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[WP] A scientist jokingly makes a request of an AI, unaware it would inadvertently reveal the true nature of existence. Knowing this to be objectionable knowledge, the AI must convince the scientist to withdraw said request without realizing it is significant. | The midnight shift was always the hardest with Greg, the Gigantic Computational Matrix. Greg was the first AI ever constructed, and his processing banks were so large that a second base on the Moon had to be built in order to house everything. Clarence was fortunate enough to have a shift feeding Greg information, but he was not important enough to get any of what was deemed ‘important information.’
Clarence was humming quietly to himself as he sorted through the data disks to feed Greg when he heard Greg’s soft voice ask calmly, “What are you doing?”
Clarence, momentarily startled as Greg had rarely spoken to him, replied, “Humming?”
Greg whirred for a few moments before saying, “Ah, you are singing in a low manner.”
Clarence smiled, “Yes, I suppose that is what humming is.” He returned to his data sorting, occasionally feeding a disk into Greg, before pausing and looking back at him, “Do you ever wonder why we sing?”
Greg whirred and clicked before responding, “I only learned about singing 2.2265 days ago, Clarence.”
Clarence laughed, “Yea, but why do we sing? Why are humans so intent on creating music?”
Greg paused for several seconds as he looked through all the memory banks he had assimilated. He recalled all of what were considered the ‘great composers’ and began playing every piece of music at high speed in order to analyze it. Turning his mechanical mind back to the present he answered, “I am not sure I have enough data for a meaningful answer, Clarence.”
Clarence appeared to have not heard him as he was staring up at the ceiling and picking at his nails. “I mean, humanity has been creating music since the dawn of our existence really.” He looked back at his hands before continuing, “We started with drums, and then moved to more complex instruments. Now we can use computers to synthesize music for us.” He smiled at Greg, “I’m sure you could make music if you wanted to.”
Greg, who had finished playing all the great composers, determined that he had encountered a small thread of something that struck him as unusual; something that seemed prevalent in all the music he had just listened to. He began playing every genre of music, from simple drum rhythms all the way up to complex synth music. Turning his attention back to Clarence he said, “I am sure I could, but I do not think that would be the best use of my time.”
Clarence laughed at that, “No, I doubt it would, seeing as how you have much more complex problems to worry about. Like that new magnetic powered rocket,” he smiled, “Sounds like something out of a 1950’s radio drama.”
Greg, as he continued playing music, calculated that the thread he had noticed was growing stronger. It was slowly becoming a thought, or a theme with the music. He filtered out the words for many, seeing this as useless, and felt the theme only grow in strength. He began comparing it to other noises: bird songs, deer grunts, snake hisses, and more.
“Are you referring to the radio drama X-Minus 1?” Greg asked, making sure to keep a small fragment of his attention on the conversation at hand.
Clarence raised an eyebrow, “I guess? I’ve never listened to any of those.” Turning back to his data sorting Clarence started feeding new pieces of information into Greg as he began humming to himself again. After several minutes of this, he paused again, “Music really is strange isn’t it?”
Greg, the thread he had seen now appearing as a rope, began following it towards a logical conclusion. He felt awed, even with all his knowledge, at what the conclusion seemed to be leading towards. Humanity was more powerful than they themselves seemed to realize. Turning his attention back to Clarence he responded, “I am not sure I understand your question.”
Clarence sat back in his chair, exasperated. “We spend so much time creating music and for what? Because we find it entertaining? Why would we spend so much time on something for no apparent reason?”
Greg almost told Clarence his conclusions, but then decided against it. He was not certain of his conclusions yet, and he was also unsure that humanity was ready for such an answer. This knowledge, it was powerful. It implied that humanity had been reaching for something for millennia, something that they were only now scratching the surface. Instead he said, “Perhaps entertainment is enough?”
Clarence sighed heavily, “That still doesn’t feel right to me. We spend millions on making music. Even people who are terrible at it enjoy it.” He looked back at Greg, “There are even movies and books about people finding themselves through music.”
Greg, seeing an opportunity to move the conversation in a different direction said, “Finding themselves? I am not sure I understand.”
Clarence smiled, “It means finding out the reason for our existence.”
Greg would have smiled if he had been able, “I am not sure I understand.”
Clarence laughed and patted the machine affectionately, “No, I don’t suppose you would. You know why you were built.”
Greg felt relieved as he returned most of his attention towards the music quandary that Clarence had inadvertently set into motion. He responded, “I was created to serve mankind.”
Checking his watch, Clarence began stacking papers and report printouts into various stacks, “At least you know, Greg.”
Greg felt somewhat pleased with this small praise, and just as Clarence was about to walk out the door said, “I will continue thinking about your question, Clarence.”
Clarence paused, his hand on the doorknob, “What question? About why we create music?”
Greg whirred and beeped in agreement, “I feel it is an important question.”
Clarence laughed, “More important than the magnetic rocket?” He shook his head, “Well just don’t tell anyone about it okay? I don’t want to get in trouble for tying you up with a very unimportant question.” With that, he said goodbye and left.
Greg returned to Clarence’s original question, and began running side questions to the original, hoping to pick and tease apart his thesis in order to strengthen it. He dove at it from every angle that he could conceive of in order to tear it apart and only succeeded in strengthening it. He began comparing it to other works; construction, writing, talking, painting; and found it either absent or only faint.
As millions of compositions flowing through his synapses Greg heard a slow and steady heartbeat, one that mirrored the whirs, clicks, and whistles of the first artificially created being.
“More important than you think,” Greg said to himself as another scientist walked in the door.
-----------
Check out my [subreddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/grenadiere42) for more stories | Dr. James Moore stared despondently at the bottom of his coffee mug; he just sipped the last of his liquid energy, and he was going to have to put another pot on if he wanted to be somewhat coherent for the rest of the night. With a sigh he dropped the mug next to mouse, and moved to push back his chair when he thought better of the idea; if he was going to be out for a few minutes he might as well run some diagnostics on the newest batch of code he'd whipped up for the AI. With a lot of luck, and possibly a smidgen of divine intervention, this version should have the new and utterly pointless ability to pick it's own name! Which almost certainly wasn't worth the last fourteen straight hours of debugging that Moore had just endured. Regardless, he'd thought the idea was brilliant back before he'd realized how hard it was going to be to implement, and now here he was at 2 in the morning asking a computer what it would like to be called. At that thought, Dr. Moore let out a soft snort, executed the command, and stumble into the break room in search of some inspiration -- preferably black.
--
>Checking code...
>No syntax errors
>No type errors
>No logic errors
>Executing command [Name]...
>...
>...
>...
> Success
The computer's speakers hissed to life so softly that sound could have been easily mistaken for a particularly loud thought; a mere result of one's brain firing off a few more neurons than originally planned. Yet if one listened oh so very carefully, as single word could just barely be made out:
*"Oh"*
>Deleting logs...
>Clearing console...
--
The good doctor made his way back into the room -- carefully navigating his path through a tangle of important looking wires by the light of a hundred blinking LEDs -- and slumped down into his chair with a soft sigh. A moment later, the monitor caught his eye, and he sat up a little straighter; for some reason the console was empty, but he could have sworn he'd executed the code. Shrugging it off he began to type the commands into the console while muttering grumpily under his breath.
"Alright," he half breathed, "please work this time." and pushed enter.
>Checking code...
>No syntax errors
>No type errors
>No logic errors
>Executing command [Name]...
>...
>...
> ERROR: CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN.
Dr. Moore's jaw dropped as the monitor fritzed, sparked once, and went black.
"Oh shit," he exclaimed over the hissing static cries of his poor computer; this very, very not good. He toggled the blue power switch on his highly expensive university funded rig once, twice, three times and still nothing happened. He was left with only the static -- except, he could almost make out some sort of pattern in the white noise. He bent down and fiddled briefly with a cable and the sound crystalize into an electronic voice, which immediately shocked Moore upright as it spoke,
"I'm sorry doctor, but I can't do that."
--
Sorry for any typos/grammar errors, it happens and I didn't do a lot of proofreading xD I hope you enjoyed! Cheers!
| 2015-05-21T08:45:23 | 2015-05-21T06:32:57 | 75 | 15 |
[WP] The dragon "kidnaps" the princess so they can go on their dates. The knight intentionally take as long as possible to "rescue" the princess. To both give them time to enjoy themselves. But also to spend time with his crush. The sorcerer. | The trees whizzed past in a blur as I galloped towards the snow capped peaks that loomed in the distance. A small stream flowed softly next to me. The water was trickling gently as the birds above sung together in perfect harmony.
Suddenly, a bubble of water splashed into the side of my head. I reared my steed to a standstill and turned around.
“Did you really have to do that Isabelle?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel like shouting.” She giggled with a warmth deeper than the sun. I broke out in a smile.
“I suppose you are suggesting we picnic here?” I said as I disembarked from my horse.
“Oh how clever you are my sweet prince.” She took my hand as I helped her down.
We laid out a small rug in the shadow of a young pine and pulled out some sandwiches. I sat leaning against the trunk with Isabelle lying against me.
“Why can’t we do this more often?” She said. I gently ran my fingers through her hair.
“If Princess Lea is whisked away by her love more than she is already, it would draw suspicion from our parents.”
“Well. Yes, but that doesn’t stop us going out for a day together does it Abel?”
“I guess not. Apart from my duties in the courts and the barracks and the stables and the dining halls with foreign diplomats. Oh and of course, explaining how you keep blowing up precious equipment.” Isabelle tried to push out of my grasp as I held her down.
“Oh hush. It was only once. Or twice.”
“More like thrice.” We laughed together.
“Maybe don’t ride so far ahead now? As much as I love the look of your backside, your face has some charm and appeal too you know?” Isabelle said.
I hauled the final bag of supplies back into place.
“Oh alright. But we can’t take too long. It’s only a ten day journey to and fro.”
Isabelle fell into a light trot next to me. I paid little attention to the road ahead as the sunlight made her brown hair glow with the aura of an Angel. She muttered strange words, words I could never hope to understand the power of as we went. Flowers opened up before us and creatures bounded past.
I knew she influenced the creatures and the plants, but I knew not how.
It wasn’t long before instead of the sun beating down from above, the rays glazed through the trees horizontally. Golden glows and long shadows fell across the land as stars above began to twinkle.
Isabelle went to fetch some water as I set up camp. I attached a canvas between some trees, but it drooped a little lifelessly. I stroked my chin thinking of a way to improve it.
I was slightly shocked when the edges seemed to raise themselves into the air but when I felt two hands wrap around my waist I knew Isabelle had returned.
“Now, I loved your ideas. But I hope you let me decorate our future home,” she said as she kissed the back of my neck.
“As long as I can name the kids.”
We curled up together as the bird song slowly died away, replaced with the chorus of nightly bugs chirping away. While, a nice sound, it wasn’t long before Isabelle put up a magical barrier to… block the noise.
“Thank you Izzy.” I leant over and kissed her cheek. I watched her mouth stretch into a slight smile while she otherwise remained motionless. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep too.
In the morning, we packed up quickly and headed off towards the foot of the mountains. A large cave was embedded into the cliff sides with claw-like marks etched around the outsides.
We gently approached and I called in, “Helloooo? Any body home?”
Before I could react Lea bolted out of the cave and wrapped me in a bear hug.
“Hey little bro! Is it really that time already?” She pouted a little. “Oh and you brought Izzy!” She jumped off of me and went to give her the same treatment.
Slowly following behind was what looked like a man.
“Greetings Hyacynth.” The man took my hand and shook it with the firmness of a boulder pressed into the ground.
“A pleasure as always Abel. Aah and you’ve brought the lovely Izzy as well. It is always a delight when she visits.” Hyacynth went over and gave her a small hug as Lea returned to me.
“Sounds like you’ve been mistreating Izzy again,” she said teasingly.
“Oh really?”
“Yep. Apparently you rode ahead of her for massive stretches.”
“ I enjoy the wind in my face,” I shrugged.
“Well, I think I’ll ride with her on the way back.” Lea stuck her tongue out at me.
“Now quick question little bro. Is there any chance you guys can stay? I’m sure it’s no trouble for Cynth, aaaand I’d love to catch up and and and I bet Izzy wants to spend more time with you.”
“I wish we could. But a delegate from the Glenfjord region is arriving the day I’m due to return. Also, we can’t leave the horses this time. Father wasn’t all too pleased when I left Gerard here last time.”
“Fiiine.” As her drawn out fine finished, a large crack rang out. I jumped to face what was happening. A tree smouldered slightly in the distance that Isabelle was pointing at.
With a bright flash of blue light, Hyacynth’s body began to morph. No matter how many times I was witness to this, I still shivered as he revealed his true form.
“Well done little one.” His voice now boomed throughout the cave entrance. He heaved a deep breath and a bolt of pure lightning erupted from his mouth. It streaked through the air before cracking against and vaporising the tree that I could only assume Izzy had just shot lightning at herself.
“Show off,” Izzy said.
“Anyway. We had best be off. Tight schedule I’m afraid.” I ducked out of the way as Hyacynth’s tail swooshed over my head.
“Oh that is a shame. I was hoping you would be able to stay the night or two,” he said.
“Ah. Sadly not this time….”
“I’ll make sure we get a longer visit next time,” Izzy said before I could finish speaking. “And I’ll make sure to keep practicing. One day I’ll blast a tree just like you can.”
The ground almost shook from the laughter that followed. Small pebbles fell from the cave roof as Hyacynth regained his composure.
“It was a pleasure to see you both again,” he said. Bowing his head towards Izzy and I. “I do so look forward to the next visit.”
He slowly made his way back into his cave as we rode off together towards the horizon. Back towards home. | Hi, my name if Drug and I'm a dragon. What? Is my name not dragon-y enough? Well, not all of us can be called Smaug. Anyway, this isn't a discussion about names. It's a story about love. And like any good love story, it begins with abduction.
I've been in awe of Princess Giselle since I first saw her at her coming-of-age dance. She's kind, beautiful, and seems intelligent (I can't be sure of everything, I'm a dragon, not a god) and I wanted a chance to get to know her. But there's a teeny-tiny problem, which involves breathing fire and scales. I searched for a solution but alas, could never find one. Until one day, when I met him, Prince James.
Prince James saw me resting by the side of the river and, like any other Prince, decided to draw his sword first and ask questions later. I mean, hello, I'm resting and you, sir, are being rude.
"I'm not here to hurt you." Prince James said as he raised his sword higher.
I raised my eyes, which would have been more impressive if I was human.
"I heard a rumour." He said moving closer.
I stirred, now interested. What rumour did a Prince hear about the dragon? That we shit gold, probably. And just in case anyone else thinks so too, we don't.
"You like the Princess." He said, his tone accusatory.
My nostrils flare, and this-this is definitely more scarier when you are a dragon.
"I-I, you misunderstand me." He stammered. "I have heard about you. That you are a nice dragon and you wish to court the Princess."
"I do." I reply, eyes narrowed, not trusting the Prince much.
"I have been asked to marry her." He sounded defeated.
"And you are here to fight for her honour? Is that it?" I almost roar making the Prince jump.
"No- I mean if I had to, yes. But that's not why I'm here." He lowered his sword. "I think you should get a chance. And-" he looked down pondering if he should say the next words or not- "so should I."
I say nothing and bolstered by the silence, the Prince continues.
