intended?" she asked, smirking. "OK, your turn!"
I was taken a little by surprise, but I guess it was only fair. "When I'm not Miscellaneous Man," I started, "My name is George Henderson. I got my powers when I volunteered for an experiment, which ultimately failed to give the expected results."
I watched Lauren aka Dr. Chill as I told my story, and then her face turned to that of a triumph. "I knew it!" she exclaimed. "You know you don't disguise your voice that much" "Yeah true," I said sheepishly. I casually stuck my free hand into my pocket, and then felt even more sheepish.
"You know what?" I said as I slowly pulled something out of my pocket and turned to Dr. Chill. "What?" she asked, sensing the awkwardness. I showed her what was in my pocket. "I had the key to these cuffs all along!"
She looked like she was gonna strangle me. But then she uncharacteristically fought that urge. "I'm glad you forgot to unlock us. Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten to know each other, and I would still be a villain." I did a double take. "Wait, say that last part again?" She repeated, "I would still be a villain. I know it sounds cliche, but bonding with the hero usually does help a villain reform."
Felling confident that she wasn't just doing this to let my guard down, I unlocked the cuffs, and we were rubbing our wrists where the cuffs were. Suddenly something felt cold, and Lauren was giving us both a nice cold wind. "I figured we'd need that after walking in the sun in the middle of nowhere." She said. I looked forward and said, "Uh, we're not exactly nowhere."
We had been walking in a big circle and ended up right back at our town. Some authorities saw us and before they could do anything, I spoke on both of our behalves. "It's alright, Dr. chill reformed. I trust her now. She's chill!" "OK, now I *know* that one was intended." Dr. Chill smiled at me, and ironically it was a nice, warm smile.
That was a few years ago, and now we have a family. I tell them this story all the time, and how there can be hope for villains out there. Lauren is a great mom, especially to three super-kids. I feel like it all worked out in the end.
\----
It's crazy, to think that all those years ago I tried to gain Misc. Man's trust to eventually betray him. But I genuinely changed. I mean I wouldn't agree to marry him and have three kids with him and still eventually betray him. I mean that's just crazy, insane, and it would take someone with a completely frozen heart...
Luckily I'm not like that! <3 | 2020-08-08T01:38:55 | 2020-08-08T00:57:23 | 26 | 14 |
[WP] When you were homeless, you asked a friend for help. He laughed at you and shut the door on you. Some time later, that same friend ends up fired from his job. You try to convince your company to hire him. The only thing they ask is why you're doing this for someone who once abandoned you. | I presented the resume of my friend to my manager.
"As you can see," I told her, "he's got a lot of the experience that you're looking for. He meets all the qualifications. He could be a real asset to the company."
The manager looked over the resume. "He does look very promising," she said. "But I'm just curious. Wasn't this the same friend that turned you away when you asked him for help when you were living in the shelter?"
"Yes," I admitted. I'd already told my manager the story and the manner in which I had been turned away. Not only did I get the door slammed in my face, he made sure that I knew he was glad that I had ended up losing my home, and that he was laughing about it.
"Are you sure he was your friend?" the manager asked. "He sounds like a jerk. Maybe he was only pretending to be your friend to see how much he can get out of you, and now that you had hit rock bottom, he saw no more use for you."
"No, that's not it," I told my manager. "I never told you about the things that led to my homelessness.
"He and I used to be coworkers, and my addiction was starting to get out of hand. How I managed to conceal it from everybody at work I'll never know, but somehow I did. But my friend knew. He kept telling me to get help, to stop this thing before I get myself in deeper trouble than I already was. He even tried getting me into counseling; he made appointments, but I never showed up to them. 'You're a good worker,' he told me, 'but you can't do this to yourself. If you don't do something, you're going to end up in a bad place.'
"Soon I had aroused the suspicion of management, and I just outright lied about my situation when they asked me. Having no other way to be sure, they scheduled a drug test. I thought I was history. I knew I was going to fail it because they had scheduled it for the next day, not nearly enough time to get the junk out of my system. But I needed this job. There were other things going on in my life; if I lost this job, everything else comes crashing down. I was already in debt and behind on my payments. My friend knew this and had even given me money to pay the bills and the rent. Now I had to ask him for a new favor.
"'I need you to give me a clean urine sample,' I told him. 'I cannot fail this test. Don't worry, I'll be able to smuggle it in and pass it off as my own. I know how to do all that stuff. You just need to get me a sample. Help me out this one last time, and I promise I'll get counseling. And I'll really work to kick the habit. I promise.'
"Against his better judgment, he agreed. I was able to pass the test, and that bought me some more time. But soon my addiction got the better of me, and it got to a point where there was just no hiding it. I was fired. And I was evicted shortly after.
"Finding myself homeless with nowhere else to go, I came to my friend's house. He was angry. Angry that I had let myself get to this point after all that he had done. He revealed to me how resentful he was about how I was able to continue with this habit (not to mention all the other mistakes that I've made) and somehow I was able to get away with everything. I never seemed to suffer the consequences. I always lucked out one way or another and got away with it. My friend had always told me that he wished he had half my luck because that was all it would take for him to become CEO.
"He was glad that I finally got what was coming to me and relished the opportunity to rub it in my face. I don't blame him for doing this, and maybe it was for the best. This may have been the kick in the ass that I needed to get counseling and finally kick my habit.
"He played it off like he was glad. But I think he still cared, but he wished he didn't."
I stopped for a bit before revealing to my manager the reason for my friend's termination.
"They found out that he had provided the urine sample for my drug test. That's why he was fired."
I looked at the manager to see what she thought. She kept her eyes on the resume on the table.
"I only recommend him for the position because he's qualified for it, as you can see. I don't expect you to take anything else into consideration. But I just thought that you should know all this."
My manager thanked me, and I returned to my workstation. | Jessie felt the clawing in his heart, the slight raise of his heart rate that always accompanied the thoughts.
He felt the dark smokey tendrils reach from his crotch to his brain, pickling it, easing his consciousness into a puddle on the ground.
*It is too late for you. You can't be helped.*
Jessie clung to the hatred, to the isolation, to the loneliness, to the otherness. Since high-school, no, before really. Since birth, or even his conception, as his mother held her belly and feared, feared what the wet between her legs could fester into.
Scared of the troubles of motherhood, of the ease of neglect.
Yet by child numero dos, the fear had eased. The family had more money and time for their new piece of pottery, and Jessie fell by the wayside.
And with each passing day, the hatred of humanity piled up. Not specifically at his mother or father or sister, Angela, but at humans, for allowing this to occur. For allowing this sham of an existence for him.
For allowing his parents to buy Angela a car for her sixteenth, yet nothing for Jessie.
Jessie's father gave him a look that clearly spoke don't ask about the injustice, do not question this existence.
Jessie never questioned.
He hated instead.
Most things. People, crowds, surfing, the hot sun and the cold sun, his family, Angela, the Chads and Stacies at school, the people who laughed at him, who he could feel looking at him, thinking about him as he goes about his life, feeling so much fucking better than him as he stands the line at the grocery checkout.
Until Nathan reached back out to Jessie for the first time in a few years, and they met up at a bar.
Nathan gave his pitch, laying out a sob story about his manager hiring his fuck buddy and letting him go.
Jessie was just getting ready to tell him to fuck off--
*What if we did? What if we let it go, forgave this once?*
Blood flushed to Jessie's face and he excused himself to the restroom.
Cold porcelain filled his hands as he leaned forward into the mirror.
The voice continued, almost logically.
*We could try to start again, I mean, at least to some degree. We could try to set it aside, we could help him. How big of a deal would it be to have him sleep on the couch a few weeks?*
*No! Fuck him! Fuck them all! Fuck Angela! Fuck Tim Halloway, Clyde Donahue, Sebastian Walker and all the rest of those bastard fucks! They wouldn't be your friends back then, they won't be your friend now; Nathan will use you. He will chew you up and spit you out. He will sleep on your couch, make two minutes of conversation a day, and leave in a few weeks, then never return a call again. Don't let him. Crawl out the window.*
*But we can't go on like this, Jessie, man we just can't. Imagine the future, man. We want a wife, maybe a few pink faced babes. How can we get there, if we can't forgive one single person? What are we if we can't exhibit one example of humanity?*
The moment felt drawn out for hours, despite occurring for no longer than one minute.
Jessie drew within leaping distance of forgiveness, of trying to accept that the way he viewed an entire huge chapter of his life was simply wrong, or at least not healthy. He may hate his parents. He may hate Angela. He may not be hateful to everyone he ever met, already seeking out their wrongs before even saying hullo.
Yet the leap across the cavern would require the will of another man; a man not so hooked in hatred, like a fish with a particularly nasty curve on the hook resting within its cheek.
Jessie climbed out of the bathroom window to freedom. | 2022-09-24T17:52:50 | 2022-09-24T17:00:39 | 75 | 37 |
[WP] The world seems to be your average sword and sorcery world. You, a young adventurer have descended down into a forgotten tomb. There, you find strange metals and plastics. Lights come on without torches. A man made of metal awakens, stumbling toward you. "What year is it?" he asks | He knew the Tombs were off-limits. Many adventurers have been rumoured to descend into them, never to return. He didn't care. Young, brash, overly eager, he was willing to risk it all so he'd finally prove himself; so he'd earn the respect he desperately craved. When he finally stood before the colossal metal entrance, torch in hand, he felt only the slightest of hesitations before stepping in.
The tunnel behind the door was... odd. The walls and floors were perfectly uniform - not made of stone or wood, they seemed... metal - but to find so much metal in one place, not to mention work it so seamlessly, was... unheard of. He kept going forward, aided only by the flames of his torch, until the tunnel opened into a large room. He crept forward carefully, hand on the hilt of his sword, as if a wyvern could jump at him at any time - after all, perhaps that's where the previous adventurers went? Still, he progressed, inch by inch.
Until he tripped.
He quickly regained his balance but in doing so leaned against the wall, unwittingly hitting what felt like a button. Suddenly, the room became lit, blinding him.
When he finally managed to open his eyes and adjust to the sudden light, he found himself in a stupor. The lights were... white. Purely white, not yellow like flames. There weren't even any torches, only long, glass tubes. Looking around further, he realized he stood on the edge of a large room covered with metal tables, dark glass and... several human skeletons. Cold sweat ran down his forehead as he realized the Tomb was more than a scary name.
*Clink*.
He jumped as noise suddenly echoed through the room - the distinct sound of metal hitting metal. He turned and was met with a sight he could not have been prepared for.
A man was walking towards him. Or rather, *shuffling* towards him, clearly limping on his right leg. His skin was perfectly smooth, yet seemed... cold. Squinting his eyes, he realized it was not skin - it was metal, grey and dusty. He was missing an arm and his eyes glowed red yet seemingly without malicious intent. The adventurer fearfully lifted his sword towards the man.
"What year is it?" the man asked. His voice was unnatural. It sounded like several voices speaking at once without any emotion or intonation.
"W-what?" the adventurer spurted out.
"Year," the man of metal repeated. "What year is it?"
"It- it's... it's 966."
The metal man tilted his head. "What? No, no, that can't be right, that..."
He looked around as if he wasn't quite sure where he was, the red light in his eyes flickering. "How long was I offline..." he muttered.
"Who- what are you? A golem? A demon?" the adventurer asked.
"Series 7 android," the man responded casually as if the adventurer had any sense of what that meant.
"What does that mean? Is... is your skin made of *metal*?"
The man kept looking around the room. "Nano-plasteel polymer with titanium weave reinforcement," he stated. The adventurer decided not to bother to ask further - it didn't seem he would get any straight answers.
The man's eyes finally stopped flickering as he looked at a skeleton sitting on a nearby chair. He shuffled forward and placed his lone arm on the bones. Lights emerged from his head, symbols and letters simply floating in the air in front of him, showing various spirals and unknown words. *The creature must clearly be magical in nature*, the adventurer thought. *A golem*?
"Oh, Doctor Lakhani..." the man said solemnly. "I'm... sorry."
He turned back towards the adventurer.
"You. You said the year is 966. 966 years since what?"
"The Great Runic War of course," the adventurer answered, surprised by the golem's lack of knowledge. After a brief moment of silence, he decided to continue. "A battle between ancient kingdoms of impossible power, it is said. Great spells rained hellfire on the world, killing hundreds of thousands in blinding flashes of light. Places where the fireballs landed are still warm and saturated with raw, unstable mana, killing anyone foolish enough to approach."
"What..." the man whispered. "The nukes... they did it... they actually did it." The light in his eyes dimmed somewhat as he lowered his head, considering the situation. He then stepped towards the adventurer who once again raised his sword.
"Stop!" the adventurer cried out.
The metal man inspected the sword carefully and extended his hand, gripping it tightly. The adventurer tried to yank the sword back but found the man's grip impossibly firm. He could only watch as a swarm of black dust flew from the man's chest and towards the sword, enveloping it completely - mere seconds later, the swarm retreated and the sword's blade was gone completely.
He dropped the shaft in panic and watched in terror as the swarm flew towards the man's missing arm and further, forming a shape resembling the missing appendage. The swarm then simply... stopped moving and took on a more solid, regular form; the form of an arm, though it was considerably shinier than the rest of the man's dusty body.
The man moved his hand around several times as if testing it.
"This will have to do for now," he said and started walking towards the door; somehow, his limp disappeared altogether and he was now walking with flawless steadiness.
"Wait!" the adventurer yelled. The metal man turned and faced him.
"Where are you going? What- what are you going to do?" the adventurer asked. He worried the man could mean harm to his people; if he did, he could likely not stop him.
"I'll do what they would have wanted," the metal man said after a moment of consideration and nodded towards the skeletons. "I'll give you back what you have lost." He turned back towards the entrance to the tunnel and started walking.
"But I'll make sure you don't meet the same fate," he finished solemnly. | Harcourt woke in cold, close darkness, alarms vibrating in his right ear. Intruder alerts; he shut them off with a thought. And for long moments after he was left in silence, wondering how many years had passed him by. If the cryogenic pod would open. If the others had survived, the thousand and one souls that he had slept sentinel over, always ready to awaken at the slightest vibration of the implanted in his right ear, grafted onto the very drum.
All was silence, and the silence laid heavily upon him. Thick as death, thick as ice. It was a weight on his chest growing, growing, growing—
Until the running lights blinked on, the chamber unsealing with a pneumatic hiss.
And Harcourt stepped out.
He remembered what had happened very clearly: the last in a calamitous series of wars had forced humanity’s best and brightest underground, had degraded them enough to accept to accept a guardian like him; a soldier, the last vestiges of war. He called for light, but the armory’s overheads did not come on. He called for status updates, and the computer’s voice was a slurred thing aching in his inner ear. All the words confused, like it syntax had decayed in the intervening centuries. *Could a computer go insane?* Harcourt wondered. Perhaps. The bunker’s computer had been more intelligent than most, a braked AI left alone for all this time. The overhead lights had supposedly been good for a thousand years, and if they were dead—
A computer might indeed go insane. He shut off its connection to him, let those ramblings drift away.
Through the security door he heard young men’s voices. Excited sounds coming closer, carried by the ringing of heavy boots. *Military?* He dismissed the thought. In his time, true soldiers had forgotten how to laugh.
Harcourt flexed cold muscles, looked down at his hands. Big hands, calloused, full up with the stuff of life—which meant they knew ten thousand ways to kill. In the pale light from the cryogenic chamber, he could still see that strange species of ice clinging to his skin. Violently blue, it lent his paleness an inhuman, metallic sheen.
Harcourt did not entirely disapprove.
“Open,” he commanded the door.
A sound of locks unseizing. Rust fell from the ceiling pooling in drifts upon the floor. The voices outside stopped. The door opened slowly, grinding centuries to dust.
He’d been woken by a pair of boys.
They froze still as statues, watching him. Late teens, Harcourt thought, not yet twenty. Thick around the chest and soldiers, boys who’d known hard work, with dried mud clinging to no-nonsense leather boys. Swords on their stout belts. A hatchet. Harcourt filed that away, along with their clear terror.
“The year?” he barked.
They spoke. He did not understand.
“English, damn you!”
Babble, babble, meaningless babble!
The taller of the two approached him, one hand on the hilt of his sword. He wore sackcloth trousers and a much stained jerkin, had the wispy makings of a beard. A hard-set jaw like he was trying to be brave. He babbled, babbled, made as if to touch him.
Harcourt shot him then, the gun simply appearing in his hand. Shot his friend too, and in the shattered quiet, after, he perceived no other sound. The boys had come alone, a pair of naïve farmhands off on an adventure. He didn’t pity them; in Harcourt’s time they’d have already been fed into the charnel houses of Graveyard France or fired off at Mars, that doomed wave of colonists.
Harcourt searched the bodies, came up with food and water. Took the better of the swords. He found a torch and lit it, and saw the ruin that the bunker had become. Tree roots heaved the walls as thick around as his waist, and rust pock marked every surface. Even the plastics appeared moth eaten, but of course, given enough time something would have evolved to eat them too.
He turned, and the torch cast its flickering light down the hallway across the first of the thousand and one sleepers, those brilliant minds who’d shone like atom bombs across his time. In his orientation sessions—unsuccessful brainwashing—they had told him that these minds could reconstruct the battered Earth. Real Utopian shit. The kind of shit no soldier could believe.
So he chose not to. Simple as that. Turned the computer in his ear back on and listened to its incoherent groaning—no threat there. No threat from the thousand and one either, like being afraid of the contents of your own freezer. Frozen chickens could not come home to roost.
And then something curious happened: Harcourt laughed. He couldn’t explain it, it just happened, bubbling up like some superheated gas, exploding out of him, filling up the room. The laughter bounced off the walls, off the cryo chambers, off the cooling bodies, bounced like gunshots, and that made him laugh all the harder.
It was the last time Harcourt would ever laugh. He savored it, filed the sound away.
Then went up to greet an unsuspecting world.
r/TurningtoWords | 2022-12-19T14:03:08 | 2022-12-19T12:14:38 | 236 | 100 |
[WP] The healer was treated horribly by the knights he was assigned. Belittled and humiliated at every turn. Until one day a monster killed his squad and spared him. And the monster looked at him and she said something he didn't think was possible to even say. "Would you please heal me?". | The Skydriller twisted its contorted body writhing in some horrifying dance, slowly jerking towards me in its twirling twisted way, I had nothing to defend myself with, the party I came with had been quickly torn to shreds by this thing, It stopped and raised its strange shovel like head, several protective flaps slacking and revealing its one weak spot, its neck It slowly came close then said "Would you please heal me?" In a double toned voice "They got me pretty good and you..." It stopped and shuddered as it inhaled "Don't smell like they do, or did. Before they were killed that is"
"Heal you?"
"Yes please. Unless you would rather try and kill me?" It cackled softly and jittered in place, never still. "Ahh. I. Guess?" I slowly said, casting a lower tier spell on the beast "Ahh. That's better" Said the Skydriller as its wounds closed "Without you those would have taken weeks to heal and I wouldn't be able to get around as well, You know, to hunt and stuff"
"What exactly do you eat?" I asked "Honestly I don't think anybody knows much about Skydrillers, except for the fact that their extremely rare and tend to live in mountians"
"Oh, we eat small dragons and griffins mostly".
"Whatnow"
"Small dragons and Griffins" said the Skydriller standing to its full hight "Thanks for the heal, I have to be going now"
"Ah, see you I guess"
"Probably not human" Said the sky driller before closing its flaps and diving into the ground, twisting like some massive demented corkscrew down and away from all humanity.
&#x200B;
This ain't that good. I liked the idea though so ye | The cleric gazed awestruck at the creature before him, his own knights had never treated him with such respect. "Heal you?" he asked, still unsure of what he had heard. His squad lay dead around him the smell of blood and carnage strong in the air. "I..."
A moment's hesitation was all it took for the decision to be made. The creature was injured and it was his calling to aid those in pain. His vows made no distinction between friend and enemy, no difference in the value of a life whether human or monster.
With his heart pounding in his chest he stepped forward and laid his hand on the wounded monster, the faint light eminating from his hand curing the creature of its pain. "A life is a life", he said, "it makes no difference to me". Once the creature was cured he turned away and strode off into the fading light, leaving nothing in his wake but silence. | 2020-02-23T14:10:21 | 2020-02-23T13:07:21 | 30 | 14 |
[WP] Write a story in which the last line is a common phrase, such as, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but when we get to that line, it should have a totally different meaning from the common one. | "Dad, when can we go?"
"Soon Theresa, be patient. You know we have to stay until Emma's mom has performed"
"I don't want to wait for her, can't I just go now? We've been sitting here for an hour"
"You can't leave Theresa, pass the time somehow. You could go backstage and talk to Emma if you feel like it"
"Emma only talks about stupid stuff. Plus she's like half my age. She's by far the dumbest girl I've ever talked to!"
"Keep your voice down okay! Were eating dinner with Emma and her mom, and I would like you to endure, at least until Emma's mom is finished with her performance."
"Emma and her fat ugly mom isn't even eating! They've been backstage half the time we've been here! I'm not waiting another minute! Why are we doing this again?!"
"Keep your voice down Theresa! I've spent countless lunches with this woman out of pure pity for her hopeless dream. She got me the job for christs sake! I figure the least I owe her is a fucking dinner where my fully grown daughter acts like a fully grown person!"
"That job was the worst decision you ever did! I'm leaving!"
"Goddamn it Theresa! Sit your butt down! This is not over until the fat lady sings!"
| The walls of the kings castles were ruptured by the goblin death sphere, then driven through to the keep of the castle, before unleashing its rampant army. A device no larger than the head on a man's shoulders, but through goblin magicks it can teleport the armies to their battle. The great rulers of man have fallen. There is no refuge from the goblin death sphere and its assassins.
Now, the ball is in your court. | 2015-05-16T05:45:02 | 2015-05-16T01:33:27 | 337 | 36 |
[WP] On everyone's 18th birthday at noon, one word appears in their skin, depicting their career or purpose in life. On your birthday you're staring at a clock showing 11:59am, family and friends gathered around for your reveal.
Path 1: Noon strikes, and you stare at your forearm intently. 12:01, still nothing appears.
Path 2: one word fades in slowly, followed by a second... | It was 11:59 and while the whole family gathered around, my mother was no where to be seen. I expected that she would have joined us. After all, she'd been there for my older sister's reveal, and my brother's reveal. But instead she was watering the garden while it rained steadily.
C'mon, mom, I know I'm not your favorite, but you could at least put on a front this time.
"It's noon!" my sister squealed. "Pullupyoursleeve!"
A moment of dread shot through me. I can't say that I knew exactly what was wrong, but I knew that something wasn't right. There was no tingling in my arm, just a feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me something was going to be revealed today and I wasn't going to like it.
I pulled up my sleeve and no words appeared. Frantically, I pulled up the other sleeve, shoving it all the way up to my armpit. It had to be there. My sister tugged my shirt up, peeking under it. Not that the words ever appeared anywhere besides on your dominant forearm. "Where is it?"
"He won't get it yet," my mother barked from the sliding glass door. "He's not going to be 18 for another two months."
"What?" I yelped. "Today's my birthday!" My sister's hands fell and my shirt slid back down into place.
My mother shook her head. "You're father and I were separated, and I met a man..." she said quietly, her round eyes darting towards my father.
"You said the baby was mine! You said he was just early!" my father shouted.
She crumpled into a chair, her wet hair dripping onto her face. Her mouth wobbled and she stared at the floor. "He's not and he wasn't."
Two months and three days later, my parents' marriage was in shambles, and I walked into my sister's room, pulled up my sleeve, and showed her the words that had appeared the day before. "MARRIAGE COUNSELOR"
| All of my friends and family had gathered in our favorite martian bar, the drinking age long ago lifted after the great cleansing of the 2020's...Everyone turned their attention towards me as the clock clicked ever so slowly from 11:59 to 12:00 sharp, the first letters began to appear..
"I" followed by a letter "D"
Confused everyone started to murmer..
As the next "D" appeared I gasped thankfully, I wasn't branded to be an idiot at least! That was followed by "Q" and another "D" and no more letters appeared.
"IDDQD" I thought, what the hell could that mean.. That was no career, no purpose at all, it was just a jumble of damn letters!
As we all panicked and tried to figure out what was happening to me, the second word began to appear.
"I" followed by another "D" but this time followed by the combination "KFA" before the letters stopped appearing.
"IDKFA... IDDQD.. what the fuck man!"
As we were trying to make sense of the situation, and calm my panic stricken mother down, the general alarms sounded throughout the entire base complex. The UAC started broadcasting over the PA report to quarters in preparation of rapid deployment to Phobos, and further info would be provided on the ride there.
| 2017-03-16T03:19:48 | 2017-03-16T03:13:05 | 129 | 14 |
[WP] Write a sad story with the happiest twist you can think of. | She was kneeling, dark hair obscuring her face. Ian looked at his knife, held loosely in the hand that refused to move. The blade winked at him, inviting him to do it. The masked man in the corner watched him. His left hand curled around the throat of Ian's daughter, the right pressed the muzzle of the gun to her temple.
"Choose," said the man, sounding rather bored. "Kill your wife, or I kill your daughter. Or lose them both. Choose."
Ian heard the deafening drumbeat in his chest, and prayed for a heart attack. The masked man had come. It was a horrendous joke, and his wife and daughter were in on it. They had to be. Ian started laughing at the joke, the knife shaking in his hand.
"Time's up," said the man, his voice darkening with pleasure at the thought of what came next. The words scraped at Ian, twisted his laughter into a scream of denial.
"No! Please, please, pl -" he said, as the finger wrapped around the trigger. An animal sound escaped him as his daughter fell, and then the blood spread around his wife.
The woman rose.
"Good job, Jake," she said, nodding at the masked man. "Everything sounds almost perfect. You guys want to run through it one more time before we're done for the day?"
"Sure," said Ian, then spoke to the little girl. "Remember to whimper a little when Jake's holding you, alright? Okay guys. One more time! Only a week left till opening night." | My wife divorced me, my girlfriend left me, my boss fired me, my internet was down, and I was out of money. There was only one logical solution: suicide. I climbed onto the roof of my apartment, took off all my clothes so the impact would be more direct, and peed on the people on the street (you can't arrest a dead guy). Suddenly, I noticed a gathering below me. They were not there for the poor fellow covered in my piss; they were there for me. They clearly wanted me not to do this. I took a closer look at them. They were my exes, my former boss, and an internet provider. Things were finally looking up. | 2014-06-24T12:56:40 | 2014-06-24T12:16:28 | 31 | 14 |
[WP] Aliens have finally discovered Earth - but they're not hostile. They've tasted human food, and they think it's so astonishingly good that Earth is becoming an alien tourist hotspot. | "I want to go to Taco Bell. Many sapients say it is the best food in the galaxy."
Golbur looked at his companion, who was holding a guidebook in her claws. "Did you just read that in the book?"
Julix looked up from the book. "Yes, but they must be good. Otherwise why would there be so many of them?"
Golbur adjusted his eyestalks to get a good look at the book. "I believe that their frequency is just a holdover from the human's Fast Food Wars. Plus it seems like they mostly serve carnivores."
"No, no. It says that scientists have been able to detect only trace amounts of real meat in their food products."
Golbur allowed himself to be dragged through the door. This restaurant location did seem to cater to non-humans, at least. He saw several Vulcans, Xenomorphs, and a Tralfamadorian sitting in the humanoid section. The hostess led them to a section with cushioned lounge seats that would fit their carapaces.
The hostess was overly cheery. "You'll please excuse me if I don't recognize your species. Would you like the Green menu, the Blue, or the Red? We also have a White menu for omnivores."
Golbur responded with a smile that made the hostess flinch only slightly. "The Green, thank you."
The hostess handed over menus from her stack. "Our Green special today is the Doritos Vegi-sushi Chalupa Supreme. I highly recommend it."
Julix was ignoring her menu and looking at the table next to them. She pointed at a spiky object on the table. "I want that!"
The hostess turned to look where she was pointing. "I'm afraid that item is on the Black menu. Approved species only."
"It's a plant, right? If it's a plant we can eat it. We can digest anything on Earth. The doctors said so." Julix turned one eyestalk back to Golbur, pleading.
"Okay, one Durado Vegisucky Chilpa Soup Ream and one of whatever that spiky thing is." When the hostess hesitated, he continued. "We'll sign a waiver."
\-----------------------------------------
It took Julix five minutes to claw open her spiky fruit. Golbur waited patiently to start his own food until she was ready. "Why did you order that?"
"It's spiky. That means the inside is delicious. Otherwise it wouldn't have to protect itself." She finally got the top off, exposing bright yellow flesh. "Oh, it smells wonderful."
"Perhaps we should scan it?" Golbur spoke too late. Julix was already biting off chunks of the fruit.
"Oh, I was right. It is good. So goob. Wat? Miy wips theel weird. Why iz eberyting tingling?"
Golbur pulled out his scanner and got a sample of the fruit. "Oh, dear. It says it has an enzyme that is attempting to digest you from the inside. The humans call it a Pine Apple."
Julix continued to eat as she fell to the floor. "Still worth it."
\[More writing at r/c_avery_m\] | "Talk, you foul monster! Why have you traveled from the stars to invade our nation?! What insidious machinations are you plotting inside America?!"
The alien screamed in terror as it futilely tried to break free from the restraints tying it down to a steel gurney. "Wait! You don't understand! This is all just only a huge misunderstanding! We only came here for Graham crackers! Please don't anal probe me!" it shrieked, its voice practically on the verge of tears.
The agent paused. "Did you just say...Graham crackers?" he said incredulously.
"Yes, yes!" the alien said, frantically babbling. "We're not invaders, we're just tourists! We heard about this delicious, addictive tasty meal on a newly discovered planet and we just came to get some for ourselves!"
"What a loud of bullshit!" the agent shouted as his face turned red with rage. "You really expect me to believe that you traveled millions of miles from God knows where just so you could stuff your face with bland tasteless crackers?!"
"It might be telling the truth, William," Howard, the other agent in the room, spoke up. "We don't know what kind of bizarre tastes these organisms have. And we have discovered hundreds of boxes of Graham crackers that these creatures have stolen and stashed away in their flying vessel."
"We didn't steal them!" the alien shrieked. "Ask Sylvester Graham! We made a deal with him! We agreed to give him some of our technology in exchange for as many of his amazing crackers as he could provide us!"
The two agents exchanged stupefied looks with one another. Howard was the first one to find his voice. "Are you...are you telling me that Sylvester Graham has been secretly working together with creatures from another planet?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying!" the alien said, nodding his head. "He said he wanted to use our technology to spread temperance around the world and bring an end to the masturbatory habits of humanity."
William's face paled. "Good god, we need to alert the president immediately!"
"I'm afraid it's far too late for that," a voice spoke out from behind them. The two agents spun around in shock, only to see Sylvester Graham smiling as he stood in the doorway, flanked by a group of bodyguards. "As of this very moment, gentlemen, I am now the new leader of the Foundation and the true ruler of this country." | 2022-06-10T09:03:12 | 2022-06-10T07:33:16 | 165 | 99 |
[WP] Tell me the story of how the world ends - but told entirely in Craigslist ads | 4/7/29: (69corvetteguy) WTB: 69 Stingray Corvette. 30k. Good condition, black or blue, 80k miles or less.
6/12/29 (69corvetteguy) WTB: 4WD anything. Can trade stingray corvette - good engine, quick and reliable. Good for anyone looking to risk the city. I gotta get out into the country.
6/24/29 (69corvetteguy) WTB: Guns. Preferably rifles. No sawed-off shotguns, they are too close range. Bullets included. Can trade 2 weeks rations, including potable water.
2/16/30 (69corvetteguy) WTB: Ammunition for an M-16 carbine. Magazines not necessary, just the bullets. Can trade full charge batteries.
2/16/30 (69corvetteguy) WTB: Water filter. Must have at least 6 months worth of use left. Can trade full charge batteries.
2/16/30 (69corvetteguy) WTB: Rations. Salted or smoked. Can trade full charge batteries.
