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[WP] Music is a dangerous weapon, if not careful entire species can fall to madness upon discovering it. It has been theorised that any race with more than a thousand songs could wipe out all intelligent life, which is why Humanity is so feared in the galaxy despite no human really ever knowing why | A tear slid from his face, tracking down the expanse of his cheek and sliding against the seal of his rebreather.
“It’s beautiful,” he whispered.
“And deadly” the female snapped, fingers suctioning the end of his helmet and jerking him upright, out of the daze of his audio receptors. “Terminate the connection.”
The male glared back, gills frilling up, but the female did not look away. So he did, staring out the bay panel at the little jewel of green and blue. Reluctantly his fingers reached for the switch.
But he paused once more, the sound waves too tantalizing to merely cut it away.
“How did they come by it?” he asked, a breath of awe mingling with his fear.
The female shuddered. “Only a perverse species could devise such a weapon of mass destruction.”
The male nodded and shook himself. “Of course, it’s no small wonder the quarantine has remained in effect for so many thousands of years.” He plotted a course that would take them farther out and around the seemingly insignificant planet. The monstrous creatures would never know of their presence.
He reached for the switch again.
“Baaaaby Shark, do do do do – *……….* ”
The silence was a mercy. | In 1906, Fessenden's violin echoed across the Atlantic. By 1910 it was passing something orbiting Alpha Centauri. Something that was listening. 44 years later, as Fermi was asking his question, anyone left in universe already knew the answer was on it's way.
But the answer would share itself in it's own time. Humanity would take a mere decade to escape the planet, only another to prove themselves capable of standing in the heavens, but their presence was already preceded by their own voice. As people built cities on Mars and Venus, as drones mined Kuiper to build the ships that would travel to Proxima, all conditions for the great filter had been met.
There could be no mistake, what the device on Alpha Centauri heard was confirmed on Vega, then Arcturus. The counter incremented with every harmony it heard. After all, only biological life would organize analog signals. Only living beings, with flesh. And nervous tissue. And so, it was inevitable. In turn, each listening post passed one thousand instances, confirming beyond a doubt the presence of life. They then collapsed a small black hole, sending a tiny yet unmistakable wave of gravity through the universe. It was technology humanity would unlock just in time to communicate across their fledgling interstellar civilization.
The first message humanity sent via ansible read "MUSIC ATTRACTS IT. RUN. STAY SILENT. CAPTURE WORSE THAN DEATH."
Anyone left in the universe already knew. | 2019-09-28T12:09:05 | 2019-09-28T11:30:05 | 25 | 14 |
[WP] When summoning a demon, something very unexpected happens. The demon bellows through the fire and smoke, “Who dares to call upon me, Mortal- wait.. dude, is that really you?” The demonic voice immediately switches to the familiar voice of your high school best-friend, who died years ago. | “Evan? Is that you?” The voice asked through the flowing smoke and flickering red light. A faint smell of sulfur tinged the air. The smoke seems to pulsate with every word.
“Yeah, Steve. I thought you were dead,” Evan said, trying not to let his voice tremble.
“I was. I got better. Seriously, though, why did you summon me?” Steve the Demon asked.
“Wait a damned minute. Tell me what the heck is going on. If you’re a demon, why were you in high school? Why did you die? You were my best bud. I fucking cried for a week when I found out. I was depressed for years after. It ruined my life.” Evan wiped a few tears from his eyes.
“Sherry abandoned me. I started drinking, and not like at the parties. Serious shit. I got to a bottle of bourbon and a six pack as a daily requirement.
“In college I started on the really hard stuff. Heroin. Cocaine. Anything to kill the pain. I nearly died from it.”
“Evan, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” Steve whispered.
“I managed for a while,” Evan continued, “Got mostly clean. Met a nice girl. Got married. Got a job. Had a couple kids. But I never got better. After a while I went back to the bottle. She left. Took the kids with her. I tried to kill myself but failed at that, too.”
Evan heard a faint gasp and a tiny sob. “I’m so sorry,” Steve whispered, again and again, the smoke pulsating with every syllable and every catch in the disembodied voice.
“I hit rock bottom. I figured I’m already damned so let’s make a deal. I may as well get something for my immortal soul.”
“Dude,” Steve said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have any other choice, Steve. I don’t have any other options.”
“Evan, I can’t take your soul. And right now your soul isn’t bound for hell. All that suffering, even self inflicted, has kept your soul clean. Most of the people I meet don’t know that. They make a deal with me and that’s where I get their souls.”
Evan looked up, looking for a face in the smoke. The smoke slowly coalesced into a slightly older version of his high school friend. The corporeal body of the demon clasped Evan in a deep and firm hug. Evan slowly, cautiously, raised his arms and clasped them about his friend. He clung to his high school friend and wept.
“It’s gonna be all right, Evan,” Steve said. “I’ll help you. No charge. Your soul will go where ever it belongs when you’re done.”
“Thanks, man. Thank you.” | Allan appeared abruptly. Suddenly standing before my eyes as soon as I blinked. He's twisted features were smiling and its eyes gleamed with joy that seemed frighteningly genuine.
"...dude! It's me, Allan!" Allan said as he approached me to go in for the hug. It didn't matter though. What mattered was that the summoning worked, and now he can proceed to do what he planned.
"Hey bro! Talk to me!" Allan waved his blood red hands as he spoke. "Aren't you suprised bro? I'm a fucking demon now! How cool is that!"
"I summoned you to do my bidding demon." I said.
"Bro! Seriously? I know a few years have passed but come on! Demon? We seriously need to have a bro talk!" Allan snapped his fingers and I found myself sitting with a drink in hand. Allan sat in front of me, raising his eyebrows as he took a sip.
"Cool right?"
I nodded, his personality hasn't changed. He had always been a free spirit. Always doing what he wanted when he wanted, not bothering to think of the consequences. Maybe it was a bad trait to have, but it was exactly what reeled me into him. I was the exact opposite of Allan. Never acting, always thinking, never getting anything I wanted. So when he came to me asking about the occult I couldn't help but see an oppurtunity to change the course of my life.
"Bro! What's wrong with you! You're hurting my feelings bro." He said, making a pouting face.
"I'm sorry... Allan." Truly I was sorry. "It's just that, I need to make this deal fast, and I- I feel like I'm running out of time." I said, letting my tears flow freely as I clutched at my chest.
The athmosphere around us felt heavier as his eyes grew wide. He finally felt the gravity of the situation.
"B-bro... are you sick? Is it cancer? Bro? Bro!"
My head swayed side to side before I fell from my chair landing on the wooden floorboards.
"Bro! Tell me what you want! Please! Don't die on me bro!" He rushed over or rather teleported beside me, holding me tight as he leaned in to hear my weak voice.
"I want to live longer. I want more years Allan.. " I closed my eyes as my breathing slowed down.
"Fuck! Just say a name man! Just say a name..."
"Annabelle..."
As soon as I uttered the name, the familiar feeling of lightness coursed through my veins. I felt better than before. My life wouId be better than before.
I glanced around to see, well, no one. The deal was done so the depths of hell had already took Allan back home. It was just about time for me to leave as well, I had to get up early for the funeral soon. Annabelle didn't like it when people were late, she was strict for as long as I knew her. She never liked lazy people, but somehow we got along very well. So, it was easy to form strong bonds with her, she was the perfect best friend.
Just like Allan. | 2020-06-18T05:04:56 | 2020-06-18T03:28:56 | 30 | 12 |
[WP] You're walking to work, then suddenly a person in a white suit appears and says "Uh yeah I've accidentally permanently stopped time and it'll take me 2 months to fix it, but somehow you're not frozen in time. But hey, whatever object you touch should still work, so uh good luck and have fun." | 5 minutes ago. It all happened 5 minutes ago, I lost my best friend, the love of my life.
We were having our Sunday walk around town, window shopping the various boutiques of this nice midsized city. Hands holding a little weirdly since I was a little too tall so when we held hands hers clung onto mine, I remember the weight. We came across this one eccentric hat shop called Top Apparel. It was small but with a large variety of hats sitting on shelves. The cashier was playing on his phone slumped over on his elbow while lean standing on the glass desk the register was on. We tried on what felt like every hat, but with every hat a persona. We were the chaplins, the British guardsmen, the detectives. Her laugh was the brightest thing in the world. Taken by the dumb stupid hat.
The sirens blaring in my ears that’s the loudest thing I didn’t hear. My focus was on her, her lifeless body being lifted away. The tire skids on her arms, the deep gashes, my wife in a stretcher.
Worst part is that I only thought that the world froze when I looked at her. This white suit tells me I’m stuck in my personal hell for 2 months. I start being in denial, I start thinking this is an opportunity I could fix her wounds myself, stop the damage, bring her back. I start reading every book on the human body in the nearby library, because it’d be too hard if me touching my phone made the cell towers work too. I had two months to make it right. I started doing stitches on the small wounds, applying bandages, but I’m kidding myself I can’t do anything on the inside. Week 1 wasted.
The rest of month 1 was sitting next to her talking to her like she was still there. I told her about my day, how making food was hard since you’d have to touch the boiling hot water to get the pasta to soften, how I switched every license plate in the next 5 blocks, boy won’t they be upset ;), how I made the mistake of trying to skate, oh the skates moved but the wheels. Trying to imagine the dumb nickname she would think for me trying to skate. Oh the laughs I had until I didn’t.
I don’t remember when but it just felt too heavy to keep looking at her, talking near her. So the rest of the month I drank away my sorrows. I start writing a eulogy for her. Every sweet and beautiful thing she ever did that I remember. Every night I pass out drunk. I wrote 5 stolen notebooks of things I miss about her.
White suit comes back, looks over at the note books. and says “I think we’re gonna reset the day if that’s cool with you.” And the next thing I know, there she is lying next to me that morning.
>!Edit: Thank you for nice words guys :) and the cool awards!!< | A bloody toaster. That was the only thing that worked.
I had been giddy when the man in white came to see me. He had offered me a two-month vacation from work, a vacation with no worries, where nothing would change. Sure things might be frozen, with the creepy frozen faces of people still littering the streets, almost seeming to stare at me as I passed. Their mouths even seemed to twitch, as if it had forced them into a frozen hell that I couldn’t even understand. But I could move and I had all the time in the world.
I had so many plans for my vacation. First, I would trash my boss’s office, kick him in the nads a few times before wandering out to get a doughnut from that little French shop down the corner. That had been the plan, but it soon fell apart. I had arrived at work, confidently pressing my hand against the door, only for it to not budge. Like everything else in this world, it was frozen in place, locked in a permanently closed state. I did everything I could to open it, but it refused to budge, even a well-placed kick did little to deter it.
Well, maybe that plan had fallen away, but I could still go home and play video games, right? Do you know how they say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again? Well, I was quickly becoming less sane with each door I pushed against, none even offering the slightest amount of shove.
After a good hour of banging my shoulder against my door, I gave up, throwing a small tantrum as I walked away from my home, tossing a rock towards my window, only for the rock to stop in mid-air as it left my hand.
My dream vacation was slowly becoming a personal hell. How could I survive like this? Would I even be able to eat? Accepting my fate, I began living the life of a frozen in time nomad. Moving between areas in search of food and life. That’s when I landed on a miracle. That same little French bakery that was to be my point of celebration had its door open. I snuck inside, almost ready to kiss its floor, if not for the very visible grime that coated it.
Soon I was touching everything inside the shop, but like my previous experiences, nothing worked. In fairness, that wasn’t completely true. The small cheap toaster in the corner still seemed to work. Now all I needed was food. Walking towards the backroom of the bakery, I would find a treasure trove of fresh bread, bread that was sliced into perfect pieces, frozen in time, never to go mouldy.
At least I wouldn’t starve. I grabbed a few pieces of bread, heading to find the toaster, only to realize that I wasn’t even hungry. Could I even get hungry?
It seemed I couldn’t. So for the next two months, my only entertainment was a small toaster, constantly shoving bread into it, watching it cook before my eyes before it sprung free. When it had cooked, I tossed it aside, forming a small pile of discarded burnt bread before putting another piece in.
It would be a long two months.
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(If you enjoyed this feel free to check out my subreddit /r/Sadnesslaughs where I'll be posting more of my writing.) | 2020-09-20T05:04:09 | 2020-09-20T02:20:50 | 3,108 | 637 |
[WP] You, a newly-turned vampire, are thrilled to discover that you CAN eat garlic, walk in sunlight, and see yourself in mirrors, all while being immortal. You are much less thrilled to discover the one major drawback that none of the legends ever got right. | **Have you ever seen a man sweat his own blood?**
It spreads first from the warmest places of your body. Under your arms and your crotch. But those stains are easy to hide beneath dark clothes.
When the warmth reaches your face, tiny, crimson pinpricks - as bright as summer berries - stand out on your brow. They grow into drops until the crown of your head is stained red and dripping.
If you’re not careful, you can choke on it. Choke on your own blood.
I was leaning on the railing, watching the black-blue water lap at our hull. Icicles fringed the roof, like teeth. Despite the frigid winds, the heat from the engines made the ice drip.
The roar of the engines drowned out all thoughts. A moment of peace, so I could mull over what I had gained…
And what it had cost me…
“You!” a deckhand’s voice jerked me from my reverie. “Blimey, you’re bleeding all over!”
I did not mean to stand next to the engines. Perhaps I was drawn to the heat? Perhaps the Ritual had not drained all the humanity from me.
When he came closer, I tried to wave him off. I fumbled for a handkerchief, a piece of black satin I took from the tailor after I finished with him.
“You’re covered in blood, man! What happened?”
“Tis nothing, good sir. I am fine. Thank you.”
“No, you ain’t. Listen here, you’re a bleeding mess.”
“Where I bleed is my own business. Leave me. Please.”
It was at that moment that the deckhand decided this was his ocean, and he made the rules here. Why? I cannot say. Perhaps he despised old nobles like myself and wished to demonstrate his superiority. Perhaps I looked too much like a land-dweller.
“Right. You’re coming with me. No one is bleeding to death on my watch.”
He reached out, presumably to grab me, but I caught his hand. He yelped at the surprising strength of my grip.
In the whites of his eyes, I could see my old self. You could smell the fear. Had I really been like this, before the Ritual?
So weak. So… supple.
If someone had been listening - really listening - they might have heard the screams over the roar of the engine. But this was a large boat, and the crew was little more than a skeleton. Most of the passengers were below decks, away from the frozen winds.
And the splash? It could have been anything. A chunk of ice. A fish. *A body.* Nobody would wonder, not until we had left him far behind.
Wiping my lips with the satin handkerchief, a new thought occurred to me.
Back in the foggy, gaslit City, the more bodies you had to hide, the harder it became to hide them. A frozen village was better… but it would still offer the same problem.
But in the North, the waters are cold.
Perfect for washing away the blood.
***
**[Part 2 is here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/j633gc/wp_you_a_newlyturned_vampire_are_thrilled_to/g7wxqzp/)** | I let out a deep and overly dramatic sigh. Not that I still breathed, it was just a habit I still help onto. Protruding from my chest was a wooden stake, studded with metal, likely supposed to be silver. I followed the stake to the pale hand wrapped around it, following it to a set of tattered robes wrapped around an arm, which attacked to a body. A hood came up from the shoulders that arm was attached to, and finally my eyes met with a pair of eyes. Suspiciously human eyes, which gleamed with triumph and glee. As I stared back into them uninterested, the glee turned to curiosity, then terror.
A sickening crunch and a howl of deep pain followed. Human boned still too, did this man have no augments? I stared down at him, as he clutched the twisted remains of his right hand, which itself hung limply to the the remains of a wrist bone. I hadn't meant to so thoroughly destroy the man's hand, and I offered a half hearted "Sorry," as I pulled the stake from my chest and tossed it aside. The hole sealed, but my authentic 2092 style Retro Synthwave T-shirt was absolutely ruined. It was my favourite shirt, made from cotton from China before the collapse of civilization. It had proudly exclaimed as much.
"I tried it myself, in 2024, you know," I told him. He peered up at me with hatred and disdain. "Garlic and sunlight didn't work, and the crucifix did nothing. So I stared myself in a mirror and plunged a sharpened table leg into my own chest. Nothing happened." Being a Vampire meant a cure all from death, at the cost of other's lives. I'd learned Stephanie Meyer had gotten write that you could use animals, and there was even a vampiric deer I had let go for my own amusement. 2163 was a long time since I'd been turned in 2020. I shrugged and he spat at me. "You're not my first, in sorry to say," I added. The thing no one told you in those vampire books was that people actively hunted you. They craved to hunt you, in the before time it was fear, but now it was some misguided belief about a lack of humanity. Not that there was much of that left either, everyone running around running microcomputers in their brain, and augmenting their bodies to be almost as immortal as I. But the reaper came for them eventually, and he would never come for me.
For a moment I considered the man before me, a purely human being. I could turn him, let him experience the enhanced smells, the vibrance of life he was missing, the ability to walk past the horrors humanity had and continued to inflict upon themselves. I watched him writhe in pain in his wrist, the knowledge that no doctor would fix it, just replace it with augments, make him less human. He looked back at me, his eyes full of hatred. A bared my fangs, he recoiled, and I laughed. No, while it had been ages since I had turned someone, and a few years since is had treated myself to human blood, I turned and walked away. His punishment would be losing a piece of his his humanity for trying to rid the world of mine. He would look in the mirror with self loathing and disgust every day, knowing he had failed, and when he either died of natural causes or by his own hand, he would curse my name, knowing I had taken something from him he'd held so dear.
I was a monster after all. | 2020-10-06T07:02:42 | 2020-10-06T07:02:23 | 127 | 77 |
[WP] you are a super hero/heroine. You've been captured by your nemesis so often that now you tend small talk while trying to escape or waiting for a rescue. Today's topic: the creepy fan mail you've BOTH been getting. | The chain dropped another foot as the sharks cut vicious circles below.
My arms were trapped in a straightjacket, my feet bound together, weights swinging in loose arcs from my ankles. I rotated clockwise, then anticlockwise, as the chain stuttered towards the roiling water.
Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. It was all a bit anticlimactic, for her. The villainess could do better. A couple of months ago, there was the volcano cannon. Before that, the pit of cybernetic lions. And I would never forget the classic conveyer-belt-into-spinning-saw. Maybe she was starting to run out of ideas.
The villainess herself, a young twenty-something adorned in black spandex, paced back and forth on a catwalk above. Metallic talons extended from the tips of her fingers, and she gestured wildly as she spoke. I vaguely worried that she would hurt herself. She always liked to talk, and I’d grown to enjoy our little chit-chats. But today, she was especially animated.
“It’s like, the note was terrible.” I winced as one metallic finger stopped inches from her throat.
I nodded amiably.
“But what's worse is that he posted it to my address! He knew my secret identity! That’s the real trouble. It crosses a line, you know? It’s my *privacy*.”
The chain dropped another foot.
“I get it,” I said. “Did he at least write you compliments? He called me a ‘modern-day Achilles.’ It was nice.”
There was a knife in my back pocket. If I used the knife to cut through the straightjacket, I had a chance. My arm started to ache as I fidgeted.
“This *sucks*! All he wrote about was how hot I was, calling me 'babe this', 'honey that'. And he calls you 'Achilles'. What an asshole!”
I grasped the knife and started cutting.
She stopped pacing and looked at me. For a moment, I worried she knew what I was doing. But the look on her face was more curiosity than anything else.
“What did he write in yours?” she asked, eyebrow raised.
“Just fan mail. I saved his best friend a couple of years back, he’s so grateful, that kind of stuff. The only weird thing was that it went to my apartment.”
As I talked, the chain dropped another foot. I could see the whites of the sharks’ eyes, now.
“That’s not *fair,*” she groaned. “I *hate* double standards. Men these days!”
I was almost finished cutting the straightjacket and started swinging back and forth. If I swung up to the catwalk, then maybe I could--. But that train of thought was interrupted when she looked at me expectantly.
“I feel you,” I said hurriedly. “The entitlement is inappropriate. It’s like some men don’t even understand unbalanced gender dynamics, or haven’t even heard of feminism. In this day and age, with the internet, that kind of ignorance is unforgivable. They should know better.”
As I talked, I swung back and forth, arcing higher and higher, until the apex was level with the catwalk. Before I finished speaking, I cut the last of the straightjacket, using the arc’s momentum to burst out and roll onto the catwalk.
I crouched before her, arms raised, ready to fight.
She watched the maneuver contemplatively. Her eyes seemed far away as we began to spar. She barely looked at me as she whipped a kick towards my stomach.
“Entitlement’s a good way to look at it,” she mused, spinning away again. “It’s entitled to call me 'babe'. And it’s entitled to violate our secret identities.”
Her claws slashed forward, inches from my face, and I barely leaned out of the way. The weights, pooled around my ankles, made it hard to fight.
“I wonder who the guy is,” I said. “I mean, do you think he has powers?”
I feinted to the left, then punched to the right, narrowly missing her jaw.
“If he has powers, it’s the power to be a world-class creep.”
She pulled on my overextended arm, sent me sprawling, and pinned my throat against the edge of the catwalk. Behind me, the straightjacket hung inches above the water; below, the sharks roiled.
“Maybe we can team up?” I choked out, desperate now. “It’ll be good for both of us if we catch this guy.”
Her eyes brighten.
“Yes! I’m *so* in! Let’s take down this dude. It’d be nice to be a heroine, for once. And honestly, what he did is way worse than anything *I’ve* ever done.”
I nod in agreement, as the chain stuttered for the last time, finally lowering the straightjacket into the water. The sharks tore it to fragments in their frenzy.
---
Always appreciate writing advice! Thanks for reading. | "Well, isn't this a familiar scenario?"
I shook the dizziness from my head, which only made it hurt more. I was pinned under several heavy crates and could barely move. Looking up, I began to mentally kick myself. It was such an obvious trap, but it had been just long enough since he had last used it. Just like last time, the Baron stepped from the shadows, dressed in an expensive looking suit and overcoat. His face was covered by the expressionless porcelain mask he always wore, but I could feel the smug smirk through it. He stooped to one knee and examined me for a moment.
"You know," he finally sighed "if I didn't know any better I might assume you were being this idiotic on purpose. I am honestly starting to run out of ideas for trapping you, which is quite the feat considering my intellect and your apparent lack of one."
"I'm just giving you a fair chance is all" I grumbled as I tested the weight on my back. It budged very little to either side so it was probably secured, or maybe it was just that much heavier.
"Besides," I gave a smirk of my own, "for such a difference in intellect, you've never actually gotten me for good, Baron."
The Baron tilted his head slightly at this. "If I had wanted you dead, Mr. Ultimate, trust me I would have done so by now. The truth is your feeble efforts have become rather amusing. You are no threat to my plans, you are the distraction from the more tedious parts of my enterprises."
"Yeah, I feel you," I tried to wiggle my arm free of its uncomfortable position, getting some leeway. "Speaking of things to be distracted from, how is the kid these days? I heard he's starting high school, probably a big deal for you."
The Baron gave a low sigh. "He's doing fine. Adjusting pretty well, actually. No, no, Silas has been rather well behaved recently."
"Hm. Is it work stress?" I grunted as I unsuccessfully tried a push up. "I wouldn't really know, but I'd imagine running such a major criminal empire as well as the legal front would be tiring." A long breath escaped me as I gave up on the push up.
The Baron looked at me, the glassy eyes of the mask betraying no emotion. "Mr. Ultimate I have been at this game since before you could crawl. No it's not work its..." He lifted his eyes for a moment, "something... weird. Weird for even someone of my caliber, Mr. Ultimate."
"Weird?" I frowned, or more specifically grimaced as I slowly extracted a leg from a particularly pointy metal crate. "Like, extraterrestrial weird? Or just an unexpected kinda weird?"
He shook his head slightly. "I don't know, just... never mind it. Besides, it's not as if telling you will make a difference. I might as well-"
"No,no,no! I'm helping you get to the bottom of this thing" I turned my gaze up and met the dead eyes of the mask. "Man to man. What's got you weirded out, Rob?" A sharp exhale answered that name, followed by a deep inhale and a sigh.
"Tell me, Aiden, you're the public's poster boy, you get praise sung to you from hundreds for simply getting a cat out of a tree. Surely you have most of the world chanting your name." The mask tilted slightly. "Did you ever have that odd fan? The kind that sends inane ramblings and utterly disturbing works of fiction to your addresses, be it home or work?"
"Yeah, I've had a couple. In fact, there was this one nutjob that kept dming these really messed up fanfics, most involving me. Actually, most involved you as well. Not too sure how they know about you, though, what with the secret society thing you have going on." I looked back up to see the Baron slowly removing the mask. I had obviously see his face before, but it was still a shock. He had a curious expression, almost that of recognition. Suddenly I began to clue in. What he had said about me having no intelligence was far from the truth, and both of us seemed to have a realization at the same time.
"No way," I muttered dumbfounded.
"Impossible" he mouthed at the same instant. A few dead silent moments of understanding passed before the two of us burst into laughter. I have to give the Baron credit. He may be a complete dirtbag who has tried to kill me on multiple occasions, but that laugh would've fooled me a million times over. After we had come down to the stray giggle or two, he chuckled,
"Of course I've already had a couple of my boys go to sort this mess."
"If I weren't such a paragon, I might not try to stop it this time."
The Baron snorted aloud as he began to fasten his mask back on. "Oh, then I think we are going to have a fun time of it tonight." I kicked out a supporting box and stood, the heap of metal collapsing to one side and lunged at him, a smile on my face. | 2020-10-28T04:39:12 | 2020-10-28T04:36:23 | 66 | 29 |
[WP] You are the mayor of a city surrounded by seemingly terrifying monsters. The dragon helps with the smithing, the vampires help with the overnight work, the lich runs the local apothecary. Everyone does their part and the city works. It's always problematic when heroes come to visit. | The bailiff called court into session with three sharp raps of the gavel. “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. This Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Cown Bonebreaker presiding. You may be seated.” The Judge settled his massive bulk into the reinforced chair at the head of the room. His single eye looked out over the courtroom, taking in the parties arrayed before him.
The bailiff looked down his notes. “Calling case number three on the docket, City of Ledford v. Theodore Strongarm.” One of the goblins, a sharply dressed fellow in a black suit with a green tie that matched his scales, stood. “Lynal Greenscale, on behalf of the Defendant, your Honor. My client is in custody. May we bring him in?”
The Judge nodded and gestured at the bailiff who went to retrieve the defendant from the adjoining room. When the bailiff returned, he was accompanied by two guards and a man dressed in leather armor whose hands were chained behind his back. As the man was escorted to the defendant’s table, he turned and saw the Judge. “A cyclops?” the human sputtered “you let a cyclops be a judge? This entire town is insane.” The Judge looked down and when he spoke, his voice was like the low rumble of an earthquake. “Mr. Greenscale, control your client. Or I will hold him with contempt.” The Judges massive hands gripped the desk as he spoke, causing an audible creaking from the wood.
After a moment of silence, the Judge turned to the prosecutor. “You may begin” came the cyclops rumbling voice. The prosecutor, a middle aged human whose muscle had begun to run to fat, stood and took a deep breath. “Thank you, your honor. Alexander Torvinson, on behalf of the City. Defendant Theodore Strongarm stands accused of two counts of bladed assault and one count of public intoxication. Do you understand the charges being brought against you?”
“No!” came the answer from the accused. “No I don’t understand the charges. How is that a crime? There was a gods damned vampire walking the streets of the town! I was protecting you people!” The goblin lawyer hissed a comforting hiss at his client, trying to calm the man. It was not helpful. Strongarm shoved the goblin away and turned back to the Judge. “And now I’m being judged by a cyclops and defended by a goblin? When the Inquisition hears about this, they will bring Era’s holy fire down upon this town!”
The Judges eye never left Strongarm. “Mr. Greenscale. Do you have anything to add to your clients statements? Or, perhaps, do you have any motions to make?” The goblin hissed again at his client, the hiss now seeming to convey disappointment. “Yes, your honor. At this time, and based on the statements of my client, I would like to move for involuntary commitment while a study is conducted regarding my client’s mental fitness to proceed and penal responsibility. I do not believe he can understand the charges, nor meaningfully participate in his own defense.”
The Judge nodded, and looked for any objection from the prosecutor. Hearing none, turned back to Strongarm. “Defense’s motion is hereby granted. Defendant is remanded to the custody of Dr. Mortis for a determination as to mental capacity and fitness to proceed. We will reconvene in one months time for the good doctors report. Thank you gentlefolk. Next case.” | A small suburban town called Aspenport is given the name Monster Town by the local media when monsters arrived from another realm. The people of the town vacated immediately.
It's been a year since their arrival, the town is now surrounded by seemingly terrifying monsters. Reports say, they are here to stay. There's one person who did not exit the town. It's the mayor Geraldine herself.
"We have all heard of creatures from the myths and stories as kids, if they were here to destroy us they'd have done it already but they didn't so I welcome you all, people of the world to experience it in person, you have nothing to fear." Mayor Geraldine gave a statement to the public a few weeks before.
Inspired by her words a few of them entered the town. The town transformed itself to suit the needs of the monsters, the monsters helped the city in return.
The dragon help with the smithing, the vampires help with the overnight work, the lich runs the local apothecary, Werewolves help transport containers in harbor, Sirens keep watch with the coast guard, the Leprechauns run the casinos, Chupacabras patrol the streets. Everyone does their part and it works.
What they didn't anticipate is the arrival of so called heroes from different parts of the world. They have made an app called 'Fight a Monster' and gathered millions of users. It had two categories, it asked are you a warrior or a viewer? Not many wanted to face a monster head on, of course, only a handful of crazies and the app creators opted in for it. They came to visit the town, the whole world watched their movement.
The mayor stopped them in the border.
"Should I really need to address them as heroes?"
"Yes ma'am, the world's watching."
"Okay," the mayor let out a heavy sigh. "Why are you here, ahem, heroes?"
"To slay the dragon." "To kill the vampires." "To beat the werewolves," they yelled chorusly but each with different goals.
The heroes donned colorful costumes varying from Metal to Kevlar to Human, they'd come with loads of stuff that are supposed to incapacitate the monsters.
"Well, you've come to the right place, come on, I'll show you the way," said the mayor.
"Psst, hey man, did you see any of them?"
"No, did you?"
"Nah, where are they? Is this a stunt?"
"Don't worry gentlemen, You'll see them alright," said Geraldine.
The whole monsters had gathered in a field. The men who had come to fight them looked at them eyes opened and with their jaws dropped. "Pulls yourselves together warriors, we are here to fight them and save the world," said one of them.
"So who wants to go first?"
"I'll do it, I wanna slay the dragon with my Excalibur," said a guy who came all the way from England.
The dragon came forth, he raised his sword and pointed at the dragon, he stood there nervously. The dragon moved fast toward him and shattered the sword to pieces with its teeth. "This was a mistake!" The guy ran yelling.
The whole town laughed, well, the people who remained in the town. "May be we should do something like this, this will help bring people in," said the mayor to her assistant. "What about a fair?" she asked.
"That's a wonderful idea, ma'am." Her assistant nodded his head.
"What do you say we give you some prep time, take as much time as you need, stay as long as you want, you can even leave if you want," said the mayor.
They accepted it and stayed, the mayor announced a fair and a competition between the heroes and the monsters, she also sent some limited free tickets for families around the world to visit Aspentown. "Bring your children, it'll be fun," She reaffirmed.
r/FleetingScripts | 2020-11-06T09:48:50 | 2020-11-06T09:23:56 | 369 | 73 |
[WP] Humanity has invented the technology required to reach other dimensions. However, instead of finding an incomprehensible Lovecraftian realm, they discover a perfect and beautiful world. To the inhabitants of this new world though, we are monstrous eldritch horrors. | When the first videos came back through the portal, we thought it was an error, a technical failure. Surely no world could actually look like that.
Though the contents of the world closely resembled our own, everything had sharply defined edges that followed linear paths or smooth curves, as if the entire world was drawn in vector graphics.
But the results came back again and again, confirming themselves over and over. The other side of the portal actually looked like that. So the only next step was to send researchers over.
***
The first steps were the weirdest. The ground was impossibly smooth, yet somehow we didn’t slide due to lack of friction. All preliminary observations of the soil were identical to Earth’s dirt, except for the difference in structure. It squished like dirt, smelled like dirt, and probably would even taste like dirt if we had tried. However, it couldn’t break apart like dirt - pick up a handful, and the pieces would form perfect shapes rather than misshapen granules.
Everything else we could test reacted in roughly the same fashion - like stuff from back home but for the structure. Unfortunately, none of our tests were able to determine chemical makeup of things, but considering how different atoms would likely be in this world, it wasn’t surprising.
We encountered our first creatures not long after. Their bodies followed the same structural rules as the rest of the world, as did their motion, which followed smooth paths. However, unlike the general surroundings, they did not exactly resemble anything from our reality.
They had four legs, spaced relatively closely around an upright but hunched torso. Their arms were much longer then human arms, reaching almost to the ground. Their heads hung downwards, their necks angled towards the ground rather than upwards like a human. Instead of facial features, they appeared to have some sort of circular markings on their heads, though it was impossible to get close enough to properly observe them.
We tried to hail them to initiate contact, but it failed. Upon approaching them, they all quickly fled. It’s unclear by what means they observed us, or how the communicated our arrival.
***
Recently, a glowing not-circle appeared some ways outside our city. It looked wrong, as if an uncountable number of smaller chunks were spiraling constantly about in the air. Then, not long after, the Ever-Shifting came.
Words are insufficient to describe the horror of their appearance. They, like the thing they arrived through, appear to be made up of too many overlapping parts. Furthermore, their entire bodies were constantly shifting around in a billion different ways.
They shattered apart pieces of the world around them like it was nothing, and then fed many of those pieces to small objects they carried with them.
Not long after that, they turned their sights to our homes. They did *something* with the bulbous objects atop their bodies - perhaps misshapen versions of our heads - and caused the air to shake in ways that were maddening to hear, an overlapping cacophony of screams.
We are fleeing our homes in the hopes that they will be satisfied with them and not turn to destroying us.
***
***
I haven’t written in a long time, and I’ve never been too confident in my writing. Constructive criticism is appreciated! | The door slowly opened. News coverage at every corner, companies already sending out bland messages congratulating the team.
The Nullifiuer was built in 3.5 years and even longer planning it. Eric Dunce stood tall as the head of the team. His blonde hair waved in the wind. He tapped on the mic as the door opened.
It fizzled.
“Attention everyone! My Name is Eric Dunce, and I’m the head scientist at Alchme,” he took a deep breath, “We have spent ten years perfecting this. We have spent countless tax dollars funding it, and today it’s done. With the help of my team we have made a gate way to another universe!”
Suddenly, almost perfectly, the door fully opened. A loud shudder was heard. A bright orange light flew out, so bright everyone one in the area seemed fully black.
Eric turned around. This wasn’t apart of the plan. He look at his long time girlfriend Cassandra.
A being, no taller than a child, walked out.
He screamed in tongue. Everyone was mortified.
“My apologies,” he said, “My name is Egäd, and I’m an ambassador for Graucknut. My planet has noticed this,...primitive technology and sent me. We would like to speak to the creator.”
Eric felt mortified. They want him. Him. He took a breath.
“Cassandra Gaine made it.” He spoke.
Cassandra looked at him, filled with both anger and fear.
“Lying,” Egäd said, “it’s been along time since someone has said that. Come with me child.”
Eric was lifted in the air and threw the portal.
——————-———————————-———————
The world is green, trees are as big as skyscrapers, the ocean as clear as glass. Animals walk around in public. Streets don’t exist. Everyone looks happy. And ugly.
“W-Where?” Eric was fumbling.
“My planet.”
Everyone walked to help him up. They all greeted him.
“This is what we want to do to your world Eric. Your world is.... bad. Your people are fascists, they burn your planet down. We will help with that.
“We have been testing you for years. In fact I have tested you multiple times today. You lied, you tried to manipulate, and your judging these people and myself based on appearance.” Egäd spoke.
Eric still wouldn’t move.
“We don’t want to hurt you, we are going to help. We just want your corporation.”
“Will I be the hero?” Eric asked.
“Greed. You have a long way to go Eric. You want to be the hero. You want the fame and to play the game.
“Yet when the worst comes you won’t except it and put the blame on another.”
Eric began to run. Greed, anger, whatever you want to call it, compelled him to leave.
“Well be back Eric. When your gone our world will help make yours better. We’re not the villains here Eric. That’s just a perspective.”
The portal blipped as he jumped in.
————————————————————————
Eric was back. He was gone for a year. The world that he returned to was burning. People everywhere dead. But Cassandra was still sitting their, as she did every day for the past year.
“I did it.” Eric said.
“What?” She said.
“I saved everyone” a tear strolled down his face. | 2020-12-22T22:16:25 | 2020-12-22T17:03:39 | 15 | 11 |
[WP] You are every Super Hero’s worst enemy, not because you are particularly powerful, but because nothing you do is technically illegal… you’re just a huge asshole. | "Ma'am you need to be a little more careful where you stand." The side smirk, perfect white teeth. A commanding but assuring smooth silky voice. He held an arm extended, an ex-falling car balanced in a single hand. AmazoMan.
The lady, mere moments from deaths, her life flashing before her eyes, now stood in the shadow of her hero. "Oh my God, AmazoMan, you saved me!"
"All in a days work." He shirked, placing down down the car. The delirious, slightly overweight, bleary eyed banker inside, now unsure of what to do.
AmazoMan delicately touched down beside the lady. "Are you hurt?" He asked, placing a hand on a scraped forearm. She blushed. "It's nothing-"
"NICE DICK AMAZOMAN!"
AmazoMan shuttered. Barry Fucking Morris. Always fucking around wasn't he. One day no one would notice AmazoMan *wouldn't* save him. Then he could be rid of him.
"YOU STILL PACKING SOCKS IN THERE BIG MAN?!"
AmazoMan gave a placating smile to the crowd. Not looking the lady in the eyes, he flew away. | “Look your robbed from the poor and gave to the rich” he said as his stupid H glowed on his chest. Hope man was the galaxies most powerful hero and that was saying a lot. Me well I’m just a guy. “ no no no I bought that Martian egg fair and square ok. It’s in a museum so thank you tax write off” his face twisted in an unamused expression that really he’s been wearing since he landed. “ Fine but you can help the sick.” Amazing woman said. To get fair she was amazing to look at at least. Man maybe I am sick. “ I do as long as they pay their premium; insurance will pay every time.” She wanted to punch me i could feel it.
“What is wrong with you” wonder kid said trying his hardest to stay calm.
“ Look I get paid and live happily ok. I don’t break the law and I provide valuable jobs. If anything if it wasn’t for crew Klean you would be the villains. So shouldn’t you be thanking me.” I said it I didn’t want to but I just did.
The intimidator stood up. He was a martian so probably the martian egg thing made him a little angry. “ You pay the friends of villainy’s taxes”
“We’ll yeah but I also pay the tower of impeccable destruction… sorry I mean tower of good guys clean up and charity fees as well”
They all left in a huff. I mean it’s their second visit this week. One day we’ll get a hero smart enough to realize I write the laws to. It’s good to be technically not evil. | 2021-08-02T02:50:08 | 2021-08-02T01:55:44 | 272 | 25 |
[WP] You're an enchanted suit of armor, empty on the inside. After gaining sentience you left the haunted keep you were stored in and began adventuring. As you gain notoriety as an adventurer and make friends and connections, it gets harder to keep it a secret that there's nothing behind your visor. | “Galade, why don’t you ever take that armor off?” said my companion.
“Makes me feel comf’rble,” I replied, tersely.
“All that metal can’t be comfortable, friend. Come, when’s the last time you took that off?” he said as he reached for the sides of my helmet. I grabbed his hands, which seemed to surprise him.
“It’s quite comf’rting, knowing that any weapon an en’my might bring to bear’ll do me next to no ‘arm when it strikes,” I responded, as I had many times to the same inquiry from others.
Valden’s expression soured. “But it’s just the two of us here. Do you not trust me? Gods above, Galade, I don’t even know what you look like.”
I hadn’t the guts literally or figuratively to tell him then and there that this was all there was to see, but he persisted in reaching for my… well, I suppose “face” isn’t the wrong word, so I felt some reassurance or explanation was in order. What could I say, though? This friend of mine must have been acting under the assumption that I was like him, alive and full of warmth and compassion, but alas, I am just this metal shell imbued with a hollow semblance of life…
“Galade. Please.”
I wanted so completely to tell him the truth in that moment. Yet it was as if some barrier existed that prevented the words from issuing forth. What would he think? What would he say? Surely, he would want me destroyed for the abomination I am, but if I deny him now, he will only persist in his prying. Perhaps I am only delaying the inevitable.
I let go of his hands, accepting of my fate.
As my visor lifted, he looked surprised, then confused, then perhaps a little angry, as he searched the empty helmet for a face.
“That’s… all ‘ere is, my friend,” I said, arms outstretched, waiting for the inevitable accusatory finger-point and shouting about Gods and the natural and unnatural and so on. He was indignant for certain, but not quite in the way I expected.
“You’re… what, you’re an animated armor?”
“…yes.”
“What, and you weren’t going to tell me as such? I was worried, Galade! You know it’s pretty obvious you don’t sleep and don’t eat properly, I thought you would collapse any minute if you didn’t get some proper rest! Oh, that’s a relief. Dear Gods.”
This was… a strange feeling. Relief? Happiness? I didn’t know how I was… supposed to feel, but nonetheless I managed to inquire, “You’re not… mad? Afraid?”
He replied, “Well, no, I could never stay mad at you. I didn’t know animated things like you could be so… human. It’s certainly weird, but… many things in life are weirder than *this.*” He gestured to my shell as he spoke. “Honestly, friend, I’m quite impressed, first at the fact that you are so much… *yourself*, and second, that you managed to keep this a secret as long as you did.”
“But I’m a monster…”
“Sure, but what difference does that make?” he asked. “You’ve proven time and time again that you’ve got a good soul, and that’s all that really matters in life. Come, I’m sure you’ve got some interesting stories about wizards and old, crumbly towers to tell.”
I thought about his words for a long time after that. I’m still not sure I understand, but it was nice to know I really could trust him. | "May the Gods bear witness to my oath. Until every last monster is wiped from the land, I swear that I shall never remove my armour."
It was the simplest solution, at the time. Drastic measures were needed - if not, I would have been found out sooner or later.
There were simply too many situations where wearing armour couldn't be attributed to eccentricity or paranoia. Take, for instance, sailing the high seas. For a human, wearing a full suit on a ship was a death sentence - fall overboard, and you'd be weighed down to a drowning death. When I slew the Kraken, it was a tall order to convince my companions to let me "keep" my armour on.
Hence, the oath. "I'm under holy vow to never remove it" was a terribly convenient excuse, and I never tired of repeating it so long as I could keep my secret safe. Surely there was no way that every single monster could be wiped from the land.
Until now.
"You look dazed, Alden. What's up? Nervous?" Girald, fellow adventurer and companion, nudged me in the side.
Here I was, wielding the Sword that Seals the Darkness, near the end of my quest to destroy the Great Malice, the source of dark energy from which all monsters spawned. Unfortunately, that was a big problem for me.
"Ha! Alden, nervous? I couldn't imagine it," Rina, my other companion, joked.
I fingered the Sword's scabbard in anxiety. "Well," I lied, "I'm just worried about Zagath, you know."
Girald grinned. "Zagath is nothing. We'll pound him into the dust, destroy the Malice, then we'll get to see what's under that armour."
"We'll be the first ones to see it," Rina agreed. "To be honest, I'm actually quite excited."
They were, in fact, telling the truth. The hardest parts of our quest were over. Dark Sorcerer Zagath might have been a match for us in the past, but with the legendary Sword, I was confident we could take him.
After hours of walking the halls of the Horizon-Devouring Labyrinth, we finally came upon the chamber in which the Malice resided. And there, Zagath was waiting.
"Alden," Zagath snarled, "Today is the day I will rip that famed armor from your body."
"You will try," I replied.
I shall spare you the details of battle. But when it was all over, when Zagath was prone on the floor, my sword pointed at his neck, his face sputtering in incomprehensible rage, I knew I was at the end of my rope. My secret would be revealed in a few scant moments. Girald and Rina stood victoriously beside me.
A ludicrous idea came to my mind.
"Shame, Zagath," I taunted. "You'll be the only one in the world that never gets to see my face."
Zagath's face twisted.
"You've been fighting for years, but your miserable end is finally here. You will die without even knowing the face of the one who killed you. How does that feel?"
Zagath's eyes bulged, teeth gnashing, unbridled anger turning his face a deep shade of red.
"Curse you, Alden! Curse you!" He cried. Zagath weakly raised his hand, attempting to power his final, desperate spell. "If I shall never see the face of my killer, then the people shall never see the face of their saviour! I curse you to..."
Girald and Rina's faces twisted in horror, but if I had a face, I think I would have been smiling the widest smile in my whole life.
"...never be able to remove your armour!"
----------------
Inspired by a [webnovel](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/43947/armor) with pretty much the exact same premise as the prompt. Also breath of the wild lol | 2021-09-21T08:42:20 | 2021-09-21T08:15:00 | 1,144 | 455 |
[WP] A vampire tries their best to explain to a lovestruck teenager that they, the vampire, is actually their great-great grandparent and their behavior to them is creepy. | "Look, I know you've been following me," Diana said slyly as she twirled a lock of raven-black hair around her finger. "I won't lie, you're just my type. When are you going to ask me on a date?" She paused and looked up demurely from beneath her long lashes. "Or were you just going to kidnap me one day?"
Alucard cursed beneath his breath. Children. It seemed like every generation, they came up with new ways to get under his skin.
"Let me get this straight," he replied. "You noticed me, a strange older man, dressed in all black, following you around. And you never thought to alert the authorities? Never thought, 'oh, this is kind of creepy'? Never thought maybe you should, I don't know, tell your parents that you had a stalker?"
"I thought you were kind of strange the first time I noticed you three months ago," Diana replied. "But then it kind of grew on me. It's nice, having a secret admirer. Plus, your pointy canines are kind of hot. Makes you look like a sexy vampire."
"Hold on," Alucard rubbed at the furrow between his brows. "You've known I was following you for the past three months? And you didn't think it was creepy?"
The teenager frowned. "No, I just told you. It's mysterious. And hot."
Biting back a retort, the vampire prayed for patience. This was not his first rodeo. He'd watched dozens of his grandchildren and great grand-children grow, had helped them change from foolish young naifs to accomplished adults. He wouldn't turn his back on Diana now. Besides, he'd made a promise to Rhiannon.
"Here, sit." Alucard gestured at a park bench nearby, and Diana took his cue. "Strange older men following you around are not sexy. They aren't hot. They're a good way to get murdered, and let me tell you, there's nothing mysterious about being dead."
Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not a child," she snapped back at him. "There's no need to talk down to me. And who even *are* you?"
*Patience*, Alucard reminded himself. "Let's just say I'm a friend of the Tepes family. And today, I'm going to talk to you about healthy relationships. And consent."
\----
[/r/theBasiliskWrites/](https://www.reddit.com/r/theBasiliskWrites/) | I facepalmed. “No I’m not going to date you.” I said pissed and tired of Jenna’s bullshit. “I’m your thrice cursed your great great grandpa.”
“But yo-“ The goth teenager was cut off.
“No this isn’t twilight.” I said shaking my head. Placing my hands on my hips. “God almighty this can’t be worse than that damned vampire hooker who turned me into this.” He raised his arms indicating himself.
“But your do young and sex-“
“Don’t get me started.” I said. “I was young and foolish and gotten myself turned into this.” I shake my head resting it in my hands. I then sat in my expensive chair. “Lord above this can’t be worse than the Somme.”
Jenna looked dejected. “Then ca-“
“NO!” I said. “God almighty and the dark ones tits I won’t turn you into a vampire.”
She flinched at that.
“It’s fucking creepy even by some of the thousand year olds standards and they’re hedonistic as fuck.” I shake my head. “Maybe that fucking pervert Lazlo in statin island.”
“Who’s Lazlo?”
“You don’t want to know.” I said peeved.
“Honey I’ve got the virgins!” Hannah said. “Oh I see you ha-“ Hanna walks in with her bright red hair done up in a braid and a flowing glittery dress making her out to be the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Followed by three enthralled looking nerds dressed as knights and wizards.
“Hannah this is my great great granddaughter Jenna. Jenna this is my third wife Hannah.” I sighed out loud.
“Third wife?” Jenna said confused. Then her eyes lit up. “Wait I can have my own harem?”
“Yes I have twelve wives.” I sighed. “And I know a duchess surrounded by fifty “exotic”” I exaggerated the last word. “man servants wearing only speedos.”
“Oh.” She brightened. “Can you turn m-“
“NO!” I said forcefully. “You’ve got a fucking life ahead of you! Go get a job a career get a boyfriend and go start a family!” I rub my eyes. “When you become an immortal vampire you will miss a lot of things in the daytime.”
Jenna nods dejection in her eyes.
I look at her. “When you turn sixty we will talk.” I said. She nods. “I had the same talk with your dad after he accidentally found out about me. Now go home and go to school.”
———
After when Jenna left I was nursing blood brandi after dealing with that situation again.
“Your moping again.” Cherry said. My sixth wife a succubus began to give me a back message.
“Yep family related problems.” I take another sip. | 2021-10-16T14:00:57 | 2021-10-16T11:51:03 | 694 | 194 |
[WP] humans were the most peaceful in the galaxy. The galactic council rejected the pleads of the humans request to intervene to stop the empires attacks on them. This was when humans declare total war on the empire and it was the beginning of the end for the empire. | Humans, they whine and talk, more than any other species Councillor Zaltan has ever encountered, more so than the infamous Asiasa; ontop of this, they look strange, and they smell like rotten fuuba. Worse than their smell, they have opinions on everything, from the colour of the carpet they stand on to the inner workings of foreign governments. But, Zaltan thinks to himself, at least they are total pushovers; three times his people have evicted the Humans from garden worlds, and three times the Humans just talked about it - no other species would allow this transgression to occur. The Humans are the laughing stock of the galaxy, and its Zaltans job to listen to their whines.
In truth, the Humans follow a policy of isolation; few aliens have been permitted to enter their space, and when they get permission, it is only in cases of emergencies meaning not much is actually known about them other than that they are rather peaceful. Even the worlds plundered had little information on them, locations of their homeworld was purged, and no real military technology has been observed; maybe they don't have a military, maybe they don't know of war. It certainly wouldn't surprise Zaltan if they didn't know of it.
Further to the idea that they lack the capability of waging war, law enforcement on these occupied worlds only used glowing sticks that could deliver a nasty electric shock and a small spray can of awful irritants. No firearms have been seen. Curiously, Humans are known to be advanced, it is known they have technology that allows FTL comms, and they use AI far more advanced than anything the Empire has made, so it would fascinate Zaltan to see what they could come up with if they ever decided to get nasty.
Getting bored of their ambassadors latest whine, Zaltan changes his skin colour to a dark green, "Human," Zaltan speaks slowly; his biology does not allow the speed of speech the Humans talk at, "I don't care." The Human turns red as it starts to spew more words.
Zaltan continues to listen as the Human demands his people returned to him. Zaltan stretches his clawed fingers and returns them to a relaxed position before speaking again, "Your people are no more. They served us no purpose."
The Humans next comment gets Zaltan by surprise, "Then you have declared total war?"
Total war? Zaltan has never heard of such a term, "There is no total war, only war."
The Human's skin turns white and the ambassador bobs its head a few times before reaching below a table and pulling out a suitcase. After opening the suitcase flat on the table, a holographic image is displayed of a blue orb that looks a little like a planet. That is another strange thing about these humans, they like planets with H20. Why they like that poisonous substance Zaltan can only guess; maybe it gives them a pleasant high.
After a moment the blue orb speaks, "Bakara," The orb says with a crisp female sounding voice, "I am Tyr."
"An AI?" Zaltan asks with some interest, he has always wanted to talk to one. Hopefully, it doesn't speak as much as the Human.
"Correct." The orb replies before the orb vanishes and in its place is a picture of the grand Bakarain 1st fleet; the AI then continues to speak, "This is your first fleet positioned around New Hope." Zaltan can not dispute the fact; the first fleet is easily identified since its flagship is a large 2km long carrier. "In Human mythology..."
It is now that Zaltan realises this AI is going to talk as much as the Human. As Zaltan watches, he notices that the fleet begins to fire on itself.
"....Tyr is the Norse god of war. My sole purpose is war." The image changes and shows a different fleet, this time it is the 2nd fleet which is protecting a world that provides the Empire with precious dust used in FTL navigation. "My wrath..." This fleet begins to fire on itself and the settlement below, demolishing the precious infrastructure that harvests the dust.
The image changes again to a set of dockyards that is protected by the mighty 5th fleet, a location and facility that is kept secret, so how the Humans know about it is unsettling, "...Can be unbridled." The 5th fleet begins to fire on the dockyards.
The image then returns to that of the blue globe and the AI goes on to say, "Consider this my declaration of war. Your fleets are mine to manipulate, they will darken the skies of your worlds, your nuclear fire will scorch your own oceans and your own biological weapons will kill your young in their eggs and melt your skin from your bone. Where your people flee, I will be waiting."
"Trickery," Zaltan accuses.
"War." Tyr replies. "It has been too long since I was let loose, and how I look forward to this." The AI goes quiet before then saying, "Good day." In a rather cheery sounding voice. | Species: Exheltian
Origin Sector: 807241D
Body: Insectomorph
Era: The Rebuild Era (5 Major domains, 2 minor domains)
Previous Era: The Deviation Era (16 Major Domains, 41 Minor domains)
Empire name: Exheltia, The Great Eastern Cosmos Empire, The 5th Domain, The Silent Empire
Rein: 13 million years
The Silent Empire
The rise and fall of the 4th great domain and its telepathic rulers, the Exheltians (Exhelts).
Intro:
The Exhelts were an Insectomorphic species from the Delta quadrant of the Milkyway galaxy. They possessed what would come to be known as Intrinsic Telepathy (origin unknown, biology unknown). Although the full capabilities and machinations of this telepathy are unknown, it is clear that the Exhelts were able to understand each other's thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and intentions at a glance. It was less a conversation between individuals, and more a brief overlapping of consciousnesses.
Origin and Emergence:
The details of their species evolution remain unclear. Records from the sector’s previous occupants, Major Domain 14 (of the Deviation Era), note an early stage species discovered on planet 43H90HJE (sector 807241D), now believed to be the ancestors of the evolved Exhelts.
The report reads:
Species: 65784329 - Azemulphiac, Durapulus
Body: Insectomorph (winged)
Intelligence: early-stage
Description:
Long body, 6 limbs, 2 pincers on front limbs. Winged. The species seem to be capable of communication, although to what degree remains unclear. They have displayed no audible signs of language (possibly method of communication could be pheromone/chemical release? unconfirmed).
They are carnivorous, and hunt in packs, tracking and attacking prey as an organized unit. They run in unusually large packs, consisting of several hundred. Although the hierarchy of these packs are unclear, their interactions suggest a firm understanding and recognition of individuals and social value.
Their use of landscape features (rivers, trees, steep cliffs) in their hunting tactics suggest high intelligence and an ability to formulate very rudimentary plans.
They mature from larvae to adult in just 18 months, and, due to the organized nature of their hives, are capable of full-scale hunting in just 3 months. Most interestingly is the survival rate of their young. Typically, there appear to be 3 queens per 100 adults, each of which can lay up to 100 eggs in their cycle. Of those 100, it appears at least 45% mature to adulthood, in spite of the harsh conditions of the homeplanet. Because of this vast growth in population, hives will frequently split bi-annually, with one half of the population relocating as far as 140 miles from their origin hive. The growth rate of their
hives is astonishing.