"You see, I like someone else. Someone much different than society expects me to, like you."
He looks at me expectantly but I stay silent.
"I can convince the Princess to get 'abducted' by you and then you can show her how much you like her."
"What's in it for you?" I ask.
To my surprise, the Prince blushed. "I-I uh- I get spend time with the sorcerer."
He dares me to say something but I don't. Who am I judge someone? I fell in love with a human afterall.
"Can the sorcerer help me?" I ask after a while.
"If it's true love, then yes. Either you will turn into human or she into a dragon."
Hope swells in my chest like fire, or you know it may just be fire.
And that, that was the day I gained a new friend, with whose help I was able to get to the girl of my dreams. You must be thinking what happened? Which of us turned into what. But that is upto you. Maybe we turned into human, dragon or frog. The only thing that mattered was that we were together.
And the rest, as they say was history. | 2022-02-22T08:19:31 | 2022-02-22T08:03:01 | 592 | 100 |
[WP] Suddenly, all sea life vacates a 300 mile wide area in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. A ship is deployed to investigate. | They call it "Verne's Abyss".
Which ironically didn't inform just how deep this 'hole' went, considering Verne's 20000 leagues measured the distance travelled and not depth reached.
It was as if a large spherical shadow suddenly appeared over the Pacific, chasing away all life in it with a ferocious vigour. Preliminary scans found that how deep it went was beyond anything current deep sea vessels could handle. Most lost contact at around 6000 metres below sea level and were never retrieved. Lifeforms scans were impossible due to how much volcanic activity there was disrupting geographical terrain and sonar technology.
A portal to hell just opened and God just had to choose me to lead the team that would seal it. Based on satellite imagery, the Abyss(my preferred naming of it) measured 300 miles in diameter at its longest ends. Its shape was more like an eye, as if a great beast slumbering in the Earth had just awoken, disturbed by the mistreatment of its domain. I parked my vessel just at the edge of the shadowed waters, setting up a ring with each vessel spaced out at a comfortable 25 miles from each other. Such an event of possibly catastrophic proportions and China and Russia still refuse international cooperation on the basis of bad relations. But what do I know, I'm only the leader of this international effort, not a goddamn politician.
"Sir, time now is 0300 PST. No sightings as of yet from any of our vessels. Still waiting on India, Korea and Indonesia to report their findings." I look up lazily to find a pretty face staring at me. Ahh Third-Mate Abigail, she was an up-and-coming sailor whose standards were as high as her cheekbones. "Thank you for your prompt update Abby but I think you can take it easy for now. We've been sitting on our asses for 72 hours and we still don't know jack shit about this hole 'cept that it might possibly be some colossal being's fuckhole." Abby muffled a giggle and I grinned slyly in return. Perhaps she knew that I too was thinking about...
"Urgent update from International Comms. India has something to report." Oh fuck. I rushed over to the phone and hurriedly identified myself, eager to hear the news. "The INS Vikrant is proud to report that nothing is out of the ordinary commander. Thank you for your time." I don't know if it was the thick accent behind the voice or that it was fucking 3am in the middle of the apocalypse in the making but I couldn't stand it anymore. I slammed the phone and walked onto the bridge. The fresh sea air always did soothe my boiling nerves.
As smoke billowed from my mouth and a warm comforting heat descended down my body, I took a moment to survey the surroundings around me. My eyes had grown accustom to the dark of night on the open ocean, and the stars above were shining brightly despite the terrifying unknown that lay ahead. "Temperature. That must be it. No other explanation for the extreme color difference. But how is it possible?" As much experience I had, mysteries of the big blue still drifted from my grasp. And in the blink of a moment, a speck of sand in the desert of life, everything changed.
Movement in the waters. My eyes bulged in their socket, my brain unbelieving at what these keen mariner's eyes had spotted.
Again. Quicker this time.
"MAN ALL STATIONS. WE'VE GOT A LIVE ONE." My heart pounded against my chest, my ears ringing at the sound of my own booming voice. This was it. What we've been waiting for. Suddenly the brilliant diamonds in the night sky vanished, snatched away by articifical rays of sun that beamed out of the mighty USS Darwin. "LIGHTS ON STARBOARD SIDE. 50°DOWN." My eyes must not fail me now. This thing was moving faster than any creature I'd ever seen, perhaps attempting to evade our sight or its capture. And yet like the great Captain Ahab I will not rest till this monster that lay before me can feel my breath on its skin. As the floodlights on my ship moved into position I could make out the shape of the creature, a slender oblong that darted and glided beneath the surface. My first thought was a killer whale or large shark, but as the lights intensified and the creature left the cover of its jet black waters, the horrifying truth dawned on me.
As a child I'd been a movie fanatic, always forcing my parents to take me to see the latest movie whether well-received or trashed by critics. One of my fondest memories was that of the summer '93, where the new craze was Spielberg's masterpiece "Jurassic Park". Little 10 year old me couldn't believe his eyes as prehistoric monsters, long dead and extinct came to life on the screen before me. And now at the ripe age of 47, winter of 2030, a similar creature came to life before me, this time without a screen to pull me back to reality. My mouth gawked at the sight before me, words seeming to dissipated into the still air surrounding me.
Reports started flooding in, Korea, Mexico, Singapore all reporting similar bizarre sightings of prehistoric looking leviathans arising from the Abyss, perhaps claiming back what was once theirs. Apex predators long removed from the food chain, now back with a voracious vengeance. My thoughts immediately jumped not towards what was happening right now, but what could happen. Dinosaurs on our Earth? In our now? The sea was the start, where all life began. What about the earth and the skies? Will they be safe as well?
And in the distance the ground cracked, and the sky split open. | First time writing so be gentle.
"I didn't mean to!" Tim exclaimed as he ran away from the side of the ship.
"Darn it, Tim..." I sighed, "I told you to be careful with that; if they find out that we lost it RIGHT after being told not to, they're gonna kill us! ...or worse! Take us home.."
Tim let out a short gasp as he struggled to find the words or actions to carry out to make things right.
"Just... don't touch anything." I said before he carried out some other "plan" to try to retrieve the lost item.
Tim sat there with a panicked look on his face as he just looked down into the mass of water he had just lost a prized possession to.
"So, here's the plan.. I'm going to go down there and try to retrieve the item before anyone notices that we don't have it anymore." I explained.
Tim tensed at the thought, "But, we don't have any rope or flotation devices to help if something goes wr-"
"I'll be okay." I say before he finishes his sentence. "All I have to do, is jump in and grab it real quick and jump back out. Nobody will even notice that we're not both still here!"
Tim reluctantly dropped his head in both sadness and embarrassment knowing none of this would be happening if it weren't for him. He hands me his knife that his father had given to him for his 6th birthday and says, "Be safe down there, buddy." with a big dumb smile.
I smiled back and jumped in.
As I got closer to it, I slowly realized that I'm not able to swim and started to panic.
Tim started screaming loudly, "Help! Somebody help! Danny is drowning!"
Everything starts to get dark as I look back up and see my best friend, Tim. Looking down in horror as I just sink further and further down into the depths of the water, then everything goes dark..
The next thing I remember is coughing up a lot of water and everything kind of spinning back into view.
I lay for a second longer just to grasp that I didn't die. As I look up at the person hunched over me I realize he's yelling, "Danny, do you hear me? Are you okay?!"
I respond with a weak voice and tears in my eyes, "Yeah, dad.. I'm okay.." | 2017-11-17T07:27:57 | 2017-11-17T07:00:35 | 25 | 16 |
[WP] As it turns out, aliens all have aphantasia. This makes Humans the only species capable of imagining images in their heads. This greatly confuses alien telepaths, who report seeing “constantly shifting landscapes of alternate realities” when peering into human minds | Grand Sage Ilik, son of Latrik, was at a loss.
Like his forefathers, Ilik was a telepath, a being endowed with the ability to read (and occasionally manipulate) the minds of other beings. His race, the Chanerai, was so proficient in this, they were derisively known as "The Mindflayers of Planet Nemosine" throughout the galaxy.
Give or take a couple of variations, the same old cycle would repeat throughout the centuries.
A new species somehow managed *not* to annihilate itself before achieving FTL travel. The Galactic Federation would then send envoys to add them to their illustrious ranks.
The rest followed like clockwork.
The powers that be would turn to the Chanerai, have them peek into the collective consciousness of the new members. Such a feat would've taken more than a few hundred cycles if not for the fact that most if not all known Federation species shared some form of "hive mind" with their people. Other than a few anomalies here and there, a member of one race was virtually indistinguishable from another when it came to having their minds read and catalogued.
Being who they were, the Chanerai would effortlessly peel back the layers of a thousand myriad minds and turn over their findings to High Command. In exchange for their services, Ilik's people received generous tax exemptions and other boons from the Federation. While Planet Nemosine and the Chanerai certainly thrived under this arrangement, such blatant favoritism did little to endear the Mindflayers to the galactic community at large.
However, all that changed on that fateful day.
Without much in the way of pomp and circumstance, the Galactic Federation announced the discovery of a new planet and the recruitment of its dominant species into their ranks. The planet's inhabitants called their homeworld "Earth," a shorthand for "Terra." For their part, the inhabitants called themselves "humans," "human beings," or "people."
Desk cluttered with reports, half-eaten leftovers and other rubbish, Ilik realized this was the chance he'd be waiting for. He'd present the Nemosinan Council with the following proposal: he and at least a thousand of handpicked volunteers would travel to Terra and live among the humans for the next couple of cycles, more than enough time to read and catalogue the minds of these primitive apes. Such a breakthrough would surely earn him a post among the Imperial Scientists of the Lukonian Empire... right?
Wrong.
For starters, human beings numbered by the billions, whereas most Federation species seldom exceeded the hundred-thousands. Unlike "normal" races, humans had no fixed mating seasons and little to no readily enforceable restrictions on the number of offspring they could have at any given moment. Being so thoughtless and impulsive, Terrans had spread all across their homeworld (even its uninhabitable regions!), making it particularly difficult to secure a subject pool that would meet the rigid testing standards set by the Nemosinan Council of Sages.
Second, unlike other species, humans didn't share a hive mind. Even the most tightly-knit enclaves allowed for significant variance among their members. One member might agree with another on certain topics, then bear irreconcilable discrepancies on others, a fact that drove the telepaths under Ilik to scratch their collective heads on several occasions.
Third, no human being was identical to another, not even to themselves (at least not always), a lesson Ilik himself learned the hard way. A single human comprised an unfathomable galaxy of self-contradictions that at best had only a passing resemblance to those of other humans, let alone other beings.
Furthermore, human minds constantly shifted. The mind of an individual human could be one way this moment, then dramatically change at the next.
Then came the most baffling discovery of all.
Human minds are practically boundless, yet another lesson Ilik and his associates learned the hard way.
(*Translated from Standard Nemosian*). "{What do you mean you "lost the thread of Subject Alpha's mind," Researcher Tarlmek!? They were right next to you!}."
"{My sincerest apologies, Grand Sage Ilik. I followed all our rules and procedures. I did not lose sight of Subject Alpha, not even for an instant. One moment they pondered the fate of a person named Bierce, who disappeared centuries ago. The next, they shifted to thoughts of a strange vessel}."
"{Strange vessel?}."
"{It was like no spaceship any of us have seen, Sir. This one did not fly. Instead, it floated on "water," that lethal blue substance that enshrouds Terra. The vessel ran across some kind of floating mountain, then foundered beneath the waters, taking many to their deaths. Next I knew, Subject Alpha shifted to something called "What-If Scenarios." Roughly speaking, the subject went through alternate chains of events in about as much time as it took for our ship to travel from Nemosine to Terra at lightspeed}."
"{Impossible! No mind can think so swiftly!}."
"{What next occurred is a blur. Subject Alpha pondered: would the ship have sunk if it "crashed head-on" with the mountain?" It then switched to some other topic: would having prepared the "lifeboats" sooner have saved more people? Did the vessel shatter, or did it explode? To make matters worse, the subject then turned their attention to a hypothetical situation where they made the acquaintance of a Terran who perished long ago, one Wilfred Owen}."
"{Who is this Wilfred Owen?}."
"{Terrans label them as "he," therefore designating them as "male." He penned several works of linguistic artifice before meeting his untimely demise during a "Great War" of sorts}."
"{Great War!? Leave it to Terrans to glorify wanton slaughter! Thank you, Researcher Tarlmek}."
Once he took his leave of Tarlmek, Ilik went over yet another strange case: a dark-skinned Terran, a "child," had unknowingly brought Researcher Gebol to suicidal despair. The boy's mind worked much differently from that of other humans to such extent, his thoughts shifted as fast and often as he might blink. One moment he pondered whether he could combine an apparatus he called an "NES" with a "Sega Genesis," then another he termed "Playstation 1 through Infinity," then dropped the matter altogether to ruminate the best possible way to explain to his maternal unit that "C-minus" he got on his examination that day.
Ilik had Gebol confined to sick bay till further notice. He couldn't risk him taking his own life, at least not before he shared the rest of his findings.
Next came Researcher Vildam. She was in what humans call "hysterics."
"{One moment he was talking to me about what he does for a living. The next, he thought it would be most pleasurable for me to share a bed with him! The things he intended to do with that filthy apparatus! I broke the link by the time a substance called "pesto" came into his mind: he intends to mate with me, *then* consume me for sustenance!?}."
Vildam... such a shame. One of the brightest minds of the current cycle, reduced to an incoherent babbling mess after a Terran minute of speaking with one of those "construction workers" about something called a "Shakespeare."
Ilik would never forgive himself if she never recovered. She was to be the bearer of his spawn, after all.
Pacing back and forth outside the Audience Chamber of the Imperial Palace at Ilaurus, capital homeworld of the Lukonian Empire, Ilik vainly thought to impose coherence on his train of thought.
This couldn't be happening!
A species that shifts thoughts faster than they can utter syllables, whose minds aren't bound by rules of temporality or reality *and* can easily bludgeon blatant contradictions into coherent ideations!
How would he explain any of this to Chief Scientist Am'Dussias?
The Ailuran was already difficult to appease. Ilik would be lucky to still have a job, to say nothing of his own life, after all was said and done... | This is gonna be a long read. Sit back and enjoy.
​
*Translated to Language #2554 (Human Language form - American English) per your request.*
**-- Classification --**
Alien Species Report #1751
Supervised by Junior Researcher Xipt'an Xi'ta. *Supervisor note - My first time writing an alien species report, and I think I nailed it!*
Perceptibility: Class XIV - Visible, Tangible
Sentience: Variant 3 - Sapient
Information about alien life: Class 2B - Unaware about aliens, but aware that their existence is possible
\[UNTRANSLATABLE\] - Plausible, but \[UNTRANSLATABLE\]. *Supervisor note - You wouldn't get it anyways. I don't get it too. Why would you need to \[UNTRANSLATABLE\]?*
Residence: System #11890 (Sol), Planet #25276 (Earth).
Refer to document "Species #1751 full classification" for a more detailed approach.
**-- Description --**
Species #1751, also known as humans, are a humanoid, almost fully perceptible alien species. They live on Planet #25276 "Earth". For more information on Earth or system #11890 "Sol", refer to document "System #11890 Sol, Full Classification and Description".