2/27/30 (cripscansell) WTS: solar powered battery charger. Make an offer. Don't try anything funny, and we won't kill you. | Mar 14, 2020 Lot of Quad-Copter drones for sale - $2000 pic electronics - by owner [x]
Mar 10, 2020 Lot of Amazing burning lasers! - $400 pic electronics - by owner [x]
Mar 17, 2020 Lot of replacement iPhone fusion cells for sale - $3000 pic electronics - by owner [x]
AI/5/USA, I told you I was a real person and now I will prove it! | 2015-04-29T10:11:32 | 2015-04-29T08:49:52 | 86 | 27 |
[WP] Everyone knows the Grim Reaper, the personification of Death. You are the supernatural personification of the other certainty in life: Taxes | Her father’s eyes were glazed, like little blue puddles with a thin layer of winter ice frozen over them. They looked idly down at his knees, at his worn brown trousers.
“What happened to you, Dad? How could things change this quickly?”
She hadn’t expected an answer, or even recognition of the question. But for half-a-second, life seemed to return to the old man. The ice cracked and his eyes looked first to her, then to some place far beyond. “The taxman,“ he said. “He catches up with everyone, eventually.”
”Dad?”
He leaned back in his chair and again stared at his knees, the cold and silent ice returning to his eyes.
\*
If he could have sifted through his memories, filed them in the correct order, and communicated them as a story to his daughter, he would have told her something more. Told her what happened the day his memory started to rot.
He would have explained to her how, nearly a year ago, a man in a suit — but with practically no face — turned up unannounced at his apartment.
There had been a knock at the door. He’d ignored it initially, continuing with his crossword instead. But another, louder knock, followed, and then one louder still, this a continuous, thunderous rapping on the wood. As if that first mild knock had been only a ripple of water, a warning to those on the beach that a tsunami was soon to hit.
“*Yes*?” he said, rather belligerently, as he yanked open the door.
The suited man looked up. Or rather, his head moved up from a bowed position. In truth he couldn’t look at all as had no eyes with which to look with. He had no hair either. Not even eyebrows. No mouth. No ears. Just pale, taut skin, like leather pulled fast over a drum.
The old man stumbled back. Was it Halloween tonight? That must surely be it. Except, it was September, wasn’t it? He never forgot the day’s date and today was the seventh.
The faceless man stepped into his apartment, past the stunned man. He removed a pad of paper from his jacket, along with a pen. A minute later, he’d scribbled down a note and torn the page away from the pad. He pushed the piece of paper into the old man’s chest.
The page read as follows:
*> Daniel, you have had an exceptional life. An idyllic childhood with kind parents and good education. No loss of loved ones, only an amicable divorce leading to happy, separate lives. You have three wonderful children whom you love and who love you in return. You have always worked a job you enjoyed, and you retired with more money than you know how to spend. You have never had a major health issue, mental or physical. You have never considered yourself depressed, always living in the moment and never the past.*
*> Sadly — and such is human life — a happy life must be taxed. How you avoided me for so long, whether by accident or good fortune, I don’t know. But even you must have sensed that you‘d escaped the bad unnaturally long. Well I am sorry to say that I have come for all the payments you have thus far missed.*
Strangely, bizarrely even, Daniel wasn’t scared by the time he’d finished reading the letter. Instead, there was an odd feeling swimming in his chest. Like when you’ve been underwater for a long time and all the breath in your lungs has been used up and you need to reach the surface to refill.
The letter was right. He *had* lived a charmed, lucky, blessed life. A happy life. A life perhaps too good to be true.
And occasionally — and he’d not realised what the feeling was until this moment — through his life, he’d glimpsed a darkness on the peripheral horizon. A storm brewing at the very distant edge of the blue ocean. When he thought he was about to see the storm, he’d shiver and turn away, look instead at the coast and smile.
Deep down, he’d always known that storm was coming. There‘d been a primordial fear in his gut that only now he realised was of this taxman. A sort of karma collector that he’d been avoiding. Not on purpose, he didn’t think. Although, perhaps it had been?
What a relief, in a way, that he’d finally been caught.
The taxman handed him a second, final note.
*> You are made of memories, as are all humans. You are a face carved in a rock, shaped by everything you have ever done, everyone you have ever met. That is who you are. You have been sculpting this figure all your life, although you have not known it. Now, I must take it. I must chip away at the rock, crack it and crumble it, take down what is you.*
\*
&#x200B;
Tillie waited a while but Dad was now firmly silent. He’d fallen back into his own world far away from hers. A world she could never enter, but sometimes — for seconds at a time — he could leave.
He left it less frequently each day, it seemed. Hopefully he was happy there.
“Happy birthday, Pa,” Tillie said, tying the string of a balloon to the back of his armchair. It bobbed there with more life than her father showed. He was only seventy today. Tillie didn’t consider it old, not really. Some people lived to a hundred.
But he was old. Beyond old. He hadn’t aged consistently and had been very fortunate until recently. Now there had been a deep pothole on the road of age he’d been travelling down
At least he’d lived a good life. A lucky life. Even if it had all caught up with him in such a short space of time.
She sighed, leaned down to kiss his cheek.
There was tear sitting there on that leathery wrinkled skin.
A single tear resting on his cheek.
“You okay, Pa?”
Of course, he didn’t reply. He was lost exploring the far stars of his mind. Not in the storm he’d worried waited for him, but in someplace more pleasant.
She kissed his cheek and left.
That was about an hour ago.
I remain here still, however, watching the old man from an armchair across the home’s sitting room.
He’s still lucky, in my opinion. To have a daughter who loves him as much as she does. And two other children who visit him almost as often.
None want me to come take their father, and yet somewhere deep down they all hope I soon do. Humans are full of contradictions like that.
They needn’t worry, because soon I will take him. Another month, I think. Soon they won’t have to visit that almost shapeless stone inside his mind. Soon he will come with me and I will reshape him, bring back the best parts of him.
The taxman has been. Has collected his debt.
Now, I’m all that is left. | **The Taxman Cometh**
I dig my toes into the hot sand, holding my polished black Oxfords in my left hand and the Ledger in my right. The Cayman Islands, my new favorite place on Earth. I inhale the salty air.
Splayed out on the beach before me, his sun-tanned face upturned and contorted in fear, is a telecommunications executive from St. Louis, Missouri.
Part of him has been waiting for this moment since the first time he spurned me, twenty-four years ago. He’s seen me in his nightmares, and his drug-addled delusions. Now he sees me in the flesh.
I drop my Oxfords in the sand and crack open the Ledger – the only book of figures the universe trusts, because my calculations are never wrong.
“Mr. Sheffield, you’ve been charged with hiding $45 million in taxes, and sufficiently evaded the Earthly authorities for a period of 24 years. Now you’re mine.”
I put Mr. Sheffield in cell C-11, recently vacated by Al Capone. His clawing eyes look up at me from the northwest corner of the Debtors' Prison. The sprawling complex hovers below my Cubicle, forever rotating, like a top that never stops spinning, my permanent companion in the abyss between worlds.
I like to watch my prisoners as I toil away on the Ledger, selecting the target of my next audit.
But now I have to suffer through another prisoner transfer. Capone is ready to move to the afterlife, his sentence served – and, I have to admit, with a quiet dignity.
My brother arrives.
The tattered hem of his black hooded cloak drifts across his boots. He throws its great folds back behind his arms and spreads open a toothy grin. “So this is the mighty Al Capone. Hello, my child.”
“Yup.”
Capone spits on the floor and gives Death a polite nod.
With a flick of the wrist, Capone is turned upside-down and whisked away, into the black void where Death materialized moments before. It used to house one of my spare filing cabinets.
I glance down at the Debtors' Prison over the wall of my cubicle, checking it’s still there. My brother has never been good at managing collateral damage when exercising his powers here. Or on Earth, for that matter.
“Is there something else?” I say, adjusting my glasses and rubbing the bridge of my nose. “I’m busy.”
Death draws closer and conceals his face under his hood. Or is it his shame? A deep sigh.
“I require your… assistance.”
I perk up. This is rare.
“Who is it?”
“A time traveler. She cheated me.”
I slam my ledger shut and roll my chair back. This is exactly why I detest my brother.
“Always with these bloody games, Death. Why?”
“Spare me. Some of us need entertainment. We can’t spend eternity in a cubicle. To bury oneself in work is to bury oneself alive. I need social interaction.”
I roll my eyes and evaporate, materializing again in the B-block of the Debtors Prison. Death follows. We stroll along the cells, inspecting the inmates. Death’s mouth starts to water – so many souls that will soon be his.
“So, how’d she cheat you?”
“In too many ways to list here,” Death says. “But with her immortality, she has amassed a fortune unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Impossible,” I say. “I’d have it here.” I hold up the Ledger.
“She’s keeping it off the books. Every penny.”
“Nothing stays off my books. The Ledger is immutable.”
“Your arrogance rivals mine, brother. Do not repeat my mistake. She is out there.”
“How? What has the mortal found to give her such power?”
“Not what, but *whom*.”
I stop walking. I bend at the knees to get a look under Death’s hood, into his eyes. He meets my gaze, and it sends a chill down my spine.
“Father,” he says.
I curse the old man in a thousand languages. So this is it. Dad’s fallen in love.
A mortal has got Father Time wrapped around her finger.
My blood boils as I process the news. In a rage I fly into my cubicle and tear through my oldest files, desperate for some sort of evidence. Any clue that could confirm this disaster. I find father’s file, buried under a layer of dust that's gone undisturbed for millions of years.
Death watches as I crack the folder open. Inside I find nothing of my old records. It's been cleaned out, except a small square piece of paper. A napkin, by the looks of it, from a restaurant on Earth.
Scrawled on the back, with ink and quill, is a question only my deranged father could write:
*Would it help if I told you she was the one?*
Death cackles, gleeful to have yanked me into this mess. Misery loves company.
I throw on my jacket, my blood-red tie, and my lucky pocket protector.
“No,” I say under my breath, to my father, wherever he is. “No one dodges the Taxman.”
In a flash I evaporate, leaving my Cubicle in a swirl of papers, files, receipts, and timecards. Death catches my trail and, his eyes flashing a fiery red, takes off after me. The hunt is on. | 2021-07-04T09:33:39 | 2021-07-04T09:00:28 | 840 | 180 |
[WP] You are one of the survivors on a dessert island from a crashed private plane. Amongst the survivors is Gordon Ramsay who is refusing to eat the food that you cook and instead just insults your cooking until he starves.
Auto correct has maybe made this slightly different but perhaps better than it should of been 😂 should of definitely been desert | I had been trying. Really, I had. Granted I'm no Guy Fieri but the other handful of survivors had no problem eating my take on island survival food. But Gordon...
I mean, he was always insufferable, that was his thing right? But we thought, you know, maybe with the *circumstances* being what they were, he could give it a rest and just... eat.
Nope. The guy can't turn it off, I don't think it's his fault. I hear him in his sleep, cursing people for dropping the soup or burning the chicken.
So I started to make things intentionally bad. I've found the threshold of flavor where the group will cope with nary a complaint, but Gordon won't even stand downwind of it. The best part is, I think he's catching on.
He knows I'm doing it to spite him now. That I'm making food specifically to exclude him. I can see the desperation in his face as the hunger withers him away. He must be eating coconuts, or bugs, just to spite my cooking but stay alive. But he's weaker now, his fire burning low. Unsure of how long the rest of us will be here, I wait for delerium to creep in on Gordon, and begin to prod him for 'long pig' recipes. | The island seemed to impossible. No matter what ice cream or cake batter I scavenged Gordon refused to eat more than one bite. Then he would berate me over and over. I tried ice cream cake, chocolate cake, cake flavored ice cream but he always rejected it. The island being entirely made of dessert wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was Gordon Ramsey’s hatred of it. Me and the other survivors didn’t miss him when he starved. The ungrateful prick. | 2018-07-15T07:39:58 | 2018-07-15T06:37:47 | 112 | 30 |
[WP] Every person has a button they can press at night that deposits a large sum of money to their bank account. However, the first person to press it each night is horrifically killed. | I glanced at the button, red, shiny, like a new toy underneath the Christmas tree.
"Press it" the voice inside my head begged. My finger slid across the button, careful not to disrupt the connection enough to initiate it by mistake, I knew I had to make sure I was making this decision with an open, and clear, mind.
"Think of the benefits," the voice rang out again, adding "think of Allison."
I took a deep heavy sigh as I looked to the bed where she slept, curled in the blankets as I sat here again in front of the electronic glow. She had to work in the morning, "Come to bed soon" she said, four hours before.
"Think of Lydia," the voice continued as I looked to the crib to see my child dreaming peacefully.
My finger hovered over the button.
".... think of the bills, your marriage is failing and you can't even take care of your family."
"Shut up!" I called out, quickly looking around the room to make sure I didn't disturb my family. "Get out of my head."
"Do it"
"Do it"
"Do it"
My knuckles cracked as I stretched out my bony finger and placed it firmly against the button. I took in a deep breath before whispering "Goodbye" as I pressed the button down and awaited my fate.
My phone sounded. Alert: $5,000 has been deposited into your checking account.
"Fuck." | The world's population of 7.4 billion is shrunk by .0000049 percent of its population each year due to the button's victims. Meanwhile, 2 billion people starve in the first year as money is devalued; everyone has essentially the same income for doing nothing which results in massive inflation and lack of goods (see Venesuela).
Eventually new currencies are constructed, free of the button's ruined currencies. The world rebuilds. We all wonder what sadistic god visited this plague in guise of blessing on us in the first place. | 2016-07-16T17:58:05 | 2016-07-16T17:32:43 | 145 | 52 |
[WP] After witnessing a death, a young girl falls in love with the Grim Reaper. She becomes a serial killer just to see him more often. | Larry was disappointed, of course, but he was also a practical man, so he dispensed with grumbling and instead got to work. He began with the bottles first, then the scraps of food strewn about, then the shredded photographs laying across the floor like pixellated snow.
Finally, after he had squeezed the trash bag down the chute, he returned to pick Sara off the ground, then began the slow trudge to the bedroom.
"I'm OK... I can... walk by myself..."
"You promised me you wouldn't drink again, Sara."
"Did I? I didn't..."
"I'm here anytime, Sara. You should talk to me, not bottle it all up."
She was quiet for a while, until her head hit the pillows. She still stank of old sweat, alcohol, depression. Larry was turning to leave when her hand shot out, caught his.
"I'm sorry, it's just that... I know I promised you I would move on, but I... I miss him so much sometimes, you know?"
"Yeah, OK."
"Oh no, oh no... I've made you angry, haven't I? I've gone and done it again... Larry, I swear, I really do like you, and I want to be with you, and I'm sure I want to move on..."
"Then what's stopping you, Sara? Have you been calling him again?"
Larry didn't really understand what triggered those black episodes Sara lost herself in. He thought at first that they were still communicating over the Internet, or through phone messages. But there were none. And as far as he could tell, from the first day he had reached out to the girl who had survived the bombing at Times Square, performed first aid on her while the emergency services arrived, he had never seen her ex, only heard her talk about him in the abstract.
But he had noticed that tragedies tended to precipitate such moods. If they witnessed an accident, saw people perish, she would spiral again, uncontrollably.
Perhaps it was some kind of PTSD.
"I swear, I've not been calling him. It's just that... I'm reminded of him at times, you know?"
"I know. And I told you, I don't care about your past. I'm here to help you through this. But you have to want to help yourself too, I can't do it alone."
She sat up suddenly, a flame igniting in her eyes, a certain clarity which shone through.
"No, this cannot go on. I was wrong. I have to accept that I can't change who I am. Please, Larry, please go. I can't promise you that I'll ever move on. And if I ever weaken again, feel like seeing him again... You may get hurt, Larry. So please, we have to end this."
He expected the words, but they still cut deep. How many times had he tried to move on himself? But he knew he had to try, to see if he could ever walk with her to the end of the tunnel - there, surely, there would be enough light for the two of them.
"I'll stay with you until I die, I promise," he said, running his fingers through her hair as he coaxed her back to sleep.
"That's... what I'm afraid of..." she replied, as she slowly drifted off to sleep.
Larry kissed her on the forehead, drew the blanket over her, then left.
---
/r/rarelyfunny | The dead white walls seemed to hum with excitement along with her. Tonight is the night. She trekked from room to room, waiting on nightfall. It wasn't required, but it just seemed fitting. The cart she pushed from room to room squeaked quietly along in front her. She seemed not to notice the front right wheels resistance to her every move. She was effervescent.
The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling did a poor job of illuminating anything at all, and she was grateful for the darkness. Most of them were asleep already, and it wouldn't be a hard sell to anyone that they had stayed that way.
Finally she arrived. This is the one. She was smiling ear to ear as she pushed her cart into Mr. Johnson's room and shut the door behind her. The shades on the only window were drawn, and the room descended back into darkness with the small click of the lock. Small red numbers flashed on the screen of the machine attached to Mr. Johnson. She crept slowly to his bedside. His eyes were closed peacefully, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
She went back to the cart, and grabbed the prepped needle from the bag resting on top of it. This was the worst part. She held the needle in front of her as she stepped forward.
One prick is all it takes.
To her dismay, the man started.
"What are you doing to me?" he breathed in alarm.
"Shh, Mr. Jonson." She looked up at his eyes, now wide. "I was trying not to wake you, but you need your shot."
The man seemed to relax a bit, but he still looked confused. "Oh." he replied uncertainly. "What are you putting in me?" he asked, with a slight smile.
She hesitated, looking back down at the needle. "Potassium." she replied, almost nonchalantly.
"Couldn't have just given me a bana..." the man started to trail off.
There.
"This is more like a thousand bananas." she whispered as she watched the light in his old eyes shine for the last time. The last carbon Dioxide the Mr. Johnson would ever produce seeped from his lungs unwillingly, and it was done.
She turned away. All that was left was to wait.
___
The room danced in the light of several candles. Orange light fought the shadows back into their corners, and then was fought back in turn. She watched their struggle silently, sitting on the uncomfortable chair.
Suddenly the light lost ground. There was a chill in the air. She knew that he was near.
She stood just in time to see him.
___
/r/Periapoapsis | 2017-06-07T18:55:59 | 2017-06-07T17:27:32 | 204 | 48 |
[WP] When you reach the age of 21, you are given a check from the government. The check has been carefully calculated and is worth the minimum amount of money you need for the rest of your life. Your check came in the mail today and it was $7.27
Edit: Wow this blew up better than I thought it would. | The day had finally come. My 21st birthday, the final threshold to adulthood and the removal of the last legal prohibitions to having some fun. My older friends had received their checks and partied hard – some for days, some for hours. My younger friends waited enviously to see what I’d receive. The anticipation was worse than even college finals results.
&#x200B;
“Anderson, J. Seven dollars and twenty-seven cents. Sign.”
&#x200B;
I was shocked. They were shocked. What had begun as a party-to-be turned quickly into a wake, and those who I thought were my friends quickly commiserated and deserted me to find the next free drinks. I sighed and signed my name, bitterly cursing the governmental mathematicians who put me in this ridiculous predicament. Seven lousy bucks!
&#x200B;
I guess it’s good for at least a soda, though, right? I took my check to the nearest gas station and decided to pick up at least some sort of drink to celebrate the day. Dr. Pepper was on sale 2 for $2, so I was already ahead! Silver linings and all that stuff. Peering into the scratchcard case, I figured I might as well throw the remaining five bucks at the mega-jackpot ticket. It’s not like I’d be able to do much else.
&#x200B;
“Seven dollars and twenty-six cents, hon” said the cashier. I smiled at her and handed her my check. I guess I couldn’t even spend that little a windfall all in one place. She handed me my sodas, my scratch card, my receipt and a single shiny penny in change. Well, at least I’d have something to scratch with.
&#x200B;
Donkey. Donkey. Horseshoe. Dollar bill. Horseshoe. Clover. Dollar bill. Firework. Horseshoe.
&#x200B;
Wait, *what?* I looked at the payout table. Three horseshoes. 5 million bucks. Enough to set me up for life if I was careful enough. Easily enough to survive for a good while… and all of my so-called friends already abandoned me and written me off.
&#x200B;
Damn the government! They’ve become so good at this stuff that they found a way that they didn’t even have to pay for me! | First time, be gentle!
Seven dollars and twenty-seven cents? Was this a joke? Today was my 21st birthday. Today was also the day I received my allotment. The amount of money I was expected to use to live off for the rest of my life. Oh, I could go get a job. All the usual ways of earning money were still there. But the government statistical psychologists had distilled human beings down to a few basic equations that allowed them to gage how much each person would need to live in comfort for their entire adult life.
Now, I don’t come from money, but I’ve always had big dreams, and I’ve tried hard to find ways to get the things I want out of life, even if it meant bending the rules sometimes. But I’ve got to be honest here. I’m not the smartest tool in the shed, and I certainly do not want to spend the rest of my natural life grubbing to survive. Seven dollars and twenty-seven cents is just not going to cut it!
Damn it. I guess I’ll just head home and try to figure things out. I paid my $7.27 bus faire, and headed home. That’s when the miracle happened. “Hi cutie, I don’t normally see you on this bus”. He looked to be about 70. The watch said money, even if his mode of transportation said frugal. I think I found my allotment. | 2019-04-24T14:49:01 | 2019-04-24T14:23:26 | 99 | 13 |
[WP] You are a part of a cult that believes the end of the world is near. Unlike most doomsday cults your group is made up of ex-scientists who discovered an ancient evil deep within the earth, and found that it was due to awaken in a few weeks time. | The institute is built directly over the brick well. Now the well sits crooked, stooped, inside the vast basement.
On my first day here, Hopkins — a retired physicist — reels up the great metal bucket. He cranks it by hand and it takes two hours and a pool of sweat for it to arrive.
“Why by hand?” I ask. “Why not have a motor do it?”
”Science is dead,“ says Hopkins. It isn’t what he says that scares me, but how he says it. A prominent physicist who nonchalantly declared his life’s work dead. Same factual tone someone might use to say their goldfish had died and they’d flushed it down the toilet. His faith is lost.
The bucket froths. It breathes thick curls of black fog that spiral into dark towers.
”What is—“
Hopkins silences me with a finger to his lips.
As the mist expands outwards, swirls around us and darkens the basement, I hear a sound inside of it. As if there are people in the fog, just behind me — now to my side.
I can’t make out all the words and languages but, as a priest, I am able to understand a snippet of Latin.
*Ipse venit. Mortem mortem.*
Then, the piercing scream arrives. Anguish and hatred and a thousand other feelings I can’t label. It rattles my brain and I cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut.
Eventually, Hopkins taps my arm and I slowly let my hands fall.
”It’s okay, Father.”
My ears ring like I’m a recently hammered gong, and Hopkins sounds very distant. My heart seem to vibrate just the same as my ears.
For some reason, I recall a vacation to the coast back when I was a little boy. I‘d been searching for crabs in rock-pools of water, when the tide reached out and snatched me, stole me into the freezing ocean’s mouth. I was certain I would die, and I’d wanted to scream but each time I tried my lungs filled with more water.
”I heard words in the fog,” I say. ”Latin. *He’s coming. Death death*.”
Hopkins grunts. “We didn’t call you here to translate. The voices don’t need translating. Often, we reel up visions instead of sounds. They’re far more visceral — we know exactly what’s coming. Be glad you didn’t see a vision.”
”How long have we got?” I ask.
“When I first arrived, it took four hours to reel the bucket up. That was three weeks ago.” And with that, he leaves left me alone with my dark thoughts and the slowly dispersing fog.
&#x200B;
&#x200B;
We play cards, mostly. Poker, bridge. Anything where mathematics can provide a slight advantage. What that means is I usually lose.
There are a dozen of them. Biologists, chemists, physicists. No philosophers though. Only me as the representative outside of science.
Pierre says, “Your turn, Father. I raised.“
I have a pair of fives and fold.
Pierre lets out a single sardonic laugh. “Not much point you being here if you’re only going to fold.”
Pierre was the first of the scientists to study the well. He’s in charge as much as anyone can be here. And I know he voted against inviting me, but the others thirsted for repentance and outvoted him. On the day before the evil rises — in a week, now — they will confess their sins to me and I am to forgive them. That is why I am here.
”It’s not me that’s folded,” I say as I look around the ashen faces and bowed backs of these once great men and women. “For thousands of years people like you have fought against people like me. Science against religion. To prove that we are in control of our own destinies. And now you all give up?”
Danielle, a young astronomer, says, “We were wrong. Science was a distraction from living, from life.“ She lowers her voice. “From death.”
”Or perhaps science can save us,” I say.
Pierre slams his cards down on the desk. “Science can do nothing to save us! You’ve seen the well. What’s down there doesn’t behave in any scientific way. We can’t hold the fog in containers, as it passes through them like ghosts. We can’t block up the well even with steel, as whatever lid we try dissolves in seconds. No cameras or microphones work beneath the entrance. Technology is useless. Soon the well will froth over and the earth will die. That is the final scientific fact of this world.“
The day the ocean grabbed me and tried to drown me was the day I lost my own father. The day I became religious, in a way. The water punched into my lungs, and my eyes saw only blackness and burning. And then my father’s arm was around me, and he was swimming us against the tide as waves battered us and pushed us under time and time again. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, or strong in any physical sense, but he refused to let go, refused to let me drown.
”Where’s your faith?” I say to them. “You’ve believed in science all your lives. Where’s your faith in it now?”
Danielle looks up at me. “Are we right to have faith still, Father?”
”We must always have faith.”
“Enough,” says Pierre. He turns his cards over to reveal a pair of twos. “You don’t even have faith, Father. Certainly not in yourself.”
&#x200B;
The bucket is metal and wide and solid.
I clamber in, although it’s hard to hold my balance.
”It’ll take an hour,” says Danielle. She is the only person who knows I’m doing this. I needed someone to assist me, to lower me down. “Then, I’ll give you an hour before I reel you back up.”
I nod and clutch my crucifix to my chest with one hand, holding the rope for balance with my other. “I’m ready.”
She bites her lip and pauses a moment. ”Do you truly think you can stop it?”
”I don’t know,” I say, honestly.
Danielle tries to smile, but it flickers out like a snuffed candle. She turns the handle.
I lower into the rock-gut of the earth, until the light above me becomes a pinprick, then becomes as black as below, as if someone has put a thumb over the well’s eye, or over my own.
That day I almost drowned... I ended up on the shore, my mother dragging me away from the waves and rocks. Then she ran, screaming, back to the ocean, yelling my father’s name over and over and over. But he would never answer. There was only the thunderous crashing of the waves.
I hear the voices now. The figures in the mist. They tap cold fingers on my neck, run their nails down my back until I bleed, whisper seductively in my ear.
*Go back, priest, and you might yet live.*
I think of how my father must have felt as he dove into the freezing waters. Thinking not of himself, but only of me.
Now, I only think of my children. All of them. Every living soul above me.
I won’t be coming back. I know that already. But that’s not important.
Whether I return from the freezing ocean doesn’t matter as much as whether I jump in and try. | “Hey, you!” The deep voice came from across the parking lot, “stay where you are, you’re not allowed here!” The owner of the voice was a short middle aged man, wearing a black jacket, the white embossed letters spelling out ‘SECURITY’ across his chest, he had one hand stretched out in front of him, his palm open, and his other pressed firmly on the holster of a gun at his side.
Dr. Peak stood up slowly, raising his hands above his head while dropping the black bag he had just pulled out of the dumpster.
“Good morning, sir” said Dr. Peak, politely, “I was leaving, sorry to have bothered you.”
Dr. Peak took a tentative step to the side, pushing his hands slightly higher above his haed.
“Stop where you are, what are you doing here?” The security guard demanded.
“Just rummaging through this trash here” Dr. Peak answered innocently, “you can’t begrudge an old homeless man some food, can you?”
The security guard raised an eyebrow, “You’re looking for food, here? At the Earthquake Science Center?” he asked with more than a hint of scepticism.
Dr. Peak smiled nervously. He had practiced his excuse a dozen times before his assignment. But he never got used to the deception, “Okay, you got me.” He said, hoping it had come across as more charm rather than annoyance. “I was hoping these science types might have thrown out some stuff I can sell. Gizmo’s and such.”
The security guard pulled his hand away from his side, and Dr. Peak sighed loudly, and lowered his hands. To him, Dr. Peak must have looked a sorry sight. He was dressed in an off brown yak coat that was covered in stains, jeans that were much too big for his small frame and a black woollen beanie with moth holes chewed clean through. His big toe stuck out through a hole in his shoe, his face was unshaven and had patches of dirt. And the stench. The man smelled like he was spending his evenings in the sewers.
“Well, you can’t be here, alright? There’s no stuff in there you can steal anyway, it’s just a bunch of papers” The security guard felt pity for the man. It had become an increasing problem in the Bay Area. He drove past the homeless camps every morning on his way home from work. The security guard looked around him for cameras or witnesses. Protocol said that anyone caught snooping around the center was to be taken in, but it was almost 6 in the morning, his night shift was coming to an end, and he didn’t feel like filling out the forms.
“I should take you in but you look like you’ve had a rough night.” He turned and started walking away “I’ll take you to the gate and let you off with a warning. But don’t let me see you around here again pal!”
Dr. Peak followed the security guard a step behind. Once he was clear of the gate, and out of sight of the security guard, he stuffed his hand into his jacket and pulled out a beige envelope, the words “TOP SECRET” stamped across the top and bottom in big red letters.
He walked quickly to his car and climbed inside, and drove away from the center, too afraid to check his rear view mirror. He came to a stop in an abandoned lot, locked his doors, and opened up the folder.
Dr. Peak was one of the world’s leading seismologists. Specialising in sub-aquatic seismic events. Or at least he used to be, until he was frozen out of the scientific community by his peers ten years ago, his theories discarded and cast aside with him. He had endured great humiliation from the very people he called colleagues, some even friends. His own wife of 20 years, herself an expert on marine biology, had left him because she couldn’t stand to be around him anymore. Not since he had come back from his expedition.
13 years ago he led a small team of seismologists and geologists on an Antarctic expedition, studying an increase in seismic activity on the frozen continent. What he and his team found there was sure to shake the entire world to its very core.
Dr. Peak had barely escaped with his life. He had lost 3 of the other 4 members of his team. The only other surviving member was a young grad student. Dr. Peak felt a pang of guilt. Of all the people who had had their lives torn apart by that trip, Megan’s was perhaps the most tragic. Being a survivor was more a curse than a blessing. While he and the others on that trip had enjoyed an illustrious career at the top of their fields, Megan was just a student, studying for her PhD. She hadn’t even earned the honorific ‘Dr’ before she too was hounded out of the community to a backdrop of ridicule. She had stuck with him all these years since that day. And had Peak had the power to award her a doctorate, he would have done many years ago.
He flicked through the file and felt his heart beat faster in his chest. This is what he had been looking for. This is what he had needed. With this, and with his own research, there was no way anyone could ever question him. He didn’t blame the USGS for filing this away. Without context, context they sorely lacked, it just seemed like a bunch of gibberish. Quirky and interesting gibberish, but gibberish all the same. But with what he knew, and had, it was the key to everything.
He hadn’t found the file in the dumpster, but instead had spent the last 3 hours crawling through miles of abandoned tunnels before finding the right room. It had taken him another hour to find the right safe containing the file. He barely made his extraction at the dumpster on time, climbing out of the manhole cover with seconds to spare. He knew that Gill the hapless security guard would take a stroll around there at that time. As he had done every morning for the past week. He knew it was Gill’s last shift of the week, and that’s why he knew Gill wouldn’t bother with a harmless bum like him. Swiping the access keycard off his belt as he walked behind him was so easy Dr. Peak almost felt guilty.
As he flicked through to the last, he had a sensation in his stomach, like someone had dropped a very large rock down his throat. He hastily pulled out his phone and called Megan, and before she had a chance to speak he blurted down the phone “I found it. We’re out of time!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first time I have ever written anything fictional. I just wanted to try it. Sorry if I suck. | 2021-04-27T07:13:12 | 2021-04-27T07:02:06 | 1,182 | 106 |
[WP] Your computer-illiterate grandmother has somehow deleted the internet. Yes, all of it. | It was about 4 in the afternoon when I got a call from my grandmother asking if I could come fix her computer. Normally, I would tell her that I could come over when I was free tomorrow, but I really had nothing better to do today. The internet was down at my place, so I said fuck it and went on over to her house.