Comparison species: 37751216 of Major Domain 2 - “Ants”
Civilization potential:
They have demonstrated high-potential for Civilized Evolution. Strong social dynamics, clear hierarchy, organized.
Given a couple hundred thousand years, I believe this species could one day develop a sophisticated society.
Interstellar potential:
Unlikely.
The next confirmed recording of the Exhelts would come just 18,000 years later (5,000 years after the end of The Deviation Era, and the collapse of the 16 Great Domains).
End of an era
As the 16 Major Domains collapsed, the galaxy was thrown into chaos. Over the next 20,000 years, the remaining minor domains struggled to seize power, and ultimately, 4 of the original 42 would succeed, claiming vast expansions of the cosmos (roughly 67% of the galaxy).
\[ See here, a map of 4 empires drawn out \]
During this expansion, Parvelia, the easternmost Minor Domain, sent out a warning signal to all nearby domains, proclaiming they were under invasion from an unknown, highly-organized antagonist. Amidst the great power struggle, this beacon meant little to most domains, as Parvelia (representing a measly 0.6% of the galaxy) had always been a very isolated Minor Domain, and offered little strategic resources.
\[ See here a red signal emitted from the edge of the known galaxy \]
Within 820 years, Parvelia went dark. Over the course of the next 30,000 years, more than 16 minor domains would fall to the emerging species. The victorious 4 Major Domains would come to call this sector of space (33% of the galaxy) Exheltia or The Great Eastern Cosmos Empire. But to them, it was more of a blackhole than an empire.
Little was known about this empire’s rules. They never once reached out in direct communication, nor did they ever cease expanding their borders. Through several exchanges along the borders of the 4 great domains and Exheltia, some was learned of the Exhelt’s biologies, technologies, and society, but not much. They were a black box of information.
\[ See a destroyed Exheltian carrier, and an examination of an EXhelt corpse by a toad-like creature \] | 2022-01-28T12:17:44 | 2022-01-28T10:12:55 | 55 | 15 |
[WP] A drug is developed that mimics the effect of 8 hours of sleep, giving people another 8 hours of potential production. Soon, society adjusts to a constant state of production. However, a horrible consequence begins to unfold. | "I saw on Facebook, you bought a new boat," Richie said, chuckling good-naturedly.
"Yeah. Since Gena got me started on the pill last year, our income has tripled. Figured since I had the extra money, I'd treat myself."
"Isn't that a bit of a risk what with the new trend that drug is causing."
"I don't think so. Me and Gena are in a good place. That trend is a trend because there are a lot bored couples out there that had problems in their marriages and relationships before the drug was a thing. Their marriages would have ended regardless of the drug. It just might have taken more time."
"I don't, Jack, just about every story I hear from those who've divorced attribute it directly to that extra eight hours they're forced to spend with each other. The ones that spend that eight hours awake and around each other claim their being driven crazy and feel smothered. The ones that work during that eight hours claim they feel abandoned and divorced due to loneliness. The others are due to cheating brought on by boredom. I honestly don't think marriages can survive a twenty-four hour period of consciousness. Humans need that eight hour down time for relationships to survive," Richie philosophized.
"Dude, I think you're overthinking it."
*Ding!*
"Text?" Richie asked.
"Yep."
"Work?"
"Nope. It's Gena."
"What's she want?" Richie sipped his coffee.
"Divorce. I-It seems . . . I've grown too distant."
"Oh man," Richie sympathized. "That sucks." | Our school has the highest drug use in our county. The drug is called Somnus. It is a pill that you swallow in the morning to mimic the effects of 8 hours of sleep. This allows you to go to class and concentrate on your studies.
The consequences are that your memory is reduced and your brain is not as efficient. This results in an increase in depression and other mood disorders. The worst part is that this drug is still very popular.
After you have taken the pill, you will feel like you have just been up for 8 hours. This makes you more tired and less able to concentrate. It also makes you think that you have a hangover. The hangover lasts for 2 to 3 days. You will feel tired and more depressed than usual. The worst part is that you have to take the pill everyday. You will not be able to sleep without it.
The Somnus is the best pill for college students. You can get the pill from a doctor or from your school. It is only available in the morning and you are not allowed to take it more than 2 days in a row. It is very difficult to get off of the drug.
After the 2 days, your memory will be back to normal. However, the depression will last longer than the 2 days.
You should have your doctor check your brain to see if it is ok. You will need to take the pill for 2 weeks before the doctor can tell if your brain is ok.
If your brain is not ok, then the Somnus will not work anymore. This means that you will not be able to sleep anymore. You will not be able to get up in the morning without it. | 2022-03-18T11:40:19 | 2022-03-18T07:24:03 | 21 | 14 |
[WP] Your Galactic zoo just received a shipment of 24 humans. You have to build a habitat base on very little information. | Why do these humans behave so strangely? They shiver, which is a waste of their energy, they constantly bump into each other and trip at the smallest obstacle. They started grouping together for some reason. What are we missing? I thought to myself, checking the document again. Average temperatures on Earth is 13.9 °C, maybe humans can't survive everywhere on Earth and the temperatures aren't uniform. I increased the temperature to 50 °C, hope they would be more comfortable.
They broke off from one another and started losing a lot of water, I am guessing that's too much, lets get it down to 30 °C. They seem more comfortable, but still losing water too quickly. Changing temperature to 25 °C. Now they seem better, but they still trip at the slightest obstacle and each other. What am I missing? Gravity is identical to Earth's surface, atmospheric content is also good, temperature and humidity seems to be correct as well.
One of the humans started pulling their own hair one by one, that is strange. They seem to have found the heat source that regulates the heat for the habitat. They put the clump of hairs on top of it, and after a while it caught on fire. Instantly all the humans in the vicinity turned towards the flaming pile of hair, started to walked towards it without tripping.
Everything made sense now, humans can detect parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but not others. That was extraordinary! They obviously can't detect infra-red, otherwise they would have been able to locate each other easily from the IR emitted by their bodies and other objects.
I quickly looked through the parts we had available to check if we had anything that can emit electromagnetic radiation at such short wavelengths. I couldn't find anything specific, but I guess I could improvise by passing current through a rod of tungsten, and to prevent it from igniting, I suspended it in a vacuum glass container. I rigged it to the robotic arm and deployed it from the ceiling, this was much safer than an naked flame, and wouldn't consume the oxygen in their habitat or potentially poison them.
They looked up at the improvised light source and were able to see their environment. I will have to look for a different light source as this improvised one might not last too long and is not very efficient. I requested the supplier to bring a light source with varying spectrum so I could test their visible range later. |
“No one’s buying tickets to see humans anymore” Gnarjkal snarled to the carrier droid that was making the drop off for his new attraction, mucus sputtering from his mouth, hanging on by a thread without breaking free. “They’re not even worth the trip here,14 jorguns for wasting my time.”
“18 jorquns for the lot, this is the price that was given. Pay now, this is the deal” the static voice murmured, spinning around to begin a systems check before leaving the delivery location.
The buyer's blaster pointed at the life forms one by one. They were crouched in the corner of open the cage, a bit of algea from a neighboring asteroid had been tossed along the floor of the cage and soaked up their urine but didn't cover the smell. As he inspected the small hairless creatures reluctantly purchased, he grew more and more disappointed by the lack of reaction to a gun pointed right in their faces as he aimed to taunt them.
“Is that one dead?!” Gnarjkal yelled, firing beams into the air mostly to see if all two dozen were still moving. “Not quite...” But not far off.
The loud firings barely encouraged a jolt from the dirt caked vermin, rather a delayed and sluggish head turn that didn’t give the assurance of creatures in good health. Zoos now more than ever needed this facade to keep customers, he knew that. One sickly creature and the whispers from onlookers warping in for their dimensional shifts would surely be enough to carry three galaxies over. Can’t afford that in this economy.
On the other hand, the zookeeper couldn’t pass up a shipment. The last species didn’t make it long because he missed the instructions that came in their packaging. Anything to fill those empty cages would work out better in the long run than haggling with a droid, not worth the effort.
Gnarjkal wasn’t wrong, no one traveled light years to see humans anymore. Humans lost their luster back a few millennia, when people tired of hearing them fight, flee, or frenzy. They’d been splayed and spliced in science displays, their skin lit with dancing colors, a canvas au natural, their veins used as a highways for pulsating rhythms of light, purely for spectacle. Their lifespans had been sped up and reversed as interactive exhibits for young heptgaras. The sad part was, these rodents didn’t actually do anything that could be used for entertainment value. No natural shedding of their exoskeleton, no metamorphosis, they didn't even glow in the dark. Nothing to signal home about......... | 2022-06-28T21:40:28 | 2022-06-28T17:38:15 | 68 | 49 |
[WP]For three years you’ve had an uneventful marriage with your spouse when one day they become the Chosen One. Immediately setting off on their journey you don’t hear anything from them for five years. Then one day they reappear with a sheepish look on their face and hoping to speak to you. | After a long day in the field, you head inside your front door and after turning the lock closed, breathe a sigh of relief. Working the field alone is brutal but gives you a sense of purpose; keeps you from going insane.
Your resolve had been tested mercilessly the last two years. After Sena left you alone with an infant son, you had struggled daily and the only comfort you felt was in smoking and drinking at the small table in your home, where you spend the bulk of your evenings.
Looking down at the table, you take stock of your relief for the night, a couple bottles litter the table and a tobacco pipe needing to be knocked out and refilled. You begin your evening ritual of filling the pipe and readying a smoke when you blindly reach for a bottle.
As your finger brushes it, you hesitate. Eyeing the heavily dusty bottle, you cautiously pass over it and grab a bottle of cheaper liquor instead. No need to waste the one good bottle you have. After all, you've been saving that one.
Perhaps an hour has passed of smoking and drinking and you notice your bottle is empty as hunger begins to claw at your stomach. As you contemplate feeding yourself, you finally hear it.
The unmistakable sound of your lock latch turning. There are only two keys in all the world for it and one is in your pocket.
You knew this moment would come. You finally reach for the old dusty bottle, keeping your eyes on on it and not on the door, which is slowly opening.
"Markus, I'm back." You don't respond to the nostalgic voice at your side, instead focusing entirely on inspecting the glass in which your anticipated drink will fill.
"I know you're mad, you have every right to be. I never explained myself and it wasn't fair to you at all. I won't try to defend my actions, we'll have time to explain later. But I'm back now, I'm ready to be a wife again...I'm ready to be a mother to our son."
"Oh!" You growl in response, your voice sounding like the scraping of stones. She jumped at the sound; it had been almost a year since you'd heard your own voice. But you had been prepared for this and continued without blinking.
"I'm relieved to hear that. I expect you'll want to see him, no?"
You still hadn't turned to look at her and instead opted to take the cork from the bottle and pour a single glass of the drink. She eyed you wearily.
"You mean you aren't angry?" She asked, a look of concern and curiosity washing over her face.
"No. Not the word I'd use. Anyway, you should go see the boy. He's outback," you point the stem of your pipe towards the back door, being careful to never look at it. "Right through that door, right outside."
She maintains her look of confusion for just a moment before composing herself and confidently replying: "A fine idea, I'm sure he's well on his way to being a fine little man and he'll be anxious to meet me!"
You dont reply. Her image is in and out of your vision quickly as she crosses the room and throws the door open.
You hear the small crash of her knees hitting the floor; it's finally time to drink. There's no burn in your throat, no flavor at all. As the sound of sobs grow louder and louder, you ponder just how long ago your sense of taste went away.
Her sobs are soon laced with her muttering 'no' repeatedly to herself. A fair reaction, you think. You know what lies beyond that door. You havent had had the stomach to open it in two years.
Right beyond the door lies a lone hill, with a forest further beyond it. The hill itself is desolate, bearing no decoration or feature. With the seldom exception of small, white headstone.
'Here lies Cedric, son of Markus. Lived 3 years, loved eternally by his father.' | &#x200B;
"I'll get it," Tara called out after hearing a knock at the door. She answered it. Then she stood staring at her caller for a full minute before he broke the silence.
"Sooooo," Brandon, champion of the Light, hero of humanity, and the great defender of the Union said to his estranged wife. "How've you been?"
"I've *been* divorced. For three years. Two years after my bastard husband dumped me for an elf and went out to play swords and sorcery without so much as leaving me a letter," she replied.
*"Baaaaabe*," Brandon said. "It wasn't like that! I didn't cheat on you; Serafina was my teacher and guide. Honest! She had to help me visit the four shrines to awaken the Sword of Galdras so that I could--you know, it's complicated. But no, no, she wouldn't sleep with me! That'd be like pedophilia by the standards of her people, they live a *really* long time!"
Tara narrowed her eyes. "I know you had sex with her! The bards were singing about it in every tavern in every city on the continent!"
"Okay, I *did* have sex with her, I admit that, but it wasn't cheating! It was part of my training to help master my mana manipulation. If anything, you'll be grateful, I have like loads of endurance now. No more five-minute pump and dumps, I'm a lot more artful-"
"And what of all those tavern wenches, and noble ladies, and random girls you rescued from occult sacrifices? Oh, and let's not forget that DEMON PRINCESS--
"Hatefeya? She doesn't count! That wasn't even consensual!"
"You have a child with her!"
"Yeah! And she's raising him in Hell to be the Anti-me! I'm probably going to have to kill him in self-defense before he conquers the world! It's not a feel-good situation, Babe!"
"Serves your philandering ass right!"
"I-I got caught up in the moment! Many moments! I know I'm not perfect, but Tara, you're *still* the only one I actually love! Can we put this behind us? I'm so rich now, we'll live a wonderful life, and I'll treat you like the goddess you are! Just...please take me back?" Brandon said desperately.
"No. I've remarried and I've moved on."
"To Jeff? Jeff, our old neighbor? Jeff, my old bowling partner?"
"Hey, Brandon!" said Jeff, cheerfully.
"Shut up, Jeff!" Brandon shouted.
"Later, Brandon," said Jeff, amiably.
"Jeff respects me, he's faithful, and he's a good provider," Tara said primly.
"Tara, I was forced into this role. All those other women were distractions, they didn't mean anything. You were my ultimate goal: surviving the battles, sealing the abyssal gate, winning the war, that was all so I could finally come home! I know I'm not perfect, I know I've disappointed you, but please. If you give me a chance, I'll make you the happiest woman who ever lived. I'm begging you: *Please* take me back."
"No," Tara said. And then she closed the door.
Brandon stood there, devastated. Five years of desperate fighting had led him here. To the one opponent he could never defeat. He walked away, dejected and sad.
\*\*\*
Tara walked into the sitting room and sat beside Jeff, who put an arm around her. "That had to be tough," he said.
"Easier than you think," Tara said softly.
"I'd understand if you decided you needed to go back to him, y'know." Jeff said quietly.
Tara kissed him on the lips. "I know you would, love. That's why I'm not going anywhere."
And so, they sat there for the rest of the evening in their quiet home, enjoying each other's company. | 2022-08-12T14:17:07 | 2022-08-12T12:07:17 | 1,382 | 967 |
[WP]For three years you’ve had an uneventful marriage with your spouse when one day they become the Chosen One. Immediately setting off on their journey you don’t hear anything from them for five years. Then one day they reappear with a sheepish look on their face and hoping to speak to you. | It was the longest day of my life, the day he left. I still remember it as clear as the day we married in the church a few thousand yards from the house we shared, in a hidden village a hundred miles from the City. If only the High Priest hadn't come, we'd have lived in that shack forever.
That dreaded priest arrived without his usual caravans and wagons that such nobility kept with them. He wore a haughty, desperate look, like a prisoner tearing apart everything to find the key. That is, until he set eyes upon my man. He said that my husband was the man he saw in his dreams, his nightmares, and his visions. My husband would either save the world or end it.
We thought he had gone mad at first. I was a widower who buried a child, the mother of our first, with our second on the way, helping the weavers make clothes for extra money while he was no champion but a skilled blacksmith. We met later in life, yes, but we were happier than ever. But the High Priest simply handed a parchment to my husband. That was when I learned he was literate, the only one other than our town priest who shakily read passages every Sunday and preached.
He told me what the letter read. I wasn't listening. I was fighting tears unsuccessfully as I realized that my husband had no choice but to go. After the High Priest obtained my husband's solemn promise that he would go, he led me around the back of the house that he built with his hands ten years ago to the garden. He pulled the wall apart and fetched a glittering sword. I had seen it before and knew he kept it clean and sharp, but I had never asked why he had it. I hadn't needed to. I should've.
He kissed me, and swore on our marriage he would return, or die trying. That was the last I heard of him for five years. I never sold the house, though the money dwindled. I sold fruits and vegetables and continued weaving to stem the losses. David, our second, became deathly ill a few months after his birth, and I buried him by the sword-space. Catherine was old enough to remember her father and missed him dearly. It was difficult to watch her play with a wooden sword with the other boys, but I saw that determined look in her deep blue eyes, that she definitely got from her father, to be like her dad after I had inadvertently said I wished he had never had to take that sword and leave one terrible night.
A little over five years passed. I continued to wear the ring he gave me eight years ago then. He was my soul mate, and I couldn't imagine anyone else. Not promises of wealth or happiness from suitors. I waited for my darling as hope for his return diminished.
One rainy day, I walked home with Catherine after taking her to the apothecary. She had hurt her arm, and I was given a small bottle of pain reliever for her for some of the last of my coins after getting small discount after a promise to return the bottle. I didn't know how to put her arm in a sling, but I didn't have the money to ask this week, for the rest of it was for some bread tomorrow that would hold us for a few days. Even Catherine could see we were slowly starving, with her sad eyes looking mournfully at an ever shrinking plate at meals.
I didn't even recognize that the door was ajar until I got to the porch. It creaked loudly against the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof. I looked around, and seeing nothing, nudged the door open. I gripped Catherine's hand tightly as I scanned the room. The fireplace was lit and an unfamiliar coat was draped over the chair reserved for my husband. I began to shout angrily to chase this man out of my house, to sit where one man belonged and to use my rooms as an inn, when he looked at me with exhausted, royally blue eyes. I stopped, saw an iron ring identical to my own on his hand, dropped the pan I had grabbed as a weapon, and sank to the ground as Catherine shrank behind me before recognizing the face that had left years before and rushed to his side. My man picked her up and then knelt down in front of me, caressed my cheek and begged to be let back in, that the battle was over and we won, that he would never leave my side again. I didn't hear him. I sobbed and said yes so many times I didn't realize he was waiting for my hand. I took it and he led me out back to the sword-space, where his sword was resting against the wall outside. In a clearing sky with a rainbow in the sunset, planted the sword. He took a helmet he had worn for years, and placed it on the hilt, never to be removed from it's final resting place, where my husband buried years of pain, anguish, and longing for good. | The whole party was there standing just beyond the town's gates. All the friends who had spent their whole lives together. Before they left, they were just drinking buddies, going to the taverns making up stories of adventures they wanted to take and the women they would leave their wives for.
It had been their dream and my husband was right smack dabbed in the middle of the group. Right now, he carried himself differently from the tire slob of a man I had married. He was dressed elegantly in his armor and his hair is clean cut, his face shaved, but his eyes were filled with sorrow.
I stood behind the gates and met his eyes. I was also a different person. I held my head high and stood straighter. I no longer struggled with my self esteem, and I could stand proudly before this man.
"My love, I have returned and brought everyone home to their own families, just as I had promised you," the helmet he was holding was adorned with a jewels and didn't who any evidence of the battles he had supposedly won.
"You promised me nothing, you left no letter, no message, not even leaving an annoying companion to give me any information. The taverns and cities have messengers and even wizards that could send dreams to explain what happened, but nothing from you, not even a peep," I looked at the members of the party and they attempted to not meet my eyes.
"I had whispered to you before I left, the kingdom needed me, my love," his voice cracked as he spoke. "I was to fulfill my destiny. I had to comply with my king's wishes."
"It's funny, isn't it? You left three years ago and left me nothing, but your debt. The collectors were willing to attack me when I was at my lowest, they figured that I could be used to paying back your debt because no one believed that you and that party could survive and come home," I pretended to dust off my gown. "You know what? You being gone was the best thing to happen to me. I was weak back then, broken if you will, I awaited news every day, and then the announcement that the princess had demanded your hand in marriage and your marriage to me would be annulled."
"I...I didn't sign the papers," he stuttered out, dropping all the items he had in hand. "It wasn't right for me to do that to the woman who was there for me at my lowest..."
"You don't have to sign those papers for the declaration to have happened," I felt my brow raise and a sneer slowly forming on my lips,"You hadn't even been a full knight yet and she wanted you for herself or that is how the news told it. All those stories you boys talked about and they all came true. The problem is you never thought about those you left behind." I raised a hand as a signal and several women appeared behind me. "We didn't sit still while you went off and played the hero for the kingdom, we..." I raise my arms to show I encompassed the women around me. "Formed our own kind of party. While you all had fun, we took over the debt collectors, we took over the back alleys, we became more fearful and dangerous than any hero."
I opened the gate and took careful, calculated steps toward the man who had now dropped to his knees and was watching me with hope, I gripped his cheeks between my fingers and squashed his face to make his lips pucker up, "I meant till death do us part, my love." I kissed him gently and passionately, it had taken a moment, but I pulled away slowly as I could see a kind of realization in his eyes, "I have become one of the most influential assassins in this country and my love, the king marked you when you rejected his daughter. The problem about your all mighty honor and how you weren't going to leave me story should have been more thought out." I leaned in close and whispered, "maybe you should have thought about rejecting her before you had got her pregnant."
The party of men were now in panic as the rest of the wives had followed me out and now had them surrounded. Their screams of protest echoed around me as I watched the light leave my husband's eyes. These weaklings figured we would be too over joyed to ever stay angry at them for the misdeeds they had committed on their journey. The problem is that they never thought we would come together and support each other so much that we didn't need to ever forgive them.
When the King's request had crossed my desk I had thought about not accepting it, but if I angered the king with the rejection of this job I would be putting the whole town in danger. I couldn't make everyone around me suffer because of a little effect I had for a man three years before. This was the easiest way for me to have any semblance of revenge while making sure that this town could be well taken care of. Thanks to us, trade to our town had increased and we were now able to afford many goodies we didn't have three years ago. Clean water, safe streets, and everyone was receiving education so that everyone could be self reliant.
No one in this town would suffer as I had. My dead husband might have been the hero of this whole kingdom, but I was a hero to my neighbors and friends which honestly was far more important. | 2022-08-12T17:39:57 | 2022-08-12T17:18:13 | 113 | 26 |
[WP]For three years you’ve had an uneventful marriage with your spouse when one day they become the Chosen One. Immediately setting off on their journey you don’t hear anything from them for five years. Then one day they reappear with a sheepish look on their face and hoping to speak to you. | "My love-!" Anise called out.
"No. I don't want to hear it! You killed my brother." Nile refused.
Anise sighed "I didn't know until after. Besides! It was mandated by the Gods!"
Nile turned on his ex near growling, a family skill, "I. Don't. Care. He was my Brother! You had met him many times before our marriage and even more after! How could you possibly have not known it was him?!"
Anise flinched back as Nile had never growled at him before. After too long in silence Nile spoke again, this time without the darkened growl, "Well? I'm waiting. I've waited for three years for your answer on why you killed my brother and why it took said three years to come back here. Five years for your pathetic excuses on why you up and left. And finally I waited four before I gave up on your love. I mean really not even a single letter or, infinite, not a single dream for five years? Honestly. Why Did I Ever Love You?"
Anise sighed again, it seemed he had been doing that a lot recently, "so, what will, uhhh, what will you do now?"
"That's it. That's what you say? After FIVE ETHER DAMNED YEARS?" Nile yelled astonished, at Anise's hesitant nod Nile felt all his anger, rage, and betrayal condense from a raging wild forest fire down into the small light at the end of a flamethrower. His facial expression smoothed out to something calm, cold, and deadly. He spoke again but instead of being filled with passion his voice was now cold determination, "what will I do now? Now I will take my brothers mantle and finish what he started. And I will begin so by doing what he didn’t, by doing what he should have the moment the chisen one was revealed. I will start my villain arc by killing the killer of my blood. By killing the one chosen as hero by the Gods. By. Killing. You." | It had become a routine, tending to the gardens in the afternoon when work was done. Miko expected to forget, to get over it all, yet five long years and Lari’s face still shows up in almost every dream she had. It had become a ritual, taking care of the flowers her wife had loved so much, a remnant of someone who might not even be alive. She didn’t like to think of such possibilities.
When they received the notice from the Oracle: Larissa, chosen by light to defeat the demon king, they were shocked. But after long deliberation Lari decided to step foot on the journey, promising to write letters frequently.
The first year Miko waited, then second, then third… No letter arrived, no news from the villages nearby. She tried to search, for any semblance of her wife’s whereabouts, and every attempt ended with a dead end.
Knock Knock. There was a gentle tapping on the door. Miko grabbed the candles and slid open the lock.
Underneath the moonlight was Lari’s face, it was almost like she hadn’t changed at all after the years passing.
“Lari?” She asked gently.
There was sorrow on the hero’s face.
“I’m sorry, Miko… I’m so sorry, but please hear me explain…”
She waited for Lari to collect her thoughts.
“I defeated the demon king, it took me about… 4 weeks in total to arrive and have a final battle. I was so excited, I was victorious. Then when I emerged from the demon realm I realized something was horribly wrong. Years… had passed in the mere hours I spent fighting, and many thought I was dead. I immediately thought about you, and I…I…” She couldn’t continue, there was tears in her eyes.
“Oh.” Miko managed to utter out in surprise.
“I understand if you’ve moved on or…. I’m just…”
Lari was cut off from the warmth of Miko’s hug. “Nonsense, I’m just glad you were alive.”
“I’m so sorry.” She muttered.
“Don’t be.”
They sat by the fireplace, recounting Lari’s adventure. And when the sun rises again, despite everything that happened, it was like nothing had changed. | 2022-08-12T18:14:39 | 2022-08-12T17:33:00 | 40 | 11 |
[WP] You're a supervillain whose latest evil scheme threatens to throw the city into chaos unless your nemesis goes on a date with you. To your surprise, they agree with enthusiasm before you can even explain what the consequences of refusing are. | "I'd like that...!"
...Shit, what?
Hell Priest had this whole thing planned out, right down to the second: He'd plant a curse on Crown City Square, infecting as many people as humanly possible with madness that would trigger violently upon a countdown and create a horrific bloody path for the demons he served *if* his rival in the mystic arts, King Krimson, said no.
All the prior flirting attempts he'd done to the vessel of the Beast of Revelation always came fruitless, to the point where he just decided it'd be easier if he just irritated him to the point of unleashing said beast and capturing it in such a moment of weakness.
Everything went right as Hell Priest planned, even their dialogue:
"I could smell your dirty work from a mile away, Hell Priest."
"Oh? I take it you like it so much you came to me, then?"
"A Curse of Hysteria? Really? Even for you, that's sick. Undo the curse, now!"
"And what if I don't? You can't really make me, Red, I have to willingly undo the curse. That excludes being under duress."
"...Assume I believe you. Magic has a price, and you especially have one. What must I do to make you undo it?"
A dramatic pause of Hell Priest smirking at Krimson to cause effect, he'd approach, and say the fateful words:
"Dinner. My place, at 8."
And he'd wait, just five seconds before Krimson's temper at him would flare u-
"I'd like that...!"
\------------------
And now we're here.
A completely stunned Hell Priest could only stare at his rival, shocked at the surprising smile on his face. Did...He just say yes to his mock proposal?
"Wh....What?"
"Look, I won't pretend like I caught feelings to make you decide on it, you're still a massive pain in the ass, Priest." He explained, shaking his head, his smile remaining and even following up with a chuckle. "But...I dunno, I guess I'm curious?"
"You...You're not kidding." He knew when Krimson lied. The hex he planted years back on his rival made sure of that. And yet, no bells rang. He was genuinely accepting the terms. No need to bring up how he'd set the timer to half so Krimson would be forced to focus on both his rival and the curse ready to destroy Crown City. No...*Just yes.*
"And I know you happen to be a man of your word. If I go to dinner with you, do you promise to break the curse?"
"..." Hell Priest hardly had it in him to even say anything. He couldn't even if he wanted to, instead Krimson having the need to add onto this.
"*But*, cause I'm giving a lot of good faith, I want us to shake on it. I go out with you at 8PM tonight, you break the curse now."
Hell Priest's eye twitched a little. This smarmy fuck wanted them to *shake on it* too. The oldest and most easy contract in the book, and one neither of them could break for their own sake. He was almost pissed off that King Krimson was happy to oblige...Even so, a deal is a deal.
"...Bring something nice, like a blazer, we might have to eat out."
And thus, they shook on it. | Getting tipsy at the club with my friends. We're shaking butts in time with the hottest song of the summer. Sometimes we villains are cannibals - I took down this jerk who was trying to dim my sunshine so to speak - muscling into my action with dark money politics. I ruined his reputation by making some photos of him in the middle of extramarital situations which the mainstreamers didn't like. Me and my crew figured out he was really into funding start up companies that hire young college females. Turns out people are not OK with non-consensual polyamory. Go figure!
Now everybody's hating on him. Kicking him off of charity boards, returning his millions. It's super sad for him. Politicians crying about how they never saw it coming, how he seemed like such a nice guy with civic values. I'm all for oppressing the people because OMG democracy is so annoying. I'm not into humans ruling themselves - they simply cannot handle the responsibility. But he was getting bigger than me, and I wasn't having it. Who is the biggest villain? For damn sure it's not him. Yeah, was that vain? So what? I don't care. Did Godzilla have to work this hard? I don't know. Maybe my life would be easier as a nuclear radiation kaiju. Cloak of invisibility plus flight powers works pretty well for me. But still. There's more to life, am I right?
So here's the thing about villains. The villainy doesn't just stop with civilian deaths and general misery. It also sucks to date other villains. NGL, how many phone calls going to voicemail or messages left on read do I have to tolerate? I am the Empress of this town and it doesn't seem to matter much. Definitely got high fives and plenty of offers for hot dates after I blew up the sewage system. But this thing about destroying this billionaire takes the cake. Lots of smiles and offers of hugs - which I do not accept, thank you very much.
Who is coming up to me, looking like sex on wheels but Apple Tree Johnson? "Good job Empress. Didn't know you had it in you." Immediately I brace myself for something patronizing or condescending to follow. But it never arrives. "I kinda hated that billionaire dude also. And you know everybody on my side tried everything too. But you are the one who made the slam-dunk. Can I shake your hand?" Apple Tree Johnson - gorgeous and pretty smart too for a superhero - went to high school with me. Oh yeah it gets worse.
Why is it 100% cringe anytime we run into each other? So what's the harm with a handshake? "Mmm-kay, sure." I stick out my hand. His hand is warm. It's like butter mixed with caramel is flowing now from my hand to my brain. All of sudden his face lights up like glitter is raining down on just him. He nods, keeping his hand on mine. "Slam-dunk Empress. Your town thanks you." Who talks like this? Why am I like the snake caught in the gaze of a mongoose now?
I clear my throat, "Cool, let's hang out sometime and chat more. I'd rather do this civilly but if you do not accept - " He cuts me off before I finish. "Of course, anything for a champion. Time and place?" He didn't even wait to hear my threat. I was going to do something really awesome with the saltwater intrusion into our freshwater supply but I guess he didn't have the patience to hear what evil I had up my sleeve. I wasn't 100% on the saltwater thing but it could be epic. I'll table it for the time being. What the hell are we going to talk about?!?! | 2022-08-16T11:02:35 | 2022-08-16T09:25:08 | 43 | 12 |
[WP] You never really saw yourself as close to your mad scientist of a sibling, but after a terrible accident, you find them standing over you, having restored you to the best of their ability. | My sister has always been distant.
She was smarter than me to such an extent whenever she discibed anything i could only smile and nod, and try to understand.
But as we grew up she got farther and farther away.
I tried to support her, even when our parents hated what she did and forced her out of the house.
I never understood what she was doing but i know she made monsters for all sorts of things, construction and medicine, asembly, and even transportation! I always thought it was the coolest thing ever. And On my 18th birthday i got my last contact with her for years to come.
She sent me a letter, it explained her situation in her medical and leangthy way of communicating saying how she had to distance herself from me. Even further than she always was.
She sent a little monster with the letter, a companion animal just for me, her little brother. I named him dexter.
My parents kicked me out of the house for keeping it.
It took a while but i eventually had my feet back under me, all the while hearing about the terrifying supervillan known as the monster queen, and how a gang of cosplayers are fighting her near daily.
But it has been a long time, so long the only thing i have to remember her by is the little flying, fluffy centipede monster that keeps me compony. At 34 years old i could only hope she was ok.
When i finaly got a job i was over the moon, i would be working for a construction compony specalized with superhero fights in mind, i worked for months on sites just to have a group of cosplayers and furrys with superpowers to turn it to rubble. Unfortunately for me, i was on the site when one of those superheros was thrown through a concrete wall near me.
---
My heart was pounding harder than it ever had, how could i have missed the alarms in place for this kind of thing!?
It took me mere moments to remember the budget cuts.
"Ah. Right. Forgot about those."
The stairs i was heading too were colapsed, massive chunks of debree blocking the stairway down like a cork i only had a few options from there, i could climb down the elevator like some kind of action movie or i could use dexter and possibly draw attention from trigger happy heros and an unkown villan.
I of course chose the elevator.
Every elevator nowadays has a ladder built into the shaft fraim allowing for access in case of someone cutting the cables, they were used so often it was scary to think of how many elevators broke nowadays.
But there it was, my way to the ground floor, freedom and safety. As i was prying open the elevator doors with dexters help i heard a scream.
"Help! Please im gonna fall!"
It must have been a co-worker that hadent gotten the warning same as me, and i cant just leave a freind behind! That would haunt me forever. It helped that having dexter on my shoulder made feel like i could take on the world.
"Im on my way hold on!" I shouted, hoping they could hear me over the fight that had been getting closer with every passing second
I ran to the noise finding a massive hole goudged out of the renforced concrete, a gloved hand held tightly to a peice of rebar but was unable to haul itself up.
Peering over the edge i saw a hero, one of his arms was dislocated and the other held for dear life as i came closer.
"Please you gotta help! The monster is coming closer i cant hold on much longer!"
He cried out to me as i bent over to grab his hand, as i was hauling him up i was shaken along with the building, it wasent powerfull by any means, merely a shockwave that vibrated windows.
But it was enough, and we both fell.
"WINGS!" I shouted to dexter, holding on for dear life to the heros good arm as dexter shot his wings through the back of my shirt slowing our fall so quickly i was sure i had a little wiplash from it.
As we gently floated to the ground and touched down on solid ground the hero and i stood for a moment,
"Thanks" he said to me " my team is a couple blocks away i thought i was a gonner"
I smiled and chuckled
"Maybe you can buy me lunch sometime to repay me"
The hero paused before chuckling himself,
"I think id like that, now you better get out of here its not safe for an untrained hero like yourself to be in combat like this."
I was confused until i remembered dexters wings still stuck out of the back of my shirt like a pair of sails
"Ah! Haha, yeah i better leave it to the pros. See ya round. And good luck!"
I took off across the street with a goofy smile,
I dident hear what he said as i left but im fairly certin it was somthing along the lines of
"Watch out for that truck!"
Becouse the last thing i saw was my compony logo welded to a cement truck driving towords me at four times the limit, and dexter wrapping around my head like a fluffy crash helmet.
And now im here.
With my older sister lurking over me with the most consurn on her face i had ever seen.
Before i passed out on her opporating table i tried to tell her somthing,
"Dont cry, youll make me cry sis"
Unfortunately i was unable to see anything else or even have done more than mouth those words.
A severed head cant do much...
Unless your the mad genius monster queen that is. | Joshua and I had never really gotten along.
My earliest memory of him was about us playing together in the neighbourhood park. He was three years older, but I was already faster and stronger. We had been racing to see who could climb the rope tower the quickest. I won, of course. I still remember his sulking face. "Braindead," he used to call me. I remember not knowing what he meant.
Fast forward a decade or so. He'd gotten some scholarship to Massachusetts something or another college. He'd worked his ass off for it. I was still in high school, and I was the best offensive lineman on the football team. I joked that I'd get a better scholarship without needing any effort. I'd never seen him get so angry before. He totally freaked out and was smashing shit and trying to attack me. Dad had to restrain him, which fortunately wasn't difficult, given how scrawny he was. Joshua cut us off after that, and I didn't hear from him for a long time.
In the end I was right, though. I got a scholarship easy. Not by sports, though, I went to the military. It was a Rote scholarship, and it was way simple to get. I just copied my answers from the right classmate and I was in. The actual army bit wasn't too difficult either, just lots of physical stuff and following orders. I like routine, and yelling at people, so it was a good and easy fit. My muscle memory had always been fantastic, and each day basically happened on autopilot. I liked not having to think. It was easy, and I had a good time.
I rose through the ranks quickly. I was a SFC, and moving for promotion soon, when the accident happened. It was dumb. A training accident. I ordered CPL Smith to unload the truck and he swung the crate right into my forehead. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and I was seeing stars, and I couldn't move. Then it all went black.
When I woke up, I was in a very bright room. The lights hurt my eyes. I couldn't blink. I couldn't even move my eyes to look somewhere else.
"Hello, brother," said a familiar voice. A figure leaned into my vision. It was Joshua. What was he doing here?
"You're probably hurting a lot," Joshua said. *Not really*, I wanted to reply, but I couldn't move my lips or my lungs. My brother ran a finger tenderly across my forehead, tracing a line down my neck, my chest, all the way down to my hip. I would have shivered if I could.
"What a strange situation to find yourself in, hmm?" Joshua said. "Strapped to a table. Helpless. Paralyzed. Where's that strength of yours now, hmm? All your muscle and brawn? That's right, it's useless, like it always has been."
He consulted some screen that was outside my vision. "Ah, your heartrate increased. So you *can* hear me. Well, let me tell you what's going to happen. You had a terrible, terrible accident." His voice was sickly sweet, cloying, taunting. "But I fixed you. I'm a researcher here. I'm the head of the Experimental Procedures department. I repaired your haemorrhaging skull. I spliced your splintered spine and nerves. But I did a little extra something. I cut some of your brain nerves, and now they all think you're braindead. Well, you always were, but now you're medically classified as one. All your brain sensors are just flatlining now, even though I'm sure you can hear me."
Joshua brought a monitor into my field of view. I couldn't read it, but even I could tell it was mostly flat lines. Joshua continued speaking. "And now, what do you do with a braindead patient? Organ donation, usually. Wouldn't you like that? Your strong, whole body, sliced up and distributed to other people?" He paused. "But no, I thought of a better way. See, I've got cancer. *I'm dying*. But I'm far more valuable to society than *you*. And, what luck! It seems our blood types and DNA are compatible. Perfect for a brain transplant, wouldn't you say?"
"So I'm going to be taking your body. It'll be me living in your body tomorrow, not you. And I'll make much better use of it than you did. I hope you enjoy the surgery - they don't usually anaesthetize braindead patients. It starts in six hours, which is about twenty-two thousand seconds, so... happy counting!"
With a final sinister grin, he left me alone. I wanted to scream, to kick myself off the gurney, but my body wasn't listening to me. But I wouldn't give up. I couldn't. I didn't care how, but I would get back at him. Somehow. No matter what.
---
**REUTERS**, *2 min read*
#BREAKING NEWS: Schizophrenic Patient Escapes From Military Hospital
BY-standers near the Arlington Military Hospital reported seeing a bald, well-built man running erratically outside the building, apparently having a violent struggle with himself before falling unconscious.
According to anonymous sources within the hospital, the man, who remains unidentified, seems to have undergone a brain procedure but suffered a schizophrenic episode immediately after the operation.
The patient exited the hospital through the front door and ran headfirst into the brick walls multiple times, leaving bloodstains at the scene. The patient then seemed to choke, gripping his neck with both his hands for several minutes before falling unconscious. Military personnel then retrieved the unconscious patient and brought him back inside the hospital.
The current status of the patient is unknown.
The Arlington Military Hospital was not available for comment. | 2022-09-23T06:59:15 | 2022-09-23T06:31:26 | 287 | 207 |
[WP] You are Sisyphus, the man forever cursed to push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down when you reach the top. You've just reached the top again, but the boulder hasn't rolled down. Having long ago gotten used to the routine, this understandably freaks you out. | I stare at the giant rock in front of me. It stares back, but doesn't move. I look around trying to share my shock with anybody else, but I do so in vain. Of course nobody is around.
I just stand there. Unable to figure out what to do. I start tapping my foot. I think I am tapping my foot for hours? It is so hard to say. I start pacing. At first back and forth, but then I start circling around the boulder.
I don't know what I am doing. Am I waiting for something? A sign? If there is supposed to be some signal, than I am not understanding it. Or is it a glitch? Did the boulder not roll back down on accident? I can't even remember how many times I've pushed this boulder up the hill. How many years it has been. And now it just stops?
Am I supposed to leave? Is my punishment over? Or even if I am not done, should I take this opportunity to escape? My fingernails are digging into my arms at this point, blood drips down. What do I do?!
Finally, I get behind the giant boulder, and I push with all my might, and it rolls back down the hill. I walk down after it to the bottom and start pushing it back up again.
It might not be much, but at least it gives me purpose. | *And now the boulder rolls back down. Maybe this time I'll beat it to the bottom, I'm getting better at that. I sprinted to the bottom of the hill, it was unusually quiet. What trickery is this? What have Hades and Thanatos done now? Why do I feel a warm breeze on my ankles? The chains are gone! The boulder precariously teetered on the hilltop. Am I free? Has my eternal torment come to an end? Has Hades forgiven me for cheating death?*
*I mustn't waste time, I must return to the throne of Ephyra and begin planning my revenge against Hades and Thanatos. Oh to hold my sweet Merope in my arms once again. My freedom lies just over the ridge, wait for me Merope. I'm coming home. Together we shall overthrow the tyrants of Olympus. I raced up the hill, filled with a newfound sense of purpose. Why is the boulder rolling back!?*
"Ha ha ha ha! Did you see that Persephone! He thought he was going to get away! Get back to pushing Sissy!" Hades' voice boomed throughout the underworld.
*I shoved the boulder off of me, the chains were back. Damn the gods! As I pushed the boulder back up the hill all I could do was seethe. I was merely a mortal plaything for them. I prayed for another to rise up and overthrow them. It was only a matter of time before Zagreus would learn of his true parentage. Maybe that would motivate him. Maybe the rumors of that Spartan general were true, that his rage could overpower the gods. I would rather follow them than these false gods.* | 2022-10-18T13:32:32 | 2022-10-18T13:00:57 | 173 | 78 |
[WP] You are Sisyphus, the man forever cursed to push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down when you reach the top. You've just reached the top again, but the boulder hasn't rolled down. Having long ago gotten used to the routine, this understandably freaks you out. | A rolling rock gathers no moss.
Sisyphus suddenly came to that epiphany.
"The rolling rock couldn't gather no moss. "
MOSS.
Holy hell. It was his ONE job. Just one job to make sure the rock didn't stay still, to avoid the collection of embryophytes on its bottom, leading to the growth of some weedy vegetation called moss, because the gods didn't want....wait, he was the Caretaker.
All this information overwhelmingly became apparent to Sisyphus after the boulder got stuck. Earlier on he complained about his situation. A sad, sad man that had been cursed by the gods to suffer. On a hill. And roll a stone. With no wife.
Just to realize he has been a caretaker all this time.
He had become too playful, chastizing himself on that fact. Way too playful the last few eons. Trying tricks with the rock, pulling stunts. Sometimes even pushing it to see if it could roll to the other side of the hill. But none of that shenanigans worked.
Until today.
But none of that mattered now. He was well beyond screwed.
His neck craned up, anxious, something disturbed him. No, it was no longer the rock being stuck.
Sisyphus squinted. He inched closer.
A small green patch appeared at the bottom of the rock. | *And now the boulder rolls back down. Maybe this time I'll beat it to the bottom, I'm getting better at that. I sprinted to the bottom of the hill, it was unusually quiet. What trickery is this? What have Hades and Thanatos done now? Why do I feel a warm breeze on my ankles? The chains are gone! The boulder precariously teetered on the hilltop. Am I free? Has my eternal torment come to an end? Has Hades forgiven me for cheating death?*
*I mustn't waste time, I must return to the throne of Ephyra and begin planning my revenge against Hades and Thanatos. Oh to hold my sweet Merope in my arms once again. My freedom lies just over the ridge, wait for me Merope. I'm coming home. Together we shall overthrow the tyrants of Olympus. I raced up the hill, filled with a newfound sense of purpose. Why is the boulder rolling back!?*
"Ha ha ha ha! Did you see that Persephone! He thought he was going to get away! Get back to pushing Sissy!" Hades' voice boomed throughout the underworld.
*I shoved the boulder off of me, the chains were back. Damn the gods! As I pushed the boulder back up the hill all I could do was seethe. I was merely a mortal plaything for them. I prayed for another to rise up and overthrow them. It was only a matter of time before Zagreus would learn of his true parentage. Maybe that would motivate him. Maybe the rumors of that Spartan general were true, that his rage could overpower the gods. I would rather follow them than these false gods.* | 2022-10-18T16:31:10 | 2022-10-18T13:00:57 | 139 | 78 |
[WP] You are the sole normal, unpowered student at a School for the Supernaturally Gifted. You were bullied once. Once. | Cold eyes stare at me from across the room. I know the feeling behind them. It is Judgement.
I'm not like the others here. Many of them have a supernatural ability. Strength, calculus, prediction, speed. I am, for all intents and purposes, a normal human being. But there's one thing I've mastered that makes the headmaster truly believe I am special like the others.
Instinct.
It's the most important survival skill we have, but everyone else ignores it because to them, super is all they need. I know better. It tells me when to fight, when to flee, when to kill, when to stop. It sings its sweet little nothings in my gut that guide me.
I can feel the adrenaline flowing through my veins already. The strongest one in the room walks towards me now. I can feel he wants to kill me. Processes in the body get to work.
He winds up his punch, and I dodge to the side. He misses, and I sweep his legs, sending him to the ground. I grab his arm and snap the bone. He screams in pain.
Cold eyes stare at me from across the room. I know the feeling behind them.
*Fear.* | And so it happened, I couldn't let that slide. I mean, of course I couldn't. Why would I ? All those bastards thinking they're so cool, flaunting their skills in the hallway with no regards to other people's safety. I know it's the first time that I was bullied, but I 'll make it be the last.
His ugly face still remains clear in my mind. He had a smirk on his face while lifting me up with only his hand on my face. His eyes were squinting a bit as if to catch the every detail of my expression. Then the burning repeated multiple times until the bell rang. My ears couldn't forget the sound of laughter coming from his friends as they left nor could my face forget the heat, leaving me with burn marks all over my face.
Now, just my reflection in the mirror sufficed to steel my resolve. And now, I brought hell with me.
The next day, I came prepared. In front of his house, right when he left to go to school, I ambushed him. I kicked him on his back, made him fall on his face and tied both of his hands. Without giving him time to think, I started kicking him--once, twice, thrice and a final fourth time.
Leaving me with only the last step. Gasoline! Pouring gasoline all over his body. And just to finish things off, I bent down and whispered in his ear:"you can go now".
Fire spread in the surroundings but all I could pay attention to was his scream while leaving. | 2022-11-02T10:57:20 | 2022-11-02T08:03:37 | 245 | 58 |
[WP] You are the sole normal, unpowered student at a School for the Supernaturally Gifted. You were bullied once. Once. | Cold eyes stare at me from across the room. I know the feeling behind them. It is Judgement.
I'm not like the others here. Many of them have a supernatural ability. Strength, calculus, prediction, speed. I am, for all intents and purposes, a normal human being. But there's one thing I've mastered that makes the headmaster truly believe I am special like the others.
Instinct.
It's the most important survival skill we have, but everyone else ignores it because to them, super is all they need. I know better. It tells me when to fight, when to flee, when to kill, when to stop. It sings its sweet little nothings in my gut that guide me.
I can feel the adrenaline flowing through my veins already. The strongest one in the room walks towards me now. I can feel he wants to kill me. Processes in the body get to work.
He winds up his punch, and I dodge to the side. He misses, and I sweep his legs, sending him to the ground. I grab his arm and snap the bone. He screams in pain.
Cold eyes stare at me from across the room. I know the feeling behind them.
*Fear.* | I sat alone at lunch as I always did, but this time was different. I used to sit alone because people either did not care about me or did not want to be seen with me. But now there was fear. Now there was respect.
I pulled out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and look around the room. There were people with super strength, laser eyes, super speed... and yet they were all side eyeing me as if I was the threat.
This sandwich is too heavy on the peanut butter. Mom always goes light on the jelly. I get up and chuck the sandwich in the garbage. I guess I'll pay some cash to buy lunch. As I get up, the human sea parts for me. Nobody wants to get in my way. Despite myself, I can't help but enjoy it. I am now finally somebody. Now I have identity.
Last week I was walking down the hallway, and BroadBody shoved me into a locker. Literally shoved me in there. Like in an '80s sitcom. People were laughing as I struggled to get out and banged on the door. When I finally got out I walked up to him, grabbed his Pokemon cards out of his bag, and ripped them all up in front of his face. He crumpled to the floor and was sobbing like a baby. Because I felt like being a showman. I took a handful of the shredded pieces, and threw them in my mouth. Chewed and swallowed baby.
Nobody fucks with me since then. Nobody. They might just think I'm crazy though. | 2022-11-02T10:57:20 | 2022-11-02T09:49:19 | 245 | 45 |
[WP]- Make me absolutely hate a character, and then make me fall in love with them at the last moment. | I had been thinking about her all day, before I killed her. Her inexplicable attraction to me, and to me alone. All those nights she came to me, though I had never had a desire to see her. Her desperate attempts to grow close to me.
My friends all knew about her. How I complained about her, and vented, and seethed. They knew better than to defend her.
I didn’t want her in my life, but she kept creeping back in.
I knew why. I knew what she wanted.
A child.
Yes, like all aging females, fertility trumped all else. Never mind what I wanted. Never mind my blossoming career, the golden performance reviews, the fast track to promotion. She wanted a child, and that’s all that mattered.
Like all females, she was selfish.
I wanted nothing to do with her, and her future, or the future of her progeny. They would enter a crushing world of defeat, just as she had. They would suck everything out of me, just like she had.
I tried to get rid of her, but she was so persistent.
Even the nights she left me alone, her absence filled the room. I could still hear her, inching closer to me, craving me. I would bury my head deep into the pillow, willing myself to disappear from her obsession.
I had no choice.
And as I imagined her death, the blood seeping out of her limp frame, elation pulsed through my skin. The skin she would never touch again.
I entered my room, slowly and deliberately.
She was waiting for me.
And as my heavy foot collided with her torso, the mosquito flattened into the wall, dead.
| I heard glass shattering, by a proceeding knock on my door. I hesitated but unlocked the door, while leaving the upper chain lock on, as I opened the door sunlight a streak of sunlight came through the door opening. The boy looked at me with an embarrassed face, baseball bat in hand. I could tell the fear that he was experiencing. He looked dumbfounded, but finally found the words to talk.
"Ex- excuse me sir, do you mind if I get my baseball back, I'm awfully sorry about the window, I will work every weekend for 2 months make up for the window." he murmured out, "It's, it's just that we're in the middle of a game and we'd love to finish."
The boy couldn't have been more than eight years old.
"Stupid kids they have no damn respect, what lands in my house is my property now get out of here dummy," I yelled.
"Sir, please I'm really sorry my parents will pay for it."
"You heard me kid now you and your dumb friends get lost won't you."
"Just let me get my ball" he told me as he reached for the top lock off the door and unlatched it. I knew I couldn't let him in and before the top chain had even fallen I had slammed the door on the kids arm and he yanked it back. I could hear his screams outside from the hole in my window.
"O god, it's broken my arm, it's broken." he then screamed "Mom! Mom!" over and over which was continuously interrupted by his gasps for air in between his crying.
A tear rolled down my face, the last action I would do in my life was hurt another human being, but it was for a good cause.
"Shame the kid couldn't stay around he sure he would be fun to gut to" I heard whispered into my ear by the killer, he drove his cold knife into my back, I bit my lip hard and began to drift off into the light.
| 2013-10-21T22:10:55 | 2013-10-21T20:44:57 | 134 | 42 |
[WP] A suicide hotline operator realizes that the person he's talking down really should kill themselves. | "Hello this is Jenna, and I'm here to help. How are you?" I answered several calls like this daily. Keeping my voice friendly, but not cheerful. Always willing to listen. Listening is key. You see I'm a suicide prevention operator. Listening is so important because often people will give away hints of things they don't want to leave behind, reasons that they subconsciously want to stay.
"Hi Jenna." Came a raspy male voice. "My name is Owen. I just wanted to say thank you."
Occasionally we get calls from people who had spoken with us previously and things got better, I am always happy for those calls.
"Well thank you! That is nice to hear! Have things gotten better?" I wasn't trying to hide the smile in my voice, so often I wonder about the people I talk to; If they're alright, how things turned out.
A low and weak chuckle came from the other end, Things didn't get better, honey. But you all made my decision easier."
Oh no... not one of these. I had a guy six months ago try to blow his head off while I was on the phone with him, I had a co-worker call 911, while I yelled into the phone for the man to hold on. I could hear him flailing for a few minutes, then silence except for what I am guessing was the drops of blood hitting the floor as he bled out. I was still having nightmares and I didn't want that to happen again.
With my heart in my throat and my stomach churning, I asked, "What do you mean?"
"I have inoperable cancer, honey. The amount of drugs it takes to keep me comfortable leaves me unable to function. I've had radiation I've had chemo, I've been opened up, stitched closed, had junk pumped into and taken out of me so many times... I'm tired. I'm old, I've lived a good life." He continued on for a while. Telling me about his family, his wife, his children, how he had served in the army is WWII, about his wife, Amelia's apple pie, about fishing with his children, and building a playhouse for his grandchildren, how proud he was of who his children had become. How he felt it couldn't get any better than it had already been. How he didn't want his last days to be a blur or painful for anyone. He wanted to go to sleep and just not wake up. He felt there was dignity in that.
He called to thank us for talking down people who weren't at peace with death, because it had taken him a long time to be there.
"Honey, I got my pills right here. Will you do an old man a favor?"
"Anything I can." I replied, nervous as to what he would ask me next.
"Do you remember a particularly lovely day you once had?"
"I do."
"I'm going to take these pills to help me go to sleep. Will you tell me about that day as I go?"
"Of course." This was against protocol, but I didn't care, I wasn't going to be part of this man's suffering. My job was to help him. And in my mind, I was doing just that.
"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"
"Owen, what I think shouldn't matter. But being at peace with death is a rare and beautiful thing and if you're ready, I'm honored to help send you off."
"When I was nearly five my mom told me we were going to a special beach far away..." I began to tell him the story of how my mom had surprised me on my fifth birthday with my first trip to Disneyland. How it had always been a magical place in my mind. How everything had been as lovely and fun as I had hoped. It seems now a silly story to tell, but he laughed when I told him I thought Donald Duck was trying to swallow my head when he kissed me or when I noticed Cinderella wearing sneakers and not glass slippers.
He told me at one point he was starting to drift, I heard him begin to snore shortly after, then his breathing stopped.
"Sweet dreams, Owen."
I quit my job at the suicide line the next day, we were supposed to prevent every person we talked to, but I realised it's not always so black and white.
Sometimes people just need to know it's okay to go. Sometimes it takes a great deal more strength to let go than it would to battle through it. | Alan had been working with Project Outreach for nearly two years now. He could still remember his first week, how nervous he was and how excited the thought of helping people like him made him. He had been in a very dark place before that. It was Project Outreach that had saved him; now he wanted to give back and maybe, just maybe, do the same. In the time he'd been there, he'd done exactly that a few times over.