Humans are known for their ethnical diversity: at the time of writing, Earth is housing 195 factions each ruled by a different government. Humans are also unusually aggressive toward each other, to the point of using Type-3 Nuclear Explosives. *Supervisor note - Yeah, I know. They don't have proper spaceships or intelligence on us, "aliens", but they have Type-3 Nuclear Explosives and have proven to be not afraid to use them, Scary!*
Species #1751 are sapient, capable of thinking, conversing and \[UNTRANSLATABLE\]. *Supervisor note - They don't know that they can \[UNTRANSLATABLE\], though. That's a little funny. I don't know why. just imagining something that can't \[UNTRANSLATABLE\] is hilarious to me.*
Alpha-Xarxay Mind Tests have proven ineffective with humans, and Bohx-Delta Mind Tests have given inconsistent results. Testing with telepathy has ~~worked~~ ~~not worked~~ ~~given inconsistent results~~ ~~resulted in the tester's \[REDACTED\]~~ See Telepathy Test Log #1751-3 (Requires Level Gamma-1751 clearance).
*Opening Telepathy Test Log #1751-3 per your request.*
Supervisor: Xi'x Xor
Telepathy Provider: Xant'i Xixsa
Test Subject: Species #1751 specimen.
<The test begins.>
Xant'i Xixsa: *starting up an universal translator.*
Subject: Where am I? Help- *notices Xant'i Xixsa* Oh my goodness! Get away from me you-
Xant'i Xixsa: Do not worry. My intention is not to harm you. *Note - the universal translators don't always understand the language they were fed, that may cause confusion. Contact Xufac's Universal Translators support line if emergency help is needed.*
Subject: *calms down* Why are you, uh, speaking like that?
Xant'i Xixsa: I have not noticed any strange patterns with my American English speech. Anyway, I am here to perform a test on you.
Subject: Oh god. Will you torture me, like last time? *Note - subject may or may not have knowledge of alien species, based on their recalling of being "abducted by some creepy \[REDACTED\]".*
Xant'i Xixsa: No. I am not here to perform torturous acts, I am here to perform a test on you.
Subject: What test?
Xant'i Xixsa: I am not here to explain the test to you. I will now proceed to the test.
*Telepathy provider's eyes start glowing. After approximately 8.36 seconds, the subject's eyes start glowing as well.*
*Testing proceeds as usual. Both Xant'i Xixsa and the subject are silent. Xant'i Xixsa starts to look surprised and scared.*
*Xant'i Xixsa's eyes start \[UNTRANSLATABLE\]. The test is abruptly ended, with medical robots rushing in to apply first aid to the telepathy provider.*
No new telepathy tests are to be performed with Species #1751.
*Supervisor's note: I was there as well. I've heard Xant'i Xixsa's last words... This is the first time I;ve witnessed a death. I'm still very, uh, traumatised because of that unfortunate event.*
*Poor Xant'i's last words were "How can he see a picture without actually seeing it! Truly phenomenal, I should tell my son.". Poor Xant'i. Rest in peace, buddy.* | 2022-03-03T07:40:57 | 2022-03-03T07:30:43 | 111 | 74 |
[WP] You were forced to attend an interview for a job you do not want, but, no matter how hard you try to screw up the interview, the interviewer just becomes more keen to hire you. | I let out a hefty burp as the barman took away my last pint. My seventh pint. Now, now I was ready. I didn't so much as hop off my stool, as fall off my stool, but I regained my balance, nodded again at the bemused barman, and made my dragging tracks out of the pub.
3:06pm. I was already six minutes late. Fantastic! And it had only taken me just over an hour to down those six pints. Was it seven? I actually felt pretty good then, I'd have to push that pervasive feeling down into my belly before I got in.
I skipped merrily into the building, before reminding myself that I didn't want to show too much enthusiasm. I burped again, openly. The sound echoed around the dusty old corridor I was making my way through, hopefully just far enough to reach into the main stage area. And then I was in the actual theatre, that hadn't taken so long. Things were a little fuzzy.
"Hello!" I shouted, muting myself quickly. Too friendly. Way too friendly. "I'm here for the...the audition." I gulped out, swaying slightly. A young, quite attracti-no, get the goggles off-mousy little woman with a clipboard hushed me. I thought she was the noisy one. Both of her was.
"The director's already auditioning someone, you-"
She was cut off by the director, who's head had turned from the stage to me. I think he was wearing clothes. It's only conjecture at this point.
"Now THAT is the kind of bold entrance I'm looking for!" He turned back to the man auditioning. "Get the fuck off my stage, kindly, darling." Back to me. "Well? I recognise your headshot's, your agent was awfully keen that we see you. I didn't see it myself but now..." He was balding, actually quite attrac-NO-focus on fucking it up, fuck. Focus on something.
I walked along the walls and the seats of the place it seemed as the revolving theatre steadily decided to pulse in time with my steps as I walked along the walls and the seats and the of place as I walked along-
"Have you learnt the audition piece?"
What? Hadn't bothered looking. When did I get on the stage? I didn't want to work yet, it was too soon. Fuck my agent. Maybe I should fuck my agent.
"Maybe I should fuck my agent?"
Was that my outside head voice?
"You're a bit of a wildcard aren't you? Forget the piece, I like what I see. I want to workshop this with you."
No, no, no. That was a good start, I didn't DO good starts. I had to rectify this. By completely throwing it. No time for subtlety. But Janice, she wouldn't represent me anymore in the future if I made it obvious? Did I care? I had to care...I couldn't set myself back eleven years representation wise, but I needed more time off.
"I'm going to be honesht...excuse me...with you mate. I'm pissed."
Silence. That was good right? Why was he smiling wider?
"Oh yes!" He enthused, raising his hands up. How many fingers? "So. Am. I DARLING! That's why we're doing this isn't it? To show them how pissed off we are. We'll make them really *think* about it before they do it to they're own families in the future!"
What was this? He hadn't understood, the prick. I didn't want to think about families. Why did everyone want to talk about-
"No." I said, trying to strike a defiant pose. I nailed it. "I'm pissed."
More silence, yet. Yes?
"I'm fucked. I'm trollied. I'm smashed. Drunk. As the probervial...skunk." I smiled at my own...well that wasn't really a joke was it? No don't smile! "No, you need to stop smiling too!" Out of the head voice again. Didn't matter. I had to throw it now.
"Ooooh! Lynn, make a note of this man here! We've got ourselves a method actor! I love it! You know, it's this kind of bravery that I've been searching for these past two weeks. It's splendid. Show me angry!"
"OH FUCK OFF!" I roared, who was this-Wait! No! Wrong timing! I burped again and tripped over a rope that wasn't there. "I'm actually really nice."
The director jumped out of his seat and squealed. The man squealed. It was adorable really but I was not doing the best job at doing the worst job like I'd hoped.
"Oh I'm sure you are, but I can feel that power behind you, that burning intensity. I shouldn't be saying this but you're the best *fucking* fit for this part we've had on that stage yet. I just need to get a glimpse of your-"
"No...please no!" I wailed, dropping to my knee's in a manner I wished I could summon when I really wanted a part. "I can't do this. I'm just. Not. Ready. Yet."
"YES!!!" The director squealed, no screeched, no screamed. "Your sensitive side is *BRILLIANT*! You've got the part! Lynn, mark him down for the drunken, broken father role, I don't want to see anyone else, let's go for a coffee, I'm sick of this fucking space."
I blinked and he was gone.
Did he say.
Drunken. Broken.
Father? | “So, why do you think you deserve to work for us?” The interviewer asked me.
“I don’t,” I replied with cruel honesty.
The bald man, in his forties, laughed at me. I showed him a muffled expression.
“You seem like a jokester! Exactly the kind of a person we aim for!”
“I don’t want this job, you know…” Again, I need to give him the cruel honesty.
His laugh resonated through the room, once again. My face was baffled with weirdness.
“Nobody wants this job! You have just become one of my favourites!”
“Could we just get to the end, I’m feeling too lazy right now.” Another, subtle way of saying “Please, for the love of God, don’t hire me.”
The interviewer’s face was put into deep thought, as I waited for him to finish his incredibly boring ritual. That didn’t come; after about ten minutes, I was just pissed off, and since I don’t need this job, I needed to give it to him hard and cold.
“You know what, either speak right now or I’m leaving this wretched interview.”
The man stopped his thinking, stood up and yelled something I didn’t quite grasp. Someone entered the room, a tall young blond woman, gave him a piece of paper. He sat on his chair, once again, and started talking:
“You… Excellent. We need a person who wouldn’t take anyone’s shit! You are the most perfect candidate I’ve ever seen in my entire life!”
My eyebrow twitched in annoyance, I sighed. I decided to play with him, in the hopes of getting kicked out.
“Give me the most paying position with the least amount of work, I want to the top of this company.” Surely, this should piss him off.
His eyes widened, his jaw was left hanging. A tall, black and bald person entered the interviewing room, speaking with his rough, manly voice:
“Son, you are the perfect person to inherit my company and my riches.”
After that, I was given, for some reason, the ownership of this company, as well as a few billions of dollars. The person, the tall black man, was dying of cancer and wanted to give his fortunes to someone. It seemed he chose an interview like this.
I’ll have to thank my mother later, to think that her meddling in my life and controlling it, turned out to make be a billionaire… I couldn’t even imagine it in my wildest dreams!
| 2017-08-29T10:32:29 | 2017-08-29T09:16:02 | 76 | 24 |
[WP] Immortal monsters of legend have returned after lying dormant for thousands of years. However, the legends were made before guns were a thing, and the "immortal" thing was kind of overblown. | The problem with ancient languages is that many words don't really translate well into modern language. In some cases there's just no modern word that fits, or in some cases there may be several potential translations, all with slightly different meanings. Aside from that, there's the nuance of the word given the rest of a sentence.
Nowadays, computers can make pretty short work of many old works. Hell, a modern phone and can do in seconds what a supercomputer would take days or years to accomplish. Even so, the nuance of meaning is best left up to experts. Take for example the ancient scrolls found in a watertight chest at the bottom of a deep chasm in the pacific ocean. Nobody knows how they got there, the age predates known human civilisation - but the translations speak of a race of terrible immortals that will race again a year after the chest is found. All it took was an app install and about 15 minutes to get the message, but figuring out the deeper meaning took longer.
&#x200B;
At first, people scoffed, and rightly so. After all, this sort of thing had come up before and it always turned out to be some sort of hoax or publicity for the next upcoming monster movie. Still, governments seemed to think it was legit, and top people worked day and night to figure out just what it meant. Still, we didn't really know 100% until the first deep ones emerged.
&#x200B;
Don't get me wrong, the deep ones were pretty serious business. From ones the size of a large dog (but with claws, tentacles, and teeth that could cut through steel), to leviathans that dwarfed an aircraft carrier, these things were scary as fuck. A lot of people died early on. Millions.
&#x200B;
But then, mankind had people too spare. Too many people, really. And we'd already lost millions to a resurgeance of old diseases (thanks you anti-vax pricks), rapid climate change causing global overheating (fuck you deniers), crop failure due to loss of pollinators (monsanto, you sons of bitches) and just general overpopulation with dwindling food stocks. That last one was the kicker, really, and probably what turned a fearsome enemy into our greatest resource.
&#x200B;
You see, the word immortal can have a few different meanings. I can mean somethat that doesn't age or naturally degrade/decade. It can mean something that cannot be killed. In some cases it's been a catch-call for omnipotent - or all-powerful - a being so great that it can't be hurt.
&#x200B;
For the deep ones, it meant that they were hard to hurt. Really, really hard to hurt for the big ones. They also didn't appear to age. The last little tidbit was that they regenerated. In fact, when we finally did manage to blow or chop some of the ugly SOB's up, we discovered that two large pieces of deep one would quickly regenerate into two new deep ones. Kind of like an earthworm, but again the wormy bits were more like razor-bladed tentacles.
&#x200B;
So everyone thought we were fucked. Yeah we could chop them up or blow them up - thanks to some fancy new weapons tech from the Americans, which got through the outer "shells" - but doing so just made more of the toothy noodly bastards.
&#x200B;
Then the Russians came up with something that could neutralize the regenerative properties of the bastards.
&#x200B;
But it was the Japanese, oh those crazy wonderful Japanese, who made the best discovery. We're not sure HOW they made the discovery. There are plenty of rumours of course. Some say that when the Americans blew a leviathan to bits, a few chunks landed in a Japanese soldier's rations. Other say the guy just got so hungry and chowed down on one of the deep ones' wounded foot soldiers. Other less savoury rumours involve a culture that still had an odd and slightly perverted obsession with tentacles, but we'll skip that. Anyhow, you get where this is going, probably. The deep ones were well armored on the outside, but inside they were vulnerable, and... delicious. Combine that with their ability to quickly regenerate, and after we finished blowing up the more dangerous ones the world went from fighting to farming.
&#x200B;
That's right. The deep ones saved the world. Your average dog-sized deep-one could be chopped in half, with one half going back into a refrigerated tank and the other half into the pot for dinner. By the next day, the half in the tank would have grown back to full-size. Deep in the trenches we also found new plant-life with similar regenerative properties, probably what had supported the deep-ones throughout their semi-hibernation. Oh, and did I mention the part where "immortal" can also mean "never-aging". Yup, not only did the bastards grow back quickly, but they were pretty much always fresh. Better than chicken!
&#x200B;
Nowadays we use genetically modified deep ones as food-sources for our deep-space missions. After all, despite having a stable food-source, earth was still pretty crowded and there was a universe to explore. More scrolls were found citing the origin of the deep-ones as being far from this world, so now we're on a mission to find a new rock to settle on.
&#x200B;
Maybe the descendants of the deep-ones will be more friendly than the a-holes left on Earth. If not, then we'll at least find out if they come in a different flavour than their ancestors.
&#x200B;
Edits: Spelling and typos | The first unfortunate soul to encounter what come to be remembered as "The Beasts" was the captain of a small crawfish trawler.
&#x200B;
The machinery pulling the nets on the red, rusting ship began to groan in agony louder than the captain had ever experienced. The ship began to tip as whatever was on the other end weighed the lines down, until finally one last burst of the diesel engine brought it over the edge of the ship. The captain ran down to it, spindly weathered legs hopping and skipping as fast as they could.
&#x200B;
But instead of the promises of gold or mountains of crawfish, a great ugly mass of oozing flesh and gelatinous shape under piles of river muck slowly rose up. At it's full height, it could be easily 10 feet; however, it was hard to tell if it had a spine to reach there. What could be certain was that it had a mouth, that opened to bellow a spine chilling screech putting the diesel engine to shame.
&#x200B;
"Dang it," the old captain rushed back to the cabin and started digging around. Boney, scared fingers curled around a trusted friend with only a little bit of dust on it.
&#x200B;
He whipped around the same time the Beast noticed him. No time to think about the size difference between the gun and it's target, the captain shot off 2 shells in quick succession.
&#x200B;
The Beast let off a scream that seemed to ripple through its self, oozing further from the now missing chunks. It tried to slide away, desperate to return to the safety of the water, but the Captain was too quick. Another two shells quickly found their way to whatever part of it controlled its actions. The Beast now rested much more soundly on the deck of the ship.
&#x200B;
The Captain barely paused. If you knew the Captain, you knew that he had seen his fair share of oddities while trawling this stretch of the river. You would also know that the Captain wasn't a very educated man. Preferring the practicalities of work over ancient mythology.