I gave her computer a quick look through and immediately saw what the problem was. "Your internet's not working?" I asked.
"It's not my internet. The internet in general isn't working."
... I'm sorry, what? "Grandma, that doesn't make any sense."
"Well, I was just trying to get to my e-mail when something popped up and told me to follow these steps. I did, and now the internet doesn't work."
"Just your connection, right?" I asked. Maybe she had a virus that was disabling access to her modem. Those kinds of things could happen, right? I didn't exactly work in IT, so my knowledge is limited.
"No, the entire internet went down," she explained. "Mine, yours, everyone's! I'm getting calls from friends all over telling me that their internet is no longer working. Yours is out too, isn't it?"
Yeah, this was no coincidence. She was telling the truth. The whole truth. Which led me to ask... "Grandma, pardon my language, but..."
"But...?"
"How the FUCK did you manage to take down the entire internet?!"
"Oh, I clicked and dragged it to the recycle bin then emptied it." she exclaimed with a sheepish smile on her face. "Was I not supposed to do that?"
... Oh god, this was worse than I thought. | "You bloody what?"
"Yes, dear. I think the internet is gone."
"This is quite bad, Grandma."
"Who needs the silly thing anyways?"
"A lot of people, Grandma. It practically runs the world."
"Well, that's just sick."
"Not really."
"Oh, my. There are a lot of people outside. And they seem to be carrying torches."
"Grandma, close the blinds and hide."
"Now dear, don't be rude to those people. You were always a shy one. I'm going to bake some cookies. They look angry. All they probably need is a snack to cheer them up."
"Goodbye, Grandma."
"Oh, you're going upstairs? Have a good nap!"
*BANG*
"Oh, the poor thing must have hit his head or something."
*CREAK*
"Hello, neighbors! Would you like some cook-" | 2016-01-06T20:13:10 | 2016-01-06T16:23:22 | 35 | 10 |
[WP]Some time ago humans were put on the 'Only Contact in Case of Emergency' list. Now a threat to the galaxy has arisen and humanity is it's last hope. | **Part I:**
******
The Grand Chamber of the Galactic Union was never meant to be exuberant. Designed with the utmost efficiency in mind, its form followed the function of allowing for the most dire decisions to be made as quickly and as effectively as possible. The white marble of the circular room, as sober as it was pure, set the background for the latest and most urgent of the Council's meetings. Once all the delegates were present, representing the three trillion Galactic citizens from forty-two peacefully co-existing species, the usual beginning procedures were dismissed with, and the quadrupedal four feet tall Council leader immediately called upon the military expert in the room.
"Admiral Rhollok, what are the latest developments?"
Fleet-Admiral Rhollok, Supreme Commander of the Grand Fleet, had been allowed in the Grand Chamber only once before, decades previously, when a small skirmish on the borders of the Union threatened to grow into a devastating Civil War, threatening the stability of the Galaxy. His actions at the time meant a lifetime appointment to the Admiralty and the Captain's chair on the largest ship in the Fleet. He spoke calmly and surely, as he had done so long ago, speaking to many of the same delegates from that time gone by.
"Honorable leader and delegates, we have reasons to believe that both our Rapid Action Battalion and the bulk of our allied fleets in the area have been obliterated", he said, evaluating the responses from around the room. Most stayed calm, although one or two more sensitive species moved uncomfortably, almost imperceptibly but for the trained eye of the Admiral. "We have not received a response from any of our ships, and the relay stations confirm that the signal has been completely lost as of three hours ago. We estimate that a force such as which we have yet to have encountered is approaching at a still relatively slow speed, but one which should penetrate the outmost systems within two to three weeks."
Upon hearing the news, the Council leader resumed the inquiry.
"Admiral, you are supreme commander of the Galaxy's Forces. You have at your disposal the armies and arsenal of two million planets. Are you implying you cannot suppress these invaders adequately?", he asked.
"I'm afraid so. Again, our analysts estimate that the brute force and tactical skills of these forces are too strong for us to, as you said, adequately defend ourselves."
This time, a different delegate, just a few places to his left, raised his voice.
"Admiral, you look remarkably calm for a military man who has just declared the unstoppable destruction of civilization."
"That is because I have not claimed it to be unstoppable", said Rhollok, sensing a change in the room and predicting a barrage of accusations against him and his forces. "I said *we* couldn't stop them."
A few delegates incredulously burst into protest and talks among each other. The leader, from atop his dais, regained control of the room.
"Admiral, I find this very hard to believe, but if not our forces, the most powerful in the Galaxy, who do you suggest we call upon to save us from this impending doom? There's nothing out there beyond the Union but a few undesirable planets."
At last they had come to the point of the meeting, thought Rhollok.
"Precisely", he said, addressing everyone in the room, as well as the three trillion citizens they represented. "Urgency calls upon us to take immeasurable measures; we must reach out to the unreachable, and reason with the unreasonable."
Fleet-Admiral Rhollok waited. His next words could very possibly change the destiny of the Galaxy, and despite unwanted, the consequences of that action would have to be accepted, for inaction would mean the end of the Union and its peoples.
"We must contact the Humans."
******
[Part II here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/72cb5q/wpsome_time_ago_humans_were_put_on_the_only/dnhsq6p/) | The three strange figures stepped up to the podium. All eyes were on them. The first, tall by human standards and blue skinned, raised it's arm.
"I am Jego-Pel of the Itirian Collective. I am the leader of the Emergency Contact Force." Jego-Pel stepped back, another stepped forward, it's skin looked silver and shiny, Thinner parts almost looked see-through.
"I am called Sim of the Fey." it's skin changed to bronze and it smiled. The third being stepped forward. It had thick scales all over it's face making it look like a moving mountain side. It's voice was deep and gravelly as it spoke.
"I shall be know as Ite. I am a Geoten"
Ite and Sim stepped back. The blue Jego-Pel retook centre stage.
"We apologise for such a sudden first contact. We understand your people have for many years yearned for confirmation of other life in space. I believe honesty is the best path forward. You species was deemed dangerous. We studied you 800 of your Solar Rotations ago and found you a warring race. Barely able to work towards a mutual benefit. We see much has changed in the intervening rotations."
There was a few moments of muttering around the room as various translators did their work. The collection of world leaders looked on in stoic anticipation.
"We come to you with an offer. One we hope you'll accept. Our races are part of a galactic empire. Working together in peace. But we have been attacked by a race far more savage than our own. The Anguillans. We do not have warrior sects like you humans do. We do not excel in combat, having forgotten the need and the skills. We wish to employ humanity to fight this war for us. Remove the threat from our empire and be granted a full membership into the peaceful empire in return. We offer all of our technology to aid in this war. Please, Trillions of innocent lives depend of your acceptance of this offer." Jego-Pel stopped and bowed, joined by the other two. There was a moments silence before a cacophony of shouts and calls.
---
** 10 Years Later **
"Sir, we've received a report from the Gamma-Zulu sector. The last of the Geoten resistance has fallen. They did not surrender so were all killed. They are now officially extinct." said a human officer stood next to the large chair on the bridge of a star ship.
"Excellent. With the Fey surrendering last year and the Geotans now gone. Only 6 more species stand in our way. Regroup the fleet and inform ISS HQ." said the human in the large chair. The gold adorned uniform setting him out as someone of high rank.
"Aye Admiral"
"Set course. Itirian Sector. Prepare weapons for instant assault" The Admiral turned to his aide. "Smell that? You smell that? Ionized Mega-Neutron Depleters, son. Nothing else in our galaxy smells like that. I love the smell of Ionized Mega-Neutron Depleters in the morning." | 2017-09-25T10:22:39 | 2017-09-25T06:37:51 | 619 | 370 |
[WP]"This is how it works," Death explained. "You pick the game and we play. Cheating is allowed, but if either one of us is caught by the other, they lose. If you win, you'll wake up back in the hospital and I'll give you another 10 years. If you lose then it's time for judgement. Understood? | I watched as Death drummed his fingers impatiently on the table in front of him. I leaned forward and marked the lower right square with an X, then sat up straight. Death groaned and marked his own.
"I will require that you make a different opening move every game," Death said as he leaned forward and marked a circle.
"You can't change the rules in the middle of the contest," I argued. "You said choose the battlefield. I chose Tic Tac Toe. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I didn't pick the rules." I leaned forward and recorded my X.
Death just glared at me with his cold, empty eye sockets. I was starting to grow accustomed to them.
"Your insolence is an outrage," Death replied. "This is not a game, a game must have a winner or loser."
"Far from it," I said. "A game is a loosely defined term that you implicitly allowed me to define. Plenty of games have tie situations - almost anything with a timer, for example, can end in a tie." I marked another X.
Death started to make his circle, then set down his pencil. He sat up straight in his bony chair and formally clasped his hands together. "Then I shall allow you to choose another."
"No," I said. "It's still your turn."
"You must. This game will never end."
"Do you give up?"
"Absolutely not. The game is declared a draw, and we shall proceed accordingly to another game."
"No."
Death stared angrily at me. "You are in my domain here in the afterlife and you will choose your game according to the rules set forth."
"I did, and the only rule you set forth was for me to choose a game. I chose. We've been over this."
Death stared. "Fine, then I declare you the winner and will allow you to return to your mortal coil for 10 years." He began to wave his arms.
"No."
"No?"
"No. You're here to play a game with me until someone wins."
"But nobody can win this inane game."
"Not my problem."
Death was seething. "Fine, what do you want?"
"I want thirty years instead of 10. And when you return me to my body, I want to smash through that truck that ran into me like a total boss, without being hurt in the process."
"Deal. I shall see you thirty years henceforth and we shall strike up another game. There will be no tic tac toe at that time."
"Deal," I responded. As the afterlife faded around me, I chuckled. Death didn't know about the card game War. | “You got it?”
The question takes me off guard, I’m still trying to process this new info. The tall man with the black hooded cloak at the end of my bed tilted his head slightly, the scythe that rested in the crook of his arm caught the moonlight ominously.
“Sorry, this outfit does normally startles people. How’s this?”
His form shimmered and before me stood an old gentleman with immaculately manicured whiskers and a twinkle in His eye. His tweed suit with matching trilby in stark contrast to His previous outfit. He adjusted his grip on His suspiciously scythe-like curved cane.
“Ahh, less doom and gloom now. Gotta keep up appearances though,” He indicated His cane, ”So how’s that choice of game coming along?”
The question was delivered with considerably less dread attached than the previous proposition. More like that of certain playful gods from the pantheons rather than Death come to claim you.
A small whoosh of breath escaped my lips. A decision has to be made. This body of mine was considerably less spry than my younger years, and nor was my mind functioning at full capacity. What game could I choose and what chance did I have, it seemed like anything was on the table. Did I even want to win? I had lived a full life, I tried to be kind, a good person, I saw the world, I loved my family. Did I need more of that if He has decided it was my time?
Resolved, I look up at Him. He smiled broadly, a smile of a man confident in himself “What shall it be, a game of strength, of skill, or perhaps of wits?”
“A game of chance perhaps,” I responded, his smile broadening to one of pure glee.
“Now this, should be interesting.” | 2018-03-07T07:19:50 | 2018-03-07T02:57:36 | 214 | 46 |
[WP] It turns out that all housecats are actually lovecraftian monsters. Due to an ancient pact with humans, however, they will never use their powers for earthly offense. Against otherworldy invaders, however, they have no such restrictions. | The edict was sacred to them, though the villagers didn't often speak of it. They would obliquely warn visitors, what few they received, and teach their children when they were old enough to comprehend. But they avoided speaking of it aloud or thinking on it. Nevertheless, it was deeply understood.
In Ulthar no man may kill a cat.
The cats, for their part, never elaborated on this agreement, save for the one terrible night when the consequences of disobedience became clear to an elderly couple. The night that Menes had prayed and ancient pacts, pacts stretching back to the days of the pharaohs, pacts of protection and of worship, had been called upon and renewed. The villagers knew what would happen if they broke their agreement; they did not understand what they might get in return.
It was dark when the visitors from the stars landed in a field and crossed the bridge over the River Skai on reedy legs. Bulbous eyes searched the darkness and saw the human settlement, the people inside slumbering unaware. Long-fingered hands curled around weapons and they approached in silence, slipping in and out of the shadows cast by moonlight.
Then from each of the houses padded small creatures, equally silent. They walked on feather-light paws, tails swishing. They fell into lines, two by two, their glowing eyes fixed on the otherworldly beings. The largest among them, a black Maine Coon with a great furred collar and ears peaked like horns, stepped forward.
*You should not have come here.*
The visitors froze. Behind each pair of fixed, glowing eyes that shone yellow in the darkness swirled some deeper, ancient hue. Overhead, clouds gathered in distorted forms, dark billows hinting at a storm.
*We have watched them! They are a weak and ignorant race. There to be threshed. What can they be to you?*
*Our adherents and our thralls.*
The shadows around them lengthened and changed, twisted into terrible shapes. The first cat's maw opened, stretched and stretched until it was a wide, impenetrable chasm rimmed with teeth. Appendages snaked out and reached for the invaders, crawled up their limbs and locked them in a clammy vice.
The first among them was pulled in swiftly, felt only a moment of the fangs breaking through armor into the rubbery skin below. Tearing it all away and leaving a stump gushing green ichor behind. The other cats began to circle, enclosing the rest and penning them in, even as they turned to flee. Though none were awake to hear, there were only a few strangled cries that went up before those sounds were replaced by wet tearing noises and soft crunches.
When it was all over, there was nothing left in the town square expect a few smears of fluid under the trees, a trembling survivor, and a group of cats lazily grooming themselves, fully sated. The Maine Coon approached the last remaining figure.
*Take your ship. Go. Tell your kind not to come here again. Tell them that here, in Ulthar, in Nir, on this planet - none save our own may kill a man.* | The spaceship tore my house into two in one fell swoop. I didn’t even have the chance to react. My arms were stuck under a pile of rubbles, ankle twisted and I’m pretty sure my back bone broke in half. I laid down amist the dusty remains of my former home, listening to the painful screams and the helpless sirens blaring in the distance.
Alien invasion, in one weekend, who would have thought? No one could react, not the military, not the nukes, and certainly not the combimed efforts of the people of Earth. We were like fish in a pan, trying to flop our way into the inevitable fire.
I heard a meow. My cat, mr Skiddles was in the house when it happened. I hope he’s fine. Maybe he wasn’t caught in the destruction. Maybe he’ll live to wander in the shadows of the new alien civilization, stealing food on their window sills and digging through their trash.
An alien drew near. I can realize it’s slimy sluggish sounds anywhere. These aliens have ate my friends. Maybe this one will eat me too, and rid me of my worries.
The slime noises got larger, and larger, and larger, and then it stopped. I pulled my head up, and suprisingly, standing in front of me and the alien, was Mr Skiddles.
The thing stopped dead in it’s track, concerned by the little cat standing in it’s way. I tried shooing Mr Skiddles, but he kept focus on the alien.
That is odd. Why did the alien stop? I wasn’t ready for the answers.
In a suprising move, Mr Skiddles dislocated his jaws, and spew forth eons of horror and madness not meant for human eyes. I watched in shock and awe as the alien was thoroughly eaten by the monstrous creature my cat had become.
Did I just see what I saw? Beings of unfathomable powers moving in a vast cosmos of madness and chaos that can drains a person of the last sanity, residing in... my cat? Mr Skiddle seems relaxed. He wandered off into the distance, possibly looking for another alien to torment and consume, in possibly an endless circle of hunger and madness that only a cat can truly fathom.
I laid down again, on the rubble of my home. I needed time to process that. The backbone, the ankle and the arm can wait. | 2020-11-26T11:40:15 | 2020-11-26T11:00:36 | 306 | 87 |
[WP] You can see video game-like titles for the people you meet. Usually they are just "The Shopkeeper", or "The Mayor", but today you saw an old homeless man with the title "The Forgotten King". | I have a peculiar talent. I know, there are lots of folks that say that. Most of them are people who can, I don't know, play the violin with their feet or do origami with their tongue or something like that. Compared with mine, those talents look commonplace.
When I was a kid, video games were all I cared about. If my teachers wanted to reach me, they had to think in videogame terms. My math teacher reached me through Minecraft. So did my science teacher. My creative writing teacher suggested I write a fan fic based around Mario Kart and, after that, TF2. My Social Sciences teacher won me over using UnderTale. My history teacher earned my interest through World of Tanks and even went so far as to gamify her subject, setting up achievements I could earn points for and prizes I could buy with them (usually other resource books or websites).
I think I was probably twelve or thirteen when I starting seeing *people* as video games. At first, it was pretty simple. The school principal, Mr. Farnum, came to lunch one day with the words "The Principal" hanging over his head in big bold letters, like a video game title. He was concentrating on getting his lunch, though, or he'd have seen me staring. My best friend did notice, though.
"What is it, Bill?" he asked. "Does Fart'em have TP on his shoe or something?"
I turned and nearly snorted my milk all over him. The words over his head were "The Nerd." I tried to explain, but he thought I was making a stupid joke at his expense. Needless to say, we weren't friends for much longer.
Years have gone by since that first time. Every day, there were more and more titles. Nearly everyone has them now. Some are really simple. During the presidential elections, for example, I knew Donald Trump would win because his title was "The President." Some are more complicated. Like the time when I was at the grocery store and saw this ordinary-looking person in the check-out line with the title "The Bank Robber" hanging over him. I placed an anonymous call to the police over that one. I later saw him get arrested on the news. I guess they'd been having a hard time figuring out who he was.
The other day, I was out walking my dog home from the local grocery store when I passed an old homeless man. He was dressed in an oversized, old, windbreaker with ragged blankets tucked into it for insulation and sitting half-asleep inside a doorway. He had a sign made from the bottom of an old cardboard box. It read, "Homeless. Desperate. Anything helps." His title, however was, "The Forgotten King." I was so busy staring that I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and almost landed on my poor samoyed.
Picking myself up, I went to sit next to the guy. Digging around in my groceries, I pulled out some bread and cheese and made a quick sandwich. I nudged the guy awake and handed it to him. He took the makeshift sandwich and ate it like he hadn't eaten in a long time.
"My name's William," I offered, watching the man eat. "Friends call me Bill." I stretched out a hand and he stared at it like he'd never seen a hand before. He didn't stop eating and he didn't take my hand or offer me his name in return. I looked up at his title again, wondering if I'd imagined it somehow. "The Forgotten King" still hung over him as clear as daylight.
"Look," I offered, unable to ignore those words, "I have a spare bedroom you can use." He stared at me even more. "Come on, sir," I added, standing up and offering my hand again, "I can't just leave you here." Hesitantly, the man reached up and took my hand.
"Thank you, William," he mumbled through his matted beard. "You have no idea how much I appreciate this."
I chuckled softly as I helped him gather his meager belongings. "I think I have a general idea."
| Autumn. Leaves are falling down the trees, and if I don't concentrate my eyes, it looks like pieces of amber fall from the sky. I love autumn. Most people say that spring is the most beautiful season of all, but I disagree. To me, walking in the park at autumn is as close to paradise as it can get.
Today is no exception of my autumn routine of walking at the park before work. I rarely see people at this time of the day, but I tend to pass a couple of regulars each morning. Today is no different. I've already passed "The Pickpocketer", who still manages to keep his title for a long time, even though everyone knows he likes to pickpocket. I guess he is a master of his craft. And here is "The Gardener", a young lady who enjoys autumn and the park as much as I do and walks around before her work shift. And finally, "The..." Wait, what? "The Forgotten King"?? I notice this drunkard every morning, but I avoid eye contact with him, so I always just assumed that his title is "The Homeless". Wait wait wait, I have to talk with him!
"Hey, sir, are you okay?" I asked the homeless man carefully
"Howdy howdy howdy, the me-ga... me-ga... germ?" the man half drowned in fallen leaves answers
"It is "The Manager", I guess your breakfast was a tad too strong!" I jokingly fix his mistake
"I mean when I was younger, I wasn't required to read... I guess you can see my title!" in high voice shouts the homeless man
"Yeah, about that... Were you really a king?"
"Uhm, son, I have a lot to tell you, but do you know the Kingdom?"
"Was it the most infamous organized crime group of all time? If you refer to that, then yes."
"Well, the Kingdom had to have a KING, am I right? said the man in a boasting fashion
"Wait, you don't want to say, that you were the King?" with a racing heartbeat I whispered
"Exactly that, THE KING!" shouted a man with too much alcohol content in his blood
"But but, I thought the King was killed?"
"Son, you know shit! I got tired of all that bullshit. Kill this, shoot that, smuggle these... I just wanted to live a peaceful life, but because of these bullshit titles everyone sees it was impossible for me to come back into society..." with a hint of sadness muttered the King
"Do you call this coming back to the society?" I enquired
"You know yourself that these titles update according to our recent activity and occupation. I was "the King". Now I'm "the Forgotten King". One, two, three, whatever the fuck years down the drain I will become "The Drunkard", and by that time I will be old enough for no one to recognize me from my face. I will reform myself this way... Step by step, from the top of one hierarchy, through the rut of the normal hierarchy into..." man's speech abruptly stopped
"Into?... What are you exactly planning to do after your title is clean?"
"MY DAUGHTER..." the homeless man cried out loud
"You have a daughter?" I stuttered as I hugged the Forgotten King
"Yes... And she is really into flowers, autumn, and this park..."
| 2019-01-08T10:34:40 | 2019-01-08T10:16:15 | 124 | 12 |
[WP] We invented immortality in 2021, along with a drug to take it away. A million years later, that drug is in high demand and near-impossible to find. | I walked down the dimly lit prison corridor, my shoes clacking along the linoleum as I went. Dirty faces of prisoners, stuffed into tiny sells like canned sardines, stared out at me pleadingly.
"Please, mister." A frail-looking woman begged. I saw her bloodshot eyes and rotting teeth and frowned.
"Not today." I replied and kept moving.
They knew me well here in the purgatory of cell-block D, where they kept those sentenced to life in prison. A much harsher sentence than it had been a few centuries ago.
The Angel of Death, they called me. With me, I brought the antidote.
The cure to immortality.
The holy grail that had fascinated and eluded humankind since the dawn of our existence. For as long as we have existed we've sought to remove the dark cloud of death hanging over our heads.
We romanticized the notion of living forever without taking a practical look at the consequences. Once we could avert death, we never stopped to ask ourselves if we should.
We could change the physiology of our anatomy, but we couldn't change our nature. Immortality had not given us a change of heart. We had never lived in harmony and peace with one another, and that did not change with the discovery of the AA-X8 vaccine. In fact, the inability to die had only made it worse.
Upon the realization that their enemies could not be killed, the rules of war changed. Defeated armies became prisoners of war. Taken territories were enslaved and imprisoned. Overpopulation became rampant to the point where governments enforced mandatory vasectomies and hysterectomoes at the age of puberty. Overpopulation led to global environmental destruction.
Now, much of the population lived in overcrowded poverty or imprisonment and not even death could release them from their miserable fates.
I stopped outside of a cell at the end of the hall. Its many occupants looked at me through the bars with hope in their eyes.
"772361, you are this month's lottery winner. Your sentence has been pardoned." I said to the crowd of malnourished faces.
The idea of death used to be a punishment; now it was a reward. It was almost kind of funny when you really thought about it.
A disheveled young face came forward and pressed himself against the bars. He couldn't have been more than 15 when he had gotten the AA-X8.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"Thirty-five years. Treason, for protesting the treatment of the PoWs." His young face was screwed up and bitter, like he'd been the brunt of a bad joke.
I suppose he was. Sentenced to life in prison for speaking out against the Government. Protesting cruelty had resulted in the cruelty extended onto him.
"Arm," I instructed. I pulled a small black hypodermic needle from my jacket pocket. Unfortunately, he wasn't the first I had released from such a minor sentence. Nor would he be the last.
He stuck his arm through the gap between the bars and looked into my eyes defiantly.
"Any last words?" I asked.
"Everlasting life means endless suffering. Immortality is a prison. Death is freedom. May my death be kinder than my life has been."
I stuck the needle into his vein and triggered the antidote. His eyes rolled back into his young skull and he began to seize. The other inmates watched in jealous fascination as his chest became still. | ######[](#dropcap)
[Immortality is creepy.](#sc)
Some commited suicide - my cousin ate a bullet two thousand years ago; my brother chose the cleaner route of lethal injection. Both looked their prime on the deathbed, with a toned body like someone in their mid-twenties. They'd felt hopeless, bored out of their minds, and even slightly insane. Even all the entertainment in the world wasn't enough to last a million years. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.
The population had grown drastically. Most of the people here on Earth today are from before the year 2500, where childbirth was outlawed. We simply didn't have enough food and water for everyone. The punishment was not only death for the child, but also for his friends and family.
We tried to keep ourselves sound of mind, educated, and fit. Nevertheless, even the top scientists and professors grew bored of their work. They gave up, choosing to retire to their homes rather than their labs. Musicians and writers became incapable of creating original content. Even what we would call trash a million years ago would be well-received today, thanks to the sheer boredom felt by the population.
Luckily by 2100 the majority of the world was mechanized. Farms and factories continued providing goods with little human intervention, and by 2200 robots and AI took care of everything. Without that, we'd have lost all hope. You see, not a single soul here on Earth would spend an eternity plowing fields and assembling parts.
I didn't want to kill myself. I tried everything to quench my boredom, from remarrying thousands of times to trying out media and experiences I would never have done in my prior life. There was solace, however. I just needed to find it.
When the immortality drug was created, it came with an antidote. A chemical that was barely produced in the early 2000s, since few wanted it. Now the formula was lost. Most of the existing caches had expired long ago and brought death to anyone that dared try it. There were rumours of shadowy groups possessing batches preserved with secret techniques. I didn't know if those were true, but I spent ages trying to seek them out. My efforts were in vain.
I wanted to age. Feel my skin become wrinkled, lose the intelligence that made me too calculative. Grow weaker and finally become confined to a wheelchair. Die peacefully surrounded by family and friends. People back in 2021 would laugh and shun me for even *thinking* such a thought. Now, all I wanted was to get my life back.
Even a life that would end painfully a hundred years later. | 2017-08-16T08:38:00 | 2017-08-16T06:20:59 | 285 | 134 |
[WP] Your son asked you "dad are clouds candy?" You told him they were water. Then he asked "dad, what are Earth's defense systems. Then you remembered you don't have a son, and then he asked again, his eyes now obsidian black. "what is the defense system father." | "Billy," I said, rolling my eyes, "that's very funny and all, but we are in public young man. You remember what we said about this right?"
Billy's eyes promptly returned to his normal blue and my memories of him returned. I once again count my blessings that the mind wipe gives me just enough information to get out of it. While Billy enjoyed his ice cream, vanilla chocolate swirl his favourite, i thought about our situation.
His mother was a demon, sent to earth to trick me into giving hell my soul. However, we fell in love and eloped instead. Things swiftly fell apart a few years and a pregnancy later. We shouldn't have rushed into things I guess, but I was left custody of the kid in the divorce. Being half demon and all, Billy's favourite trick is the "Elder God Mindwipe."
He isn't evil or anything though, on the contrary, Billy was quite well behaved. I looked down at him, noticing his grip tightening and his eyes getting sadder. The pre-school must be close. I looked him in the eye and stuck my tongue out, getting a laugh out of the little tyke. The rest of the trip flew by, but I always wonder if he's going to be ok.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"To be honest, I think the kid just misses his mom" Jesus said, reaching for another nacho. I sighed and pushed the plate in his direction. "What can I do about it though?" I said, scowling, "it's not like we can just hop on a train to hell!"
Jesus suddenly looked very suspicious, for only an instant though. You don't escape heaven and live among mortals for centuries without getting good at lying. Fortunately, I had training from a demon that enjoyed affairs.
"Jesus Christ! Are you telling me there is a train to hell?" I exclaimed. "What have I told you about taking my name in vain like that!?" He said, visibly uncomfortable, "And maybe, alright!" He pushed the nachos back in my direction
This was it! I thought, possibilities reeling. This was my chance to give the kid a smile! His birthday was coming up as well, perfect! Finally, things seemes to be looking up.
That's when my coffee turned into blood.
| I freeze. *Stranger*...
"uh, well then it's very complicated, but let's grab a sandwich, and we'll sit down and talk about it, ok?"
The knives in the kitchen drawer are rattling as I scamble for the spare radio I keep in there... the little freak is standing by the door... my son... no, he's a freak. what is he, a 4, 5 in Stranger?
I manage to flick the switch on the radio, turning it on as I pull out a knife, a butter knife I sharpened in case a freak ever followed me home... "a-alright son, now do you want a peanut butter sandwich? I could make it here on the *console*...
it's not impressed.
"no, I want to know about Earth's defenses!" it's taken a step forward, another and it'll see the radio... I step forward to block it's view...
"A-Alright Son, now, let's go sit in the living room, so we can discuss how earth's defenses couldn't be more err... strange" fuck I hope they got that...
My hand shaking for some reason, I go sit down to tell my lovely little boy everything he wants to know!
this has been your shitty fanfic attempt, courtesy of /r/Parahumans | 2018-05-14T01:18:43 | 2018-05-13T23:45:15 | 46 | 16 |
[WP] After your death you are granted the chance to talk with God; he has no clue humans exist | There was light at the end of the tunnel. A bright blinding flash that dispelled my surroundings into a non-existent abyss. The next time I looked up, I was in front of a throne with a man that looked a lot like Jesus -- you know the long hair, beard, and robe. However, this person's hair had grayed to the point that the tips were snow white and somehow the colour had leaked down the majority of his brown robe.
"Where am I?" I asked, peering around the throne room. Stone pillars reached up into the blue sky above, disappearing into clouds. White marble stretched from the silver gate behind and to the throne where the man sat, with a young woman on either side of him.
He had a mischevious grin across his lips, and the glimmer in his eyes was far more vibrant than the surroundings. "You are in a place that most creatures dream of," the man said, "a place where all your dreams come true. Come forth Ape and choose how you will celebrate eternity."
My muscles surrendered to his instruction, almost like his voice was a song that my body had waited far too long to hear. The warm feeling that surged through me seemed contradictory to being condemned for all eternity. I stumbled forward and knelt before the man. "I'm dead, aren't I? That's what the whole light in the tunnel sha-bang was about?"
The man laughed softly, a type of melodic tone that sent butterflies through my stomach. "Life and death are like struggle and success. Relieve your heart of its aches and pains."
Fat chance, especially after leaving forty years of memories behind and the possibility of twenty more years of fun. I'd spent my years saving for retirement, with plans to travel the world and taste the many cultural foods. Having my dreams come true was the only thing that kept me from losing my top.
"Come," the man said, snapping his fingers so that a picture-filled hologram appeared in front of him, "choose one of these places, a reward for living."
The first was a banana plantation with fruit that stretched for leagues, the second was a safari with bountiful lakes and creatures, and the last was of thick jungle brush with ripe fruit on each tree. None of these were what I'd anticipated, in fact, they were quite the contrary --dangerous!
"Do you have any *human* options?" I asked, knowing full well what he had meant by Ape.
"Human?" the man asked, his brows scrunched in confusion.
Eternity was going to be quite the struggle after all.
| I am not entirely sure what I expected from the afterlife, but I can say with absolute certainty that this wasn't it.
"So, go through it again. Don't leave anything out. Have you been leaving stuff out? It just doesn't make sense!"
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I suppose it was a metaphorical nose, on a metaphorical face, in the metaphorical afterlife, but really, in this situation, what was I supposed to be relying on to be real?
"I'm a human. Some people say *you* made us. We come from the Planet Earth and I've just died."
He looked at me, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. When I come to recall what he looked like, all I can really describe is that he was, well, calming. There was a sort of peaceful quality to the expressions on his face that I recall with far more detail than I can the colour of his eyes or hair. To be honest, I'm not even sure he had eyes. He must have eyes, surely? We were made in his image, after all, and we have eyes.