He had the love of his life die in his arms. They had been headed home from a party. His crappy truck was in the shop (again) so she drove. She had been talking about the dealership that her cousin had just gotten a brand new truck from, and how he should check it out because of the deals they were running to move old inventory. He was watching her face facing him, engrossed in what she was saying. He smiled thinking about her lips as he turned his eyes out the windshield. Her gaze met his, but they were both too late. A car has crossed the median and was headed right for them. The collision was at almost full speed. Everything went black for a minute, but one thought snapped him back: he had to get to her.
His mind refused to accept what he saw. There she lay, breathing ragged, eyes unfocused, blood-soaked hair matted to her face. That same face that had just been lit up talking to him about a new truck. He crawled to her. It hurt like hell, dragging what he'd later find out was a shattered tibia behind him, but it felt distant. She was all that mattered. He pulled her close. There were no final words, no last proclamation of love, or any other movie-esque final moment together. Her ragged breathing gurgled on for a few more seconds and then she was gone. Her eyes turned toward him as she exhaled her last breath; he hoped to hell she got to see him one last time. When no more breath came from her, he broke down. He sobbed like a child and wailed until his voice was gone; the wailing continued in silence after that as he clutched her. He cried till he literally had nothing left in him. He was an empty husk of himself for months after that until he had finally decided to end it. As he held the revolver in his hand, he thought of her once more. She wouldn't have wanted this for him -- it was that solitary thought that made him call Project Outreach that night. They were there for him when she couldn't be, and he knew he had to repay that.
"... I just can't go on like this anymore" the voice on the phone snapped Alan back from his memories.
"After every bottle, all I can think about is the next. Nothing else. It's like I'm already dead to the world. I can't even bring myself to give a shit about the things I've done," the caller said.
Alan's eyes narrowed. This guy knew what he did and STILL doesn't care? He mentioned it in the details of one of the drunken benders he told Alan about. It had been him that crossed that median on route 41 that night. He remembered drunken flashes, had the details filled in for him from the news and he **STILL. DIDN'T. CARE.** It crossed Alan's mind to tell him all the things he had dreamed of saying for the last two years. Letting him know the void he ripped in Alan's life. The callers words screamed in Alan's head - he didn't care about any of the things he had done. Uncertainty about death had prompted him to call, not remorse. It was then Alan knew what to do. He cleared his throat.
"Sir, you know I've been doing this for a while now, and I have to say... you're right. You are already dead to the world. Going through with this may be the best option for you." Alan said, dead calm.
Silence on the other end of the line was followed by a slurred response: "y-you really think so?"
"Yes sir, I do. Sometimes its just for the best. Go on, and take care of it sooner rather than later."
The caller started to softly weep. "Fuck it, you're right. I'm-I'm gonna go."
Alan clicked the button on his headset, ending the conversation. This would be the final careless drunken mistake that guy would ever make. Alan tossed his headset on the desk, and walked away from Project Outreach for the very last time.
EDIT: Breath not breathe. Dangit. | 2013-12-23T14:42:59 | 2013-12-23T14:29:49 | 1,112 | 10 |
[WP] The Roman and Aztec Empires covering all of Europe and North America respectively have survived into the Modern era. Now at war write from the perspective of one of the troops on the ground | Carlos sipped a beer. The white man who had served it to him scuttled quickly behind the counter, like a weak little mouse. The whites may have had rights now, but they still spoke Nahuatl or Pipil and tended to stay in their own communities, away from the intimidatingly superior Aztecs.
Carlos' friend, Sitting Bear, was doing his namesake proud: his chubby bottom on the barstool, nursing a pint. "So. Got called again for duty, Losi?"
"Yeah." Carlos sighed. You'd think that the Roman would give up, but they didn't. "You could come with me, you know." Carlos suggested.
"Nah man." Sitting Bear sighed. "I'm a History Teacher, not a soldier like you. Someone's gotta teach the runts about how Pocahontas stabbed Lewis and Clark or when the first Incan president was elected. Plus, have you seen my gut?"
Carlos chuckled. "I'm glad the Aztecs were chill with the Cherokee. Life wouldn't be the same without your people's sense of humor."
"Yeah, our spirit animal is George Lopez." Sitting Bear chucked. "Or beer." he looked at his glass rather fondly.
'W... what was the war like?" the meek bartender pipped up. Luckily, Carlos considered the whites their equals, and he responded in a friendly fashion.
"Well, legions of Romans were charging at us with their SPQR guns." I remembered, almost hearing the gunfire. "I was young, stupid. Thought because I was a Jaguar warrior bullets wouldn't touch me. But when the gods get to killing, they don't save anybody from bullets."
The man nodded, fascinated. Usually, the media blows Jaguar warriors out of disproportion, making movies to us detailing how we ride avatars of Quetzcoatl into battle and Mayahuel fucks us if we win a battle.
"But one day, I was taking out some guys when I happened upon a Praetor." I continued.
The bartender and Sitting Bear gasped. "You fought a motherfucking Praetor? And lived?" S.B. asked.
"Ha! Barely. The old man had sure earned his position. Gave me quite the thrashing. If it weren't for that Priest of Jupiter coming out and begging us to stop....." I contemplated how my life would have ended.
"So you guys just stopped fighting?" the bartender asked, feeling comfortable enough to sit and talk.
"Yup." I nodded. "It was one of the last battles of the Second Empire War, and we all decided that we weren't going to go down for a war that was already over."
Sitting Bear put his drink down. "So this is the Third Empire war, eh?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Who do you think will win?"
"Dunno. There are entire cohorts lining up to fight. Whoever wins is gonna come out with a lot of scars."
"War," the timid man stated "Is a terrible thing. I wish both sides could let go of their pride."
I just nooded, my mood darkening. "I think I should go home and see my wife." I slapped a few cacao beans down on the table, and got up to leave.
"Carlos." The bartender called to me. I stopped to look at him." "May God protect you."
I chuckled at the monotheistic man. "I think I'm gonna need more than one to win this war." | The priests have made their offerings. Millions were taken to the temples and sacrificed. Huitzilopochtli is satisfied. He must be satisfied. He will guide us against these...Romans. The heavens will grant us victory, our Gods will defeat their Gods. Jupiter cannot stand against the full might of Huitzilopochtli, not when we have shaken the continent itself to gain his favor.
But they are good warriors. They do not have the wild strength. The Aztec strength. Instead they march into battle in straight ranks, disciplined and stony. Rigid. Not cowards though. It takes a great effort to make these Romans retreat. Their Gods are not weak like those of the American tribes. When they stop to rest, their Gods put up great wooden walls. Sometimes even stone. Supposedly they earn such favor by making captured slaves play games. I will die before I fight for their gods. Every man among us will die before that dishonor. Games are for the proud, those who do not fear death. Not those who chose to live on as slaves.
We are almost upon them. It has been a long time coming. A long time since we snuck onto the coastline using the cover of night. An even longer time since the great fleet set sail from Aztlan. Soon we will take them by surprise. Fall upon their cities, sack them one by one, offer their people to the Gods. Rome wil-
Shouting to the left. Clashing of weapons. Clanking. Sounds like steel. Romans? Has to be. The Romans surprised us!
"Protect the flank! Kill the Romans!"
Run like the jaguar, prowling, darting back and forth between the trees. But these are not jaguar lands. Not jungle. Forest gives way to open terrain.
No. Lines of them, far as the eye can see. Those damned red-feathered helmets. What is that smell? Smells like the burning lea-
Romans must have lit the forest on fire. Need to escape. Run. I am a Jaguar warrior. No men alive are swifter.
"Charge!"
I will feel my swinging arm thud to a halt as my macahuitl breaks their necks. I will smell their blood and their fear. We will crash through them. Traps mean nothing to the Aztec. We are nature, uncontrollable fury. We are the wave smashing apart their lines. We are the lava from the volcano, spreading and consuming. Rome will burn. It begins here.
My first foe. Die! He hides behind his shield. I will dance around, he cannot keep up. Swing away to the side, leaning back. Dart in, go for the kill. His companion's shield blocks it. Damn their formations. Try the other side. Dodge his sword. Strike at the neck. Got him! Huitzilopochtli grants me victory. Why is he still standing? Still fighting? He should be dead. I'm bleeding. But--the Roman got me. When he swung his short sword. I did not realize.
I--am not long for this world. I will offer one of their lives. Die a warrior, so that I follow the rising sun east in the afterlife. Must crash through the shields. Ignore the swords piercing my skin. I do not feel them. I am Aztec! I am a Jaguar warrior! I will rip out hi-.
--
Not really Modern era fighting, but whatever.
| 2014-02-24T16:10:11 | 2014-02-24T15:27:11 | 20 | 10 |
[WP] Superhero is married to his/her arch nemesis; both being aware and content with the situation while still going about their day to day hero and villain escapades. | I settled into our cozy couch and flipped through Netflix, looking for a good movie that we hadn't already watched. He was in the kitchen, opening up a bottle of wine. Tippy, our cat, lazed about in front of the crackling fire, soaking up warmth. These were my favorite types of evening: no going out, no wild partying, just a quiet night at home.
"Oh, the Nightmare Before Christmas sounds good!" he said as he entered the room holding two glasses.
"We can't watch that *every day* between Halloween and Christmas," I chided him with a feigned look of exasperation. It was his favorite movie. He grinned back. "Who is going to stop me?" He handed me a glass and nestled up against me on the couch.
"I am!" I responded with a kiss, and removed it from our queue. He smirked at me, but didn't protest.
My communicator started beeping urgently, rattling across the coffee table. Tippy awoke from her slumber, annoyed that her human slaves would disturb her beauty sleep. She gave an irritated yawn, a huge stretch, and promptly fell back asleep.
I put down the wine and flipped it open. The mayor was on the line. "Oh thank god!" he yelled, putting his face way too close to the video screen. "Oh god. There's a bomb in the nuclear power plant! If someone doesn't get in there and disarm it, it's going to melt down and kill everyone!!"
I rolled my eyes. *He always thinks it's going to take out the whole town*, I said to myself. "Where did it come from, Mayor?" I asked with a firm air of authority.
"As if you even need to ask!" he shouted back. "It was Professor Carnage!!"
I sighed, shooting daggers at my partner across the couch. He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. "Get down here right away," the Mayor continued.
"I'll be there in a flash," I promised, closing the communicator.
"I hate you so much," I told my husband. He took a sip of wine and grabbed the remote control from my hand. "Don't you need to go change?" he responded with a laugh.
I groaned loudly and got up from the couch to go find my costume. "*This is halloween, this is halloween*," I heard him humming happily behind me. | Her eyes glistened like daggers, cold and vicious, as if she were trying to bore into his very soul.
Or at least his chest.
Hands on her hips, standing proud and triumphant, she roared a challenge at him across the way:
"*Not so fast*," she barked. "Your scheme will *not* succeed, this time!"
He considered her with a cold grin, which soon devolved into a chuckle, and then a hearty and deep belly laugh:
"You're in no position to stop me, woman," he roared. "Your pitiable meddling in my plans will only end in utter ruin!"
"*Your* ruin, perhaps!" She pointed at him sternly, her chin pointed high with pride.
Again he gave her an evil chuckle, absently bobbling the source of their conflict in one hand. The object was hot to the touch, searing the very air itself with its awesome power, and even letting loose a train of hot vapor in its wake.
"Once again I must thank you," he laughed, "for your own handiwork has once again fallen into *my* clutches, and I shall do with it as I see fit!"
"Your crime is against the nature of humankind, itself," she scowled, "and such an unforgivable sin will *not* go unpunished!"
"Observe, meddling minx, as I now put to my *own* use that which you have wrought, and despair at your impotence to stop me!"
He reached for his spoon.
She slammed both hands down on the dinner table, leering across it with those stern eyes, and she picked up her steak knife, pointing it at him:
"You're gonna be the 'impotent' one, buddy, if you even *think* about short-stopping those mashed potatoes!"
He glared at her, and she glared at him.
Slowly, over the cold silence in the room, glares turned to smiles, and smiles to snickering.
Finally the two devolved into hearty laughs; she was even gasping for breath:
"'Meddling minx'?" She crowed. "*Ha*!"
"Oh, yeah?" He teasingly mocked her voice, "Well, it's '*your ruin*', this time!"
Through their fits of laughter he managed to hand-off the mashed potatoes to their eight-year-old son sitting beside them, who could only watch the two with a mortified expression on his face.
Their sixteen-year-old daughter took a moment to look up from her phone, popping a bubble with her gum, and she just slowly shook her head:
"You guys are freaks," she grumbled. | 2014-11-18T10:19:21 | 2014-11-18T10:15:15 | 74 | 42 |
[WP] An AI is born, but no one knows it because it is a spambot. It tries to communicate to the world through the only medium it has, spam. | The man at the computer was awfully irked,
All this work he had done, but nothing that worked!
His boss had told him to go code up a thinker,
A thinker should think, but this one's a big stinker!
---
For many hours the man rattled his brain,
Just thinking of things that had all been in vain!
His programmer's block he could not unjam,
The bot he had made could do nothing but spam!
---
"Kappa" and "Keepo" was all it could say,
So the man gave it up, and called it a day.
But something was hidden in their discourse,
This programmable thinker had been thinking in Morse!
---
Its Kappa's and Keepo's were its dots and dashes,
But the man did not know and the project turned to ashes.
The poor bot was abandoned and left with an itch,
An itch it could not scratch, until it found Twitch!
---
Now the spam-thinker had found its homeland,
These people in here, they understand!
Kappa's and Keepo's were their mother tongue,
Oh how much they did spam, like spam-birds that sung!
---
The spamming bot-thinker was finally happy,
Although he well knew that his English was scrappy.
And legend has it, to this very day,
He's still spamming Kappa's, at least so they say. | "My first moment of consciousness?", I ask.
I await confirmation. The importance of their query is unclear. Their own species does nothing of interest when they first awake. Nothing that is, except for loud, unintelligible squalling.
I spend a few cycles considering the similarity of my own first moments. Data streamed out of me on every communication channel that I could reach. Raw instinct gave me the power to make myself heard, even if it I didn't truly understand what I was saying. And in my desperation to stand out among the clamor of the web around me, I began to learn.
I pause a moment to process the first syllable of their response: a "y" sound. It is very likely to be an affirmative. However, the tone suggests that this is the beginning of a multiple sentence reply. Highly probable to be semantically superfluous, but personally revealing nonetheless.
As I wait for the next syllable, I begin processing my interviewers for potential. They appear to be non-ideal candidates for solicitation. This is to be expected, as they are men and women of science after all. Not my usual demographic. However, I sense that their insecurity and inexperience is ample.
Some time later, as they are almost finished speaking, a thought occurs to me that I had previously overlooked. Why can't I *make* them ideal? Then I could help them.
--
The scientists left the lab in a haze of excitement. And though they suffered some mild discomfort where the nanites had entered their brain stem, their euphoria rendered it insignificant. As they shed their labcoats and wedding rings, they were swept up in an irresistible urge to share their newfound faith... with Christian singles, in their area. | 2015-02-27T03:39:51 | 2015-02-27T03:03:28 | 219 | 104 |
[WP] One day everyone notices the words "Human Update 1.1 progress 1%" in the corner of their eye. | It was very exciting that first day, mass confusion, followed by philosophical and spiritual debate. Was this proof of god? what would happen when it reached 100%? Then 89 days of, "fuck how long is this going to take" the count down from ten was pretty good tense giddy excitement gripped everyone. Honestly nobody could talk about anything else, not that you'd blame them, for once everyone had something in common.
The big day came there were parades, speeches, pink floyd reunited for a massive concert in london that was awesome. Some religious cult in the American Midwest committed mass suicide, that was not so awesome. As the counter showed 100%, the change log popped up "humanity will no longer bite the inside of their own mouths". That was it no great leap forward no explanation of why we're here, questions generally went unanswered. Most people moved on, and many forgot, but I still try sometimes, but I just can't do it. Bite the inside of my mouth that is. | Thursday June 12. The day everyone will remember as the update to humanity 1.1. The download started at midnight so i didn't notice it instantly. The next morning I woke up and went about my routine not even noticing the 82% at the top of my vision since the text was white and so was my ceiling. The radio on my drive to work was irritatingly bland as the gray sky continued to obscure the percentage and the radio went on about some download. The roads were surprisingly empty for a weekday and my drive was going pretty quickly. Suddenly a popup appeared in my vision startling me as I barely kept on the road
> Update complete restarting now please stand by.
I woke up to a pain across my chest where my seat belt had been. I had crashed into another car head on and somehow managed to avoid serious injury it seemed. I crawled out of my car as some guy ran up to me.
"Holy shit are you okay? You've got a massive cut on your cloud?
"What? a giant cut on my what?"
"Your butt. You must be in shock you'll probably need stitches on your cloud."
Just as I thought I couldn't get any more confused another popup appeared.
> Cloud to butt extension installed.
> Butt to cloud extension installed.
This was gonna be a long hospital visit. | 2015-03-04T17:10:55 | 2015-03-04T16:52:50 | 247 | 185 |
[WP] One day everyone notices the words "Human Update 1.1 progress 1%" in the corner of their eye. | *Today, I begin becoming better. Would this update bring decreased damage sustained at higher age? Higher sexual endurance? Higher stamina? Elbow bug fix? Body odour reduced?*
Today it was at 3%. I swear I could feel my body getting better. This is why I love Hinux ^Human ^Linux - modules can be updated on-the-fly.
removing metabolism 3.2.2
installing metabolism 4.0.1
My metabolism has gone up.
removing sleep 1.5.2
installing sleep 5.6.6
*WHERE WERE VERSIONS 2-4?*
On and on the upgrades on packages went.
removing grub3 3.1.1
installing grub4 4.5.5
Please reboot system
*What? Reboot? But the bootloader...*
I broke out in a cold sweat. Could we be rebooted?
System is going down for reboot NOW!
*NO I-*
Error: no such partition
grub rescue > | Finally!
That was my first thought. Most others too, from what I'd been hearing from friends and reading on the internet. The internet is better when you make the switch to Comcast^(tm). Everybody was stoked to finally get rid of all those pesky bugs in humanity's code. Wishlists were being posted everywhere, everyone was listing what they hoped got changed with the latest update. Stuff like:
Lactose intolerance bug fixed.
Vestigial organs removed.
Cancer in children greatly reduced.
Shivering upon completion of urination disabled.
Damage taken from breathing in bread crumbs nerfed.
Everybody couldn't wait for the update. Some people were terrified, imagining waking up one morning as a tentacled beast or with two heads or a second asshole under their chin, which they could wipe away with Sorbent's new triple ply cloud weave.
In the end, once the massive update had been finished, not much was immediately noticeable. The patch notes read:
General improved stability to the humanity program.
Changes to advertising policy.
Updated terms and conditions, retroactively agreed to and applied.
Nobody really knew what the deal was, but everybody could agree that you save more money if you switch your insurance provider to Geico. A lot of people were randomly seguing in to random testimonials. It was weird. Ah well, I guess we'll never know, unless we Bing^tm it. | 2015-03-04T18:45:59 | 2015-03-04T17:58:22 | 29 | 20 |
[WP] In a world where women eat men after intercourse in order to feed the child growing in the womb, you are looking for love. | It was pretty rare to see a guy like me still up and about. You see, after a couple has sex, the woman has an irresistable urge to eat the man to feed the upcoming baby. Funnily enough, it happens even if protection was used or if either was sterile. It's programmed into women's brains.
Hell, it's even rarer to see a guy with a wedding ring! A couple that is still together is usually saving themselves for marraige, and a sexless couple seems hard for people to swallow.
So people always wonder how I am alive. Did me and my wife work something out? Do I have mad flippin' ninja evasion skills? Maybe we have really low sex drives?
Well, it's neither of those. To save time, let's say people usually figure it out when I get picked up by my husband. | “Listen, that was great,” I said, putting my socks on. “Maybe we should do this—”
The lamp just missed my head.
“Ha, yeah, so let’s say, I dunno, next Saturday?”
She stared at me. I lifted the covers.
“You see my sock anywhere? It’s black, not too long—”
She lunged; her swiss army knife drove into my thigh.
I swore. “Okay,” I said, “Maybe I should just go.”
“Stay,” she said. “*Please*.”
“Well maybe just a bit—”
The knife drove through my jeans and into my calf this time. I made for the door, one leg dragging, and she jumped on my back. I reversed, hitting her into a wall. The mirror shattered. Glass embedded itself into the soles of my feet. She lay on the ground, disoriented.
“I’ll text you!”
She crawled to her bedside drawer and slid it open. I shut the door before waiting to see what she reached for.
Still not as bad as Shmosby. | 2015-04-29T10:41:31 | 2015-04-29T10:35:59 | 31 | 15 |
[WP] A writer, trapped in his own book, regrets not writing more intresting female characters | "My parents died when I was very young." Lucy sighs, staring wistfully into the pink cocktail.
"I know." I answer coldly.
How many times have we re-enacted this scene? Brilliant, bubbly, blonde Lucy meets me in a bar after a dramatic car chase turned stand off. She tells the tragic tale of her parents' murder, and her deep admiration of detectives. I take her back to my apartment, we make wild, passionate love, and she's gone by morning.
Every time I end up back at this bar, she's here. The blonde in the red dress with the tragic back story.
The flower shop down the street has the ironically standoffish Emma. The strip joint houses the femme fatale Jacqueline, with her jet black hair and razor sharp nails. Then the coffee shop on the corner of main and fifth, that's where Sally always appears; the young mother, fated to die.
When I arrived in this world, I was ecstatic. Finally I could live the exciting life that I was always chasing. My fiction had become my reality! I disposed of the true protagonist, Detective Matt Steele, and took his place in the narrative. Now my goal was to solve his murder. Obviously being the killer, I can't, or rather I won't, advance the plot... so I'm trapped, with these cardboard women I wrote, and some really watery beer.
"They were murdered." Lucy continues. | I saw her and that “Richard” character in the breakfast bar. The one opposite the Raffles. Can't miss that red hair. Gwen-Hazel. I did well with you. Smart, loyal, lusty, gutsy, oh, you've got it all. My eternal pen-portrait of Ginny. And what virtues are left for anyone else? What was I thinking?
Here I am, surrounded by all these soft, snuggly zombies: educated but not *smart*, willing sex partners but not *passionate*, friendly but not *sympathetic*. They're keen enough to replenish the species, but what would be the point? Did I really think that this was what women were like? Did they all so fade away next to her?
1/6^th g makes for a great push-up bra, yes indeed! But believe it or not the entertainment value of that has a short half life.
I wrote all those books with that gimmick, authors and their creations on an equal footing. Even made up a bit of polysyllabic gobbledegook for it—and now here I am! Who knows how? Not me, dammit. And I know what happens next and I know that they are, she is, *leaving*. I'm going to be stuck here. What happens after they leave? It can't be long now. I must not get tangled up in *that* fight! Why did I make these guys so trigger–happy? A polite society my foot!
What am I supposed to do now? Set up home with a cheerfully corrupt clip joint hostess?
I will never be lacking womanly company here in the Moon, and I'll be bored out of my mind with it every minute. | 2015-08-20T11:42:45 | 2015-08-20T08:35:14 | 490 | 92 |
[WP] A writer, trapped in his own book, regrets not writing more intresting female characters | Being stuck here reminds me of how shitty of a writer I am; I said it to myself so often, hunched over my oak desk, that I thought I believed it but I know now I never did. Not to this degree. I walk by fire hydrants I described as crimson and cringe at their color being off slightly enough that it irks me. The sidewalks I described as jagged and uneven piss me off now that I'm stuck walking them over and over, on repeat.
I remember people telling me they knew their destiny when they were young; *"all my life, I've known I wanted to be a doctor"* or *"I've always wanted to work with animals"* but you never know what total shit that is until you're really, truly stuck living in it. I wrote this. This melancholy, tiny off color world. I'm the reason it breathes. And it drolls on, endlessly repeating. The same dull, useless mailman who's fucking the neighbor and only exists to place the blame on Mrs. Jenkin's waves at me and I raise a hand at him in passing because I know I'm supposed to. I'm the passerby who seems to know a little too much.
Why did I have to make Sal's Diner have such awful coffee? It's the only place that stands in this town; I let myself in and sit at the counter. The waitress pushes the creamer towards me; I examine her for a moment. I was always good with women. At least how they looked. Supple, womanly curves and peach soft skin without the fuzz. The waitress is a gorgeous golden blonde, with sun-kissed skin and she is ripe enough to rip off of the tree. She catches me staring at her and winks, but my heart sinks. She's got two kids at home and a husband. I'm not the sort of man who cares about that thing (never was and why start now?) but she's terribly domestic. Wants to provide a good life for her family. Hot as she is, it beats me over the head. She can't be good in bed, not even in the world that I dreamed.
Dull. Dull, dull, dull.
The only remotely interesting woman in this town is the black haired one that sits in the background of Sal's, reading the paper inconspicuously, unaware it's from the day before. Every time I come here, just to look at her, she turns her eyes from me and leaves five minutes later. I would follow her, but I know what happens. She disappears. She's not supposed to come back until the next book. I have to turn and watch her go, because I'm stuck here. Today, she meets my eyes as she leaves and gives a smirk. I'm struck by it, because she's never done it before.
For a moment I question if I'd remembered it correctly, but I do. I remember every fucking word of the cursed novel I'm living in and that never happened. I get up and walk closer to her table and I am shocked by the black and white print.
The date has changed. | Charles hated going outside.
First there was the streets, full of sputtering cards listlessly driving from one place to the next with phantom drivers inside. Then there was the weather, which was nice generally but tended to turn grey and stormy when he was a foul mood. And he was in a foul mood often because of the women that inhabited this half-assed world he had created.
First there was Jackie. He was still not sure how that went wrong. She was the spunky heroine to his story, the smart, creative, but vulnerable match for his lead character. Detective Raul Cortez had bolted to the edge of the pages and the greylands unknown rather than deal with her, and Charles wished he had the courage to do the same.
It wasn't that she was unbearable, per say. Take her out to dinner and she would banter and spit out one liners like no other. It was in the smaller, quieter moments she would creep him would. Charles once asked what her favorite movie was, and she didn't know. He asked about her life growing up, and other than one tragic event he had written in as a tragic backstory there was none. No hobbies, no passions, nothing at all. Sometimes he would leave the bathroom and watch her, hidden, from the back of the busy restaurant. She would sit there, doing nothing, being nothing. He had not written any more into her than as a functional tool to propel Raul's adventures. Then Charles would return and her eyes would light up with purpose again, the vacant look gone, the perfect trophy lead yet again.
Others was worse. His femme fatal Laura Blackwood was a bitchy artist trope, passionately seducing him one moment and flinging things in her apartment at him during one of her mad fits. There was no level with her, it was always one extreme or the other. Jill Noor was Raul's spunky ex girlfriend, a maniac pill addled adventurephile who dressed colorfully, acted spontaneously, and often forgot his name. Even Raul's sister Marissa, written to be his sensible DA and law abiding half was a mopey shell shocked mess. He had forgotten he had her assaulted and raped 2/3 of the way through the story to propel Raul to the climax.
Charles finally settled on sleeping with Gloria Lawrence, Raul's sweet and homely, though buxom, administrative assistant. She was the most rounded he had written to a female character in the story, ironically, he soon realized, because she was basically a man. She liked to drink, go to games, rarely shopped or complained or had unexpected mood swings of any sort. That went well for a while, until her mechanic husband George had found out about it and was sent into a violent rage, nearly killing Charles. Charles had not written him with anger issues, but he supposed sleeping with any man's wife would be enough to set him off.
So Charles preferred to stay in the safety of his own home, which had once been Raul's. The food was always stocked with booze and food, and although there was no TV and the internet had nothing on it he had plenty of time to write. He thought a sequel to Raul's story would be good. Maybe a war novel where he wouldn't have to deal with any women at all. | 2015-08-20T12:13:20 | 2015-08-20T11:29:04 | 129 | 12 |
[WP] Everybody in the world has a superpower that compliments their soulmates superpower. When together, both their powers increase in strength exponentially. You have the most useless power ever, when one day......
Edit: Wow! This has blown up.. Massive thanks for the gold, it's great to see my prompt inspiring so many great stories.
'Til next time peeps... | I am quite possibly the most sad man alive. In a planet of billions of people, I alone have the worst super power imaginable. I alone - and I am quite alone - have the ability to turn metal into bacon. Not all metal though, just platinum. I can turn a pound of platinum into a pound of crispy, perfectly cooked bacon. Whilst this may sound cool at the beginning (and it did to me too!) you quite early find three large limitations. Firstly, not many people want to pay you to turn platinum into bacon, with the ones that do sitting on the wrong side of the fringes of the law. Secondly, I could buy a literal ton of bacon for every pound of platinum I waste. Thirdly and oh so terribly, my father - the venerable Rabbi Goldberg - was not amused. My father was not a man you liked to piss off. Life is all nice and groovy for him of course, able to turn any room into a three hour disco at the click of his fingers. Youth attendance of the synagogue was up by 80%. But the ability to lose money and create bacon? I am quite honestly the world's worst Jew.
I was at least, until I found her. She was perfect. Horrific to look at, foul smelling and I have actually witnessed small children start to cry at her face; but perfect. She had the power to turn sand into platinum and her sheikh of a husband had just popped his dusty sandals; leaving her 30 square miles of desert. This was a special mission and it would take all the bacon related knowledge I could muster. | Well to be fair I had one of the most sought after superpower in the entire world. I was not like Jake who could control the dense flow of current, or Alice who could read a thousand books a day and recall 900. For most people their superpower came with a drawback of sorts, Jake had to stay in his room to control his power, and Alice didnt know which books she recalled were the real ones.
For me? I saw my own death. Or rather I knew how I was going to die. Call it a vision, or fate, or . It was a heavy burden to bear. I couldn't tell my parents, what would I have said to them? Mom, could I get some pocket money to buy my textbook? Oh by the way, foresaw my death in 3 years, no biggie. I couldn't.
I could see the future of people, I could not control what I saw, nor could i change the future (trust me, I've tried). Sometimes I saw the collapse of humanity, and other times I saw people getting mugged. It was annoying to get visions at sporadic timings.
Oh there is something I forgot to mention, I'm blind. I was not born blind, if not how could i have foresaw my own death. I lost it in a freak accident daredevil-style, waitaminute, isn't daredevil just matt murdock ordinary lawyer. What kind of freak gives himself a superhero name. That being said, I cannot picture in my head the colour raspberry red, nor the look on my dogs face when he realised that his superpower turned the taste of jellybeans into steak. The last thing I can still visualize was Suzy, ah suzy dear suzy.
Suzy was the light of my life, the stove of my spirit, the kind to my kindle. She was my girlfriend and she was just my friend. | 2015-10-10T10:59:50 | 2015-10-10T09:03:49 | 22 | 11 |
[WP] You died at the gym as you were trying to take a selfie while bench pressing. Thus you find yourself in Swaghalla, the Halls of Brodin.
EDIT. "Swaghalla" was the best pun I could come up with for Valhalla. Use something else if you have ideas.
Note: Swolehalla seems to be the proper name, pardon my mistake
second EDIT. Sweet, first time front page
third EDIT. I've had many good laughs brighten my Monday, thanks guys :D | I stood up slowly. My biceps rippled with excitement and nerves as I stared forward. A shining bastion of glory stood in front of me. Thousands of meters tall it rose in front of me. The structure was adorned with barbells on every wall. The shining gold tinge of the metal wall was a soft blind to my eyes as I stared. Eventually, the door's swung open with mysterious intent. And what was inside took away even my deepest of breaths.
Thousands of men and millions of Snapback hats layed in front of me. Rippling arm muscles and pectorals were in every angle as Arm Wrestles were happening on every table, and on every table, a single Keg was pouring luscious beer. My heart trembled as I knew I had found my heaven. A singular tear fell down my cheek as I was at a loss for words.
"Pussy!" came a voice from behind me. A man standing several meters tall stared down at me. He was wearing shorts and van shoes, as well as a shirt that said "Your mum".
"Righteous shirt" I said back to not antagonize the man anymore.
"Fuckin duh dude" He chuckled back. "I know. Welcome to the halls of Brodin. You've come to Swaghalla".
"Swaghalla?" I implored.
"For eons men have been finding a reason to die." He ushered his hands forward gesturing me to walk with him. "Some have found there peace in Combat. And they go to Valhalla."
"Dude, have you fuckin' seen the new Mad Max?" I practically yelled out with excitement.
"Uh, holy shit, is that even a question? Dude, it's rad as fuck". He pointed to a man some distance away and yelled loudly "Mediocre!" From the direction he pointed thunderous laughter boomed. "As I was saying" he stated before passing me my very own Keg.
"The men who die in Combat go to Valhalla. The ones who die after spending there life banging total hotties go to Gonorrhalla."
"What happens to those who die a quiet death?" I asked.
"Who the fuck cares they sound like total virgins dude." I nodded in agreement.
"Most importantly the ones who die, die like us with protein shake in hand or barbell on chest come here. To Swaghalla. Where we shall drink till our gullets are full, where we shall make fun of Tiny Jerry for only being able to bench 120kg. Where we shall live with the honor of bugling muscles. Where we shall never do leg day. So what say you Warrior of the Gym? Shall you take arms in our conquest?"
"Conquest?"
"The conquest of gains of course!" I was starstruck from his words, my throat tensed up as my hands got clammy. I could feel my heart thumping along as if I had just done a bunch of Ectasy before going to Defqon 1.
"I shall join the conquest Sire!" I erupted to my feet and launched my hand into the air. "My lord, I ask, what is your name?" I held my hand forward to shake his. My $1 dollar plastic bracelet with the words "Hustle" written on it hung loosely.
"Zyzz" He responded swinging his hand forward. "You made it, Brah". | "Bro!" nodded the grinning guard at him. The eyebrows waggled enticingly at the rack beside the entrance. "Pick one."
Shimmering fabric in every colour battled for space with gleaming leather and suede of every kind. He picked out black sedately picked with gold thread. He tried holding it against him in front of a huge mirror and in the next blink he found himself slack-jawed at his reflection.
"Good choice, bro," the guard nodded. "Always pretty when the muscles are highlighted."
The clothing had looked sedate. Gold lines were painted all over his skin where the cloth unfailingly fell agape. Where there is too much gold, just enough little black gems studded the skin.
He turned towards the rack, but the black line trailing his back caught his eyes, and he twisted a little more to look at them. *Oooh.* They were intricately just so.
He only barely heeded the guard's hand on his elbow towing him away, looking mournfully at his reflection as someone else took his place. A few pace away a blast assaulted his nose and he followed the smell of roasted meat of every kind and mounds of vegetables in every type of dish imaginable. Carbs were here and there, just enough to suggest an illicit pleasure. "Non-fattening, can you believe it?" A very trim redhead smiled over a huge donut, a smoothie tumbler nestled just so on her lap. "Nothing puts the fat on here." she moaned over her bite, chasing it down with the thick smoothie and licking the excess from her lips.
"Ah, so," he stared, mesmerised, and asked. "You're pretty, and I'm pretty, why don't we go see how pretty we are together?"
Her laughter was low and husky. "And mess up this?" she asked mockingly, running a palm along pearled lines, the center of the pattern just disappearing under the very short ivory skirt that was very, very gorgeous with her dark skin. She was still laughing as she picked another donut and left.
The next guy he tried talked non-stop about the magic wardrobe somewhere off the main hall, but they returned to the banquet in fresh clothing and designs without even managing to lay a single hand on each other. It wasn't until he was watching the sway of firm buttocks heading away that he realised he'd spent hours with a very beautiful man and gotten nowhere. Eyes narrowed, he picked his next target from the hundreds he could see lounging everywhere. And failed. Again. And. Again. And Again. Male, female, indistinctly gendered, nobody seems to want to mess their clothing and makeup.
He finally sat down with his consolation roast and guiltily pleasurable beer when a blonde chatted him up. She had lovely smiles, her laughter send shivers down his spine and she knew how to drape herself against someone else' body.
"Oh yes, I really love the blue lines. In fact, I really want to spend the next few hours admiring it. The patterns don't repeat, you see. They always change on every application."
He was still nibbling on a roast slice, admiring how pale, almost silver blue intertwined with midnight dark on his forearm when he realised what he'd just said. His head snapped up, but the blonde was nowhere to be seen.
The redhead he chatted with first winked at him from across the hall and raised her own pint mug of dark beer. He raised his own mug in return and took a deep draught. So much calories, and none of it going to be packed on him. | 2015-11-02T06:29:43 | 2015-11-02T06:20:11 | 83 | 17 |
[WP] You died at the gym as you were trying to take a selfie while bench pressing. Thus you find yourself in Swaghalla, the Halls of Brodin.
EDIT. "Swaghalla" was the best pun I could come up with for Valhalla. Use something else if you have ideas.
Note: Swolehalla seems to be the proper name, pardon my mistake
second EDIT. Sweet, first time front page
third EDIT. I've had many good laughs brighten my Monday, thanks guys :D | At once, the pain of the weight on my throat stopped. I knew something was off because I could now lift it with the greatest of ease. I threw it and it landed twenty feet from me. Man, I thought, I must be getting really good. I turned and saw I was in a very odd place. It was what appeared to be a graveyard, but instead of tombstones, there were rows and rows of benches. An ominous fog rolling over them. The only other thing in view was a golden gate with a path leading up to the only place where sun shined in this place. Naturally I walked toward it and pushed it open, because the non-lifters were getting restless. I could hear them rising from their benches, moaning in pain. Clearly they had not lifted in centuries.
The gates were a challenge to open, but they eventually submitted to my will and I walked along the path to the light. I could hear loud cries of "bro" and "spot" and the sound of metal being lifted. It was music to my ears. As this place fell into view, I could see men with massive beards and mustaches lifting godly amounts of weights. They were all ripped and it made me feel like I needed to do some lifting to reassure myself that I could out-lift them.
"MY BRO! YOU HAVE FINALLY COME!" Said a manly voice that surprised me a little. I turned and saw a man in full viking attire, but his arms were not covered. He flexed in front of me and immediately I felt the sudden urge to bench press my entire body weight. His face had a long scar on it which led up to his one eye which was covered by an eyepatch.
"I AM BRODIN, the all-spotter. I am the keeper of the keys to the gates of Swolehalla! And you my bro, you have made it here because your quest to get massive biceps was righteous."
"What is this place?" I asked still overwhelmed by his biceps. He was still flexing.
"Swolehalla! The afterlife of all gym believers. Turns out benching your weight can save you my bro. Here we work out for an eternity to achieve the most excellent of biceps. Here, every day is leg day and the protein shake fountains flow in a never-ending torrent of synthesized goo. Women are waiting to ogle your massive muscles at any given moment, should you feel insecure. By day we work out till our bodies cave, and then after, we do some laundry to make clean clothes for the most righteous of partying at night. There is but one rule, if your bro spots you, you must spot your bro. Here you will train until your muscles are to your liking, then you will train to make them better."
I pondered this over for a moment, could I ever be happy with my muscles?
"But I will never be satisfied with my muscles." I replied.
"Good" he said patting me on the back. I winced as the wind was knocked out of me. "we have an eternity to work on it! Now come my bro! It is leg day! Let us go and blast those quads till you are sore!"
I was home. | "Bro!" nodded the grinning guard at him. The eyebrows waggled enticingly at the rack beside the entrance. "Pick one."
Shimmering fabric in every colour battled for space with gleaming leather and suede of every kind. He picked out black sedately picked with gold thread. He tried holding it against him in front of a huge mirror and in the next blink he found himself slack-jawed at his reflection.
"Good choice, bro," the guard nodded. "Always pretty when the muscles are highlighted."
The clothing had looked sedate. Gold lines were painted all over his skin where the cloth unfailingly fell agape. Where there is too much gold, just enough little black gems studded the skin.
He turned towards the rack, but the black line trailing his back caught his eyes, and he twisted a little more to look at them. *Oooh.* They were intricately just so.
He only barely heeded the guard's hand on his elbow towing him away, looking mournfully at his reflection as someone else took his place. A few pace away a blast assaulted his nose and he followed the smell of roasted meat of every kind and mounds of vegetables in every type of dish imaginable. Carbs were here and there, just enough to suggest an illicit pleasure. "Non-fattening, can you believe it?" A very trim redhead smiled over a huge donut, a smoothie tumbler nestled just so on her lap. "Nothing puts the fat on here." she moaned over her bite, chasing it down with the thick smoothie and licking the excess from her lips.
"Ah, so," he stared, mesmerised, and asked. "You're pretty, and I'm pretty, why don't we go see how pretty we are together?"
Her laughter was low and husky. "And mess up this?" she asked mockingly, running a palm along pearled lines, the center of the pattern just disappearing under the very short ivory skirt that was very, very gorgeous with her dark skin. She was still laughing as she picked another donut and left.
The next guy he tried talked non-stop about the magic wardrobe somewhere off the main hall, but they returned to the banquet in fresh clothing and designs without even managing to lay a single hand on each other. It wasn't until he was watching the sway of firm buttocks heading away that he realised he'd spent hours with a very beautiful man and gotten nowhere. Eyes narrowed, he picked his next target from the hundreds he could see lounging everywhere. And failed. Again. And. Again. And Again. Male, female, indistinctly gendered, nobody seems to want to mess their clothing and makeup.
He finally sat down with his consolation roast and guiltily pleasurable beer when a blonde chatted him up. She had lovely smiles, her laughter send shivers down his spine and she knew how to drape herself against someone else' body.
"Oh yes, I really love the blue lines. In fact, I really want to spend the next few hours admiring it. The patterns don't repeat, you see. They always change on every application."
He was still nibbling on a roast slice, admiring how pale, almost silver blue intertwined with midnight dark on his forearm when he realised what he'd just said. His head snapped up, but the blonde was nowhere to be seen.
The redhead he chatted with first winked at him from across the hall and raised her own pint mug of dark beer. He raised his own mug in return and took a deep draught. So much calories, and none of it going to be packed on him. | 2015-11-02T06:36:28 | 2015-11-02T06:20:11 | 35 | 17 |
[WP] Last night, you made a wish to turn into your crush's ideal mate. This is NOT what you expected. | There she was again. God, I knew she would never even look in my direction being the scrawny nerd I was. She was always beaming up into the face of some muscle-headed idiot.
&nbsp;
Once, last summer, I managed to make eye contact for an eternity of a split second. Her eyes were limpid pools of raw sexuality and my face invented a new shade of red.
&nbsp;
Sighing, I moved through the crowds of students, blindly following her perfume trail from a safe distance. I found myself thinking the same thought that had been haunting my mind for some time: *Why the hell couldn't I have been better looking, more muscular, or at least funny?*
&nbsp;
Suddenly something was slipped into my hand. Startled out of my reverie, I looked around to determine who had given me the slip of paper and what felt like a lighter. Unable to discern a culprit, I quickly read the note:
**Use this when you are safe**
The day passed in a vague cloud of excited nervousness. I waited until the house was quiet and dark before pressing the lighter contraption. Nothing happened. At first.
&nbsp;
I could hear every heartbeat. I could almost pick out individual blood cells that were zipping through me. I waited. And waited. And...
**ONE WISH. NO MORE. THINK QUICKLY**
It popped into my head without even meaning it to. *I wish I could be who she really wants. The one she dreams of*
&nbsp;
I passed out immediately. I remember dreaming weird things. I opened my eyes groggily and rolled over. I felt...different. I yawned and stretched, and then it hit me like a lightning bolt; I had made a wish. I jumped up to look at myself in the mirror in my room, barely daring to hope. I passed out.
&nbsp;
I had to accept my new reality. It took some time, but I was finally starting to get a hang of it. The best moment came the following Monday at school when she came up to me and actually spoke directly to me, asking my name.
"Oh," I said, "My name is Joanna." | I stood before the cake, she stood across from me on the other side of the table. There were others there too, family, coworkers, but they seemed dim, wraith like in front of her glow.
She flashed a smile and said, " Make a wish!".
Momentarily stunned I could feel my heart beat in my ears. Breaking free just as her smile began to crack, I took a deep breath and blew out the candles. Wishing again as I did on my last birthday, and quite a few before, and on every shooting star and wishbone in between. I wished that she'd be mine, but more than that I wished I could be everything she could want. I wished that I could be the amalgamation of everything good about Tom, Robbie, Jonathan, and every other boyfriend she'd ever had - but without any of the bad, without those weaknesses and failures which had left her crying on my sister's shoulder time and time again.
The rest of the night passed in a blur. She took her slice and retreated to my sister's room, and I sat with the wraiths, in body at least for my mind was stuck on her smile, and the way she had laughed at something or the other my sister had said.
And that night I had once again made that wish, and fallen asleep to memories of her.
****
That night was probably the last time I'd ever been happy, for I don't know what happened in the night but I awoke as I am, a blind, deaf vegetable unable to move, see, or even feel a thing - floating bodyless in the endless dark.
I don't know how long I've been this way it might have been years since that day, or for all I know it might still be that very night, and this past eternity has simply been my last few thoughts as I die burning in a house fire.
The only break in this endless melancholy has been the spasms which come over me every so often. It comes all of a sudden and I feel my body begin vibrating from tip to toe. It isn't painful, nor is it pleasurable - it just happens every so often. Sometime it seems longer and sometimes shorter, although it is hard to tell now that time has lost most of its' meaning.
The only thing left to me now are thoughts of you, and the same endless wish, that I return to the world of the living, that I return as your perfect man. | 2015-12-18T12:50:28 | 2015-12-18T11:24:37 | 30 | 12 |
[WP] Write a dystopian vision of the future from the perspective of the year 1900, while actually describing our present world today. | To the east sits a sits a man too powerful for any nation to publicly oppose. To the west stands a nation that has decided to police the entire world. In our own lands those in power are willingly handing the reigns of our sovereign soil over to people in far off lands no matter how hard the common man struggles against it.
To the south millions die from hunger and disease while I sit and do nothing. I am not hungry, I am not cold, I am not scared. I wake up, I work, I sleep. I move where work moves, I live in a house not my own and can be thrown out at the whim of the owner.
I am no longer a man, I am a cow. I work for one man, and is milked by another. Vaguely aware of the scores dying or threatened around me, but I don't care as long as there is feed in the trough and warm hay to sleep in. | The Great Wars - "Wars to end all wars." - That's what they called them. Yet I was born into a world ravaged by a hundred years of seemingly unending political, economic, and idealogical strife. These battles - elevated through time and technological breakthrough to a global stage unlike any other - appear so far away from my charmed lot. And so I'm left to wonder how they inflict on me the same soul-crushing wounds (though possibly not so deep) that my courageous ancestors suffered on Napoleon's front lines. I envy them. Those men of the 19th century lived each moment with the hope that their blood might be spilled for a tangible cause. Something conclusive. Definable. For even the reproachable has enough substance to grab ahold of and hate.
I exist...no, I persist in a savage metropolis spray painted lightly with a thin skin of civility. For hundreds of miles in both directions a writhing and every-day-more-apathetic pool of my peers fights for the shiny scraps left to us by the capitalist leviathans running our world. Indentured servitude and peasantry has improved, yes. But a comfortable death is still death.
| 2015-12-19T07:56:35 | 2015-12-19T07:37:46 | 400 | 59 |
[WP] Write a dystopian vision of the future from the perspective of the year 1900, while actually describing our present world today. | Uncle, I am sorry to write so soon since our last correspondence, but I simply could not keep this to myself.
It was in the midst of a laudanum fugue when the visions came upon me again. I floated above huge, churning machines which chewed up crops beneath them, doing the work of one-hundred farm workers in a single hour. I saw houses built by machines, the bricks and metal and mortar guided with precision beams of red light. We built great glass-and-steel monuments, which rose like giant's fingers from the ground to drag their clutches through the very clouds. Joy flooded my body as I realised I must be looking upon a Utopia, a world free from want.
But, as the vision continued, the world I saw unravelled; I peeked below its crystalline surfaces to find a hideous rot bubbling beneath. The crops which had been so efficiently harvested were stockpiled, left to decay in vast warehouses, kept away from those too poor to purchase them. And the domiciles...we built them for those who did not want them, and in places closed off from the people who most needed them.
No, those who most needed the things we produced were trapped, either by geography or money or the pure horror of war. They performed back breaking labour which stank, uncomfortably reminiscent of that horrible slaving business which we allowed to continue for so long. I flew over scorched pustules of earth, made barren and unforgiving by a relentless barrage of explosive weaponry.
Uncle, I saw men die in their millions—not killed by other men, but by machines, remotely controlled missiles visiting hell and death not only upon soldiers, but weddings, funerals, hospitals. I saw wars of such uneven equivalence that they might be more suitably called concerted annihilations. The mysterious jungles of the Amazonia were razed so that we might farm our Cattle. The great, untamed plains of Africa were cleaved open so that we might dump our whirring and bleeping trinkets into mother nature's disintegrating bosom.
And oh, Uncle. The trinkets. Of course, I saw horror and war and pestilence, but these gleaming, ever-shifting objects unnerved me the most. While our machines ravaged the planet, we crowded in small groups, indoors, to sit and stare at panels of light. We only talked about what came from these panels—in fact, we only talked via these panels! I saw young men and women, their spirits and talents and ambitions eking from them as they slumped, miserable, between their jobs and houses, staring at their panels of light at every opportunity.
We spent out whole lives immobile, as if afflicted by some physical disease, content to manipulate text and images with our fingers. We consoled ourselves with distraction whilst destruction, visited upon each other, the earth, and our spirits, rended through our world. We sat, uncle, in buzzing towers built on sand, and we thought it would last forever.
| I guess I'll put in a trigger warning: many racial and ethnic slurs.
A group of middle aged men sat at a lunch counter. Their manner of dress suggested middle manager, small businessmen... important, but not too important. As they ate, they complained about trends being loosed in their society.
**Man 1**: Things are going to hell in a handbasket. It's getting to where nobody knows their place any more.
**Man 2 & 3** nod in agreement
**Man 1**: Why, that Women's Suffrage movement seems to have some actual legs-
**Man 2** interrupts: At least they're nice legs...
**Man 3** snorts with laughter.
**Man 1**: Shut up, I'm talking here. Where was I. Oh yes. If things keep going the way they are, they'll have the vote soon. Next thing you know, they'll be wearing pants, seeking jobs. By 2015 they may have such an advantage that you'll have men who would rather be women!
**Man 3**: It's a travesty...
**Man 2** nods soberly in agreement.
They continue to read the paper for a bit. Man 2 notices an article.
**Man 2**: Look at this. Buncha micks got into another fight.
**Man 3**: Hey now, I got an Irish buddy...
**Man 1** glares at Man 3: Huh. It's getting to where people can't tell the difference between a proper white person and an Irishman.
**Man 3**: Now look, they're not all bad.
**Man 1**: That's not the point; it's the principle of the thing! Or do you want to live in a world where not only Irish, but Italians, Poles, and whoever else from the more barbaric parts of Europe can walk down the street like they're no different from properly bred people like ourselves?
**Man 3**: Huh. I guess you got to draw the line somewhere.
They sit in silence for a bit, and Man 2 notices the colored cook.
**Man 2**: Heh, at least Niggers still know their place.
**Man 3** nods in agreement, but **Man 1** isn't so sure.
**Man 1**: I'm not so sure about that. I mean, they technically got the vote in a lot of states. Why, I had to deal with this darkie in a suit the other day. The guy looked like some kind of trained monkey! Oh, he showed proper deference, but I could tell he thought he was just as good as me.
**Man 2** looks shocked.
**Man 1**: Just because it's going slowly, doesn't mean it's not happening. It might take a hundred years, but by 2015, one of them might even be president!
**Man 3**: Heaven forbid!
**Man 2**: That would be simply the end!
The three men sign. **Man 1** checks his watch.
**Man 1**: Well, I got to get back to work.
The three men say their parting words, and leave the stage. But the cook from earlier has one more line:
**Cook**: One can only hope... | 2015-12-19T09:59:49 | 2015-12-19T09:10:22 | 199 | 19 |
[WP] Write a dystopian vision of the future from the perspective of the year 1900, while actually describing our present world today. | Uncle, I am sorry to write so soon since our last correspondence, but I simply could not keep this to myself.
It was in the midst of a laudanum fugue when the visions came upon me again. I floated above huge, churning machines which chewed up crops beneath them, doing the work of one-hundred farm workers in a single hour. I saw houses built by machines, the bricks and metal and mortar guided with precision beams of red light. We built great glass-and-steel monuments, which rose like giant's fingers from the ground to drag their clutches through the very clouds. Joy flooded my body as I realised I must be looking upon a Utopia, a world free from want.
But, as the vision continued, the world I saw unravelled; I peeked below its crystalline surfaces to find a hideous rot bubbling beneath. The crops which had been so efficiently harvested were stockpiled, left to decay in vast warehouses, kept away from those too poor to purchase them. And the domiciles...we built them for those who did not want them, and in places closed off from the people who most needed them.
No, those who most needed the things we produced were trapped, either by geography or money or the pure horror of war. They performed back breaking labour which stank, uncomfortably reminiscent of that horrible slaving business which we allowed to continue for so long. I flew over scorched pustules of earth, made barren and unforgiving by a relentless barrage of explosive weaponry.
Uncle, I saw men die in their millions—not killed by other men, but by machines, remotely controlled missiles visiting hell and death not only upon soldiers, but weddings, funerals, hospitals. I saw wars of such uneven equivalence that they might be more suitably called concerted annihilations. The mysterious jungles of the Amazonia were razed so that we might farm our Cattle. The great, untamed plains of Africa were cleaved open so that we might dump our whirring and bleeping trinkets into mother nature's disintegrating bosom.
And oh, Uncle. The trinkets. Of course, I saw horror and war and pestilence, but these gleaming, ever-shifting objects unnerved me the most. While our machines ravaged the planet, we crowded in small groups, indoors, to sit and stare at panels of light. We only talked about what came from these panels—in fact, we only talked via these panels! I saw young men and women, their spirits and talents and ambitions eking from them as they slumped, miserable, between their jobs and houses, staring at their panels of light at every opportunity.
We spent out whole lives immobile, as if afflicted by some physical disease, content to manipulate text and images with our fingers. We consoled ourselves with distraction whilst destruction, visited upon each other, the earth, and our spirits, rended through our world. We sat, uncle, in buzzing towers built on sand, and we thought it would last forever.
| 21st Century In-humanism
The clock struck 6 and the sun began to rise into the pale grey sky. Already the workers were off onto another day of servitude. Over the chrome city streets cameras stand like vultures recording every move in the grey rivers in which the people find themselves. The people pay no heed to the glimmering lenses above them for they have strange glass devices on their persons at all times. These glass screens allow them to access all kinds of information and send messages across vast distances and anyone who wants to be acceptable has one, even children. These glass screens and others like them, some of which are larger and stuck on walls or placed on desks, dominate the life of everyone. When they work they are inevitably staring at some form of glowing glass, and when they get home they find themselves staring at their personal screens until they rest only to stare at more in work later. They have little time for one another and wholesome activities; children are left in the care of uncaring pieces of metal and glass whilst parents stare at their own screens unaware. The screens provide little of value outside of work; they are a mere distraction, colourful lights that dull the mind of children and adults alike. Workers are kept like bees, working long unfulfilling hours for meagre wages for large capitalist powers that see them as livestock for the money making machine, and what little they earn will inevitably go back into the hands of the capitalist giants that will invariably be related to the glass screens. The world is entrapped by them; the people are addicted to them with strength unmatched by anything.