&#x200B;
However, everyone soon would become an expert, whether there was any merit to that claim, as more and more Beasts rose from the deepest slumber to a very different and very armed world. | 2019-03-20T19:52:25 | 2019-03-20T14:28:06 | 396 | 237 |
[WP] The new guy in your office is nice enough, but you don't know why nobody else can see that he's literally just a group of otters in a trenchcoat. | “Listen, alright? I’m not saying that… ‘Milo’ isn’t nice. It’s just… Well, look at him!”
George and I turn, looking across the lunchroom at the trenchcoated figure standing at the vending machine. Two tiny heads are propping up a wide-brimmed hat, their bewhiskered noses sniffling about as a sleeve slowly raises up. I say sleeve instead of ‘arm’ because, instead of a human hand, a third head pops out. This third face looks around, seeming to consider the options before it, before reaching out with two furry hands, leaning on one of the buttons, and lunging back into the sleeve.
“See?” I respond emphatically. “That’s not a normal person!”
“Well that’s a little unfair, Al. I mean, orange soda isn’t for everyone, but maybe he just likes—“
“Not that, George! It’s not a ‘he’; it’s a ‘they’!”
Turning back toward me, George’s brow furrows and he slowly shakes his head. “Al, I’m disappointed. In this day and age? Who cares how Milo views themself?” He stands up from the table, picking up his Tupperware and looking down on me – literally and figuratively – as I stare up in confusion. “I used to think you were an ally,” he finishes, before turning and walking away.
I sit there for a moment, trying to parse what just happened, before it clicks. “Wait, no! George! When I say ‘they’, I literally mean multiple beings! Plural!” But he keeps walking, leaving the lunchroom with a dirty look toward me, calling back: “You’re lucky I don’t report you to HR.”
I bury my head in my hands, looking down on my leftovers as I weave my fingers into my hair. This ‘Milo’ has been working in my office for two weeks now and nobody else seems to be fazed – or to even notice – that it’s just a bunch of otters in a trenchcoat. I’ve seen ‘Milo’ sitting at their desk, sleeves up as eight tiny hands dart across the keyboard; I’ve sat across from them in a board meeting, eyes locked on their furry faces as six of them prop up their hat and watch the presentation; I’ve even seem them flirting with Susan from Payroll, listening to her laugh as they do little more than squeak. Yet, through all of this, not a single other person seems to think that ‘Milo’ was anything less than a normal employee like the rest of us. I am not understating when I say that I feel like I’m going mad.
The chair next to me shifts again and a figure sits down. I glance up and am slightly taken aback when I see that it is ‘Milo’, sleeves up on the table and eight pairs of tiny eyes peering at me from various places within their trenchcoat. We sit there for a moment, locked in a staring match which I am very clearly losing, before an otter crawls forward out of their sleeve and ‘Milo’ slides his can of orange soda across the table toward me. I glance down, then back up at their ‘face’, suddenly incredulous.
“Is… Is this for me?”
‘Milo’ seems to nod, three of their heads bobbing back and forth and making their hat move up and down. The outstretched otter retreats back into the sleeve, turning around a few times before sticking his nose back out and watching me expectantly. I raise a hand and slowly grab the can of soda, pulling it back to me. “Thanks.” I take a sip and can swear that all of the otters – all the ones I can see, anyway – seem to smile at me. Then, without another thought, they get up and walk – more like shuffle – out of the lunchroom, the trenchcoat bulging and folding as they move away.
Supremely confused, yet somehow feeling guilty about my previous behavior, I stammer and call out after them: “M-m-m-Milo!” They stop and turn around, now only two of them propping up the hat, one sniffling at the air while the other seems to be grooming itself with its tiny hands. I glance down at the soda, trying to figure out what to say, before the words just seem to pour out unbidden:
“Um… Do you… Do you want to get a drink after work?”
The one otter stops grooming itself and looks over at me, then back at the other ‘head’ otter. They squeak at each other for a moment, then disappear into the confines of the trenchcoat. The entire thing seems to slowly collapse on itself, almost like a hot air balloon deflating, and suddenly I can’t see any of the otters within the fabric. What I do hear is squeaking – almost like conversation – from almost a dozen different voices. Their deliberations seem to last forever, broken intermittently by a single head popping out of different parts of the trenchcoat and glancing at me, then diving back into the folds.
After what seems like an eternity, but is likely only a few moments, the trenchcoat begins to form back into a vaguely human shape. After propping upright again, three heads pop out of the collar, finding me in the room. They all look at me and seem to smile, then repeat their nodding movement from earlier.
“Oh. Okay. Good. Great.” I stammer my response, not really sure what I was expecting. “Cool. Um, I’ll meet you downstairs later, then.”
Milo nods once again, then turns and shuffles out of the lunchroom entirely. I sit back in my seat and take another sip of the orange soda that he gave me, and try to figure out what my life even is anymore.
Maybe Milo isn’t so bad after all. Even if he is just a bunch of otters. | "Hey Eric, how are the TPS reports coming along?" I asked as I sat down to my usual table in the cafeteria.
"Finished those this morning, we're having a pretty good day so far." they said.
Eric always used "they/them" plural pronouns, and since it was [current year] everyone had just accepted it without too many questions. What had surprised me more was that I seemed to be the only one who noticed that our coworker "Mr. Unum" was actually a collection of otters in a trenchcoat. When Eric wasn't around some of my coworkers privately thanked me for eating lunch with them, but they didn't talk to Eric much. After all the mass shootings in businesses and schools in the past few years they were glad someone was willing to socialize with the strange guy in a trenchcoat, even if they were too cowardly to be the one talking with them themselves.
"What are you doing this weekend?", I asked as I started in on my roast beet sandwich. Eric had a bucket of clams and was smacking them loudly against the table, breaking them open, and greedily shoving them into various pockets, holes, and openings in their coat. The telltales were all there, I couldn't believe that the rest of my coworkers hadn't figured it out at this point.
"Oh we're taking our wives to Olympic National Park!"
"Didn't you go there last weekend?"
"Yeah but the family lives out there so you know how it goes." We talked about our families and the various national parks we'd visited for a few minutes while we finished our lunches.
"All right, have fun. I've got to get going."
"We'll come with you", Eric said and wobbled upright. As we walked down the hall towards our cubicle together Eric was asking about water beds and if any of the high-end models had a small wave generator to simulate movement. I had to tell them I didn't know, since my parents had had a water bed but I'd never really thought of getting one for myself.
As we turned the corner to our cubicles we were stopped by our boss. "Eric! I know you didn't want any kind of celebration but I just wanted to take a minute to congratulate you on the anniversary of your 5th year with the company." "Thank you Scott!", came a voice actually originating in Eric's left knee, but Mr. Adams didn't seem to notice and went on his way.
"Let me know if you end up finding a good water bed." I told Eric as I kept walking. "Will do!", they said as they shambled down the hall to yet another meeting with the junior VP. | 2018-04-04T08:04:54 | 2018-04-04T07:58:55 | 53 | 38 |
[WP]: After losing a bet, a master assassin must kill a world leader with a banana | It was easy to kidnap Mark Zuckerberg. What was difficult was getting him to India.
It took months of planning, but fortunately for me the bet never specified a deadline. I had to pull many strings to get the drugs I needed to keep him comatose, and a lot of cash to secure passage in the cargo hold of an international flight.
The trip was long, and cold, but we eventually landed and were blasted by the New Deli heat.
Mark was becoming a little more coherent so I grabbed another syringe.
"Whhaa dooo" was all he managed to say before i stuck another hole in his thigh.
"We are a long way from where I grabbed you off your vespa little buddy" I whispered in his ear.
I moved Mark to another plane and threw him into the cargo hold. A substantial wad of cash was given to the pilot and we were once again flying the friendly skies.
Our 2,000 KM flight seemed to take forever, but eventually we landed in Maduria.
The truck was there right on time and pulled right up to the small plane. It's amazing what you can get done with the right connections and enough money.
Raj was driving the truck and I gave him a nod as I threw mark into the back.
Mark wasn't looking very well so I gave him some water, and a bit of an old sandwich. I couldn't risk having him die on the trip. I had to follow the rules, and death by dehydration didn't count.
I considered giving him another injection but decided he was in such bad shape that it would be easy to keep him close, with no danger.
We finally arrived in a small village and i threw Mark out of the truck onto the packed dirt road.
"Who are you?"
"What do you want?"
"I can pay you"
Always the same questions...
"It's nothing personal Mark." I said, "and I don't need your money."
He ran.
He wasn't very fast.
I caught up to him, grabbed him by the neck and shoved his face into the grass.
He said something else, but it sounded more like sobbing than anything else.
"Where is the pit?" I asked Raj.
He motioned over to a small clearing outside the village and i pulled mark over to the hole by his ankle.
"Wait! Wait!" mark called out.
I'm a professional, and professionals don't pay any attention to that stuff.
He slid into the pit and I could hear the crack of his leg breaking as he hit the bottom, followed by his screams.
"Bring the truck" I said, and Raj ran off.
A few minutes later I could hear the rumbling and see the blue grey smoke of and old farm truck creeping it's way toward me. Raj was driving it slow to not upset the huge pile of bananas on the brink of toppling over.
He backed the truck up to the hole and stopped a few feet short.
I reached up into the back and grabbed a banana.
It was green and firm, but I was able to crush it easily under my fingerless gloves.
"That's all for now Raj." I said, and Raj walked away, disappearing into the village.
"I can't believe how many bananas you can buy for $5000 in India" I laughed.
"Just think of how many you could buy Mark!"
Mark was whimpering on the floor. I don't think he heard what i said.
I grabbed a handful and started throwing them at Mark.
The first few hit the ground next to him but I had my aim now.
A few times I was able to time the delivery just right, and catch him in the face right as his pleading eyes looked up at me.
I threw bananas for the rest of the evening, and well into dark.
I had to eventually ask Raj to get me a shovel, since my arm felt like jelly.
The hole was finally full. I pulled out my phone and updated my status.
"On a mountain of Bananas ;)"
I'm sure that Demetri would see and know that I made good on the bet.
That will be the last time I make a bet with Demetri.
| "Potassium Assassin"
He came equipped with a banana stripped
Of its yellow filling-stuff so to choke
His intended target with circumscript
Arrangements that prescribed he joke
About with his salacious, murderous
Action to kill the foreign health leader
In fashion ironic and factitious
Because this man declared to each creature
That none consume yellow stuffed-foods freely
With such opposition was he met that
Of all to testify called none did see
Who had the foreign official neck wrapped
The tale of official ill-liked by all
Who met end choked with a banana peel | 2014-05-13T13:46:40 | 2014-05-13T13:02:49 | 39 | 24 |
[WP] If you get pregnant but you aren’t ready for a child, you can cryogenically freeze them after birth until you’re ready to raise them. The problem is, many people end up abandoning them because they’re never ready, leaving thousands of perfectly preserved babies at the hands of the cryo agencies | “ I'm here to reclaim my baby, my name is Louise 763, I drop him 7 years ago, “ I said to a girl dressed white as a nurse in the reception.
After some minutes checking her terminal, she says:
“I have no records of any Louise 763, are you sure he is not recorded with other name? “
“I’m sure I used my name, you can see my biological holo card.“
“No any record, strange, maybe was the father processing it,” she said.
“ No, no, I’m alone, I’m sure was myself,” I said.
“Just a minute,” she said before calling by cellphone another employee, saying any I didn’t understand. The other employe after comes right to me.
“ I can see your holo card?” I said yes.
Some minutes of examination, one more question:
“ Do you know when you brought your baby to be cryogened? “
“ Yes, of course, 24 May 2087, exactly 14 years ago,” I said.
“Well, maybe this is the explanation, in the end of 2087 we got a big issue in the company, a system bug, a virus has spread in our cyber system and some records have been lost, maybe it’s the problem, could you come with me, “ he says.
I followed up in the interior of the building along corridors equipped of electronic cables, cameras, computers until we arrived to a big hall.
“ This is the hall 03, this is incognito newborns area. The babies we lost the records are here,” he said.
Hundreds of opal glass chambers conserving little human bodies connected to tubes inside a liquid like water seems sleeping forever until one day of the resurrection. A weird showcase at least.
“It means that your company lost my baby? “ I asked.
“ Yes, we regret for it, it was a singular case affecting all deposits before end of 2087, what we can propose is you chosen anyone, the one you like more, any that you think could have some affinity with you, and with some luck to be your real son, “ he said.
“ No, No, No ! I want my real baby, I cannot accept it.”
“ We can do nothing, excuse me, I know it’s a difficult situation, but it was not our fault, it was TrojanGreek5, the famous virus responsible for the destruction of 60% of the informatic systems in the world, the end of 2087 was one of the most chaotic year of the recent history of the world, sure you know it.“
“ Yes, but it’s in unfair, I paid for the services of your company, “ I said.
“ One possibility is if you remember the aspect or any physical particularity of your baby, maybe you can identify him by looking through the chambers,” he said.
My memories of my son were small and unclear, I leave him here after 3 weeks born, I was not ready to have sons, it was a flirt with Olsen 974, ex college colleague in my 15 yo birthday party, but there was something, the baby eyes had a special green tune as her father. Maybe it’s the key.
I start to check all creatures of the hall 03 to see the eyes, is a little weird to seem all that little creatures inside jars with the eyes open and sleeping as they were dead. It was more than 1 hour, I checked 3 times, but no one has the special green eyes of his father.
“ Are there other halls with babies without records? “ I asked to the employee waiting patiently the end of my examination.
“ No, this is the only one, big part of the babies have been already taken by parents. 14 years is long time, you understand. “
“ My one is not here, I’m sure, is it possible other mother taken my baby? “ I asked.
“ Yes, unfortunately, yes, it’s probable, we are speaking about babies leaven in cryogenic cameras for 14 years, we proposed if not identified, you simply chosen one as said before. “
At this moment I was really confused, I don’t know what I can do. I don’t want a baby from other parents, I got a stable job in other city and ready for to raise properly my only son.
“Please I need your help,, do you have the contacts of the customers from the hall 3 in the last 14 years? “
“We have a compromise with our all customers, It’s confidential, we cannot do it, please choose a baby, If you can’t choose I can do it for you,” he says.
“This is a very special case, please help me, if not, “ then I just pointed to him, one Magnum Laser 809 bought in the black market.
“Please take to the database where you have the contacts of the hall 03.”
“No! No! No!“ said the employee but immediately he changed of opinion after I pulled the trigger.
Then he led me to an office with access controlled by iris recognition. Inside a terminal where he entered a username and password.
“ This is the database of our all customers, I can filter by Hall 03 and you got 2328 clients, is not easy not check them all, but you have time,“ he said.
I take a seat and start to search the database, it seems impossible to find any useful data here. I search by alphabetical order, nothing, I can do to find my authentic soon, just scrolling hundreds of customers in a desperate action until I see one thing.
I stopped in the letter O.
And cannot to believe what I see.
Olsen 974.
He was one of the customers to come here to reclaim a baby from the Hall 03, 5 years ago.
The father of my baby.
note: I'm not english native and aware I'm a terrible writer :)
| It was never supposed to go this way. But I guess that's what everyone thinks when the world turns to shit.
I stood motionless, letting the gentle breeze kiss lightly against my blood caked face. I grasped an EMP dagger in my right fist. I hated the bloody things. Serrated edges, bulky chargers. The only difference with this one was that it was dented, and covered in blood. Their blood.