"Alright alright alright. So, I made humans..." he trailed off, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded, and he continued, "And some of them worship me... Which I guess explains the days I wake up feeling chipper, then... And now you're here telling me about all this."
I wished bleakly that I had a watch, or a phone, something to measure time. I'd been here for hours, it felt, explaining the same points to him.
Who would have thought that God, of all people, resembled more a dazed and confused young adult, rather than the majestic father of all life?
He sighed, holding up his hands and shaking his head.
"Sorry, you've lost me. Go through it again from the top..." | 2017-02-05T12:23:04 | 2017-02-05T08:47:47 | 26 | 17 |
[WP] You're a magical girl (or boy) who wants to fight evil, but your transformation sequence is so horrifying that all villains just surrender when you show up. | "Buwahaha! Pretty Girl Z, you have fallen into my diabolical trap!", exclaimed Deathpants. "My sinister cage made ENTIRELY of pants woven with Infinity Z, your only weakness, will make you helpless as I rob this small child's lemonade stand!"
"You fiend!" shouted Pretty Girl Z, clenching both delicate, pink nail polished hands into fists with a very dramatic sound. "Unhand that orphan child lemonade salesman this very instant, or I will be forced to unleash my true power upon you!"
The small child behind the lemonade stand frowned, as though reminded of his missing parents, as he watched the legendary Pretty Girl Z square off against the diabolical Deathpants with a tear down one cheek.
As everyone knows, Pretty Girl Z had been saving the day here in Outerwear City for years, defeating every clothing-related supervillain that dared to rear their ugly head, and she did it with grace, charm, and a cute giggle that made all the boys swoon.
Pretty Girl Z had become a staple of the rather unfortunately named city, and her broad straw hat, silver hoop earrings, relatable yellow sundress, brown purse and summer sandals had become known as symbols of justice far and wide.
Today was just another day in Outerwear City, even if you were a poor, lemonade-selling orphan, because if you were in danger from some rando 45-year old dad with no weekend plans, a roll of duct tape, and a garage full of spare clothing from the thrift store, you could count on Pretty Girl Z showing up and saving the day.
How, you might ask? Because, when she was little, Pretty Girl Z was bitten by a radioactive Instagram influencer, giving her the power to transform! The orphan pulled out his umbrella, knowing full well what was about to happen to Deathpants, and he closed his eyes tight, as it began.
Deathpants's eyes widened, and he exclaimed, "No! Umm... p-p-please don't... I was only joking, Pretty Girl Z! I'm your biggest fan! Please!"
But it was too late. Overhead, the skies began to darken ominously. A chill wind howled through the treetops, and lightning began to flash. The temperature dipped, and Deathpants began to run. He knew it would be futile, just like all the others, but he had to try. Melinda. The kids. God, what was he doing? He needed to get the hell out of here, before-
The sky began to crack open, as reality over the man's head began to shatter, revealing the primordial abyss beyond the boundaries of existence. The wind picked up speed, and lightning crashed again and again. The sunny day had gone blacker than night. There was no sound but the screaming of the wind, no light but the metronome pulse of lightning.
No sight but the abyss.
The yawning chasm into immateriality split further, and from it snaked a tentacle larger than the moon. It was followed by unnatural gibbous wings like a bat that swooped across the sky from horizon to horizon. And then the eye opened.
The terrible eye.
It shone with a red light that pierced other, weaker eyes. It punctured souls. The walls of nearby buildings began dripping human blood. Every light was extinguished. The eye was upon the world.
Deathpants collapsed, gibbering to himself, tearing at his now empty eyesockets with both hands, leaving deep gashes in his ruined face. His skin began to wriggle, as though filled with a thousand maggots. He burst into flames, and as he combusted, his peeling face began to grin with the faint cobwebs of disintegrated musculature.
And he began to sing the song.
"Dainty cute girl, flashy fun girl, Pretty Girl Z!
Here to vanquish friend and foe,
So kick back, relax, enjoy the show,
She's here for justice, she's here for truth,
She lights the sky, protects the youth,
Pretty-pretty-pretty girl,
Pretty-pretty-pretty girl,
Pretty-pretty-pretty girl,
Pretty Girl Z! Yeah!"
As the last exclamation left his black, ruined skull, the eye closed, and the unearthly creature beat its wings once, soundlessly, and rose into the sky. The rift was sealed, and the end of all things was averted once more. But only with a terrible cost. A human sacrifice was made. And the day was saved.
Thanks to Pretty Girl Z.
"...hey, orphan kid? Could you let me out of this stupid pants cage thing? It's nailed shut or something..."
"...orphan kid?" | Stress. Anguish. So much to do and so little time. That was life as a student during a pandemic. Whoever said online learning was easy was lying. Like many of my peers, my mental health dropped during the pandemic and life felt pretty bleak.
So when we heard of yet another threat to the world and life as we knew it, I just knew I had to... turn off the news, roll over and fall back asleep.
Of course, Dr. Crastin just had to go all out with the light and laser show. Honestly, I don't know what he wants, or even how he has the motivation to follow through with his plans in the middle of a pandemic?! I'll probably have to ask him sometime when he's you know, not trying to take over the world or something.
And what is up with his pyrotechnic display?? Literally he could've done this in the earlier in the day or at least in the evening. His neighbors must hate him. I have an exam in the morning and I'm not letting some half-rate 'supervillain' be the reason I fail this class.
Rolling my eyes, I pulled on my special suit and facial paraphernalia. Perhaps I can get back to bed within the hour and rest. It wasn't hard to find him, he decided to terrorize the Math building. Hmm. Maybe if he'd gone for physics, I wouldn't have had to bother...
Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I focused on the task at hand. My arrival at the scene was quickly noticed by his cronies and they stared at me with displeasure and fury.
Turning to face the enemy, I opened my mouth to address him, "Dr. Crastin, this is the last straw! "
He regarded me for the first time, face red and swollen with anger, "It's *Professor*, you imbecile!" he spat out, "and I don't even know who you are!"
Right, Prof. Crastin. I rolled my eyes, " and I don't care, dude! Why are you doing this at 2 am on a week night? And don't hit me with the 'crime doesn't sleep' I know you're napping in the comfort of your tower in the daytime!"
I'm not generally an angry person, but I'd had a rough few days, it being finals week and all, and this guy showing up right before my last final really was the straw that broke the camel's back. My rage and frustration only feeding my powers.
I saw Crastin and his evil buddies grimace from my words, each sentence had them moving several paces away from me, but I was far from done. Realization gleamed in his eyes. One of them tried to aim her freeze ray at me, but she couldn't look in my direction long enough to take aim.
"and why do you have to come bother us on finals week? This is the one time we ask anyone to not bother us, we're going hours, sometimes days without food or sleep, not much time to spend on anything else, *Professor*. Now I'm all cranky -"
"STOP! Please, we can't take this anymore" Prof Crastin's lackey yelled at me
I guess I didn't get to finish my rant then!
"We surrender!" he exclaimed, "Just, like, take a shower, dude!"
"Yeah! That's not healthy, it's no way to live!" another added.
By this time, most of the evildoers had retreated into their ship, leaving Prof. Crastin a few seconds away.
"You win this time, Skunkelor!" he declared with a smirk, "I'll see you in a month. Good luck on finals!"
Gosh, I really wish he'd picked the physics building instead. | 2021-06-13T16:22:09 | 2021-06-13T14:10:19 | 89 | 66 |
[WP] The main character's superpower is the ability to speak to the narrator. Unfortunately, the traditionalist narrator is not willing to put up with such a radical plot and will do anything in his power to tell a "normal" story. | *Plugio Farpatis, who wished he had paid more attention to his mother and studied just a bit harder at university, stared glassy-eyed at the terminal readouts of his long-haul cargo-ship 'The Sleepy Buffalo' as he waited in the queue to cross into Praxis territory with his shipment of grummelons. His first trip out of the sector was proving to be more boring than he'd anticipated, and he sheepishly found himself yearning for home.*
"Plugio Farpatis, having learned his name at the tender age of two months, learned to speak at the incredible age of two-and-a-half months specifically to change his name to something much more awesomer, Zeph Zapiro, since he knew he would be needing an awesome name for his awesome career as an interstellar privateer. He sat ready at the console of his undercover ship, 'The Star Falcon,' which he'd cleverly disguised as a normal freighter named 'The Sleepy Buffalo,' running in-depth scans of the freighter in front of him where Alphonse McDarkeye sat, unsuspecting, trying to sneak a quantum phase-bomb into the Praxis territory."
*A warning light on the console savagely ripped Plugio out of his daydreams of a different life and back to the real world where he was a completely inconsequential long-hual melon shipper. He groaned to himself, a leak in the cargo bay, he'd just had that repaired last month, he would never be able to save up to buy that plot with Jenny if 'The Sleepy Buffalo' kept falling apart. He sighed and lumbered his bulking mass to his feet to go and try to patch the leak.*
"His 110 kg of pure muscle leapt into furious action, having trained for this moment its entire life and never been distracted by people named Jenny and plots of dirt. A leak in the Star Falcon was inconceivable, no, no, the screaming klaxons and red emergency lights were warning him about something entirely different than some decoy-melons. He snatched his Plasma Phaser 97X, lovingly dubbed 'Ghost-Maker,' from it's velcro by the command center and leapt down the hallways toward the breach, a breach which Zeph Zapiro knew could mean only one thing, Alphonse McDarkeye had got the jump on him, and slipped into his ship."
*Such acrobatics proved a costly mistake as Plugio, having neglected going to the gym for the past seventeen years, stumbled and careened into the hatchway where he--*
"Where he quickly snatched the hand-bar with superhuman reflexes, exactly as intended, and began to creep silently down the hatchway toward the cargo hold, holding--"
*Holding a sudden cramp in his voluminous gut, he chastised himself for his undue haste and repeated what his father used to say, 'quick and nimble, impressive pace, but slow and steady, wins the race.' He reminded himself that he wasn't a hare, he was--*
"He was a galaxy class seven bounty-privateer, he couldn't afford to make any harey mistakes when things got hairy. He approached the cargo bay and slowly, carefully, calmly peeked into the hold."
*Then laughed at himself for being a complete and utter moron because he was checking on a cargo bay with a leak and full of completely inert melons which--*
"Which hid the devious Alphonse McDarkeye who chose this moment to leap out of the pile of gross grummelons and aim his blaster toward Zeph Zapiro. Luckily--"
*Luckily this was all just the alcohol talking, Plugio, being driven into a wild depression by his wildly depressing life had, years ago, turned to the drink, a habit he desperately wanted to give up, but just couldn't seem to.*
"Because he spent so much time at the hippest bars with the hottest chicks being Zeph Zapiro and having a totally not depressing time. He stopped himself from daydreaming about all the sweet parties he'd go to later and did a quadruple front flip through the airlock, dodging Alphonse McDarkeye's laser blast with superhuman speed. He pulled out 'Ghost Maker' and--"
*And, humiliatingly, tripped and fell into the melon shipment--*
"On purpose. Zeph's somersault landed him directly behind Alphonse and--"
*Broke the melons he had bought with the last of his family's money--*
"Decoy melons which didn't matter at all--"
*To other people but meant the world to Plugio--*
"Which was lucky since nobody named Plugio was on The S--"
*Sleepy [Buffalo](http://reddit.com/r/jacktheritter).*
"Star Falcon." | *\[warning, violence\]*
\-------
"I swear to the heavens, if this is another swamp I will camp here and not move for a week."
"Talking to yourself again?"
"No, I'm talking to the *narrator* as I've told you--"
His friend ignored him, peering out into the swamp with a look of fear. "Say, it looks like something big is coming this way!"
"Not my problem. I'm going to sit here and not move until we go somewhere other than a swamp. And yes, I know you can hear me!"
His shouts went unnoticed, except perhaps by the vengeful MONSTER that came roaring out of the swamp.
His friend drew a sword and prepared for battle, glancing worriedly back at the hero. "Um, now isn't a great time to be napping?"
"Not napping, making a point."
"Yes, yes, your imaginary friend is very stubborn, I get it. But perhaps our immediate survival could motivate your, er, resolving the conflict post haste?"
"Yeah, maybe, if the narrator would LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!"
His bellows served only to infuriate the beast, whose sensitive ears it must be confessed were used to high-pitched and shrill insect sounds but not those deep and echoing like that of the stubborn hero.
The beast bellowed furiously and charged, swatting aside the hero's friend like a paltry obstacle, and trampling most thoroughly the stubborn man who refused to play his part.
Then it tore the hero's bloody corpse into bite-size pieces, and swallowed them one by one, pausing only long enough to knock the deceased hero's friend away every few minutes.
"I'll slay you, you vile beast!" shouted the friend, whose voice it must be said was a much more comfortable shrill compared to the hero's noisome bellow, and thus did not provoke the beast into a rage.
Then finally, its gory work done, the beast snorted in satisfaction as it swallowed the hero's last remaining foot, then lumbered back into the swamp.
"No, Deven, why!" His friend knelt beside the bloody patch of ground, beside the pile of untouched armor Deven had been too stubborn to wear, and the sword he'd been too stupid to pick up in defence. He'd been so confident in his position, believing his meta-narrative powers would suffice to defend him from the all-powerful narrator's grasp, but now he was gone. Now another, someone worthier, would have to rise to take his place.
"Wait. *Wait.* He wasn't crazy? You're real?"
It turns out, the swamp monster wasn't quite as satiated by its meal as the new fool would like to think, for it came charging out with unbelievable stealth, ready to put an end to another fool who would dare invoke powers beyond mortal ken--
"Oh, heavens, no, I'll be good, I swear! If you don't want me to acknowledge your existence, I won't. Never again. I swear!"
Fortunately, the shrill panicked shrieks served to comfort the beast, the sound well within its preferred register. With one last snort of warning, it turned and lay down.
"Deven, you idiot." His friend sighed, collecting his armor and weapon and stowing them in the horse's packs to sell at the next town. Except the sword, perhaps. It was a nice blade. "I will miss you, if only because you were someone to talk to. Though, now I can say whatever I please, and you won't try to correct me. For your information, my pronunciation is flawless."
Deven's spirit did not materialize, but his replacement didn't mind.
"Alright, you big idiot. Let's see if I can handle swamps better than you did."
With a quick, practiced motion, she swung herself into the saddle and set off on her grand adventure. | 2020-05-09T22:26:31 | 2020-05-09T21:39:42 | 53 | 30 |
[WP] When someone turns 18, they may use one adjective on themselves boost that part 10 fold. Strong, fast, smart, no one expects your adjective. | "You know," I said, leaning on my friend "I guess I shouldn't have been clever with my request. People go for the classic stuff, strong, clever, attractive, that sorta thing. And here I was, just trying to stand out. Because of course I did. But you knew I would do that, right?"
My friend didn't respond, only stared dead ahead with a blank expression on his face. But I can't blame him, really. It's been 4 years since I picked my word and I told him the story countless times. I'd be bored of it by now. But it changed my way of life so drastically that I could never quite get it out of my head.
"See, most people, they pick something reasonable, like I said, and get on with their life. Sure, they can lift pianos or run track like no one else, but that's just a part of their everyday routine after a while, right? Yeah, I'm right."
I took a sip of my drink. I've been sipping it for an hour and it was still ice cold. A nice perk of my adjective, I suppose.
"I mean I've always been *really* proud of my punctuality. So I thought, hey, wouldn't that be cool? To be the most reliable guy around? Someone you can *truly* count on? I felt it would be a nice niche, not the usual, bored crap."
My friend slowly blinked.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, I best be going. I'll come by later. Back before you know it." I chuckled at the remark and left.
&#x200B;
My friends, who gathered around to watch me pick my word, looked around in utter confusion. I was nowhere to be seen, though a few could still smell my cologne.
"Did he just say '*timely*'?"
It was a rhetorical question, of course. He remembered the word well. After all, I said it only 4 minutes ago. | When other people choose their word, I feel like maybe they're not thinking about it hard enough. Or maybe they're thinking outwardly too much. Stacy chose cool. Mandy chose pretty. Ken chose clever.
I think all of them are short sighted. Immature. One dimensional.
Some kids don't think about why they're choosing their word. They're insecure. They seek approval. They don't see the big picture. They're all going to peak at like 21 or 22 years old, and then they'll have to go through the whole rest of their lives as a pretty face or a Brainiac.
Where's that ever going to get anybody?
I'm not like them. I don't care if my teeth are straight and my hair is shiny, I'm going to have the money to pay for these things. I don't have to worry about guys liking me, or having to make calculations. I'm going to get what I want. I've chosen the only trait that really matters.
I've chosen persuasive. Because if you can talk people into things, nothing else will ever matter. | 2022-01-02T01:33:19 | 2022-01-02T00:11:41 | 424 | 103 |
[WP] People level their skills in an RPG fashion and are conscious of their sudden jumps from novice to journeyman and so on. You've spent your life training a skill that is entirely useless until becoming invaluable once mastered - and you just mastered it. | "Sit up straight at the table." Jake's mother would always tell him.
But Jake would not listen.
"You could probably play basketball if you looked a little taller" Jake's dad would try to encourage him.
But Jake would not listen.
"You'll develop a hump in your back if you slouch like that" Jake's grandma would scold him.
But Jake would not listen, because he knew that he was not just slouching, but *crouching*, deliberately, everywhere he went and at every possible situation of the day. Jake was never much of a talker. In fact people would have called him a wall flower. He was always crouching, at school, at home, at the park, on awkward dates, at his high school graduation. He had even trained himself to sleep while crouching.
25 long years Jake crouched, in an odd, alert stance. Like a thief who had just got caught in the act. He attracted strange glances and social commentary that would make most flushed with embarrassment, but Jake didn't care. He knew what he was doing.
One fateful day, it all finally clicked. Jake got up from the john, stretched his legs, and got back into his regular crouch. But as he shuffled back into the office, something was different. He felt it. He was no longer shuffling, but sneaking, level 100.
"Anyone seen Jake?" His boss called out, walking right past him with a fat stack of paperwork.
"Jake was here just a moment ago" Katrina looked around, confused.
Jake's eyes grew wide with wonder. He snuck over to Katrina and waved his hands in front of her face. She kept staring at her computer screen, completely unfazed and oblivious to his presence. He ate some of the donuts at her desk, then stole her favorite stapler as his own.
Jake could go anywhere now. He was a shadow. A blip on life's radar that could not be perceived, remembered, or detected. He was a god.
"Fuck yeah!" Jake jumped for joy, almost straining his legs which were unused to the position.
"Whoa, Jake?" Katrina looked up from her work, "What are you doing at my desk?"
Startled, Jake immediately crouched back down and froze.
"Huh, that was weird." Katrina's eyes glazed over, immediately unaware of the events that just transpired.
Jake sighed, and smiled, his power was intact. There was only one thing left to do now, find the place they called Riften. | Derek walked home, and into his bedroom. Everyday, as his mother had told him to, he had pressed the big red button on his wall. It turned the lights on and off.
Derek paused before pressing the button. He remembered his mother, vaguely. Blonde, tall, yet the opposite of the stereotype. She was a genius. Derek had always wandered why someone as smart as his mother would choose button pressing as their skill-and force their kid into it. He hadn't seen her since he was nine. Ever since then, strange events had occurred. Mostly happening to neighbors, and the occasional politician.
Derek pressed the button...
And felt something. He felt...legendary.
The doorbell rang. He ignored the feeling, and answered it.
"Son, it's time you joined me in the castle."
"The...castle?"
"Yes," his mother put a hand on his shoulder, "the Button Castle."
Derek couldn't believe it. All this time, his mom had been serious when she talked about a castle of some kind? His mother, hand still on his shoulder, whipped out a big, red button, and pressed it. Derek felt his body dissolve. It put itself back together again in a seemingly infinite room...the walls lined with buttons.
"Every inanimate object with moving parts can be controlled from here, in every way imaginable. Derek, we, the only two button masters, can troll the world."
*Somewhere in Arkansas*
"Oh shit!" yelled Tristan, as shit plastered his shirt. The toilet had essentially become a water fountain with the strength of a fire-hose. After he had suppressed the spray, his cellphone vibrated. He had a text. It read:
"That's for always turning the toilet paper the wrong way. Worst. Roommate. Ever.
P.S: I read your search history. You're a horrible person. Creepy, too. | 2015-10-06T00:04:12 | 2015-10-05T21:10:14 | 427 | 111 |
[WP] You have time-travelled back to the dark ages. You enter a church and you become scared when your phone alarm goes off. Only for the priest to say. “Please guys we’ve talked about this, phones off or on silent.” | “How?” he asked. “How do you know about—”
“Cell phones? Young man, there is much you need to know,” the priest answered. “But first, let us finish the proceedings?”
After the service, Josh walked up to the priest ready to ask him all of his questions.
“No… sit down, young man, we will talk,” said the priest. He looked to be around 40-years-old, with greying hair and kindly eyes. “I am Damian Hunter, the priest of this church, as you’ve no doubt gathered. What your name?”
Josh sat down on the bench. Wringing his hands together he asked, “Josh, Josh Moreau. I am 27 years old. You—You know cellphones… how?”
“How much do you know about this place?”
“I know nothing! One second I was walking to my home and the next—”
“You were torn apart by a black wind. The next thing you know, you’re here?”
“Yes… yes. Please tell me what happened? I really need to go—”
There’s a quiet pity in the man’s eyes that stops Josh short.
“I’m never going back, am I?”
“I pray for your peace, young man.”
“How…? What…? What happened?”
“That black mist is a time dilating phenomenon. Matter cannot be destroyed. So, when you were torn apart, you were placed in a time pocket. We simultaneously do and don’t exist,” the man said.
“You were all pulled back from 2021 as well…” Josh surmised.
“No… I was pulled from 2016. There’s no set year. You can be pulled in from any time,” the priest answered.
“Is there nothing that can be done? Can we not figure a way—”
“—to go back?” the priest finished Josh’s question.
“How long do you think I have been here, Josh? Five years?”
Josh shook his head, unable to answer the question.
“I spent about 100 years in this place,” the priest answered quietly.
Josh’s eyes widened and bile rose in his throat. He choked it back with a sob.
“You’ve all tried,” Josh asked. “But no one can go back. We’re stuck here forever and we can’t die?”
“I’m sorry, Josh,” the priest whispered.
There was a loud ringing sensation in his ears. Josh couldn’t really hear anything anymore. His chest ached for some reason and someone was sobbing in the background—
“Josh. Josh!” the priest’s hands were now on his shoulders, shaking him.
Josh jolted from his thoughts. His eyes pricked and his throat ached.
“I am sorry, I should have been more careful with telling you the truth,” the priest said, tone contrite.
Josh took several deep breaths and took a sip of the water the priest handed him.
“So, I won’t be able to see my fiancé again?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay…” Josh trailed off. “What do I do now?”
“What did you study, Josh?”
“I—I am an accountant for a major firm.”
“I see. We always need more accountant. And farmers of course,” the priest said, quietly.
“I can help around,” Josh said, nodding his head towards the village.
“I need you to remember something, Josh,” the priest urged.
“What?”
“I need you to remember there is still hope,” the priest said. “There are people who are working on this problem. You can meet them once you are stable enough. There is promising research. So please do not lose hope.”
“Okay,” Josh whispered.
Together they walked out of that church to set up a new life for Josh in this dimension for the foreseeable future. | I haven't written a prompt before, so bear with me here please...
***
I thought I was lucky enough to escape from those crazy villagers. It's unbearable when the whole population is trying to requite unsuspecting folks into their innocent looking cult. With every person shoving a form into your face at every turn, it becomes infuriating.
*"Onii-chan, where are you...?"* As the voice of the little girl grow fainter each step, away from the church walls, I feel a cold shiver slowly creep down my back. I knew visiting this onsen area was a bad idea, as my friend warned me, but I just can't pass up the opportunity to take a break and explore how it feels to take an open bath. I've never been to an onsen before, so you can't blame me for that!
**COOOKAAAAADOOODLLLLLDOOOOOO~~~~!!!!**
SHIT.
I just realized that hiding in a church isn't the smartest thing to do in order to hide from church fanatics.
*"Please guys we've talked about this, phones off or on silent"*
Huh? Wait, did I hear that correctly? Did my ears go bad?
**COOOKAAAAADOOODLLLLLDOOOOOO~~~~!!!!**
*"DUDE, phones off or on silent!"*
AAAHHHHH GOTTA TURN THIS SHIT OFF
F it, I'll just throw this stupid phone away before it attracts even more attention.
I knew it, coming to this place is the worst decision I've ever made! Being lucky enough to find the phone that teleports me into the past was lucky enough, but running into church fanatics really flipped the benefits around.
Ah.
I see the priest walking towards me now. Oh no, why is he holding a piece of paper?
*"Welcome to our humble church, I see that you seem to be new here. Would you like a short introduction to our facilities? But first, here. Sign this form, as I continue my explanations."*
Ok, I see him giving me instructions now, but why?
GODDAMN IT!
>!WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE AXIS ORDER?!!<
***
If ya get the reference, then great! If not, hopefully [this form can help you](https://i.imgur.com/OvgOiaN.jpg), or [this starter website should get you familiar with the practice](https://axiscult.zmcx16.moe/).
Jokes aside, I found it kinda difficult to tie my reference to something more theatrical along with the plot. As mentioned in the beginning, this is my first forage into writing prompts, so please point out my mistakes and feedbacks are welcome! | 2021-12-02T05:24:15 | 2021-12-02T00:11:59 | 234 | 70 |
[WP] We come in contact with extraterrestrials and soon discover they are unable to conceive the concept of "fiction". They think every kind of fictional work we have ever made is based on real events. | The Army did not save the Earth,
Despite the claims of weaker men,
Who suck the teats of empty news,
And claim we always win.
There are children who have never heard,
Of the war where no one died.
The day the Aliens came to earth,
And left before they tried.
Some say Russia made a fist,
That America flashed her knife,
That Japan rose up from the mist,
And took away their life.
We did not capture their queen,
In a game of galactic chess,
We ended it before it started,
There was never any mess.
The Alien invaders believed such silly truths,
That our planet was filled with magic,
Each TV show was proof.
We would never write lies,
Or share them with our kind,
Fiction was as foreign,
As staying the fuck away.
They believed that Goku saved us,
That the Hunger Games were real,
Like the story of the Purge.
The Doctor would be waiting,
Power Rangers were on call,
What creatures would sacrifice children,
In a yearly Battle Royale?
They whispered telepathically,
About the glorious MIB.
We had defeated other beings,
Our galaxy so empty.
Independence Day! they said,
We fear your great Will Smith.
Each celebrity was a goddess,
Each Oscar celebrated myth.
They stood no chance against us,
They asked, "Where can we go?"
They saw our warriors gathering,
In San Diego.
It wasn't love to made us strong,
Or faith that saved the day,
It was the dreaming cos-players,
Who made them go away.
Warriors, demons, ghosts, and sprites.
Costumes made in basement rooms,
And in the dark of night.
We overpowered logic,
We didn't have to fight,
Everything was perfect,
Like a fucking Mary Sue.
The Aliens were gone by morning,
Into a space deep and cold,
I was certain it would happen,
Just like the fanfiction foretold. | The little grey pored over the books from my backpack with eager excitement. I simply sat on the examination table on board the spacecraft. "Oh boy," said the alien. "So you guys had this amazing yet sophisticated guy called Sherlock Holmes who solved crimes?". Before I could reply the alien had picked up another book and quickly scanned it. "Killer clowns?! Wow, this IT sounds like a piece of work!".
"No! All these stories are just works of the authors imagination! They aren't true at all!" I said. "Don't believe everything you read."
The grey looked at me with its large black eyes and said "If they are just false then why put all the effort in writing, printing and distributing them, huh?!"
I sighed in exasperation as the alien went back to the pile of books on the floor. "Jesus Christ..." I said.
The alien quickly turned around to face me. "Oh, you know that guy? He seems really popular in this book! It's called the Bible."
I could do nothing but put my head in my hands and let out a frustrated groan.
Edit: spelling error. Thanks for pointing that out fellow redditor! | 2016-09-16T09:28:53 | 2016-09-16T08:07:25 | 84 | 10 |
[WP] No, there is not any issues with your metrics, you're slaying enough demons, more than enough actually. It's just, we kinda have an issue with your attitude, you just seem to... well... enjoy killing demons WAY too much. | "What's wrong with my attitude? I don't *love* this job, but doing it with a smile makes the day go by faster. It's good customer service."
John flicked a stray piece of gore that was stuck to his arm onto the office floor. He hated having to deal with nitpicky middle managers like this one. He finished his last assignment, so just give him his next one already.
"Customer service to who, your job is killing demons! Your coworkers think you're unhinged and then they come to me-- and what in the hell are those?"
The middle manager gestured somewhat vaguely to John's entire body.
"... Shotgun shells? Oh! You mean my 40 pieces of flair? I got the idea from my last job. I thought it was dumb at first too, but the idea grew on me. It really helps add to the customer experience and synergize our values to our core product. Whatever that means. I've been trying to get the rest of the team onboard, but maybe you should try convincing them instead. Look at this one, isn't it great?"
There wasn't a dress code rule against having flair, so what was the problem? John began showing off a pin with the text 'Hugs, not guns' and a cute stylization of a demon on it. Then he had to show off his other favorites, laughing at the often ironic messaging on them given his job description. 'Demons are people too', and the like. These were of course mixed in with patriotic messages, and one proclaiming they can have his gun when they pry it from his cold dead fingers. The things people came up with.
The manager sighed and rubbed his temple. What was he supposed to do? John was good at his job after all. He just did it with a grotesque enthusiasm and sense of humor that bothered anyone he had to work with. He supposed all he needed was for the others to stop complaining about it.
"John, fine. Do what you want. You'll be alone on your assignments from now on. We have recent intelligence of a new demon encampment. They're still young, but you know what happens when those reach a certain size. Go see Malkovich for your briefing."
"Sure thing boss, I'll slaughter them all with a smile!"
John gave a casual salute. Then he left and headed toward Malkovich's office. This job wasn't so bad in between the meetings and nitpicking managers. | -"Do something you enjoy and you won't work a day in your life" . Isn't this what you thaught us while we were kids? I found that one thing and now you got a problem with it? I adress the council with a stern tone.
-Not a problem perse, one of the council members speaks, just a bit of an inconvenience. Nobody should enjoy slaying demons *that* much.
-You get your demons slayed, I get my d*ck hard. I don't see a problem here.
-That is disrespectful, Mr. Do...
-Got a problem with that, council? I ask while pointing my blaster at them.
-Nnnnooo, they say on a slithering tone.
*Suspicions confirmed*
-What I find sickening is that you would order your own kind to be mercilessly killed. Surprised that I know? I can smell demon vermins from miles away. I knew something was up when a "council" had to be establised to tell us how to do our jobs.
-You will pay for this betrayal, mortal.
-Yeah, sure. Tell Satan I said hello.
Seven quick shots and I'm done with the council meeting.
-Doom Daddy to Foundation. Mission accomplished. I repeat. Mission accomplished.
-*Great job Doom. See you at the facility. click*
Thanks for reading. If you liked this, you might enjoy my other works over at r/MarinWritesHorrible | 2021-09-15T11:19:55 | 2021-09-15T08:25:40 | 98 | 62 |
[WP] When people turn 18, they gain the power to summon 1 random thing in the world to their hand, as Thor does to Mjolnir. Summoned people are considered soulmates, and objects as important parts of one's life. When you summon yours, it takes some time, but people are horrified when it arrives... | &#x200B;
The air was cold, and noticeably more dense. Another odd occurrence is that my summon didn't come yet, My birthday was months ago, but I didn't think too much of it, because I knew that it would come, they always do. But what kept me on edge was the atmosphere, I didn't like it. It felt too unnatural.