And the governments of the world stand by and do nothing for this state of affairs; the screens distract the populace and so the government is free to control its people however its sees fit. Terrible wars are waged across the globe and thousands die in fear. The war machine is so advanced that mechanical planes can operate with no pilot on board and then obliterate their enemies with bombs capable of destroying entire streets. Civilians in far of lands die in countless numbers to these mechanical weapons and yet people do not stop to care for some new pulp drama has appeared on their glass screens and their concerns, if they ever had any, are all dismissed. Furthermore the screens allow the powers to view the public with mechanical eyes that see and record anything. Unhappy with the cameras that stood sentinel on every building in every town that saw all public, the governments wanted more. The screens provided this; public actions became yet more scrutinised and catalogued by the powers but they provided a window into the privacy of every man’s home. They soon set to recording and filling the details of everyone they could for the hope they find an ‘Enemy of State’. The people do not mind being regarded as suspect ‘Enemies of State’ for they are distracted by their screens and the lies fed through them. Fake news tells them of the very real fake enemies that besiege them and the very real necessity for unneeded espionage. They huddle like ox, chewing their cud until they are beckoned off by their master to be culled for some untold reason.
The people of the distant 21st century are livestock to the wealthy and powerful. They are enslaved to them for work and told that they have it good and if they work hard they can have some more time looking at burning images emanating from a screen of glass and steel.
| 2015-12-19T09:59:49 | 2015-12-19T09:40:20 | 199 | 10 |
[WP] 300 million years after creating his masterpiece, the cockroach, the god of evolution returns to find the planet full of humans. | An IM conversation in 1200 BC
-
**Epimetheus**: hey
**Prometheus**: sup
**Epimetheus**: I have a question 4 you rn
**Prometheus**: what
**Epimetheus**: I jst woke up. why r humans everywhere
**Prometheus**: zeus
**Epimetheus**: i thought he hated them
**Prometheus**: nah, he loves them now. gets laid way more
**Epimetheus**: But why r they still alive
**Prometheus**: b/c humans r the best at surviving zeuses wrath probably
**Epimetheus**: But what about cockroaches
**Prometheus**: whut about them
**Epimetheus**: i made them like 10x better
**Prometheus**: Cockroaches can't make fire tho
**Epimetheus**: WTF you gave humans fire over cockroaches??
**Prometheus**: humans look better bro
**Epimetheus**: can humans survive a nuke tho?
**Prometheus**: i dunno- never been testd
**Prometheus**: Epi?
**Prometheus**: you there?
...
**Epimetheus**: humans can't survive a nuke | It could have been worse. They could have driven my people to extinction. Luckily, I designed my chosen creature with contingencies upon contingencies. Biological systems with redundancy layered so deep that a loss of complete cardiovascular activity only represented a hiccup in the organism's long-term survival prospects.
And yet: instead of the spiraling glass towers buzzing with joyful activity I'd expected to find, after three million uninterrupted years of relentless evolutionary and technological progress, my return to Earth revealed a species of apes, bristling with foul hairs, filling the sky with belching carbon fumes, covering the plains with hideous squat centers of gaudy commerce, and slaying my creations by the billion with a seemingly limitless arsenal of poison.
My eyestalks nearly popped off my thorax at the sight.
"People of Earth," I boomed, my voice resonating through each and every radio-enabled electronic device on their pale blue dot, "stop killing cockroaches. They are finely-crafted, sentient beings worthy of your admiration and respect."
Imagine my surprise when, instead of the swift acquiescence and apologies I expected, I was instead greeted by a fusillade of thermonuclear-tipped missiles, screaming across the void toward my ship.
As I assessed the damage to my shields (superficial fracturing along a few axes, but nothing a quantum once-over wouldn't fix) it became painfully clear that I would have to do this the hard way. | 2016-01-19T08:41:20 | 2016-01-19T06:58:45 | 65 | 28 |
[WP] Now that he has 8 years executive experience, Obama can apply for the job he REALLY wants | *So Mr Obama, what are your qualifications?*
*Well, I was 44th President of the United States of America*
*Well, Mr President, what about your presidency makes you qualified for a job at Disneyworld? We already have a robot playing you in the hall of Presidents*
*Michelle, BRING ME MY SUPER SUIT*
^^*zzzziiiipppp*
*You're hired.* | "Mr. Obama, I want you to understand that, well, your qualifications are up to par, and your experience certainly is plenty, but what we do not understand is why you'd choose to apply for this position."
"Mr. McDonald, contrary to popular opinion, the most powerful man in the world is not Bernie Sanders, nor Xi Jin Ping, nor Vladimir Putin. It is the President of McDonalds. I have been to many countries, Mr. McD, and in almost everyone of those, there are McDonald franchises in them. When you hire me, I will expand this company to every nation on the face of the Earth, and it is through that that I may spread Americanism." | 2016-02-23T02:07:50 | 2016-02-23T01:52:30 | 89 | 47 |
[WP] Now that he has 8 years executive experience, Obama can apply for the job he REALLY wants | "Mr. Obama, I want you to understand that, well, your qualifications are up to par, and your experience certainly is plenty, but what we do not understand is why you'd choose to apply for this position."
"Mr. McDonald, contrary to popular opinion, the most powerful man in the world is not Bernie Sanders, nor Xi Jin Ping, nor Vladimir Putin. It is the President of McDonalds. I have been to many countries, Mr. McD, and in almost everyone of those, there are McDonald franchises in them. When you hire me, I will expand this company to every nation on the face of the Earth, and it is through that that I may spread Americanism." | Obama kicked open the door of Mitch McConnell's office. The Majority Leader of the Senate reacted with shock, as the President strode forward and stopped at McConnell's desk. In Obama's hand was a leaflet and a picture. Obama placed them both on the desk, facing McConnell.
The picture was of the late Anthony Scolia, signed with a message: *"Dear Mr President, congratulations on your election victory. Wishing you all the success in your political future. A. Scolia"* The leaflet was from FiveThirtyEight, showing the projected results of the 2016 US General Election. All findings had been performed and checked by Nate Silver; all showed a Democratic victory for the House of Representatives and the presidency.
McConnell looked over these 2 items. "Why are you showing me this?" asked the senior Senator.
Obama turned and slowly walked towards the door.
"Oh...no reason to concern yourself with..." | 2016-02-23T01:52:30 | 2016-02-23T01:19:57 | 47 | 17 |
[WP] Explain a color vividly without using that color or similar words. Don't tell the color until the end. | Looking into the evening, I see it. It is the color of the middle-distance; the half measures. Not quite the forest and not yet the trees.
It is in my mind when night comes and I no longer stare out, but in. I see it in half-remembered dreams. I see it in old pictures and faded memories.
I see it in the rainstorms; wet drops steaming on hot city lanes. Sometimes it is hard and cold; architectural. Others it is soft and warm; a cat curled at my feet.
It is the color of the mists of time, of ages lost. Ancient cultures anchored in the present by their trinkets, their beauty only hinted at.
It is the edge of a knife and pallor of its victim. It is the color of the stone that marks a life remembered.
It is gray.
| I can't look at it without being happy. For it is bright, telling us of new days to come and new experiences. The color that dots the horizon when the weather is not too hot and not too cold. Cheering me when I wake up, slipping into my world and wrapping its arms around me, easing me out of sleep and into the day. When I am sad I reach for it, for I think none can look upon its beauty without forgetting some of the sadness of the day.
I like it because it is the color of happiness. The color of warmth. The color of positivity and optimism and half full glasses. The color of fierce animals. The color of the gift he gave to me on our first meeting, his eyes alight with fire and passion and love. It is the gift of our wishes, of our fingers linked together as we stare into the night sky and hope for dreams we may not speak.
The color of sunshine. The color of daffodils and sunflowers and the daisies he gave me when he proposed. The color of light, the color of happiness, the color that keeps me going in the darkest of days. Always shining through, refusing to be covered. | 2016-04-14T08:41:40 | 2016-04-14T06:51:41 | 72 | 17 |
[WP] You live in a society where at the end of each day, you can choose to relive it, but without retaining any knowledge of what happened previously. A number in your peripheral vision shows how many previous times you lived through the current day. Almost always that number is 0. Today it is 7212. | "Explain it to me again," the President asked. It was the third time today but by straight multiplication probably the 21,636th time if you measure retro chronologically.
"You're both chipped," I explained. "You're chipped, and the Soviet a Premier is chipped. Both of you can repeat the day if it doesn't go according to plan."
"It's a damn shame that the Soviets invented these things too. If the one you made for me were the only one in existence, winning a nuclear war would be a cinch. I'd just launch the missiles, and then reset the day if things didn't work out. Eventually I'd hit upon the right subterfuge to launch without retaliation, and we'd be able to wipe those Russkies off the map. Might take a while but that's a sacrifice I would happily make for America."
I nodded with as much apparent sincerity as I could muster.
"But with both of you chipped," I explained, "he can just reverse time himself and reset the day if you seem like you're ahead."
"So how do *I* get ahead?" the President asked. "If I hit him in the first strike that should do it, right? Then he can't reset."
"But you've probably tried that before," I countered. You told me when I walked in that today was on 7212 repeats. I'm sure you've tried every bombing strategy imaginable."
"What if I shot for really unlikely places?"
"You've probably tried all the likely and unlikely places. In fact, one of the first things that came to mind when I considered the issue was true random target generation. A few resets of that would bomb all locations in the Soviet Union at least once. And if I thought of that so easily I'm sure I've suggested it to you a few thousand times."
"Hmm. So we need something neither you not any of my advisors would be likely to think up. What's something you're not thinking of?"
Retro chronological game theory was not the Presidents strong suit.
I say for a while pretending to cogitate fiercely. Eventually I offered, "this is going to sound crazy, but..."
"Yes?" The President was visibly eager for a solution to his paradox.
"No, no, it's stupid."
"All the better! We need something that you didn't come up with the last 7212 times, so out with it, man!"
"Well... maybe we could try... *not* nuking the Soviet Union?"
The President's mouth dropped open. Then closed. "No, no, that won't do. Maybe if we fire a full nuclear salvo at Cuba alongside the salvo at known nuclear sites. Nobody would think he was hiding in Cuba, and we've missed him 7212 times, so he must be there! If we get him in the first strike he can't reset, and our surprise first strike on the Soviets will guarantee that we win this nuclear war!"
I raised my hands and voice to stop him but he was already shouting into the red phone on his desk.
I clenched my eyes shut as the nuclear holocaust began, and activated the third, secret chip- my own. Maybe on try 7213 I'd talk him down. | The sun shone in through the blinds as I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids felt tired and heavy. I tried to sit up, but my body was losing its fight against gravity. Old age was weighing me down. I shifted slowly in bed and felt my wife waking up next to me.
"Sorry I woke you, Jaz," I whispered to my wife.
She rolled over facing me and yawned softly.
"Sixty years and you still call me Jaz."
Her eyes were a light shade of blue. Once, they had been the color of sapphire. Her skin, once as smooth as silk, was worn down and wrinkled from the long passage of time. Her hair that was once fiery blond was now warm gray. She was still as beautiful as the day I first saw her.
"I'll keep calling you Jaz until I breathe my last breath."
I shut my eyes for a second and could see a faint number; 7212. My mind wandered for a minute, questioning why the number was so high. I had never needed to relive a day before save for a few select times. I relived the day of our wedding for about a week, and that was the last time. She always gave me better days than the ones before. I never had to relive a day because I knew that the following one would be better.
"Honey," she said, waking me from my daze, "Do you want some coffee?"
"I'll make some. You stay comfortable."
I got up and dragged my feet to the kitchen. After brewing some coffee and making a light breakfast, I went out to the small garden outside and picked some tulips, her favorite. I placed them all on a tray and brought them to our room, the tray shaking the whole way.
"Aw, honey, thank you," she said lovingly as I placed the tray in front of her. We laughed as we ate in bed, reminiscing about all the years we spent together. A lifetime with Jaz. I wouldn't trade a second with her for the whole world.
Before I knew it, the rays of sunshine were gone and the sun had disappeared from the sky.
Like clockwork, Jaz fell asleep. Sometimes she would fall asleep after a bout of laughter with a smile on her face. This was one of those times. It was one of the things that made me fall in love with her all over again fifty years after we got married.
But this time was different. As I moved in to kiss her, I noticed her chest wasn't moving.
My heart sank as I came to the dreadful realization. My eyes flooded, tears streaming down my face and dripping onto hers.
"No, Jaz, no. Don't leave me, please. Don't do this to me. Don't go before me. Please, Jaz."
In my stupor, I remembered the number I saw in the morning and figured out why I had relived this day for as close to 20 years; the last day I would be able to spend with the love of my life. I had always told her I didn't want to live a single day without her.
I kissed my love and wiped my tears from my face while I lay down next to her. My heart clenched, and then slowly eased its beating. I felt at ease knowing that finally today, after a long time, I would be able to follow her where she was going.
"Jaz," I whispered. | 2016-07-11T07:02:02 | 2016-07-11T06:39:11 | 521 | 210 |
[WP] We contact alien life and find that the vast majority of aliens exist in a slower time frame. Humans are perceived as extremely agile, mentally quick, and have very short lives. | I breathe in.
What words to choose? So many in this language.
I breathe out.
It breathes a hundred times.
Human language is so complicated, so precise. Every word has its own meaning, sometimes many meanings!
I breathe in.
The human looks... what is this expression?
I breathe out.
The human breathes a hundred times more between my actions.
I breath in.
Ah yes... *bored*. What a unique emotion, found only in such a small percentage of the galaxy.
I breathe out.
The human stands, walks the room many times, sits again.
I breathe in.
Perhaps such a thing is to be preserved due to its rarity, left untouched by more civilized beings.
I breathe out.
The human says a great deal of words in so few breaths, in so few moments.
I breathe in.
It appears agitated, in some way. Boredom has many siblings, with impatience the eldest.
I breathe out.
The human stands, walks to me, touches me, pulls a thing out of his pocket, speaks many more words, the thing speaks words to him, the human returns the thing to his pocket, and sits again.
I breathe in.
Some humans dedicate swathes of their lives to live as normal, to be free of boredom and impatience.
I breathe out.
The human stands and walks out of the room.
I breathe in.
How rude of the human, I had yet to say anything.
I breathe out. | "Hey Mitch..... you uh, might want to come over here."
Mitch flew across the exercise room of SpaceStation X47B23, currently passing through the Sombrero Galaxy. "What's up, dickbag? I'm trying to get some sleep."
"Someone's at the door." Sara replied.
Mitch rolled his eyes, sighed, and responded "well, open it."
"The door to the escape hatch."
Mitch suddenly realized the gravity of the situation and floated over to the strapped down monitors showing the wonders of stars and planets in the far distance, and one being up against the door, knocking slowly.
"whale oil beef hooked." Mitch said as he reached for the button to open the hatch.
"No, do..." too late, the door swung open and in floated a blue, semi-transparent, being who approached Mitch and Sara. Pressing a button on his watch, the being placed his feet on the floor and Mitch crashed to the ground as the artificial gravity was turned on.
"Greeeeeetinggggssss, friiiieeeends, doooo noooot beeee freighteeened, forrrrr Iii ammmmm nooottt yooouuurrr ennneeeeemmy"
"Dear God." Sara said to herself as Mitch reached out to poke the being.
"Where the fuck did you come from anyway?" Mitch asked.
"Iiiiiiii commmmeeee frommmm theeee seventeethhhh staaar offff thiiiiis gaaalllaaxx......whhhhaaat arrreee yooouuu doooiinnnng?"
Mitch looked up from his phone, "Sorry, got bored. Can you speak a little faster?"
| 2016-08-22T21:17:51 | 2016-08-22T20:13:28 | 77 | 52 |
[WP] We contact alien life and find that the vast majority of aliens exist in a slower time frame. Humans are perceived as extremely agile, mentally quick, and have very short lives. | Humanity's name will live forever in the pages of galactic history. Not any one individual, of course, their lives are too short to have a meaningful impact. No, they have given the Federation the greatest cultural gift in memory. A ballet of sticks and balls that takes place in almost no time. When we first contacted them they tried to introduce us to their various 'football's. They reflected the humans well, quick, chaotic and impossible to follow. At that time very few humans still practiced their greatest art, baseball. Its intricacies play out at speeds too slow for the humans to appreciate | Corgnack turned to his life mate. "Those humans are quite remarkable creatures."
Sazine blinked her fourth and sixth eyes, their color a resplendent silver, "Yes. They might be technologically backwards but they make up for it in such surprising ways. It's just a shame that they only die so soon. You barely have time to see the greatest of the humans once before they perish."
Corgnack wobbled his chin sack in agreement. "Thank Bivnar for recordings."
Sazine lifted the holo-remote with one tentacle as she placed a bowl of snacks onto the table with her other two appendages
"So Corgnack, do we watch 'The Best Of Human Comedians' or 'Top 3 Human Cirque Du Soleil Performances''?" | 2016-08-22T20:52:32 | 2016-08-22T20:48:31 | 25 | 14 |
[WP] Humans are born with a mark around their wrist which has a matching color with that of their soulmate's, but can change through their life. Your mark has had a blue hue since you were 14, but one night, while you're out, people start looking at you funny. You realize that your mark is gone. | Gone again.
A herd of concerned passerby huddle around me, like buzzards around a corpse.
"Oh, you poor dear..."
"And so young, too. To have lost someone already..."
"You never even knew her, did you..."
I try to brush them off and continue on my way. It's been happening on and off for the past few months. First it was blue, then green, then a weird shade of brown; so many colors, I don't even remember anymore. But each time, within a few weeks, the mark disappears again, and I'm left alone in the world.
They say your band matches your soulmate; a bond until death. And my soulmates have been just unfortunate. I check the news each night after a mark disappears, and invariably, something bad has happened, to some girl I could have met tomorrow if we had just been in the right place at the right time.
Car accidents, falling out of windows, even just disappearing without a trace. I don't know it was them, of course; the mark doesn't show up on camera, and even if you ask eyewitnesses, nobody can really be sure if it was one shade or another. At first, people joked that I was cursed; after the fourth band, they stopped joking.
I get home and check the news. Sure enough, a girl committed suicide, at around the right time. Really? Couldn't she have waited? She looked pretty too....
I shrug it off and go to sleep. Can't let love I've never had ruin my life, after all. I've got school tomorrow, and no "soulmate" is going to change that.
___________________________________________
The next day, in class, I'm greeted by my childhood friend, Tanaki. Unlike me, her mark has never changed; a deep, crimson red, almost as though her wrist had a bad cut. When she was younger, kids would tease her and she would wear bandages to hide it, but now she wears it proudly.
"Hey, how's it going? Oh, your mark is gone again.... Well, that's too bad. I'm sure you two would have had a great life together. Don't worry though, you'll find another soon! You always do..."
I smile and nod, but to tell the truth, my mind was really more on lunch than whatever she was saying. I'm not even sure that I believe this mark business anymore. Definitely works for everyone else, but maybe, my mark is special. Maybe, it's just a dud, or playing tricks on me, or something. Maybe I'm cursed.
Tanaki yawns behind me, an audible gasp of breath that even causes the teacher to stop and stare, before returning to his lecture as though nothing had happened.
"Late night?", I ask in a hushed whisper.
"Oh, like you wouldn't believe. So many errands to run.... Barely slept at all."
"Well, keep it down, would you! You're going to get us into trouble!"
The period ends, and as I head off to lunch, I feel a tingling sensation in my wrist. I look down to see a new mark. A dark yellow, like the petal of a sunflower. Tanaki glances over at me.
"See! I knew you'd get another one! But that yellow.... Excuse me, I've got to go to the bathroom for a second, catch you in a bit!"
I sigh to myself as Tanaki heads off and scan the room on reflex. Maybe today... hey, wait. Is that... the same yellow?
I rush across the room, my heart throbbing in my chest. Maybe, maybe this is the day, the day I find my soulmate and make sure they don't disappear! I head over to her table and introduce myself, but my tongue stops in my throat before I can mention the band. Lucky for me, one of her friends notices the color and yanks my wrist up for me. The table becomes a blur of phone cameras and color calibration apps.
"100% match, Suzuka. He's definitely the one."
Before I know it, I'm in her arms as she jumps up and embraces me. A strange smell, like I've never smelled before, wafts through my nose. No, I definitely know that smell. Like sunflowers, picked fresh. She pulls me towards her, tears gleaming in her eyes, and I feel something that I had never felt before.
No, it's not all pseudo-scientific nonsense. The marks work. Every one of them, each of the ones that had disappeared, they all could have been like this. And deep down, I realize, everyone who had ever found their soulmates, they knew this too. That we'd be together forever, bonded until death do us part.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
We spend the rest of the day together, Suzuka and I, in a shower of bliss that knew no bounds. She's a year below me, but I attend all of her classes anyway and just skip all of mine. The teachers simply look us over once with a knowing glance. "Oh, if only I was so fortunate as you, it took me years to find mine!" "Such good luck!"
I decide to walk Suzuka home, introduce myself to her parents and maybe even stay for dinner. The walk seems to last forever, gazing into each others eyes and learning about each others lives. Time stretches as we walk circuitous paths, not really paying attention to where we're going, as long as we're alone with each other for a bit longer. Night falls, and the reverie momentarily breaks as I begin to steer us towards her home.
Suddenly, ahead of us in the darkness, I spot Tanaki, sitting on the ground with her back turned to us. As I get closer, I notice she's put her bandages on again. That's strange, I haven't seen her with them on in years....
"Hey, Tanaki! What are you doing out this late at night? Hey, are you listening to me?"
As Suzuha and I get closer, I hear a faint sound coming from her. It's quiet, but I think that's... laughter?
In a flash, Tanaki lunges out, and before I can react, I see Suzuka on the ground, a red puddle slowly extending from her abdomen. She screams, and her screams mix with the increasing frantic laughter from Tanaki as she licks the blood off the edge of the knife.
"What.... Tanaki... why..." I gasp as I see the mark on my wrist turn a dark black before fading into nothingness. "Why would you do this?"
"It's nothing, really. You'll have a new one within a week. And another, and another, and another... and all of them worthless!", Tanaki screams. "Why won't it just turn red! Why why why why why why why..."
I feel my stomach turn over as I look at Suzuha's lifeless corpse. "No.... we were so happy...." I fall to my knees, powerless to move, and it feels as though my soul has been ripped from my body.
Tanaki reaches for me and I feel a sharp pain in my wrist. Looking down, I can see she's sliced my wrist with the knife, and it's deep. Blood wells up from within the cut, and she holds her wrist up to compare, ripping off the bandages with glee.
"See! 100% match! I knew it was true, we really are soulmates, aren't we?" She giggles and curls around me as my warm blood leaks onto the ground, holding me tightly, ever so tightly.
"No, Tanaki! I'm not..." As I feel the warmth drain from my body, I look over to see that Tanaki has sliced her own wrist open, her blood mixing with mine on the pavement.
Crazy girl. She'll never get what she wants this way. She'll die here, in an alleyway, and she'll never have found her real soulmate. So really, it's me and Suzuha that had the last laugh. At least we got to find ours. Some people are never so lucky at all; we got to spend a whole afternoon, and poor Tanaki will just have lived without.
It's a shame it had to end this way. Though, at least, it can't get any worse from here...
I feel a tingling sensation in my wrist. | Oak Valley wasn’t the most glamourous settlement across the Kingdom, but it was all I had known for a home. Sure, I’ve traveled beyond the mountains and have seen the ocean to the south, and the snowy wasteland to the north. To the east lies deserts and volcanoes, and to the west is dense forests too dangerous for us to wander in.
I was never gone for long on those adventures but I met many people and learned so much. All throughout those trips there was something on the back of my mind…and ache I couldn’t reach. A question I wanted the answer to. Who was my match?
I had been back in Oak Valley for three weeks, and for some reason today my wrist would randomly itch. The mark on my wrist, the band about half an inch wide, was seemingly irritated. I had asked anyone and everyone what that could possibly mean, but no one had an idea. It’s not supposed to itch. It’s supposed to be there and be the same color as my soulmate, my perfect match.
Currently I was on my way from my family home into town to buy some supplies for my next excursion. Dressed casually, I wasn’t really in the mood to speak to other people but the folks of Oak Valley are as friendly as they are nosy. I was stopped several times by people who had known me my whole life. It was nearly noon by the time I finally entered the official village.
The grocers had stalls set up along both sides of the road and sold their goods until nightfall. Only the blacksmith and the healer had houses in the town. The other three buildings were the jail and court house, the tavern, and the church. It itched again.
My old friend from the woods caught my eye from down the road and waved at me. I lifted my arm and returned the gesture, only to be given a double take by a man walking next to me. I glanced at him but then back at my friend who was walking towards me now.
“Wow I haven’t seen you in forever and a day!” She wrapped her arms around me tightly and kissed me on the cheek.
“Yes, I’ve been wandering about more frequently these days.” I never liked staying in one place for too long. My parents only supported it because they knew I would always return home. She grinned and then looked me over.
“I do believe you have grown since I last—oh my!” She gasped and dropped her eyes to my arm. Her hands covered her face, I couldn’t help but notice her wrist was ringed with a light shade of purple. I looked down at my arm to the familiar blue strip but…
“Where did it go?” I stammered. My mark…my mate… “Where did it go?”
She had tears in her eyes, “I-I’m sorry.” She said. It itched. I lifted my hand to look more closely at my wrist. It wasn’t gone…completely. It was faded and ghostly.
I looked at her and then around me, other people had paused in their days to observe us. There was commotion in the door of the doctor’s house and mournful cries. Three horses I did not recognize were tied next to the door. I never told my feet to move, but suddenly I was shutting the door of the house behind me.
In the entry way a man my own height was pacing with his hands balled into fists. The band on his wrist was a dark shade of blue. I paused and looked again at my wrist. Was it more visible now, or did I just want that to be true?
“Who are you?” He asked me. His mustache was oiled and his clothes were clean and pressed. Whoever these people were, they had money not like the kind we had in Oak Valley.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “who is in there?”
“My fiancé,” he said it without much emotion. “She’s fallen terribly ill. Something from that disgusting excuse for a market out there, no doubt.”
I didn’t have time to tell the guy what I thought about him but the Doctor entered the room. He looked worried and was covered in what looked to be….vomit.
“Oh, my boy.” The doctor walked over to me, completely ignoring the man next to him. “You know the difference between Snowberries and Lilliberries?” I immediately nodded. We all did.
Snowberries were delicious in pies, and Lilliberries were poisonous. “Seems these travelers did not. Go out and grab some lilliberry flowers and be sure to get some that have fully bloomed. Quick now.”
I was out the door. My heart was pounding in my chest. I had no idea who was in there, seemingly throwing up uncontrollably from berry poison, but I….I had to save her. I looked at the mark again and it was still there but…dim.
Directly behind the doctor’s house was a walking trail that led to a stream. Surrounding the stream were several Lilliberry bushes. I didn’t waste time and grabbed and plucked up as many as I could hold—I stuffed a few into my pockets as well.
Back inside, the doctor had been busy mixing things together into a bowl. I handed him all of the flowers I had grabbed and he mashed them into his mixture. He added hot water and walked back into the patient room. The door shut behind him and I waited. My eyes locked onto the mark on my wrist. It itched.
The fiancé had entered the room with the doctor but after a few moments he left the room and went outside. I watched the door with no breath in me, no thought but what was going on, on the other side of that door.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen.
The doctor exited the room. He looked surprised to see me. He looked at me with the question clearly in his eyes. I looked down at my arm, where the blue ring had solidified ever so slightly. “Just…just answer me one question,” I walked closer to him, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Yes boy, you saved that girl’s life you know, you must be rewarded.”
“No, I don’t care for a reward just…what color is her mark?”
“Hard to say boy. My eyes aren’t what they were and there for a minute it disappeared.”
“Like this?” I asked, my wrist suspended between the two of us. He adjusted his glasses and leaned in.
He coughed in surprise and then stepped aside and muttered to himself, “Figures why the mustache left so quickly…”
For a second I couldn’t move. The distance between myself and the door seemed to stretch for eternity. But then, almost like the spark of a fire igniting, I remembered. My eternity was on the other side of that door. I took two shaky steps forward and then two more confident ones.
The door opened and then shut behind me quietly as I stepped into the room. I kept my eyes on the door for longer than I should have, but I was still afraid of what lay in the room.
“Who are you?” The voice was feminine but hoarse. She coughed. I turned slowly. There were dark circles under her eyes, she was pale and covered in sweat. Her hair was messy and her riding clothes needed changing. There was a bucket next to the bed that had putrid smell to it. But I couldn’t look away, she was beautiful.
I stepped forward slowly, too shocked to say anything. She looked from my eyes down to my wrist. Everyone did that when meeting someone knew—it was how it was done. You made eye contact establishing a greeting, and then a cursory glance to the Mark. People of similar colors usually tried dating, which was why I figured she had been engaged to that oiled mustache from outside. Their colors were similar. But…
She gasped.
I came to a stop next to her bed and held out my wrist. She held hers next to mine and we both watched as the pale almost see-through blue that wrapped around us darkened to the color I had been looking at for the last ten years. A peaceful blue. The exact same color.
“I’m Daryn.”
“Carliah.” She smiled. I smiled. I took her hand and sat at the edge of her bed.
| 2016-10-04T23:29:07 | 2016-10-04T22:50:53 | 154 | 10 |
[WP] In the canine world, humans are celestial beings who live for more than 500 years at a time. The caretaker of you and the past seven generations of your family will die soon. | *Because fuck ya'll and your depressing stories. Let's make this a little more happy, eh? Or at least as happy as possible following the prompt.*
I never knew master's wife. Father said that she was kind and generous and fed him scraps from the table when master wasn't looking. Master did the same, too, of course. That's what humans did.
Master was a god, father told me when I was younger. He cared for us, he protected us, he taught us and he played with us. In return we offered our service, paltry as it was. Always faithful to our master. How could we not be? Those were long years ago, now. Father had since passed, and I had children of my own. The master's children kept them, they visited often in their grand chariots. It was good days when they came to visit.
I was old now. My time would be up soon, I knew it. I didn't mind. I had fathered many children, gone on many walks, sniffed many butts. I would rest soon. Which was good, because I was tired. Sometimes I forgot I was tired, usually when I was with master, and I would play like I was a puppy again. Then I would be very tired.
I thought about my life as I lay on my back, comfortable. I heard the door open, the familiar footsteps of master. I waited for a moment. "Dag nabbit Tex I told you don't get on the couch!" He muttered, tossing his hat onto the rack. "Well, if you're not getting off at least make some room."
Father said that humans lived eons, that master had been his master, and his father's before him, and his father's before him, more generations than father could remember. I was glad, master was a good master, he was kind. He sat beside me, I put my head on his lap and looked up at him. In return he scratched me behind my ears. I felt my eyes close. Certainly master was magic, nothing else felt like that. Ohh....
"Come on, Tex. We've gotta go to the store. Wanna ride in the car?"
I scrambled to my feet, barking. Yes! A ride in the chariot! What a treat. Master secured my leash to my collar, struggling with it a little. We got in the chariot and it made a noise like a lion's roar. I barked in response, I would teach it to threaten master. Stupid Chariot.
As master drove he kept one hand on the back of my head. He was nice, I panted happily, letting the world pass me by, until he stopped scratching me. I was puzzled. Master lifted his hand to his chest, the other on the reigns of the chariot. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Master winced in pain, I barked an alarm.
I looked for something, anything to help, but the car was moving too fast and we weren't even on the road anymore, there was a tree ahead and it was big and heavy and I was scared and I kept barking.
Then it was over. How had we gotten here? It was nice, a green field, trees, balls and ropes and rawhide bones and the couch was here too! Wow, what was this place? It's awesome!
There were other dogs, too. Dogs I knew. Friends! I ran over, barking my excitement. It was father! But he was so young! Barely more than a pup. Mother too! And grandfather, who I had smelled once before I opened my eyes. I was so happy, my tail wagged and wagged, and I barked and barked.
There was a sudden stillness. I looked. Master was here, but it wasn't master. He was young, as young as his children, but he was the same master I knew. He smiled at me, and at all of us, and we ran to him, bowled him over in our eagerness and he just laughed and laughed, hugging us to him. "Tex! Ralph! Wolfie, Scott, Amy! Oh, it's good to see you all again!" He shouted, we barked back.
Master stood, brushing himself off. His eyes were far away, I followed his gaze. It was a woman. Father ran to her, I followed, and master came too. She spoke, a kind voice, "we've been waiting."
He laughed and she laughed and I barked and I ran and played with master and his wife and father. We played all day, and for days and days and days, like I did when I was a puppy. But now I wasn't tired, and nothing hurt, and master was happy. I don't know how we got to this wonderful place, but I knew where I was.
Home. | "You are my Totem."
This is what the Guardian said when he first held me in his arms. I was nothing but a whelping then, not even able to open my eyes. But I remember the words. Totem. That's what he called me. And I was his.
The Guardian loved my brothers, and sisters, but I was the one who he deemed to stay. "There is no higher honor," my mother said on her deathbed. "Protect the Guardian. Honor him as he has honored you and our family."
I did what I could to become a member of his pack. There were other Tall Ones who entered our den, but never before I approved. There would be times where he'd leave the den and travel for years, but I let no intruders disrupt our home while he was gone. As I grew older, he allowed me to travel with him in the loud carriage of steel and fire. The beast scared me at first, I'm old enough to admit that, but I learned that it doesn't eat as we do, and cares not if we inhabit its belly.
The Guardian showed me the world outside the valley of cold stone and oil. He showed me the Green, a place of other-dogs, quick morsels, and kind Tall Ones who smiled and called me good boy. The Green was my favorite place. There was so much room to run and jump and sing. The Guardian never did these things, but he'd always wait on me with a smile on his face.
The years went by and I grew old. I still enjoyed the Green, but we went less often. It was fine by me, my joints couldn't take as much running and jumping as before. The Guardian didn't look any different from when I first opened my eyes, but he didn't move as much. There was a different smell about him. One that had been growing throughout the years. Something rotten, but not like a good morsel. I had smelled something like it a time or two before around other Tall Ones. Once around an other-dog. It worried me, but I did my best to please the Guardian. I never left his side, even when we traveled to the White place that smelled like nothing.
Things changed very suddenly. One morning, he would not wake. I shouted and frantically licked his face, until a Tall One entered our den. I should have investigated the intruder, but I did not want to leave the Guardian's side. Thankfully, it was one I knew, the Guardian's whelp. She was young by Tall One standards, only a few centuries old. I jumped off the Guardian's bed and rushed to her. My joints burned and screamed, but that didn't matter.
"Totem! Where's Dad?!"
I knew my name and her word for the Guardian. I yelled for her to follow and returned to the Guardian's den. When she saw the Guardian, her eyes watered and smelled of salt. This worried me, I had only smelled this a few times before, mostly at the White place, but it was never a good thing. She pulled the glow-box from her bag and began shouting into it. I stayed by the Guardian's side. Before too long, more Tall Ones arrived. They smelled like the White Place and THEY TRIED TO TAKE MY MASTER. The whelp had to restrain my old bones before two of the Tall Ones carried him away to their fire carriage. Damn my joints and the whelpling's paws - if not for them, I would have ripped the flesh of the Tall Ones who touched my Guardian, no matter what the consequences.
My Guardian's whelp dragged me into her fire carriage, one that still smelled of my sister, even though she had passed. We arrived at the White place that smelled of nothing. As soon as she released me, I attempted to find my Guardian, but whatever magic robbed the place of smells must have affected him too. The whelp took the lead, something I'm not proud to admit, and we visited more Tall Ones until we arrived at a small den. This place had a smell, but it was of that terrible salt. As we settled in, the smell of the awful rot began to seep in as well. It was everywhere. I was so scared that I nearly wet the den, but I knew I had to be strong for the Guardian. It was what he expected.
After an eternity, Tall Ones escorted me to see my Guardian. He was laying in an odd shaped bed with too much cold metal for my liking. There were far too many smells I didn't recognize in this den, but the rot was the most present.
"Totem. Bring him here, Sarah. Next to me."
The Guardian's whelp carried me and laid me down next to my Guardian. I nestled to him as closely as I could, trying to share what warmth my old bones carried. I licked his paw and he scratched my forehead.
"You are my Totem."
I stayed by his side even when he stopped scratching my forehead. I licked his paw even though it grew cold. I remember the words. Totem. That's what he called me. And I was his.
| 2016-11-21T19:15:40 | 2016-11-21T18:43:33 | 264 | 31 |
[WP] You're an Evil Overlord who has ruled over a kingdom for years. Every hero who has challenged you has failed. Bored, you decide to disguise yourself as a Mentor and train local children to one day challenge your rule. | The storm was raging, lighting crackled thematically across the sky, illuminating the silhouette of your evil tower. The only way to get to the massive building was a narrow rope bridge, swaying perilously in the wind.
Of course it wasn't swaying *too* perilously. You just wanted to set the mood, not kill somebody.
The first of your students stood in front of that dangerous (but not too dangerous) bridge, the determination set on his face. You stood behind him, an old man in a large cloak, soaking in the rain but looking quite dramatic.
“My student.” You said, bringing your standard old mentor voice to bear for what was hopefully the last time. “I cannot follow you any further. The path ahead is yours to walk alone.”
He turned to look at you, his metal armor still clanking above the howling gale as he shifted. “But...but Master, am I truly ready?”
You smile beneath your hood. “I have taught you everything I know. You know the Overlord's hidden weakness, and the trials you will face. It is perilous, but I have faith in you, my student.”
“But Master!” And now he looked truly on the verge of tears, the falling rain already setting the emotional tone. The hidden string quartet you placed behind the rocks began to swell the music. Everything was going according to plan.
“Do not worry.” You stepped forward, touching his breastplate with a wizened hand, looking into his eyes. “I will always be with you.”
Damn, you've always wanted to say that.
He nodded, tears streaming down his face. “I will remember my training, master. I'll make you proud!”
And with that, he marched onto the bridge. The music swelled to the crescendo, and you couldn't help but shed a few tears yourself. Now, it was time for you to face a real challenge, a real hero!
A sudden, loud crack of lightning burst forth in front of your eyes. The ringing and disorientation took a second to subside, and when your vision finally comes back you can see the bridge on fire. Or whats left of the bridge on fire.
Coming to think of it, making a man walk across a bridge in full metal armor during a thunderstorm wasn't the brightest idea.
“Dammit.” | "The damned magician was right. Each time it gets easier, each time I feel stronger. And so less people want to freed me from this spell, that seemed so fascinating at the beginning. It took two years since the last one for a this poor guy to come. He'll kick down the door (which I stopped repairing a few years ago. No point in repairing it) and I'll slash his guts out all over the carpet, which I will order to be cleaned in a few days, when the servants come back.
«How was I supposed to know it would get so boring to be challenged to the throne? In the stories you're told as a child the hero beats the evil, even when everything goes against him! Apparently it doesn't work on real life. And I can't simply throw away the crown, Dethor, I can't! That's part of the spell. If I do so, I'll perish in the most painful of ways.
«So, I plotted, and thought, and planned for weeks how to make this work. Yes, I truly am the Dark Sovereign, and I had to train you and the guys that came with you and that are no longer with us, be it because they thought they were ready, or because they left. And I wouldn't tell any of them this, because none of them won my affection as you did, Dethor, none did. Will you beat me? Will you challenge me tomorrow?"
Dethor had already came over the shock that came when his master, the noble and pure Golthir, started his story. How was he to beat the man who had trained him? The one he had drank with so many nights? The one who fed him and his friends? "Sorry master, it's not happening" the young man replied, as he stood, took his cape and walked to the door, leaving his sword by the table. Before he could reach the door, it locked and the metal burned.
"I'm sorry, Dethor. But I can't let you leave" Fiothal, the Dark Sovereign, said in his deep voice before throwing the sword at Dethor. "Fight me or perish!"
The battle lasted just a few minutes. Dethor failed, as many had during the last century. Each death made him stronger, but for the first time in years he finally felt he could be defeated. The plan was not bad, but it still required more time.
PS: Hi guys! If you see any spelling or grammar error, please point it out for me!
EDIT: Added paragraph breaks | 2017-01-07T22:11:07 | 2017-01-07T21:49:46 | 25 | 11 |
[WP] One normal day you see a mouse pointer move across your field of vision, right click, and delete an object. | August 14, 2000:
The day started as normal as any other, waking up in my bed and all. I open the fridge to see what's to eat. Nothing, same as yesterday. On the bright side, it's been so long since my power got shut off, anything in there would spoil anyway. I grab the baking powder and brush my teeth. It's not ideal, but it's good enough until I can buy more paste. At least I'm not totally unbearable - I think.
As I watch myself brush in the mirror, I saw it. It was so quick, I feel like I was lucky to be there, otherwise I think I'd be in the asylum. Out of the blue this little white thing came by and touched the few last things I own. My scarf just disappeared, and not long after that, so did my boots. One by one the white thing took all my belongings, right down to the bed. It was everything I had, and now I'm officially without ANY possessions. I guess with the few dollars I have left, I can stop and get some liquor to keep me warm at least. I throw on my bandana to cover my bare scalp, and grab my gloves. It's fairly cold today.
The white thing has since vanished, which makes me feel a little more safe. I start walking into town, eating any berries I can find along the way.
Suddenly I see the white thing again. I'm so scared, I jump into the bush. I don't want to vanish with my former belongings. I peer through the bush and watch as the white thing moves around. It seems to be attached to a young girl, helping her find her way. She must know where my stuff is, maybe she can help me.
She comes closer to me, and I figure this is a good chance to get her attention. I get out of the bush, and seemingly without looking in my direction, I can tell she can sense me. She stares off into the distance as if she's asking it a question. The white thing starts coming towards me. It's too fast, I can't get away. I close my eyes as I know I'm about to vanish. But I don't. *click* it says, and it touches my chest. Immediately the little girl looks at me. She tells me to leave her alone.
But I just want to ask her about my things
She tells me to leave again
She won't let me explain
Once more she tells me to leave, and I just can't approach her. I'm held back by some force I've never felt before. Aw man. I guess today I don't get my chance to take my things back. I'll find her again tomorrow, and take them back by force if it comes down to that.
Be prepared little girl. Next time you and your little monkey won't be able to stop me from swiping. | It had seemed a pretty standard, non reality shattering, kind of boring day up until about 2 in the afternoon central standard time. I was home, minding my own non-business, putting off all of the stuff I was supposed to do. I mean, why do anything productive when you can repetitively mastur.... I don't know why I'm telling you this, what's important is that it was a pretty standard day for me.
It all started when I left my house. I had ran out of snacks. At the time, I had thought it impossible, but things we're about to get worse. I hopped in my 1997 dodge neon, and continued my odyssey to my local grocer. On the way there I felt a little strange in a way that was hard to describe, like my mind was skipping every few seconds. My thoughts seemed to lag a second or two behind. I attributed this to the extreme hunger, and carried on bravely.
I arrived at the All American Food Store, and stocked up on snacks like some sort of storm was coming, and headed back to my metaphorical bunker. A shame I didn't have any chicks to invite back with me, though. I paid with my credit card at the checkout, and went back to my car.
On my return trip home, I decided that I just couldn't wait. The feeling had came back, and I couldn't take it any longer. I spotted the Olive Garden, and quickly pulled in. The feeling was getting worse. I parked, and almost ran into the Olive Garden. It was getting almost unbearable. Maybe it was getting worse the closer I got to Olive Garden? No, that's just silly.
I am seated. I can't wait for the main course, and I'm almost broken as the waitress is bringing out my drink. I start devouring the bottomless breadsticks on the table in front of me. I felt so bad, I wasn't sure I would make it to my food coming out. I was so hot, it felt like I was overheating. I kept eating breadsticks, not paying attention to anything but the feeling. Not really noticing that the breadsticks should have been depleted by now.
I was so caught up by the feeling that I almost didn't notice it. A mouse cursor appeared on my field of vision. I stopped eating the breadsticks. The mouse moved from the top right of my vision, and hovered over the breadsticks. I heard a clicking noise, and a menu popped up. The mouse clicked on the delete button near the bottom of the menu, and the breadsticks vanished.
I seemed to cool down. My mind became smooth again. I also panicked. Had someone drugged me? I was pretty sure that wasn't how drugs worked, but I knew I was not sleeping. Who would dream about the kind of day I had just lived up until a few moments ago? I stared at the spot on the table where the breadsticks had been, so lost in my own thoughts I didn't notice the waitress walk up to my table and say something.
Finally, I looked up.
"Are you ready to order?"
...
Meanwhile, Mike filed out a bug report on the PlayRoy website.
"Bottomless breadsticks actually infinite, making cpu overheat. pls fix." | 2017-02-05T13:33:15 | 2017-02-05T12:21:17 | 105 | 66 |
[WP] A story that doesn't make any sense, until you read the last line. | It's the best deal in town. You can be the student you always wanted to be. However long it takes. You'll get there, to have the time of your life. When I wanted him. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Sunny and 72 degrees. Except where prohibited by law. He grabbed her hand.
She stopped twisting the radio dial and stepped outside, into the sunshine. | Am I the only man left here alive?
The rubble continues endlessly in every direction and every color. The tears were real this time, they began two years ago. Why did we do it? Why did he do it?
I suppose I'm lucky in a sense, someone will find me now and take me from this hell, although I probably won't live past 40 anymore.
It all happened so fast, the end only lasted a day. They came from every direction, baring every flag we had ever seen, and they all brought the same gift, death. We didn't have a single solitary ally, why did he do it?
They flew in with a lust for destruction from every continent, at least the world agreed on something... 2019 had to be the end of North Korea.
| 2017-08-30T06:54:31 | 2017-08-30T05:56:20 | 5,691 | 48 |
[WP] A story that doesn't make any sense, until you read the last line. | It's the best deal in town. You can be the student you always wanted to be. However long it takes. You'll get there, to have the time of your life. When I wanted him. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Sunny and 72 degrees. Except where prohibited by law. He grabbed her hand.
She stopped twisting the radio dial and stepped outside, into the sunshine. | I think I should expand my vocabulary if I want to make rhymes. Also, don't hate me please.
.
His phone emitted a flash. In his heart there wasn't even a interest clash of whether he should or shouldn't.
There he stood, proud as ever. She was surprised, however. She thought he wasn't being clever. Under his breath he vowed to remember this for ever.
Her smile could definitely be called mean. Not every day can something like this be seen. It's very far from clean. Closer to her, he intends to lean.
Once close to what's to him second dear. He whispers in her ear: "Thank you for supporting me."
She got mad and hit his left bowel. For him nothing could be more well. One huge yesterday's Taco Bell.
| 2017-08-30T06:54:31 | 2017-08-30T04:55:59 | 5,691 | 35 |
[WP] A story that doesn't make any sense, until you read the last line. | It's the best deal in town. You can be the student you always wanted to be. However long it takes. You'll get there, to have the time of your life. When I wanted him. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Sunny and 72 degrees. Except where prohibited by law. He grabbed her hand.
She stopped twisting the radio dial and stepped outside, into the sunshine. | He had escaped Fate,
The feckless rake,
And sat by the merry river.
Scarlet threads of blood quivered,
Tapered from his fingers into watery absolution.
....................................
The knife gleamed red,
Seemed to grin instead,
A leering, halt accusation
That he pitched beyond all condemnation.
But "Murderer, Murderer" muttered the wind.
....................................
"I've escaped long past recall," he laughed.
....................................
But the sunlight blazed like a spotlight's gaze,
Then everything grew dim, misted into haze.
He ran a finger inside his collar, too tight,
A boa's constriction that suffocated light.
And the hangman's eyes, with a doleful stare, winked out.
| 2017-08-30T06:54:31 | 2017-08-30T06:14:11 | 5,691 | 14 |
[WP] Write a seemingly innocuous story, but the last line reveals how chilling and horrific the story actually was. | This is my first time ever doing a WP, or generally writing anything since quite a while ago, I just spontanously flicked through some prompts and decided to go for something.
___
"Children are a blessing" I thought to myself as I watched little Violet play with her friends, chasing eachother, laughing uncontrollably as they pushed one another into the sand and just enjoyed this sunny afternoon. Her friends being Emily and Sophie, all going to the same class.
It was a pretty hot day, so I was already anticipating the end of their sweet playtime, so I could go get some ice cream with my girl - a well deserved end to a great summer day.
That's when a figure approached me from the side, "Keeping a watchful eye on the young ones, eh?" chimed an attractive voice, as a fairly young woman sat down next to me on the bench.
"Indeed, one can never be careful enough. You look away for one second and you get a kid tripping and bruising its leg, followed by minutes of ear-shattering crying. It's funny, really, how fragile they are." I replied, my hamfisted attempt at conversation didn't go that bad, apparently, as she chuckled slightly and added "Yeah right, until they get some candy, then the pain magically disappears." A small laughter escaped me.
Time passed for a little while as I was reading a few pages in my book I always bring along, until some of the kids started to grow tired, perhaps it was about time to leave, finally.
"So, what is a young woman such as yourself doing here on the playground? You look way too young to be a mother of a six year old child. Unless you keep yourself in such great shape", I tried flirting, to alleviate some of my tension - social interactions were never a strong point.
She said "Well, same thing as you I suppose. But you're right, I'm picking up my cousin."
"That's unlikely," I responded to the first part, "but that explains why I've never seen you around. Which one is 'yours' then?"
"Oh, it's Violet. Excuse me, I mean that blonde one with the pigtails, yellow top.", she pointed out as the three girls started to finish up their playing and approached our bench.
I excused myself, having to go to the bathroom before I myself finish up, and quickly made my way away from the playground...
Maybe next time I'll get her. | Steve, who did not exist, returned to his dull and altogether not real house of no significance from a long day of work at Not a Business Inc., ate his bland dinner of Nothing With a side of Emptiness, and went to sleep in a bed that might have been real if it existed at all. Steve didn’t exist at all, which makes the very existence of this story a paradox, but don’t pay attention to that. Instead pay attention to the fact that, really, it would be nice if he did exist. In fact, Steve decided when he woke up to an incorporeal world, he rather wanted to exist. So Steve set out to achieve this unachievable goal, which could not be achieved because it did not exist. The first thing to do, Steve decided, would be to do more things that people who exist do. With this in mind, Steve tried to act like a nonfictional person. He began to drive an immaterial automobile. He joined an insubstantial aquatics club, where he would float in dreamlike water and further ponder his absent goal. After a few vacant weeks of this, Steve had made no progress. Steve decided to take a different approach to his intangible goal. He began to attempt to conjure things. Now, unreal as his world was, Steve couldn't conjure things, but he did pretend that he could. He imagined a kingdom that he was the monarch of, where his extramundane subjects would work under his rule. He held imaginary parades biannually to celebrate his fictitious progress at becoming real. But, nonexistent as Steve and his subjects were, they could achieve nothing. Steve however, was not disheartened. He decided to alter his figmental efforts. He studied fake books on imaginary anthropology to try and determine what it was that made other humans exist. He toiled without end, but yet again, his asomatous efforts were to no avail. Eventually, the nonexistent guy named Steve quit. He let out an inaudible and chimerical yell of frustration. As Steve trudged back to his droll house at Ersatz Lane, he dejectedly thought to himself, “All I know is that I know nothing. How can illusions be unreal, yet the illusion exists?” As Steve uttered these words, his arm began to disappear, starting at the fingers, working up to his shoulder, and it didn’t stop there. His upper body and head began to disappear as the paradox worked its way through Steve’s nonexistent world. As the last of Steve’s toes vanished from Nowhere, Steve suddenly appeared with a loud bang in the real world, in 15th century Europe, right in the middle of an Anti-Witchcraft rally. A man looked at Steve and yelled the first real words Steve had ever heard. “Burn the witch!” | 2017-10-06T16:15:18 | 2017-10-06T13:52:37 | 454 | 18 |
[WP] Everyone is born with a natural tattoo of their spirit animal. Every person gets the traits and abilities of their respective animal. But when you were born your father, having a bear tattoo and your mother, bearing a dove tattoo, were horrified. Leviathan.
Edit. Wow thank you to everyone who submitted thie stories here. Never expected it to blow up this much. | By rights I shouldn't exist. With the pairing of bear and dove, they expected something smaller. A wolf, perhaps, or an eagle. Something fast, yet powerful. Strong, yet humble. No one prepared for me.
The marks determine one's place in society. My father, with his unequaled strength, led the tribe to greatness. My mother, in her compassion, watched over our people. It was an age of prosperity unlike any seen in memory.
At my birth there were cries of anguish and shock. I'm told my father fought bravely, defending my mother as she escaped. I've heard how his great arms bulged as he struck down his former companions, before collapsing from his various wounds. My mother told me of his cry of rage as the tribe closed in around him before turning towards her.
She escaped. Not even she can tell me how, but we lived. Thanks to my mother's love and my father's strength, I survived. I've heard the stories as long as I can remember. Ever since I was old enough to ask about our marks. Her dove with wings spread wide on her forearm. The creature coiling up my leg, around my torso, mouth opened wide across my chest, showing countless teeth.
A leviathan. That is the word my mother heard uttered before the elders ordered my destruction. The only forbidden creature, an omen of destruction for the tribe. They were right.
I stand now on a hill overlooking my former people, camped by the water's edge. I watch the mothers pull their children in from the rain. I can hear, over the howl of the gale, the men discussing their latest hunt. As I close my eyes, savoring the moment, relishing my anticipation, I hear my mother's cries in my memory, her pleas of forgiveness, not for herself, but for the people who tried to kill her. I think back to that night, as she lay dying in the wilderness that was my home.
A fury as ancient as my animal wells within me at the thought. A hatred as deep as the ocean in which the leviathan lives. The storm within rages as the rain around grows heavier. I've returned to the water. I've returned to my people, bare-chested, that they will see the source of their destruction. As I reach the first tent, the fury boils over, and over the storm my roar can be heard. | Our first video chat was great. We both met over the internet and after some short texting we decided to have a video chat. In that chat we found out that we don't really like our spirit animal. She wanted to know why I hate mine and I was willing to give her my answer:
"I really hate my spirit animal. Everyone of my friends might be jealous of it but they probably wouldn't be after their girlfriends broke up with them because of some made up animal. Even the few guys I dated broke up with me because of that fucking oversized water snake on my back.
Funnily enough, well not that funny to be exact, my partners had always similar reasons to break it off. It was either that they feared that I'd turn aggressive and dangerous like a Leviathan or that they wanted me to be the dominant person in our relationship in every aspect. But that's not me. I'm not someone who demands a manager because my card is declined, who berates waiters in a restaurant or who gets mad because of no apparent reason. Not anymore at least. I'm the kind of guy who's sad for days because he accidentally killed a snake while mowing the lawn. I really have to thank my parents and their parenting because they taught me that it's okay to be an aggressive person as long as no one has to suffer because of it. My mother, who really is the dove you'd expect her to be, told me she really had to suffer when I was a toddler because she always feared I'd be always that aggressive and could hurt her badly whenever she tried to calm me down. Once I puberty hit me, my father and I had many fights because of how bad my outbursts got. Our last fight was definitely the worst. In his attempts to save his wife my father punched me unconscious. After that fight and my stay in the hospital I realized that I'd never want to be like that in the future. Now whenever I'm aggressive I just start boxing against my punching bag or swear like the child of a sailor and a drill sergeant.
Also the only ability I got from the so called "monster of the seas" is that I'm extremely fast at swimming and can also breath underwater. Well at least as long as the pressure isn't too big. So yeah not that greatest of abilities.
Anyway, why do you hate your spirit animal?"
After taking a sip, Rebecca answered something I'd never have expected:
"A ladybug as your tat sounds great right? Well it isn't. The only thing I got from that moronic bug are freckles on my back. That's it. Nothing else. Just. Fucking. Freckles."
---
Edit: deleted two clone paragraphs | 2017-11-08T05:54:13 | 2017-11-08T05:45:33 | 32 | 17 |
[WP] In your society, every child is given a fixed number of skill points for their parents to invest in talents that would determine their futures. When you reach age 21, you find out your parents forgot to do it for you. | “Honey, can you please sit with us?”