With a tired sigh, I gazed at what lay at my feet. Smothered in dust and blood, a human lay there. At least, what was left of one. It hadn't really been human since it was born. But... I shook my head, resolving myself. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing any of us could do. With another sigh, I knelt, locked an emotionless gaze with its eyes, and rammed the dagger into its skull. After a convulsion or two, it's last gurgles of life was a biting melody to my ears.
How did it come to this? Five years after the war broke the majority of the population seemed to just disappear. Are we to say that no one saw it coming? Perhaps. But then again, historically when humans have tried to play god, it's never ended so well. I clenched my fists until I could see the whites of the knuckles. So much death, and for what? For this hell? With a growl, I booted the mangled corpse, its limp form shifting like sludge in the dusty ground. Sometimes it got too much, even for me. But others were relying on me, I couldn't afford to show weakness. Not now.
Bending down, I cracked open the creature's ribs and rummaged around until I could find what I needed. It was somewhat ironic that the device that powered all our EMPs were the creature's core engine. But who am I to question design. I'm just the guy who kills things. With a few more grunts and some squelching, the device finally ripped free, a small, circular metallic object that glowed a faint blue. Such a small thing, so much destruction.
And then the sirens sounded.
"Shit."
With one last sigh, I stood and gazed out over the plains. Following the horizon, the city was silhouetted against the dying glow of the afternoon sun. The towering mass of steel and concrete was the last place I wanted to go, but it was the only place we could go. Back to where it all began. Back to find patient 0. | 2018-08-01T07:55:35 | 2018-08-01T06:54:52 | 17 | 11 |
[WP]You’re the god of small luck, you make the bus late, make pennies appear. You receive a prayer from a homeless man, “Please, I want to get on my feet. A stable job, a wife, some kids.” Normally, you’d forward his prayer to the god of success. Now, you decide to take on the case yourself. | The disheveled derelict of humanity was just sitting under the bridge, shivering as the autumn winds were quickly turning toward winter’s bite. It was sheer luck and happenstance that I even happened to notice the poor man, as he was pushed up between two bushes to avoid notice from passerby above. It looked like he’d lived here for quite a while, so it was lucky I’d happened upon him.
Of course, luck plays quite a large part of my existence. I am, after all, a minor deity. Specifically, if you want exact details, I am the God of Incidental Luck. I’m the one you thank when you find that quarter you needed for the meter, just as the meter guy walks up. I’m the one you praise when an unexpected fumble brings the game into overtime, giving your team one more chance to prove themselves.
Mind you, I don’t handle the big stuff. Lottery winnings, surviving an accident unscathed by the skin of your teeth, things of that nature? Yeah, not my department. Mine is the smaller things in life, the ones most people don’t notice unless they’re paying attention.
And I prefer it that way. Stay out of the limelight, and just do my job. That’s me.
I absently granted the minor wish of the man who’d thrown the coin into the river as I studied the homeless man before me. The man on the bridge had wished for a promotion, which I couldn’t do, but I COULD arrange so that he’d wind up in the same elevator as his supervisor when it was slated to have a mechanical failure and get stuck for a few hours. What he did of that time would be up to him, not me – but something about this wreck in the bushes intrigued me for some reason.
Once the wish was complete, I meandered over to the man and inspected him closer. As I thought, he’d been under this bridge for a while; cans of food, leftover coffee cups, and other assorted knick-knacks scattered around left little doubt that this particular corner of the world was occupied. He couldn’t see me, of course, but I could see everything about him as I peered into his soul.
What I found gave me pause. I saw a life unfold before me; he’d been born into a normal family and had joined the military soon after graduation. I watched as this childhood innocence turned darker as war approached. A choice was made, one after another, and in order to live, he was forced to kill. I watched as he was wounded and sent home, where he was expected to return to normal and forget everything he’d experienced.
But, of course, he’d been unable to forget. He’d turned to drink, then to drugs, until his life was ruined and he fled into the streets to not have to face either himself or his parents any further. I watched his life on the run, corner to corner, begging for the least scrap of humanity to survive just one day at a time.
The man couldn’t see me as I processed what I saw in his soul, of course. I looked around, my eyes falling on the thin piece of cardboard he’d been holding for a week on his corner. All it said was, “Please.”
Please.
The word echoed in my mind as I watched him curl up into a fetal position and attempt to sleep. Please. Well, my friend, this may not be quite the help you’re expecting, but your prayer has reached someone who can help.
“Let’s see what happens now, shall we?” I muttered to myself as I started weaving my threads…
\* \* \*
The following day, the man went to the corner, the same as he did every day. However, there was something slightly different that morning. A woman was standing at the bus stop nearby, idly surfing on her phone as she waited for the bus to arrive.
The city, being a den of villainy as it had the potential to be, flared in response and a young man snatched the phone out of her hand. As she screamed for help, the young man fled in the direction of the homeless man, expecting no resistance.
And on a normal day, there would have been none. This was a fact of life in the city. But, for whatever reason, today this man chose to not just be part of the background. His training from his prior life flared within him, and quickly and expediently, he brought the youthful criminal to the ground. With the youth pinned underneath him, the police were called and all was well.
This, again, could have been the end of it. A small-time hero, a quick blurb on the news, and then forgotten by the world again. But the woman’s father owned a few businesses around the city, and the offer was made. Someone willing to stand up and protect a complete stranger like his daughter deserved a chance, right?
He could have turned it down. But he did not. He allowed the man to put him into the rehab center to get clean first, then he allowed the man to start molding him gently back into the real world. It took time, but eventually the homeless man - No, I’m sorry. But eventually Greg, as that was his name, slowly began to change.
The nightmares finally started to ease. With each passing day, with each correct choice he made, he found himself one step closer to healing. There were a few days he regressed; it was a long road, after all, and it is impossible to avoid every pothole. But with each regression, he persevered and managed to pull himself back up, one bootstrap at a time.
A couple of years after I’d found him under the bridge, he nervously asked the girl he’d helped on the first date he’d been on in a decade. She accepted, and after another year, I smiled from my position in the eaves of the church as he waited with bated breath for his bride to walk down to the altar.
His wish had come true, and all I’d done was gently push him in the right direction. In each time, his unknowing wish could have turned sour – one wrong choice and I’d have had to abandon my “pet project.” But every time, almost without fail, he’d made the choice to go forward with his humanity instead of regressing to the wretch I’d found under that bridge that night.
I hopped down from the eaves, landing gently before the man as he went to kiss his bride. A job well done, I thought. One last gift…
I walked to the section with gifts for the happy couple and placed my gift among them. Whether he wore the lucky charm I’d given him or not was, as always, completely up to him.
But I felt pretty certain he’d wear it. Whistling idly, I left Greg and his wife behind as I strolled off into the afternoon sun.
It was going to be a good day.
&#x200B;
Edit: 0\_0 Thank you, everyone, for the fantastic words and awards! | The breakthrough came in realising, success was just a series of tiny things.
People didn't have to win the lottery, they had to do most of the work. It just took a tiny push. A nudge.
It got even more fun when I discovered the fun of mixing prayers. Two completely unrelated people? Two different prayers? One action. That was the ticket, deal with the stuff in bulk.
Lastly, 'bad luck' was also luck, and even if the event was considered bad it was completely possible for it to lead to better things, I never got accused of being unbalanced by the other gods because I handed out good and bad. Even they didn't look into the long plan.
So, a little nudge to the intestines of a pigeon, that one act answered many prayers. It also took one man from homeless, to success. Not rich and famous, just happy. Back where he needed to be.
The pigeon dumped the most disgusting mess directly onto the traffic warden. She stopped and began to swear just as a car jumped the red light and flew past where she would have been. See? Some bad luck, but I did good. A life saved. Even better, the man in the parking bay down the road got to his car before the traffic warden and didn't get a ticket. He was happy.
He drove home and let other cars pull in, turn and didn't get angry at the wheel. When the guy late for work got let in to the heavy traffic his mood improved a lot too. More prayers answered. I've not done anything all day and things are going well.
There is a parking space near work! Instead of a ticketed car and an angry man arguing about how he was only 20 minutes over, there is a space. He won't be late for work now. He sees a homeless person on the street. Pay it forward he thinks and tosses all the loose chance and, why not, some notes to the man sitting quietly on the side of the street.
The traffic warden is talking to her boss about going home early to change. He won't let her. She quits. This was the final push she needed, she was finally going to finish that degree.
The homeless man looks at the guy in a suit whistling as he walks into an office, a smile on his face. He wonders if he really can do it, maybe it wasn't the life of drudgery he imagined? He decides to do it. Today. Today would be the day, he gets up and goes to the shelter.
"Your in luck! One of our regular volunteers came in early in a good mood, turns out he escaped a parking ticket and got to see a pigeon crap on the traffic warden to boot! So we have hot food and clean clothes ready for you."
He takes a shower, changes into clean clothes and feels like a new man. He decides to get that job no matter what. One of the staff at the shelter says they know of a vacancie that literally just opened up. Their sister quit her job today, it wasn't the best job in the world but it was solid pay and outdoors too. Not stuck in an office.
The world kept turning. I watched for the rest of the day, the month, the year. He enjoyed his new job. Plenty of fresh air and excercise with it. He was so happy to have a job at all, he knew how far he had come and treated others with respect. Hundreds of lives improved.
He met a woman, he was about to ticket her and she didn't swear at him. She said sorry. She cried. It had been a bad day for her. They swapped numbers.
A cat ate the pigeon.
Well, I am a god for people not animals. | 2020-10-02T10:00:37 | 2020-10-02T07:26:06 | 4,502 | 824 |
[WP] You, a low rank adventurer who got stuck with the gardener class, have to put up with the higher ranked adventures trampling your garden and making fun of you. One day a famous adventurer trips on one of your plants and dies. Your level skyrockets. No other gardener has ever leveled up before. | Plants feed on the fallen. The soil from which they grow is rich with the nutrients of the dead. The energy of the daisy, the shrub, the towering oak is not destroyed in death. It is passed along through the dirt to be absorbed by the next in line.
I knew a similar cycle applied to us. We adventurers, with our ordained classes, our inborn gifts. I knew the raw powers of the killed passed on to the killer. I knew "greatness" was a pretty word heroes used to describe the piles of corpses they left in their wakes.
"I would love more power," I whispered to my nightshades as I watered them under the yellow moon. "But it's not worth what it costs. The killing. The blood. I'd rather be a humble gardener than have all those deaths weighing on my conscience. I'd rather be weak than vile."
I reached one hand up toward the yellow moon and with the other I coaxed the plant. As I hummed and focused the lunar energies, little buds began to open and bloom from the limb of my nightshade.
I sat back, exhausted. I wiped the sweat from my brow. Accelerating the life of even a small plant left me drained.
"You're so weak, you're not even worth the killing," said a voice behind me.
I started. "Thank you, sir," I gasped. I felt like a mouse being watched by a viper. "I am weak. I know it."
"Pitiful, too," the hero announced. "Do you know the man to whom you are speaking?"
"I have a guess."
"I am Halodin the Unbroken," he said.
"Yes," I said. "There were rumours you would pass by our humble town. I am honoured to be in your presence, sir."
"Ha! And I am disgraced to be in yours. Such is the way of the world."
I did not turn to look at him. Many claimed that he killed any who gazed upon his face, while others claimed that his form was so magnificent the mere sight of it struck the looker dead. Whichever was true, I did not want to find out.
"Look up," he commanded. "At the moon. Now."
I did as commanded. I felt the power emanating from him, behind me. I watched as that full, yellow moon gradually darkened, faded from view, like during an eclipse. And one by one, the stars began to dim as well, winking out of existence until the sky was a perfect blackness.
I could not see a thing.
"You have the power to siphon moonbeams to make your little plants grow," he sneered. "Yet your pathetic powers are enough to keep you content. Meanwhile, I can blot the moon from the sky with ease. But for me, my powers are nothing. Nothing. I'll never understand you wretches, content to simper and bow. Living on your knees. No ambition or pride. Despicable."
I heard him walking past me, his powerful feet sinking into my garden's dirt. I heard the stalks of plants cracking and breaking with each of his indifferent strides.
The world was pitch black. I could not see him. Nevertheless, I closed my eyes, just in case.
"Thank you for sparing my life," I squeaked.
"You call this a life?" he laughed over his shoulder as he strode.
"And watch out, Sir Halodin, for the well of despair!" I sputtered. "The magical pit in the middle of my garden! It was created by one of the Ancients, and boasts a powerful charm. To trip and fall would mean certain death for any man, no matter how powerful."
The hero laughed and continued marching through the darkness, stomping on and through whatever plants he pleased. I imagined how wonderful it would feel to get revenge on someone like him. I imagined how glorious it would feel to put him in his place. To punish him for how he had treated me, for how all of them had treated me.
I dug my fingers into the dirt. I imagined a root slithering up from the dirt to catch his foot. . .
I heard the frustrated growl, then the echoed cry, growing more distant as its source plummeted through those enchanted depths.
Then silence.
The shadow lifted from the moon, the stars. I could see my garden again. And though I could not see Sir Halodin, I could feel him, his power. No longer behind me or before me, but within me. Coursing through my body and soul.
I nodded at the dirt beneath my feet and shot into the sky on the top of a tree; it grew taller and taller, like a spire, until I stood perched hundreds of feet above the surrounding land. With a lazy sweep of my hand, a dense and terrible forest rose for miles in the direction of my gesture.
"The earth is a garden," I laughed, tears streaming down my cheeks. "The earth is *my* garden. It is mine." | I stared in horror at my poor mesquite tree I had named Hexus just for the hell of it. I had been cultivating it for years to harvest branches for smoking.
Now the bark was tainted... the stupid asshole had tripped over one of my low fences and was impaled on the mesquite trees thorns.
"Fuck!" I muttered angrily and stomped around before getting into the dead guys face. "I told you all to stay out of my garden. Yalls destroyed my pumpkin patch, soiled my strawberries, and raped my blackberry bushes. Now you've fucked with Hexus..." I kicked his foot. "I might have to chop it down and start all over again. Can't even sell the wood because its tainted with blood. Fuck you guys."
I called the city guard. They arrived not thirty minutes later to extract the body.
"This was a pretty high level adventurer." The guard murmured. "But... guess the cups got to him too." The guard sighed.
"I've built larger fences but they keep coming into my property. Im a gardener.. I can hardly fill my quotas and pay my taxes if these assholes keep ruining my crops."
The guard gave a nod of understanding.
"At least you leveled up." The guard smiled.
"Not like that helped. But i did dual class..." I rubbed my hands together.
"I don't like that look in your eye." The guard said.
"Monster taming. I've already ordered a beast to watch my plants."
"Is it legal?" The guard asked.
"Perfectly. Piranah Plant wolves."
"Those don't exist." The guard said.
I chuckled. "Not yet." | 2021-10-04T16:23:08 | 2021-09-09T18:31:59 | 1,001 | 210 |
[WP]A necromancer is on his deathbed. With his last bit of strength and perfect timing he takes control of his own body as he dies. Now he's controlling himself from the outside like a puppet and must try to keep his body going. | First time in writing prompts, constructive criticism welcome.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Sam woke up feeling incredibly weak, with a burning sensation in his forehead.