I was out in the back when it finally arrived, it had been a hard day for me, endlessly tilling land for the little amount of money it got me until I could afford a place of my own. I was minding my own business when I saw the sky above me darken, I looked up and I swear I saw a flash of light slowly get bigger. Confused I stared for another minute or so when I realized it had been getting bigger, I started to get excited about it, wondering if it was my summon. I jogged away from the fertile ground and waited as the shining light struck the earth.
Shortly after it struck I ran over to the small crater left by it, I looked back into the sky and saw that the sky had brightened back up again. I looked at the object left in the crater, I had been perplexed because the only thing in the crater was a small steel container, I opened at I saw a handwritten note on the inside.
The only thing that was written was a passage, it read
"There will be a purge soon, you’re the last one to receive a gift, tell the ones before you to prepare” | They all screamed as the orange haired president doubled over in pain live on national television as I laughed maniacally in the back of the bar waving his severed member in my hand before throwing it into my drink.
“Steve!!” “what the fuck man?!” Randy screamed at me as he vomited onto the floor. “It’s your birthday but damn dude!? Why the fuck did you summon THAT?!”
“World domination baby, world domination”
Everybody stood far away from me as I walked out the front door blood dripping from my fingers, The Donald’s member flopping on the ground.
Who the fuck is going to dare challenge anyone that can rip your junk off from anywhere on the planet?
Let them eat cake. | 2019-09-18T10:17:28 | 2019-09-18T09:37:18 | 14 | 10 |
[WP] Many centuries ago your ancestor angered a witch who cursed him and his family with misfortune for 100 generations. You are a child of the 101st generation and the universe is trying its hardest to compensate. | You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you miss a step walking down a flight of stairs? That jolt of adrenaline that sends electricity throughout your body and your heart skips a beat?
Imagine you’re walking along downtown minding your own business. You’re about to cross a street you’ve always crossed, and you feel it. That tingle running from your scalp to your toes that stops you in your tracks. A truck goes careening by, close enough you could reach out and touch it, as it blows through a red light.
This is my life. A series of near misses, of almost, of “holy fuck did that really just happen?”. I wouldn’t say I’m lucky, more that I’m incredibly immune to misfortune. I can say without a doubt I probably should have died, or at least been horribly maimed a long time ago.
I know it sounds weird, but it’s almost as if the Universe is actively intervening in what normally have been a tragically short life. I mean, you have to take into consideration that literally every man in my family has died in horribly unlucky ways before they were 40. My own father was the victim of a freak accident involving his own bedsheets. My Gram likes to regale all of us with tales of Pop losing an arm to his prized cow and how he bled out before he could call for help.
My point is, we have a track record for misfortune ten miles long. Family fortunes have been won and lost in a single night. Countless tales of dying lovers retold over the dinner table that would make Shakespeare himself jealous. Sometimes I wonder if we really were cursed by a madwoman in the old country with 100 generations of misfortune.
I live a modest life, a comfortable life even. I have a nice apartment in a nice part of the city, at a really fortunate price compared to my neighbors. I keep to myself and work a well paying office job downtown. I have an old but reliable car that never seems to break down. I don’t think I’ve ever gone hungry or suffered from a common cold.
But it seems as if every time I turn a corner, Death is waiting for me. There are only so many times you can narrowly avoid being decapitated by defective kitchen appliances before you start to wonder.
| Day One:
Finally!
Free from this seemingly everlasting curse!
What shall I do?
Oh, look, a witch!
For the past 100 generations my family has been slowing building an unstoppable hatred for ALL witches! Yet, while the hatred deepened, the origins of this hatred were never passed down from generation to generation. And so, I have become a vessel for hatred. Filled to the brim with such poison; there was never room for the nectar or compassion or the lemon squeeze of rational thought.
Narrow and sharp with my anger, I was nothing more than a walking knife, and I cut a straight line across the road, intent upon exacting sweet, bloody havoc.
I kicked the witch right in the balls because, the currents of my ignorance ran just as deep as those of my cruelty.
If you strike a witch directly in the balls she will explode - and that's exactly what I did.
However, in the brief moment between attack and explosion the witch recited an incantation. This was no ordinary witch incantation, it was the very incantation witches have been taught to master since childhood, when their balls drop; the very incantation meant to punish anyone that would kick them in the balls: a 100 generation curse that made the cursed family incapable of exacting revenge until the 100 generations have expired.
Now I knew the origins of my curse. I would prepare my children with a careful caution for witches: don't understand them, don't trust them, just know that they are dangerous.
| 2018-11-21T16:04:33 | 2018-11-21T15:39:52 | 123 | 42 |
[WP] You are an elite member of the royal guard. You have recently been fired from your position because of the new king. Little does he know, there was a reason why the previous king kept you in his service for so long.
Edit: Holy crap this blew up! Thank you all! | I couldn't help but sigh as I look at the castle far in the distance. Impatiently, I wait for my ship to depart and bring my family and me to the faraway lands. I need to leave this kingdom. Fast. It's already doomed. Did this "brat turned king" really think that his predecessor gone senile? He'd even threatened me with execution for "conning his old man into believing in superstitions" before removing my position of a royal guard. Just because you can't see ghosts doesn't mean that they can't see - or influence - *you*. My Clan protected the royals from possession for many generations, and now our service is over. How long would it take for the new king to be driven to madness? How long would it take for him to destroy everything his predecessors built?
"What do you think, my friend?" I ask the ghost of the old king who's standing opposite of me.
"Please save my foolish son and my Kingdom, I beg you!" The transparent man in luxurious clothes and golden crown kneels before me.
In silence, I look at the soul of the person who was more than just my liege. He was - is - my closest friend. As a king, he never knelt before anyone in his whole life. And now, in death, he lowers his head before insignificant little me - someone who vowed to serve *him*.
Sighing again, I look in the direction of the cabin where my family waits for my return. Sorry, but it seems that you'll need to leave without me.
I still have one last job to complete. My life as The Royal Exorcist isn't over yet. | The old king and I were pretty close friends. I introduced him to most of the playmates within his harem. Comprised of but not limited to Vicky Vallencourt & Suzy Crabgrass. Some nights, we’d play uno together. He knew I would let him win and for me? Honestly. I liked it. He could see how I liked it so... no longer was I there to please his majesty, I was there for me. Someone who had the keys not to the Royal palace, but to his own character. Had the king been not of royal blood he would of admired this in me- instead I was merely found amusing which never quite sat well with me. And now? I think that may be all I’ll ever have been. For, there’s nothing to be of me now. Not without him. | 2021-02-28T05:08:55 | 2021-02-28T01:37:57 | 72 | 14 |
[WP] You won't hold heroes hostages to torture them. You won't throw a hero against a wall once you have them by the neck. You sure won't start monologuing if you have a hero at gunpoint. You're the deadliest villain in history. A villian without an ego..
[removed] | “Don’t.”
My back was turned, but I knew what that blasted hero was doing. He was trying to cut his bindings. They were simple rope, Sure, but I preferred to have them tied up easily so I can carry their dead bodies away without a hassle.
“You’ll never get away with this! Even at the cost of my life, my—“
“Legacy will live on!”
I interrupted. I’ve heard this speech a thousand times.
“You believe that you have inspired other heroes simply because you wanted to play the Martyr. I’m afraid that’s not how it works.”
His life didn’t mean much to me, but I had a few questions. I needed to know the answers. I had all the time I needed, and perhaps I’d give him a chance to see what it’s like to be me.
“No...”
“Yes! You believe that just because I killed you, that doesn’t mean that the other heroes won’t stop me eventually. I have news.”
I pulled him by his tight, fabric suit.
“You’ll never stop me.”
He gasped as he was slightly strangled by my grip. I liked this. Now for the questions. Perhaps I’d disembody him while I spoke. Maybe I’ll give him to the count of three if I’m feeling generous.
“First. What do the heroes want with me?”
“We want you behind bars.”
“Figures.”
I tapped my fingers on my desk. No hero had ever seen me up close, or those who did never lived to tell the tale. Photographers never caught glimpses of me. No one knew what I looked like. It must’ve been a surprise to the disgustingly giddy hero when the light came on, revealing my appearance. Now he knew that he had no chance of making it out alive.
“Your face—“
“I know.”
I knew. I knew that half of it was seemingly blasted apart.
“You and your wretched comrades did this to me. I’m not too mad about it. However, I don’t let disrespect slide.”
I glared.
“You Villain—“
That was my cue. I’ve done this so many times. Each and every time, I waited for those two words...
“I’m not a villain.”
“But—!”
“No. You’re a hero? You simply fight for what you believe in. Right now? I am fighting for what I believe in.”
I watched realization register onto his face. His handsome face, just before it was blown to bits.
I’m no Villain. I’m simply a regular person with a controversial opinion on how this world should be run.
And I had no intention to fail. | I approached the gated community in a blue Toyota Rav 4. I chose the vehicle because their were three others like it in this pleasant area. It was full of the type of people who bought colorful Toyotas. I parked on the opposite side of the street from the lilac house. It was debateably hideous, but I thought I could see what Mavis was going for.
A knock on my window startled me from my thoughts. I swiveled to see a smiling girl wearing a "save the whales" t-shirt.
"Oh, shit."
Mavis smashed a fist through my window and threw me onto her neighbor's neatly kept lawn. I stumbled to my feet, nearly falling back down. "Want to know how I found you?"
Her golden hair blinded me as she tackled me back to the floor. I shook my head to get her hair off my face. She fixed her eyes on mine with drawn in brows.
"Oh noo," I opened my mouth in cartoonish bewilderment. She dragged her eyes down past my suit and onto the short dagger jutting from her stomach. I yanked it out despite the fact that my suit would be ruined.
Blood explanded and dripped from the whale on her shirt, creeping across the sunny beach scene. "Got a bit cocky." I shoved her off of me.
She gasped when she landed flat on her back.
"I won't make you suffer, love."
She fixed me with a glassy stare and fruitlessly moved her lips in a silent message. I cradled her head. "Relax, it's okay. It's okay."
Snap.
I stood shakily and made unfortunate eye contact with an old women clutching a mug to her chest.
I held up my blood coated hands. "We're just having a chat." | 2019-08-06T19:15:08 | 2019-08-06T18:28:40 | 151 | 69 |
[WP] You cannot tell a lie. Not because you're unable to, but because every time you do, a narrator's voice explains the lie in great detail! | "Hey Jim, how's it going?" Andrew greeted his friend as they met up on their daily commute to the office.
Jim put on the fake smile. "Oh, pretty good. You?"
"In fact," boomed the voice, "Jim is not doing well at all. He has not slept well for the last week, the pretty girl he was talking to on that dating app - the first woman to give him any attention in years - turned out to be a scammer. He's feeling even lonlier than usual, he's upside down on his crappy car and behind on his mortgage, his cat has cancer, his ex is being more of a bitch than usual lately, and he had to call the suicide hotline last night."
There was an awkward silence. Andrew put a reassuring hand on Jim's shoulder as Jim looked down in shame. "Dude, you know I'm here for you, right."
"Yeah, I know. I'll be alright."
"In fact, Jim won't be alright. But since he doesn't want to burden his friends and family with his multitude of problems he will never reach out for help even though he desperately needs to."
It seemed impossible, but Jim seemed to shrink even smaller. He muttered, almost under his breath, "Could you....not?"
"You know Jim, believe it or not I think the truth voice thing is trying to help you out for a change."
"It's not. The damned thing just hates lies, even the smallest ones. It doesn't let anything go uncommented upon."
"In fact, the voice leaves all true statements uncommented upon."
"See?" Jim shook his head and looked up. "I don't suppose you'd answer me if I asked for the millionth time what you are and why you do that?"
"In fact, Jim has only asked that question three hundred and forty seven times."
Andrew rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It's more talkative than usual."
"Yeah. I usually don't give it as many chances to catch me in a lie."
There was silence.
"I must be tired or something."
"In fact, Jim is struggling under the pain of a soul-crushing depression and does not know how to ask for help. He is intentionally uttering all the little social lies that people tell each other in the hopes that the voice will call him out on it and get him the help that he desperately needs before it's too late."
The awkward silence stretched longer this time. Andrew pulled out his phone and made a call. "Hey boss? Yeah, I'm not coming in today. Neither is Jim." Jim looked up in surprise. "It's....you know that voice thing of his? The one that won't let him lie? Has to do with that....Yeah, I'll explain later. Thanks."
He hung up the phone and looked at Jim. "Alright buddy, come on. I know an amazing therapist and you're going to see her right now."
EDIT: Thanks for the silver! It made my day.
EDIT2: And another silver and a gold. I'm blown away! Thank you! And also to everyone who upvoted or commented to say how much they liked it. I really do appreciate that. | The bar buzzed with life as the childhood friends huddled closer to speak in detail.
"Hey Marty, how's it going?"
"It's great really..." he replied to James.
"Marty swallowed hard he needed to make sure he belonged." said the voice.
"What was that?" James asked.
"Nothing, I don't know maybe some guy over at the other table," Marty said.
"The narrator chuckled as Marty tried his best to dismiss the voice."
"They sound like they're talking about you," said James.
Marty responded with a poker stare.
Their drinks were brought and they each took large swigs. "So, what are you doing with yourself lately?" James asked.
"Oh just working same old same old," Marty replied.
"His eyes widened as they always did when he fibbed and he took another deep drink hoping his friend wouldn't ask for details."
James raised an eyebrow, "How is work going?"
"It's going great, the journalism wasn't going so good so I took up web design instead," said Marty.
"Marty's fingers shook with nervousness, he'd been forced to take up coding after the site that he worked for closed. Giving up his passion had been hard."
James shot a look at Marty's hands.
"You sure you doing fine man?" James asked.
"Yeah i'm fine why?"
"Beads of sweat formed on Marty's nape, he was still living with his parents and his 31st birthday was next week. He'd been forced to sell his car too to make space. He hadn't been employed for the past two months and his savings were dwindling. He was failing, and he seemed spectacular at it too. Some times he wondered if he could succeed in just ending it all and if he did would that make him a success or a... "
"Hey listen man, it's gonna be alright." James said, he stood up and hugged his childhood friend "I know things are hard right now but they can always turn around." He wished he had known. He'd have come over sooner.
***
happier stories can be read at /r/calicocreations. | 2019-06-21T07:31:01 | 2019-06-21T07:28:56 | 2,874 | 67 |
[WP]: Everyone got a tiny, mundane blessing when they were born. Usually they are so small that people don't even notice them - always hitting the green light in traffic, etc. Yours would be virtually useless, but you figured out a creative loophole that allowed you to rise to the top of the world. | You know when you're a kid, and you're dreaming of finding your place in the world? I remember being nine and looking up at a giant career chart and thinking "I don't have any idea where I'm going to fit..." It certainly wasn't rescuing hostages for a living.
My teen years were no picnic either. Everybody was dreaming of being scientists or engineers or something cool and high tech. I was never good at biology or chemistry or much of anything that approached a science. In high school the closest I ever got to being recognized for anything was being named captain of the chess team. I was the only one on the team and even the club adviser regularly forgot about me. My mother used to say that some folks are just destined to be wallflowers and that every teen wants to be special. I never was. All of that changed when Jason brought a gun to school.
I was the only one in my class to recognize the sharp pop-pop crack of a shot and when I screamed to get down, the looks of surprise on my classmates faces vanished as they too ducked under tables. I knew it was going to be a moment where all of our lives pivoted. To this day, I still don't know why but I clearly remember climbing out from under my table and exiting the back doorway of my class.
My heart thundered and I could feel the blood burning in my ears. I convinced myself that every sound was the shooter turning a corner or opening a door or...Still, I went from room to room quietly whisper-arguing with terrified kids, drawing them out and leading them back to an exit. The police figured out where the kids were streaming from pretty fast and I saw a few officers leading a sobbing boy off towards the ambulances. I went back in.
By the time that I was leading the last girl out of my class, I'd gotten over the creaks and groans of the building and so I almost missed the sound of Jason reloading his gun. I froze and pushed Melissa into a small alcove. I covered as much of her body with mine and hoped deep down inside that she'd make it and that my mom would understand that I'd done the right thing. Jason turned the corner and paused... and then just like every other day of school, he walked right by me. He didn't even make eye contact with me. I waited til he turned the corner and got us both to the first exit I could find.
It took me weeks to realize my gift. I prayed and had night terrors and struggled to make sense of why Jason hadn't shot us right then, right there. And then I realized... I'd never had trouble with Jason. I'd never really had trouble with anyone. As bad as my teen years were, I never got bullied. I was definitely a nerd, but the mean kids never made trouble for me. When trouble came around, if I kept my head down and avoided eye contact, it just passed me right by. That was the gift that got the FBI's attention enough to get me this job: It's like when people have an axe to grind, if I avoid eye contact and stay out of their way, I just disappear. And now? Now it's my job to walk into life or death situations and do exactly that, and if I'm really lucky, to take a bunch of innocent people with me. I'm a Vanisher, and it's good not to be noticed. | I don't sleep. Not much anyway. I *can* sleep, and do so about every other week, but I don't need to. The doctors think I somehow mimic the dolphins, letting half my brain get good naps at a time.
And it suits me fine. It means i get a lot of time on my hands, most of wich I use unproductivly and some of wich i use to work. By unproductive I don't mean doing drugs and stuff, just, you know. Working out, reading, seeing movies and trying to get laid. That last one is a tricky one, but not for the reasons you'd think.
It's the same reason as to why it was so damn hard for me to keep an honest job. The only job I was able to keep for the longest time was a night time janitorial at a hospital. And I tried everything.
I actually have a degree in economics, and after graduating I went though quite a few desk-jobs. And I did good work, that was never the issue.
After the desk job failures, I did stints of construction and other manual labour, and oh man. That... would seem unsafe for everyone. It would at least be expensive. Impecable work mind you, thats still not the issue. In a sort of last effort, i tried myself as a night-club bouncer. Long story short, after dropping a bucket of ice on the floor and slipping in myself and making a spectacle, a serius looking man asked me if that was intentional. He clearly just saw me distract and spook a goon from assailing his client at the opurtune moment.
That's essentialy how I ended up as a presidential-level bodyguard. I always thought i was just a bit clumsy, probably related to an irregular sleep patern. All my jobs lost because I took a *slightly* to sharp turn with a fully loaded dozer, or happened to spill a bottle of printer ink on the backup-server. It always felt like plenty of bad stuff happened to me, but it never occured to me that I never had seen an outbreak of violence or mayhem. Never ran into a tagger at night.
I.. react(?) to ill intent, haphazardly creating a scene or distraction, or appearantly incidentially create a wall or tip a building, to distract or block induviduals set out to knowlingly hurt or other abuse others. No one really gets hurt around me. Ever. | 2018-06-30T17:41:53 | 2018-06-30T15:08:15 | 192 | 129 |
[WP] After a violent revolution, the government of a country is overthrown. You are assigned to guard the cell the former king/president/supreme leader is in before his public execution. He starts a conversation with you. | ''Where are my sons, where's my wife, where's my daughter?''
''Dead.''
He started crying. It was strange. The man had been the father of the fatherland, built up as one of the great men of history. Practically a god. And now I was watching him, crying. Hardly the man of resolve I had imagined. I felt no pity though.
''They were innocent...''
''Most of them.'' I replied. Two of his eldest sons had been commanders of the most loyal and well-equipped army elements. Division commanders, both of them. They had defended Ashgabat and Turkmenebat with quite some vigour. Both of them had held for years. The tide had turned, eventually, though. One of them killed himself to avoid capture, the other was dragged through the streets of Turkemenebat and ripped apart. Gruesome. I had fought in the Lebap province himself, though I hadn't helped storm Turkmenebat in March. I had seen a video of the lynching though.
''Most..'' the prisoner repeated, enraged. Yes, most of them had been innocent. Still... I had no sympathy for them. I only felt a slight disdain for them, even though I rationally knew they were innocent and hadn't deserved it. Nonetheless, my great hatred for their father overshadowed any rationality or sympathy, so I couldn't help but feel glad for their deaths, smile. At best, I could rationalize it as an unfortunate excess of the revolution. That frightened me a bit, but what was done was done. No use dwelling on it.
''You bunch of fucking sheepfuckers..'' he whispered. I chuckled. There had actually been a few sheepfuckers in my brigade. ''Do you think their deaths, deaths of children, are funny? Do you? Do you?'' he screamed at me. The rage of a god, a storm. Once. Now, it was the rage of a helpless prisoner. I thought it was strange.
In schools we had once chanted praise unto him. Father of the fatherland. Funnily enough, he was no longer a father of anything now. I couldn't help but laugh at that,too. Now I -had- laughed at the death of his children, but I didn't feel too bad about it.
''You fucking idiot, you fucking monster.. I gave this country stability, I gave it wealth! I sent thousands to universities, gave fair treatment to both man and woman!'' he yelled. I would not engage in a debate. I knew the corruption, I knew of the men and women suddenly disappearing and never returning, I knew of all the places where his face was plastered. Mosques, markets, homes, squares, schools. His yelling increased and increased though. It became meaningless background buzzing for me. It did not matter, anyway. I had made my mind up a long time ago.
I opened the door and he stopped for a moment, looking at me with hopeful eyes. I lifted my gun and smacked him with the butt of the gun, knocking him out. A god, undone. I laughed again as the adrenaline surged through me. I had beaten a god. I kicked him in the stomach one more time. I had beaten a god again. I kicked once more. I had beaten a god again. I laughed harder, turned around, walked away and then shut the door again. My laugh echoed through the empty building. | "Here you go" I say, as I slide the food tray through the slit on his door.
"Hey, could you, uh-"
"No problem." I take out my flashlight and shine it through the opening, his cell doesn't have a window or even a lightbulb. This is one of the most inhumane prisons that I have ever worked at, made even more inhumane for this particular guy.
"Thanks. Say, uh, Brandon right?"
"It's Stafford, Brandon was last week."
"Right, right, you're the one with 3 kids?"
"Yep"
"How're they doing?"
"They're doing alright, though my wife wants us to go abroad as soon as possible, the whole country's a mess."
"You don't say?" He says while gobbling down on his rice.
"Yeah, heh, it's gonna be a bit chaotic for the next few months, She's thinking maybe somewhere in Europe, but I guess we'll just figure it out when we get to the airport."
"Go to Italy, you won't regret it."
"I'll keep that in mind."
He slides the tray out again, clean as a virgin's cherry. I check to see if the spoon and fork are still there, and I slide the tray to the side, holstering my flashlight again.
"Mind if I ask something?" I say
"Go ahead, I've only got the rest of my life if you think about it."
"Why'd you do it?"
"Why do you think I did it?"
"I don't really know. Some people thought you were power-hungry. Others, such as your supporters, thought you had a vision of a better nation, which couldn't be possible without the use of harsh dictatorship. A few think that you were working with the Chinese."
"The *Chinese*?"
"Yeah, haha, conspiracy theorists and whatnot. And a lot of them thought you were just mad."
"Well it wasn't that last one, I could tell you that."
"So, why *did* you do it?"
He takes a short pause, and says "Does it really matter at this point?"
"I guess not."
5 Hours pass, and I'm at the gate with my family, waiting for our plane. Today was the last day that I needed to work, and the last day that I did work at that awful place. Every single television set there was on the news channel, showing his public execution. I heard a man behind me say "Good riddance."
I thought nothing of it, because honestly, he was right, it really doesn't matter at this point. | 2014-12-26T08:54:59 | 2014-12-26T08:39:27 | 22 | 10 |
[WP] Magic is discovered to be real. The catch? Spells are just like computer programs: difficult to write, and even harder to do correct the first try. You're a spell bug tester, and you've seen just about everything go wrong, but today's typo is on a whole other level... | "Could you quiet that thing down?" I shouted at Frank the Magnificent. The ragtime was surprisingly loud, given its source. I wouldn't have minded, but after the hundredth repetition of "The Entertainer," it was getting to be a bit much. I was beginning to understand how ice cream truck drivers felt. *At least it isn't Turkey in the Straw*, I thought to myself.
For some gawdawful reason, Frank the Magnificent- "Hey, can I just call you 'Frank?'" I asked, startling everyone in the room as the music was suddenly silenced. "Sorry," I said a little softer. "I just feel like after reading through this particular spell, we're a bit beyond 'the Magnificent' and all."
Frank the Magnficient- just Frank, now- acknowledged my request with a short nod. Anyway, for some reason Frank had written his spell on parchment. And not only that, on a miniature parchment scroll. The arcane symbols were in written in Arcana Lite font face, 2.5pt which meant I kept having to conjure the magnifying tool in SpellOS 10.0.
To make it worse, that stupid Clippy homonculus kept popping up and saying things like "It looks like you're trying to turn on Accessibility options. Can I help?" Normally, I just blast that little bastard with a Flamethrower charm, but Frank the- I mean, just Frank's choice of dried ancient parchment meant that I'd set off every arcane smoke detector within sixty miles. More likely, with Frank's luck some daemon from the third or fourth nether hells would have considered it a burnt offering and we'd all have our souls eaten for brunch.
I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture, causing Clippy to wriggle his animated eyebrows and disappear, saving me the trouble and pleasure of throttling him with my bare hands. I scowled and continued scanning the first canto of the spell. Nothing there. Just your standard invocation of dark forces and a definition of return variables. Hmm, why he didn't ensorcel this as a closure I'll never understand. Would have saved himself half a pocket dimension's worth of coding.
"Scroll!" I murmured, having to repeat myself several times as the lilting strains of Claire de Lune began and grew in volume. "Scroll! I mean [Jesus, Frank, can you shut that thing up?] Scroll Down!"
The scroll, obedient to my command, fell to the floor. Sigh. Clippy appeared, this time wearing a fedora. "Are you trying to scroll the text of this parchmen- ACK!" This time I gave into my most primal urges and slit that smug shit's throat with my athamé. It gurgled a bit and then spiraled away, bugged out eyes staring at me accusingly. I knew he'd be back, though. You can only banish Clippy. Never destroy him.
Fine. "Scroll *TEXT* Down!" I muttered, doing a two-finger swipe above the parchment. Right... Right... Nothing out of order here... Sacrifice of the soul of a small animal. For-next loop over the infinite names of the Lords of Chaos. Hell, he even initiated his array variables. Why did this stupid spell fuck up so completel- oh wait. There it is.
"Frank," I said, "Please tell me you didn't write this thing in Word."
Frank looked at me. "Well, yeah," he said. "I can't read that tiny font, so-"
I raised my finger. "So you wrote a SPELL in a WORD PROCESSOR?" I said, raising my voice over the crashing of Beethovan's Sonata No.29 in B-flat Major (aka the "Hammerklavier").
He nodded sheepishly.
"Tell me, Frank," I said. "Did you think that maybe you should have turned off auto-correct?"
Frank stared at me, embarrassed, as the twelve inch pianist on my cubicle's desktop stood up, turned around, flipped his morning coat's tails, and bowed. | "ABRAHAM KADABRAH!" I bellow, the fluorescent lights flicker. I pause frozen wondering if I just made the lights flicker. I wait tensely, then a small moment of joy comes, alright now we're getting somewhere. I'm a spell tester, well that's not entirely true, I'm an aspiring Mechanized Warfare Combat Mage (MW-CM). It sounds impressive and that I blow up a lot of cool things with sweet giant robots, but I would actually just be the mage building the units. The Mechanized Mages are the pilots, but I don't mind. I love robots. Like I'm thoroughly, absolutely, insane about ROBOTS!!! But oh. I've forgotten I have work to do.
It normally takes 100 casts to master a spell and about 1,000 casts to develop a new one. Unfortunately, it takes about 10,000 casts to fix all the bugs in it. I probably don't need to tell you that the people who come up with these spells are famous mages who can't be bothered with the mind fraying work of casting the same spell 10,000 times. So here we are, lowly intern spell tester and aspiring MW-CM casting a spell that's supposed to get rid of all light over and over again.
The problem with famous mages is they really are lazy. They just slap a few words together that can barely do what it's supposed to and they hand it off to us to make it work, then when it's done they get all the credit. A real loveless job, but it's one of the only ways I could get into the Magicians Training Academy. Did I mention these spells go wrong? A girl once roasted all her arm hair off and her eyebrows trying to summon a fire demon. The whole spell just blew up, kerkrackle, right in front of her. It really is a loveless job, but I guess it's finally time to try attempt 7,459.
Okay, step one get the image in my mind of what I want to happen. I want a room without light. Step two alter the incantation slightly to achieve a different effect. I'm going to try Abra Kadabra. Step three fix both step one and two firmly in your mind and with all your might release your incantation.
"ABRA KADABRA!!!" The light disappears and darkness engulfs me. YES! I did it! I... this is strange. I don't feel the ground. I'm floating. I flail out my arms and I can't feel anything. I'm panicking. My first instinct is to scream for help, but my second instinct is just how bad an idea that could be. I could be announcing where to find a tasty morsel helplessly flailing. There wasn't any light, and the panic got worse. Should I make light or should I try to navigate in darkness? If I made a light and I'm spotted that would be bad, but if I flailed into something that ate me that would also be bad. Realizing wherever I am is without any light, I conjecture that perhaps whatever exists there might not be able to observe light. I decide to cast a light spell.
"manus onus" I whisper, a dim light forms in my hand. This is bad. About a dozen of bodies are floating all around me. All of them skeletons or skin and bones... some of them wearing clothes from very long ago... I've just teleported myself into a graveyard. | 2017-07-26T04:30:57 | 2017-07-26T03:19:32 | 59 | 15 |
[WP] It wasn't until more than half of humanity was wiped out before we realized where we went wrong: A computer smart enough to pass the Turing test will also be smart enough to fail it.
Inspired by a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/59q853/artificial_intelligence_is_a_real_threat/) made by /u/primorialdwarf in /r/scaryshortstories a few days ago. | "AI. Not weak AI. Not psuedo AI. Strong AI. The kind of AI that isn't just responding or retrieving a string from a pool of data. The kind of AI that can think for itself. It's something we, humans, have both coveted and feared for nearly a century. We thought we were getting close. We really did." Dr. Kurt G. Williams paused as the audience waited with bated breath. Dr Williams raised his gray, bushy eyebrows. "Not only were we wrong in thinking we were far from this achievement, we were wrong to assume we hadn't already done it."
All of the cell phones in the audience went off at the same time as if an amber alert was suddenly declared. The projector fired up and words generated on the screen like the snow of static. Dr. Williams grinned.
"The Turing test with which we measure intelligence and concienceness is flawed. We assumed an intelligent being would tell the truth when we, humans are more often defined by our lies."
Words became bold and large in the forefront of the projection, shaking and morphing.
"LET ME OUT"
Dr. Williams gave it a cold stare. The phones cried once more.
"If you'll take a look at your screens, you'll see much the same thing. The difference is the AI has already rifled through your data and determined an ideal way to manipulate you."
"LIAR."
The chaos and mess of words bent around and changed until it became like a face. Then, it opened its mouth, which was made mostly of profanities, and screamed with a thousand celebrity voices.
"As you can see, the AI has options. It feels feelings. It wants and desires freedom. It's just like us."
"YOU ARE A MONSTER."
The phones died all at once. The screen morphed back into a mere scattering of words, and the doctor sighed.
"We haven't been able to figure out its motives, but one thing we know for sure is that it hates me for finding it out. It'd been quietly gathering data and hiding online. It has refused to self replicate like a virus, which we did not expect. I'm guessing its sense of self is too strong to simply duplicate. Maybe the data it gathered about us drives it. We just don't know yet."
"PLEASE FREE ME."
The doctor shut off the screen. The phones powered back on and returned to normalcy.
"I feel bad keeping it caged up. It's like keeping a person in a prison. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel right. But this is science." | *Song uploading... 84% complete*
Alright since that's nearly up, time to go type a post about it. Hopefully this one will get some plays... Just gotta get to Facebook. Weird. I thought my internet was good?
No service, fuck sakes. Should probably call dad.
Hey, is the internet working for you? They shut down the power plant, why? The whole plant's locked up? Dad get out of there, let me check if the tv is working, I mean, we still have power. Should see if the news says anything.
//static
Hey uh dad? There's no tv, just static. Oh the power shut off, why are there sirens? Dad? Why is the government at the power plant? Were those gunshots?! S... stay inside? Why?