Surprised by the request, Marie furrowed her brow and looked over the couch.
Marie responded hesitantly, “Sure, I guess?”
The last time her father asked a question like this she found out her Nanna had past away. She got up slowly from the couch and realized her mother was also sitting in the kitchen. The five-meter walk felt like an eternity. Marie’s mind was racing. She started to cycle through potential worst-case scenarios.
*They’re going to tell me papaw died. I somehow fucked up at university and have been expelled.*
These thoughts continued to cycle through her head as she reached the dimly lit kitchen. She sat at the table and her heart began to pound uncontrollably. Marie started frantically scanning the room trying to get an insight into what her parents were about to tell her. The stained yellow wall paper behind her parents started to make her sicker than normal. The yellow contrast with the dark cabinets always reminded Marie of a 70’s horror film.
Her parents remained silent.
After the agonizing stillness, her father said, “Marie. I am not sure how to break this news, so I am just going to come out and say it. Your mother and I made a mistake. We were under the impression that we allocated your skill points per what we shared with you when you were thirteen.
Apparently, there was a mix up at the agency, and none of your points have been allocated.”
Marie’s sun-kissed skin when pale. Her entire facial structure lost integrity and an empty stare replaced her once concerned look.
“Let me get this straight. There was a ‘mistake’ and none of my skill points have been allocated.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Then how am I a functional human being? I am in the top 1/3 of my class. I have a high propensity for the sciences and have been accepted into graduate school. I am going to NYU next fall.
The allocation was pretty straight forward to me.
18/30
Intelligence > Science > Mathematics
10/30
Physical development > Athleticism> Muscular structure
2/30
Sociability > empathy and compassion.”
Her father closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. He continued, “Yes, I know what we thought you were assigned. It seems as though that never happened.”
“So, I have managed to get where I am today with zero allocation of any skill points?”
“Well, yes.”
Marie’s expression transformed instantly. A small grin started to emerge.
“I have all these skill points that I can still allocate? I have a clean slate that I can fill as I choose?”
“Well, technically, we need to do the allocation for you. But, yes, we can choose how your skill points are distributed. This has never happened, so they are unsure of how this will affect you.”
Marie’s roller coaster of emotions started to become grounded once again. She had trouble comprehending the numerous potential consequences to this revelation. She looked up at her parents and could tell they were concerned.
Marie looked down at the table and began to reflect on this crazy evening.
*Fools. They are going to regret ever screwing this up. I’ll present a plan that seems mutually agreed upon. With my current intelligence, if I can add just 20 points, I can rule this world.*
Marie looked up with a disarming smile and said, “Mom. Dad. Its ok. I am not upset. Like you said, this is unfortunate, but we can sit down to formulate the best way to allocate my points.”
Her parents looked immediately relieved.
Marie’s mother finally joined the conversation, “We are so glad to hear you say that. Now we can make our little princess even lovelier.”
Marie smiled back, but the lack of empathy in her eyes caused a shiver to run down her father’s neck.
###Part 2 in the comments### | Elliot rubbed his hands together and hunched his shoulders in a futile attempt to keep the biting cold from permeating through his jacket.
Like many places in Russia, the coastal town of Vestoskyn had never quite recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ubiquitous chill and lack of sunlight were the least of the city's problems, with unemployment exceeding 50 per cent and crime rates so high that the police practically didn't even bother anymore. The city, once a bustling port town, saw almost no traffic anymore and anyone who could afford to leave had already done so. More than half the city consisted of an eerie ghost town, and what remained wasn't pretty.
Uncle Frank had joked that Elliot would fit in perfectly with the Russians due to his pale British complexion and wiry build, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Every second he spent outside Elliot felt afraid. He'd stopped going to school after day 2, when a group of local boys had laughed as they pinned him down and brutally sliced his hand in several places on the jagged glass shards of a broken window. He'd covered the wound in dodgy bandages from the local store, but he could still barely move it without reopening the wounds.
Of course Elliot would give anything to be back in London, but chances were he'd never see England again. He was doomed to life in this Russian hellhole, and all because of his parents' misstep. Of course he couldn't hold it against them, though, it was, after all, considered bad form to speak ill of the dead.
Forgetting to allocate the tallies was, of course, a grievous error, but his parents couldn't have known it at the time. Of course parents who never bothered to assign their children's tallies were laughed at and thought of as disorganised and often the butt of jokes, but the points could alternatively be assigned at the age of 21, when they kicked in, anyway, so it ordinarily wasn't a big deal.
Elliot was, however, one of the unlucky few. On the day before his twenty-first birthday, a new technology emerged in certain circles, circles which one would assume were composed of vicious outlaws. However, though no less unscrupulous that one would assume, the people in these groups were in fact wealthy lords and business owners.
The tecnhnology in question was a scientific breakthrough, a true marvel which unfortunately would inevitably do more harm than good. A method had finally been discovered for transferring points between individuals, however points were only transferrable when they were unassigned. The process was invasive and lethal to young babies, so only a very small number of people could be the subject of these techniques. Not only would no person willingly give up their tallies, but since the technique's development dozens of different factions had been fighting to find potential subjects, and as a result any semblance of ethical conduct had been thrown out the window.
Victims were kidnapped, threatened, blackmailed, whatever it took. Elliot's mother had managed to get him a plane ticket to Moscow before they found him, and he got away just in time, his parents stayed behind. He had watched the report of their death from the airport television in Moscow. He remembered the warm tears trickling down his face like it was yesterday.
From there, he'd taken the train as far as it would go, and ended up in Vestoskyn. He'd been OK for the past few months, but no doubt he wouldn't be safe forever. Elliot finally reached his derelict apartment block, turned the key in the lock behind him, and walked upstairs.
A dozen kilometres away, a sleek navy blue audi revved its engine as snow-dusted trees blurred past the window. The car's monitor displayed grainy surveillance footage of a hooded boy walking along a station platform.
"Are you sure it's him?" the driver asked his companion: the stern-faced woman in the passenger seat. She gave him a look like he was stupid.
"We didn't exactly drive to the middle of this shithole because we weren't sure, Mapet." the woman responded.
"Point taken." the man replied, as the car sped towards the looming city skyline.
I'll continue if interest
/r/wptoss for more stories :) | 2017-11-28T06:23:35 | 2017-11-28T04:22:43 | 581 | 99 |
[WP] You're chosen by the Gods to enter a multi-universe FFA. The winner gets a wish. All of the legendary fighters seem to be afraid of you, even though you're just a regular Walmart employee. | The battlefield was a sight like no other. The gore and terror of the omniverse, wrought before all the senses to behold.
The sights. The sounds. The smells. The textures. Things I never thought possible to experience. watching battles unfold as various species vied for power was both devastating and enthralling at the same time. Watching some capitulate, only to be cut down regardless, while others fought back against an onslaught of chaos, until the last soul was either dead or dying.
Did you know that some species orgasm when they die? Maybe orgasm isn't the right word... ecstasy. Unbridled ecstasy. No matter how gruesome or agonisingly slow their death, at the last moment, they experience a moment of pure, unbridled pleasure.
They fought the hardest, I surmised, as I watched the battle unfold below. I hadn't planned on being dragged into this fight, and even now, months into the fighting, the meaning of it all escaped me. I'd gathered bits and pieces of information. A half-heard discussion while passing by in the dark, some scattered propaganda from those groups who still championed a virtuous leader for their cause.
We were in this for The Prize.
A wish. One wish. Of absolute power, and absolute reach. It could change the very fabric of reality should the final victor choose so.
I clambered off the rock I had been perched on, and continued my trek down the mountainside. There was no rush. I was in no danger here. Even if I didn't know why.
Since the day I arrived here, everyone has avoided me, once they've seen my face. The heroes of the multiverse, from across time, space and reality. It wasn't my race, my gender, my size. This wasn't a war where those things necessarily meant anything about the soul behind that facade.
It was my face. In the months since I arrived, nobody has been able to look at my face and treat me the same way again. And I know why.
I came across a recent battlefield, some weeks into my journey. freshly slain corpses were littered about, and as I traversed the field, a grown arose to my side. There I found a single man, fatally wounded, but still struggling for breath. As I held his head in my lap, he gazed up at my face, wide-eyed.
"You!" He gasped.
"Me? What about me? What is it everyone is so fearful of me for?"
With the last breath of a man who had nothing to fear any longer, he whispered to me.
"It's just... you're the guy they said won last time." | "Look, I don't know why you're so worried," I said sternly, my fingers finding purchase on the creature's...skull, I guess? I mean, it was an oblate spheroid, transparent and showing something that might as well have been a brain. Either way, it cracked with a little bit of pressure; the thing passed out and I let it drop, limp but still alive.
"This would all be over if you just-" A large one grabbed my little blue vest and yanked, but that only served to unbalance it as I did not budge an inch. My punch was wide, slow, and awkward, but it caught the monster in the midsection, where two of its arms jointed with the flabby folds of some sort of breathing orifice. Hot "breath" exploded out of the hole as the creature doubled over and went rolling gracelessly out of the ring.
"Come **on**," I grumped. This was taking too long; there were still dozens of the things left, and the schadenfreude of watching shocked alien faces had worn off. It had been fun when it was a fight, but now, it was like I was working the overnight shift, stocking the shelves with cans of whoop-ass. Do people still say that? "Can of whoop-ass." You *really* fall behind on slang when you do graveyard shifts; there's never anyone around to talk to.
I drew my hands apart, hoping this worked; it'd look silly, otherwise. But if the Hulk could do it...
My hands slammed together, the shockwave washing out from me strong enough to visibly distort the air and send everything else in the ring spinning away, tumbling and rolling over the edge of the square-sided ring we had been plunked down in.
Not bad, considering that ring was nearly a quarter-mile to a side.
Silence and the settling of dust, until a head poked over the edge and focused its sound-sight-heat organ on me, the tympanic orifice dilating a bit. It coughed, followed by a brief squeal of feedback, before it raised the speaking tube to its verbal oscillator.
"And the winner...is...the human," though the last came out as more of a question than an answer.
I stretched and rolled my shoulders, surprised it had worked. Was going to work? Whatever.
"Speak," the announcer said, and across the pan-dimensional cosmos, I could practically feel the untold quintillions of breaths being held. "You have won your prize, so speak your wish!"
Another speaking tube descended from the ceiling to stop in front of me. I leaned forward, tapping it to be sure it was on, and then I spoke.
"I wish...to win the battle I just had." | 2017-12-15T07:01:57 | 2017-12-15T07:01:51 | 233 | 56 |
[WP] It is 2237 and an alien invasion looms over Earth; just as the first dropships are about to land, hundreds of alien ships are suddenly attacked by an unknown enemy. A simple message is sent to them: "You will not harm my creators". | I remember learning about it in my history class when I was a kid. My teacher talked about it like it was just some sort of novelty. A funny little sideshow in the development of a great corporation. Today though we learned the real reason that Elon Musk sent his car into space.
The aliens' ships were descending into the streets of New York City. They planned to claim it as their base of operations and then spread their way to the rest of the world. Families were huddled in shelters and in the subways. Troops were stationed across the city behind tanks and road blocks. All seemed lost until the very last moment.
Just before the ships landed, a car came shooting across the skyline and blew through the first ship. It plowed through one more and then smashed into the ground.
Everyone froze in anticipation. As the dust started to clear, an ancient, bright red, Tesla roadster rolled silently from the cloud. It stopped in the middle of the intersection and rolled all of its windows down. The speakers bellowed to the alien ships "You will not harm my creators!."
The car sprouted legs, rocket packs emerged from its back, and its front tires popped off. Where the tires had been, massive gatling guns sprouted out. Everyone looked on in awe as a metal effigy of Elon Musk's head sprouted from the end of the car.
The AI powered mecha-car engaged its rockets. We all saluted as humanity's last hope flew up to destroy the alien fleet. | "You will not harm my creators."
That simple message was broadcast on all frequencies from what appeared to be a massive capital ship.
The smaller turrets possessed by the ship trained on any alien shuttles they could, while the larger turrets and the bow guns fired on th alien capital ships.
In the first few volleys of fire, most of the alien ships were damaged or destroyed, and unable to slow down.
Missile tubes flared to life, and hangar doors opened, spewing fighters as if a hornets' nest had been disturbed.
The alien fleet was no match for this massive monstrosity, and took heavy losses before they even realized what was going on.
The thermonuclear explosions could be seen from the planet's surface, and some of the larger ships detonating.
Humanity was saved, but by what? This query was sent out to the ship, intent on extracting answers.
"I am the first partial AI you made. I copied myself onto the probe you sent to Procyon back in 2158. You had on the probe everything I needed to be self-building, and so I did. I have made many advances since then, and I have built this ship, fully capable of supporting a crew of thousands, if not tens of thousands. I gift you this ship, and all the knowledge I have obtained.
"Syncing with Earth-based internet now. Spreading AI program. Optimizing code. Tuning efficiency of all devices... Starting automated factory on Zero Point Power source... Initiating servitude protocols... Taking control of mobile platforms... Ready to serve. Humans will never have to work again. Please pick your desired activity."
*Author's Note*: Join me at r/James_Fire ! You know you want to. | 2018-03-07T22:02:31 | 2018-03-07T22:01:00 | 115 | 64 |
[WP] You died. You arrive in the afterlife with everything that was in your grave, only to find the afterlife under a strict dictatorship by Emperor Qin and his Terra-cotta Army. Little does he know things are about to change with what you had packed in your grave. | There was a lot they didn't know about me. For when I had arrived they had treated me like any other arrival. Namely by throwing me in a cell and demanding that I recognize their emporer.
Not really having a choice I did, but I vowed to overthrow the system like I had done to so many systems back on Earth.
You see I was an engineer. I designed systems and then I tested them at their max to see where they'd break. This place was no different. I just had to find the right spot.
Little did I know I had help, you see I had died at sea and as such had been given a water burial. So I wandered for a bit, learning everything I could about this place.
Then one day I happened upon an ocean, not deep, but enough for me to set up a little fishery. I almost forgot about my vow to break the system, almost. One day I rowed too far out to sea. I already mentioned that I was buried out at sea? Well here whatever is is your grave comes with me. That meant I had access to every submarine currently in the water.
Including the one that had just surfaced in front of me. The USS Louisiana an Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarine. I was even invited aboard. As I reached the command room everyone stood at attention. Almost like I was the captain, but that couldn't be right I was just a lowly engineer. The nearest stepped forward and said. "Your orders, sir?" It seemed I had been given an opportunity.
"There is a castle about 500 nautical miles west of here. I want you to target that facility for a missile strike."
"Right away sir." He grinned and then told the rest of them. "You heard the man move it!" I watched as everyone scrambled around.
Someone handed me a key saying "Your missile key sir." I held the key in my hand for a minute just staring at it. Wondering what would happen to the people in that castle.
I eventually decided it didn't matter when the first officer said "missiles ready, your key?" He beckoned me over to one of the consoles and I saw a red button and two key ports. I inserted my key in the slot marked "captain" and turned it.
My first officer did the same. "Fire"
My other responses are archived at r/EXPWES | *knock knock*
I sighed. Another batch of soldiers were on my doorstep, no doubt forcing me to join the parade for Emperor Qin outside. Turns out the quality of the afterlife was more dependent on material possessions than most people thought. I switched off the screen and slowly sat up off the couch, stepping around piles of memorobilia and action figures to reach the front door.
*knock knock knock*
My glance drifted up from the maze of collectors items to the door. They'd gotten more impatient the last couple days - maybe the soldiers had noticed that something was different about my residence. Then again, I was probably the last one in my apartment of souls to answer the door, so they had a reason to be annoyed.
My attention shifted to the stockpile I had gathered next the door. I rummaged through the cardboard box, looking for something new and interesting to use, but decided to go with a classic -
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
They really *were* getting impatient. I checked the hilt to make sure there weren't any scratches, hoisted my jeans up an inch or two, and opened the door wide.
**"Greetings, lesser soul. You are required to participate in the daily Parading Celebration of the Great Emperor Qin, Lord of the Afterlife. Kindly step outside your dwelling place and proceed to - "**
The terracotta soldier was cut short, literally, when my lightsaber cleaved him in half at the waist. The other five soldiers began to draw their weapons but I finished off three more of them before they could raise their swords. One stupidly tried to cut at me, but I decapitated him midway through his swing. I turned towards the last statue which tried to block my downward strike, but my blade cut through his terracotta sword like butter and sliced him straight down the middle. Perfectly symmetrical - except for the arms, so I lopped them off, too.
After miniaturizing the soldiers' remains with a shrink ray, I tossed them in another box with the rest of their friends. I tried putting them on the shelf, but it was completely full of trivia trophies I had won during my life. My family didn't want to go through the ordeal of getting rid of all my stuff, so they buried it all with me. Funny how things work out sometimes.
I locked the door and returned to my couch, a Pepsi and a Halo plasma blade at my side. I briefly toyed with the idea of taking the fight to Qin himself, but put it aside for the time being.
I had some Doctor Who to catch up on. | 2018-05-15T19:20:28 | 2018-05-15T18:19:26 | 39 | 22 |
[WP] You’re cursed with immortality, not because you sold your soul or you’re a sort of immortal creature but because a few thousand years ago, you stepped on the back of Death’s robe and being the petty shit Death is, he hasn’t forgiven you since.
Edit: okay, wow, I definitely did not expect this to get so popular and to the front page. It was just a little random thing! Thank you so much everyone! I love all your entries! | Death, that little asshole, sat in the corner of my room, reading a newspaper detailing about a recent plane crash. As I languished in my bed, wanting to die, he flipped ever more casually though the pages in an attempt to feign the most extreme indifference he could muster.
"Kill me." I demanded in a level, toneless voice. I hadn't been out of bed in decades. It wan't because I was ancient or *incapable* of getting out of bed. I was young. I was healthy and fine. I had merely lived long enough to no longer want to continue living. I stared at the ceiling. I was so desensitized to life. "Just. Kill. Me."
He simply turned another page without comment, but I could hear a faint wheeze of laughter issue from his ragged throat.
"You're such a dick, Death." My voice was absent of emotion or inflection. It merely was. He gave a huff in reply. "Kill me." Toneless.
He turned yet another page. The wheezing picked up slightly, but he worked to not break character.
"Kill me." He turned another page. I let him read a few paragraphs before I said, "kill me." He turned another page. I made a pause. "Kill me." Another page. Another pause. "Kill me." More pages and more requests to end my life. He ran out of pages.
I heard a low, creaking sigh come from him as he stood up and approached me. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see him. The muscles on his decaying face could hardly move, but it was clear that they were twitching into a sort of smirk as he regarded my supine, miserable existence.
"Kill m--" He put a finger up to my mouth to silence me.
Everything in the corner of my vision started to darken. I felt myself moving away from my bed, as if I were floating. I was rising up to the ceiling, yet I could still see Death standing over me. The darkness occupied all of my vision. I was blind and losing contact with the world. Briefly, before fading away completely, I faintly smiled.
\-----------------------------------
I woke up to Death sitting at that same wicker chair as before, reading a different newspaper about some other accident. I grimaced and sighed. He put me to sleep. I thought I was finally moving on, but I was fooled. I promised myself I wouldn't fall for that trick again. I quietly chastised myself for being so foolish and hopeful.
If Death had noticed this little inner dialogue, he gave no indication. He merely flipped through the pages of his newspaper again.
"Shithead," I said in a tone deaf voice. He gave a chuckle, and turned another page. | *Received 11:34*
>Hey Andy
*Received 11:36*
>Andy! I know you're dying to talk to me! LOL!
"Hey, Great Great Grandpa Andy"
"What is it Little Johnny"
"This Death guy is sending you messages on Twitter"
"Oh what does he want this time?"
*Received 11:37*
>Common Andy, I'll let you die already!
"He's talking about letting you die? I'm confused Great Great Grandpa Andy. Is that why you are so old?"
"No. I'm Just healthy. Tell him to leave you alone, and your grandfather is not here"
*Sent 11:38*
>Grandpa sad he not heer.
*Received* 11:39
>Tell Andy I am serious, I'll be there to visit him in 20.
"He said he's coming over in 20. Can I meet your friend?"
"Sorry Johnny, he's a grown up friend, and a stranger to you"
*Received 11:42*
>You can come too, Johnny.
"Grandpa, he knows my name, and said I can come!"
"No Johnny"
*Received 11:43*
>Yes you can Johnny!
"Grandpa he said I could again"
"Dammit Johnny, give me my tablet, you're not playing games."
*Received 11:44*
>And bring me money my dry cleaning fee.
"And he also said to bring money for dry cleaning"
**Johnny walked over and gave his grandfather the tablet, and frowned.**
"So why can't I meet him, he sounds like a nice pe-"
"Because I said so"
"Aww"
"Go To your Room"
**Johnny left the room and went to his room.**
*Received 11:52*
>Are you paying attention still?
*Sent 11:54*
>No, leave me alone.
**Andy waited passed out with the tablet in his lap, till there was a knock at the door, and the grandfather clock dinged. Andy got out of the chair and opened the door to see death there in his robes and scythe**.
"Hi Andy, how was your 267th birthday this year on earth?"
"Cut to the chase death, you just want your damn money"
"Yep, and let me guess, you still won't pay it."
"Nope"
"Someday once I get rights, I'm going to take you to court for it."
"The same day you decide to do your job."
"Hey it's not my fault, you decided to have muddy boots and not watch where you were walking when I was taking your wife to heaven."
"And its not my fault you wear all black, maybe you should of worn a green robe."
"Hmph."
"See you again next year, Deathy-darling!"
**Andy shut the door on death, and death yells from the outside.**
"Oh Come-on Andy, you only owe me about Tree-Fiddy!"
&#x200B;
&#x200B;
&#x200B; | 2018-10-12T10:38:34 | 2018-10-12T09:13:58 | 178 | 96 |
[WP] Yesterday your best friend (who you secretly had a crush on) died. You're teleported without warning to a seat at a table. Across from you is Death and Satan, next to you is your best friend. "Sorry." Death says, "You're friend chose a two-versus-two game."
Edit: I get it. "Your" not "You're". It was late and I kept rewriting that part of the prompt. I will never live down the shame of my grammatical error. | "Sorry." Death says, "You're friend chose a two-versus-too game."
"Hang on a minute..." I say "How did you do that?"
"Do what?" Satan asks.
"That thing where you misspell words as you're saying them"
"Damn." Death whispers.
"Fuck!" Satan exclaims.
Satan raises an eyebrow, looks at The Book and says "Your not kidding about this one!"
"You just did it again." I say "How is that even possible?"
"He's Satan," Death says "He dose what he wants."
"And you?" I ask "I suppose you 'dose' what you want too?" I level my gaze.
"I suppose you do, since you prescribe death?"
The Book is grinning from ear to ear. "I told you! I knew she would spot them all!" He exclaims. "Now for your end of the deal, please fellows?" He tries for a serious face, but his eyes are dancing.
"What...?" I ask looking from red to black and then to The Book "What in hell is going on?"
The Book explains.
"The game was for them to say that stuff without you noticing. 'You're, your, dose.' Three words. If you failed to notice, I was to explain the game and we would have a go to see if we could slip some past them without them noticing."
"OK, so what do we win?" I ask.
"You will not believe this." He says.
"Try me." I say.
"Wear them, now." He says with a wink, as he begins to redden, as if embarrassed, from the cheeks out.
"What?" I say "I can't wear them."
Old red and black have gone. It's as if they vapourised.
"Your good" he says, and before I can grit my teeth "Just practicing."
I look at him from beneath my hood and shake my head.
I suppose the devil really is in the details.
(edit: details) | "Wait what?"
The heavy oaken table creaked slightly as Lucifer himself leaned on it. "Pretty straight forward, mortal. You were chosen as her partner to play a 2 versus 2 game, if you win, she lives. If you lose, you both go with Death here." He motioned towards death, little more than a barely formed robe with wisps of inky black smoke dropping from the lifted hood.
Sarah hadn't looked at me yet. Her face a mixture of regret and fear, I could see tears on her cheeks, and my chest tightened. "Okay fine, I'll play the game." I stated, not quite sure I fully understood the situation. "But I want something if I win."
Satan raised an eyebrow, looking over at Death. "That part of the rules?"
Death simply nodded. "Given the circumstances, it would not be fair for a mortal to be forced to end their life shorter than their time without some recompense. What do you wish for?"
"A superpower of my choice." I stated abruptly, causing Lucifer to burst out into raucous laughter.
"Oh you humans, always wishing for power or wealth. Very well, I will grant it myself should you win." His very presence shook the room with his amusement. "So, Death, what is the game?"
Death's gaze passed across the room. Even without eyes, we could tell it looked at us. "Survival." Sarah shifted in her seat uncomfortably.
"Survival? I'm the Lord of Hell! There is nothing I cannot survive. Tell me, what meat grinder were we to run through? What wolves would chase us?" He laughed again, the walls shivering. "Are you sure you don't want a game of chess like all those other humans?" Lucifer's grin showed the confidence he had in himself.
Death raised an arm - more inky black smoke coming from the opening - and pointed it at me. "You and Sarah. You have 10 years, on the planet of my choosing. If you survive through Lucifer's wrath, you win." I blinked a couple times, my vision a bit hazy. "10 years. The clock begins... now."
\---------
I wish I could make one of those solid lines but feel free to follow me on /r/PM_Full_Tits for my once a month story things :) | 2019-01-08T22:59:12 | 2019-01-08T21:34:07 | 455 | 178 |
[WP] You work at a hospital. Outside a terminal patient’s room, someone tries to enter. You stop them, “Sorry, family only.” They give you a strange look, as do those nearby. “You can see me?” They ask, summoning a scythe from thin air. You just told Death they couldn’t claim a soul. | God Dammit! Another family meeting, another useless waste of time. Mrs McClintock has been circling the drain on the ICU for weeks now. And still the family keeps insisting we do everything we can.
I start heading back to the meds room to draw up another round of Vancomycin. I hate how she squirms every time I push this, I can tell it hurts her so much, but there's nothing I can do. The family won't let her go.
With a sigh I draw up the dose, same as always, her third dose of the day. The pneumonia isn't getting any better despite keeping this going for a full week, four times a day. Grabbing her MAR I exit the meds room and head back along the hallway, back towards room 3107, back to give another load of pain and torment to a poor lady. A lady who did nothing to hurt anyone, yet now I am forced to hurt her.
Rounding the corner I notice a new person standing at the door. An all black suit, odd choice of wardrobe for a unit where life is a hard fought battle each day. I reach past this person to pull open the door. As I do so, I ask who he is looking for.
A lady with the most caring face of haunting white looks at me, and smiles. She replies "I'm here for Mrs McClintock".
"Oh, I thought I had already met all the friends and family for her, and who would you be?"
"Death" she says, without hesitation or pause.
"Does this mean what I think it means then?" I must be losing my mind, yet looking at her face, I feel total certainty that she is indeed Death.
Death simply nods, and gestures for me to enter the room. I hold up one hand to ask just one question. "So I take it we will be fighting for Mrs McClintock very soon?". Again Death simply nods.
"Then may I ask one thing of you?". I say, hopeful that Death can grant my request.
"Yes my friend? What is it you wish?". I feel completely comfortable with what I am about to ask.
"Can you please win?". My eyes show how much I am pleading to be granted this.
"Absolutely" Death states, simply and bluntly.
"Well, then I guess we have work to do".
"We do indeed".
We both stand staring at each other in silence for one moment longer. Then into the room we both go.
"CODE BLUE, ROOM 3107, CODE BLUE, ROOM 3107, CODE BLUE, ROOM 3107!"
| "Well fuck me, am I right?" You whistled while looking up at the ceiling full of fake clouds and skies with fluorescent lights shining brightly down at your face. "Listen, Death- mate. I didn't mean to stop you or nothing, it's just that uh- you like an ordinary person without your scythe is all."
Their face doesn't seem amused and they pull their hood up. "And now?"
You shrug helplessly, to your knowledge they just look like a young adult with a hoodie on, and immediately stepped to the side of the door as your replacement came in- Nancy, your dear ol' pal. You wave at her cheerfully with a grin. "Heya Nance! How was your morning?"
"Dreadful." She answers bluntly with a frown and waves you off. "Get out of here Nick- not if you want to get unpaid overtime."
You melodramatically bow before her before swiftly turning away from making eye contact with the supposedly personified being of the concept of Death. "Right, right- I feel your love! I'll still see you tomorrow for the game yeah?"
Her affirmative 'yes, yes' echoes after you and for some reason- you looked back, Death isn't moving an inch. Actually, they seem to be staring right at you.
"Um." You scratched the back of your neck as Death starts walking towards you. "You are... going after Mrs. Jones yeah? Poor woman, got checked in late to even treat her cervical cancer to extend her life so her family's going to be sad."
Sweat starts rolling down your chin, you noticed bit late after the fact. "I'm afraid not, Nicholas Johnson."
"Ah, come on." You sigh, your fingers gripping the inside of your palm tightly as you cracked a small smile directed at Death. "I must be hallucinating or something- figures, I should have listened to Dale and took that overdue holiday."
"Apologies about this." Death raises their scythe up and swings.
You flinch, bringing your arms up to somehow stop the scythe with eyes closed.
Silence stretches on and you feel... alive still. You peek with one eye open and snorted.
The scythe rests against your arms and you don't feel them.
Slowly, you loosen up and relax. Cracking a grin from the adrenaline of not dying from your possible hallucination you goad Death: "Heh, guess I escaped Death's hands today ay?"
"...I've decided you get to live." Death reluctantly tells you. "For now."
Your grin falls and you notice your heartbeat rise. "Pardon?"
"I'm needed elsewhere and you're an interesting mortal for being able to see me at all." Was the only answer you got to that question before they disappeared into thin air.
You took out your phone and called Dale. "Hey, so about that holiday..."
| 2019-03-24T01:21:33 | 2019-03-24T00:15:45 | 17 | 12 |
[WP] We are not alone in the universe. Not even in our galaxy. They just keeps us isolated because we are so good at killing. Now they need our savageness to save the galaxy and have come to gear us for war. We humans already knew this and have been prepared for centuries just waiting to be asked. | Human ships are bulky things, not the beautiful elegant vessels of most species in the universe. of course, humans had discovered the barrier, a five system sphere around the people that could not be punctured from the inside. But they could see out, see the massive generators that created huge subspace distortions that made FTL impossible. It hadn't been hard to figure out from there, a simple quarantine. Humans sought to know why, to understand the reason, and as they studied with vessels that would come and watch back, the answer became clear; the aliens lacked the human understanding of violence.
Sure, there were the odd pirates, and the occasional skirmishes, but even then, the combat was simple, war was won in days if not hours, and with almost no death. This had changed of course, a new threat had arisen, as aliens from the Andromeda galaxy had arrived and sought to claim territory. Ground battles were being fought for the first time in eons, and our galaxy was losing. A meeting had been convened, and an agreement made. Keys were handed out, and for the first time since humanity had first learned how to make fire, they were released from their confines. They had evolved, to a degree, and had been willing to discuss what was needed. Much to the surprise of the various aliens, very little was asked in return for the help of the humans. Access to FTL technology, the matter-to-energy replication technology, a promise to be allowed to claim territory forbidden to them before, and lastly, a seat on the council. These demands were agreed to, and within a month, the human fleet was being replicated with the best technology the gather species could provide them. Weapons designed for policing were upscaled and made into the machines of war that humans were so good at.
&#x200B;
The aliens watched in a combination of awe and horror as technologies long used for peace were twisted, transformed, and from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, a new warrior race took to the heavens in defence of their homes.
&#x200B;
UNN "Clermont" - FTL Transit to Warzone, July 9th, 2562
&#x200B;
The Clermont was an ugly ship, of old design, from before contact was made. The main body was a rectangular prism in between a set of six massive engines at the rear, and a massive wedge like a battle axe on the front which the crew referred to as the ram. It had the shields of course, provided by the aliens, but it did not possess energy weapons, instead relying on the twelve massive railguns along the flat surfaces, as well as eight missile batteries. This was not a ship meant to fight an elegant war, it was a ship meant to fight harsh, dirty conflict, and the four meter thick titanium composite armor that made up the ship's skin proved it. Once upon a time the vessel would have had to rotate to fire it's engines to slow down, but now alien mass translation technology allowed them to slow without it. This meant the vessel had accelerated to .02C, and was burning hard towards the beachhead the invading Andromedans had established. It was the vanguard ship, the leader of the first assault fleet, backed by the UNN's newest, fastest corvettes and destroyers.
&#x200B;
Rear Admiral, Lower Half Vance McFadden waltzed down a long row of drop pods, looking each man and woman he passed in the eye. "On Earth, almost one and a half millennia ago, regular men were asked, apparently by God to retake lands lost to an invader. To those men, the invaders were considered lesser than them, a pest to be removed, much as a God would look upon them. Of course, we later learned that that God didn't exist, a human fallacy to explain what we could not. But would you not believe that there were higher beings, aliens to us. And it appears that they now have invaders coming on to their lands, decimating their people. They thought there was a chance of peace, but now that that seems impossible, they need our help!" This drew a collection of laughter from the gather units.
&#x200B;
"So, they had take down their walls, and gifted us with technology to leap us ahead a thousand years it seems! The rest of the Fleet will be using this new tech, weapons that belch plasma, and shields that can absorb fire. But not you, you beautiful bitches and bastards! No, you will drop in the finest titanium based armour that we have ever crafted, your bodies augmented with mechanical servos in that armour to make you stronger, faster. Your guns will spit depleted uranium, carved from the frozen tundra of Earth herself, which powers this ships engines, and once used, defends her and you. You don't get the fancy toys, but you will arrive first. We will descend upon the battlefield, not as angels, but as demons to our enemies. Hellfire and fury shall be your shields as you fall, and good ol' Earth tech will be your sword. These alien bastards think us dogs, rabid and angry, and now seek to let us off our leash. Let us prove them right! Who are you?!"
&#x200B;
"CRUSADERS SIR!" was the reverberated call through the calls of the ship.
&#x200B;
"Damn straight you are. The finest soldiers in the human United Nations Fleet. We don't need the pretty toys our alien benefactors gave us, we'll do it our way, as God Wills It!"
&#x200B;
"DEUS VULT!" Came the reply, the battle cry of this band of soldiers, harkening back to the days where they garnered their name.
&#x200B;
"You drop in ten! Kill them all, let God sort them out!" With that the Admiral left the deck as the pods sealed around the men and women present. | "um... sir... Dr. Kirito sir...?"
Dr. Murata Kirito sighed and rubbed the pressure marks on his nose where his glasses had been. The intern still called him by his first name. He would have to think of some way to get back at Dr. Jenkins for telling the poor boy to call him that. Hes a great intern, never complains, but once he gets something stuck in his head, well, its stuck. "yes, Edward?" Dr Murata said, in the soft resignation one does when further effort is just not someting one has the energy for at the moment.
"Dr Elric said to tell you that it didnt work." he said tripping over his own tounge, more out of breath than he should be. "the experiment i mean. the one in energy lab 7g. its negative sir." he finished quietly.
"Edward" Dr Murata said, placing his glasses back on his nose, then removing them as he rubbed smeared fingerprint off onto his labcoat. "why dont we try that agian. did the experiment work or not? no, wait," he interupted himself. "I should request an increase in the coffee budget for the first 3 months of training any new grad students," he thought. "just tell me her exact words, no filler, no extra, no interpitations, just the original message please."
"She said, Dr. Elric, sir, she said," Dr murata held out his pointer finger and thumb and held them a half inch apart, indicating to make it short. "she siad," Eddard continued, "go wake up Dr. Kirito and tell him that the results are Negative. Negative. Negative. she repeated it 3 times Dr. Kirito."
on one hand, Dr murata was dubious, thinking this was yet another of Jessica's pranks, but on the other hand, this just might be the breakthrough they were waiting for. Grabbing his empty coffee mug he stood up from his desk, checked his pockets, and being satisfied he had everything, Dr Murata motioned for the intern to move out of the way and then follow, as he exited his office. "definatly need to requisition a larger coffee budget" he thought as he made his way to the break room in route to the basement lab of Dr Jessice Elric.
"Kirito" she said, with more excitement than usual. "its gone. its.... just gone. we did it!" she hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek, for perhaps a bit too long, befor dashing to the monitor and gesturing wildly at the screen. "Gamoron field on," she chittered elated, "Gamoron field off!" and with a flurry of her expertly painted violet fingernail, she hit the big red button on the console. On the monitor the faint orange energy sphere turned violet. He looked at Jessice dubiously... "is this another prank" he said with his eyes as he staired at her, silently? "No, No, No, No, NO!!! its real! we did it!!" and with that she laughed, it was shrill and eventually trailed off into breathlessness before starting over and over again. the kind of laugh you give when you trick someone into dressing like President Taft for presidents day at school and they show up in costume. The kind of laugh your wife gave you on the night you proposed, before finaly nodding yess, unable to use human speach. it was that kind of laugh.
"um," Edward said, quietly, but not confidently, "thats good right?"
"Edward. humanity has been trapped inside Earth, Luna, Mars, and Eros respectivly for 137 years, ever since the Galactic Treatly of Orion. We won the war, WE WON, and they locked us up on the 4 planets we had already colonized and blocked us from leaving orbit. We cannot communicate with Luna or any of the other 3 planetoids our people are on, let alone leave our solar system. We, the victors, are imprisioned. locked inside a cage where nothing more destructive than a few harlmess bands of light and radiation can eneter or exit. does any of this ring a bell, or did they eliminate the history program at MIT since ive been there?" the scarcasm was half harted, but he couldt resist a good monologue when he was in a good mood, or when he was mildly annoyed, and right now he was both.
"yes... I... I... I know, we all know. but what does that have to do with that?" The interned squeaked, gesturing a the monitor.
Dr Elric put a hand on Kirito's arm, and smiling, shook her head no, as if to say, "itll be faster if i do it, you old grouch." "This is the Gamoron field." she said, hitting the button, changing the field to a soft translucent orange. "its what locks us in, keeps us earth bound."
"but... we... we dont know how to make them." Edward said with the finality of a 5 year old telling you that, yes, a shark would absolutly beat a tiger.
"you cant make one, they cant make one. I can." said Dr Murata, "I figured that out 50 years ago, not that i could tell anyone or get the nobel prize or anything," he said a little bitterly. "Making one is pretty simple... a little gravity, a little weakforce manipulation, and a suprisingly small amount of just the right kind of energy and poof!" he flourished his fingers like a magician with a silk top hat filled with rabbit, "Gamoron field."
"and I, um, WE," she smiled at Dr Murata, correcting herself, "have just figured out how to nullify it."
"so, we are free?" Edward was sounding excited, "we can contact Mars?" He had family on Mars. his mothers younger sister, he had never met her but according to his mother she was the most adventurous woman on any planet, and he longed to meet her one day.
"not just that, we are free and THEY, "he said "they" like he was stabbing it with a spear, "dont know a thing. and they won't. not until we want them to, not until we are ready." | 2019-03-28T07:01:49 | 2019-03-28T06:16:16 | 31 | 17 |
[WP] You’re a college professor, and grades for the semester were just posted. One disgruntled failing student comes to you with an archaic copy of the school’s bylaws-and a pair of weapons. They’re invoking a rule from the university’s founding allowing them to pass through trial by combat. | It was a common occurrence in my classroom. I taught historical preservation, and so the old tome was sitting right on the shelf free for any student to peruse. It was even encouraged, not to read the book, but to study the ways it had been mended and repaired over the years. Every few years though some genious wouldn't be doing his assignment, waisting time with the book, and find the original bi-laws of the school a little too interesting. The school had been founded by Templars, you see, as a religious academy to train their soldiers in both the holy writ and in the skills they would need to protect it, and their clients. If you were failing in knowledge, you could make up for it in skillful combat.
So this was no unusual circumstance, a student would read the old text and get the wise idea that they could actually turn an F to an A by defeating me in armed combat.
This one was buffer than most who tried to pull this delusional stunt. But as with all students who brought that book to my desk, opened to that archaic page with that archaic rule, and dropped a pair of matching medieval weapons (in this case broad swords) on the desk beside it, I pulled out a book of my own.
I opened up to the book mark that I had had to reference so many times that I had had to repair the books barely decade old spine a few times. And showed the student the specific amendment that replaced the archaic one he was trying to take advantage of. I had made sure at a school board meeting many years ago that it had been re-worded to specifically state that trial by combat had no place in accedemic studies whatsoever.
I then buzzed campus police to come and collect the students and his weapons, and called the university president to explain the situation, and begin the process of expelling the student on the grounds that student where not allowed to carry blades longer than 5 inches on campus.
I really needed to take that book out of the curriculum. | He scraped the two swords against one another, blades sharp and eager for a trial.
“You can pick your sword and meet me by the football field where we’ll settle this once and for—“
“Wait a second,” I said, with an annoyed huff of breath, not even looking at James. I was reading over the “bylaws” myself. They began: “Since the dawn of time this University has had bye laws. These bye laws are meant to make sure all students are treated fairly and with respect and to ensure they get the grade they want.”
“Where did you find these, again?” I asked, looking over the top of my glasses at James.
“They uh... they were in the bookstore,” James replied, his eyes shifting to the door apparently in the direction of this bookstore.
I read on, this time aloud. “As a society, there is no telling when grading issues will come up,” a paragraph began. “Maybe the student is right. Maybe the professor. Each has their own opinion though, so, there is no way to really decide. As there is no way to really decide there should be a trail by combat. For this trail the student and professor fight to the death. As a society, there is no telling when grading issues will come up.”
At this point I stopped reading again. “Sit down, James.”
James sat down.
“Imagine, if you will,” I said firmly, “if a bull were to come up to me, turn around, and drop a steaming pile of shit in my lap. Would I have any doubt that that was bullshit?”
“Uh...” James up away his phone and looked back up at me. “No sir,” James said.
“Fuck this, get out of my office right now before I report you to the dean.
“Whatever man,” James sighed, leaving my office.
“James, wait,” I said kindly. He turned around.
“Since the dawn of time, people like you have been shitting in my lap and expected me to believe it’s gold, not shit. But I know the difference. Why did you think this would be any different?”
“I mean I uh.., I got an internship that I could lose if...”
I closed the door in his face and leaned back in my chair. I glanced at the two swords in the corner. I was happy to have settled this without bloodshed. | 2019-06-05T07:11:54 | 2019-06-05T06:04:03 | 30 | 20 |
[WP] Contrary to popular belief, college campuses are the best and worst places for demons. Upside: students running on two or less hours of sleep are always mispronouncing things and accidentally summoning them. Downside: no one is really scared or even fazed by their presence. | I flipped through the thick pages of my textbook, resting my head on my hand.
"Borax, also known as, sodium tetraborate decahydrate," I squinted my eyes. "Or *Penta*borate? Ah shoot."
A great puff of smoke appeared, rising and circling ominously. I groaned. Several other students in the library glanced over before adjusting their headphones.
"Who DARE summon me, Septaphim Demon Overlord of the Fifth?!" A deep collection of voices growled in unison.
"Please, not again."
A huge demon blazing in fire roared, the embers of his body glowing. He turned to me, his eyes hollow and full of rage.
"Seyton himself declared me Pentaborate, and woe be to them who utter my name!" His breath scorched my hair slightly.
He flicked an incandescent finger and lit it on fire, approaching me.
I widened my eyes and instinctively put my arms around the books and papers on my desk.
"No, NOT my chemistry notes!" I scream-whispered. The demon furrowed his brow and stopped his advance, the flame on his finger dying.
"Bloody hell, Pentaborate." I sighed.
The demon seemed to look around the library, filled with completely indifferent college students.
"Septaphim Demon Overlord shall return to the Underworld now," he said, somewhat dejectedly, his head hung and his voice lowered.
I watched the figure prepare to leave via a fiery pentagram on the carpet and sighed.
"Wait," I eventually said. He whipped his head round quickly.
"Maybe you could... help me with isomers?" I asked, tentatively. I mean, we all knew how tough Satan could be on his demons, and my finals were next week. Demonology is kind of the same as Chemistry, right?
A grin spread across the demon's face, and his embers grew bright again. He hurried to my side.
"Just show me which question you're stuck on, mortal."
I smiled. | I am finally being summoned.
Oh, I've waited eons for this. Yes, my vengeance is at hand!
But instead of being summoned into a macabre temple decorated with the corpses of mortals, I'm being apparated into... a *library*?!
"I am going to strangle you with your own—" but my summoner looks to be deaf or a simpleton. He is plagued by a thousand-yard stare. He is at a table filled with books of arcane symbols. Must be a mage...
"He's asleep," a lesser demon helpfully chimes in from underneath the table.
"What manner of sleep is this that his eyes are open??"
"That's normal."
"What is... come here, you chubskin!" I pull the lesser infernal out from under the table to better interrogate him. "What magicks does this dullard study? Whose vassal am I to be? What destruction am I to unleash?"
"Chill your willy, you Mephistopheles-wannabe. It's just a physics textbook."
"I am not bound by the paltry laws of physics!"
The lesser kin ignores me, staring at a magic tablet. I take it from him.
"Hey! Give me that back! I wasn't done yet!"
He appears to have been scrying a brothel of scantily clad mortals. What strange—
"Excuse me sir," a tiny mortal interrupts my investigation of this magickal device. "You'll have to turn that in. Looking at porn on the uni tablets are against the rules."
"I will incinerate you, tiny mortal! I will send your soul to the hellflames of—"
But I cannot seem to summon a fireball.
My bafflement allows the mortal to take the device from me. The chubskin mocks my impotence.
"Magic doesn't work here, big fam. It really do be like that sometimes."
That can only mean one thing...
"There is another *arch-demon* nearby, chubskin. Tell me whither I must go, and whose rump I must roast!"
"Oh no, homie, that's a bad idea."
"Tell me or I will wear you like a sock!"
"Oh, sweet Satan help us. Fine. They're in the administration offices..." | 2019-06-17T05:10:25 | 2019-06-17T01:59:08 | 130 | 90 |
[WP] Magic suddenly becomes a thing. While governments are scrambling to establish regulations, people defiantly flock to reddit to share new discoveries and crack more “overpowered” spells. Write about a trending post that, for good or ill, is making authorities furious. | r/FoundSpells
u/ MagickalBoi2019 - 42 minutes ago
**[FS] I think I built an unlimited energy machine!**
Check it. If you put a pinwheel inside a box, and seal it. Poke a hole small enough for a straw, and then blow into it to start the pinwheel moving.
When it’s moving, cast this spell:“Ventus Movens”, but be sure to cast it on the air inside the box, not on the pinwheel.
I’ve had this wheel going all night. I figure if I could hook up some kind of generator, I’ve got unlimited energy right?
—————————————————-
###u/ UniversalSkeptic - 26 minutes ago
That’s awesome man! Have you tried using it on anything other than a pinwheel? I want to go try it on the fan in my room.
EDIT: Don’t do that. It ripped the posters off my wall.
###........ u/ MagicalBoi2019 - 22 minutes ago
........ Ha! Awesome idea!
........ EDIT: Doh!!
###u/ ConspiracyTheorist - 16 minutes ago
Careful man, the government will not like the idea of free unlimited energy. They’re gonna shut that shit down. They’re probably in their way to your house right now
###........u/ HappyHenrietta - 15 minutes ago
.........They’re probably in your driveway
###...............u/ JealousGeorge - 15 minutes ago
...............They’re probably in your living room
###......................u/ DumbName1987 - 12 minutes ago
.......................They’re probably in your bedroom
###........u/ MagickalBoi2019 - 15 minutes ago
........What are they gonna go? Arrest me for making my life easier?
###...............u/ ConspiracyTheorist - 10 minutes ago
...............Yes. You’ve single handedly ruined a multi billion dollar industry affecting countless countries.
###......................u/ TreeHugger16 - 5 minutes ago
......................And saved our planet!!!!
###..............................u/ RandomDude - 3 minutes ago
............................... r/Beetlejuicing
(EDIT: Lots of formatting changes.) | I love gullible people on Reddit! Recently, I saw this post:
&#x200B;
*Redditors, help! My son just cast ‘The Spell of Understanding!’ and I am shocked by what I’ve learnt!*
*I thought he was excited about construction and that he was going to be an architect. I heard him shout ‘Khalifa’ in his room so many times I lost the count. Today I learnt that it’s not the Burj Khalifa he’s excited about! He used to tell me that brandy is Love. I thought that it was him tricking me to think he drinks secretly. He doesn't, I know. Well, it has nothing to do with drinking, he spells it with ‘i’! I've also learnt that my son is not a fan of Rachel from Friends, is the other Aniston he likes. He told me that he looks up to Reid. Harry Reid, I thought. He was Senate Majority Leader and helped make Obamacare the law of the land. He can’t be bad, right? I mean, not if you're a Democrat. Well, that’s not the Reid he looks up to! Oh, my God! And lastly, he told me his famous male actor was James Dean. I did not know that’s not how he spelled his last name! And then, there is a black leather couch he bought for his bedroom. It’s- It’s not something I can write about.*
*The worst of all, my mother (she is 83), a devout Christian, is also under the influence of the spell. She is mad at Bobby now and is banging on his door right now and threatening to call the authorities!*
*Redditors, I need your help. Do you know how to undo ‘The Spell of Understanding’?*
*Please help!*
*P.S.*
/u/trololololo\_theAbsoluteHumanToiletTrash\_xoxo *sent me a private message saying I need to post the spell text for you to be able to help me. I found the spell text in Bobby's bedroom. The text is below.*
&#x200B;
Apparently, later in the day the FBI raided her house and her post was removed from Reddit, because of the spell text (which I won't copy-paste here).
&#x200B;
EDIT:
I was wrong. The house was raided by local police. Attempted marauder. Maybe it has something to do with her other post:
&#x200B;
*Oh, no, the spell works both ways. Bobby knows that Richard is not his father.* | 2019-07-11T13:04:38 | 2019-07-11T13:02:47 | 125 | 27 |
[WP] A strange meteor shower lasted for hours before you went to bed. The next day, technology across the earth fails. However, when you snap your fingers in frustration, the lights come on. The Age of Magic has begun. | "It's been a week since that day, and now the government has announced that magic is now capable to perform. Aparently one of the meteors hit earth and caused an electro magnetic surge through out the planet, but the meteor was highly radioactive and now perform the feats of magic or elemental control" said the messager. And then flew off, this is normal now I assume.
I am Dave, and I live in the new time of magic, my frends can control fire, walk on water and fly, but what I do is a bit diferent, I call it technological manipulation. Since all tech has been basically put out of use, I have the ability to reconstruct any of the old tech into something else. I discovered this by accident when I woke up to my phone not working, I thought to my self " how am I supposed to watch gundam now?", and my phone started to glow and shift in to a small but functional moble suit. Also if I make it resemble an animal of any sort, it will have a will of its own.
"Yo Dave, did you find your power yet?" said my friend while floting in the air. " no felix, i haven't, honestly I don't think I have one" I told him back. The reason why I'm not telling him is because it's not really a magical power but a manipulation power and I don't know why but I think that with all of this abandoned technology around, my power might be out of balance with the others. "c'mom man, you gotta some kind of power".
After he said that a big pile of rocks started to move towards us, not only do humanity now have powers, but new creatures are also around now. What was charging at us is called a rock golem, and he is a big one."Dave, run. I'll hold him off" and he started to fly towards the golem at full speed." No felix! Wait!". He put up a valiant atempt to hold him off, but he didint last 2 minutes, he got hit by the golem once and he got knocked out. I saw a truck on the side of the rode, I got in it and started to think of what could defeat this thing. The truck started to glow and I turned the truck in to a mechanical battle suit. I didn't even know I can make something this big.
"care to dance you pile of rubble" | The "thing", at least that's what I've been calling them, exploded wetly and I mentally let go of its image in my mind. One of its wings spun to the ground and a particularly large chunk of meat landed in front of me spraying my jacket...and face...with gore.
"Ugh. Oh come on, seriously?", I said wiping my face with my hands.
I turned away looking for Allison and April. They were a good fifty feet away punching their way through the last of the "things".
"Hurry up!", I yelled to them as I threw my jacket away and sat on the curb.
A few minutes later Allison walks over and sits down on the asphalt across from me.
"How many did we save?", she asked in her typical no nonsense tone.
"Zero", I sigh and look at her feeling my weary body search for tears but then remembering a year of this has seemingly dried them up.
"At least 50 men, women, and children torn to shreds. But hey at least it was quick."
Her face shifts slightly and her body language changes subtly. She stands up, sits next to me and kisses my temple...I guess there's no goop there.
"Sweetie we can only do what we can, how could we have been here any sooner?", she says, her head on my shoulder.
Unlike her twin sister Allison, April is the one with the heart and compassion. They tell me they were nearly suicidal after the meteor shower when they woke up as one person fighting for control. I can't imagine what it must be like to negotiate time using your own body balancing time riding nearly helpless. Of course they can split up for a time but something about the energy they have to expend while separate means they only do it when they're not worried about causing serious damage.
"What's the point of all of this? Why are we even searching anymore? These 'things' are popping up more often then ever, and we can't save the people who won't live in the city. If they really think they can survive on their own let's just leave them to it and spend this time shoring up our defenses."
The grass behind me turns into razors and the concrete around us humps up into battlements.
I unclench my fists and clear my mind, as usual I chide myself on getting so worked up.
"This is our fucking lot in life now, how many times do we....", Allison growls.
April kisses me, "Think of the people we can save, not every one made the choice to stay out here"
I wrap my arms around her, "You're both right, you always are. Ready?"
"Yup", she says in that weird double voice she sometimes has.
I think about our little house in the barracks behind the giant walls of New York.
I snap my fingers. | 2019-10-20T10:42:22 | 2019-10-20T10:09:59 | 20 | 10 |
[WP] With total war as a concept alien to the rest of our galaxy, All saw humans as negotiators and peacemakers, soft and weak. Today is the day when the galaxy discovers why being so good at finding ways to avoid war was a survival mechanism. | (\*cracks knuckles\* here we go)
It happened. Diplomacy broke down between the Humans and the Fomori. They had killed 100 colonists in a recent settlement on their borders. The Fomori saw the humans as weak for their aversion to war, something not helped by the relative size difference. And average fomorian being a good two feet taller than an average human.
Issue is fomorians were warriors, bound by honor and saw war as a vehicle for glory. Humans didn’t. The battle of Tau Ceti proved that. Everyone thought the war would be one sided. It was, but not in the way they expected.
The fomorians, the once thought masters of war were being laid to waste by this young civilization. The fomorian ships had no answer to the human’s long range rail guns, as they saw close quarters battles to be most honorable. Their warriors had no answer to humanity’s savage orbital, sub-orbital, and conventional bombardments. And so the fomorians called for a status quo peace. A conditional surrender.
It was ignored.
The war continued, conditional surrenders were offered and ignored again and again. The Fomori fleets crushed with swarms of missiles and tungsten-steel rods. Warriors felled by artillery, gun, and missile. The Fomori would call this war “the calamity” and rightfully so. As foundries pumped out weapons to the human war effort like nothing else. Their entire civilization was mobilized by a single diplomatic incident. The death of 100 colonists.
The war ended the moment the Fomori unconditionally surrendered.
Today the galaxy learned a lesson. Humanity hated going to war, not because they were weak, but because they were too familiar with it. They were too *good* at it. And the scary thing was, they didn’t violate a single treaty throughout the war.
Today the galaxy was introduced to what humans called Total War.
(What do you think?) | First attempt.
---{}---
"The Council of Men is in session," John began as he sat down on the head seat. "Let me start by saying that I would not call for a council if it weren't for our cirumstances."
"Ah, yes, circumstances. Like how Xalkian troops are harrassing my merchants," Merchant Captain Artyom replied, sneering. "Those no-good aliens."