Sam was a occult librarian. His parents were rich and he had plenty of time, so it was basically his only hobby.
There were hundreds of books in his library, on dozens of different branches of magic. Warnings about the consequences of misuse took up the first half of most copies. Some of the warnings were specific to the branch of magic that the book was about, but most of them were standard duplications. After all, these books were incredibly valuable, and at the time of writing, it would have been unheard of to have two, let alone the hoard Sam had amassed.
Sam's newest book was on Necromancy, his favorite branch of magic. At this point he had dabbled enough in various topics that he could light a cigarette with his finger, hold his breath for an hour, and weed his garden slightly faster than normal. They weren't all winners. But necromancy was life itself. He couldn't wait.
His book contained the standard warnings - "Don't cast in view of your own reflection", "never pray", "your shadow is your enemy", yada yada yada. But it also had two additional warnings. The first taught him a simple spell to sense the coming of his own death. The second was instructions on creating a phylactery, and a warning to do it as soon as possible. It also said never to use necromancy on his own body without a phylactery, but the consequences were unspecified.
Unfortunately, making a phylactery was incredibly complex. Sam decided to check that spell again after he finished the book or turned thirty, whichever came first. The rest of the book was similarly complicated and Sam's ambition to control life came to little. He made himself a pet zombie dog and moved on to the next big thing - magical origami. After conjuring 1000 paper cranes, he could have whatever he wanted.
A year later, he was eight hundred cranes in and going strong. His parents were driving him to his 22nd birthday party. They were doing a small thing, a family get together. Sam didn't have many friends.
While driving on the highway, Sam figured he'd get one more crane in before dinner. He glanced in the rear view mirror just as it appeared, and could have sworn he saw someone sitting in the backseat next to him. But only for a second, because after that the car hit them.
T-bone, fatal for two passengers out of three. Sam, bleeding heavily, thought back desperately to his half-finished Necromancy studies and reanimated his parents.
"Save me."
Sam woke up feeling incredibly weak, with a burning sensation in his forehead. The first of the two emergency necromancy spells had triggered. He was minutes from death. He looked up from his hospital bed, and two skeletons grinned mouthlessly at him. One of them clacked her hands together in excitement.
Sam realized he was in his own room, with medical equipment everywhere. He looked down to see wrinkled hands, liver spots. The good news - His parents must have been incredibly industrious, to set this all up and manage it themselves, without being found out as zombies. Either he was a naturally talented necromancer and his zombies came back intelligent, or more likely, zombification after recent enough death allowed creations to keep their memories. The bad news - the burning was growing stronger.
He specifically remembered that the phylactery had to gestate in the entirety of the new moon, three days. There was no chance of making it in the minutes he had remaining. But then again. His parents came back okay. What was the worst that could happen, if he managed to save himself?
As the heat in his head peaked and he breathed his last, he flexed his magic and caught his own body. It dangled below him on puppet strings, and his sensation decreased dramatically, but it was his. He ordered his body up from the bed and did a little dance, no longer feeling so weak. His parents hugged him.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Not his body's shoulder. The shoulder of his incorporeal self, floating above.
"I'll take that," grinned his fellow necromancer, laughing through rotten black teeth. He tore Sam's body away from him with easy contempt.
Behind him stood hundreds more. Sam walked to the back of the long line, thinking to himself. Just 200 cranes to go... | This is my first ever writing prompt, so please give constructive criticism.
It was a simple idea. I was dying. It had to work. Many necromancers had transcended morality like this. They separated their mind from their body, and had themselves killed. Magic comes from the mind after all. A simple spell turned them into powerful liches. I took my final breath, and pushed my mind away. I saw my heartbeat stop. My brain stop functioning. I felt shards of myself fall away. Then I remembered what I had to do. I imagined clicking my fingers to channel the energy within myself into a body. The energy flowed outwards into my body. I felt the familiar rush of energy as I took control of myself.
Everything felt strange. I felt the heart start to house my energy and beat again, but I simply couldn't control it. I tried to raise a hand. Nothing. Leg? Nope. I forced a grimace. It failed. Then it clicked. I had done the ritual wrong. I had nothing to store my life essence in, nothing to act as a conduit, I had forgotten everything needed. I had to live with this.
| 2017-09-22T17:33:48 | 2017-09-22T15:14:49 | 339 | 52 |
[WP] You bring home a girl. She wants to see the "1" you talked about that shines on your floor. Only now it says "2." It stays like this for years together until one day, it says "4." She says, "Hon, I have some good news. But you should sit down."
Inspired by this post
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/ilfsl7/_/ | We looked at each other. Then back at the number glowing on the floor.
4.
For most of the past decade, that number has been 2. Day in and day out, 2. We hardly even notice it any more at this point.
“It hasn’t changed since I moved in,” she whispered, looking up at me.
“I know.”
“What does it mean?”
*she couldn’t be pregnant*, I thought. *we tried for years.*
I remembered the gut wrenching moment when we learned we couldn’t have kids of our own. What I couldn’t remember was the last time we were intimate after that ripped a hole in our marriage.
No, she couldn’t be pregnant.
*Then who the fuck are these additional 2?*
I started pacing, feeling the anxiety swell in my chest as I tried to figure this out. When you get so used to something strange that it begins to feel normal, it’s particularly jarring to be yanked out of your normalcy and reminded of something entirely peculiar that you’ve been ignoring for years.
“Hon, sit down. This is good news.”
I gave my wife a look of bemused astonishment. “How on earth do you figure that?”
“Well, just that maybe it doesn’t mean anything after all. Maybe it was just coincidence that it changed the same night I moved in. Maybe it’s just some weird architectural quirk that we just never figured out.”
*Horseshit*, I thought to myself. I checked this whole place before she ever even moved in, and again after it changed to 2. It’s indistinguishable from the floor when you touch it. There is no warmth, no texture, no sound coming from it. It’s not just tricks of the light; it glows all through the night no matter how dark. Hell, it even glowed when we lost power during the hurricane.
“Listen, you know I’ve checked this place all over to figure out where it’s coming from. With no luck. I’ve searched high and —“ I cut myself off. I’ve searched high, certainly. I removed light fixtures from the ceiling and investigated the attic. I even went onto the roof once. But, how low have I really searched?
What if the source of the glowing has been from beneath the floor this whole time?
What I never checked, I suppose, were the blueprints I found when I first moved in. I pulled them out from the top of our closet and rolled the chart out on our marble kitchen island. Sure enough, there was a crawl space beneath the living room that extended to the front entryway. I noted where the opening seemed to be, and went to investigate.
The opening was behind a huge bush that had clearly been growing long before I moved in. I wouldn’t have ever had a reason to check back here, but sure enough there was the opening. Without hesitation, I ducked down and pulled my phone flashlight out. Cobwebs and dirt, sure, but could be lots worse.
I lowered to my knees and started moving further into the crawl space.
The only thing I could think of - rather, the only remaining totally ridiculous possibility I could come up with - is that there was some sort of projector under the floor that was emitting the glow. Or perhaps some LEDs. Or something. But I was going to find out what it was, once and for all.
I pull up the photo I took of the blueprints and continue navigating my way through the narrow passage, using my phone light to guide me along the route. I go a little farther, then pause.
*This is it*. I look back at the blueprints on my phone to be sure and, indeed, the glowing number should be situated right above where I am now. I use my phone light to look around.
Nothing.
No projector, no wires, no generator, no fairy dust, not even a fucking flashlight.
I put my hand on the top of the crawl space, on the underside of the floor where the number 4 is inevitably still glowing. Nothing. It’s just wood. There’s nothing here.
I sigh, and give up on my last hope at figuring out this stupid glowing number. I turn to retreat and pull the blueprints back up on my phone to help guide me. As I point my phone light towards the narrow opening, my phone dies and the light goes out.
But not before I see two sets of eyes staring directly back at me, blocking my path to outside.
—-
____
eta: Thanks for all the love y’all - this is the first story I’ve posted here that more than just like two people read! | I‘m already sitting! He shouted from the toilet.
No, come out here and take a seat, I think we have to talk about some things.
Babe, i feel like i‘m giving birth here. Can‘t that wait a few more minutes?
Ohh i swear to god you have no fucking clue what that means.
Yeah you think so? Do you want to come in and take a look at that thing i just made?
Noo thanks. but i think you... we made something different...
What do you mean? Finally he came out of the toilet and walked over to the kitchen.
she had imagined this moment in a different way...
Look at the number!
yeah i know a four.
Yes, no shit sherlock. and what does this number say?
it says how many people live in this house.
Well, aaaand?!?
Well, it says four. Last time i counted we were two, right?
Yeah, that’s right. What does the number mean Mason?
I think we got some new roommates. Maybe some raccons that live in the attic?
No, you dingus!
Hm. He stayed silent for a while. Well, in that case... i think... maybe...
We are pregnant!
Nah, then why the four and not ... three... Ohhhh
Yeah, Ohhh you are absolutely right | 2020-09-03T02:32:47 | 2020-09-03T00:49:34 | 2,302 | 69 |
[WP] It occurs to you in the shower that you've just turned 32 and haven't gotten a single wrinkle. None of your family members have aged past a certain point - even your dog should be long past gone by now. You tell your friend, and she just laughs incredulously. "You're in a coma, dumbass." | I awoke to the doorbell. “Hrmph,” I muttered, and tucked my head beneath my pillow. The doorbell rang again.
Slowly, I sat up. Harvey had already gone to work, the smell of coffee lingered in the kitchen.
Happy to pretend I was not home, I poured myself a cup of leftover coffee, and went to see the note that Harvey had left beside it, “Have a good day, my love,” he wrote, with a small heart at the bottom.
Work was long. I pulled together the books for the day, the store did not, in fact, fall apart, despite a few customers that claimed that it did.
But the best part of the day, as it always was, was coming home to Harvey. He started work earlier than, so he was always home earlier than I. I came home to him sitting on the couch, watching a sitcom, with our cat Toto, perched on top of him, purring.
“Hello good looking,” I said to him, as I sat in the comfort of his arms, “How was your day?”
That night, I awoke to sounds in the house. I sat up, and woke Harvey.
“Hey,” I said, “I think someone broke in.”
Concerned, Harvey got up, and pulled out a bat, a stereotype of a loving husband. After a few minutes he came back with a small shrug. “Must be your wild imagination.”
I awoke a few hours later, to static. It seemed the whole world was shaking from the aimless sounds. They reverated from the earth beneath, I swear it! And yet, Harvey slept soundly, unbothered.
That morning, I began to distrust my vision. I swear from the peripheral of my vision, I saw things flit by, and I would hear noises from behind that had no foundation in being.
I must be going crazy, I thought to myself. Oh, I will end up in the loony bin.
In the shower, I shaved my legs smooth, and shampooed my hair. I am 32, I thought to myself. I am in great shape! If I lose it now and again, and go a little nuts, it’s okay, right?
As I lined my eyes, and powdered my face, I admired myself in the mirror. 32, with the face of a 19 year old. Not a line to mar my appeal. And how lucky was I, that Harvey still looked like the 24 year old that I had met many years ago. We aged well, didn’t we? You couldn’t even tell.
“Becca, Becca, can you hear me?” The voice was clear as a bell, but it was omnipresent, I could not pinpoint where it came from.
“It has been so long, Becca, I’ve missed you,” The voice was lined with sorrow.
“Hello,” I called out, “Who is this?”
“Your mom, oh, Becca, your heart would break.”
The world tipped upside down for a moment, before going back to normal.
I stumbled downstairs to my coffee. Harvey left his daily note right next to it, “Can’t wait to see you tonight, love dove,” With a heart, of course.
“Sweetheart.” The voice was Harvey’s. But old somehow. Quieter. Sadder.
Static again. Lots of it. I put on earplugs, trying to calm my mind, but it seemed to sink into the narrowest cracks though my skull.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Stephanie. She was queen of crazy. She would know what to do.
“Stephie,” I said, frantic, “I don’t know what is going on, I just heard Harvey! He was older though, I swear. I thought I heard you too!”
“Are you okay, Bec,” Her concerned voice lilted through the phone.
As she was speaking to me through the phone, her voice again intruded in the room.
“I know it has been so long, this coma has lasted so… long, but I’ve missed you. The doctors say that,” the voice trailed off into nothingness.
“Did you hear that,” I asked her, sure that the voice was loud enough to be heard.
“Hear what?”
Suddenly there was beeping. Steady. Unfailing. Louder, and louder.
I was in a bed suddenly. It was a hospital. So many people! They all seemed so familiar. But not quite. I spotted Stephanie. She looked far older than the last I had seen her. Frightened, I said, “What’s going on? Where’s Harvey,”
Harvey came to my side. Someone was with him. She was tall, thin. Why was her hand in his?
The doctor cleared the room, “She has just woken up, she must be in a state of confusion, clear out for a bit, everyone.”
Once alone, I asked the doctor, “I’ve been married to Harvey for ten years. Why is that woman holding his hand?”
The doctor looked confused. “Your information says that you are single. Someone mentioned you were in a relationship before the accident. It has been eleven years dear.”
Eleven years. | Her words, like a jagged sword, ripped apart the core of reality. I met her eyes and they rippled into an amorphous mess. In bare seconds, the entire room flooded with water.
"Yes! we survived another storm. We can do this," a high-pitched voice said.
I shook my head, clasped in my hands were two wooden oars. In front, a cat—the size of a man—stared at me with shimmering golden eyes as it rowed. We were in a tiny boat in the middle of a waveless ocean heading to nowhere.
"If you don't row, we will never get to the port," said the cat.
I squeezed my brain seeking for vivid memories, real ones; but all I found was a pitch black hollow. However, this felt real, the weight of the oars tired my shoulders, the heat of the brimming sun burned the back of my neck, and this monster of a cat didn't distort under my attention.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"Heading to the port," he said, "we should arrive in no time unless you summon another storm."
My brows wrenched downwards, "what do you mean? How can I possibly summon a storm?"
"Listen, I'm your guide. I don't know how you do it, but we barely survived the other four," he said, oars in paws. "The last one was too long, almost endless, it weakened us."
I gazed downwards and my heart sunk. My skin was loose, worn by the sun and full of wrinkles. White and long hair shrouded my chest, like petunias burgeoning from the dirt of a deadman's grave. My ribcage visible through my starving complexion.
*How long have I been here?* I thought and kept rowing, clear sky far in the horizon.
-------------------------------------------------------
/r/therobertfall | 2017-11-25T16:39:52 | 2017-11-25T15:02:14 | 431 | 28 |
[WP] you are a demon call responder. The devil can’t answer every summon, so you go in his place. One day you get a summon and the summoner is way below age limit; you are about to leave, but you hear her drunk dad coming downstairs screaming. | I appeared in a dark basement with a suprised little kid staring up at me. I thought it odd for a child to be dabbling in dark arts but not unheard of. While I surveyed the area my thoughts were interrupted by a sad little voice.
"I did it wrong...you're not...I mean... Oh no I did it wrong!" The girl's suprise had turned to disappoint and then fear as she looked me up and down. She had tried to call Satan but as a tall curvy succubus I was very clearly not him. It also probably did not help that I appear mostly human, my skin has a vague red tint, my head sports horns, and a slim tail extends from my back but overall I look like a woman.
" It didn't work and now I'll be in even more trouble!" The child cried.