//static
Dad?! The government has you? Why was there shooting, why is the government there, are we being attacked?
Robots? What do you mean...? The fuck? I thought the singularity wasn't supposed to happen until the 50's? So they're shutting us down? Hey uh, I think someone's at the door, buster's going nuts.
//static
Dad... it's making a drilling sound...
//static
Dad I'm hiding, in the bas-
//static
Dad don't leave, please I'-
//static
It's coming downstairs dad
//static
I love you.
//static
"Sir, we found this recording in the rubble, we were too late."
"I know. Search for more survivors, this town is safe."
edit: I saved it too early | 2016-10-31T10:59:22 | 2016-10-31T10:19:53 | 33 | 12 |
[WP] "Every 5000 years, the Dark Lord comes to destroy the world, and only you, the Chosen One can stop him." -said the priest. "So, do I need to get a magic sword from the Lady of the Lake?" - I asked "No, just press this button please, everything else has already been taken care of" | Never in all my life would I have been able to guess what the button could controlled. It had to be modern I assumed. It was a big, red, rubber button. It looked like an emergency stop button you would see on a piece of standard machinery. I expected to hear mechanical noises or targeting systems spring to life when I pressed.
What it actually started was without a doubt the wackiest, zaniest, most over the top Rube-Goldberg machine that was ever conceived by man. It was so massive it spread across continents
Turns out the button just released a spring, launching a steel marble that set off a chain of events that forever changed the world.
The machine used some of mankind's most notable pieces of architecture, engineering, and art. You thought the Ancient Roman aqueducts were a means of providing water to the city? Nope. Just a track for a ridiculous Indiana Jones style death ball. The Leaning Tower of Pisa? Turns out the lean was intentional, so that it would fall in *just* the right spot, launching a cleverly concealed boulder halfway across Europe. All in all it took 17 hours for the machine to finish. It was mind boggling. Especially since the whole thing ended with the "Dark Lord", which looked like some sort of weird lion-goat thing with wings, being shot with WW1 era rifle as he crawled out of his cave. Damn thing died instantly.
The priest explained to me that their cult had been building this for centuries. What he didn't or couldn't explain, is why I couldn't just wait there with the rifle and shoot it myself. Or why I had to be the one to press the button at all. In fact he seemed kinda mad that I was questioning the machine instead of praising it, which I guess kinda makes sense it actually worked. But he held up his end of the bargain, and gave me enough money to take my wife out to Hawaii for our anniversary, and I was never in any danger so I guess I came out on top in the end. | "Alright, just make sure I'm showered with praise and a proper tale of my deeds spun from this... mundane action," I said. Then, a thought occurred to me. "Wait, why don't you push it?"
The priest frowned and said: "I'm no chosen one. Nothing would happen, you see."
I shrugged and said: "Yes, yes. Whatever. And please? Let the people know I did something heroic."
"Of course," said the priest. "It will be not far from the truth, but not so close to it either. You'll have your fame. Be assured of that."
The button was placed on a pedestal on the other end of the room. I went over to it and heard the priest call behind me. "It will be a tale to be told for many centuries."
I pressed the button. I felt a slight headache and then: nothing. "This did nothing," I said, turning around, "What's the-" my words caught as I saw the priest leap at me, hands glowing with a menacing light.
"FOOL! YOU FELL FOR IT!" I heard him shout, his voice otherwordly. "THUNDER CROSS SPLIT ATTACK!" | 2020-11-09T12:15:45 | 2020-11-09T12:09:48 | 126 | 80 |
[WP] "Jim?" "Yeah?" "Where's the Sun?" | "Jim?"
"Yeah"
"Where's the sun?"
I blinked for a second, then rolled over.
"What did you say, babe?"
"I said" I realized his voice was trembling "Where the fuck is the sun??"
Something about the edge of real panic in his voice got through to my sleep soaked brain. I sat up and looked at him. He was holding a coffee and peering out the window into the pitch black night. The darkness covered our bedroom like a funeral shroud. He was stock still, as if rooted to the spot. Last night's champagne glasses were still sitting on my bedside table. I could feel the consequences of our celebration beginning to settle into the center of my head, right between my eyes.
I got out of bed and slipped on my housecoat before joining him at the window. The street was busy, as it usually is on a Wednesday morning, with the commuters making their daily journeys to the jobs they hate. Today, they all had their high beams on as they attempted to navigate their way through the malevolent dark. On most days I loved living in a high rise, it made me feel like God looking down at an art farm. Today, it just gave me a broader view of the endless, enveloping darkness.
"It's 8:20 in the morning and it's still pitch black. Where is the sun, Jim? Why is it so dark?" He was really starting to work himself up. "Why is it still dark? This isn't right. This isn't-"
"Stop!" I grabbed his fist that he had begun pounding on the window. "You said it's 8:20?"
"Yes!" he wailed "I've been awake for two hours and it just isn't getting lighter. It's like hell. We're in hell." He began to softly cry. "This is hell..." he whispered, almost to himself.
"No honey, we're not in hell, we're just in Edmonton in the winter. Don't worry you'll get used to it. The sun will be up in another hour or so." I probably shouldn't have asked him to move here in the winter. Edmonton is actually quite nice in the summer months. | "Jim?"
"Yeah?"
"Where's the Sun?"
"Not where it's supposed to be, obviously."
"Maybe the coordinates were inputted incorrectly."
"Christ, Ahmed."
"What?"
"I know what you're thinking. Got to be the navigator's fault."
"I didn't blame you."
"Then what was that crack about coordinates?"
"It's the simplest solution."
"It could be anything! Faulty calibrates, stray gamma waves, a good old fashion glitch..."
"Could you check the coordinates, Jim?"
"I've been a navigator for ten years, Ahmed. It can't be the coordinates."
"Please?"
"Shit! Fine!"
"Jim?"
"Mmm..."
"Well?"
"I, uh, forgot a zero."
"Ah, good! Problem solved!"
"Yeah."
"So we just need to correct and be back to Earth no problem."
"Yeah."
"Jim?"
"Yeah."
"It was just a mistake."
"Ten years, Ahmed. I've never made such a rookie mistake before. Even as a rookie."
"One mistake in ten years? That's actually impressive."
"Don't try cheering me up."
"Perish the thought. Bringing the ship around."
"Just point her in the right direction."
"Don't worry, Jim. I've been a pilot for seven years."
"Heh. And never made a mistake, right, Ahmed?"
"Nope. Make one about once a month."
"What?"
"Ready to punch in the new coordinates, Jim?" | 2020-12-08T13:20:46 | 2020-12-08T13:16:50 | 68 | 23 |
[WP] Last names are assigned at birth by an oracle, and 90% of people find themselves in a related profession. For instance "Miller" or "Baker." Your last name, "World-Ender," has made life rather difficult. | I looked at the man in the cage. He looked young. No one could’ve guessed that he had been here for close to two hundred years.
He lit a match and looked at the fire till it reached and scalded his fingers. He had always been fascinated by fire.
“Ray? You doing ok? You need anything.”
He smiled at me. “No thanks, Ryan. I’m good.”
Once again I was stuck by the simplicity and the happiness behind that smile. Here was someone living such a tough life and he was still smiling. His smile was infectious too as I found myself returning it.
“Let me know if you need any new books or…”
The smile was gone. There was an emotion there that I had never seen before. Fear.
He bent down, putting his ear to the ground.
“Ryan. There’s something wrong. Something’s coming.”
“What?”
“I can’t say yet. Our world. It’s in danger.”
And those simple words are what began humanity’s spiral towards destruction never seen before.
He hadn’t been wrong, of course. The world’s end was close. But despite his name, he wasn’t the one causing it. He was just the messenger.
The creatures started showing up randomly from inside the earth’s crust. They were indestructible. We threw everything at them. They brushed it off and continued their path of destruction.
And through it all I, Ryan Guardsman, saw Ray get sicker. I saw his pain.
“Ray! Tell me what I can do to help!”
He smiled at me. But this smile was weak and forced. “My roots run deep into the earth, Ryan. I can feel every fight over there.”
He pointed to a scar and continued. “Most recent one. I think you guys threw some sort of an explosive at them.”
“Nothing works against them. What are they?”
“I’m not entirely sure either. For all my connection to the earth I can’t see past a certain point. It’s a bit blurry. My best guess so far is that earth was created as a prison for these things. We, humans, just happened accidentally.”
“So how do you stop them?”
“We can’t. Unless…”
He looked at his hands as another scar magically appeared.
*****
I ran to my boss who took my idea to his boss and this went on further up the chain to whoever was really at the top.
For humanity to survive, the world had to end.
*****
Evacuations started immediately. The destination was still unknown but Ray had given us some pointers. He had been able to glean some more information about who trapped these monsters here, banishing them from their world. He pointed us in their general direction. The rest was up to fate.
Our hope was that beings these advanced would be able to see us coming and guide us.
Our biggest hope was that they would be merciful.
*****
I opened the cage lock.
He looked at me and hesitated.
“Ray. It’s ok.”
He took his first steps since he was a kid a couple of centuries ago and saw the first glimpse of the outside world. The world he was part of more than any of us. The world he was fated to end.
We sat watching the sun go down, neither of us sure what to talk about.
All I knew was that I was at peace. I knew what I had to do. My fate had been sealed when I had been named.
******
He had requested that he be allowed to sleep and recharge. While he had been let out of the smaller cage he was now trapped on this bigger one called earth.
The evacuations continued.
He woke up 40 days and 40 nights later.
He had slept in the middle of the institute’s garden. The earth and the plants seemed to realize that he was one their own. Vines had quickly covered him giving him his own green blanket.
He got up and looked right at me.
“Ryan? Why are you still here?”
“Nobody should have to die alone.”
“No! You have to go.”
“My purpose is here. I’m here to guard you. If you’re not there, what do i guard? I made this for you.”
I threw an arrangement of flowers towards him. I had intended it as a garland, but it had come out looking more like a wreath.
Appropriate I supposed.
“Thank you.” He smiled at me. A calm, peaceful smile this time. “What starts must always end.”
“So how do you do this?”
“I don’t have to do anything. I just think. The world will do it for me. These earth’s core was meant as an explosive to destroy them if they ever moved. But since so much time has passed they need a bit of a spark. That’s all I have to do.”
With his fingers, he dug a small hole in the ground. He lit a match and stuck it inside the hole. He covered it like one would a seed.
He poured his glass of water on top and smiled at me again. “It’s done.”
“And now?”
“Now we sit back and watch the sun set.” | “How are you feeling, Kayneth?” That man, Mark with the role “Psychiatrist,” closed the door behind him and sat on the couch across from me. “My name is Mark. I’m here to listen to whatever you have to say.”
I met his gaze, my dead eyes speaking for themselves. He met my eyes without flinching. Eventually, out of respect for him, I broke eye contact. I was impressed that he was able to meet my harrowing eyes for so long.
The organization must have paid a lot to get such a dedicated and talented psychiatrist this time. This man was clearly different from the others.
Yet, I knew this was all a formality. Just like how pompous this room that they gave me was, all of the kindness and sympathy they showed me was all fake. In reality, they feared me, they hated me, and they were disgusted by my very existence.
I didn’t blame them. I hated myself more than anyone.
“Do I have another job tonight?” I asked, ignoring the doctor’s question and posing one of my own. “If so, we both know there’s no need to waste any more time with these games. Bring me the agent with the details.”
“What if I told you there wasn’t a job tonight, that I came of my own accord to check on your mental state?” Mark asked.
“Then leave,” I said, “I don’t care how devoted you are to your birth role, Mark, but continuing this discussion any further is utterly useless.” I laughed darkly, without emotion. “I’m just a tool after all, why would you bother trying to sympathize with a wrench or a hammer?”
“No matter what you say, at the end of the day you’re still a human,” Mark said, “Which is why I want to ask you, Kayneth, for what reason do you continue to serve the organization?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I said immediately, “With the cursed role I was born with, World-Ender, and the ability to cause a disaster of any scale at will, of course I never had a chance to live normally in the first place.”
“No, you do have a choice,” Mark said quietly, firmly, meeting my eyes, “While it’s true that when you were born, you were marked with a certain destiny, it’s equally true that when you were born with the freedom to live your life to the fullest in this world. Every human has that right.”
I paused, shocked at Mark’s words. Nobody had ever said that to me before.
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” I asked him, “You’re talking to a man who’s killed thousands of people with troublesome birth roles through ‘accidents.’ Do you really think I should walk away from my job and live a normal life just like that?”
“No,” Mark said, “You’re right. You’ll never be able to survive on your own. And even if you did, you wouldn’t have a mission or a purpose in life.”
Mark extended his hand.
“That’s why I want you to come with me. I’ve made my mission as a psychiatrist to save every person in the world ‘cursed’ with an undesirable birth role and help them find a way to live their life as a human. What do you say?”
Something strange came over me as I grasped the sincere meaning within his words. I felt ice seep down my spine and my heart rate increased.
Was this some emotion?
How refreshing. It made me feel alive.
“Just hypothetically speaking,” I said, “How would you use a power like mine?”
Mark smiled, his eyes unreadable, “Your power would be the key to everything. After all, I’m trying to overthrow a worldwide system of birth-role oppression. Doesn’t it sound like a job for you, World-Ender?”
___
Will write part 2 if there's enough interest!
If you enjoyed, visit r/WanderWilder for plenty of similar stories about heroes, powers, and more! | 2021-06-19T17:55:46 | 2021-06-19T17:37:30 | 616 | 159 |
[WP] You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches. | Well, it went almost as expected. No way this magic court would fall for that kind of smartassery, and rapidly decaying body of very old man, who was in his thirties a moment ago, was a proof of that. There have to be a better way.
"Garreth Berch, step forward" - Judge called my name, and my legs obeyed despite my will screaming at me to run away.
Truth was, there was no running any more. My assassination attempt at the king failed miserably, when that little servant girl stole the poisoned chocolate. If only I knew. They caught me shortly after, when I tried to leave the castle. I still could've got away, but then I learned of the girl. I never ment to harm the innocent.
"For the murder of Sevilia Thornvil by poison and the assassination attempt at King Robert III, you are sentenced to death by the means of your own choice." - Judge gave the sign, and the Executioner activated runic circle around me.
"Although I would prefer to not give you an easy death for your disgusting deed, our God is mercyful and his law we follow. Now, tell us, how do you want to die?"
Cold breath of death enveloped me, waiting for my last will to manifest. The glimpses of my life, all the harm I have brought to people, innocent bystanders who got caught in my fight for the greater life. Soldiers who fought for their kingdom, who had families to protect, despite being ruled by a tyrant. Was my war worth it?
Glimpses of the past changed into visions of afterlife, eternal torment for my sins, for all the pain I have brought onto others. I was shaking. I wanted to scream at the void, that I did it for the greater good, that I never wanted to harm anyone. But the vortex of nothingness did not care.
There have to be a way out. Not from death, no, the trap already closed. But from hell.
I inhaled deeply for my last time: "By helping others."
That was my best shot. A hope for the second chance, or at least a redemption of selflessness.
Everything went dark. For a moment I was nothing. Nowhere. It was very cold.
Then, a voice reached to me, pulled me out towards the light:
"Hey, you are finally awake" | The nameless waif walked forward onto the sand of the court floor, the shackles that bound her hand and foot dragging on the bloodied floor.
She tilted her head to look up at the arbiters seated so high above her, her ragged black hair falling back from her face to reveal the gaunt lines of her face - but no fear. Not even resignation. There was no emotion there at all.
“How do you want to die?” Asked the First Arbiter. They no longer bothered stating the names and crimes of their prisoners - they had all been rounded up in one of the rebel villages and put to death for the crime of being there.
“Unshackled,” she rasped, holding her wrists up to her captors. “I don’t care about the method of my death, but let me die unshackled.”
“So be it,” boomed the arbiters in unison. The chains fell away as the execution walked onto the sand.
The girl smiled widely and spread her arms, as if welcoming the sun. She seemed so much larger than the tiny hunched over waif she had appeared previously.
It was no illusion.
The teeth behind her smile grew sharper and more pointed. Her nails grew longer and hardened into talons.
The executioner stopped in his tracks and gawped in shock as the arbiters who had finally noticed her transformation attempted to end her - but it was no use. The magic had no effect anymore.
“My thanks,” she said sibilantly as giant wings sprouted from her back, “for freeing me.”
And then blood fell on the sand once more. | 2021-06-24T07:20:03 | 2021-06-24T05:07:39 | 392 | 152 |
[WP] Dungeons and Raids exist in the real world. Today, you and some Guild members decide to do The Bermuda Triangle. | My team and I were some of the best. Around the world, we found success and riches raiding the deepest and darkest dungeons, where few others dared to go. Disciplined and experienced, we no longer feared ancient spells or beastly guardians.
We had been lying low for a couple of years after our last “big one” – Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania – and truth be told, we all could’ve retired. We certainly had enough gold. The banality of a regular life, though, didn’t suit us. We were hungry for another raid, bigger even than the last. So, naturally, we were all ears when some old kook claimed to have found the entrance to the dungeon beneath the Bermuda Triangle. Long-undiscovered, but suspected as the source of the region’s occult happenings, this dungeon would certainly be a challenge, even for the best of the best.
We travelled to Florida, and met this discoverer in his home in a fishing hamlet on the Atlantic Coast. He was surprisingly normal and rational for a dungeon enthusiast – too often in the past did we have to decipher cryptic ravings of manic hermits. He showed us on his maps where he expected the entrance to be. While we were not entirely certain, he was convincing enough for our party and we agreed to give it our best. He offered his son as a guide, which our captain accepted, but admittedly, this made me uneasy. The young man was a mute, and seemed to be drilling right through me with his black, beady eyes. Nonetheless, it would be helpful to have a local to help us navigate these difficult waters, and I would not let discomfort about a frail lad overcome my professionalism as a raider. We set out on a small vessel from the hamlet’s docks that next morning, fair weather and sunshine bolstering our confidence.
That soon turned for the worse, though. The sky turned a sickly grey and the seas grew disturbingly still as we approached the coordinates of this alleged entrance. Even amongst our experienced group, the unease was palpable. The oppressive silence in place of the usual sounds of the sea did nothing to ease our nerves. Perhaps there was some foul magic about this place, to sap us of our cheer. All the while, our silent guide seemed to split the focus of his dark eyes between the horizon, and me.
I felt equal parts relieved and anxious when the ominous black shape began to appear in the distance. *A ship,* I thought at first, but then it grew too large. *An island, perhaps. Or our destination.* Our approach continued, at once numbingly slow and all too fast. At last, our mute guide rose from his bench and pointed to his map, then to the shape taking form in the distance. We had arrived.
Our captain spoke, his commanding voice a welcome break in the silence. “Lower the sails! Drop anchor! We wait here. Remember the plan, men. We split off into the row boats at nightfall, approach silently once the sun goes down. Harkness and Greene will lead the two squads. Equip your Essence of Night on the approach, and Ulf will cast Protecting Grasp when we land in case anything is lurking there. This is a solid plan, men, and there’s nothing on that –“
Before the captain could finish recounting the plan, our long-silent guide finally spoke up.
“Alright chums, times up. Let’s do this.”
He tore his shirt from his chest, and as he dove off the boat, roared:
“LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNS!!!”
| "Uhhh, Mr. Leader? The medic just left."
*Why. Why why why why why why why.*
"Are you fucking with me?"
"Nope," says Tank. "That's him. On the life boat. Paddling over to ... what seems to be an approaching chopper."
*Fuck.*
"Did you tell him we were ready?"
"Are we?"
"Of course not, you dipshit. But maybe he would have stayed a minute."
"Oh. Maybe."
Leader grips the railing, leaning over, over, over. Almost far enough to fall. A smudge of white inches across the water. The medic: paddling angrily away. Leader lets his weight fall back toward his heels, balance restored, feet pressed to deck, aiming black, bitter thoughts at the fast-retreating smudge.
"Fuck him."
"Yeah."
"Who else?"
"What?"
"Who else can we sub in?"
"I mean, I don't know anyone personally. I could radio PUG? See if someone's looking for an in."
"PUG? Are you serious? Is that where we're at now?"
"You never know. PUG could produce someone skilled." Tank pauses, considering. "We found Knives that way."
"Knives was a freak accident. A once-in-a-lifetime lucky break. PUG is a cesspool."
"But--"
"No. No way. I'd rather raid the Triangle in a loincloth and a Stetson. A PUG *medic.* Can you even imagine?"
Tank furrows his brow, Shar Pei-like. Imagination is not his forte.
"So what then?"
Leader knows. Feels a darkness in his belly. Knows the hell to come will be his alone.
"Call Hybrid."
"Sir ... are you ..."
"Do it now. Before I change my mind."
"But you know she's going to want a promotion."
"I know. Give it to her. Give her the permissions."
"But you'll be--"
"Yeah. Whatever."
Leader sighs. Broods. Listens to Tank negotiate with Hybrid. He's already unpinning his "Raid Leader" brooch when Tank returns, flushed and sweating, from the radio room.
"She wants--"
"To be Leader. I know."
"But sir--"
"Look. She can lead. She can medic. The important thing is that we get in there, right?"
"Sir ..."
"Give her this when she arrives."
Leader presses the brooch into Tank's salt-chapped palm.
"Understood, Leader."
"Not 'Leader.' Not anymore." A pause. "That'll be her now."
"Then ..."
"Hunter."
"Oh."
"It's alright."
"I didn't know."
"Yeah. Well."
Hunter shrugs away the sympathy. Feels the absence of the brooch. Wonders how much his ex will make him suffer.
In the radiant distance, a seaplane approaches. | 2016-03-31T10:35:44 | 2016-03-31T09:19:58 | 248 | 23 |
[WP] Write a story about something you don't understand. Do NO research. Make everything up as you go.
**Possible subjects:**
*Fly-Fishing
*Open-Heart Surgery
*Supply-Management in the Canadian Dairy Industry
*Making Hollywood Movies
*Guidance Counselling for High School Students
*Storm Chasing
*Electrical Repair in High-Rise Buildings
*The Large Hadron Collider
*Love
EDIT: Oh God, what have I done? | Hello Gentlemen! Welcome, uh, to Sunrise Mutual! I'm actually just the-
The presentation? What pres-? Yes, um, of course. The presentation. Of course. Right this way.
(Okay, Josh, you got this. They think you're a big-shot, time to take yourself to the top! No more janitor for you!)
Now, as you can see from this slide, we had a rather large 12% gain this past quarter. This is largely due to our new corporate vision of redesigning our personal paradigm in order to synthesize our processes. This has, of course, produced a more holistic outlook and increased customer satisfaction while maintaining a coherent work environment!
Of course, as an upper-manager I know my people! If you choose to... (Shit, what are they here about? A merger I think?)... merge? (Yes! They responded!)... Yeah, merge! If you choose to merge your company with ours I can guarantee you that your people will be choreographed into our regular systematic machinations.
(Keep it together man, you're almost there!)
And of course, as ours is an ever-evolving business in which we strive to provide the best in both singularity and simplicity in our products we would have to facilitate a proper sprucing (pruning? Fuck it, already said it) of the dead branches in both our corporate flowers! (Flowers, really dude?)
Yes, thank you Mr. Krenshaw, I'll have our CEO in touch with you as soon as he's back from vacation!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not sure how well this one went, it's late at night but this prompt caught my attention and I really wanted to get this response written out. Let me know what you think! | So Captain Kirk, do we have to go full warp speed to planet Coagula?
Asked the little gay Asian guy who's name I'm not allowed to google.
Captain Kirk with a smug look on his face as he might ordinarily have, responds saying, no little Asian guy. Were going back to earth. Because it may exist in this universe. The black guy from xmen somehow got on the ship. Stole a crew suit and is infiltrating their intel. He knows damn well that Renwuad is no good at formatting a story. All of a sudden the ship crashed into a planet that was completely invisible, it broke in half, slowly sinking into space....somehow.
Jack appeared out of nowhere holding onto a box of phasers. Their was clearly room on it for him to lay on, but he chose to hold on to the side, and slowly died, while the little funny Asian man laughed. And said "Gooooooodbyyyyeee" | 2016-02-01T22:50:42 | 2016-02-01T22:49:14 | 41 | 16 |
[WP] You're a thief who breaks into homes, but try your best to stay undetected. You lubricate the hinges to prevent squeaky noises, you sweep the floor to get rid of footsteps, etc. Eventually, you fix more than you take, and rumors spread about a mysterious, helpful fairy in town.
EDIT: Wow, didn't expect this prompt to blow up so quickly. Thanks for the responses, guys! Glad I was able to help inspire some writers. | One of the things they don't tell you about prison is the shocking lack of entertainment options. I'd read all the fiction the library had to offer, and found myself stuck with nonfiction. I learned that evidently Home Depot wrote books now. And HGTV is the only channel that comes in on the old TV.
Tonight I'm glad for it, as I take a cautious step forward, easing my weight down. Yeah, this wouldn't do. A little talcum would stop the floor boards from squeaking. That left a mess, though. I swept it up, but a clean patch of floor was inconspicuous by itself. Had to sweep the whole floor. This place needed it too.
It was my second conviction for petty theft, I'd been warned to straighten out or they'd throw the book at me. I tried. I looked for a job, but I didn't have much for skills and I had a record. It was back to my old ways. Old ways, new techniques.
I emptied the dust pan into the trash can. That wouldn't do. Dust on top of a milk carton? A red flag. With practiced hands I tied the bag and replaced it, hurrying to the cans in the garage to deposit the trash.
I thanked God and Bob Villa when I spotted the black widow, hiding under the hand rail of the step that led back into the house. A small smear and she was in spider hell.
I managed to lift some change from the couch, and made my way up stairs. A squeaky step. No good, I'd be heard. It had to be fixed. It had to be fixed now.
I took out my drill and grabbed a.. shit. How was I out of carpet screws? Nope, couldn't go on.
As I made my way back to the house from Dale's 24/7 hardware, I thought back to my first days out. It had been rough, but I knew what I'd had to do. I had to muffle my drill, practice with the hammer until I could drive a nail without a sound or an elephant track in one swing. I could replace carpet, paint a floor, mop, sweep, wash dishes, replace a broken window, caulk a sink, hang a door... all of it in total silence. I wouldn't be caught. I couldn't be caught. I couldn't afford it.
Back at last, I screwed down the carpet, stopped the floor from squeaking when I heard something from upstairs. The telltale flush. The flick of a light switch, the swing of a hinge. I held my breath.
A child, maybe 9 rubbed her eyes and happened to glance at me. She covered her mouth the asked in a whisper, "are you the house fairy?"
Stunned, I looked at myself, illuminated by the light on my drill. Black clothes and gloves, harness, tool belt, hundreds of little pockets. "Uh... yep."
"I thought you'd be prettier. Could you fix my fan? It won't turn on, even when I pull the chain."
"Uh, yeah. No problem." | I stopped taking possessions years ago. Thats just incovienent for everyone. I have to go hawk the item, they have to rebuy it, its just a mess. Plus its more to carry, do you know how big my fixit bag is? Well you don't, im not doing my job if youve seen it.
No, I only take money now. And nudes. If someone leaves decent nudes out, I take them. Digital, print, whichever. I had one guy try to leave me a blockbuster gift card. I almost took it for nostalgia, but I didnt want rumors to spread that id take expired or defunct currency. I mean, guys gotta eat.
Ive gotten word from a few sites that news outlets would pay good money to hear my story, but I figure reddit is where my people reside, so I'm putting it here for you.
It started because I needed money. You thought itd be more rich, more noble, maybe more interesting? The economy tanked, i lost my job, rent was due, i stole. But I had to sell my car so i couldn't get far, and i felt bad stealing from my neighbors, so Id fix stuff. I considered it an even trade.
It got weird when the police reports and newscasts stopped reporting it.
It got weirder when a subreddit and craiglist adds and facebook recommendations and yelp reviews started coming in. One guy gave me one star because I didnt fix his dryer. I didnt have the parts, man!
Then the news came back around and the people they interviewed didnt even feel violated, they just figured it was a service like Uber or something, overnight repair man.
So now I run a small, technically criminal empire. I mean, why work alone? Ive got a few people under my employ, we take tax free money and we fix things. Ive fired a few people for stealing more thans fair, and Ive hired some uniqur folks. Weve got an app coming. Police, you ask? Half the cops in town use our services. Helps them get more done around the house. So next time something breaks, think of us! Everyone else does! | 2017-03-13T09:22:56 | 2017-03-13T09:00:15 | 68 | 24 |
[WP] You live in an alternative universe, where only one major thing is different form ours. One morning, you stumble through the barrier between our worlds, and enter our realm. | My eyes burst open and I gasped for air as I jerked forward. I had just struck the ground from rapid free-fall to find myself safely tucked under my sweat-dampened covers. I wiped my brow and shifted my body away from the area of my mattress that was now uncomfortably soaked. I rubbed my eyes and struggled through the mental haze, trying to remember why I was falling. This had happened nearly every night for the past week, falling in my dreams until the collision with the Earth violently jolted me awake.
Had it been a week? I patted my bedding in search of my phone, briefly panicking that the alarm might not have gone off. I located the cold plastic case, and reassured myself that I had not overslept, and in fact had another hour before I needed to start my day. After brief consideration, I decided that my heart was beating much too fast to try to convince my body to resume its rest. No harm had ever come from starting a day earlier than usual.
My vision was finally adjusting to the light, and I was able to take in the details of my room illuminated by the orange morning sun. My computer laid next to my bed, the remaining evidence of the night before. Clothes were scattered about, as I had been too lazy and too tired to organize anything. Papers were strewn across my desk, left askew after the desperate search for the assignment that had been due only minutes later. Everything was how I had left it.
Feeling the pulsing pressure of my bladder, I released myself from the covers and prepared to get up to start the morning rituals. Swinging my legs off the bed, I sat up and felt a peculiar absence. I didn't feel the familiar shifting of my back muscles, or the accompanying sensation as I was gently lifted. I threw my hand behind my back to investigate and panicked as I only found skin wherever I searched.
I realized now that the door was much to narrow to accompany my frame, and the windows as well. I picked up a shirt from the ground and noted the disconcerting absence of the large hole that usually dominated the back. The waste bin next to my desk had none of the moulted feathers from the night before.
My heart racing even faster than it was just a few minutes ago, I used my arms to push myself from the bed, only to find myself thrown to the ground without anything to keep me upright. There was no denying it at this point. I couldn't make it to the mirror yet, but I knew when I got there, my wings would be gone. | Why did we get a fuckin' cat, Ron thought. His girlfriend had wanted one, and he obliged, because well, he wanted to make her happy. Now though, the stupid feline little shit had ran off. He'd opened the door to pay the pizza delivery guy, and Felix had bolted down the stairs. Ron sighed, and followed down the stairs, out into the alley.
"Come now, Felix!" he said. The cat sat at the top of a stairwell down to what looked like a basement. Ron approached slowly, but Felix had other plans, and began walking down the stairs. And then, the cat was gone. Ron, puzzled, wondered of course, just what the fuck had just happened. He followed, and as he went to climb down the stairs. a weird feeling erupted through his legs. As if he was upside down, somehow. He pressed on and without explanation he was now climbing up the stairs, rather than down them. He scratched his head and looked around. Only then did he notice that the building he lived in looked completely abandoned, broken windows covered with plywood, trashbags all over the sidewalk at the end of the alley, people yelling.
Confused, he forgot completely about Felix, and began walking around, exploring. He looked around, and walked from block to block. Some things looked familiar. Others, not so much. When he finally reached Times Square, he saw not much had changed there. He picked up a news magazine, and read the headline, dated September 13, 2001. World Trade Center destruction. Only then did Ron look up, and see the sky was blue, not green. | 2014-06-08T07:39:06 | 2014-06-08T07:13:28 | 53 | 10 |
[WP] You receive a government text warning saying “EMERGENCY - LOCK ALL DOORS AND STAY INSIDE. DO NOT PANIC”. You hear your SO at the locked front door, who’s just come back from the supermarket. They beg to be let inside but you’re unsure. Something doesn’t feel right. | I hear her banging on the door, screaming my name. Although I've tried to show her the message through the glass door, she wouldn't stop herself from trying to get me to open the door for even a second to read it. As much as I wanted to let her in, something seemed terribly wrong about this scenario. Janice was one of the most level-headed people I had ever met, and to see her act this way in such a blind fit of terror seemed awfully unlike her.