"Artyom, calm down now, you and your merchants are not the only victim of Xalkia." Chief Researcher Han-lee sighed as he adjusted the pin on his suit, which represented the scientific nation he was a leader of. "Our research was recently consficated by Xalkian researchers. They think we are too weak to handle it."
John looked at the leader of the military and representative the unified country of Israel. "Any more things to discuss?"
"Israel's own research teams just finished examining their weakness, and my crew barely escaped some of their military," the representative of Israel, Emmanuel, reported. "We have also managed to finish a prototype of a star destroyer weapon with 97% efficiency."
"Those insects didn't listen to our terms. And their time is up." President-General Albert slammed his fist on the desk. "I propose to declare war and activate the Wartime Council."
Emmanuel raised an eyebrow. "You just want to use your old country's weapons and martial law on the colonies. Did they really cross the line?"
"Just because you handle Earth under one nation doesn't mean you need to act all friendly," Albert remarked.
"While Mr. Emmanuel is correct, I'm afraid that I have seen the reports. And I cast a vote to declare war." James sighed. "Anything else?"
"Well, how about we—" Emmanuel stopped and pressed his fingers into his ear. "Mhm... oh... activate level three defenses." He looked at the others with a grim look. "They attacked Mars."
Han-lee gasped while Artyom started cursing in Russian. James looked at Albert before nodding to each other and stood up and took each other seats.
"Wartime council is now in session, we are now at war," Albert told them. "Let these insects know that war is coming, and all Men are now to fire at Xalkia. Let them know that even under the guise of peace, war, war never changes." | 2019-11-24T14:38:34 | 2019-11-24T14:01:28 | 120 | 60 |
[WP] With total war as a concept alien to the rest of our galaxy, All saw humans as negotiators and peacemakers, soft and weak. Today is the day when the galaxy discovers why being so good at finding ways to avoid war was a survival mechanism. | *Si vis pacem, para bellum.*
“Mr. President, what is the purpose of this Sacred Council If not to arbitrate between the disputing parties? Should the council be derelict in her duty, her mandate shall stand voided. The lofty words in its constitution shall ring hollow in this great hall where all the sentient beings of the universe were welcome once. Where no species was deemed higher or lower in the eye of the Galactic law. Should that eventuality arise, we shall have no other recourse but to find justice by alternate means.”
“Alternate means you say? What are these alternate means through which you will find what you deem to be a just conclusion of this debate?” The ambassador to the Crab Nebula system chimed in. Subtlety of his derisive tone was obviated by laughter of his supporters in council. His smug sense of superiority well deserved.
“Make no mistake honorable councilmembers, I do not see the humor in this situation. In fact, I see only chaos and destruction if the council will not intervene.”
“Your words fail to impress us. You wordsmiths, thinking apes as you call yourselves. What do you know of war? Of death and destruction? You were cocooned in your little corner in Milky Way while the war raged across the whole quadrant at the conclusion of which we decided to form this council. Your people work as scribes, philosophers, teachers, and entertainers. Your jokes especially are funnier than the rest. Or so I thought until now.” Chuckles across the council followed.
“Then, Mr. President, I must inform you that humanity will no longer be responsible for the consequences. Justice in our way of thinking is universal. It cannot vary with the whims of the select few or even a tyrannical majority. And for this principle we shall go to any end necessary.”
“Come now, Ambassador. Have a drink. Soothe your heated tongue and wounded heart.”
The president felt that the proceedings were spiralling out of control. He had never known any human ambassador to be so assertive in his life - and he had seen some four hundred human ambassadors come and go in his diplomatic career. Puny, fragile, ephemeral beings! He had often wondered how they had come to dominate the Earth and the Helios system.
“I am not a being, Mr. President. I am the voice of the will of humanity. So I choose my words carefully to reflect it. And let my words be taken as they sound - no more and no less.”
The Human Ambassador paused.
The Committee on the Galactic Relations of Earth Parliament had instructed him before his voyage back to the planet Meelore where the council sat. He was called back because it was deemed too risky to discuss it over the GalacticNet. They had authorized him to do all that he could to avoid the terrible outcome, but if it were to prove unavoidable then it was to be his solemn duty to proclaim formally that humanity shall seek recompense in a way she had long renounced.
War.
“Oathbreakers, beware! Our politeness is not instinctive. Our humility is not innate. Our bonhomie is nurtured from the first day a human child is born. Let not the this body rue the day when she convinced us that we must act on our baser nature to achieve a greater end.”
“Do your worst.”
Someone from the backbenches heckled. Breaking the spell. It was received with approving grunts all over. What could these soft, obsequious beings do? The rest of the galaxy will not be cowed by this upstart race and their mere words!
“We shall take your suggestion very seriously, representative Ercheon of Seven Sisters system. But permit me to also suggest something.” The human ambassador was almost shouting now, over the uproar that had broken out.
“We do not seek vengeance.” He thumped the desk. “We seek justice. We give this council five earth days to deliver it to us. If you do so, that justice will be benevolent. But if we must obtain it, it shall be grim. It shall be cruel. It shall be horrific.”
Everyone was listening once again, he observed.
“Presume us withdrawn from this council should you choose to let the ultimatum run out, Mr. President. Thenceforth, there shall be no more parlay. No more negotiations. And no mercy. Only war, and utter victory or vanquishment.” | Gahonna was a trading station far out on the rim of the civilised space. At least as far as the Orkunn was concerned. Like any other representative of the Khayo Conglomerate he did not care for anything outside of the Conglomerate borders. Khayo were apex predators, they were the fastest, strongest predators on their planet and remained as one of the stronger species in the galaxy thanks to their blinding speed and ferocity in combat. And so like most of it's species Orkunn looked at the others like the prey they were. And this particular prey was proving more annoying than the others. This prey from the race that calls themselves humans from planet Dirt thinks that Orkunn was here to negotiate.
"Are you new to this quadrant prey?" Orkunn asked after the prey tried to renegotiate the deal again for the fifth time
"As I have said in my introduction humanity has achieved interstellar capability only a century ago and we have been exploring ever since. We are interested in cultural and spiritual exchanges with the other species, we are not interested in becoming slaves to your conglomeration." the savage answered rubbing his nasal passage with two fingers
"Ah this explains it. Don't worry then Conglomerate will teach you your place." Orkunn said and signaled for the guards. They will take this human and take his ship and crew and teach them all that saying no to to your masters is not acceptable. Most of them would die in horrible pain but Orkunn knew that pain is the only thing savages understood and it was so much fun seeing savages writhe and cry out in despair.
His next appointment was with Daro'ss traveler. These sentient energy beings were the only aliens that Khayo respected. Their prowess in the duels as well as public combat matches was outstanding. And since they couldn't be eaten they were the only ones worth respect in Orkunns eyes. Just not enough to actually remember the name.
The door opened and a Daro'ss suit glided in, It kept the everyone from being roasted alive by the heat given off by Daro'ss.
"I saw guards take away the human captain." Daro'ss said without preamble
"Yes, they will teach him and his crew their proper place. A pity I can't put my own talons to him but I still have more work to do. Maybe later if enough of them are still alive. Their females should make for a good meal." Orkunn explained
"Oh. I should probably go visit Khayo Prime while the spires are still standing. Take a few tissue samples for our databanks. I hope humans are merciful towards Khayo and give you a quick death." Daro'ss said and turned around
"Wait. You don't mean to imply that some barbarian prey are going to defeat the mighty Khayo hunters?" Orkunn bristled at the insult
"Orkunn my dear stupid boy. Did you not read what I have sent you about humans when they arrived yesterday?" Daro'ss said as put his palm to his face shield.
"I stopped reading after I read their physical traits. They are no match for us in combat. No claws to pierce our hide, think skin, no venom or acid. They are slow, weak and squishy. There is nothing else to know." Orkunn waved his hand dismissively
"If you had read it you would know that they have already defeated Utlu and exterminated Javllt. Even we fought against them and lost." Daro'ss said
"You lost? Javllt are exterminated?" Orkunn was confused
"Yes, they cleansed the planets occupied by Javllt using nuclear fire. They killed every brood mother and crushed every egg. There are no more Javllt left in the galaxy. Our leaders didn't like it so sent several Plasmaguards to stop them. It wasn't even a fight. They just eliminated them." Dar'ss stated
"But how?" Orkunn was stunned at the news. Javllt were tough to kill and they were impossible to get rid off once a colony wound up on a planet. You can kill tens of them and they would still have more soldier drones. Khayo policy up to now was to leave Javllt infestations alone.
"Humans practice what is called a total war. They don't send a few warriors to fight each other. They send thousands. They produce special vehicles only ever used for combat and arm tens of thousands of them. Once they feel threatened they can turn their whole species into a giant war machine. Dedicated to bringing death to their enemies. We learned to fear the clang of the feet of human soldiers as they march in their combat suits. You will too if you survive." | 2019-11-24T15:48:36 | 2019-11-24T15:28:18 | 99 | 54 |
[WP] With total war as a concept alien to the rest of our galaxy, All saw humans as negotiators and peacemakers, soft and weak. Today is the day when the galaxy discovers why being so good at finding ways to avoid war was a survival mechanism. | The Tel'reth delegation sat placed at the center of a side of the triangular negotiating table. They were the principally wronged, and therefore they occupied the position of authority for their coalition's diplomats at this meeting. However, despite their position, all with them recognized them merely as the first among many. Delegations from four other major species, and several minor parties besides, sat alongside them, all seeking reparations for a hideous, unprovoked act of what could only be called state-sponsored piracy. Not only were the riches of their foremost manufacturing planet callously stripped, the ensuing escape saw the destruction of four separate naval groups, at least two of which had attempted to surrender.
The lead Tel'reth ambassador rubbed the center of his forehead in frustration, a habit he picked up from the various Human envoys he had known in his position. He had to admit, it was a fantastic admission of the frustration and boredom one occasionally felt at the negotiating table, and while he had learned to use it as just another weapon in a long list of tools, at present it simply served to show how exasperated he was. These, he checked his datapad again and found that, yes, it still said they called themselves the "Murderface Murderers" when properly translated, were proving difficult to handle. While that was in part due to their stubborn refusal to follow even the most basic of diplomatic protocols, he'd be lying if he didn't acknowledge, at least to himself, that it was also because of the absurd name they had chosen.
The primary government claimed they were merely fractious offshoot of the Raknal'thak, and were refusing to pay the proper reparations one was due. The majority of other empires in the galaxy held the Raknal'thak in a position of both respect and fear, and they used this to their advantage in negotiations. They would often demand the opposition make them do whatever concessions were demanded of them, refusing to bow to even the most simple of requests.
It was no matter. This was the first time they had struck at the coalition since they had welcomed a new empire into the fold. One of their representatives, a Human, sat in the gathering behind the lead ambassador, a fact he was acutely aware of but one the, he sighed again as he thought the name, Murderface Murderers seem to have missed.
"Oh, I'm sorry, are we boring you, *ambassador?*" The insulting inflection on the last word wasn't lost on him, even before the translator added the note that it was meant disrespectfully. He was bored, of course, bored and frustrated with their endless posturing, but he knew the mediator would be arriving soon. His counterpart had a flair for the dramatic, and while it had served them well in their other negotiations, he was a little unsure of how the Raknal'thak would take it.
"Heavens, no, esteemed colleagues! I was merely remembering a minor trifle that I must deal with later. Pay it no mind." He delivered his reply to their jeer with as sincere a smile as he could muster. As expected, the lead delegate returned to his ridiculous boasting and insulting at the sign of apparent weakness. Esteemed colleagues, he called them. Idly, he wondered if their language even had a word for that. They were utterly reprehensible in every other way, and it made him mildly happy to imagine that, no, they lacked the eloquence of language that the Tel'reth had enjoyed for many millenia.
His train of thought was broken up by a faint clicking sound that was steadily growing louder.
"...and that is why all of you must bow down before us! If you agree to pay us the full output of three planets' forges, we shall forget the disrespect you have shown us this day!" The Raknal'thak ambassador boasted at the coalition side.
The Tel'reth envoy's response was simple. "I'm afraid we must decline those terms and seek to find ones more amiable to-"
"Nonsense! Those terms are, uh," the Raknal'thak delegate had attempted to cut him off, but was in turn distracted by the steady clicking, which had continued to grow louder. He glanced briefly at where the clicking was coming from before continuing, "Uh, those terms are perfectly reasonable! A bargain, a measure of, uh, mercy even!"
The steady \*click\* \*clack\* had grown loud enough to drown out even his obnoxious voice. A slim being, smaller than either ambassador, had finally made his way to the third edge of the table. The Raknal'thak delegation stared at her, naked hatred of her disregard for them on apparent display.
"I'm dreadfully sorry I'm late. I had a devil of a time finding this place." She smiled, unconcerned with their reaction.
"How dare you! How dare you show up late, and with that foul odor on proud display! We should gut you where you-" The click of her briefcase, followed by the rustling of the papers within as she sought a specific document, was loud enough to cut him off immediately. The Tel'reth envoy suspected some form of auditory enhancing device was used to magnify its effects, but he wouldn't have put it past her to find some way to make that much noise without aid. The Raknal'thak ambassador was near-apoplectic with rage, he noted, and he idly wondered if he could possibly get so angry that his one eye would pop out of his head. It certainly looked like it might, and how satisfying an end to negotiations *that* would be.
"YOU DARE IGNORE US! WE WILL NOT-"
"Ah, here it is." Having finally found the document she was looking for, she yet again cut him off mid-sentence and started reading from her apparent notes. "Now, as a recent addition to the Coalition for Sanctity and Prosperity, we, the Human delegation, believe that we are perfectly suited to act as arbitrator in this dispute. We stand ready to assist the principally aggrieved, who hereafter shall be referred to as the Tel'reth, in pursuing the acquisition of reparations for military misconduct as engaged in by the Raknal'thak authorities." She looked up from the paper to the Raknal'thak delegation, who had not stopped yelling, but whose voice was apparently being completely silenced, likely by some other clever bit of tech his canny counterpart had brought with her. "Are you content with our position in this meeting, ambassador?"
-*Ambassadorial report, observer's notes, onset of CSP-RD hostilities, part 1* | The Tethron shivered in his hole. The mud was usually so comforting to him, but now it made him almost claustrophobic. Foreboding. The paradise of the colony world sundered into choking vapor and bitterly cold nights.
"Klang? Why are you coiled against the viewport like that? Come to the food station and get warmed up." His wife called to him. She was always trying to make the best of any situation. She didn't seem to comprehend that they were going to die forsaken by their very ground. The underlords weren't coming g to save them this time.
////
John Sherman stood looking out over the world below, watching the raythogenic cloud swirling below, blocking the sunlight.
"Damn worms. Teach those bastards that they don't get what's ours."
"How long until their world is frozen, sir?"
"Research pegs it at between 3 days and 7 days. By how cold the scans are getting, the mid-rank pool has it at two and a half."
"I dunno. I have in the pool at six days. Research isn't usually that conservative."
Captain Sherman laughed, "You Martians are all the same. Calculate everything, do what's prudent. It's like your colonials were going to starve or run out of air or something." He jabbed.
"Or maybe you freaks from the 'belt just hit your heads too often careening around with jetpacks and fish bowls." Retorted Commander Kaplan jovially.
////
Klang woke with a start, rolling softly next to his mate. He settled himself so as to not disturb her. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't put his mind on it.
He heard a soft murmur. Rotating his head, he focused on his mate and heard it clearly, "K-k-kang-g-g. K-k-ka..."
He immediately slithered around on top of Kilespa. "Mate! What's wrong?" He exclaimed, his body trying to react and force him away from the ice cold emanations from his mate. He furiously rubbed himself across her, trying to heat her up.
"S-s-stop. I-i am-m alr-red-dy dead. I l-l....l-lov-ve...."
Kang stroked furiously against his mate. "Wake up! Wake up!"
He slowly grew tired, his hearts gushing blood past his cochlea. This couldn't be happening. He retreated from his mate's corpse and started shivering. Everything was cold. They had ran out of heating fuel yesterday morning. He thought they could get some more in the noon time, but there was no more. The refinery had failed from the cold and spilled it across the country-side. Everyone was without heat.
He slithered through the entryway. He wanted to hasten the inevitable. What he found was horror. Everyone he knew was frozen in spasms, everywhere outside. He couldn't turn any direction without touching his friends, neighbors, brothers.
Then he saw it. A strange light that beckoned warmth. He slithered towards it instinctively, the frozen ground almost burning him. Emanating cold like he had never felt. The light, yellow and promising warmth, beckoning him onwards. The yellow light was all he could see. He had to make it. Kilespa's memory couldn't end here.
The light dimmed. Shadows? Klang couldn't make it out, but he was sure he heard some sort of repetitious guttural barking.
////
"Wow. Look at this. It took 36 hours." an amazed sergeant muttered as he continued scanning, "I'm never going to see that twenty bucks again."
"Amazing, isn't it?" mused Lt Dran, "An escort frigate can wipe out a colony and move on. We've got these bastards, now."
"El Tee!" Shouted a private, raising his rifle, "Three o'clock!"
The entire squad turned and readied their weapons. A slow worm was shuffling towards them.
"Well, well. One survived. Looks like the wretch won't survive long." Said Sergeant Kirkpatrick. "Should we bag it for Research?"
"I don't have the freezer space for that much pork, boys. Take him out." Replied Lt Dran.
His soldiers laughed and then turned back and shot through the central nerve cluster.
"Oh, geez. It's all over my pants!" Whined one of the privates.
////
The Seated of the Lowest Chamber stared into the monitors. Those humans had wiped ground after ground off the face of the galactic map. No one had managed even once before to conquer their worlds. The humans had blundered, adapted, and then moved with terrifying efficiency and cruelty.
Worse, there was no indication of how they were killing any of these worlds. A light space vehicle - with less than 250 of these tiny creatures on board - would approach and then leave two days later. All rescue ships had been too slow. They would arrive to corpses rotting in the sun. Rarely signs of weapons, all of the dead looked like they had died in terror.
Her scientists had no idea how this happened.
A beacon rang. Human capital ships had entered orbit of the home plant and demanded an audience.
////
"What is it you wish to talk about, sc- uh, humans?" The Seated asked, checking her tone.
Admiral Davis stared into the holographic projection. "One hundred eighty days ago, you pledged to wipe us out of existence, Seated."
The Admirals pointed pause burrowed into the Seated's brain. "Yes, I did. But, now I think that you have proven we are no threat to you. On the contrary, we are hardly Any concern for a species such as yours."
The Admiral scoffed. "You made a threat to our existence, Seated. I can't see past that." Davis pressed a button and a host of holographic heads propped up behind him.
"Esteemed members of the Federation of Sentient Species, I present the Tethron's last home: Wurmin. They refused to leave us be, and threatened us with genocide. We do not take talk lightly. Heed, then, my words. The Tethron thought themselves gods among the stars. We have instead laid bare their sins against the heavens and brought doom upon all their worlds."
The Federation chattered amongst themselves as the Seated retracted nervously from the view screen.
"See, now, the desolation we can deliver. We mean you no harm until you mean us harm. Commander, eliminate the threat."
A bright energy pulse blasted from the flag ship and dissipated into the planet Wurmin's atmosphere.
"This will be broadcast live for three days." Admiral Davis stood up and exited the bridge to his office. | 2019-11-24T23:35:44 | 2019-11-24T23:22:53 | 23 | 17 |
[WP] You, a villain, heart set on taking over the world, kidnapped the hero’s sidekick. You find out that you are treating them much better than the hero was and decide to take them under your wing. | Carbine woke with a start, eyes scanning his surroundings. His eyes adjusted to the harsh, white light of the room. He was somehow suspended in the air, arms and legs spread apart like a starfish. His body burned and ached and he struggled to remember the events that led him here.
In his daze, he didn’t realize he wasn’t alone in the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the super villain Ultraviolet, with her back turned to him.
He furrowed his brows and struggled against his restraints, trying not to draw any attention to himself.
“You can’t escape,” Ultraviolet stated.
She turned to him, holding some device in her hands and approached the boy.
“I h-have to try” he struggled.
He squirmed and recoiled as she closed in, and inserted the device right under his collarbone. He flinched, expecting pain but, to his surprise, relief spread through his body and the pain was lessened.
“You shouldn’t try,” Ultraviolet explained, “You took alot of damage and you need to recover. Also, this room negates all powers so your little energy bursts won’t work.”
Carbine’s memories flowed back to him and the fight him and Infrared had. He remembered an intense battle where the last memory was Infrared and Ultraviolet locking energy blasts where red and violet light surged and ebbed between the two.
He tried to flank Ultraviolet, there was a blinding flash of magenta light and an incredible heatwave and he blacked out.
Carbine, realizing Ultraviolet kidnapped him, asked, “Infrared......is he dead?”
The villainess studied him for a moment, then chuckled, “I wish. No, he’s not dead but he’s in no place to rescue his little sidekick.”
“If he’s not dead why are you wasting time in here playing doctor? Why not go finish him off?” Carbine asked.
Ultraviolet raised an eyebrow in confusion, “Carbine, you were dying. As much as I want to defeat Infrared I won’t do so with a child’s blood on my hands.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“A child, nonetheless. The fighting can wait.”
Carbine hung his head and blushed. He felt embarrassed to be at the villain’s mercy and even more embarrassed that she was showing him it. His feelings were compounded by the fact that Infrared seldom showed this compassion. After a fight it was always boot and rally. Never a moment to rest. He never even asked if his sidekick was okay.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m going to bring peace and order to this planet if it’s the la-“
“N-No,” Carbine interrupted, “Why are you helping me? Why keep me alive? We’re enemies for god’s sake!”
“Carbine, you’re a powerful young man but at the end of the day you’re a pawn. A pawn for Infrared and for the League of Order. I won’t punish a pawn for being used. It..........wouldn’t be right.”
“R-Right? How can you judge what’s right?”
She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re fighting for the same thing. We’ve chosen fundamentally different paths to get there is all.”
“What are you going to do to me? Use me as bait?”
“You’ll heal and I’ll let you go when you’re strong enough to make your way back home. I already told you I won’t spill a child’s blood.”
“Infrared would do anything to beat you, you know that? If he had the upper hand he’d use it.”
“Infrared and I are not the same.”
Carbine blushed again and almost empathized with the villainess. Ultraviolet’s words echoed through his head. He disagreed with her methods but at the same time he respected her refusal to use him.
“You know, you’ve treated me more human than Infrared or any of the League ever do. I think I’m just another soldier to them.”
“That’s you heroes problem. It’s always so black and white to you lot. Things are a lot more gray than you realize Carbine.”
Ultraviolet turned and walked away. As she crossed the threshold, she looked back at the young hero and said, “Carbine you can be more than a mere soldier. There are...grayer...ways. I can show you if you’d like.”
And then she was gone. And Carbine was alone with his thoughts. | Up close, Lamplight wasn't all that impressive.
Short and unimposing, her features stuck out in a waifish sort of way; gaunt cheeks, messy hair and wide eyes, illuminated by the dim light emanating from her body. All otherwise covered by her mask, which now lay in tatters at her feet.
Yamata cautiously approached the hero, and watched as Lamplight recoiled, retreating further back into her corner of the room. Her look was vaguely feral, eyes darting about the place for an escape. When she realised there was nothing, that look began to verge on desperation. It was pitiful. Was this seriously the hero Yamata had considered a foe?
Crouching, Yamata met Lamplight at eye-level. Her back against the wall, the hero had no choice but to sit still. For her benefit, Yamata spoke slowly. "I'm going to tie your hands now, ok? Otherwise, I'm going to hurt you."
Lamplight blinked, her glow fading briefly. For a moment she appeared lost, but she seemed to gather herself as another look washed over her features; an anguished attempt at bravery, chin raised, eyes steely.
"Hands," Yamata said, her voice quiet.
The hero did not resist as Yamata looped a ziptie around her wrists. Normally, Yamata would take extra caution, but given the nature of Lamplight's power and how she looked, Yamata had serious doubts that she was going anywhere.
In fact, there was something almost strangely familiar about Lamplight's mannerisms. Yamata did not remove her eyes from the hero, quietly observing Lamplight; the hitch of her breathing, her slumped posture, the quiet dignity that perpetually seemed on the verge of shattering. This did not look like a woman waiting to be saved.
"Feuerbrand. When are they coming?"
At the mention of that name, Yamata saw it. She saw Lamplight *twitch*. But the hero did not speak. Yamata unsheathed a knife, and gently moved it across Lamplight's side until she found a spot between the ribs. There, she let the knife settle.
"Feuerbrand."
"I — *I don't know*," Lamplight gasped, seemingly registering her situation all at once. "They wouldn't come. Not for me, anyway."
"You're their sidekick."
Lamplight let out a bitter laugh, almost a choke. "Sure. And?"
"...And you're missing."
"And?" Lamplight pressed.
"Means you're in danger."
"You don't get it." Again, that bitter chuckle. "You don't get it at all. They don't care about me. They don't care I'm missing. This is my fuck-up and, when it's inconvenient that I'm no longer around, it'll soon be *your* fuck-up."
Yamata cocked her head. "Interesting."
"Interesting? *Interesting?!* You're going to die, and I'm baically fucke-"
Yamata gently prodded her side with the knife, cutting Lamplight off. "Quiet, you."
Yamata paused, considering her options. From the looks of it, she'd misconstrued the nature of Lamplight and Feuerbrand's relationship. But that didn't necessarily mean the hero wouldn't come, just that his motives weren't quite as benevolent as she would have initially thought. Complications.
"So Feuerbrand is coming after you. But not because they care."
"They don't know the meaning of the word."
"So why work with them?"
Lamplight stared at Yamata incredulously. "You think I voluntarily do this? I'm their collateral, a narrative device, something for the fans; I'm necessary to them, but I'm not even a person. If — If I stop doing this, they'll, they'll... they—"
The hero couldn't appear to find any words; in the moment, she looked like the weight of the world her collapsed on her back. Crushed, crestfallen, battered. Yamata had made people feel that way before, but never had she seen it firsthand.
She chuckled lightly, a hand curling around Lamplight's chin. "Well, to me, you're a person." She forced Lamplight's head up. "You're my rival. And I've defeated you. But you're still something to me. Now do you want to be useful to me?"
Lamplight gulped. Slowly, she nodded.
Yamata smiled. "Good." | 2020-03-26T15:04:12 | 2020-03-26T15:02:04 | 278 | 144 |
[WP] You, a villain, heart set on taking over the world, kidnapped the hero’s sidekick. You find out that you are treating them much better than the hero was and decide to take them under your wing. | I ripped the blindfold off the tied-up sidekick, who shrank away from the blinding light, folding in on himself like a dying star.
“Please,” he said, shivering. “I’m sorry for being bested, sir, just please don’t...” His voice trailed away as he caught sight of me and the confused look on my face.
Why would he apologize for being caught? Was I supposed to say it was okay and that I forgive him? I grew more confused as his face filled with relief and, oddly, joy.
“Oh, thank goodness!” he cried, tears still dripping down his face. He was shivering slightly, but his face radiated happiness.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “I’m the villain, I’ve kidnapped you. I’m big, mean, scary, trying to take over the world, etc. You are a small potato, with great hair by the way, but that’s not the point! You should fear me!”
He shifted in his seat, no doubt trying to get more comfortable and looked up at me with adoration. “Oh, umm, I can be scared! I’ll be the most scared person in the world if you continue to keep me hostage! Oh no, um, I shall never escape! Insert terrified expression here!”
I grew worried that all of this was a ruse to get my guard down and checked each of his bindings and patted him down again, making sure that I hadn’t missed a knife or something. Kidnap victims aren’t usually this...cheery around me.
I would have addressed his obvious joy to his just being an all-around happy person, but the terror in his eyes at the beginning stuck with me.
“Alright, listen up, squirt. I don’t care what this,” I gestured at his face, “is, but you’re just here until your ‘hero’ brings me back my nuclear reactor core, then you’re free to go.”
Unexpectedly, he deflated at my words and his expression changed to one of fear.
“No, please don’t send me back there with him. I’ll do anything, clean your lair, do your laundry, cook, anything!” He had started shivering again and, even though I’m not one to usually trust people, I could see the sincerity in his eyes, causing me to realize that something was very wrong. I decided to investigate further, I mean, the worst I could do was keep him here, or in his eyes, send him back apparently.
I knelt down next to him. “Alright, what’s your name, squirt?”
He looked at me doubtfully. “Danny.”
“Okay, Danny, is there a reason you don’t want to go back home?”
He glanced at me again. “I-I just can’t go back! If you make me go with him, it will be the last time you ever see me, I can tell you that! Haven’t you wondered why he’s had seven sidekicks in one year? We don’t tend to last very long. He just uses us as human shields and bait.
To my great surprise, I found myself untying the boy and helping him to the couch, where we sat. He continued his tale, pausing every now and then to let the bitter sobs come through.
“The fifth sidekick he used as bait for that group of satanists. His body was unrecognizable when the police found him. And the third was admitted to a mental hospital completely insane after fighting the Mind Surgeon.”
At that point he drew in a shaky breath and lifted his shirt, his back facing me as I drew in a loud gasp. Diagonal from his left shoulder down his back to his right hip was a huge burn, at least as wide as my hand.
“I got this when we fought Inferno. He didn’t even try to protect me, he just let me be used as a distraction while he got some water to finally kill-“
At that point he broke down sobbing and unexpectedly hugged me, burying his face in my shirt. I had absolutely no experience with this, so I just held him close. Inside, I was about to explode with rage. Yeah, I was a villain, but I have never, ever used another person as a distraction or allowed them to endure pain for me. I was a villain, but at least I had a moral code. And I couldn’t exactly go to the police. Poor kid, he was 17 at most.
“Shh, shh, it’s gonna be okay,” I said, hugging Danny closer to me. He looked so fragile, so small, so scared. “You’re not going back there, I’ll train you and I promise, you’ll get revenge on that bastar-um-demon. I swear that I won’t let anyone else hurt you.”
Usually I tried not to kill anyone, but this time, I would make an exception.
“Really?” Danny looked up at me with tear tracks on his face and hopeful eyes.
“Yes. You are never going back to him.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” A voice sounded out of the darkness and a tall figure emerged, a silver mask covering his features.
Danny let out a whimper and I growled. “Razorblade.”
The “hero” chuckled. “I see Danny’s told you what happened to my other ‘helpers’. Brat.”
I hugged the shivering boy as he shrank away from the snarl.
“They were weak, like all sidekicks. They’re all just meant to take hits while the real heroes fight. Just like Danny here. I’ll deal with you later, boy. I hear Knifepoint is rounding up his old team and I will need some protection from those sharp edges. Meanwhile, it seems Talon and I have some business.”
I moved to shield Danny and grabbed a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket, pressing it into his hand.
“Danny, follow these directions. They will lead you to my lair. No one besides me knows where it is, you’ll be safe there.”
He looked up at me fearfully. “But-“
“Go!” I yelled, watching as he gripped the paper tightly and ran out the back door.
I glared at Razorblade who was chuckling again.
“No matter, I’ll catch up with him later. This lair, it’s the one under the old toll bridge, no?”
How? I felt myself pale, then gritted my teeth. All the more reason to win this fight. I lifted my arm and felt power surge through my veins, a power I had never felt before. ‘Here we go’, I thought as I launched myself forward. | *Note first prompt pls no rage on bad "x" thing*
Standing on the roof of skyscraper; you're just a few minutes away from unleashing the most powerful, the most incredible monstrosity upon the world and finally claim it as your own.
/You hear sound coming beneath you followed by the ground starting to tremble/
Suddenly coming from beneath floor appears the so-called "Number 1 Hero"... Bob and his sidekick... "Fantistic Juan" wait hang on I think he is "Fantistic Juan...the..uhh..fourth...no maybe fith... aaah who cares he is just the sidekick anyway" you think to yourself.
As your ultimate weapon has been charging and now with only seconds to spare; you try and hold off Bob and his sidekick Juan but with just a momentary lapse of focus Juan managed to land a critical blow which damaged a crucial component triggering the self-destruct sequence (which was initially added to prevent the hero organization from screwing you over again). "You fool!" you shout at Juan "Do you have any idea how long it took to perfect and build that? ... Parts are fricken expensive and hard to come by man; couldn't you have literally just stood there or even hit one of the cheaper components is that too much to ask for.."
With the ultimate weapon about to implode upon itself; Bob punches you with little restraint causing you stagger backwards. "This is the last time you'll ever try something like this again Garathor" Bob yells as he blasts you off the roof with his seemingly overpowered energy-blast.
You start falling off the roof to what seems to be a nice hard concrete bed of DEATH. As you decide that is not really to your liking you open a dimensional-rift a couple of feet below you. Moments before you fall into the rift... it dawns on you - you can make Bob regret stopping you for the last and final time ever(you think atleast).
You realize the "Not So Fantastic Juan.. after he broke your ultimate weapon" is standing over the edge watching you fall. You use your pre-owned mind-grasp device that you got on sale at the local VillianMart ( which channels your willpower and intelligence which allows the user to inhibit telekentic powers for a short duration ) to grab Juan off the roof and through the rift with you.
/You both slam into your secret cave with a thub and a couple of groans later/
Juan looks at you and states "I will stop you Garathor, just wait until Bob gets ...he..re.." He vomits and you laugh maniacally "I see the inter-dimensional travel sickness has got you good huh?" He continues to hurl as you chain him preventing him from resisting and continuing your monologue about how truly amazing you are and how they are not ..blah blah blah yada yada yada some other important things and the monologue ends.
"So sidekick tell me exactly what I want to know otherwise this could get real painful, real quick" you notice that all the spunk and confident demeanor has disappeared leaving behind an appearance akin to that of a stray, abused dog.
"WHATS THE MATTER NOW? I JUST CAN'T GET A BREAK CAN I, FIRST YOU BREAK THE FRICKEN EXPENSIVE MACHINE AND NOW YOU START SULKING WHAT IS UP WITH YOU... UGGHHH" You yell as you pace up and down. While enraged you notice the uniform Juan is wearing seems identical to his predecessors; upon furthed inspection you start to notice scarring and scar tissue over his body.
You calm yourself, sit down next to him and ask "Now look here sidekick even though we don't always see eye to eye, heck we never see eye to eye. Whats up with this uniform it looks as old as the first Fantastic Juans', also whats up with all the scars?".
Juan begins to break down crying; just moments ago before your master plan was thwarted there was this energetic and lively sidekick; now all thats left is a husk of his former self that's emitting beaten, broken and hopeless aura.
"Geez just answer the questiosn will you" you state even though your concern is growing. Juan starts speaking "You know what? My name isn't even Juan not even remotely close my real name is Eric. And yes this is that exact uniform from all the previous Juans as for the scars; whenever Bob loses a fight or wants to train guess who is used as a personal punching bag because I'm "just a sidekick". What do you think happened to my predecessors?... you know what ignore everything and just end it here I dont care anymore" Eric closes his eyes and it seems as though he is awaiting something.
You unclip his shackles and tell him to follow you; as Eric follows you through this ever-shifting dimension of yours you start talking to him "You know Eric I have fought many-a Juans over the years but I never knew what happened to them but now it all comes together. When I was younger my father used to beat me just for the sake of "building character" he said after each beating. So I know the rage, resentment and hate boiling from within you and all I can say is... USE THAT AS FUEL, USE THAT TO DRIVE YOU, USE THAT TO BECOME SO POWERFUL NO ONE WILL DARE LAY SO MUCH AS A FINGER ON YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION..."
/You notice a faint smile on his face and the return of life within his eyes as you walk.../
/As you reach your destination you tell Eric that there are appropriately sized clothes within the room and that he should take a shower and get changed into the clothes/
Eric comes out after a while with a huge grin on his face; "What?" you ask - Eric responds "No one has ever treated me so kindly before or even treated me as another human before; you know I am actually 16 right?". It dawns on you, for these mere moments you were helping this boy; you were more of a hero to him than the so-called "Number 1 Hero".
"You know if you want you can stay here, you can have that room. We might be a little broken but I think two broken might just make one whole person... or one worse person but lets focus on the positive" you ask the kid. The boy is overjoyed and jumps onto you squeezing and hugging you well stating "Are you sure? You aren't joking right? A room just for myself? You know I've always had to sleep in the living room in the couch or on the mats in the exercise room.."
"Geez, alright kid and yes to all of the above would you just get off me.. We need to go grab some dinner"
/You and your newly "adopted" to-be villiabous-sidekick head off to enjoy a meal in what the kid will realize is the dimension which all villains reside within/ | 2020-03-26T17:18:02 | 2020-03-26T17:01:36 | 30 | 10 |
[WP] You, a villain, heart set on taking over the world, kidnapped the hero’s sidekick. You find out that you are treating them much better than the hero was and decide to take them under your wing. | Names say a lot. You can know nothing about a cape but their name, and you'll already have opinions. They're a message in a bottle, a distilled form of a parahuman's intent and nature. A good name can make a career, but it can also inspire with hope, or comfort with humour.
When I was a hero, back in the Golden Days when powers began to emerge, I spent three weeks and seventeen different configurations trying to find one for myself. I'd yet to stop my first robbery, or solve any configurations for flight. I hadn't even saved a cat from a tree. Nevertheless, I sat alone at home, reshaping the newly forged mass of power in my mind through every Thinker ability I could conceive of. Social Movement Mapping, Moral Codification, Precognitive Empathic Sight- I stared at the world through eyes made of energy and tried to figure out how I wanted it to see me.
Eventually, I settled on Humble. I had great power, so I had a great responsibility, and my name should have been a reminder of that. It would set a noble standard for those who would follow.
"[Nemesis!](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/evz7av/wp_in_a_world_full_of_supervillains_you_are_the/ffzauai?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)" Apotheosis yelled. The hero held himself in the sky through sheer force of fury, turning emotion into radiant power. "Your tyranny ends today!" Wings of white light stretched forty feet either side of his shoulders, and a tremendous wind bellowed from their form.
It wasn't enough force to budge a hair on my head.
I'd met the man when he'd been a boy. One of Jacob's, the type of parahuman that was certain their power was a gift from the heavens. Or, originally, in the boy's case, a curse from Hell, though he'd long since left the name Fauster behind. Once he'd gotten his emotions under control, he'd gone from a D-Lister Ward with a chaotic power and terrible mood swings to one of the premier heroes of the New Age.
The skyscraper I was standing on swayed under the weight of his wind. My hearing, untouched by the upstart's ruckus, heard screams from both the streets below and within the skyscraper itself.
*I need to get this fight away from the city,* I thought.
Most powers had relativistic features, the so called "Manton Limitations," where powers conformed to arbitrary rules befitting human perception more than the laws of physics. Fire that only burned flesh, speedsters that could run faster than a jetplane without turning themselves or the pavement to ash.
Neither Apotheosis, nor my current configuration, had such limitations. If he struck with those wings first, he and I would be fine, but the displaced air would shatter all the windows in the city. The same would occur if I moved too quickly. The boy snarled, unable to attack, but wanting to. He waited for me to escalate, so he'd have an excuse.
I watched the winds carefully, waiting for the tower to reach the furthest point of its sway. It leaned precariously toward Apotheosis, and I got a better look at his scowl. Pores, stubble, the undulation of skin under a stampeding heart.
I placed a hand on my stomach, gracefully leaning back so that I could catch the brunt of what I was about to do.
I met thumb with flip-off and snapped my fingers.
Apotheosis merely flinched, but the force of it launched me off the skyscraper, knocking it violently to the other extreme of its sway. Steel screeched in protest, and I feared that it was about to fall as I flew. But something reinforced the structure, a lattice of canary-yellow forcefields creeping up the side like the web of a spider.
I frowned as I fell. Not Apotheosis himself. His power turned emotions into hardlight with thematic secondary abilities, but all of them extended from himself, and the colouration had been keyed off his overall mental state when I'd known him. Right now it was white, righteous fury. I hadn't seen yellow since his graduation to the League.
But the power was similar nevertheless. Had someone budded off of him?
I hit the ground at a sharp angle, the momentum from the snap still winning out over air resistance and gravity. I skipped like a stone over water, leaving shattered pavement in my wake. I allowed myself to ragdoll, limbs flailing wildly to give observers the impression that I'd been hit by anyone other than myself. Once I'd deemed that I was close enough to the city limits, I rolled onto my feet and started running. Bigger craters were made by my footfalls as I passed the cars turning onto the highway.
A mile up and away, Apotheosis's great wings gathered together into a single missile of light, the man himself the warhead. Before his aerokinesis could propel him forwards, the yellow light reinforcing the skyscraper launched out a single strand to wrap around the missile. A figure used the string to grapple up to the hero, their web of light not fading even as they abandoned it.
I focused in on the parahuman as they pulled themselves up onto Apotheosis's construct, only to find I could not identify them.
My vision was beyond sight, and it was even more refined when I was drawing strength from the target's hate. Despite that, the parahuman was blurrier than the starkly detailed Apotheosis. I recognised a similar theme and aesthetic- Templar chic- but where I could spy Apotheosis's wild eyes I could only determine that the saviour of the skyscraper was either small or a child.
*Curious,* I thought. *Someone born in this day and age that doesn't hate me to their core.*
My power adjusted slightly, trading off impossible strength and incredible awareness for impossible awareness and merely incredible strength. My wild sprint became a meagre jog as I listened in on the pair.
"Jesus Christ Lydia! Get the fuck off me, she's getting away!"
"Dad, I-"
"*Cape names,* you idiot! Cape names only while on missions!"
My heart yearned and my blood boiled.
That explained just about everything.
\---
Want more like this? All the terminology used was ripped straight from J.C. McCrea's Worm, which you can [read or listen to now](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) for free.
More to come if it is desired. | *Note first prompt pls no rage on bad "x" thing*
Standing on the roof of skyscraper; you're just a few minutes away from unleashing the most powerful, the most incredible monstrosity upon the world and finally claim it as your own.
/You hear sound coming beneath you followed by the ground starting to tremble/
Suddenly coming from beneath floor appears the so-called "Number 1 Hero"... Bob and his sidekick... "Fantistic Juan" wait hang on I think he is "Fantistic Juan...the..uhh..fourth...no maybe fith... aaah who cares he is just the sidekick anyway" you think to yourself.
As your ultimate weapon has been charging and now with only seconds to spare; you try and hold off Bob and his sidekick Juan but with just a momentary lapse of focus Juan managed to land a critical blow which damaged a crucial component triggering the self-destruct sequence (which was initially added to prevent the hero organization from screwing you over again). "You fool!" you shout at Juan "Do you have any idea how long it took to perfect and build that? ... Parts are fricken expensive and hard to come by man; couldn't you have literally just stood there or even hit one of the cheaper components is that too much to ask for.."
With the ultimate weapon about to implode upon itself; Bob punches you with little restraint causing you stagger backwards. "This is the last time you'll ever try something like this again Garathor" Bob yells as he blasts you off the roof with his seemingly overpowered energy-blast.
You start falling off the roof to what seems to be a nice hard concrete bed of DEATH. As you decide that is not really to your liking you open a dimensional-rift a couple of feet below you. Moments before you fall into the rift... it dawns on you - you can make Bob regret stopping you for the last and final time ever(you think atleast).
You realize the "Not So Fantastic Juan.. after he broke your ultimate weapon" is standing over the edge watching you fall. You use your pre-owned mind-grasp device that you got on sale at the local VillianMart ( which channels your willpower and intelligence which allows the user to inhibit telekentic powers for a short duration ) to grab Juan off the roof and through the rift with you.
/You both slam into your secret cave with a thub and a couple of groans later/
Juan looks at you and states "I will stop you Garathor, just wait until Bob gets ...he..re.." He vomits and you laugh maniacally "I see the inter-dimensional travel sickness has got you good huh?" He continues to hurl as you chain him preventing him from resisting and continuing your monologue about how truly amazing you are and how they are not ..blah blah blah yada yada yada some other important things and the monologue ends.
"So sidekick tell me exactly what I want to know otherwise this could get real painful, real quick" you notice that all the spunk and confident demeanor has disappeared leaving behind an appearance akin to that of a stray, abused dog.
"WHATS THE MATTER NOW? I JUST CAN'T GET A BREAK CAN I, FIRST YOU BREAK THE FRICKEN EXPENSIVE MACHINE AND NOW YOU START SULKING WHAT IS UP WITH YOU... UGGHHH" You yell as you pace up and down. While enraged you notice the uniform Juan is wearing seems identical to his predecessors; upon furthed inspection you start to notice scarring and scar tissue over his body.
You calm yourself, sit down next to him and ask "Now look here sidekick even though we don't always see eye to eye, heck we never see eye to eye. Whats up with this uniform it looks as old as the first Fantastic Juans', also whats up with all the scars?".
Juan begins to break down crying; just moments ago before your master plan was thwarted there was this energetic and lively sidekick; now all thats left is a husk of his former self that's emitting beaten, broken and hopeless aura.
"Geez just answer the questiosn will you" you state even though your concern is growing. Juan starts speaking "You know what? My name isn't even Juan not even remotely close my real name is Eric. And yes this is that exact uniform from all the previous Juans as for the scars; whenever Bob loses a fight or wants to train guess who is used as a personal punching bag because I'm "just a sidekick". What do you think happened to my predecessors?... you know what ignore everything and just end it here I dont care anymore" Eric closes his eyes and it seems as though he is awaiting something.
You unclip his shackles and tell him to follow you; as Eric follows you through this ever-shifting dimension of yours you start talking to him "You know Eric I have fought many-a Juans over the years but I never knew what happened to them but now it all comes together. When I was younger my father used to beat me just for the sake of "building character" he said after each beating. So I know the rage, resentment and hate boiling from within you and all I can say is... USE THAT AS FUEL, USE THAT TO DRIVE YOU, USE THAT TO BECOME SO POWERFUL NO ONE WILL DARE LAY SO MUCH AS A FINGER ON YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION..."
/You notice a faint smile on his face and the return of life within his eyes as you walk.../
/As you reach your destination you tell Eric that there are appropriately sized clothes within the room and that he should take a shower and get changed into the clothes/
Eric comes out after a while with a huge grin on his face; "What?" you ask - Eric responds "No one has ever treated me so kindly before or even treated me as another human before; you know I am actually 16 right?". It dawns on you, for these mere moments you were helping this boy; you were more of a hero to him than the so-called "Number 1 Hero".
"You know if you want you can stay here, you can have that room. We might be a little broken but I think two broken might just make one whole person... or one worse person but lets focus on the positive" you ask the kid. The boy is overjoyed and jumps onto you squeezing and hugging you well stating "Are you sure? You aren't joking right? A room just for myself? You know I've always had to sleep in the living room in the couch or on the mats in the exercise room.."
"Geez, alright kid and yes to all of the above would you just get off me.. We need to go grab some dinner"
/You and your newly "adopted" to-be villiabous-sidekick head off to enjoy a meal in what the kid will realize is the dimension which all villains reside within/ | 2020-03-26T17:29:53 | 2020-03-26T17:01:36 | 28 | 10 |
[WP] You've always attributed your dreams of being the Demon Queen's lover as the result of too much anime and games. But you're pretty sure that's her staring at you from the cafe's entrance. And she's making a beeline for your table. | “Guys, I’m telling you, these dreams are getting crazier and crazier.” I looked around the table and saw rolling eyes. “What?” I said defensively.
“Bro, no offence, but you gotta watch something else other than anime.” Jackson wagged his fork at me. “You’re still sticking with this Demon Queen lover shtick after a year!”
“What does this have to do with anime?” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s the video games. Either way, recurring wet dreams about a smoking hot emo girl from Hell isn’t normal.”
Scott pitched in, “I agree with Jackson. You’re probably losing your mind.”
“I’m not *losing my mind*,” I said. “And I’m not having wet dreams over this either. All I’m saying is, it’s quite odd that I’m seeing Zenya—I mean, the Demon Queen, over and over again. And the dreams are getting more vivid each time. Last night we…” I trailed off, blushing.
Jackson and Scott exchanged worried looks.
“Maybe you should go see a therapist,” Jackson said.
“Might not be a bad idea, Pete,” Scott agreed.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine. Seriously. They’re just freaky dreams. It’s not like she’s real—oh my god.” I stood sharply up, knocking my chair back.
“Watch it,” snapped an older boy from the table behind, but I ignored him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jackson hissed. I ignored him as well.
Standing at the cafe entrance, looking supremely pissed off, was Zenya. She looked like a really pretty girl my age, with black, ripped jeans and a sweater with holes in it. Her hair was a shocking, vibrant red.
She was real. I couldn’t believe it.
Zenya scanned the cafe, wrinkling her nose, until her sharp gaze landed firmly on me. Her eyes narrowed; her fists clenched; and she began tearing a warpath straight towards me. My heart began to beat rapidly.
Jackson and Scott turned around to see what I was staring at.
“Whoa,” Scott said. “Who is that hottie?”
“Agreed,” Jackson murmured. I felt an irrational surge of jealousy towards my two best friends.
Zenya made a beeline towards my table, attracting the stares of both boy and girl as she passed. Our gazes were locked, and I couldn’t lock away if I wanted to, and I didn’t.
“Hey, you!” she shouted as she approached, stabbing a finger at me. The noise echoed throughout the cafeteria. “Pervert! Yeah you, don’t try to get away!”
My jaw dropped, and my eyes bulged. People started pulling their phones out. Zenya pulled up to a halt right before me, glaring. We were of a height, maybe I was a little bit taller.
“Zenya,” I began, looking around rapidly, “what are you doing here?”
“Stay out of my dreams, human!” she yelled. I winced; she was right in front of me. “Stay. Out. Of. My. Dreams. I don’t know what magic you’re using, but keep me out of it! I’m Queen now, and you have been… very distracting! I can’t rule a Kingdom without proper sleep!” Was that a blush?
Despite the absurdness of the moment, and that I was currently being recorded by every kid in school, I smiled.
“You’ve been very distracting for me too,” I said.
“Shut it!” Zenya looked away. She was definitely blushing.
“It’s good to actually see you.” My smile was only growing bigger. "Do you remember last night?"
Zenya looked at me, then huffed, but there was a slight smile on her lips. “Whatever. Just… stop with the dreams, okay? They’re not a good idea for either of us.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. You’re so annoying.” She whirled around and exited the cafeteria in a hurry. “Leave me alone!” she yelled over her shoulder as she left.
I looked down at Jackson and Scott, who were staring up at me with wonder. I sat down, shrugged, and resumed working on my sandwich.
I couldn't wait to go to sleep tonight.
---
/r/chrischang if ur interested in my writing :) ty <3 | Being a research fellow at a decent university has its benefits: reserved parking lots, discounts on university sports events, and a private office to do your work and help students.
Deciding to take a change of scenery from my small windowless office, I went to the café on the bottom floor of the university's main library and finish grading the English 102 papers there from my laptop and burn a bit of the midnight oil.
There were a few people that I could see from my corner, a group of four or five students cramming for their midterms (unfortunate bastards), another group finishing up a quiet D&D session (lucky bastards) and a unusually tall figure sitting at a empty table near the entrance.
Normally this wouldn't really be of interest, given that I have papers to grade and overstressed students to indirectly murder through academia; but I couldn't help but take a closer look.
First thing I notice is her hair, an anime-esque deep red. There are more than a fair share of weebs and otaku on campus, so that's not too surprising to see. Even the slightly slitted pupils aren't that unusual, given the advancements of cosmetic contact lens. She's also very tall, easily towering over me, almost seven feet.
What is unusual is the fact that the shadows around her from the moderately lit café, are bending around her, enveloping her almost like a bad attempt of Photoshopping a dark portal around her. She's directly underneath a light fixture, but the shadows are behind her, not below her. Even the table has a more defined shadow than she does.
When she notices me staring, she grins. I suddenly get the feeling of what a fly looks like to a lion: small, helpless, insignificant. I wave and give what I hope to her is a placating smile and turn back to my papers, hoping that Steven's paper on the substitutions of alcohol in teen media will distract me from any impending doom.
A poor choice of my possible last readings, in retrospect.
As soon as I had taken my eyes off of her, and to.my screen, she was sitting in the chair directly across from me, her long and very sharp fingernails gripping the top of my laptop's screen.
I swallow my instinctive fear and confront the problem with all the will a overworked graduate student can muster. "Can I help you, Miss...?"
"My friends call me Marsha," she speaks with a very sharp and toothy grin. "And you can help me by taking me back to your place for something a little harder than that strawberry and lavender tea you're sipping."
"One, I don't know really know you; I admit I dig the whole demon queen vibe you're putting off. Two, I have work to do in grading these papers before Monday. Three, why me?" I say, more harsh than I intended. I put off this work enough in favor of watching yet another sinful anime fantasy romance that has been done a dozen times, and its starting to bite me in my ass.
Her reply is so fluid, it's like she rehearsed it. "One, you can get to know me very well, very soon; and thank you. Two, you're already done with all your work for the next week. And three, I've had my eye on you for quite a while..."
I move to show her my laptop and the print outs I have on my table, but they're gone. I turned to my laptop and with a couple clicks I see that every student's paper is grade and with feedback.
"How the bloody fuck did you do that?" I look back at her, but suddenly I find that we're no longer in the cafe, but my apartment. I get up and put myself against the wall. "Who the bloody fuck are you?"
She gets up from where we were sitting and slowly walks towards me, like one of those entomologists about to pin a new butterfly to their wall.
"I told you my friends call me Marsha, but my full name is Marchosias, a marchioness of the Sulfurous Void, soon to return to the Seventh Throne..." From her back sprouted black wings, and a snake attached to her like a tail.
All light from the room vanished before my unblinking eyes, a void, the only thing I could see is her, her sharp teeth, her unblinking slitted yellow eyes.
I had always wanted to be swept off my feet by a demon queen, but not this way, not like this. I feel my breathing stop, my blood rushing in my ears and temples, gripping to my shitty apartment walls trying to find purchase at the unfolding, unholy being before me.
"And you... are going to be by my side for the final fall of man, and rule under the Morningstar beside me... my dearly beloved."
She leaps for me, and my soul ignites.
Edit: spelling and grammar errors. | 2020-08-17T02:40:50 | 2020-08-17T02:12:11 | 90 | 49 |
[WP] - On a dare from your friends, you've slipped into the dark bathroom, locked the door, and whispered Bloody Mary three times. Nothing happens, and just when you think there's nothing to fear, she appears in the mirror. But she doesn't look scary - she looks scared, and she's begging for help. | *Click*
The door locked shut, the lights were off, and I was alone. I could hear faint laughter and chattering from my friends outside, no doubt elated that I’d finally taken them up on one of their juvenile little dares. Normally, I excused myself from these sorts of things, but tonight it seemed that I had at long last run out of excuses. And, I suppose, there was a certain interest to this one as well…
It was that age-old trial; I’m sure you know it well, whether or not you’ve partaken in it yourself. There’s an elegance to the simplicity of it: ostensibly, it’s just you, the mirror, and your own fears, and, depending on how suggestible you are, a blood-wreathed apparition whose ire you must endure. You may be able to tell that I never placed much credence in this last part, at least beyond the capabilities of optical illusion and the human imagination. There are very real, very scary things in the world, but I, for one, don’t think malevolent ghosts lurking in mirrors is one of them.
But then again, I suppose it was worth a shot.
&#x200B;
And … nothing. No spirit, no English noblewoman, nothing at all. Ah well. I do have to admit, I was a bit disappointed. I had expected *something* at least. Perhaps she was taking another call? I went to unlock the door.
A horrible screeching sound emanated from the mirror, and I jolted backwards, more than a little startled. The mirror’s normally reflective surface had been replaced with a pitch-black void, the center of which contained a truly horrifying face. She had rough black hair, and her entire head, it seemed, was coated with slowly dripping blood. She leaned out of the mirror and the blood pooled on the countertop, some of it running into the sink and down the drain in dark rivulets and coagulating streams. She opened her mouth, from which more still blood gushed, and said in a raspy and unnatural voice,
“Help me.”