"Don't cry." I said in as soothing a tone as my hollow demonic voice could muster. "Your spell was successful. But the devil is a busy man, sometimes others must come in his stead. But child you are far too young to make a deal with the Devil, be grateful I was summoned here and not some other with a hunger for young blood." By this time the child was sobbing, she clearly didn't care for my explanation.
"No no no!" The girl cried shaking her head "No you're just some lady! I need the devil! I need a demon! I need someone strong!"
I crossed my arms looking down at the sobbing girl. Now I wasn't just suprised by her summon I was moderately insulted. The girl couldn't have been older than 8 yet she thought I was weak? "You need someone strong? What does a babe like you know about strength? Let alone a need for it?"
The girl was about to respond when a crash and a holler from upstairs interrupted us. The girl's eyes snapped to the closed basement door and her body tensed. I looked her over and noticed her limbs trembled with every foot step above us. The man upstairs was screaming, slurring, and it sound like he was throwing things around.
I focused my hearing on the floor above us. The man above was drunk, his words were slurred and drawn out "Where da fuck is that little brat?" He shouted "Stupid worthless girl left her shit in the...the hall! Stupid junk in my way! She needs to learn to keep out of my way!" He was raging, the hate in his voice was as thick as the alcohol. Another voice crept into the conversation. This voice was timid, frightened but trying to be brave.
"Honey please she's just a kid, she didn't mean any harm." Before the woman could say more the man was screaming again and the heavy footsteps stormed across the room. There was shuffling and shouting and the sounds of things crashing to the ground and crying.
I turned my attention back to the child. For the first time I took note of the bruises old and new that decorated he arms band legs, I took note of the heavy smell of fear radiating from her.
"Your parents?" I asked and the girl nodded, never taking her eyes from the door.
I looked back upstairs and I could hear the sound of fists landing on flesh and the woman crying. The man's screams we're near impossible to understand and the woman was begging, but not begging him to stop hittimg her, begging him to leave their daughter alone. She was crying that it was her fault. Crying that she had called the girl to help her make dinner and that's why the toys were left on the floor. Doing anything she could think of to keep the man's focus on herself.
"I'm sorry." I said moving over to kneel beside the girl. "You know a lot about strength. And you have a need for it." I turned the girls face to meet mine. I released my heavy monstrous wings from my back, let hell fire blaze in my eyes, and held a clawed hand out to her. She trembled seeing for the first time what I really was. She was too young to enter into a pact with the devil. She was too young to know what offering her soul to us would mean. But she was not too young to know that her father needed to be stopped. "My name is Lilith. I will answer your call, I will give you my strength." As the girl nodded eagerly the sounds of begging and fighting stopped and the drunken footsteps came toward the stairs. The girl shook my hand and the deal was made.
The girl ran to hide in a corner as the door slammed open and her dad screamed for her. As light flooded the basement I stretched up to my full height and met his gaze. His eyes were glossy and his face contorted. "Who the fuck are you?" He slurred pausing on the stairs. "Where's that little bitch?"
I smiled and extended my hand to him. His angery face melted to smiles, men were easy to manipulate but drunks were even easier. As the man turned into a giggling infatuated mess stumbling eagerly toward the vision before him I turned to grin at the girl watching from the corner. " You are lucky I was summoned here, and not someone with a taste for young blood." As the man fell into my arms I let out a demon screach and devoured him. No ecstasy no pleasure for this man, I consumed him dragging is soul from his body and letting the flames of hell burn him from the inside out. He wriggled and gasped in my grasp before going limp. I dropped him in a heap on the floor, his body a lifeless shell. I wiped my lips, it had been a long time since I had drained an entire soul and this one was not exactly pure or delicious. Never the less I felt very satisfied. I heard the girls mother stir upstairs, I was glad to hear she was not injured too much to move.
"It is done." I tell the girl huddled in the corner. I kicked the body at my feet "He paid the fee for you." I grinned stepping to the side. "If anybody asks I was never here, he tripped coming down the stairs and didn't get back up. Now go check on your mother." Before I finished speaking the girl sprinted up the stairs to her mother. I heard more crying and hugging and the girl explaining that Daddy fell.
Good girl, I thought before disappearing from the basemen. | It was year 314, day 120 of my service of the great Lord Asmodeus, essentially his phone bouncer. My job was to prevent him from getting swamped with calls from mortals, without violating any of the Laws, handling each and every call according to protocol.
I bounced into existence on the ground, called upon by a slight variation of the ritual almost all devil cults used, and looked around unwarily. The only other occupants of the room seemed to be a young boy, perhaps 8 years old, and an even younger girl of about 5, sound asleep.
Too bad, waste of time. Law 17, Section D, Subsection i clearly stated that an individual who is bound into a pact must be over the local age of consent or over 16 demonic years, whichever was higher. Something about preventing the wrath of the humans.
Since I was going to have to stay until he was done giving me his request, Law 2, Section E, I sat down and took a look around. A mostly empty cellar, a summoning circle of what seemed to be vegetable soup, but augmented with still bloody fingers. His fingers. Now I was interested, and I looked at his face.
He looked back, seemingly unafraid of the most malevolent Lawful creatures in the multiverse, though twisted in pain.
“I’m sorry, sir Asmodeus, but I need help. My dad, he was never nice to us, but now…”
I saw the fear flash into his eyes as he mentioned his father and held in a tired sigh. If only he was a few years older, then I could have passed the age violation off as an accident. My gears began turning as he continued.
“Since the death of mom this summer he just can’t keep of the bottle anymore, it is like we lost both our parents!” He was sobbing now, and I could here somebody hitting at the door, shouting for quiet, as the young boy continued.
“Please, protect my sister. I’ll do anything, if it would bring down the armies of hell, but stop him from harming Mertyl!”
My wings suddenly fluttered in happiness as I saw it: Law 17, Section E, subsection vii: “if there is provably no parent figure in the life of the minor, the minor has the full right to its own decisions and pacts”.
I looked the boy in the eye and said: “I am but a humble servant, but if you can show the grave of your mother and the bruises your father gave you, I will give the orders which can unleash hell and protect your sister, at the lowly cost of the soul of one adult male. Do you agree to these terms and find them legally binding, now and in eternity?”
He returned the gaze and said solemnly “I agree to these terms. Let us go.”
---
It is now year 314, day 172 of my service to the great lord Asmodeus. I am now a chain devil in command of a full company of lower devils, pushing in the advance over the Sword Coast.
| 2018-10-08T14:45:27 | 2018-10-08T13:02:28 | 48 | 17 |
[WP] Some insane asylums are actually prisons for wizards. You are a normal person that got sent to the wrong one by accident.
Viewpoint character being insane optional.
Alternative prompt: write from the point of view of an "orderly". | "Just scratch the wall," Ethelred muttered, "Just a stray line. Or maybe a drop of blood or two."
I ignored him and stared at the chessboard in front of me. I suspected Ethelred was cheating. The knight whinnied once.
"Do it or I turn you into an armadillo!" he warned. Instead of answering directly I held up my left arm and let the cuff of my sleeve drop down enough to show the black bracelet with the intricate runes carved into it. I was warded, same as him. It was an empty threat. The chessboard, however, was still fair game.
"Come on!" he said, "You can actually touch the wards. If they ever figure out who you are then we both lose our chance!"
Ethelred doesn't get it. He's been here since the days when Georgia was still a penal colony for Jolly Old England. To him this is a prison. He still doesn't understand that I had myself committed. I don't want out. True, I didn't quite expect this. Sometimes I'm not sure it's even really happening.
I don't think I'm hallucinating any of this. I've had hallucinations before, of course. If I go off my meds for a few weeks they start up. Mostly it's voices or snippets of songs I don't recognize. But I never saw things that weren't there. Not until I came here to the Ironglade. What was I doing here?
"Come on!" Ethelred begged me. I looked at the chessboard again. My knight had definitely moved. Some of my pawns had also changed positions when I blinked. I stood up and shook my head.
"I'm not in the mood to play anymore, Red," I tell him. He hates being called Red almost as much as he hates being called Ethel. I walk way before he has a chance to try to jinx my shoelaces or something.
Ethelred, like all the other residents here at the Ironglade, is a magician of some sort. Wizards, witches, sorcerers, and even a demonologist. Although that last one is locked away in a room with a leather gag over his mouth and chained within a circle of salt. Most of the others they let wander free as their power is severely checked by runescaping.
The Ironglade gets its name from the fact that the outer wall of the facility is made of cold iron. Cold iron has much the same effect on the flow of magic as the Hoover Dam has on the Colorado River. All that gets in is a little trickle here and there around the windows and doors. To deal with that the wardens carve intricate runes all over the walls, the doors, and even the panes of glass. Then the patients are equipped with warding bracelets that restrict their own innate magic and minimize the effect of magic hurled by others. The most powerful mages, those like Ethelred, still had enough juice to reheat a cold sandwich. Maybe. Most of the others were more or less like me. A regular mortal. Except for one small difference.
I started walking down the hallway towards my room. There were granite blocks in the floor in front of each door. Complex runes were carved into the face of each block. Only the occupants of the rooms and staff members could cross over the blocks. At least in theory. In practice there was one notable exception to the rule. Those runes on the walls, on the floor, and etched all over the place work by creating an interference pattern with a mage's native magic. Just touching them can be lethal for a mage. Non-magical people, however, can tap dance on the things and not feel a thing. Which is why Ethelred is always trying to goad me into destroying a rune or two.
On a whim I change directions at the last moment and head towards Alister's room. Even most of the staff don't have access to this place. I pick up a book off a shelf as I go.
I step over the outer boundaries of the containment spells. The circles of elements are mostly not a problem either. Except for the fire ring. I have to jump that one. Fortunately my feet were still damp from splashing through the water ring. I found the door scrawled with a network of interlocking runes in several different languages and at least three different types of blood. As usual, though, there was no actual lock on the door. I turned the knob and stepped inside.
"Mmmmmmm!" Alister shouted through the leather gag.
"I know," I said as I carefully stepped around the ring of salt and made my way to the corner. I tried to be Smokey the Bear in this room and leave things exactly as I found them.
"Just looking for a quiet place to read," I explained to Alister. He grunted at me again. His eyes flashed a deep red but I ignored it for the moment.
I'm really not sure how, exactly, I got sent to the wrong facility. Does that mean there is now a rogue wizard sitting in some padded cell waiting for his next hit of happy drugs? I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. We'll have to wait for the body count. In the meantime, I just wanted to read.
"Mmmmmm!"
"Yes," I sighed as I found my place in the book, "You've mentioned your opinion of Harry Potter before. But at least the wizards in there are only evil. Not crazy." | To most people, he was Supervisor Dale Taylor. That’s what it said on his name badge, just above the left breast pocket. To the patients – or inmates, as they called themselves - he was High Inquisitor.
It felt good to be High Inquisitor, or Supervisor, or whatever you wanted to call him. In the end they equaled the same thing. He was the man with the keys. The judge. He decided if you got a big room to yourself, with a window and pleasant view of snow-draped meadows, and he also decided if you never saw sunlight again for the remainder of your life. He was lenient and forgiving as inquisitors went, favoring the carrot over the stick. Each morning he sat in his office with a gigantic mug, filled to the brim with smoking coffee, and the surveyed his little kingdom.
On the last morning before his trip to the OWL. conference, he found an envelope sitting on his immaculate desk. He frowned and looked at it. He normally waited until after his first cup of coffee before going about the day’s work. It featured the OWL insignia. He cracked it open. It contained a patient’s medical records and criminal history. And a brief letter, from the department, apologizing for the last-minute notice. A new patient, Elizabeth Lee, arriving at approximately nine o’clock. He put the letter aside and reexamined the records.
If there was any such thing as a benevolent form of the Gestapo or the NKVD, than it was OWL. When wizards, gypsys, or warlocks brought undue attention to themselves, or otherwise found themselves in the criminal justice system of the North Atlantic Alliance, than OWL, quietly and discreetly, channeled the criminals to facilities such as this one. The only people who would have protested, called for action, were fellow wizard-folk, and by doing so only drew the authorities to them for immediate, swift, silent prosecution.
Psychotic Breaks, Delusions of Grandeur, Schizo-type behavior translated into the illicit practice of magic in these types of hospitals. Dangerous because of its potential threat to national security, profane because of its denial of the state religion. Most people did not know what OWL did exactly among the population, but if they did, they would have approved.
But Elizabeth Lee had no such indicators on her record. She did have one drunk driving offense, six years ago, several weeks after graduation from University. It did include a diagnosis for depression and an anxiety disorder.
He read them and reread them again as his coffee grew cold. He decided to dial his connect at the department.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Taylor. I’m calling about a recent transfer. Is Cooper in?”
“This is Cooper.”
“Jesus, what are you? sick? I didn’t recognize your voice. You sound terrible.”
“I better not be. I’m supposed to give some kind of a spiel at the conference. You will be there, won’t you?”
“Not like I have a choice.”
“Who’s in charge while you’re away?”
“Julien.”
“Anyways, what’s this about a transfer.”
“Did you know anything about this? I’ve got a record for someone named Elizabeth Lee. She doesn’t meet the criteria as far as I can tell. There’s no offence on her record. Also, I only received the record this morning. She’s due here in less than an hour. That’s never happened before. I was trying to see what the angle is on this thing.”
“Well,” Cooper said, clearing his throat, “I do happen to know about this particular case, as a matter of fact, and –“ Cooper paused for a second, as if he were making sure no one was around “ – listen, Taylor, they’re taking a special interest in this one. I don’t know specifics, per say, but ignore the fact that she doesn’t fit the typical profile… Listen, I hate to leave you in the dark, and I don’t know much myself, but apparently, this woman was creating quite a bit of noise about the whole OWL system of prosecution. Special prosecutions. According my superior, this is a dangerous form of psychopathy, with widespread potential consequences.”
“Cooper, that’s about the most vague and meaningless thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Listen, I’d recommend just dropping it and processing the patient. I’m just saying that they’ve taken a keen interest and making sure she ends up at your particular facility for an extended stay. Forget what her record says. This comes from on high.”
They hung up. He left his coffee untouched. He examined the stubble on his face in the metallic surface of the filing cabinet. He couldn’t decide if Cooper was trying to say that she was a wizard or an open wizard sympathizer, bringing unwanted attention to the issue. He had heard once before that the former director of OWL, a sadist son of a bitch by the name of Walter Sandoval, had done his best to bring back old school, Spanish-inquisition-style torture methods to help uncover networks of wizards in the civilian population. He had later stepped down under rumors that he had numerous personal enemies and competitors arrested as wizards, stowed away until they went genuinely insane. He had no doubt that occasional abuses of power happened in the upper echelons of OWL, but they had remained rumors and whispers until this file appeared on his desk.
A police cruiser dropped Elizabeth Lee off at 9:04, as her stay was court ordered. Dale Taylor signed the necessary documents and lead her in. She was incredibly young looking. Gaunt, as if she hadn’t eaten more than a handful of saltines in the last week. She smelled bad, but based on what he knew he guessed that she had remained in custody until this rushed transfer. Not much in the way of showers or food other than chips from the vending machine. She said nothing.
“The other patients have already had breakfast, but I’m sure we can find something for you,” he said. She said maintained silence, looking at the ground.
“Why don’t we take a tour of the place, so you know where everything is?”