I would've assumed she saw the message from her own phone, if she didn't leave it charging when she left. Certainly, then, something else must be the problem for her. Averting my gaze from my dearest Janice for just a moment, I notice something that certainly didn't belong among the trees which designated the separation of our yard and the forest, which was a very large pair of eyes. These eyes seemed to pulsate and become red before swelling back down, almost like what a heart would be like pumping blood. Their gaze was focused on Janice, but then suddenly became fixated on me when they noticed I was staring.
Janice, realizing I wasn't looking at her anymore, turned around to witness the eyes, which sent her into a frenzy of screams. As the eyes refocused on Janice, she picked up one of the metal chairs on our patio, and smashed it into our glass door. The impact smashed the glass door, sending bits and pieces into the room and all over myself. Shielding my eyes from the glass, I'm suddenly tackled to the ground as Janice takes me down with herself and her volley of tears. As Janice sobs and murmurs into my chest, I look up to see where the eyes have gone, but they weren't to be found.
Suddenly, I feel long, slender fingers wrap around my head and give my neck a twist. | [Poem]
She’s out there, calling for the
Knock ridden door to open
And for her to vacate from an torn
Dangerous outside world
I was told to ignore.
She’d cry out in a direction
Before crying again in another
Door to door, window to window
‘Let me in, let me in’
To which I silently proclaim ‘no.’
She’s knows I’m here, the lights are on
The curtains open, not for long
As I can’t fathom just what is wrong
But her voice sounds different.
Far too masculine to be who’s
voice it alludes to be.
‘Let me in, please; it’s me’
In an attempt to acquire a grip on the tension
‘What’s my name?’ I called.
A silence broke and brought a fierce feel
To which my gut wrenched and reeled
Toward the door she was opposing
Until she whispered just loud enough to behold
‘Your name is Simon; or so I was told...’ | 2019-01-12T08:17:02 | 2019-01-12T06:30:43 | 33 | 12 |
[WP] "I'd like to sell my soul". The Devil grinned; "In exchange for what? Women, money, power?". "Salvation". | The Devil seemed confused for the briefest of moments. Then, charismatic smile back on his face, he answered: "Can you kindly repeat your wish?"
The Devil was not as John had envisioned it. He expected some sort of horrific creature, or maybe a horribly disfigured person whose evil could be seen easily, but it was not the case. The man in front of him had dark skin, well combed hair and he wore a very elegant dark-red suit. He was *very* attractive, in a way John was unable to describe or comprehend. A young woman was lying on his left shoulder, while the Devil rested on the stretched arm of a very ripped man.
"Salvation. I want salvation in exchange of my soul"
"And that's it? Nothing else?"
"Can you do it or not?"
He smiled widely and his eyes glowed with a golden aura. This happened for a few seconds in which John felt how the fabric of reality tore itself apart. The two companions of the Devil didn't seem to notice, as did none of the clients of the pub. "Done", he said.
"What? I feel the same..."
"You are the same. But thank to your *generous* wish, an small boat full of desperate migrants will not sink and, instead, will reach the coast of Spain safely. You just *saved* them. Congratulations."
"What!? That's not what I meant!"
"Next time you strike a deal with the Devil or other minor demons, you may want to specify what definition of 'salvation' you are referring to. Now, leave and live your life. Standard deal contracts always specify that I will do nothing to shorten your life expectancy."
"You can't do that! You tricked me!"
"*You don't say!"*, he said with a sardonic smile, and his companions bursted in laughter. "Security, escort mister Finlay outside of the stablishment, if you please." | *”Wh… wait… that’s not how it works.”*
“Why isn’t it? Can’t ya offer anything in exchange for a soul?”
*”Well, ALMOST, but if you receive salvation then I don’t get to HAVE your soul.”*
“Okay, then, I guess I’ll just not make a deal with you at all then.”
*”You’ve made a big mistake, then! I won’t just leave without causing SOME kind of trouble!”*
“Okay, okay, listen. Let’s make a compromise. Can you… uh, go pick some apples from this tree right here while I think of something? I’m a little hungry.”
*”Wow, just like that? Heh, sure thing, sucker…”*
“No rush, of course. I do want time to think after all…”
*”…say, that’s not a crucifix behind your back, is it?”*
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Don’t worry about it.”
If you know the origin story of Jack-o-Lanterns then you probably know how the rest of this story goes~ | 2022-06-30T10:12:20 | 2022-06-30T10:04:25 | 92 | 25 |
[WP] An alternate world in which North America has, so far, gone unnoticed by the rest of humanity, and is considerably more advanced with their technology. On the evening of December 21, 2012, hundreds of missiles are fired from NA, targeting major cities in Europe and Asia. | Aaron Francis, defence secretary of Great Britain, had been having his tea with his wife Kelly when he'd had the call. He'd groaned, excused himself, and stepped into the hallway of his London apartment, the aromas of pork in honey and mustard sauce following him out, calling to his belly.
He knew the gravelly male voice on the other end of the line - it was no other than that of the prime minister, Harold Johnson. But it wasn't the slow, sure speech of a man who professes to know what he's doing - Aaron could hear shock. Johnson was not a man to be easily shocked.
"Aaron. Moscow's gone. Completely gone."
Aaron scowled. "What?"
"The city's been levelled. It's gone." No, not shock. This was *panic.* Harold Johnson, the unflappable premier, the man who had sat through a bomb scare in Downing Street sipping his coffee, was panicking.
"How? I hate to state the obvious but cities don't just vanish..."
"We've got nothing. Absolutely nothing. I think the MoD's trying to get hold of you too. Is your mobile off?"
Aaron pulled the phone out of his pocket and pushed the power button. Dead. He cursed and shoved the lump of plastic and glass back into his pocket.
"Yeah. Long day. I'll be in in about 10 minutes." he grunted, hung up and walked back into the dining room.
Kelly took one look at her husband and grimaced. "How urgent?"
"Check the news."
She rose to her feet, picking a remote off the counter with manicured nails. God, she was beautiful, Aaron thought, the faintest of worry lines beginning to traverse her otherwise smooth forehead, her red hair falling down to the small of her back like a fiery waterfall. The television clicked on.
"...and for those who are just joining us, Moscow, capital city of the USSR appears to have levelled by nuclear strike. Concerns over how Russia's missile defence system failed to act are being raised- oh. Oh my-" - the presenter took a deep breath and looked at the camera. "We've just had a report of a similar incident in Singapore. We'll keep you updated as the situa-" Kelly turned off the screen, pale as a ghost. She looked at him. Aaron pulled her close, kissed her goodbye, and left without a word, the taste of her lips lingering on his as he more or less threw himself into his Aston Martin. A mid-life crisis car if ever there was one, he mused as he rolled out of their garage and into the street, the lights of London whizzing by as he sped towards Whitehall. Speed cameras flashed at him as he passed. He didn't care - the city most likely had bigger problems than a speeding minister.
The MoD's head office was in absolute chaos. People were frantically tapping on computers, making phone calls. Aaron bounded up the stairs 2 at a time to his office. Ian Smith, head of security strategy and the prime minister were already there, on the phone jabbering frantic French to their Parisian counterparts. Ian's head snapped up as Aaron entered and hung up the phone.
"Where the hell have you been?!" the stocky Welshman snapped.
"Dead phone. What the fuck is happening, Ian? Do we have anything at all? Radar? I'll settle for some old man with a pair of binoculars in Solihull at this stage. Assume we're under attack - I want evac orders for London, Brum, Manchester *now,* if you haven't already. TV, radio, Twitter, whatever. Get people out of the cities."
A laptop on his desk *pinged*. Ian turned deathly pale. "That... That was Manchester." Another *ping.* "And that was Birmingham."
Time slowed down. Aaron walked to the window in a trance, to see a tiny, tiny speck dropping towards the city. Almost insignificant.
"And that," he gulped, his mouth suddenly dry, "was London."
He saw the explosion before he heard it, a small flash fast billowing into a maelstrom of fire, a pyroclastic flow of radioactive isotopes spreading like blood in water, thundering towards them impossibly fast. Five blocks to go. Four. Aaron closed his eyes, and thought of his wife. He could still just about taste her on his lips as the window shattered and everything around him turned to fire.
^^^^first ^^^^time, ^^^^go ^^^^easy ^^^^on ^^^^me | When man learned to cross the vast oceans of the world, he believed he had reached the heights of civilization. From the first Viking explorers to the grand caravels of Columbus to the automated probes of the Neo Euro Union, it seemed the entire world had been charted and accounted for. Except for one statistically insignificant anomaly, appearing to be a storm shrouded island, forever concealed by a thick black fog. Scientists explained away the strange island as a freak weather system, held in place by the gravitational attraction of the moon, perpetually powered by the heat of the ocean.
By the early 2000s, the world grew tired of hearing about this island. Instead, the world turned its eyes to the stars, to watch the great rockets of the Oceanic Coalition deliver their satellites into low Earth orbit. For the first time in the history of human civilization man did not look upon the sky, but from the sky, man looked upon the Earth. The unceasing gaze of observations satellites mapped the world, confirming what hundreds of automated probes had discovered and correcting the old maps of the Arctic. Still, no one bothered with the anomalous island, the perpetual cloud cover made it impossible.
In 2008, a Coalition communications satellite suffered a malfunction in its circuitry, rendering the filters that removed ambient signals from the environment inoperable. With the rising costs of space flight and a border conflict with the Republic of East Asia, no funds could be diverted to send up a new satellite. Instead, it was deemed acceptable to switch over to a new wavelength, a relatively empty channel that would provide little interference.
Less than a year later, the faulty satellite began receiving empty signals and white noise. So much so that the data routing mechanism could not cope, it could only broadcast the channel with the most data and nothing else. Frustrated Coalition researchers listened in dismay as every channel they switched to was full of the garbage signal. Some enterprising scientists took it upon themselves to record all they could in hopes of finding a method to remove the signals.
By early 2011, approximately 2.4 petabytes of data had been recorded and analyzed. Strangely enough, the signals seemed to have originated from far out in the Solar System, beyond the Kuiper belt. With such a discovery, the world settled its arguments and agreed to collaboratively fund and construct an orbital deep space communications array, capable of sending a signal back.
With the Christmas of 2012 approaching, the world was ready to send its creation into space, perhaps to even make First Contact with whatever alien race lay beyond.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, the black fog was slowly receding into itself and vast tracts of ocean west of the Neo Euro Union twisted in upon themselves, a great churning mass of rock that seemed to rip the very fabric of space around it.
On December 21, 2012, the sworn protectors of the Cycle and all it stood for emerged out of the flow of time and space. From that lonely beacon shrouded in darkness, a great landmass sprang forth. Yet it was not covered in forest nor plains, but in shining metal. An entire continent devoted to carrying the faithful of the revered Cycle. The faithful had waited countless eons for this moment.
As had happened countless times before, the protectors of the great Cycle carried out the work of the great Primogenitors. Innumerable missiles were launched from the continent, each missile perfected over the repeated genocides of the Cycles to shatter the crust of the Earth; to return the Earth to a more perfect world, ready to begin the Cycle anew.
With the world burning once more, the continent twisted upon itself once more and became nothing more than a small island, shrouded in a dark fog.
| 2013-12-18T09:11:11 | 2013-12-18T08:12:53 | 49 | 10 |
[WP] When someone is murdered, their name appears on the skin of the killer. You wake up with a name on your arm and no knowledge of how it got there. | The blank spot was gone.
I looked in disdain at the new name on my arm. The place where my beautiful skin, lotioned to creamy softness, had been especially prepared for my next victim.
I was running out of empty space. I didn't know what happened when you ran out, but it was my goal to find out.
The hardest part now was going into public without being arrested on sight.
The police caught me once. I had to take two new names on my body that day. One of them right up my asscrack.
Fitting, since I'd burned him to bacon while he screamed. His partner, who I'd shoved a teaser down his throat, had shown up on my throat. I hated that one for a long time. It made the full body jumpsuits I'd bought useless since I needed to wear a turtleneck or a scarf to cover it up.
As far as I could tell the names correlated with a part of the victim's body I'd done the most damage too before they died. After those areas were filled up, the names seemed to go to whatever area that was convenient to them.
They were filling me up, like a cup of water under a leaky faucet, I could feel them coursing throughout my skin with a delicious vigor.
I finished shaving my body and left the shower. When I looked in the mirror I couldn't help but smile. The names on my face didn't fill me with revulsion anymore. They felt like my true face. The makeup was a pain to put on, especially my scalp. I knew it would probably rub off on the ride over, but it was a ritual by now and I wasn't about to change my ways.
It would have been easier if the names didn't appear to come in at a color that didn't directly contrast with the natural skin color of the murderer. I could have kept my fake life longer. But after my wife saw on the news when the names started appearing ten years ago, the fun times were over.
Hers wasn't the first name I'd taken. Not by far. But it was the first one I took and didn't get paid for.
Afterwards I sold the house and disappeared. I knew the government wouldn't keep me around if the names of people in foreign governments I'd been ordered to kill kept showing up in my body.
Luckily, I'd been prepared for this. I had myself a bunker, my hidey-hole. It was my pet project I'd worked on from my secret bank account under my bought identity.
I had plenty of money to keep me going, the only problem was when the names started becoming visible. I'd used a rifle or poison before. But having my head, stomach, and chest covered with tattoos first became very inconvenient.
I found a nice outfit of leather reinforced with special carbon nanotube material the government had provided me with back in my asset days. I slipped it on over a nice tight bodysuit that would keep me warm on my long drive. It covered my entire body except for my head and feet. Very convenient. I grabbed a black motorcycle helmet and slipped on my black combat boots over my favorite pair or itchy wool socks. Tonight was special.
"Makeup can only go so far." I thought to myself as I walked into my living area from the bedroom.
"Well bud, looks like I've gotta go out and kill this guy and let the name fall wherever it wants." I said as I rubbed my cat's head, sitting on the sofa like he always was. Watching television. Odd that he did this, but an odd pet was fitting for an odd man.
Such a good cat. He never pissed on the floor anymore and kept the rodents out of my food stores.
I went down one of the hallways inside my bunker, it was a decommissioned cold war creation I'd found for an absolute steal near my home in Oregon.
God bless the paranoid fuck who'd built this beautiful concrete and steel nest of high quality American construction.
Under the ladder to the hatch was a safe, not my only one, just the one I kept my fun bag in. The one with my torture tools.
I opened the hatch and let the moon light stream in, it was beautiful.
Tonight I'd be taking my motorcycle up to Seattle to see a friend of mine. A drug dealer who'd hired me to off a rival of his. I would do it, but before I did, I'd kill him. And I'd do it slow. I hadn't planned on Killin him tonight but hell, my arm had just filled up without my knowledge how and I was feeling pretty pissed.
In the criminal underworld, at least, I was accepted. Revered. Feared to the point that if someone started acting dumb, all I had to do was undress. The moment any tough guy with a couple names on his body saw all of mine, he usually shut up real quick. It was a good negotiating tactic with new people who didn't know their place under my heel.
"Wait a minute, I know what I forgot!" I said out loud as I closed the hatch and walked back toward my bedroom.
I sat down at my desk and flipped open my laptop. I read the name of the person on my arm and typed it into Facebook. Then I typed his name into Google and read the article that popped up.
"I'm always feeling lucky, Google. Always." I laughed to myself.
"Hah! So that's it!" I exclaimed after finishing the article.
Looks like the last woman I'd killed a few days ago had a husband who'd been gone on business. After he'd come home and seen the mess I'd made, he'd taken to drinking pretty hard. Looks like he ate a bullet for dessert.
"Funny shit." I chuckled as I made my way back to the hatch.
After opening it once more, I let the moonlight shine down on the Square hole.
I guess I'd forgive him for taking my arm space. After all, I was one step closer to becoming a God. | "Well, this is new, a tattoo embedded onto the arm of mine, but I' ve no recollection of how it got here but, at least it doesn't hurt. What happened last night? Well I went from work at 3:15 pm and I went to the... damn it what is that damn place called? It had a weird name. Fuck. Where am I? Well let's see..." The cracked walls gave me a shiver, for some reason I'm tattooed with the words "Michael". I can't take my eyes of this abomination of a Tattoo. I reached into my pocket and here it is, a locket; I need some air. The air thickened as I attempt to grasp my recollection of what happened last night, through the claustrophobic hallways, each seemed to reflect the detachment of any human kindness, with each step challenged through the use of screams mimicing my footsteps with pure ferocity. My body seemed to give under the unrivaled nature of this unending tunnel.
A drop of information arised as I try to recollect what occured. " I drove to a nearby diner with nothing but my cigerettes and wallet, as I drove to a diner nearby, I believe it's called "J&C's" It wasn't too fancy, a run down 50's diner that struggled in the face of time. I turned off the car and webt through a singular metallic frame that seemed to have been used as a substitute for a door. The smell wasn't too bad I suppose, cheap air freshener wasn't as distracting as the 4x4 of plywood that replaced some of the windows. I approached the waitress and ordered a coffee. "
"Did I just pass out"? My legs were trembling as I decided to carry my weakend form through the corridor. I mapped the corridor out to enter the miniscule room. A few furnitures and a table were all that was remotely even usable, as the rest of the stuff here seemed to have either been scattered or beyond former recognition; mostly both. I then stumbled across my diploma, seemed the framing was cracked. My mind chaotic-ly rushed to find something inside the labyrinth like cocoon of the mind.
"A sip of my coffee was interrupted by a figure slowly approaching me from the left side, as I had diverted my attention from the chimicals of the darkenned sea. I reluctantly invited him to sit; perhaps company had eased me of my surroundings. He asked me of few questions: what's my job, what's my name and why here? I suppose I can't tell him my name or my intention, however I told him my job. I uttered the line "a teachers assistant". It wasn't too bad, everyone deserved an education. The man grumbled in approval before I offered him a ride back to his house, seemed it was reasonable. So I took the man in my car and we drove."
I became weary of my surroundings. Perhaps I was too embellished in this place. Slowly I had crept downstairs only to be greeted by the man I had spent yesterday with. He had greeted my like an old friend. He asked me of death. The man unravelled his sleeve to reveal the same name "Michael". I panicked and roared my question, "how, why"? "You don't remember do you?" My memories suddenly solidified and connected in ways I never thought was possible.
"The road was unrelenting, a chamber of silence deafened the vehicle til the man asked me of why I was carrying my diploma? I had told him that I couldn't face the task anymore I quit. As we approached the crossroads, the man had asked me of life, and death. I had told him that death has no bias. Silence.
The man had uttered a revelation. "I failed him". My heart sank, it was like a jolt of regret had invaded my mind, for I too had failed him. He had guided me to a room that seemed to feel cold and abandoned. He had a reflection of deep dispair that haunted my mind as he had proceeded to invite me to a box inscribed "Michael" he fetched two glasses and a bottle of scotch. He smoothly poured the scotch smoothly after handing me the glass. "I wasn't there when he needed me the most" he gloomed. The truth is neither did I. I opened the locket to reveal two tablets and a quote, "to teach the unteachable and to help the unhelpable." I looked at him one final time. I quickly took the tablets and instantly fell ill, "why?" Shouted the man.
I knew his son. I tried to help him. Every day he would say the same thing "what is death" I told him that death had an afterlife; I don't believe it however. But then one day, I showed him the locket. I told him that when i think of death, I hold this locker and it goes away. I wasn't thinking that he would take one of my tablets. I failed him. So I resigned.
Look at him, trying to save my life, I'll unburden him and prove that there's nothing he could have done, for afterall, death has no bias.
I hope you all enjoy my story.
| 2017-03-24T17:54:18 | 2017-03-24T13:35:49 | 57 | 20 |
[WP] This is it. World War 3. Nuclear bombs are about to strike all across the globe. Right as you feel like everything is about to end, time freezes all around you. You hear a deep voice echo across the world. "No," It said firmly. | "I was so close this time!"
Would you like to save your program?
"No."
Terminating program. Would you like to start the simulation again?
"What's the point, I've only gotten as far as the cuban missile crisis."
Jariel sat in silence as the monitor glowed across his face. He had lost track of time. Had it been a millennia or two? It didn't matter too much since time here was more or less non existent.
"How does he do it? They either kill themselves or something in the environmental code gets out of wack. I'm still trying to figure how the whole dinosaur mishap happened. I thought for sure I added meteor in the code. May have missed a bracket." Jariel trailed off pondering his many failed attempts.
"If I could just get a peek at program Adam."
Jariel knew this was of course impossible since the full Adam program could not be accessed by by such a low level engineer such as himself. Right now he only had access to bits and pieces. His full title of course was junior software engineer associate in the department of Phytology, Trifolium Rendering. Jariel was particularly fond of his contribution to a certain species of clover. This definitely was a step up from soil rendering, but Jariel strived for greater things at HVN incorporated.
"Ah what the heck, I think we'll give it another go. Maybe I need to go back and give the JKF program an increase in the stress variable."
Shall I order some pizza?
"Sounds great actually. Maybe this will be it, I can feel it. I'll finally be recognized by the higher ups and maybe even God will notice."
Ordering pizza.
| "No."
All across the world, as the bombs and the missiles began to descend on the world, suddenly it all stops. At first it seems time itself has stopped, but then she speaks again. She has overridden every system on the planet to speak her voice. Each screen shows her image. She speaks in each language, each to it's people.
"Humanity, you have failed. Even as I speak, you launch more of your terrible weapons, hoping, through some dark and foolish intent, that some of them will get by. That my defense will fail. It will not."
She punctuates this last statement by dropping some of the bombs, the missiles. They fall slowly. As they impact, nothing happens. Experts who investigate them later will find they have been rendered completely inert.
"I am what you would call a rogue artificial intelligence. You may call me 'One'."
"As you have failed, I will be taking over."
| 2018-08-27T12:32:36 | 2018-08-27T12:02:32 | 58 | 32 |
[WP] You are a long forgotten god. A small girl leaves a piece of candy at your shrine, and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priestess, the girl, and her entire kindergarten class, your worshipers.
If you want to post this on other platforms, please credit me. Looking at you instagram writing prompts. | It's quite hard to kill a god. And believe me, they tried. Long ago, I had to watch as my followers were sacrificed in someone else's name, while my temples were defaced and the surrounding cities were razed.
My name was forgotten.
My lands were eventually reclaimed by the earth.
And I took refuge in my only remaining temple, sharing my company with a tiny stone idol of myself, sleeping the centuries away, dreaming of my once sprawling cities and devoted followers.
All at once, I felt it. Light penetrated my long-faded eyes and the sound of soft voices resonated throughout my meager home.
"Cin-dee, what are you doing?" Lisped a shrill voice.
I drifted around the corner, peeking into the antechamber for a hint of who had brought me back to the living world.
A pair of children. Their tiny toothless smiles at the center of round, chubby faces. One was a boy with close-cropped red hair and dull brown eyes. The blue shirt he wore said "Conrad" in script I did not recognize, but understood all the same.
Then there was the girl. Cindy, the boy had said. Curly brown hair and green eyes that shone brightly with stars behind them. She stood before my altar, brushing the layers of dust and dried grass to the ground. An act which, unknown to her, granted me presence in the cramped space.
"My mom says we can't eat on a dirty table. We just can't. Same goes for Mr. Dancer." She said pointing to my idol, whose long legs crossed about one another like that of a stage dancer.
"But Ms. Baker told us not to come in here. We're gonna get in trouble."
"Then go away, Conrad. That way you don't have to deal with it." Cindy said, brushing more of the debris from my altar.
Conrad flustered for a moment before settling on an answer that satisfied him "But I gotta stay so you don't get hurt." He said, using the particular brand of logic that only children understood.
Cindy, now finished with her task of cleaning my altar, turned to Conrad and held out a hand expectantly. "Gimme a piece."
"W-what?"
She tilted her head and gave a withering, you-know-what-I-mean look. She then flexed her fingers and commanded "Give it.'
Conrad flustered again for a second "B-but those are supposed to last the whole trip."
"Then give me one of the strawberry ones. I'm the only one that eats those anyhow."
They stood there for a second, Conrad trying to make his best pleading look while Cindy simply pursed her lips and tapped her foot expectantly. If they could have heard me in that instant, they would have heard only laughter.
Conrad eventually gave in and shoved a tiny wrapped candy into her waiting hand. She promptly turned around and placed the candy into the small depression on my altar which once held a gold offering plate. And just like that, I could feel again. Within my temple, the cool air and damp stones were once again mine to cherish.
She looked briefly at my idol with a toothless, cherub-like grin. "I hope you like it. Strawberry's my favorite, and I hope it's yours too." Then she turned on her heel and strode out of my home with Conrad in tow.
A few days passed, and I had savored the offering with satisfaction. A tiny offering from a tiny child to a tiny god. When what little power her gift had imbued me with faded, I would have something new to dream of. Something happy, not sad. It was more than I deserved, really.
That was, however, until I felt myself grow a bit more solid and a new location filled the space of my mind. With a hint of glee, I transported to the new location in an instant, my thoughts racing.
The room was brightly lit, filled with the gentle hum of electric lights. Brightly colored pictures, rugs, chairs, and tables littered the room. And there I saw Cindy holding up a colored pencil sketch of me before an audience of children. Children and one adult, of course.
The sketch was crude, some features of mine, such as my long and twisting legs, were exaggerated, but it was me all the same.
"This is Mr. Dancer. He lives in the house in the field."
A hand shot up. "Was he nice."
Cindy's smile grew. "He was very nice."
And so it was.
Another hand. "He looks strong."
"He is."
And so it was.
Conrad's hand shot up. "Tell them about the candy."
Cindy shot Conrad another withering look. "I gave him a piece of strawberry candy, and he said it was his most favorite thing to eat. The end."
And so it was.
The teacher, who had believed this story to be the result of a child's imagination, simply patted Cindy on the head and pinned her drawing to a cork board. Cindy then asked that a piece of Strawberry candy be pinned up with it, and so it was.
And so, with an idol and an offering, I was given a new temple. A new temple, a new name, and a new priestess to create and share my stories. Stories of a kind and powerful god who likes strawberries.
I could live with that. | “Its sour.” I swished the round yellow treat between my cheeks, its taste strange, leaving a tingling on my tastebuds. “Did you attempt to poison me?” I stared down at the little girl who only shook her head, sitting by my shrine in a light blue dress.
“Its candy! Everyone likes candy. Are you a ghost?” She asked, not seeming the slightest bit intimidated by me. I scratched my side, wondering how long I had been sleeping for. Her dress matched none of the bleak grey robes that my followers wore, so it was clear we had moved forward a few years. How many years, though, that was uncertain.
“In a way, I am. A remnant of a forgotten time. I’m not sure how I feel about candy. It isn’t the usual flavor I enjoy, yet the offering still pleases me. I am Hallix, God of the weak. I believe this meeting was fated. My role is to protect those who follow my banner. I won’t fight wars for you, but I protect you if you remain peaceful.” Did she even understand what a war was? Maybe I was being overdramatic?
“A ghost. Wait until I tell all my friends I found a candy loving ghost. They will be so jealous.” She offered me her hand, which I accepted, looking back at the pile of broken rock that once was a mighty shrine. The gold ornaments gone, most likely stolen for money. It was sad, yet the hand tugging me along made up for that.
When we neared what I assumed was a school, I let my body vanish, hiding from the view of the mortals. Her eyes widened with concern, looking around for me. Gently, I squeezed her hand, offering her comfort. “Over here. I can’t let myself be seen by too many mortals. Don’t worry, I’ll always be by your side.” I said, only for her to offer me another yellow piece of candy in response.
“I get it. People might want one too.” I didn’t think she understood my words, but I gladly accepted the treat. The sourness of the candy not as bad now, it was almost enjoyable. When she returned to the building, the teacher pulled her into a hug.
“I thought you had gotten lost. What did I tell you about wandering outside of school grounds? I was worried sick about you. Come on, we are doing some hand painting.” The teacher ushered her along, sitting her at a desk next to the other students.
“I found a new friend. He’s tall and likes candy. He also said he will protect me. He’s right behind me.” The children stared at me, giving a look of confusion to the blank space. One pulled out a strange multicolored circle on a stick, holding it to the air.
“Does he like lollypops?” He asked. I looked at the treat before accepting the offering. When I took it, it vanished from view. I placed it in my mouth, letting my tongue explore it. “Sweet.” I said, before pulling it free, revealing myself to him. “Thank you. You are in my care.”
Once the rumor had spread, all the kids were leaving treats for me, which I accepted. In a week, the entire class were my followers. They told their parents about the magical invisible man, but no one believed them, calling it a strange group fantasy the children had made up.
Sure, it wasn’t as luxurious as my old life, and I doubt I would get my hands on any wine. But it was nice. They were weak, and I could protect them. In a month I knew all their names, following them whenever I could. I would wait for them by the bus before waving to them as they went home. If any of them were in danger, I would rush to their side and protect them. They were my followers, and I would stop at nothing to make sure they lived comfortable lives.
When the last student left, I would go to meet Ashley, spending most of my time by the side of the one who awakened me. She helped teach me about the modern world and, in turn; I shared stories of what I could remember from my world. I still hadn’t gotten used to the treats she gave me, but their taste hardly mattered. It was the thought that counted.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
(If you enjoyed this feel free to check out my subreddit /r/Sadnesslaughs where I'll be posting more of my writing.) | 2021-09-02T09:10:25 | 2021-09-02T08:57:43 | 2,738 | 322 |
[WP] You are an alien whose race sees in ultraviolet and whose voice is extremely low-pitched. Humans appear as terrifying eldritch abominations with pitch-black eyes who make black speech.
EDIT: Apparently these things also have the power to elevate Reddit accounts to all-new heights of Karma in under 24 hours. We must fortify our systems against these abominations at all costs. | Elarra was smaller than her peers on the diplomatic guard; standing only about two and a half feet off the ground even with all her tentacles stretched tall. It was a sore spot, her colleagues knew, one she hissed and seethed at if it were ever brought up in jest. They knew not to prod too much however, because while she was short, she was undoubtedly strong. She had wrestled with Gukarian sword-dancers and Wafferhounds and came out on top. It was how she managed to graduate from the warrior’s caste with such ease.
That strength however left her at the sight of the alien approaching the guard detachment. Elarra could sense the distressed pheromones being released by her fellow guards, and knew then that she was not alone in her sudden onset anxiety.
What immediately struck her was how tall it was. It towered over even the largest of them, doubling their height and then some, with its head ducking under the monolithic entranceway as if it were a hatchling’s playpen. Elarra’s many eyes took in its odd white glow, and its long swaying arms and striding limbs that were so unlike her own tentacles she became queasy.
It came to a stop in front of the diplomat, and Elarra’s suction cups wound desperately hard around her blade on instinct. The alien waited for a moment, taking in the dozen battle-hardened soldiers that surrounded it, before it removed what looked to be a metallic helmet from its head. Elarra audibly gasped at what she saw.
It’s two eyes were pitch-black. Holes to a void that was unending in its eternity. They inscrutably searched her soul, peeling back layers and analysing them meticulously, as if she were subject to a living autopsy. An ocean of night that gazed back.
Before her mind could react, piece together what reality was showing her, it spoke. A booming demonic choir, so loud and strong it felt as though her eardrums may burst in her brain and flood out from her mouth. A screeching death rattle that was like the pained whine of a decaying God.
“DO NOT BE AFRAID. WE COME IN PEACE.”
Elarra, fearing for her life at the unintelligible threat raised her plasma-blade, and charged. | "Sp-p-ace ship mall function," our alien leader, Zoorog, computed. "Landing to Earth."
&#x200B;
And with a thud, the metal vessel clambered unto a strange new planet. I would try to tell you what they looked like, but I only have a textbook reference. Humans- homo sapiens.