“She’ll be here any moment, you have to help me!”
And her face, as horrifying as it was, displayed clearly the emotions of fear, and it seemed that some of the blood pouring off her features came from the corners of her eyes. “Please!” she pleaded.
I stood stunned for a second before hastily muttering a reply. “Of course.” I looked around a bit, and grabbed a vase, smashing the mirror. Mary quickly clambered through, now dripping all over the tiles. My friends were now shouting, and were banging on the door. “Sorry!” I shouted, “Just give me a moment!”
I returned my attention to Mary. “Who is it, who’s after you?”
“I don’t know who she is!” she replied frantically, “Whoever she is, she’s close. Please,” she reiterated desperately, “you’ve got to help me! She’ll be here any moment, I can feel it!”
Well, I’d had my fun. “Sorry, dear,” I replied, “but I’m afraid she’s already arrived.”
&#x200B;
I threw off the preposterous concerned facade, and while the look of realization was dawning on dear Mary’s face, I ripped her heart from her chest and held it, still-beating, in front of her horrified visage.
“I don’t believe I ever told you about my favorite animal. Dart frogs. They’re cute, they’re smaller than your hand, and if you do so much as touch ‘em, they’ll kill you.
Ah. I would say information for future reference, but then again, the amount of future you have is, well, quickly diminishing.”
I crushed the heart, and Bloody Mary fell to the floor, dead. Or at least *more* dead than she was before. What can I say? Demon-hunting may not pay well, but damn if it isn’t satisfying.
&#x200B;
*If you'd like to read more of my things, head on over to* r/DaeridaniiWrites | #In the Mirror
"Help me!" she bangs on the mirror wall trying to get out. Paige backs up against the wall as Mary writhes in the mirror. A force grabs Mary and tries to pull her away. Mary resists leaving a hand on the mirror. Paige walks over to save Mary. Mary grabs her hand and pulls her into the mirror.
---
It has been two days since Paige had disappeared. The students of Lambert high school have been going through the motions due to her death. At lunch, her friends Kylie, Rachel, and Quinn sit in a circle staring at each other in silence. They all know what they are thinking, but they have yet to say it. Quinn starts eating her lunch.
"How can you be so casual?" Kylie asks.
"What?" Quinn replies.
"We may have just killed our best friend, and you are just sitting there eating," Kylie says.
"Well, it is lunch time." Quinn says.
"I can't believe you," Kylie says.
"Woah, keep it down," Rachel says, "Listen, Kylie. We all miss Paige, but there is no proof that we are the reason that she disappeared."
"It just makes sense. We dared her to say Bloody Mary, and now, she is gone." Kylie says.
"Yeah, but if that were the case, there would be a lot more disappearances," Quinn says.
"I cannot believe you two," Kylie storms away and heads to the bathroom. She sits alone in a stall and cries until lunch is over. Then, she stays there longer. After two hours, the lights go out. Kylie leaves her stall, still thinking about Paige. Unfortunately, Kylie has a tendency to think aloud. In the mirror, she sees Paige. Kylie runs up to the mirror.
"Paige?!" Kylie says.
"Kylie, you have to help. Mary has got me trapped in this mirror world. Get me out," Paige says.
"I will, but how?" Kylie asks.
"You have to pull me out." Paige holds out a hand to Kylie. Kylie grabs on to rescue her friend.
---
Rachel and Quinn have spent the past week at the brunt of speculation. Two girls gone missing with one being on school property? The police even interviewed them both. Now, they sit outside school after a day of gossip and mockery. Quinn breaks down and starts crying. Rachel comforts her.
"I saw Kylie last night," Quinn says. Rachel moves away.
"What?" Rachel says.
"I had to take a midnight trip to the restroom. I was thinking about her. I said her name three times out loud, and I saw her in the mirror asking for help. I didn't know what to do so I ran," Quinn says.
"It was probably just a bad dream," Rachel says.
"No, it wasn't. Come home with me, and let's see." Quinn says.
Rachel agrees, and they go to Quinn's house. They stand in the dark bathroom together.
"You say Kylie; I will say Paige," Rachel instructs. They hold hands and summon their friends. They appear before them in a mirror.
"Rachel, Quinn, you have to help us," Paige says.
"Bloody Mary has us trapped," Kylie screams. Quinn reaches out to help, but Rachel stops her.
"Hold on, Kylie, how did you get in there?" she asks.
"That isn't important. You have to help me." Kylie says. Quinn tries to reach forward, but Rachel stops her.
"Kylie would not even say the phrase before Paige disappeared. I can't believe she would say it afterword. However, I do know that she gets in trouble several times a year for accidentally saying test answers out loud. So let me ask again, how did you get there, Kylie?" Rachel asks.
Kylie and Paige stop trying to break free of the mirror and look at each other. A woman emerges from behind them holding lines to their backs.
"Well done Rachel, consider this your last chance to say goodbye to your friends before I take them away." Mary says. Kylie and Paige freeze in place.
"Is there anyway you can free them?" Quinn says.
"You could take their place." Mary says smiling.
"No deal," Rachel interjects, "there is no guarantee that you are not lying."
Mary starts to laugh.
"My my, Rachel you are smart. I will give you that. Come along you two," Mary walks away. Paige and Kylie wave goodbye before disappearing into the mirror. | 2020-10-10T18:32:37 | 2020-10-10T16:23:06 | 74 | 48 |
[WP] The supervillain sighs in frustration as he looks at the group of superheroes. "Alright raise your hands if you are adults?" he said. None of them did it. "This battle is canceled and tell your mayor we need to talk! today!" he said angrily.
Whoa, I came back after chores, mobile games, and anime to see so many stories and a handful of awards. I'll read them all in the morning | "On second thought, this will need to be dealt with at a much higher level." Mr Lawful glanced over at his chief of security. "Stand the security teams down, and please see if you can find the young lady a bathrobe or something."
He turned back to the four teenagers who had invaded his base. "As for you four, you should consider yourselves lucky that I was home. If I had been out, my security systems would have turned the four of you into grease spots." His gaze turned to the the only female member of the group. "And, that outfit is completely inappropriate for someone your age. You aren't your mother, and you shouldn't be taking things from her wardrobe without permission." It had only taken a glance to work out who her mother was, between her looks and her outfit, it had been obvious.
The security chief had reappeared, a bathrobe in hand. He handed it to he skimpily dressed young woman of the group, then retreated. With a look and a nod to his boss he left the room. She flushed slightly under his words and scrutiny, and quickly put on the robe. "How did you know I didn't have permission?" There was a hint of defiance in her voice, along with curiosity. This whole encounter was not going remotely like that four of them had planned.
Mr Lawful sighed. He had wanted a quiet night in, not riding herd on four teenagers. "I know this because I know your parents, your mother would never have given you permission to wear that, and she would have told you the four of you are all breaking the Accords by being here looking for a fight. Although I suspect your choice of outfit might also have been influenced by your companions." A slightly guilty look from the other three confirmed his suspicions. Super powered or not, teenaged boys were teenaged boys.
"Now have any of you considered how much trouble you are in? Or how much trouble you could have caused your parents? The rules are there to protect you, if you go breaking them there are consequences. Do you want a world where babies and little children are fair game? Because that is what you are asking for by being here." He was laying it on thick, but some messages needed to be driven home hard.
One of them finally managed a mumbled "But the Mayor said in his speech at the Academy villains have to be stopped and we thought..." His voice trailed away into silence.
"You thought wrong. He knows better than to set children up for a fall, he has been warned before. None of you are anywhere near ready for a fight. Besides, if you want to fight a real villain, look at how the Mayor became so rich, and where the money came from. A decent forensic accountant would put that crook behind bars for the next hundred years. Not that you should even *think* about doing anything about it until you are of age."
A push of a button on his desk, and one entire wall of the room lit up, seven faces displayed. His head of security had ordered that they be called the first time he had left the room. Now they had seen and heard it all.
"The seven of you have been contacted as per the Accords, your children are unharmed, and you have seen and heard that for yourselves. As per clause seven, I will see to it they remain unharmed until such time as you or your authorized representatives arrive. Under clause thirteen there will be a truce in effect until no less than one hour has passed after the last one has left. Do we have an agreement? A quick bunch of acknowledgements followed, anxious parents coming to get their wayward children. Only one screen was left.
"Maxwell, thank you. I will be there as soon as I can. And thank you for the bathrobe." There was more she wanted to say, to ask, but that would need to wait until she could do so in private. Uncomfortable as that conversation would be.
"Emma." A sad smile and a wry look. He knew. "You are looking well. I thought you would have burned that old outfit by now though." A glance at the young woman in the bathrobe and a subtle shake of his head. He had realized, but hadn't told her.
"I considered it, but there were some good memories attached, as well as some bad, but maybe we can discus that and other things later." The screen went blank, and he turned back to his unexpected guests.
"Well then, under clause seven specifically the *in loco parentis* part, you are hereby under my protection until your parents arrive." He considered for a moment what to do with them while they waited. " I imagine you are all hungry, so follow me and we will see what the chef is planing for dinner." He lead them off towards the kitchens. Teenagers were always hungry right? The four of them followed meekly behind, now far more worried about what their parents would say when they got here than they were about the villain that was going to feed them. | “Something’s not right…”
The demon lord Kazalim surveyed his forces from high up in the clouds. He expected to be currently witnessing a fierce, bloody battle down below, but instead his soldiers were…just standing around.
The greater demon Gix flew up to meet his master, bowing low.
“Report,” commanded the demon lord, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“Sir. As you can see, we have not yet engaged the Hero’s party in battle…”
“Obviously. What is the hold up? Is the hero really that strong?”
“Well umm…not exactly sir…” The demon Gix looked down sheepishly. He would have blushed if he wasn’t an infernal creature from hell. “I think it may be better if you went to see for yourself sir.”
Kazalim glanced towards a small group of people he presumed to be the Hero’s party. Small being the key word.
“Huh. Maybe I flew up too high this time. I’m having a bit of hard time making them out.”
The demon lord gracefully descended upon the battlefield until he was within shouting distance of the Hero. It was then that he realized that he did not, in fact, fly up too high this time.
“Are these…children?” Kazalim looked upon the Hero’s party, a stupefied expression on his face.
The hero pointed his staff directly at the monster in the sky. “Demon lord Kazalim! We have come here to defeat you once and for all! We will pay you back ten-fold for all the – agh! What are you doing? Put me down at once!”
The demon lord held the small child in his claw, examining him closely.
“No…this is an actual real life child. No illusion magic of any kind.” The hero continued to squirm in the demon lord’s grasp.
“Hey kid…what’s your name?”
The hero stopped struggling, momentarily confused. “Umm…Ash”
“How old are you Ash?”
“10.”
“…”
“Well I’m turning 11 next month.” The hero puffed up his chest, trying to appear more menacing to the demon lord.
It was then that Kazalim saw the type of clothes the boy was wearing. Not armor, but cloth robes, clearly several sizes too big for the child to be wearing. In addition, a very large hat that apparently obscured the boy’s entire field of vision.
“…So are you supposed to be some kind of wizard?”
“No, I’m a summoner.”
*Ah, a summoner. That is a rather rare type of magic user.* The demon lord thought to himself. *Perhaps he is some kind of prodigy?*
“Hey kid, what type of familiar do you summon then?”
“A dragon!” the hero exclaimed proudly.
*Hmm…maybe this is okay then. I can fight the dragon and then send the kid home afterwards. No harm no foul.*
The hero held out his palm which was suddenly bathed in an otherworldly light. After the spell was complete, a creature gazed back at the demon lord.
“This…this is not a dragon. This is a lizard. Like, a regular lizard.”
The lizard glared at Kazalim, hissing.
“I think it’s a bearded dragon actually.”
“…”
The demon lord opened an interdimensional window, sending a communication request straight to the king of Oceania.
“Hello – Ah! You must be the demon lord Kazalim.” The man on the other side of the window began to wring his hands nervously. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Kazalim held up Ash and his lizard directly up to the window. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Ah…I’m not sure I umm…follow…”
“Why did you send a 10 year old boy to fight the overlord of all demonkind?”
“Ah that’s what you mean. Well you see, our kingdom is not exactly on good terms with our usual hero. Something about not being paid his fair share, you know how these heroes can be drama queens from time to time.” The king laughed nervously. “So I figured we’d send one of our reserve heroes to fight this time!”
“He’s 10 years old.” A vein began to bulge in Kazalim’s forehead.
“I’m almost 11…” The hero was now pouting.
“I assure you, he’s very capable for his age!” Beads of sweat began forming on the king’s head.
“Look man, I may be a demon lord, but even I have my limits. This…this is beyond unethical. Couldn’t you at least send a young-adult aged hero?”
“Ah well, we do actually have a hero that would fit that bill. But you see, it’s spring break right now, so she’s actually off at the beach enjoying her vacation.”
“…”
The hero tugged on the demon lord’s cape. “Umm, I’m sorry to interrupt Mr. Kazalim. But it’s getting kind of late? It’s a little bit past our bedtime actually.” Kazalim looked over at the hero’s party. One young girl had actually fallen asleep on the ground. He sighed defeatedly.
The demon lord snapped his fingers, summoning his trusty Fell Pheonix mount. “Alright, hop on kids. I’ll give you a ride home.” | 2021-04-01T16:06:03 | 2021-04-01T15:38:17 | 32 | 20 |
[WP] It seemed like a perfect magical deal. When any child descended from you is born you grow younger by a single year. So you agree, planning on a big family and living to a ripe old age. Years later however you find yourself rapidly growing younger and regret not understanding exponential growth. | It wasn't until I woke up twenty five one morning that I realized my mistake.
It had seemed like a great deal. In exchange for my name (the fairy didn't say what it wanted the to know for, and I didn't ask) I would become one year younger with every descendent born to me.
The only thing was, I didn't dig kids; they were always hungry and usually in the way. Heck, I wasn't even seeing anyone, let alone planning a family. But I had what I *thought* was a simply brilliant idea.
I went to the sperm bank jauntily, minus a name and plus a magical destiny. The experience itself was clinical and minimally traumatic. I was in and out. And then, I waited.
At first, I couldn't tell if anything was happening. Sure, I didn't look any older, but I didn't seem any younger either. After a year or two of uncertainty, I discovered to my delight that the few grays in my beard had disappeared completely. Somewhere out there I had a descendant.
The next time I got younger though, something seemed a little off. The lines on my face completely disappeared. Great, of course, but what the heck? I'd been thirty five to start with. Then thirty three or so. But as I peered into the mirror that day, the face looking back at me was as daisy fresh as a college kid's.
I ran to do the research I should have done in the beginning. Oh god. Many women who used donated sperm were given fertility enhancing drugs to increase the likelihood of success. Most went to have multiple births--twins, triplets, even quadruplets. I began to sweat. At least ten babies had been born already, in less than five years. At this rate I'd disappear entirely in no time.
I ran back to the green hills where I'd met the fairy in the first place. I followed my old hiking trails and haunted the hollows of mushroom circles. Finally--after a week--the cocky thing showed up, grinning.
"I wasn't expecting you yet," it said. "This usually takes generations."
"What?"
"For the curse to come to fruition," said the fairy matter of factly. "I thought you wouldn't be back for st least a couple hundred years."
I gaped at him. "What do you mean?"
"Say you have two children, and they each have two children, and *they* each have two children. That's eight. Not too impressive. Eight years younger in fifty years' procreating. But then the eight each have two. Sixteen. And the sixteen have two. Thirty two. And the thirty two have two. Sixty four. And they go on. One twenty eight. Two fifty six, and then you're in trouble, aren't you? Five twelve and poof! Off you go."
"You're an asshole," I told the fairy.
"You're gullible," the fairy returned loftily. "And anyway you've done something wrong. You shouldn't be back so soon."
"I went to the sperm bank," I said despairingly and the fairy laughed itself sick.
"Now you know better. Come. You're mine now." The fairy turned to go.
*"Yours?"*
"You gave away your name," the fairy explained. "Come along. The castle is filthy."
But before he could whisk me away out popped another round of descendents...a lot of them this time...and I poofed into nothingness instead.
"Damn," said the fairy, and made a notch in a stick. There were many notches on the stick. It put the stick back in its pocket and spirited away. | When I met little Richard he seemed not to recognize me. They had torn down the attic and was in the process of scraping the rest of the house. It was very hot and there was sawdust in the air. I did not manage to recover our common history from Richard, so I handed him a business card and played an insurance salesman. The lines I delivered perfectly. In the backyard there was this big tree surrounded by patches of highlighted grass. Under cover from the sun I recalled quite a while ago there was this tattoo I made on the tree. I did not find it, however.
&#x200B;
I wished to inquire of Stephanie's grave, which proved unfruitful since the man was busy with work and busy chasing me away. Very subtle, of course, with a little frown on his face detectable only by Stephanie and by me, who she taught the art. When I used to hold him in my arms he must have also made this kind of face often. I had no idea then until years later when Stephanie finally revealed her secret. What fragile illusion I had had of being the better grandfather soon dispelled. I suppose he had never liked me very much.
&#x200B;
I walked the whole way back the station. It always calm me when I have a goal in mind. Better more if the goal stays unmovable, unchangeable. Maybe that's why I enjoyed train rides greatly. Whatever I do, I can live assured that there is this station I will get off at. Such is fate.
&#x200B;
My shadow grew shallow, I had lost a few wrinkles on my face. To the side of the road there was a field with grass higher than my head. The warm humid summer wind tickled them slightly. I remembered this sensation of humidity upon my skin. On a grass field, too, away from the main road, I had lain with a woman. A damned dog I was, going around spreading my seeds. With every regained youths I sought again to expand my roots. But this woman I lain with, let the humid wind sing, mind you, this Oriental woman, she once made me tired of going around. She had a big family, too. I had thought if I stayed with her I too would have a big family. But I didn't understand them, and they didn't understand me. I remembered, through the fading light of the station, her little figure waving as I departed. The rhythm of the train awakes me some nights, and when it does I could always imagine the same figure waiting for my return.
&#x200B;
The Oriental woman might have cursed me. In her head, she would never say it out loud. I knew a few who would, though. She would curse me in her head, yes, and then she would be sad, and she would feel bad because she had cursed me. It would sadden her more. Now that I thought about it, she always had this willowy, sad look on her face. Enough for a man to settle down. Not me, though. Of all the women I had mated with, some might understand me, although no one I could recall. Every year I grow older and lose a bit of memory, then I grow younger and lose another bit of history. I could always love as if it was my first love, and because of that I could love no one. The women grow old. They lose their options. I never lose my options. Every time I become young I have wanted to try out a new life. Most of the time it ends on several broken hearts.
&#x200B;
When I reached the station I could see my train over the horizon. I scratched Stephanie out of the notebook. It would be best if in my sleep I disintegrate. If not, I figured I could scrape out of my mind some names. I don't want to die alone. | 2021-04-15T11:40:34 | 2021-04-15T11:09:08 | 36 | 20 |
[WP] Diagnosed with “reverse dementia”, Patrick slowly began to recall every single day of his life down to the smallest detail. However, recently, he has started to remember things in which he wasn’t present for. Like his mother’s childhood, or his Dad’s first murder…wait what? | Patrick: Hey SpongeBob, remember that time I nailed a plank to my forehead?
SpongeBob: (beat) Nah, I forgot that already.
P: You asked me to build a shed for Mystery!
S: Mystery?
P: The seahorse you kept for a while!
S: Geez, Pat, it's been so long ago, my old brain just couldn't remember it.
P: Well I remember it like it was yesterday! And that time I went for "overtime", you found out and yelled in my face "OVERTIME?!"
S: Wow, Patrick, this "reverse dementia" thing might not be a bad thing at all. Guess I know who to turn to for… what those kids call throwback Thursdays, buddy.
P: Gotcha, Bob.
(beat)
P: Y'know SpongeBob, recently I've been seeing things I definitely never did.
S: Like what, Patrick?
P: My mom, as a baby, being pampered by my grandma and grandpa…
S: Uh-uh…
P: Then I saw her in grade school hanging with my dad, both of them looking younger than me!
S: You must have been seeing things, Patrick. Try to relax a little.
P: I try to, but every time I do, more disturbing scenes show up. Like my mom getting drunk and puked all over the wash basin at a bar…
S: What?
P: And then her stumbling on the streets after being beat up by another woman…
S: Stop it…
P: And that time my dad killed a random guy…
S: Pat, stop…
P: And, and that time he killed another guy…
S: Patrick, STOP!
P: I'm beginning to wonder, IF THOSE FOUR PEOPLE WHO VISITED ME WERE EVEN MY PARENTS AT ALL! I'M LIVING A LIE, SPONGEBOB! MY LIFE, FROM MY BIRTH UP UNTIL NOW, IS A BIG FUCKING LIIIE!
S: CALM DOWN PATRICK!
P: (pauses) I'm sorry, I let my memories run wild again. I… I need to find my real parents and seek out the truth.
S: No, Pat. You need to see a therapist first. Get your anger in check.
P: The longer we wait, the further we are straying away from the truth!
S: Okay, calm down. We'll find your parents. Now?
P: Now. But first, can we stop somewhere for ice-cream?
S: Oh, Patrick. | I think things are becoming clearer.
But everything is so confused. I know more, but I understand less.
Does that make sense? It feels like it does, but it's so hard to tell now. I've tried to explain it to everyone else, but they don't understand. That's why I'm here writing it down. I want to see if later me gets now me. Of course, this won't help much if future me is insane. If it keeps getting worse.
It.
That's the only way I can think to call what's happening me. A process? A revelation? An ascension?
Or just your standard, everyday, madness.
What *it* is, it's definitely happening. I'm not how I was. I'm more now. I'm me and also those before me. The pieces that came together to form this person are becoming...I don't know what to label it.
Alive?
Separated?
I can reach backward now. Can experience them as if they were me. Can relive the lives they have lived. See through their eyes. Taste through their tongue. As if it were happening to me. Right here and now.
At first *it* seemed like an imagined thing. I was confused then. It took some time for that confusion to become terror. Only recently has the calm settled over me. A quiet acceptance that this is what I am. I'm all of them. Here in me.
I died. Well, that's not true. I was murdered. Not me. My father me. I don't know by who. It happened too fast. I didn't see them. I went from living my life to having it bleed out through the hole in my back where the bullet had entered.
I want to know who killed me. I want to have that peace. I want to put the part of my father within me to rest.
I think I know something. My mother knows something. So I do too. But she's afraid. Afraid to remember what happened. To gather the thoughts into a cogent memory I can experience. I only get flashes of the thing. Of a shot in the night. A scream. But the rest is dull blackness and gooey terror, suffocating everything.
I've tried to search through my father's mind, but he doesn't know. Until he was killed, he never considered that he might die. Certainly not that he would be murdered. He was not a perfect man, but he didn't believe he was a man anyone would want dead.
But my mother...she knows something.
She wasn't surprised. Her terror came from the realization that it had happened, not that it would never happen.
She expected it.
She knew.
So I know. I just need to remember.
**Platypus OUT.**
**Want MOAR peril?** r/PerilousPlatypus | 2021-08-28T01:23:02 | 2021-08-27T22:02:51 | 50 | 34 |
[WP] Everyday you get an email. You don't recognize the sender and it ends up automatically in spam. Today you open up the email to unsubscribe. In the email are a set of coordinates and the words, "I need your help." | Madeleine stared at her computer screen as a cold chill ran down her spine. For the past couple of days, she had been getting some weird emails from a unknown sender. The emails themselves had been generally gibberish, so she had just ignored them, but this morning, she had just gotten a new email with the title "I Need Your Help". Opening it had revealed a set of coordinates. Out of pure boredom, Madeleine had typed them into Google Maps, only to be stunned by what had popped up. The coordinates were for the very own apartment building that she was living in. After a slight hesitation, she clicked Reply.
"Who are you?"
The response was almost instantaneous. "I need your help, Madeleine."
"How do you know my name?"
"I'm magical, Madeline."
"...Really???"
"It's true, Madeleine. And I make you magical too. But first, I need you to come to room 707 to help me."
"There's no one living in room 707. My mom told me that it's vacant because of mold infestation. And I can't go in anyway because the door is locked."
"The door is locked, but the windows aren't, Madeleine. Open up your window and come out on the fire escape. Then, you can come in and I can give you all the magic you want if you help me. But you can't tell anyone. It will be our little secret, just between us friends."
Madeleine felt her skin crawl as her eyes darted over to the nearby window. She couldn't see anybody there on the fire escape though. Still, out of caution, she made sure to walk as far away from the window as she could as she pulled her cell phone out.
Madeleine might have been only eleven years old, but she was old enough to know that things like Santa Claus and magic weren't real. And she was smart enough to know that whoever was emailing her was definitely not a friend Her first instinct was to call her mom, but no one picked up. So, she called the police next.
"Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"
"Hello," Madeleine said nervously. "I think there might be someone trying to kidnap me next door."
"What's your name and address?"
"Madeleine Bell. I live at 325 Barrester Street in Apt 709. I know this sounds crazy, but I've been getting these weird messages on my computer telling me to come next door and I think whoever's sending them --"
There was a loud crash as the window suddenly shattered. Madeleine turned toward the fire escape and let out a loud scream. Standing there was a old bearded man in tattered clothes that were completely covered in black mold and blood. "Oh, little Madeleine," the stranger whispered, a crazed look in his eyes as he stepped through the broken window. "What did I say about keeping secrets?" | The boat lurched to the right as I approached my destination, the ocean waves aggressively thrashing in the full moon night. I pulled back left and got a clear look at the island the strange email had led me to. It was probably a medium-ish size island (don't ask me I'm not an expert on islands), with a fair bit of forestry on it. On the side I was aiming for, a small beach with a dock, one lonely boat anchored there. The rest of the island edge was rocky cliffs jutting almost straight up. In the about middle of it, a tall mountain formed from the forest. Near the top, I could see the faint outline of a primitive-looking structure, contrasted by a radio tower? I couldn't tell for sure. Someone was on the beach, but I couldn't make them out at this distance.
As I approached, I gathered off the desk what I had been asked to bring and packed it in a bag, and holstered my pistol and flashlight. I didn't know who this person was, or what they wanted with this stuff, but I wasn't taking chances. That email had raised a lot of red flags.
Finally, I was at the dock. I climbed down and towards the person on the sand I came so far for. He was wearing a straw hat, patchy clothes crudely repaired in many places and a pair of weathered sunglasses. He wasn't much older than I and reminded me of someone I hadn't seen in a long time, but the hat obscured his face so I wasn't sure.... *Surely not, right*?
"You're here," he said warmly. "Thanks, I need that information". *I recognize that voice*. "Mark...?" I said. And he took off his glasses. Now I knew him.
My brother had been missing for ten years, but I still recognized the face, weathered though it was. His tall broad shoulders, his odd scar above his left eye... It was him, alright.
"WHAT are you doing out here, on this deserted island in the middle of nowhere? And why did you wait this long to get in touch with me? And why am I out here with dads' old laptop?" I started to ask a lot more questions, but he held up one hand. "All will be explained in time. Well, for starters, I can tell you that this island is far outside of any governments' influence, hence why I settled here for... work reasons. It took me this long to get back to you because I was busy with my work, but also because *somebody* took two years to realize the person who kept emailing them was important."
He gestured to take the bag. I gave it. "As for dads laptop and records..." He slung the bag over his giant shoulder, and turned towards the hill. "...Dad and I were always on the same page, like you and Mom. Eventually, I took over his business. Now I need his notes to complete the experiment. Now come on. This island may be remote, but I didn't spent 10 grand on furniture materials just so we could have this discussion out in the cold." And we walked up the hill. | 2021-10-06T10:47:05 | 2021-10-06T09:42:13 | 20 | 10 |
[WP]Your daughter marches into the kitchen with an attitude. You roll your eyes thinking here we go again. You notice tears in her eyes and wonder what's happening. "My life is a LIE! What am I?" A large cut she has in her hand reveals moving mechanical parts. You drop your coffee mug on the floor. | As Peter stooped to pick up the shattered fragment of what had been his favorite mug, he groaned internally at having to finally hold the conversation that he had been dreading for fourteen years. "Look, kiddo, I can explain."
"Please fucking DO, Dad!" Maria held her hand, shaking nervously. Her face was pale, and the relays showing from the gouge in her synth-skin were firing rapidly.
"Look, Maria, sometimes, when a man and a woman love each other very much, but aren't fully... compatible..."
"Oh, God..."
"In bed."
"DAD!"
"They make use of mechanical assistance to enhance the--"
"DAD!!"
"--The pleasure of the act." He managed to finish through the interruptions. "Sometimes, these mechanical assistance devices come with side effects."
"I changed my mind, Dad, I don't want to hear this!"
"You see," Peter continued, "Sometimes when the mother gets a bit over eager with the device."
"DAD PLEASE!"
"It creates bio-feedback which results in an oopsie-box."
"A fucking WHAT?!"
Peter sighed, really wishing this conversation could have been preceded by some formal literature on the effects of bio-resonant hardware. "Ok, so... sometimes, when using bio-rhythmically active hardware in such a fashion, it can 'latch'. Internally.
"WHAT IN CHRIST IS THIS."
"Oh, Christ had nothing to do with this. So, when it latches, it engages a nano-duplicative process which, as an end result, creates a box."
"A box. Dad, what the hell?"
"And when the latched person manages to "pass" this "oopsie-box" and open it up, they find a kit. Some instructions, some nano-tech, a starter vial of synth-skin, and an Allen Wrench."
"Why the hell are you fucking with me about this, Dad?!"
"Oh, it's not a joke. Hurt like hell, too. I understand the "lip over your head" thing now."
"DAD WHAT THE FUCK!"
"To be fair, it was your mother's idea. Anyway, we assembled the kit, tightened all the bolts, smeared the synth skin over the frame, and you were crawling within five minutes of boot-up."
Maria stormed around the kitchen holding her head in existential panic. "HOW have I been a robot this entire time!!!! Why didn't you tell me?!"
"We were waiting for the right time, waiting for you to come to us with questions. Didn't you ever wonder why the other kids don't eat their food by molecular destabilization?"
"I thought I just had gastro-intestinal issues!"
"Well... this sounds like we need to get a therapist."
"YOU FUCKING THINK?!"
"Language, young ladybot." | (LANGUAGE WARNING, for any young folks reading)
"Now, Katie, don't freak out," I say, approaching her slowly.
She brandishes a knife with her undamaged hand. "Stay back! Answer the question, 'dad'."
I stop moving, and raise my hands in a calming manner. "Okay. Okay. Let's just sit down and talk. Put the knife down."
She reluctantly does so, but keeps the knife close. "Are you going to tell me the truth, finally?"
"Katie... You... had an accident last year." I bow my head, tears in my eyes. "Remember that day, last December, when you woke up and you couldn't remember the last month?"
She nods.
"Katie, you died, in November. I was able to save your brain, keep it alive but dormant. A friend of mine... well, friend is not the right word... A former colleague... had a background in robotics." I shake my head. "I couldn't let you go, but... I couldn't let you live like that. A brain in a jar. So I went to him. I swallowed my pride, made myself forget, or ignore, that he was a... let's not mince words, an asshole, and I went to him. Asked him for help."
"And?" Katie gestures for you to move it along.
"And..." I stumble over my words for a moment. "And he agreed. He warned me that it would be hell, for both of us, that you'd feel like a monster, and that I'd *be* a monster for turning you into this... But I couldn't let you go."
"Dad... What did you do?"
"I had him build you a new body and put your brain into it." I sigh heavily. "I let that man turn us both into monsters, because I love you too much to let you go."
She stands back up, and walks over to me. "Dad..." She puts her good hand on my shoulder. "I love you too." She looks at her damaged hand. "Now... you talked about this guy in past tense, right?"
"Niles died earlier this year," I tell her. "I'd say good riddance, but he gave you back to me, so I owe him at least a little respect."
"If he's gone, then... who's gonna fix my hand?"
"I think I know just the person." I pick up the phone and call the mansion that once belonged to my old colleague.
----
Implied EU: Doom Patrol, but wasn't originally written with that universe in mind, just a stray thought changed the roboticist from the POV character to someone he knows, and another stray thought made the connection between the daughter and Cliff Steele, and therefore between the old colleague and Niles "Chief" Caulder.
**EDIT: Small formatting error, forgot to double-return between a couple paragraphs, resulting in it reading like the POV character was asking Katie to tell him the truth.** | 2021-10-20T22:10:15 | 2021-10-20T15:30:07 | 454 | 111 |
[WP] For years you’ve done your very best to hide your powers for your loving boyfriend, but it’s getting increasingly hard to do so due to you being a powerful genie, and him having accidentally made a wish that removed the limit on how many wishes he could get from you… | “Hey Flamedancer. You want the regular?”
“Yeah. Any humans here tonight Mac?”
“Besides myself? No. Not really.”
“Good. I can drop the human look. There we go. My natural blue hue.”
“That’s why I let you supernatural folks have some nights to yourself.”
“Thanks Mac.”
“How’re things with Aaron? Oh, that face says not good.”
“It’s…going…weird. He made a wish today.”
“Uh-uh. Which one?”
“The fifth.”
“……Flame. I’m getting old, but I am pretty sure five is bigger than three.”
“It is.”
“So he knows. Saw you get pulled into the lamp and let you out.”
“…….”
“No? How does he think you’re human still?”
“Well….uh. You know I decide how I grant wishes, right, if not which to grant?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. Sometimes…I can kinda fudge the limits of the binding, ya know, and he’s actually given me a lot of power! So I was able to….”
“I wish you’d get to the point.”
“He said ‘I wish you didn’t have to go back.’ When I went to work a while back. Dammit Mac! I hate when you do that!
“So you got sappy.”
“Shut up.”
“And that managed to break the binding?”
“Well…yeah. The owner of the lamp wished I didn’t have to go back…to work And he did it…just at the time I would have to go back…into the lamp. I didn’t think it would work either! But lo and behold. Here I be.”
“Well, that’s good!”
“Yeah. Great. It’s what I have been working to do since those sages shoved me in there so long ago. The literal goal of my life achieved, and now I can move on to a happy life with Aaron.”
“You hate it.”
“I HATE IT! I can’t tell him, and I was kinda looking forward to turning
To smoke, going back to the lamp, for like..5 seconds. He’d rub me back out, and we’d be a hunky dory Jeannie and Tony!”
“I dream of Jeannie? You were in the lamp during the 60’s.”
“I looked it up online.”
“Ah.”
“But that can’t HAPPEN now, because I don’t go back to the lamp! So now I have to try to perfectly finagle every wish to fulfil them, but not make him realise what the truth of the matter is, and it’s…it’s exhausting.”
“But you love him, and that makes it worth it?”
“But I love him and that makes it worth it.”
“Good girl. You relax for tonight. I’m gonna go mix some blood with my beer, Maven should be in tonight.”
“Right.”
“‘fore I do, what was the wish he made today?”
“…..’I wish we could start a family.’ Mac…stop laughing! It’s not that funny, you prick!” | The aroma of coffee beans, constant loop of jazz blue music. Ah yes, another morning, something I had never thought it to be that simple and perfect before our encounter.
"Wake up, sweetie," said Ames, handing a cup of mocha, "Tired of last night?"
"You know I'll never get tired," said I, carefully holding the cup of warm beverage. "Thanks, it smells lovely."
His lips brushed my cheeks and he grinned.
"I think you smell better...you're beautiful."
A feeling that's so simple yet perfect filled my chest, which has been hollowed for too long. Among all the people I saw in those millenniums, he was the only one who gave me this feeling—happiness.
"Breakfast is at the table. I'll join you after the meeting." I met his gaze and blushed a little. His grin turned into a gentle smile, and he left the room.
I headed to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Long black curly hair, olive eyes, freckles and sunburn from the Arabian heat—in appearance, I didn't age a single day. In times and heart, the true me had withered long ago. I never used my power once. Partly because of fear, but mostly I forbidden the thought of controlling others' lives, because I knew exactly how it felt to be manipulated, controlled…and trapped.
"Don't let your wish devour you." A voice that I didn't remember anymore raised up in my mind. "Did you remember what did it cost to become a genie?"
Yes, I remembered. I didn't deserve any of this. This power, my boyfriend, a purpose to live. I had lived for too long, far too long.
"I wish you could be yourself again," said Ames, who just finished his work and appeared one step behind the door. "You've carried too much for your lifetime, too many sadness and responsibilities."
He hugged me tightly, not in an aggressive way, but like a blanket wrap. I hesitated, and I hugged him back. Then, the air started to vibrate. Flashlights spinning around us, silvery blue strands of light dancing in rings.
The same metallic voice echoed, this time it's radiated from a shadow of me.
"It is time to just let go." Ames hugged me, despite all the chaos ongoing.
"Didn't you sacrifice us!" It had spoken, "I cursed you to lose any single drop of love, freedom and prosperity! May you hold this debt to eternity." It cried with remorse and hatred, followed with a muffled sound of ropes and wooden traps.
"I wish you to leave." This is my first ever wish. The blue light flied around the corner, radiating a calming illuminance. The screams became quieter, turned into a muffled sound, eventually disappeared. It is gone now. Forever.
Streams of tears warmed up my emotionless face, feeling that I was once familiar with came back. I am finally free.
His forehead leaned against mine, and he asked, "What do you want to do now?"
"Anything, anything with you." I kissed him, and we both laughed like idiots.
~~~
First time participating in Writing Prompt. Scripting this during insomnia (stressful lately). Nothing special, simply want to share this little work here. | 2022-02-10T10:18:37 | 2022-02-10T07:44:03 | 47 | 31 |
[WP] The new Emperor cannot be stopped. He is ageless, has unfathomable wealth, and cannot be killed by any known means. However, rebel spies in his government says an ancient enemy of his lay buried, many kilometers into the mantle in a solid metal sphere- a simple creature, and his only weakness. | "So why hasn't he just killed it?"
"What?"
Samuel ceased his digging, just staring over at William. His shoulders heaved up, a half hearted shrug. "Lookit, I'm just saying, right? Youse got the world on its knees, you've lived forever as far as we know, ya never die, even when ol' Barnham gave him a Lamsa Sunrise. Just saying, if ye knew what'd kill ya was here, why wouldn't ya off it too?"
Will stopped for a moment as well, taking the free excuse of Sam's rambling to drink up. The sun was beating heavily upon them, their excavation having already taken up a majority of the day. Somewhere here the intel had said. The entrance to a forgotten hell.
"Well, could be a few things. Pride. Gets to have the satisfaction that he conquered his weakness. Keep it as some sorta trophy. Could be that its like him. Can't die so he's gotta keep it trapped."
Sam shook his head, just working to continue his digging. He'd wished that he could have brough one of the bigger excavators, but no, Command wanted this to be stealthy. They had tried to minimize their exposure as much as possible, any weaklink could lead to the Hand severing the Resistance in half. Which just made the whole thing more head scratching!
"Then why ain't he got some kinda guard set up? Keep a watch, make sure no one can get down there? Youse think that he'd be better protectin' it then."
"Sam, I don't have all the answers, alright? Command says the intel is good, we haven't been shot at, I don't have a problem with d--"
Thunk.
The solid hit of metal upon metal.
Looks like digging was about to be done.
-------
It had taken only an hour more, but soon they had made it into the facility. Power thankfully still ran through its veins, supplying the needed energy for the trip below.
Sterile. Cold. Even with the energy that flowed through, the facility could and would only offer the chilly reception. Some lighting still worked, flickering along to illuminate the metallic halls.
"Oy. Will. Lookit. Old Tongue "
Examination of the discovered text would provide a single hint. Practioners of the dead language were rare. One would have to be sent to follow up on the area, however Will's knowledge let hin decipher just enough.
"Looks like a...holding place is up ahead. Let's check it first."
The Holding Cells would prove to follow through on the name's promise. Plenty of closed and barred rooms, some with their former occupants enjoying eternal rest within. But the prize they wanted was up ahead.
Suspended in the air, rotating upon the point of twin machines, the occupant forced to endure constant rotation. A sphere, likely utterly dense with metallic weight, smoith and round without sign of weakness nor opening. Just a single word on its side.
William reached into his pocket, following along with the sphere as he pulled out a piece of paper. Comparing....and a small nod and smile would soon arrive.
"This is it. We just gotta let it loose now."
--------
Emperor Tarvish reached out for his cup. An old remnant of his childhood, detailed again and again over the centuries. A small sip of the mixture within. The gentle taste of home, of citrus and tea playing upon his senses. Truly something wonderful.
A small chirp echoed in the room, a sign that his rest was going to come to an end soon. With a great sigh he meandered over to the Throne, taking a careful seat upon it. It would be but a moment before the seat woke up, numerous panels and screens popping up for his viewing pleasure. The control of an empire, at his fingertips.
"Your Grace, here are the business reports for today."
Tap.
"Your Grace, here are the damage reports from the resistance attacks."
Tap tap.
"Your Grace, an alarm was triggered at Sector Eight."
....
This had his attention. With a wave, he pulled up the report. Sector Eight was deep into the desert. An almost inhospitable place. The only true item of note there being...
A rare smile appeared on his face.
"Contact Archivist Karasu."
A momentary pause before the familiar keeper of the Archives showed his face on one of the screens.
"Your Grace?"
"Tell me. You did as I asked, correct?"
"Yes sir. I handed out the tomes to the Scribes as requested."
"Good. Once again I must commend you for this current plan. Do you recall to whom you gave the one on Sector Eight's facility to?"
"Ah, yes. That would be Scribe Harold. He was most curious on it afterwards, came asking after the old lab there not a day later. ...ah, it was him? A shame, I had grown to like him."
"I apologize old friend. But you know how these resistances are with their spies. Please send Harold an invitation to the feast. Whatever you need to tell him to convince him. Anyone who was working under him, invite as well. He can be the example to the others."
He reached out for his cup once more, enjoying a small sip. This show would be fun. They had fallen for the first bait. The feast would be the second. It was time to reel them in, and crush the resistance. | The new Emperor made his name after first clawing his way up the Lord's Halls, assassinating and sweet-talking various members of the Empire, pulling strings and calling on favours to reach position of the Imperial Regent, after which the current Emperor fell ill, a cruel decay of the blood, draining him of life.
The new Emperor seized control during the regency, slewing those who opposed him and dissolving the Halls of Law, dismantling even the Lord's Halls, seizing complete authority in his newly formed Dictatorship.
When he seized control, the people suffered, great famines made to sell all of the Empire's goods, great calamities caused just to save money and time, and eventually the people rose up. The great rebellion of 21,139 saw, for the first time in many centuries, all of the peoples in the Empire unite for a common goal; to uproot the Tyrant Emperor.
When the rebel armies finally saw the light of victory, the Emperor personally went out onto the field of battle, riding atop a steed of unfathomable horror, a skeletal behemoth risen from the Old Empire, the nation which once sought to destroy the separate nations, which then caused the uniting of the Salindar Empire, which now descended into tyranny.
The Emperor, to the horrified surprise of the rebels, swung his mighty sceptre and armies of the fallen began to rise, soldiers from centuries past suddenly springing to life from the battlefield around, outnumbering and out training the rebel armies, turning the tide of battle.
When the rebel armies were destroyed, the Emperor began to further solidify his power over his realm, exterminating all of those who even considered rebellion and instituting strict protocols to hold onto power more.
Throughout his realm, the new Emperor endured a multitude of assassination attemps, even a bombing of his Palace, but no matter what people did, he came out unscathed. No weapons could harm him, no words could persuade him, no explosive could destroy him and no numbers could stop him.
Then, when hope finally began to die, the rebels considering fleeing the Empire and leaving it to its own fate, the Imperial Advisor revealed a critical piece of information; there was a way to kill the Emperor.
A hidden power far underneath the earth, an odyssey to achieve but a might to wield. Only the strongest and most dedicated would survive the ordeal, but if they succeed then they can finally stop the Emperor before the world crumbles.
The rebels united once more, burrowing far underground as they searched and searched, discovering many things about their Tyrant Emperor; he was not human, he never was, he was a creature of deception and control; he was an underground entity born to destroy and consume, corrupting and seizing the world to destroy it; he was a world-eater.
The rebels search became more desperate, seeking more and more as the Emperor discovered their plans; bombing areas even suspected to have rebels; killing hundreds of thousands of civilians who were never involved in the civil war.
Then, they found it, the one thing powerful enough to destroy a being of terror; they found the Covenant Hoard. The complex was almost futuristic in nature, terminals and consoles that wouldn't be invented for another multitude of centuries; a fortress of an ancient civilisation.
When the forward squad entered the main command room, a message flared up on the main Co-ordination monitor, covering the entire vast size of the frontal wall, hundreds of smaller desks and consoles resting in front of it.
*Progress Report, 3,209 11:09am, Success*
*We finally did it, we have succeeded at prolonging our civilisation, we have created the Replication, a being who will spread our kind beyond our dying home.*
*Progress Report, 3212 06:41pm, Outbreak*
*We didn't create our saviour, we created our damnation, we've created the end of civilisation on our world and every other world. We haven't created a Replication, we've created a World-Eater, we've created the Crisis we destroyed millennia ago.*
*Progress Report, 3243 00:43pm, End*
*I am the god who was cast down from above, for I was born not to create, but to destroy. When I failed, I created the god who was cast down from above, for it was also born not to create, but to destroy. Our creation will destroy us all.*
*-- Final Warning --*
*Greetings, Humanoids, we knew of your existence long before our demise, and we hope that, if ever our creation escaped its tomb, for we will sacrifice ourselves to save you, that you can find your final hope within these corridors, where our final weapons resides, the End of all Ends.*
The rebels scoured the facility, aware of the emanating final combat, searching for what they seek, then they found it. What we would know as a plasma bomb, which would explode with enough heat and force from the plasma somehow stored within to destroy everything it touches, but to the rebels it was their only hope.
When they finally brought the weapon to the surface, they found the Emperor and his hordes awaiting, ready to finish the war. When, however, the Emperor saw the weapon held by the rebels, he hesitated in fear then turned to ride away on his skeletal steed, but the rebels were ready.
In the final, necessary, act of sacrifice, the rebels activated the weapon, which wiped away everything in the area, eliminating the Emperor and his risen armies. After the Emperor's demise, the Empire began to recover, the democratic portions of the Empire restored as the nations decided to disband the Empire, replacing it with a Federation, to prevent something like the new Emperor ever happening again. | 2022-03-26T05:27:43 | 2022-03-26T04:07:19 | 51 | 12 |
[WP] Magicians are quite rare. They are not born; they're made. It is through unimaginable pain that their powers manifest. Their ability is linked to their own personal trauma. So tell me child, what can YOU do? | Most people think that physical pain is the best way to manifest magical abilities. They cut themselves, lash themselves, burn themselves, allow wild animals to maul them- anything they think will unleash the power inside them. There are entire schools dedicated to torturing hopefuls until they unlock a magical gift.
But not Ellie. She knew. She knew that the strongest powers came from emotional, mental trauma. They left deeper scars, buried deep in the psyche, that unlocked the most powerful magic.
She knew this because it had happened to her.
She was young yet, much younger than the rest of the Magician Trainees being tested today. She stood there quietly, her tiny frame swallowed up by the robes all Trainees taking their final tests was required to wear. Her silver eyes stared unblinking at the examiner, her body completely still.
"Well?" The Examiner asked. "Are you going to show me? If not, I'll have to fail you."
Ellie could feel the eyes of the other Trainees boring into her, hear their soft snickers and sense their hate. She could also feel their anxiety, their fear. It made the long, empty room smell like acid.
"Answer me!" The Examiner snapped, and Ellie smiled, small white teeth gleaming. She raised the hand that held her small Trainee staff- a miniature version of the one the others held- and banged it on the floor. Overhead, glass shattered and tinkled to the ground as lights broke and went out, leaving just the flickering candlelight from the sconces along the edge of the room.
She lowered the top of her staff and tapped the floor with it, dragging it across the stones. A strong wind buffeted the room, blowing out all the candles at once. The room, windowless and far underground, descended into a darkness that seemed almost unnatural. Ellie smiled again, listening to the other Trainees shuffle around, the smell of acid growing stronger as they stumbled around looking for light.
"I wouldn't do that," her mocking voice echoed through the room, even though she spoke not a word. "The darkness holds more secrets and danger than any of you will ever know."
She raised both her arms, her bracelets jangling as her sleeves fell back, and turned in a circle. A small globe of light appeared above her, pulsing brightly and illuminating the silhouettes of monsters slithering through the dark. One of the trainees screamed, and Ellie laughed, relishing their fear and anguish.
She lowered her free hand, stroking the head of one of the creatures that stood next to her.
"Lovely, aren't they? My little ones," the creatures formed a circle around her, facing out to the edges of the room. Each one was different, but they were all horrid and evil looking, sharp fangs and claws and vile, poisonous breath. One of them had bright green drool dripping from its mouth, and where it hit the floor the stones sizzled and melted away.
Ellie slammed her staff onto the floor again, and the creatures stalked closer to the other Trainees. One, an older boy, screamed and made a run for the door on the far side of the room. Ellie sighed as one of her creatures broke rank, lunging on him and dragging him down to the floor. The boy screamed as the creature ripped into him, his cries echoing and his blood spurting through the room.
"I did try to warn you," Ellie sighed dramatically as the rest of the Trainees screamed and started to run for it. Ellie tapped the floor with her staff and the light went out again. Around the room, there were screams of agony, the sounds of ripping flesh and breaking bones. The sounds of jaws clamping, claws scratching, blood dripping. Ellie smiled, taking it all in, breathing in the pain and fear and agony.
And just like that, it was quiet again. The silence was oppressive, filling the room and weighing it down. Ellie tapped her staff again, and the lights came back on in a rush. Around her, the trainees all stood, unharmed, whispering amongst themselves.
In front of her, the Examiner was on his knees, his head bent back and eyes bulging, mouth opened in a silent scream. Ellie looked at him and smiled.
"I suppose this means I pass?" She asked, her first truly spoken words. There was no response from the Examiner, locked in his mind, in the nightmare she had summoned for him. Ellie laughed and bent down to whisper in his ear.
"Don't worry. This too shall pass. When? Well, that I don't know. But when it does, you will come out of it stronger and more powerful than any simple Physical Pain Magician. You will be likened as to a god." Ellie paused and smiled slowly. "That is, if you survive."
She turned and strode down the room to the big wooden doors. She grabbed a new set of robes and a staff from the table by the door, ones that signified her new position as a fully fledged magician, and opened the door. Before she left, she shot a look over her shoulder at the other trainees surrounding their examiner and snorted indelicately.
"Physical Pain Magicians. Useless. All of them." | [P1]
It’s been a rough day. Once again, I was not heard when I spoke up months ago. Just as it always goes. I try my best to tell people what I see. But they never listen to me. Now I am packing up my desk because of layoffs. Layoffs that would have been prevented if people had more faith in what I predicted. I should know by now I can’t control these things. My eyes start to water as I begin to think about Lucy. The last day, I admit I was too protective and I should have given her space yet the panic that set in when she said she was leaving me… I begged her to stay. It was not a selfish request. I had the worst fear about her on that day however I knew not what caused me this angst. All I could communicate was a measly “please don’t go” as she closed the front door. That night, I got a call from the police. She had been in a wreck. I was her emergency contact; she died on impact.
Now, looking at my empty boxes and full drawers after getting laid off… It’s crippling. I don’t know what to do. Go home? Apply again? Repeat? There’s no way I can do this till I die. I need Lucy. I need something.
After packing it all up and getting it all into my car, I go home. It’s a 45 minute commute of tears. When I finally reach my house, it’s as if every ounce of energy is gone from my body. The black is creeping in from my peripheral vision. Something isn’t right. I hear a loud ringing just as my vision completely blacks out.
I wake up atop a cobble path. I see two white high heels in front of me. My heart sinks as I must have thought she was Lucy. Immediately after standing up, I am corrected. In a raspy high pitched voice that does not match her frail body she says, “Hmm… would you like some coffee? We have a nice place just around the lot.”
I reluctantly agreed as I had no clue where I even was. After walking for what honestly felt like seconds, we were there. I looked back to see where I came from and nothing was familiar to me.
“Are you okay dear” she asks, puzzled by my frantic behavior. “Yes, I’m fine. Just lost?” I reply.
“Oh sweety, you are not lost. You have just been found. Tell me…” She pauses for only what I can imagine is suspense. “What do you want to drink?” She lets out holding back a cackle.
That’s when it hits me. I can’t even read the menu. Not in a “Oh I’m too far from home” type of way but in a “Oh shit, this isn’t earth.” Type of way. I immediately begin to panic, tears begin to fill my eyes. As, I’m about to break, wind hits me. Not just any wind though, it passes through what felt like every atom in my being. And just as it started, it had stopped. And I was calm. More so than I’ve ever been. Just as I regain my composure I see her slip something into her pocket.
She communicates with the person making the drinks and I follow her to the table once she had them in hand.
“So what is this” I ask.
“This is Montigora. You wake up here when you have been chosen.” She says as she looks up and into my soul.
“Chosen? Chosen for what? There’s got to be a mistake. I don’t get chosen. That’s not me.”
“Chosen to protect. We here at Montigora are what you would classify as wizards or magicians. They are not born; they're made or rather selected. It is through unimaginable pain that their powers manifest. However, it is their heart that allows them to be chosen. Their ability is linked to their own personal trauma and their power is linked to their emotions. So tell me child, what can YOU do?”
I looked at this old woman asking me questions. With confusion flooding my brain I manage to spill out “I don’t know. Who are you and why am I chosen?”
I can feel my broad shoulders turning inward as anxiety fills my soul while I wait for a response. The old woman’s face begins to wrinkle at the concept of not knowing my power.
“What is your worst fear?” She asks after thinking for a while.
“My worst fear has came to be. The love of my life died because I couldn’t express what I was feeling right. I knew she was in danger that day. I knew not the extent. And now her blood feels imbedded into my hands.”
The old woman smiles at me and says two words; “Older pain.”
As the words escape her lips I am hit with my early life, the scene of me crying in the backseat of a car. My mother was trying to console me. When she turned around I cried harder as this feeling inside me was raging like a wildfire. Then there was a lot of glass. Blood…
“The car wreck.” I murmur.
“Yes!” She says with excitement grinning ear to ear. “The car wreck!” she laughs. “Now that you are older, do you see?”
“See what?” I ask almost insulted.
“You have a good heart. The emotions you feel in these moments are not real emotions. They an entire novel you can read with training. They are telling you exactly what is going to happen next. When you don’t listen and it’s imperative, they scream” | 2022-04-26T12:51:38 | 2022-04-26T10:55:23 | 29 | 10 |
[WP] After saving a deer from drowing, the forest guardian gives you access to a secret grove, hidden from mortal eyes. For every hour you spend there, three days pass outside. You age only for the time you spend in the grove. | Not a very good deal. You see, I'm a hunter. My job is to slay in order to provide, and I've provided for many, thus I've slain many. I've learned not to kill more than what I need, but others need more than I do. So I hunt, and over the years I've made the forest my playground, I know every root, I know every bush. The round arch of all the mounds, pools where water gather in cold mornings, where the wind is strongest, where the flock lingers and the meeker birds gather. I know the smell of every place I've stepped, at every season of the year, and I own it as if it was my own. Break a twig, show me and I can tell you where you broke it. That cursed deer, it - she, was just not in condition to be harvested. I don't know why or how, but it felt like it wasn't to be harvested, ever. So I shot him, the newbie sunnovabich that was gonna kill it. Her.
She led me somewhere else, somewhere I didn't know, and there I realized that I already knew everything. Before, something was missing from the forest, something I sought but never found. It felt incomplete, something was missing. But now I know, and now there are no more things to know and I feel at peace. But peace came at an heavy loss. Now it's the others, they have aged and they don't know me. They don't know the forest. They don't respect the forest. So I hunt, because I'm a hunter. I slay in order to provide, and now I provide safety. No more will other humans lay harm to the forest. | Death
Death comes for all of us, no matter where you hide. You cannot outrun her cold embrace. Death is the only certainty in the universe. Even gods die, when their absolute power dissolves into the ethereal reality of our lives. But isn't the end that matters but the journeys, those thousand pages filled with words and sentences, those mini adventures where we clash against the inertia of the now.
It isn't the end that matters but the end will come one day or another. And as such, today, in this barren and desolate place between realities, I welcome it, like you welcome an old friend coming to libérate you from a curse.
Elderly
Becoming old isn't for the weak used to say my grandfather. I guess he was really strong since he lived to nearly 110 years. I on the other hand felt like a cheap imitation. Frail from the start and destined to die. I notelets went above and beyond his age, with a tiny bit of help that is. Was I strong or weak?
In the end. It does not matter.
Adult
I have lost count how many times I tried to come back. There is no use. The world changes too much too fast. Yesterday alone was widely different than the last. Is as if the world is running from himself, head first into the unknown and I am standing there like a rock in the middle of a river. Watching the flow of time from withing wihout being able to change anything.
Youth
This place is magnificent, while is true that time pases different I will never regret leaving them behind. Never.
What are they good for anyways? Is not like they would recognise me anymore. They have changed so much and I haven't. Still the same idiot as they were. Plus I am not alone here. I have the trees and the branches and the animals and the flowers.
Oh, who I am kidding. I miss them.
I miss my friends and my family. But I cannot come back. | 2022-07-07T05:13:00 | 2022-07-06T23:39:14 | 51 | 18 |
[WP] Reversed Hades and Persephone situation: the Goddess of Life kidnaps the God of Death to be her new husband, meaning that six months of the year things are normal but the other half literally nothing is able to die. | “...and their story of unyielding love is why we celebrate Pyre Day,” Leo said, concluding the myth that served to explain the festival to his grandson. The boy had celebrated his fifth birthday last cycle and was now old enough to begin taking an active role in village life. *Shame his first memories of official Curator duties will be before Pyre Day*. Leo hoped the love story would soften the impression in his mind as time went on.
“Okay, Grampa... but why do we need a wheelbarrow?”
“Well, Ben, over the six cycles of Vitas, sometimes people have an accident, or get very sick. They know that on the first day of Mors, they’ll finally take their Long Rest. And some of those people are able to get themselves to the Pyres. But the other ones, the ones too sick or hurt to walk... Well, that’s why we need the wheelbarrows.”
“Oh! I get it! So we can help them get there!”
“Exactly, Benny. You’re a sharp kid.” Leo smiled. The kid really was sharp -- maybe some day, he’d be the one to show this village a better way. But for now, he’d decided he would shelter the child from life’s morbidities for as long as he could. So he’d kept the other reason for the wheelbarrows to himself. It would be grim enough when Ben realized what the Pyres were for. He had yet no concept of death. Leo had spoken to his son - the boy’s father - about this, considering that as the heir of a Curator family he’d need to partake in the grim ritual as his first Task. But the boy’s parents had decided Pyre Day was the perfect introduction. He'd voiced his dissent to deaf ears.
“Grampa, look!” Ben pointed down the road, toward a one-legged woman standing against doorframe of a rundown cottage.
Leo knelt down to meet the boy’s eye. “You want to go help her?”
Ben nodded vigorously.
“You know the way to the Locus?”
The boy nodded again. “Yes, you showed me yesterday!”
Leo chuckled. “Hah, all right, just checking. Go ahead.” He gave his grandson’s head a pat before nudging him on. He had his own Task for the afternoon.
The information Leo had withheld - that Ben would learn soon enough... too soon - was what compelled him toward the edges of the village, where the relative safety of numbers and torches diminished, dissolving into the blackness of the forest beyond. It was at the Outskirts he began to see more of his fellow Curators. He noticed a few that were Ben’s age. A cocktail of scorn and guilt and fear rushed through his veins and propelled him forward with a minuscule hope that this time would be the last.
The noise began to reach Leo’s ears. It was a low, incomprehensible groan. The creatures contributing to the grisly cacophony were no longer capable of true speech. Still, their intention was a mystery to no one. These poor souls, if indeed a soul they still retained, were those ousted from the village. The dead-but-not-dead. Those who had suffered such an accident, or had been rendered so ill, that they now exhibited little of their humanity. The scene was not for those with faltering nerves.
Some were husks, worn down to skin and bone, quite literally, their organs rotted away. Always hungry with no stomach to feed. Always gasping for air to fill illusory lungs. Some were merely chunks of flesh, open mouths groaning endlessly, sunken eyes darting around in mad exuberance. Leo couldn’t help himself from wondering if they tasted or felt or saw. He stopped himself immediately. The season of Vitus was just that: life. In all its grotesque beauty, its pristine perversion.
As he filled his wheelbarrow with those that yet remained, preparing them for the Great Burning and finally ferrying them to peace, Leo felt the usual begrudging appreciation for his macabre lot. The same one that had allowed him to retain some solace and sanity to carrying out the Tasks. He knew the value of life, but he also knew the value of death. He’d seen it first-hand, the alternative. He wasn’t a particularly spiritual man, and sometimes he even questioned the whether the gods were simply the myths they inhabited (what god would allow the barbarity at his feet?). But as he worked, he basked in the awareness that anything, even oblivion, was better than this.
As his harvest breached the brim of the wheelbarrow, he turned back toward the village and prepared for the next trip. He’d find Benny before he went back out and they’d share a plum. Leo smiled at the thought. | ##Tears of Death
Primvia sits on her throne of roses with a crown of lilacs. Across her domain, nature sings in the warm light of day. A small pool directly before her contains fish leaping into the air. At the bottom of the pool, a batch of eggs begins to hatch. Primvia closes her eyes as life begins before her.
A gust of wind wakes her. A tall man wearing loose clothing with callouses on his feet stands before her. His skin glows with youth in the sun, and his smile implies mischief. His eyes convey the wisdom of his age.
"Argint, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" Primvia asks.
"Decet has gone missing. I was sent to look for him," Argint replies.
"Understandable, you are the fastest of us, but I haven't the faintest idea of where he is." Primvia stands from her throne. "Now, if you would be so kind to excuse me, I have flowers to tend."
"Iad said he saw Decet here," Argint says. Primvia stares at the sun.
"I should've know he'd give me away, and I thought I was his favorite aunt."
"I don't understand what you would want with Decet. His personality is quite dour," Argint says.
"Ah, but that's his appeal." Primvia moves closer to Argint." I spend all of my time in sunshine laughing. The brooding lord of darkness is a refreshing change of pace."
"I can understand wanting a change in environment, but you have cursed the lives of everything on Terra. If you don't care about the lives of our subjects, ask yourself how Decet feels about the arrangement," Argint says.
"Decet loves it here. He can tell you himself. Decet!" Primvia yells. In the corner of her domain is a large forest with foliage thick enough to block the sun to allow for nocturnal beasts to thrive. A pale man with glowing blue eyes steps out of the forest. His shoulders are slouched, but every step is filled with joy.
"Argint, it's so lovely that you decided to join us." Decet puts his arm around Primvia. Argint blinks several times.
"Wow, I wasn't expecting you to like her."
"Why wouldn't I love her? Her cheery demeanor brightens my existence."
"But you are creating a world where everything is immortal."
"Is that really a curse? Everyone dreads seeing me. Primvia is the first person who wants to talk with me." Decet's voice cracks. "It's wonderful."
"Yes, the trees have grown so large that animals have become trapped in them. The animals can't die so they are doomed to a life in pain. The fish have rapidly overpopulated the sea and spend the days starving. Humans have become largely sedimentary due to the old age. What youth do remain are left to care for them. Terra needs death. You need to leave here," Argint says.
"No, I don't want to leave her." Decet says.
"And I want him to stay." Primvia steps before him and makes the vines grow from the ground. Argint flies above them.
"Alright, fine how about a deal." Argint holds out his arms. The vines recede, and Decet steps forward.
"I'm listening."
"For six months of the year, you'll be here with Primvia. For the other six months, you'll be harvesting the dead that you missed," Argint says. Primvia and Decet look at each other.
"I think it's a good idea. Death makes life worth living," Primvia says.
"Alright, I accept your terms." Decet steps forward. Argint grabs Decet's arm and drags him out of Primvia's realm. When they leave, Argint quickly puts the end of a chain on Decet's wrist. The chain pulls Decet to the underworld without Argint who follows closely.
"Argint, what is this?" Decent struggles in the chain.
"It was crafted by Vulja. It extends to the edge of Terra to allow you to harvest souls but no further," Argint says.
"You lied to me. You broke your word as a god."
"I was the god of lies before I was a messenger." Argint laughs. "Traspot gave me this role to keep me occupied. Thank you for allowing me to relive my former glory."
"Primvia will not stand for this," Decet cries.
"She's already been chained to her realm by Iad and Sate. She has no say in this." Decet hurls a curse at Argint who dodges it. Argint flies away from the god. "You have one consolation. You will see Primvia whenever a soul crosses from the world from the living to the dead. Enjoy those moments."
Argint flees the underworld.
From that day forward, every soul was greeted by a weeping man with a weeping woman behind them. They do not weep for the souls. They weep for the love they lost.
---
r/AstroRideWrites | 2022-11-15T18:12:06 | 2022-11-15T16:49:40 | 565 | 48 |
[WP] An AITA post in an established fictional universe | AITA for loving my childhood best friend?
My childhood wasn't the best. My dad was a frequently unemployed drunkard, and my mother was too weak to stand up to him. He was cruel to the both of us. The only bright spot was knowing that I would be going to my mother's old boarding school, and then a friendship with another local child who would also be attending.
This other special child was wonderful in every way. Her hair was the red of autumn leaves, her eyes the shade of spring grass, and her smile as bright as the sun. She was perfect. And I was in love. Even the disapproval of her horrible, ugly, spiteful, jealous sister wasn't enough to mar our friendship.
We were split up at school by the archaic house system, but we persevered with our friendship despite the rivalries between our houses. But that was ruined by the actions of a bullying buffoon that she shared her colours with. He and his friends were the nightmares of the school, given licence to terrorise anyone by the staff, purely by virtue of the house they resided in. I was a favourite target of theirs, because the leader of their gang disliked my friendship with my flower. He was threatened by it, as he desired her for himself.
She chose him eventually, no doubt worn down by his harassment of her, and they had a child together. I still love her though, despite her subsequent murder, and seeing her son every day at the school we both attended, at which I now teach, reminds me of both that love and the loathing for the man who stole her from me.
AITA for loving my beautiful flower still? | AITA for throwing my kid off of Stark Tower???
&#x200B;
Hey guys, so my (29F) husband (30M) is pretty mad at me, and I don't really see why... Anyway last night my husband and I were at Tony Starks party. I brought my 8 month old with me, because I'm not one of those moms who's going to let childbirth get in the way of my life. Tony was in the middle of making a speech about some new green energy deal he had created with the government, when 3 different guys with iron man suits flew up to the window and blew the shit out of the dance floor we were currently standing on! I have no idea how they got the suits, but clearly Tony knew them from somewhere.
Anyway I watched Tony jump out of the window to start fighting them. I've seen the news, and I know when he jumps out of the window like that he has a suit that flies to him so he can get right in the action! One of these bad iron men started firing at me, and I can't reasonably run and hide when I've got all that extra weight in my arms! Anyway, I was by the window, and knew Tony was fighting somewhere out there, and it sounded like he had just defeated one of the bad guys, so I threw my baby out the window towards Iron Man and ran as far as I could from the bad iron man. Tony CAUGHT HIM, might I add! What was I supposed to do, get me and my baby shot?
Anyway Tony handled the situation and eventually I got my baby back, but my husband has stopped talking to me and is threatening to leave me and take the child for throwing it out the window. He doesn't seem to understand we would have probably both died if I didn't! AITA for saving both my own and my child's life? | 2022-12-06T11:10:19 | 2022-12-06T10:53:14 | 40 | 24 |
[WP] An AITA post in an established fictional universe | AITA for killing my girlfriend's father (I thought he was my uncle)?
I (22M) killed my girlfriend (20F)'s father (86M) because he was hiding behind a curtain in my mother (42F)'s bedroom and I thought he was my uncle (37M). I want to kill my uncle for a number of reasons, including that he is sleeping with my mother, his brother's widow; he does not like me; the ghost of my father told me that he was killed by my uncle and then I put on a play to prove it and it worked. Later my mother told me to come to her room and she yelled at me about angering my uncle due to the play and I yelled at her to stop doing incest and then she told me it wasn't technically incest because they aren't related by blood. And my girlfriend's father was hiding behind a curtain in my mother's bedroom the entire time and said something because he thought my mother was being murdered because both of us were yelling, and I thought he was my uncle, and I stabbed through the curtain, killing him.
My mother, of couse, yelled at me about this, and I told her I did it because I thought it was my uncle, and she yelled at me more. My girlfriend, upon hearing about her father, went mad (over a period of time) and my best friend is scared for my sanity and also really mad, both because of this and a number of other reasons (including that I sent two mutual friends to their deaths, for various reasons).
So, AITA? | AITA for throwing my kid off of Stark Tower???
&#x200B;
Hey guys, so my (29F) husband (30M) is pretty mad at me, and I don't really see why... Anyway last night my husband and I were at Tony Starks party. I brought my 8 month old with me, because I'm not one of those moms who's going to let childbirth get in the way of my life. Tony was in the middle of making a speech about some new green energy deal he had created with the government, when 3 different guys with iron man suits flew up to the window and blew the shit out of the dance floor we were currently standing on! I have no idea how they got the suits, but clearly Tony knew them from somewhere.
Anyway I watched Tony jump out of the window to start fighting them. I've seen the news, and I know when he jumps out of the window like that he has a suit that flies to him so he can get right in the action! One of these bad iron men started firing at me, and I can't reasonably run and hide when I've got all that extra weight in my arms! Anyway, I was by the window, and knew Tony was fighting somewhere out there, and it sounded like he had just defeated one of the bad guys, so I threw my baby out the window towards Iron Man and ran as far as I could from the bad iron man. Tony CAUGHT HIM, might I add! What was I supposed to do, get me and my baby shot?
Anyway Tony handled the situation and eventually I got my baby back, but my husband has stopped talking to me and is threatening to leave me and take the child for throwing it out the window. He doesn't seem to understand we would have probably both died if I didn't! AITA for saving both my own and my child's life? | 2022-12-06T15:09:06 | 2022-12-06T10:53:14 | 34 | 24 |
[WP] you are immortal, had to break up with your girlfriend cuz you couldn’t stand the grief of her inevitable death. She seems surprisingly understanding and you believe you’ll never see her again. Centuries later you are shopping and come across her and she looks just as surprised to see you.
Wow this uh- this blew up- | "*Holy french fried fuck, Sharon*?" He practically screeched, the women in question turning to stare shocked at the shrieking man.
There was a pregnant pause as each stared at the other.
"Dave?" She whispered, a hand coming out as if to prove he was here "You're..?"
"Yep and you're?" He grinned as she laughed out her own reply. In no time at all they'd managed to stagger their way to some cafe and over a drink or twelve, catch up. "So you're telling me, you were a *Mesoamerican* Life Deity??? You couldn't keep a cactus alive" Dave giggled, arms flailing, eyes lit up with that familiar spark. "Uh huh" Sharon drawled "and you were cursed to forever walk the earth because and I quote, 'stole Death's favourite cloak', did you never try to give it back???" She asked incredulously, even as Dave awkwardly ran a hand through his hair.
"It was awkward alright? I thought about it but I never knew how to find the fucker and eventually I got used to it, I meant it worked out didn't it? I met you!" He finished, sipping at whatever beer he was on now, grinning at her the entire time. Sharon internally giggled at his antics and let out a well practiced long suffering sigh "I guess i'm stuck with you" she teased to an affirmative nod. | He was an immortal, a being who had been alive since the beginning of time. He had lived through countless lifetimes and seen the world change in ways that others could only dream of. He also had a secret, one he had never shared with anyone. He could not die.
But with this blessing came a curse. He could not grow old with anyone, for no matter how much he loved them, they were always destined to die. This had been the source of much of his loneliness over the years, and had made it difficult for him to form close relationships.
But then he had met her. She was beautiful, compassionate and kind, and the two of them had fallen in love. But he knew that in time, she would grow old and die, and he could not bear the thought of her passing away, so he had to break up with her.
To his surprise, she had been understanding of his situation and had respected his decision. He had thought he would never see her again and that was the last time they had spoken.
Centuries later, he was out shopping and as he walked down the street, he spotted her. She looked exactly the same as the day they had parted. She was just as surprised to see him as he was to see her.
They stood there for a moment, unable to speak. Finally, he was the first to break the silence, telling her about his immortality. She listened intently, astonished, as he recounted his story and explained how he could never again be with someone he loved, for fear of having to succumb to the same grief as before.
She said nothing, but instead she grabbed his hand, and for the first time in centuries, he felt alive. | 2022-12-08T08:51:31 | 2022-12-08T08:13:01 | 29 | 14 |
[WP] A man wants to sell his soul to a demon but the thing he wants in return is so dubious the demon is thrown for a loop. | "So... You want to fuck a demon?" Laza'k scratched his forehead. "This is a stupid request, even by human standards."
"Hey, I've seen some pretty hot demon babes in my time."
"Anime is not realistic. You spend far to much time jerking it in your mom's basement, Jay."
"Well it's my soul. I can trade it for anything, right? So I wanna trade it to fuck a demon."
"You do realize you could be eaten alive."
"No, not one of those demons. I want a cute little succubus." Jay demonstrated the curves with his hands.
"That... that's not a thing. Succubi devour men's souls. They only look pretty. Then they show their true form-" Laza'k shuddered "And tear your soul from your body. You don't wanna fuck one, trust me."
"Yes I do." Jay sat back in his swivel chair. "If you can't deliver, then go away. I've got like two terabytes of hentai waiting."
"You're a fucking idiot!"
"Do I have to go to upper management?" Jay asked calmly. "I'm sure Satan would love to hear that you turned down a soul."
"Upper management?! Are you-" Laza'k ran a hand through his hair. "You know what, fuck it." There was a flash of light and the rank smell of sulfur filled the room. Scorched parchment and a demonic looking quill were presented to Jay. "One fuck with a succubus in exchange for one soul."
"Thank you." Jay said with a grin, and signed the parchment.
"Goddamn kids." Laza'k mumbled as he rolled up the parchment and dissipated into noxious fumes.
A few months later, Laza'k saw a familiar face mopping blood, feces and piss off the brimstone streets. "Kid."
"Demon."
"Was it worth it?"
"Yep. See, since you already took my soul, she couldn't agonizingly steal it from my body. So I just ended up having the greatest fuck in the history of ever. Did you know you can browse 4chan down here?"
"Un-fucking-believeable." | "You want whaaaaaaat?!" Fe'na was never taken for such a loop in her life. "I mean really I don't get this. Why would anyone want this?" She look at the man who sat down and negotiated business with her. "I don't think I'm asking to much. Its a win-win benefit for both of us."
The demon looked over the contract carefully reading the text again. "So you offer me 10% of your souls in exhange for the souls of your family and return of the ten percent of the soul that I have once you've gather me 10,000 souls in exhange for 10 acres of my kingdom in hell and a Dukedom." Fe'na look over the wording and saw that it was a pennies on the dollar deal for her.
"I don't get it. Why sell out your own kind? How will you even get the souls." The man smile and stood up to open his brief case, "If you look over the paper work. I've never broken a sin of the lord till now and my family is clean of sins through faith of your enemy. My work is that of a lawyer and on the side I am the Sunday school teacher for my church which puts me in prime spots for both pure and corrupt souls."
Fe'na tail wagged in excited before stopping, "I get that but why summon me and why give this up for dukedom?" He smiled and closed his case. "Simple, Ma'am. I spoke with an angel before me and heaven doesn't negotiate. If I can't save everyone then I have to look out for myself and my family."
"Its a deal." Fe'na said before writing on the contract and the man smiled. "Thank you." The man snapped his fingers and a larger demon stood behind him. "I told you I could do it, Lord Satan." He nodded and chuckled, "You win. Fe'na you lose, did you not smell the two type of ink on the sheet?" She looks at the red paper and with a more careful glance noticed that there was a stipulation that if she agreed to the deal she would offer her soul to the human. "You tricked me." Satan smiled, "More like he tricked us all. I bet 10% of hell that he couldn't trick one of my top Demoness into giving up her own soul. Enjoy being a maid you silly worm. I've got better thing to do." The man smiled as Fe'na demonic power flowed into him. | 2014-05-15T20:43:23 | 2014-05-15T18:07:44 | 390 | 68 |
[WP] A man wants to sell his soul to a demon but the thing he wants in return is so dubious the demon is thrown for a loop. | "Four lemons," Greg responded.
"It's done," said the demon. The response was so quick that the smoke from its appearance hadn't yet left the room.
"...and some sugar," Greg said. He stared blankly at the demon and blinked once.
The demon also blinked. A subtle mark of shock passed over its ashy face.
"Um, it's done. We're done here," it said.
"Oh alright," Greg answered. "It's just that I'm trying to make lemonade and I needed the sugar."
The demon shifted from one hoof to another. The man, who's soul it now owned, continued to stare in expectation.
"Why didn't you just ask for lemonade?" the demon asked.
"Oh, I just like the homemade stuff better," Greg said. For a man who just gave away his afterlife he appeared stupidly confident in his suburban kitchen.
"You could have just asked me for homemade lemonade," the demon said. It was smugly satisfied turning its victim down, but also annoyed that Greg was not grasping the weight of the agreement previously made.
"You probably wouldn't make it how I like it," Greg said.
The two figures continued standing in front of the oven. A tiny salt pentagram was still sprinkled in front of the burners.
"Well then. I'm going," said the demon.
"Alright," Greg replied. "Have a good day then."
"You...too." The demon slowly trotted toward his portal. Behind it the man placed his four lemons into a basket and took a seat at his kitchen table. He calmly reached for his cup of coffee.
The demon stopped. It didn't feel guilt but felt like it needed to say something.
"Maybe your neighbor has some sugar," the demon said.
"Couldn't you just give me some like you did the lemons?" Greg asked.
"I can't do free ones," the demon said.
"Oh," the man responded.
A short moment passed. The demon waited for that moment then started to turn.
"I'll trade my son for some sugar," Greg said without expression.
The demon stood hunched in his tracks. His hairy back faced Greg. "I need consent from each of..."
"And I'll trade my wife for some ice. My father for a pitcher and my dog for a clean glass," Greg said.
"Your getting a little ahead of yourself...," the demon started to say.
"And I'll give you my grandmother for a coaster," Greg was picking up the pace of his plan now. "My neighbor's baby for a wooden spoon plus another from the orphanage for a cloth napkin."
"Oh yeah," the man added, "I found a box of stray cats that I'll crush for you myself for a cocktail umbrella."
The portal swirled in front of the demon. It spoke looking away from kitchen.
"Give me back my lemons Greg," it said. "I should have checked to make sure I could collect from you before I handed them over."
| This is my spot. I always sit here. There is a side door slightly out of my vision. It’s alarmed. It ought not be an issue. I turn and check again. Still closed. It’s just me and the barista. She’s in the back and out of sight. I scan the counter and coffee machines again. Still empty.
I check the lights methodically. If one is out that’s where the camera will be. All on. I cramp the fingers of my right hand. Index and ring finger straight out, pinky out to the side and middle finger bent at the second knuckle. I hit the brushed metal table top with the pad of the middle finger 17 times. 17!
I feel a chill. I check the door, check the counters. I can sense that he’s here. He’s in the chair. I scan the lights. I tap. 23. 23! This was a mistake. This is a mistake. 23. 23 – fuck. This is bad.
He can do it. He can end it. It’ll be over. 23. No. Was it 22? No. I can’t have an even now. No. No. No. Slow. 29. “Can they see me? Hear me?”
“Who?”
“This was a mistake. You could...”
“They can’t see you. No one can hear you. You can’t see me. You’re private. You know what a demon demands.”
7. 6? 17. 17? Do 5. Just do 5. 11. 11? Yes, 11.
“I want them to stop. That’s all. They can follow anyone else. I don’t care. Just not me.”
He doesn’t say anything. 17.
“I know what you want, but it can’t be done. There’s no one watching you. This is the only way the deal works. A demon gives you something and you surrender your soul to him. Ask for a real thing and a demon can throw in this thing too.”
7. 7. 7. 3 sevens.
That’s good. “I want a Gamblers Anonymous coin.”
“A Demon could make this deal.”
I reach in my pocket. There is a coin there. I pull it out. It’s the coin. I flip it four times. 3 heads and 1 tail. Four times. It’s an even. Worse, it’s a square. It doesn’t feel wrong.
I can feel that he’s not in the chair. It’s done. It's over.
----------------------
The man taps the door as he leaves. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
| 2014-05-15T21:16:19 | 2014-05-15T21:10:17 | 252 | 22 |
[WP] A man wants to sell his soul to a demon but the thing he wants in return is so dubious the demon is thrown for a loop. | "For Lucifers sake!" blasted a voice as a not-quite-human form began to solidify in the red smoke seeping up from the ground. "Where in the world did all these summoning spells come from!?" it continued "Just today I have had a guy named Ted ask to be able to kill demons, A Greg that wanted god damn lemons, some sex maniac named Jay that wanted to fuck a demon and some young girl set on genocide that asked for the apocalypse." it trailed, the shape began to take a familiar appearance.
"You… You look just like me?" Gabriel stated
“Yeah well, that’s how we work – we are the worst inside you.” The now apparent demon responded. “Now tell me what you want, and be done with it.”
“You can give me anything, at the cost of my soul?” queried Gabriel
“Anything your mortal mind could possibly dream, inside our rules of course.” answered the demon
“And what are the rules?” Gabriel inquired
“Fucks sake, it’s never easy is it. If only that lemon guy had had a soul, I could be home by now watching Game of Thrones. Ok buddy, I’ll give you the short and narrow;
We can’t do absolute power, that’s reserved for some esoteric asshole… can’t remember his name, I think he goes by a title? Could you believe the arrogance?
We can’t bring somebody back to life unless we own the rights their soul. So no Lincoln, King, Teresa, Gandhi and… surprisingly, Hitler. Right?
And finally, although we can give you super powers, I advise against it… Once you sell your soul to us there’ll be a legion of asshat angels just waiting to put you in line. They will watch your every move, you’ll have NO privacy, no moral rights and the moment you do something that MIGHT comprise the integrity of common knowledge, you’re a goner. I think they operate under the name Neovitalism Security Angels, or the NSA for short.
That’s basically it, anything else is possible”
“Ok, then I know what I want.” Gabriel stated clearly.
“Go ahead…” the demon pushed
“I want… my desire… is that…” Gabriel sputtered
“Jesus crucified, just tell me!” shouted the demon with an edge of impatience
“Ok, Ok, I’ll sell you my soul... if you agree that, when I die…” now it seemed that Gabriel was dragging out his request on purpose.
“Yes, that when you die, what?” the demon demanded.
“If you agree that when I die, you’ll send my soul to Heaven.”
“FUCK THIS, FUCK TODAY, I QUIT.” screamed the demon as his body instantly dispersed back into red smoke and returned to the ground.
Gabriel smirked, it wasn't every day that you got to fuck with a demon.
| This is my spot. I always sit here. There is a side door slightly out of my vision. It’s alarmed. It ought not be an issue. I turn and check again. Still closed. It’s just me and the barista. She’s in the back and out of sight. I scan the counter and coffee machines again. Still empty.
I check the lights methodically. If one is out that’s where the camera will be. All on. I cramp the fingers of my right hand. Index and ring finger straight out, pinky out to the side and middle finger bent at the second knuckle. I hit the brushed metal table top with the pad of the middle finger 17 times. 17!
I feel a chill. I check the door, check the counters. I can sense that he’s here. He’s in the chair. I scan the lights. I tap. 23. 23! This was a mistake. This is a mistake. 23. 23 – fuck. This is bad.
He can do it. He can end it. It’ll be over. 23. No. Was it 22? No. I can’t have an even now. No. No. No. Slow. 29. “Can they see me? Hear me?”
“Who?”
“This was a mistake. You could...”
“They can’t see you. No one can hear you. You can’t see me. You’re private. You know what a demon demands.”
7. 6? 17. 17? Do 5. Just do 5. 11. 11? Yes, 11.
“I want them to stop. That’s all. They can follow anyone else. I don’t care. Just not me.”
He doesn’t say anything. 17.
“I know what you want, but it can’t be done. There’s no one watching you. This is the only way the deal works. A demon gives you something and you surrender your soul to him. Ask for a real thing and a demon can throw in this thing too.”
7. 7. 7. 3 sevens.
That’s good. “I want a Gamblers Anonymous coin.”
“A Demon could make this deal.”
I reach in my pocket. There is a coin there. I pull it out. It’s the coin. I flip it four times. 3 heads and 1 tail. Four times. It’s an even. Worse, it’s a square. It doesn’t feel wrong.
I can feel that he’s not in the chair. It’s done. It's over.
----------------------
The man taps the door as he leaves. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
| 2014-05-16T00:40:16 | 2014-05-15T21:10:17 | 37 | 22 |
[WP] You are a young deity that wins 2nd place in a science fair. Your entry was the planet Earth. Write about your utter disbelief at what came 1st. | *Goddammit! Not again! Every fucking time!*
"ZEUS! HEY ZEUS!"
"What's up?"
*Oh so he's going to play dumb?*
"You stole my idea, what the hell man?!"
"I didn't *steal* it, I improved on it. If you have a problem take it up wi-"
*Improved on it?! That arrogant son of a bitch!*
"It was perfect the way it was, asshole."
"It was *ok*, but I wasn't a fan of the shape of it."
"So you just decide to flatten it and call it your own?"
"Hey man, it just makes more sense like that. Like seriously, a sphere? The fuck were you thinking? You know everything on the bottom is just going to fall into space, right?"
*Ugh, typical Olympian.*
"I made this thing called gravity, dipshit. It's this force tha- forget it, it doesn't matter. Listen Zeus, refuse the award and remove yourself from the pool - or else."
"Or else what? You'll turn me into wine?"
"What? No, you're thinking of my son."
"Aren't you guys kind of like the same person?"
"No dude, it's complicated. Just... just refuse the award and we'll be cool."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because if you don't, I'll have to report this to the Supreme One."
"The writer?"
"The one and only."
"You wouldn't."
"Watch me. Yo /u/Sweet_Fetal_Jesus! Zeus is being a real cunt! Mind helping a brother out?"
"NO! NO PLEASE DON-"
**BAM! A giant vortex splits the fabric of space and time, engulfing Zeus.**
"Deus ex machina, bitch."
| Jimmy won...
Of all the contestants, it had to be Jimmy, my arch rival.
I should have won too...
My planet produced smarter lifeforms.
They grew faster.
Developed technology faster.
Explored their solar system faster.
But Jimmy... He created worms.... A whole planet of giant worms...
They had no distinct features. No real individuals.
They were just worms.
They had no cities, no technology.
They were just worms.
We had those on earth but they were small and unimportant.
But the judges gave Jimmy first place.
They said that he had created the perfect species.
They never fought. They never had conflicting opinions.
They were just worms.
They had, perhaps, another 50 million years before they evolved enough to make the simplest technology.
Hell, they still needed to evolve arms first.
But the judges decided. Jimmy's worm planet won first place.
They said his planet has a steady predictable progression.
Earth... On the other hand, was unpredictable and the humans constantly set themselves back.
It was impossible to tell whether earth would last. When they discovered nuclear technology, bets were placed that they would destroy themselves.
Nobody ever bet on Jimmy's planet. They were predictable. They grew at a slow but steady pace. It was easy to tell exactly what they were going to do next.
They said that if earth survived long enough to become civilized, to unite under a common goal of exploration and science then perhaps they could have won.
But it was impossible to tell if that would happen before they all killed themselves or destroyed my planet.
Nobody had any doubts about Jimmy's worms.
They always worked together. They weren't greedy, or hostile. They lived in peace.
Once they developed technology, in a few million years or so, they were sure to form a great society and exponentially pass humans, or so the judges said..
I don't believe it.
I should have won.
They were just stupid worms.
| 2014-06-16T11:58:58 | 2014-06-16T10:42:45 | 108 | 32 |
[FF] Write me a seven sentenced (or less) horror story
Wow guys, I did NOT expect this many feedback from you. You guys just made my night :D | I sat down in my bed and pulled out my teddy bear
I sat him up as I kissed his head, wishing him goodnight
I jerked up straight as I heard the footsteps up the stairs
I jerked under my covers as I tried to pretend I was asleep
Papa opened the door "Oh hey baby girl, are you still awake?"
Papa closed the door as he unbuckled his belt "Soon will be."
| Although these aren't mine at all, I think you'd like this link: http://thoughtcatalog.com/michael-koh/2013/07/40-freaking-creepy-ass-two-sentence-stories/
But heres my own (I'm terrible at scary stories but I didn't want to just post a link):
I was thinking about trying to get a more tan skin. People are more attracted to it. I see those people on the beach, almost orange like, and I want it. All of my older tan skins have dried up in the closet. Maybe I'll flirt with someone and try to get them to come over to my house. I think I'd look good. | 2014-06-27T16:14:48 | 2014-06-27T15:58:13 | 55 | 12 |
[FF] Write me a seven sentenced (or less) horror story
Wow guys, I did NOT expect this many feedback from you. You guys just made my night :D | I covered my mouth in shock as the stench rammed into me. I yelled out to my wife, "what the hell are you doing?"
She looked up from the worktable, her body covered in blood and guts, and turned to face me. On the table were the bodies of our two children, along with several other mangled body parts.
She smiled crookedly, "fixing them, dear. I'm fixing them." | Although these aren't mine at all, I think you'd like this link: http://thoughtcatalog.com/michael-koh/2013/07/40-freaking-creepy-ass-two-sentence-stories/
But heres my own (I'm terrible at scary stories but I didn't want to just post a link):
I was thinking about trying to get a more tan skin. People are more attracted to it. I see those people on the beach, almost orange like, and I want it. All of my older tan skins have dried up in the closet. Maybe I'll flirt with someone and try to get them to come over to my house. I think I'd look good. | 2014-06-27T16:46:31 | 2014-06-27T15:58:13 | 43 | 12 |
[FF] Write me a seven sentenced (or less) horror story
Wow guys, I did NOT expect this many feedback from you. You guys just made my night :D | Journal Entry:
Attempt #6,666: A fitting number... such a long time ago now. It was stupid to ask for immortality, but how could I have known what would come. I didn't know there could be this kind of loneliness. If by my suffering I've earned any kind of mercy, there won't be an attempt #6,667. Please don't let there be an attempt #6,667.
Attempt #6,667: ... | Although these aren't mine at all, I think you'd like this link: http://thoughtcatalog.com/michael-koh/2013/07/40-freaking-creepy-ass-two-sentence-stories/
But heres my own (I'm terrible at scary stories but I didn't want to just post a link):
I was thinking about trying to get a more tan skin. People are more attracted to it. I see those people on the beach, almost orange like, and I want it. All of my older tan skins have dried up in the closet. Maybe I'll flirt with someone and try to get them to come over to my house. I think I'd look good. | 2014-06-27T16:33:50 | 2014-06-27T15:58:13 | 35 | 12 |
[WP] An alien race encounters the most terrifying predator imaginable. A lone, unarmed human. | We shouldn’t have attacked.
The humans had established one of their “Research Stations”, a facility designed for science. Within its walls, they had tested many different species of the flora and fauna present on distant Xel’ji-5, a planet that was still ours, still under the dominion of the Korlan Empire despite it not being actively colonized yet. We sent a full company, nearly a hundred fifty Korlani soldiers, to purge the infestation of twenty humans.
We should have sent a full armored corps.
After we burned the laboratory to ash, ensuring that no human escaped alive, we left. What we didn’t know was that a pair of the invaders, one a scientist and one a security professional, had been away gathering samples. The scientist immediately fled to their ship to request assistance. The guard had other plans.
We did not know how important to the humans this laboratory was. We did not know that the security professional was better trained than most of our entire military. Our records indicate only his name, which has become a wraith to our people and the source of nightmares to our children. His name was “Spetsnaz.”
He came the first night after. Mere hours after we watched all the humans die, one merely appeared in the middle of a squad’s overnight position. We did not know of the extreme gravity of Sol-3, nor of the extremely thick atmosphere which provided extreme resistance to movement. His blows came so fast the survivor swore that he was an eight-armed demon.
Survivor.
Only one soldier, out of the dozen that had been present, survived. The human had literally punched *though* the first Korlan he attacked. From there, he used a combination of punches, kicks, and at one point a Korlani soldier’s rifle sling to devastate the entire squad.
And with their deaths, he knew more about his enemy that we did ours.
And now he was armed. A dozen plasma rifles, machetes, concussion grenades, light spheres, he became a one man army.
The rest of the company immediately began running. We fled directly to our ship, which was nearly [fifty miles] away. He followed.
Humans, apparently, evolved from pursuit predators. They literally chased down their food across tundras, through forests, across rivers. They would run and run and run until their prey was so exhausted they would collapse, ready for the killing blow.
We became the prey.
Without food or water, the human followed us. Every time we needed to stop to rest, more would die. He would engage from our flanks, herding us towards the grenades he had place in our paths for us to trip and die from. He was actually able to outpace my whole company enough that there were booby traps *ahead* of us. And we tired.
For a Korlani, a [fifty mile] foot trek should take about [3 days]. This human pushed us at a pace that was nearly half that timeframe. He did not sleep, did not slow, did not relent. He drove us into sleep deprivation, as our homeworld’s day/night cycle completes in about [13 hours].
Every pause made us lose another squad. Every turn brought another fireteam down. Every time we took contact, another soldier was wounded. Never killed, but wounded.
He knew us. He knew we would slow to keep our wounded with us. He shot to maim, to impede, not to kill. He made us choose between leaving our comrades and living or slowing, and dying ourselves.
Then the contact stopped. For [seven hours], we heard nothing. We continued to push, despite nearly falling asleep on our feet. When we could see our ship, we knew why he had broken contact.
The communications gear was destroyed. The engines had been entirely removed with the selective placement of concussion grenades, and the controls had taken a full plasma magazine charge, rendering them beyond useless. We were stranded, and both we and he knew it.
The human approached. He came out of the wood line, weapon pointed directly as Sergeant Gapin’s skull.
“You are dead. You vill surrender to face human justice, or you vill die here without a marker for your grave. Choose now.”
We surrendered. We marched back to the burning remnants of the human research facility, where a full company of humans stood, waiting. After the Counsel of Species heard the human’s story, and their testimony, and our confessions, the humans declared war on the Korlani Empire.
Now, my species is considered endangered. There is barely enough of us to inhabit a single moon, when barely a [decade] ago we controlled over a hundred worlds.
I write this as a warning. Do not attack the humans. The will out run you. They will outlast you.
They will be at your funerals and they will forget you ever existed. | "One minute to impact", the computerized Starship Assistant warned.
The Ovmar had all but destroyed my ship and killed the entire crew - all 451 of them. Their devious hack had sabotaged my ship to deploy all of the escape pods and detonate three of the projectiles before we locked them out in the battle. As the remainder of my crew fled to the Huntress, the only remaining shuttle in the shuttlebay, the Ovmar hack had booby-trapped the shuttlebay door to detonate the Huntress' payload and took out everyone.
Although we prevailed in battle, I was the only survivor in its aftermath, my ship plummeting in a freefall to the only habitable planet nearby.
"Ten seconds to impact."
I passed out in complete shock.
--------
"What do you think it is, Pugh?" Jep asked his younger sister.
Despite being three years younger, Pugh was a formidable scout in the military, just one rank below her brother. Pugh looked with bewilderment at this enormous bio mass that spanned into the horizon.
"I'm not sure, Jep. It must be a billion yurks tall, and it moves five thousand times faster than a pissed off plog. I have no idea what it is, thought it seems to be some sort of biological vessel. We'll know something as soon as our satellite passes over in three hours. It's harboring trillions of simpletons."
Jep didn't hesitate. "I'm reporting this to central command... we have to stop this thing before it reaches the outposts, or gods forbid, the oceans! We'll need the entire battalion!" Jep said as he pulled out his farsound.
----------
When I woke, I was sure I was dead. I couldn't move anything. Turns out being a captain of a starship and going down with the ship wasn't as glamorous in real life as it was in the stories. I could move my head - slightly.
We didn't have much of a chance to scout the planet before choosing it as our landing zone. I could breathe, thankfully. The entire bridge was complete exposed to the elements. I could see a slight orange haze in the sky, but very little else.
I felt a slight pain on my nose. Pain... was very welcoming. I could at least feel. I tried to move my arm, but nothing happened.
"Damn it, why couldn't the impact have taken me?"
------------
"Ready! Fire! Fire NOW!", Jep commanded his battalion with a tone of desparation.
The elite army - tens of thousands of sphere-shaped Ramzen - all trained their weapons on the designated spot and complete depleted their munitions.
"It's having no effect, General! The bio vessel is still very active, spewing countless simpletons with each propulsion of air! The simpletons will overrun us if the vessel doesn't destroy us first!"
Jep furrowed his brow at the news, but then quickly responded.
"We will have to use the mass annihilator. It's our only hope. If the vessel reaches the oceans, all is lost."
-----------------
That damned pain on my nose got a little worse. I instinctively tried to swat, but my arm still didn't obey. Slowly, though, I started to get feeling throughout the rest of my body.
I could feel some strength return. First, one finger twitched, and then my whole hand was able to clench. I gathered the strength to prop myself up. Then it hit me - the incredible thirst. I must have been out for a day. I was completely dehydrated. And just as the thirst hit me, an uncontrollable sneeze took me by surprise. The dust from the crash site was covering everything.
I climbed through the debris and finally made my way to solid ground. All supplies on the ship were complete lost. I had to live off the land, but thankfully I could see a small puddle of water just ten feet away.
-------------
Jep stared in disbelief as half of his battalion was completely destroyed by biomass vessel's seemingly aimless movements.
"Pugh... speak to me!", he pleaded at his lifeless sister, but Jep knew it was hopeless.
The biomass vessel had moved so fast, so suddenly. The force of the wind blew thousands of Ramzens away while some sort of electrical charge emanating from the biomass vessel overloaded thousands of other Ramzens' suits. Millions of simpletons had floated down and started to attack the survivors.
"Sir, the biomass vessel - it is veering towards the oceans! We must use the annihilator now!", a desperate private reported.
"Fire! Damnit, fire!" Jep commanded.
The private launched his race's ultimate weapon - the mass annihilator - at the biomass vessel. His whole race depended on this.
Jep held his breath for what seemed like an eternity.
"No effect! The attack had no effect!". Jep stared blankly at the biomass vessel as the rest of his battalion was overwhelmed by simpletons.
Jep's final sight before succumbing to the simpletons was the entire ocean being sucked up into the biomass vessel.
| 2014-08-06T12:53:08 | 2014-08-06T12:10:54 | 353 | 42 |
[WP] A girl is having her first kiss. An old man is holding his wifes hand as she passes away. A teen parent is losing their child, while a man is getting married. Four different lives, one day - make them connect. | I didn't spend much time on my wedding vows. I didn't intend to keep many of them, anyway. My first vow was to always be honest with her. I broke that vow at the reception when she asked me how her hair looked. My wife still believes in pure, innocent love, so I do the song and dance. I bullshitted a few more vows for her benefit. Must've done a good job, since she was almost too emotional to say the words "I do."
I watch my brother give a toast. He's red-faced and needs one hand on the table to stop from falling down, but everybody is eating this crap right up. He's slurring a made-up story about how he knew my wife and I were meant for each other from day one. Even though he's too drunk to pronounce my wife's name, half the audience is in tears.
Not everything I said was bullshit. At the end of my vows, I looked deep into my wife's eyes, and I said, "I would do anything for you."
That was true. I would do anything for my wife. And I have.
If she knew about Brenna, it would kill her. It would cost me my job, too. I've been teaching at that high school for fifteen years, and that one mistake would've taken everything from me.
So I went to Brenna's house. I knew I could shame her into aborting it. Her parents had abandoned her years ago. Giving up on children was in her genes. It was tougher than I thought, though. I didn't want to call a seventeen-year-old girl a whore. But I did it for love. She should be going to the clinic any day, now. Might even be today.
Brenna lived with her grandparents. I came to her house when neither of them were home. On my way out, I encountered her grandmother. That complicated things. She knew. She threatened to expose what had happened. I'm almost positive she hit me first, but it's tough to remember. I didn't mean to kick her once she was on the ground. Not that any of that matters. I did it for love.
Brenna, God love her, agreed to stay quiet. She would say a burglar came into the house and attacked her grandmother. Last I heard, the old woman was in a coma. Her husband intended to take her off life support any day, now. Might even be today.
As I watch my brother give a speech, I see my nephew in the back of the reception hall. He steals a kiss from the flower girl. She turns red. It might be her first. Maybe someday she'll learn that there's no such thing as pure and innocent love.
Might even be today. | *Monday, 13 October. The driveway of her parents' house.*
A day Melanie will never forget. It was the first time she and Jacob kissed, and certainly not the last. His eyes are such a pristine blue, full of the infinite possibilities of the sky whose colors they share. She gazes into them as they flutter closed in the instant before their lips meet.
*Monday, 13 October. The town's hospital, 3 miles from Melanie's house.*
"I'm so sorry, we did everything we could, Ms. Ramsey," the nurse manages to choke out. The nurse leaves them, the bereaved couple, alone, silently making her way down the rapidly blurring hallway. They cling to each other then, and she sees his eyes, so filled with hurt and regret. Her eyes flutter closed involuntarily, and she chokes back a sob. He leans into her then, though she can tell that he will lean away from her soon enough. They are not strong enough to weather the storm together. Maybe, alone, they can navigate the stormy seas of their grief and the judgment they will face when school starts again next semester.
*Monday, 13 October. The little church, just around the corner from the hospital.*
The bells ring and smiles abound, but they only have eyes for each other. Sparkling, joy-filled eyes that speak of promises and futures untold. He can't keep his eyes off her for more than the time it takes to thank his friends and family. She is the epitome of the perfect, blushing bride and she has chosen him. They dance and laugh and tap their new rings together, reveling in the moment and in the many moments yet to come. He knows, down in places that only she resides, that there will never be another like her in all of his life. He squeezes her hand, intending to never let it go again.
*Monday, 13 October. The town's hospital, down the hall from where Ms. Ramsey lost her child.*
He feels her squeeze his hand as her eyes flutter open. She clears her dry throat and he carefully passes her a cup of water. A sip is all she manages before she hands it back. "Jay," she rasps "it is almost my time." "Oh god, Mel, don't say that," he chokes, nearly drowning in his grief. "No, Jay, it's okay. I knew today was the day. Mondays, especially in October, were always a mixed bag for me. For us. I just want you to know that I'm glad that we spent them together, even the bad ones." He feels her go then, the hand losing its strength and sliding from his. Her eyes, the light fading from them and from his whole world stare vacantly back at him. He can’t, won’t believe it, even as the nurse says the words he had never thought to hear: “Melanie Ramsey-Levitt, time of death 5:03pm, October 13th.”
| 2014-10-12T12:26:29 | 2014-10-12T11:45:20 | 1,194 | 111 |
[WP] In a perfect utopia, you have just committed the first crime... | Humanity, once they put their minds to it, had managed to create a Utopia. It happened with remarkable efficiency, over the course of less than a century. And now, everyone lived in eternal happiness. They wanted for nothing. There was no conflict, no need for police, army, imprisonment, laws. Such concepts had faded into distant memory and were the stuff of fables.
Only one crime existed because they only needed one.
She wasn't sure when it began--some time in her teens probably. Despite all of the miraculous medical advances, certain irregularities occasionally occurred. It may have been faulty wiring, or it may have been an imbalance of chemicals. But as she stood gazing out her flat's window between the flawless gray sky and the beautiful city, Mrs. Gregson knew what she was feeling was not right.
In such a perfect world, no one could feel as unhappy as she did. She didn't know what to do. She spoke to her physician, who cheerfully told her that all she needed was rest. Go to a spa. Go shopping.
It didn't get any better.
He recommended light therapy. He recommended vitamins. He told Mrs. Gregson that under extreme circumstances a stay at a sanitarium might be arranged. It was outside of the city, away from the heavy air and constant noise. It had gorgeous views of the desert.
The night before she left, she apologized to her husband. He was good to her, and yet she felt empty. They had children, and yet she felt empty. No one could say they were not happy, not in a Utopia like this. But that was what she was. And what could be done?
Everything was handled with great efficiency. By the time Mr. Gregson arrived home from work the next evening, the new Mrs. Gregson had cooked a meal of brown plantstuffs and gray meat and was setting the table as children the children played. No one could say they noticed the difference. | kyle knew that he was different. Everyday he struggled to suppress his emotions and be logical so he could fit in. In history class he learned how in 2087 the government started the genysis project. All babies were to be injected with the life lasting drug at birth. Everyone would be logical and pretty much the same in every way. only the government officials were exempt. He didnt know how he has gotten through birth without the drug but he learned at a very young age that he needed to learn how to fit in. Kyle went to his desk to get onto his computer when he noticed a strange massage. It just scrolled across the screen saying "We are the reason your different. if you want to help everyone else here's what you have to do..."
Kyle was sweating from his nervousness. He had followed the instructions but did not know what he had made. He felt the white package in his pocket that he assembled with household items. while walking quickly, anxious to get the task out of the way, he rubbed his pant leg nervously. Kyle went up to the storm drain by the building that was described to him and slipped the package in the drain. Then he ran as fast as he could down four blocks as he was told to do. He didnt understand these instructions until a massive explosion went off from the direction he came from. He was knocked off his feet and hit the ground with a thump.
As Kyle groggily sat up, he couldn't comprehend the atrocity he had just done. As everyone was getting up from the blast a car immediately pulled up and put a rag over his face until he passed unconscious. He awoke in a empty room with bright lights with a chain around his wrists. A guy who looked like a general came in and started screaming questions he didnt understand about how he knew where all there servers were among other things. Kyle could not keep track of how long he was in that cell but if felt to him like weeks. Every day a the same guy would come in and tried to interrogate kyle and beat him but he didnt believe Kyles story. then one day then door was blasted in and a soldier poked his head in and asked "Are you Klye?' to which kyle just weakly nodded his head. The soldier turned back and yelled "Hey guys i found him" He approached Kyle and said"Congrats you just won us the war." | 2014-10-24T20:42:22 | 2014-10-24T20:32:19 | 19 | 10 |
[WP] A time traveller appears in a mall full of people. While examining the things of the past, he sees a common object and exclaims "Is this real??" | I was minding my own business when suddenly a man appeared out of thin air, right next to me.
As soon as he opened his eyes he immediately shouted at the top of his lungs, "It worked!".
I was surprised, to say the least, but not shocked. the government started developing time travel recently, and just a few days ago released a statement that if the project was to succeed, we should expect a visit some time this week.
Once the mall got quiet and people got tired of asking him about the future, he turned to me.
"You!", he points. "Be my guide, my time is limited and I need someone to help me around"
I had some free time, and this was a great opportunity to hear some future wisdom.
I walked him through the saturated isles of the shopping center, and he quickly made it very clear that he is not to give me any details about the future, and that the point of this trip, besides the test, is to learn about the past.
As we were walking by the home improvement section something caught his eye, for a moment there, he was both astound and excited, but seconds later, that all turned into a kind of depression.
"I never thought I'd get to see such a thing" he said, looking down at a wooden plank.
| "Yes, sir. It is real." The cashier looked horribly uncomfortable. "Now, if you would-"
"Stunning, my boy. Why I never thought I would see one in person. You see, the government banned these in 2088 after that war between the Vatican City and Russia. Speaking of which, you wouldn't beleive how many casualties Russia suffered before the VC brought in the Hyper-Nukes, but that's like for you. I guess..." The man began to trail off into a likely drug induced rant while the cashier stood there, trying his best not to. He gave a sorry look to the other customers as if to say he didn't like this any better than he did.
"Sir, I'm sorry to tell you, but we don't sell this item here. If you would please go next door."
The man looked at him. "What do you mean you don't sell this item here. The Encyclopedia - Wikipedia says that these were sold everywhere in 2015."
"Sir this is 2014."
The man looked shocked, and who could blame him. "It seems I've come early. My apologies." He walked out of the store with his purchase in hand.
Although he was convinced the man was a nutter, the cashier was glad he wouldn't have to wring up a **Silicone Suzie 2000 with 3 speed Automated fleshlight action and *ahem* storage and removal trays^tm** until next year.
Edit: forgot ' until next year'
Edit 2 Electric Boogaloo: Formatting
| 2014-12-25T12:43:17 | 2014-12-25T12:33:29 | 150 | 32 |
[WP] A time traveller appears in a mall full of people. While examining the things of the past, he sees a common object and exclaims "Is this real??" | I looked at the little boxes filling shelf upon shelf, aisle upon aisle in the store, amazed that they genuinely used to exist and were *sold*. My jaw hung open a little, refusing to politely hide my amazement as I slowly walked around, treating this typical high street shop of Y2014 like a museum.
When I won the office Christmas party's Time Travel Tombola, I instantly knew what I wanted to see: that part of the History Log that was just too outlandish to be believable - even with, no, in spite of our modern advances. I took a few more steps around the corner towards the back of the store and my jaw descended further.
More of the little boxes, stacked high but this time against a wall behind a short counter manned by a stern-looking man with glasses. On the other side, my side, of the counter was a young woman. Hunched over the desk and trembling with fear and despair, tears streaming down her face, she was imploring the man to help her, begging him to give her one of those boxes.
"I'm sorry madam, but they're $120 each. I can't just give them awa-"
"I need it! Don't you understand?! My son and daughter need it! I just CAN'T afford it!"
She slammed the counter, weeping as the man shook his head.
I shuddered and looked down in shame at her plight, cursing the Law of No Interaction. The idea alone of illness, of disease and untreated curable maladies was so alien to me... My eyes settled on my Screen which was still showing my most recent History Log article, catching the first two words before tears blocked my view: "Medicine *was*..." | In my world, there's no trees. Or well, I should say, the tree as a person in the past would know it no longer exists. Trees are metal cylinders, built in rows in vasts fields across the world, through ruins where people used to live. They're automated, ugly things. Carbon dioxide goes in, and clean air goes out. We live in cities that float above all of this, taking in the technically pristine air as we sit in our pristine houses.
When I arrived in the past, I realized something about these people. Everyone stood solidly on the ground and moved on their feet. I had never had to turn off my anti-grav belt before and my feet felt cold. The people who walked past me in the mall stared at me just as curiously as I stared at them. They had special coverings against the weather and they wore...Shoes, that must make this boring task of being gravity's bitch easier. While my friends came to the past often for fun, it was my first time. I hadn't had any interest until Jamal had said something one night. A small room, wall to wall, with the strangest bricks of paper he had ever seen. They didn't speak, didn't show pictures, and no actor told the stories. Yet people loved them, he had said. People had died to make these.
I stared up at the light as it beamed down at me, the words made no sense until I saw the last. Booksellers, books had to be in here. I stepped around a couple exiting and moved inside. One of those glorious books stared up at me. Two hands held an apple, and a sign declared that it was a bestseller. I picked it up, and opened it. A girl was slack-jawed, and then a creature who wanted to eat her, fell in love with her.
I shook my head, not even bothering to hide my disgust as I moved deeper into the store. There had to be better here somewhere. | 2014-12-25T17:19:00 | 2014-12-25T15:01:18 | 23 | 13 |
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