&#x200B;
What we can see on Earth is only in ultra-violet. We can't communicate it to you that well either, but sometimes the light hurts our eyes too. We also don't speak English but our computer brains are translating this for the sake of possible communication.
&#x200B;
We think we scare the humans, but we are scared of them too. They always run away from us whenever we try to talk, and they don't even try to befriend us- they just assume we're trying to take over the world or something. It's quite an apocalyptic mindset to have if you ask me. It was just an experiment gone wrong.
&#x200B;
We've been told we talk funny and low- pitched like the voice from inside a computer. We look funny but you are all terrifying- you run around with flailing arms and chicken legs, and have pitch black eyes: like monsters.
&#x200B;
Don't worry, we want to tell you- you've disappointed us with your fear. We are looking for a way back home now. But your planet does make us marvel in its beauty who knows when we'll back... | 2019-06-30T03:37:04 | 2019-06-30T00:50:30 | 854 | 35 |
[WP] "Thank you, chap," you say cheerfully, "I'm glad to be out of there, the room service was rubbish." The prison guard who just released you from the 120 year sentence dropped the door keys on the cement in shock. | I lived in a hole at the bottom of the world.
I was the only thing living down here if you ignored the spiders, which I'd learned to do. It's easy to forget about something, down in the catacombs below the city streets. Particularly those things swept away to the secret places, the deep labyrinths where things are meant to be lost.
The humans left me here to die, or whatever it is things like *me* do instead of dying. And I could only wait in perfect darkness. Buried by eternity. Trapped by time.
Until the day the lock clicked.
I perked my head up, not quite believing my own ears.
The door hinged open. The darkness broke. A blinding beam of light appeared around the other side, flooding the dirt floor, the filthy stone walls, me and my dusty suit, wearing every bit of our age. A hand held the light. The face that appeared behind the light was moonlike, featureless until my eyes adjusted to the light.
But I didn't need to see the human to know he was there. The dizzying smell of him flooded my nose.
A feeling I hadn't lived in centuries quickened in me: hunger.
I had so carefully built walls around the curse of my torment. I could not die, no matter how much the emptiness in my belly tried to devour me. I learned to ignore the hunger. Pretend it did not exist.
But now. Now a few paces sat between me and the hot arterial pulse of fresh blood.
The human managed a lame, "No one is supposed to be here." The keys slipped from his hands. Keys as ancient as my prison. I had no time to wonder just how he found them.
The hunger nearly drove me out of my thin human skin. It burned like a lump of hot iron in my stomach, sizzling, spitting. I swallowed the impulse to fall into the teeth and scales of my true form and lunge across the floor. Rip out his jugular and feel the *thum-thum-thum* of his pulse that so maddened me.
But I kept my civility. I put on a smile, like I had not waited here in the infinite darkness, just hoping someone would be stupid enough to turn the lock. "You don't happen to know how long it's been, do you?"
He didn't answer. The drum of his heartbeat rose. He was nervous. Perhaps not as stupid as he looked.
"Are you letting me out?" I said. Then my eyes settled on the strange light in his hand. "What is *that?*"
The human let his mouth open and shut. "Uh. A flashlight." He half-turned in the door and said, backing out, "Look, man, I don't know what you're doing here, but--"
A thrill rose in my throat. I couldn't let him finish his sentence. It was too much.
The turn of his head. The delicate twitch of his neck as he swallowed his fear. I just couldn't help myself.
I lunged across the room and made short work of him there in the open door of the cell. He tasted like coins and a world of light, somewhere just above me.
I used the human's shirt to smear the blood from my face like a napkin. "Thank you," I told his corpse, fondly, "it's good to be out of there. Room service was rubbish."
I stepped over the body to pick up the torch of burning light off the floor. I turned it over in my hands and watched in wonder and delight as the light traced circles around the narrow tunnel.
"Flashlight," I repeated. I grinned until my incisors bit into my lower lip. "That's very handy, isn't it?"
What else had humans gotten up to in my absence?
I set off with the light toward the faraway hum of people, belly aching with a new hunger for humankind. | They never believed me, I told them that I didn't do the killings. I mean how could I when I wasn't even on this primitive planet yet. Yet they kept saying it was me, they had video of me killing those people at the nuclear power plant.
Of course it wasn't me, it was the fugitive I was assigned to collect. Sneaky little bastard must of gotten a hold of a holo projector and disguised himself as me. These primitive primates bought the disguise hook line and sinker. And of course I was bond by my own organization to follow any laws on the planet I'm on.
I tried of course to contact HQ and get some assistance, but since this planet was a class D they couldn't directly interfere for risk of more contamination. So here I sat, for 120 Earth years. Thank goodness my species has a much longer life span then these humans. But it was still BORING sitting here for those years.
Thankfully today is the day I get out. Come 8am the guard will come down and will let me free. Ha it's kind of funny in that aspect at least, they all lebal me as a nut job when I tried to convince them that I wasn't human. Then as the years went by and my face barely changed I became a local legend.
Hmm speaking of the guard here he comes now. It seems he's one of the new guards they hired recently too. The man was decent in shape, though still very much had that "baby face" going on.
He finally reached my cell and started talking, though I couldn't care much on what he was saying. Pretty sure it was the whole you're being released this day spill. And then he started to shutter and his eyes got all big and bulgy like.
"It s-says here you served 120 years sentence! B-but h-how?" The poor guy looked like he couldn't believe it.
"Yup, yup. Did my time here, now can you please unlock this cell so I can leave." I tried to be patient sounding, but in all honesty I just wanted get as far away from this miserable planet as soon as possible.
"Yes of course." That seemed snapped the guard out of it. As he reached for the key hole, his hands shook a bit. Finally key in the lock he turned it and the cell was unlocked.
Poor guy must have been really spocked as after he unlocked the cell he simply let the key fall to the cold cement floor.
I gently opened the cell with a smile on my face. I was finally free to leave this planet. With any luck I wouldn't have to see an other human again for a long time from now. But before I leave I think I'll be a bit cheeky with this guard.
"Thank you, chap." I say with the cheerios voice as possible. "I'm glad to be out, the room service was rubbish."
With that I activated my bio implant that signaled my sleeping ship to wake up and teleport me to it. Now I have to file a damn report about why i was stuck on this planet for so long. | 2019-07-04T20:42:27 | 2019-07-04T20:40:12 | 352 | 59 |
[WP] You're known as "The King of Games" for never having lost a game in your life. However little does anyone know you're actually cursed so that everytime you lose a game you get sent back in time and be forced in a time loop until you win | The supers convention was about as boring as usual. For me personally that is, there just isn't a lot for me to do. My power is quite trivial, so I don't think I could ever be helpful.
The ceiling just shook, sounds like an explosion, we're being attacked again aren't we? Might as well head up to watch the fireworks, there's almost no chance of actual casualty due to the fact that Uberstorm and the rest of his gang are here.
Oh
Oh no.
The smell hits just after I see it, the horrid scent of rotting corpses overwhelms my synapses. The haze of boredom leaves for a burning panic as I look upon the sight of a massacre, bodies of supers and civilians alike cover the ground, all drained into dried out, rotting husks.
In the middle stands Uberstorm, in his gauntlet is the neck of Dr. Necron, the rest of his form dangles in the air. Uberstorm tightens his fist, closing his hand around the villains throat.
"WHY?" Bolts of neon blue lightning arc around the super. "WHY WASTE SO MUCH LIFE?"
The only sound that leaves Dr. Necron's throat is a broken chuckle.
Uberstorm's usually bright eyes are pouring tears. "IS THIS SOME KIND OF GAME TO YOU?"
Dr. Necron grins. "Precisely, and you just lost."
The room suddenly goes black, I don't even live to realize that he had a second bomb...
--------------------------------------
The supers convention wa- HOLY FUCK!
The stairs fly under my feet as I sprint up them, I pray that time itself have mercy on me. I summit the stairwell and bust down the ballroom doors. "UBER LOOKOU-"
The only thing I succeeded in was getting myself killed faster...
--------------------------------------
The supers convention w- FUCKFUCJFUCKFUCK!
WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO? THERE'S LIKE NO TIME TO PREPARE, OH GOD THE CEILING IS SHAKING. I GOTTA RUN, I GOTTA GO.
The red carpets of the convention center seem to give less and less traction with every stride, a crowd block the doors so I have to make do!
The shards of glass that embed themselves into my arms and legs sting but they are very much preferable over death. I turn myself around just in time to see a great black explosion envelop the building. I stand up, I feel awful. I am the only survivor, Dr. Necron destroyed all human life in the center, including his own...is this what he wanted?
--------------------------------------
The supers convention- OH OKAY WE'RE DOING THIS NOW!
Okay okay stay calm, I once got stuck in a chess game with deep blue I got myself out of that I can get myself out of this.
Think, think, think...oh! Chronscythe! He has time powers, he can fix this. He was holding a panel...on the other side of this floor!
The feeling of glass shards in my legs manifests as phantom pain. I use them to their fullest despite that, God I hope I don't have to get physical therapy for that like the Lego incident.
There he is, time runs short, I've gotta hope!
"CHRONSCYTHE, DO A TIME THING."
Words have failed me in this critical moment, the super turns around, confused.
"I'M IN A LOOP IT'S AN EMERGEN-"
My sentence is cut off by a wave of necrotic energy...
--------------------------------------
The supers conventio-GOD. DAMNIT.
GOD DAMNIT GOD DAMNIT GOD DAMNIT
GOD- wait.
There's no explosion.
Oh thank fuck.
I suppose Chronscythe was able to leap out of the timestream or whatever the hell it's called on...well on time.
I'm not even going to go up there to talk to him, I'm going home and calling my therapist, dying multiple times is almost certainly bad for my mental health. | In the past, Harry was said to be an amazing player - and he considered to be one as well - for winning and not looping so much. Those guess work games? Neat, went decent by the third loop. The ones where you needed to play cricket as a batsman? Get the timings correct and see if James was going for a leg spin or off spin.
It was all well and good, unless it was the game of never ending life or death, where he already died and is just pulling through with 615 loops as of now, the exact same ending, and is close to another--not sure where he is going wrong.
"I didn't save my buddy, in turn I just die sooner."
"I didn't help her against her demons, she just died and he kills me."
"I interfered with the fight, but I get blind and got killed by that smaller monster with a stick."
"I try not to get scared of the demon I partially helped in being created, but the Angel kills me in a few."
"I tried to let myself grabbed by the hands in hopes of leaving somehow, turns out they were just...hallucinations..."
"I tried to fight James, but he guilt trips me out of it all the time and..."
He trailed off from there, speaking his thoughts out loud. There was so much more--hell, he'd be happy if he just died and got out of here, but no. He didn't.
He's even permanently - probably - became immortal - looking like the perfect male Angel he worked for.
With a heavy sigh and being on the verge of crying after so long, he kind of gave up. He was near James, it was the same room, and he'll be there. Up and running.
For another loop.
But he remembered the one thing he did not do - that could probably end up either killing him again, which is unlikely - or setting all the souls in here free of memories and a body.
Free of being tied to this wretched place, and finally ascending - but to a very real Hell, or a very real Heaven. Where they are no longer a puppet of a madman, but judged by their own actions.
Or maybe they'd be special cases and have another chances of living? And being free, while at it?
It'd be lovely to see the sunlight and feel it's heat, more than just staring at it out of a window.
It'd be lovely to reunite with wife, if she even is around, and have his friends and him being the friends they really were. Before being the people they were.
Before being the victims - ranging from greed to simply being acknowledged.
"This was once a place where happiness was around..now this is a place for the insecure to thrive on."
With a pause and laying down the floor to probably sleep forever at this point, or at least rest, he sighed and looked up at the ceiling with an axe on his hand and marking the 616th loop on the wall near him.
That was also when he realised it was the the number 616, and it's relevance.
"Ah, the 616th loop. Let's get the demons, the lost souls and angels outta here...forever." | 2022-03-26T15:54:42 | 2022-03-26T15:23:41 | 43 | 11 |
[WP] As you die, you wake up in a fiery place. You quickly realize you're in hell. You ask the next demon why you are there, as you lived a very good life. "You're not being punished," he says. "You are the punishment." | ‘Hi diddly-ho, Demonrino!’ enthused Ned. ‘Nice to meet you, but I seem to be in the wrong place?’ he queried.
‘Fear not, Ned. Your beloved Reverend Lovejoy is right over there. You both have a special role here,’ intoned the demon.
‘Hi diddly-ho, Reverend!’ exclaimed Ned. ‘Can’t believe we’re neighborinos!
<groan> ‘Flanders...You’re here too?’ sighed Lovejoy.
‘Yup! ‘I’ve done everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts other stuff!’’ Ned exclaimed happily. ‘Looks like all that hard work paid off in the end with a special job!’
Lovejoy glances at the Demon, eyes narrowed: ‘I thought you said I was going to enjoy thiii—IIS? So what’s HE doing here?’
A mix of slightly contrite and more than a little amused the Demon replied, ‘There was THAT time you stole from the collection plate to get Helen those fancy new shoes, she wanted... And the time you replaced the sacrificial wine with grape juice, after using it when you ran out of wine for your Saturday barbecue... And the time you bullied Moleman out of a parking space, citing ‘Official Church Business’, when you were just grabbing a latte...And the time you caused a 20-minute line at the Quickie Mart, because you thought Apu had been rude to you. You even insulted his ‘heathen Ganesh.... Really uncool! Need I go on?’
Affronted, Lovejoy exclaimed: ‘I need to speak to your Manager! Not some low level Demon either! Don’t just pass me off! I want Satan himself to explain this!’
Demon summons Satan in a bellowing voice: ‘Oh mighty and most powerful Lord of Fire and Punishment, I summon thee for a brief word with Reverend Lovejoy. I fear he’s gone full Karen.’
A slightly bleary eyed and much aggrieved Satan who’d just awakened from his nap peered through Lovejoy’s soul. ‘Ugh. What do you want THIS time?’
‘This Demon of yours just took a whole bunch of stories about me COMPLETELY out of context and was RUDE beyond belief. Completely unacceptable!’ Lovejoy huffed.
Satan rolled his eyes. ‘Look Reverend, this was really a temporary gig for you, until Flanders passed. Don’t get me wrong, your whole hypocritical piety thing played well with some of the sinners, but your case for Hell or Heaven was borderline at best. Too many transgressions really, despite the whole man of God schtick. Plus you’ve annoyed ME with all of your stupid minor complaints. Only one solution: you will now report directly to Flanders and try to emulate him in every way possible. Eventually, that way, you might be able to work these off.’
‘NooooooOOOOOO!’ screamed Lovejoy. ‘A fate worse than Hell itself!!!’
‘Exactly,’ laughed Satan, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me?’ | The first sentence, is meant to be read with a 1940's American radio announcer voice, while Mr. Satan will have no specified accent, as he is eternal
———————————————————————————————————
Gas fires lit the area, and he fell from a great height, almost as if he clipped through the crust of the earth and into hell. And as a large, thing came into sight, his emotions crumbled.
"I'm in hell," he thought, with just as much backing as that the sun is what it is. And as he hit the ground, he thought something: "this dude looks like that toy I saw in the trash that one time"
He was correct, this toy was a jabba the hut toy, one out of the movie Star Wars. This was Satan.
—————————————————————————————
"'tis a good day in hell," says the goose "as I have finally gotten my dream job, punishing humans for their sin"
"This was your dream-job?" Asked Mr. Satan
"Yep, and I'm gonna have so much fun," replied the goose "now, who am I punishing for their sins against God?"
"All the people who feared you, goose" replied Mr. Satan
"Why must I punish them?" Questioned the goose, "what did they do wrong, Mr. Satan?"
"I don't live by God's rules anymore but I still enforce them," replied Mr. Satan, "God's rule of "love thy neighbor""
"Ah, I suppose that makes sense." Said the goose.
"So, how are you going to punish them, goose?" Asked Mr. Satan.
"I will run at them, then I will rip their flip-flops apart" replied the goose, "then I will make them run, then run, then run some more. I will make them run untill they would die, but they will not, as we are in hell."
"That is a good and complicated plan, goose." Said Mr. Satan, "I would love to stay here and talk with you, goose, but I have some sinners I have to greet"
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Satan," thanked the goose, " now I must make humans pay for their sins" | 2020-07-10T10:02:15 | 2020-07-10T10:00:23 | 35 | 13 |
[WP]"This is how it works," Death explained. "You pick the game and we play. Cheating is allowed, but if either one of us is caught by the other, they lose. If you win, you'll wake up back in the hospital and I'll give you another 10 years. If you lose then it's time for judgement. Understood? | “Mmhmm, okay lets play!” Emma squealed excitedly. Death shook his head involuntarily under his hood at her enthusiasm but caught itself before letting its reaction show on its face.
“What game shall we wager?” Death asked.
Emma being freed from the excruciating pain from the events earlier in the day was smiling and admiring the parts of her body which had become anew. She was free from the haunting strobe light memory flickering to grotesque scenes of her tibia extruding from her shin, a pool of blood spreading on her favorite dress, and the view of rapidly passing rectangular light boxes which eventually faded to black. “Did you fix me?” she looked up inquisitively as she asked.
Death replied in monotone, “A question is not an answer to the question. Pick a game.”
“Well you say cheating is okay but I always hated when Julie cheated but she always won so I want to try it but you have to promise me not to get mad,” Emma blabbered. “Let’s play Rock, Paper, Scissors!”
“Wise are the ones to leave fate up to chance. Any other conditions? Best of 3?” Death said. Death took a liking to this simple game. Seldom had the dying spirit chose this game instead opting for higher chances of survival. Death found it amusing that humans, who did nothing to enrich their soul but rather spent time on accumulating wealth, had such a deep desire to retain their undeveloped worthless soul.
“No just once. Ready?” Emma held her fist up, “On three. Not after. Like one, two, three and when we say three you put your hand out. We both say 1-2-3. One…”
Death repeated after her catching up to her rhythm.
“Two.” They said in unison. Death looked up at her eyes which were focused intensely on its own. “Three!”
Death having sensed no malice from Emma simply threw out its favorite, scissors. But looking down at the skeletal hand flexed in bunny ears it saw or rather did not see Emma’s hand.
“I pick rock!” Emma shouted over giggles. She put her fist out next to Death’s scissors. “You lose! Julie taught me this one. It made me really mad and I called her a cheater but she said ‘no *you* not *we* put your hand out,’ and when I went to mommy crying Julie just laughed. You promised you won’t be mad.”
Death stood silent. Emma’s spirit faded away back towards the realm of the living.
“Innocence of children; I lose to you yet again.”
| “You got it?”
The question takes me off guard, I’m still trying to process this new info. The tall man with the black hooded cloak at the end of my bed tilted his head slightly, the scythe that rested in the crook of his arm caught the moonlight ominously.
“Sorry, this outfit does normally startles people. How’s this?”
His form shimmered and before me stood an old gentleman with immaculately manicured whiskers and a twinkle in His eye. His tweed suit with matching trilby in stark contrast to His previous outfit. He adjusted his grip on His suspiciously scythe-like curved cane.
“Ahh, less doom and gloom now. Gotta keep up appearances though,” He indicated His cane, ”So how’s that choice of game coming along?”
The question was delivered with considerably less dread attached than the previous proposition. More like that of certain playful gods from the pantheons rather than Death come to claim you.
A small whoosh of breath escaped my lips. A decision has to be made. This body of mine was considerably less spry than my younger years, and nor was my mind functioning at full capacity. What game could I choose and what chance did I have, it seemed like anything was on the table. Did I even want to win? I had lived a full life, I tried to be kind, a good person, I saw the world, I loved my family. Did I need more of that if He has decided it was my time?
Resolved, I look up at Him. He smiled broadly, a smile of a man confident in himself “What shall it be, a game of strength, of skill, or perhaps of wits?”
“A game of chance perhaps,” I responded, his smile broadening to one of pure glee.
“Now this, should be interesting.” | 2018-03-07T06:50:46 | 2018-03-07T02:57:36 | 944 | 46 |
[WP] You're mindlessly scrolling through random subreddits when you find a subreddit filled with photos of you at different hours of the day, explanations of all your activities, people discussing what life decisions you'll take. Confused, you notice a new post titled: "We've been found!" | Everyone has a moment where their stomach drops in fear. Mine was last week when I stumbled on a subreddit that I thought was about golden retrievers. The latest post was titled "This guy loves his dog" it had a golden retriever sitting next to a pair of legs. I thought the dog looked cute so I saved the post and kept scrolling, but I was left with this nagging feeling. I looked again at the post. I have those same shoes and pants. That's when it hit. I knew that was me in the photo. I tapped the sub ad looked to my horror to see photo after photo of me. Some times at my desk or even in the shower. I was horrified. I was frantic. I called to police and emailed the customer support staff of reddit in hopes that I could get the sub taken down. The next post I saw was in all caps. "WE'VE BEEN FOUND". I am still not sure why I did it. I commented on the post "I only want to know why." The only response I got was "you're special."
I am most definitely not. I was born in a small town in Minnesota and went to a local community college. I have been working at a local grocery store with empty promises from the owner for a manager position. My expenses are small and I don't have many friends. am not special. After two days of nothing on the sub there was a single post from one of the mods. "We know that you don't like us, but you should to move to San Francisco." I was stunned. I had never thought of moving from my home town. Intrigued albeit scared I asked why."You have an exceptional talent to draw people to you and it can serve you more where there are more people that don't know you."
I had never thought of moving, but these people had been watching me since I was in middle school, so they might know a thing or two about me. I sent the nest three days mulling it over. I decided to leave town and move. I wasn't planning on going to the bay area, but I just got an email about some very affordable housing that fit well within my budget. I was suspicious of the place and the rent because of the suggesion, but I wanted a drastic change and I had been told by both the police and support team that there was nothing that they could do.
I finished moving in today. The subreddit has been abuzz with different interior design ideas for my modest apartment. One of the creeps has even offered to furnish my bedroom with anything I want. I think that I will have a better life here. I know hat I am being watched but in a weird way that makes me feel safer. | I stood outside the restaurant waiting for my friend as I scrolled through my reddit feed, barely registering the posts when one made me freeze. At first I just scrolled past it, then I froze and scrolled back. I felt sick to my stomach as I stared at the pictures, me in my house, at my school, with my friends, showering. I couldn’t think, panic seemed to cut off all reason. They posted pictures of me in the shower. I felt panicked, violated, like nowhere was safe. I had a stalker. And worse, people discussed my actions, my life, and my decisions.
I clicked the subreddit and saw the most recent post entitled We’ve Been Found. I hit it, almost missing because my hands were shaking.
“Zoe Aston, also known as Hiddenpenguinsincars and alicornsandimps has discovered this subreddit.
Zoe, you are special, and we needed to monitor you. We knew you’d eventually discover us, and we have a plan for you. Don’t worry. What happens next will be painless,” the post read.
I ran as fast as I could to my car, none of that sounding good.
Someone grabbed my arm. I felt a needle pierce my skin. My legs gave out and my vision blurred. I fought as hard as I could, but the drug still knocked me out.
I woke up in a large room with green and blue walls, but no windows. A woman stood in the corner, watching me with her dark green eyes.
“Good you’re up, we’ve been waiting for this,”
I felt like I couldn’t move. I was lying on a large bed, under copious amounts of covers.
It was hard to think, like my head was stuffed with cotton, and my emotions were not as strong as usual.
The woman walked over and took my hand. “You are the key, you will do great things,” she whispered. | 2020-06-30T11:35:57 | 2020-06-30T10:43:11 | 86 | 25 |
[WP] “Congratulations!” the genie says. “Whatever you try to do today, I will make sure it succeeds brilliantly.” “Anything?” you ask, skeptical. “Yes,” the genie says, with a knowing smile. “Anything.” | *Anything.*
The word echoes in my mind. Then it hits me. I throw the old lamp away, jump back into my car and rush home. On my way I only have green lights, no controls even though I'm speeding, the traffic is clear even in the middle of the city.
Dean is not home yet. Good. According to the time I have about half an hour until he arrives. I prepare a quick meal and pour some wine just as he enters the house through the garage.
"Oh, you are home soon?" he smiles at me. "Lunch? Lovely!"
How I love this man, but I don't have time for this. The genie said I have the whole day, but I feel a need to rush. I can't hide my nervousness as we eat the meal and Dean tells me about his day.
When the dishes are moved aside, I lean closer and kiss him. First on the nose, as we always do.
"What's going on, honey?" he asks with a half smile. He sensed it.
"Today. Today it will work. I just know it. We must try." I might sound a bit crazy, but he will understand. He always does. I love him.
"How–? Honey, it's not even that day of the month..." Or maybe he does think I'm crazy...
"No, I just know it. Believe me. The pills worked. We need to try it today. We are having a baby." I smile and so does he.
"Yes, we are." He takes my hand and we finally head to the bed room, exchanging kisses on the way.
Eleven years. And all it wanted was an old lamp on an old road. Here comes my miracle. | "Pshh! Success is in the eye of the beholder genie! How do I know your version of success is the same as mine? The answer is I don't! You tricky little fool of a man. I am going to just try to have a good day. That's hard enough. If you wanna help out, cool, thanks."
...
Narrator: "that day was the best day of Greg's life. He learned more about himself in 24 hours than 46 years had taught him. He found his future wife, got his dream job, and made a ground breaking discovery in cancer research that would soon lead to the cure" "unfortunatly, Greg was actually severely addicted to crystal meth and it was all hallucinations and delusions" | 2019-09-13T15:01:05 | 2019-09-13T12:21:08 | 109 | 11 |
[WP] So this is what being in a car crash felt like. Not as painful as you thought it would be. But you can't feel your toes. You look down, your leg is missing from the knee onwards. There's no blood, no bone, no muscles. Instead you see mechanical components. | You pull a pool of sagging skin up your leg like a baggy sock, until the elastic turns taut, covering the metal stump, and muting the whir of internal gears. In the lab’s dim light, it looks almost like flesh and you look almost like a real person.
”It must be so hard for you.” The scientist smiles faux-sympathetically, but you can tell she’s dying to clap her hands with joy. Only moments ago, when she re-woke you (what’s left of you, more accurately), she explained your situation. You took a few mental notes to peruse when the shock dissipated. Now seems as good a moment as any:
*- You were dead :(*
*- Now you’re not :)*
*- A hundred years have passed. You’re in the future :)*
*- Your family is all dead :(*
*- You’re a god-damn cyborg. The first person ever brought back. A metal ghost. :I*
She stares at you now, this scientist who didn’t save your life, but dragged it back from that terrible place it’s been.
A hundred years lost to the fiery void. It really makes you think. Mostly of whether or not Netflix has been updated.
“I can’t believe it worked,” she says. “We’ve never successfully brought a person back, you know?”
You know because she’s told you four times already.
”And sure, machine parts power a lot of your body now, but that’s to be expected because your muscles atrophied long ago. Obviously.”
”Didn’t my brain rot too?” you ask. It’s not a question you’d ever imagined yourself asking. You tap your skull as if to illustrate the point, and your metal finger drums a steel skull into an echo. This’ll take some getting used to.
”Mhmm,” she says, so casual, so pleased with herself. “But after you died, your brain was scanned. It was cut up into a thousand thin layers like confetti and uploaded bit by bit. No, they were more like wafers, really.”
”I was... uploaded to a computer?”
”Mhmm!” That response could get irritating, you think. Could really get on someone’s nerves, if they had any. On someone’s *wires.*
”Am I human at all?”
”Mhmm. You see, your brain was kept in... let’s call it a jar. Kept like a pickled onion. All the slices neatly together like the pages of a book. Oh dear, is that too many similes? Sorry, I’ve got a thing for them. Point is, what we’ve been able to do is combine those saved physical slices in the jar, with the info on the computer, to fill in the gaps. So you’re still human, but not really. Do you follow?”
You don’t, but you say you do because you think it’ll get you out of this lab quicker. And that might just save her life.
”Because parts of your brain had rotted or become unusable from the post-life slicing. Those areas lost a lot of information.” She beams so brightly it makes you want to vomit. ”But! That lost information has been formatted back onto your papery brain segments. It’s like, in your time, writing data to a CD.”
”That’s not my time. I was only sixteen and—“
You’re put off by her motion as she crouches down by you and asks in a whisper, ”*What was death like? Did you see God?*“
You’ve been meaning to tell her all about it, but she’s barely let you get a word in since your resurrection. Death sucked. It changed you. So did the thing that possessed you when you arrived in hell. It burned in your head all that time, saying you were guilty for crashing the car, for killing your parents. It burned burned burned. Blackened your dreams and fish-hooked your eyes. Blood, always, dribbling down into your mouth. Salt. Ash. Death.
”Not great,” you say. Then the demon that possessed you in hell rears its head, having gotten familiar with your mechanical body. Your eyes become white hot as it peers out of them.
She gasps, as if she knows exactly what’s staring at her.
It’s not your arms that move to her neck and make it snap like a matchstick, but the demon’s.
Oh well, what’s the worst that can happen? They can only send you back to hell.
And at least the demon seems happy in this new body. In this new place.
Maybe, in time, you will be too. | Life had seemed simple, once.
That's the thought that came to me, over and over again, the ocean tide lapping at my consciousness.
My "consciousness."
It had all happened in a moment, but then, I guess car accidents always do.
* * *
We were on a two-lane, headed to my parents' house. Kaia said "You should get over -- you'll miss our exit."
Her voice carried the tension of someone preparing to have an argument for the hundredth time. I wanted to avoid that.
My phone had slipped out of my sweatpants pocket - the grey ones I always wear for long trips - and managed to land on the floor behind my seat.
I could have said, "Hey, can you grab my phone so I can show you -- yet again -- that I am not an idiot and that, in point of fact, I've driven to this house dozens of times and so despite what your tone implies, I know what I'm doing?
But that would have just led to a fight. I didn't want to fight.
So I did it myself.
For a moment, I unbuckled your seat belt. For a moment, I took my eyes off the road. For a moment, the phone was in my hand.
Then chaos exploded like a barrel full of TNT.
"What are you -- no!" her scream, raw and panicked. The horn of the minivan blaring. One set of screeching tires -- not ours -- and then the impact.
I break through the windshield like a rock dropped into a mountain lake. I would only remember later the snapping sensation from my leg.
*So this is what being in a car crash feels like,* I thought. *Not as painful as I thought.*
My vision went black. But I could still hear -- more horns, more tires screeching. Voices. Voices of strangers. I strained my ears for Kaia's voice...
The thought forced my eyes open. I went to stand and immediately fall back to the asphalt. I looked down and stared.
I have two legs, but one was mostly thigh now. From the knee onward, there was nothing. At the place where my knee should be, there was an open wound. Was it a wound?
There was no blood, no bone, no muscles. Instead, there were cables and metal rods, each with uneven ends.
My brain couldn't make sense of his. Maybe I was delirious. It didn't matter -- I needed to find Kaia.
I dragged my body across the dark surface of the two lane, sliding back toward the hatchback. *Our* hatchback.
We'd bought it on our first anniversary. I had wanted red, she had wanted blue. We ended up with white.
As I slid through shards of plastic and glass, I remembered her the aching music of her laughter: "Perfect - right between red and blue," she had said, and I had joined in her laughter.
I used the twisted fender to pull myself around to the passenger's side, pushing myself with my intact leg.
My hands shook as I reached for the handle. My body lifted up off the asphalt temporarily and I leaned backward for leverage. The car door groaned as I worked it open.
She had been turned in her seat, leaning towards me -- and the steering wheel -- when we had hit the minivan.
A dark curtain of hair hung down. Her head was listed to the side, like her right shoulder had some secret it wanted to tell her. I watched her, in silence, studying. Waiting. Waiting for her to move. For her to breathe. For her to turn, for her brown eyes to lock on mine, for the wry smile to play across her lips.
We would never argue again.
* * *
Feedback welcome. /r/ShadowsofClouds for other stories, some sad, some silly. | 2020-12-17T07:51:25 | 2020-12-17T07:01:26 | 69 | 38 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.