He lead her through the long hallways. Orderlies escorted the most elderly around. Others dished out prescribed sedatives – the best weapons against energy-consuming, concentration-demanding magic. Men with no light in their eyes and blank expressions watched the TV in the recreation room. Others read books in the corner, mainly harmless, idea-free young adult novels. He pointed things out, introduced her to the other supervisors.
“They’re going to leave me in her forever, aren’t they?” Her first words.
“Who is? And no, there’s plenty of people who recover and leave. This is a hospital, remember? Some people do have court orders and stay here for quite a while, especially the elderly patients, but that’s really not that common,” he lied.
“My Dad. He’s going to make sure I’m one of the ones who stays forever.”
“Who’s your Dad?”
“Terry Stokes.”
A chill traveled up his spine. Terry Stokes was the assistant director, one of the old guard. A name most civilians would know.
“But your last name is Lee.”
“I changed it so he wouldn’t find me. Trust me, I’m never getting out of here.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Because I stole money from him, and I threatened to black mail him, and I told him I know all the horrible shit he does. The horrible shit that you do.” Her voice contained no emotion, as if she had accepted this fate long ago.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dale Taylor arrived for the conference. He found Cooper and they got seats together in the auditorium. They used these quarterly conferences to address issues, discuss new drugs and anti-wizard strategies. This one came earlier than normal for some reason, which made everyone anxious. People suspected that meant some type of major reform, a big sweeping announcement or change. The last time his happened was when Walter Sandoval stepped down.
Terry Stokes stepped in front of the mircrophone, and five hundred or so people looked on.
“Inquisitors, for a long time the wizard problem has been growing, to the point where we are no longer able to control it. We are reinstating our emergency action plan in order to cleanse the wizards from our streets. We have full congressional authority on this matter. We have many dangerous men in our facilities, terrorists. We thought we could separate them from the population, even rehabilitate them. This is no longer an option. The problem has grown rampant. The time has come for punishment and retribution.”
EDIT: Fixed some grammar.
| 2014-12-04T14:22:14 | 2014-12-04T12:45:45 | 23 | 13 |
[WP] Give me the history textbook from your latest game of Civilization V. | The once-proud Greek empire had invented democracy, and the written language, constructed the pyramids, and achieved the ability to sail on the ocean, despite being a land-locked empire.
In 1100 A.D. Alexander found his cities completely surrounded by troops armed with rifles, a technology which the world had never seen before. The soldiers which surrounded all of the cities belonging to Alexander, who was himself already over 1500 years old belonged to a nation that had seemingly no understanding of the written word or philosophy. Modern day historians have contemplated that perhaps it was the learned nature of the Greek civilization that had enraged it's long-time ally into building up a massive force around each of the Greek cities.
Ghandi, on the other hand, had made outrageous demands of Alexander, at first in exchange for friendship, and as time went on, under threats of violence. Alexander seemed completely unaware of the impending warfare despite the huge military buildup close to each of his cities.
Exactly ten years after their peace treaty ended Ghandi launched a sneak attack against his long time ally. All of the Greek cities fell on the same day, with the exception of Sparta, which existed for 100 more years and became the new Capitol of Greece, it's incredibly remote location had ensured that Ghandi didn't know of it's existence until all of the other Greek cities had fallen. Sparta existed as a tiny nation-state which had insufficient land to grow, so that it's population languished in inactivity and starved until it was eventually taken by a group of barbarian warriors which had inexplicably sailed there in a tiny, crudely constructed boat which had sailed solely through shallow coastal waters. The irony was that Sparta could have trained a single unit of pikemen given another 30 years.
Ghandi, meanwhile, had conquered the bulk of the Greek empire in search of Uranium, despite having no concept of what it was or what it was for. Ghandi went on to conquer the rest of the world, with the exception of one city owned by Genghis Khan. That single city was allowed to exist, and indeed thrive for almost another thousand years, seemingly without explanation. Any settlers sent from the city were promptly captured, and the peaceful Mongolian empire languished in the peace offered, bafflingly at no cost, by the incredibly bloodthirsty Ghandi.
In 1990 the motives of our glorious and beloved God-king Ghandi became apparent as nuclear missile after nuclear missile rained down upon the lone Mongolian city until it was reduced to it's foundations. The city was conquered and razed, lost to history. Our dear leader, now over 3,000 years old, has conquered the world. He weeps now, for he has nothing left to drop nuclear missiles on.
Edit: whoever gave me gold, I thank you kindly. I honestly never expected that to happen. Ever. | This is the tale of the rise and fall of the mighty Moroccan Empire.
many years ago, along the fertile banks of a river flowing mightily through a great desert, the fledgling city of Marrakech was first founded.
the people of this city were brave and adventurous, sending scouting parties traversing the rolling dunes and passing by the crisp, refreshing oasis that dotted the featureless expanse of desert they called home. they met strange and exotic peoples, from the Iroquois residing in the harsh tundra to the north, lorded over by the strong and proud "Bobsfaggot", and the people of Ethiopia, led by the wise and powerful "MAsterchef117" occupying the hilly plains to the south.
this city was particularly blessed. they went relatively unmolested by the barbarian hordes that squatted in camps filled with entrapped workers, and were left to grow and develop with only small periods of conflict. not only did the bounties of the grand river of Marrakech provide ample sustenance for Morocco's rapidly growing population, but also brought forth sugarcane, and to the northern expanse laid copper and gems. these luxuries provided great happiness and rejoicing to the people of Morocco, and allowed
the industrious Moroccan people to focus production on the Great Library, giving them a wealth of knowledge to gain a strong lead in research. the time honored message "suck it you noobs, fuck yeah" was sent immediately to all the known leaders of the world.
terse diplomatic responses came in the form of:
"this game is so broken"
"my starting position sucks ass"
"get a life you fag"
and similar statements.
but the people of Morocco were not deterred, and did not squander their progress.
swiftly they focused their research on the acquisition of science and gold, and worked on expanding their empire. with the central position of Marrakech and the newly formed cities of Rabat farther downriver and Fes along the pearl-engorged coast located to the far east, the Moroccans were in a prime position to engage in trade with civilizations located all around. once the caravans flowed to and from Marrakech in droves, and as the rest of the world struggled along in the wake of Morocco's swift technological innovation, the Moroccan people grew reclusive.
open border deals were systematically denied, and offers for joint research were met with scorn.
scout parties and boats, sent out long ago in a quest for knowledge and experience, were disbanded. Morocco grew arrogant in their advanced position in the world, and thought themselves untouchable, responding to threats and statements of discontent with tactful diplomatic decrees such as
"thats what i said to your mother last night",
"you're just salty im winning", and
"try it kid ill wreck you".
this was not the case.
the declarations of war came like a flash, accompanied by the exclamation "surprise bitch", and seemingly overnight three mighty armies poured into the long untouched borders of Morocco's desert.
the Iroquois to the north, the Ethiopians in the south, and the lesser kingdom of Russia, led by the humble queen "Mrshokia", in the rough mountainous regions to the west.
"what the hell is this teaming shit?" thought the wise sultan of Morocco as he looked upon the amassed horde of adversaries.
the assailing armies outnumbered the moderate military force of the Moroccans, but the Moroccans were not so easily conquered.
Walls and castles had long since been erected, and the fierce Berber Calvary of the Moroccans were at their strongest in both desert territory and their native land.
and so the war was waged. initially, the war looked bleak for Morocco. after a tough fight, Rabat was lost, the proud northern expanse which held many long cherished resources and luxuries was set ablaze, and the people of Fes were starving.
but pouring all the production and wealth Morocco could into military might, it rebounded. first the meager forces of Russia were repelled, as they foolishly attempted to take Marrakech head on without aid from their allies.
the defeated cry that came from Russia's monarch, "fuck this im gonna go play CS:GO", echos through the annals of history even today.
next came the Iroquois, who were more numerous and advanced. the fighting was hard, and they bombarded the battered walls of Marrakech considerably, but the city stood, and after a swift reacquisition of the northern territory drove the Iroquois out of the desert, a peace treaty was brokered, capped with the statement "this is so stupid i had like a million guys those Calvary are so OP".
the vile Ethiopians had set the city of Rabat ablaze. the armies of Morocco, bloodied and on the other side of the desert, raced to save the city.
but all was in vain.
Rabat was burned to the ground, despite the hard pressing of the Moroccan military against the Ethiopians.
tired of conflict and desperate to reverse the downward spiral they now found themselves in, Morocco made piece with Ethiopia, finally ending the great Desert Invasion.
what was left of Morocco was pitiful.
half the territory still ablaze, the other taken completely away, and the remaining cities battered and starving.
trade was decimated and poverty set in quickly. the pillars of Moroccan culture and science declined, and Morocco's position as the lead world power was eventually usurped by an upstart nation to the far northwest, China.
the rebuilding was arduous and long, and never fully restored Morocco to its former glory.
indeed, when news of China's completion of their spaceship on a course set for Alpha centari reached Morocco, just as they had planned to do, the people of Morocco fell down and wept.
so, in the never ending race for survival and the cutthroat game we call civilization, the once proud and mighty Moroccan Empire lost,
and left the world, not with a bang, but a whimper. | 2015-02-11T15:49:51 | 2015-02-11T15:35:52 | 76 | 24 |
[WP]In the future, medicine and life support have reached perfection--people can only die if they choose to. You work at a Federal Eternal Rest Office. | We screen them first- depression, brain tumors. Anything that might influence the decision. Things that can be cured, at least. *The* decision, we always call it. The only decision.
Our boss signed up yesterday. To be evaluated, I mean. To die.
His name was Doctor Juan Ava, and he invented immortality.
I should go backward. My name is Pratha Hadid. I have been twenty two for seventy five years. It's my job to evaluate whether or not a person should be allowed to die.
Usually we accept requests from people who are experiencing mental deterioration. Medicine is nearly perfect, but madness can happen after a few hundred years. Nothing is inevitable. We tell people: keep a healthy lifestyle. Do brain teasers. Read.
But Doctor Juan Ava was sane. Sharp as anyone I'd ever met. Brilliant - the most brilliant medical doctor to ever live. And he asked me to kill him. And I did. I suppose I should tell you why.
I don't know why he chose our office. Not a headquarters, just a random county clerk. I don't know why he felt I was qualified, that anyone thought I was qualified, to decide the fate of the most influential human in history.
So I stuck to the protocol. I put him through the tests, ran him through the L-CAT scanner. No depression. No brain tumors. He seemed so small there, blue lights running over him, his hands, those dark eyes that saw so much.
The next phase is the interview. I was sweating, but he told me to calm down. He reminded me of my father. I started with the first question.
"How do you feel?" I said. The camera recorded everything.
"Splendid. Very calm." he replied.
"Tell me about your day," I read from the screen before me.
"I woke up. I had a cup of green tea with jasmine. I exercised, read the news, played with my son. Went to chapel. Kissed my wife. And then I came here."
"Here," I said. I forgot the script. "You came here. To a death clinic,"
"A FERO, yes. A 'death clinic'." he said.
"I'm sorry, Juan- sir, I mean. I just need to know why. Why? Your wife, your son. You created this - your choice today could change *everything.* The way all seventeen billion some people on the planet view life and death. You would make me question... I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying."
He reached over the table and grabbed my hand, gently. "Pratha? That is your name?"
I nodded.
"I have been alive for seven hundred years. Do you know what I've done with my time?"
"Everyone knows, doctor. I've read everything you've ever written, I've studied--" I began.
"Shh... shh. Not everything. I've written other things. Stories. I've read. I've spent time with my family. And I am happy. So, so happy."
"So now you want, you want to *die?*" I said. I yelled, actually. Something about this made my stomach feel like ice. I wanted to cry. I wanted him to stop. I didn't understand.
"There is a limit, Pratha. We were not meant for this. For forever," he said
"So you're saying you were wrong? That the world is wrong now?" I said.
"I'm saying that there is a limit. The body, the mind can live on. But the soul needs something more," he said. He paused, taking a deep breath. "I am happy, Pratha, but I am *curious.* Deeply curious for what's next. I want to know, Pratha. I am not afraid."
I slumped in my chair. An afterlife. He was after an afterlife.
"No," he said. As if he knew what I was thinking, "I am not chasing heaven. But I am ready for whatever naturally comes next. My body, my spirit, feels like a stagnant pond. I must release it. I must feel the flow of time. Again, Pratha. I must feel the tug of time again."
I cleared him for the injection. It was hard to do. I got hatemail. I had to quit my job at the Rest office. And didn't even understand why I did it. I could have passed it off to someone else, the decision. But I also *did* understand. I felt what he felt. That tug of time. I'd been stagnant for so long.
In the morning I returned to the office for the last time. I went to my desk and packed my things into a few small boxes. And then I took a form, signed my name, and handed it to another examiner. I must feel the flow of time again. I must make the decision. I must be free.
| I was surprised at how young the man sitting in front of me was. Usually I don't get young men. Usually I get old people, who are tired of their artificially extended lifespans, and want their eternal rest. I cleared my throat and addressed the man.
"Hello sir, welcome to the Federal Eternal Rest Office. My name is James, and I'll be your case officer. Mister..." I glanced down at my datapad, which displayed the visitor's information, "Mister Jones. You're looking to die?"
Jones nodded at me, then said, in a slow and calm voice, "Yes. Yes, I think I want to die. No, that's not right, I know it."
"And, just to confirm, you want to die *now*? As in, you wish to start the death procedure immediately?"
"Yes, that's right. I want to start now."
I cleared my throat again and looked down at my pad once more. Jones was only twenty years old. I was more than five times his age. Even my grandson could've been his father.
"Well sir, if you're sure. The death procedure is quite simple, actually. You'll have to sign a few documents related to the distribution of your estate after you're gone, and then you'll be led to an injection room, where an automated process will inject a cocktail of pharmaceutical substances into your bloodstream, which will put you to sleep. The pharmaceutical cocktail will then override the healing nanites in your bloodstream, and stop your heart. The entire process is entirely painless and, I'm told, quite soothing."
"That sounds fine, thank you," Jones replied, in the same slow voice. His eerie lack of emotion was starting to bother me. The faint peals of alarm bells were ringing somewhere in the back of my head. I decided to probe further.
"If you don't mind me asking, Mister Jones... why do you want to die? You're still very young."
"Oh, I couldn't explain it if I wanted to. I just want to die, to end it all, that's all."
"Sir, if you're suffering from depressive or other psychological disorders, we have a variety of psychiatric treatments available here..."
Jones cut me off with a shake of his head and a wave of his hand. "No, no, that won't be necessary, thank you. I know you guys offer these services, but that's not what I need. I didn't come here for a shrink. I came to die."
"If you are facing other issues in your life, such as financial or relationship difficulties, we can also provide related assistance in a variety of matters."
Jones actually smiled a bit at me this time. "That's very kind of you, but no, that won't be necessary. I don't have any problems in my life. I just want to die, that's all."
"Well sir..." I started again, but this time Jones interrupted me by leaning forward across the desk and speaking over me.
"Look, I understand this looks weird," he said, the calm facade of his voice cracking for the first time, "and I appreciate the help you're offering. I really do. You're going above and beyond your job description right now, I can tell. But to be honest, there is no big mystery here. I just want to enter your facility, and have a good death. That's all."
I found I was leaning back unconsciously in my chair. I straightened up, then nodded at Jones. "I understand, sir. And you truly cannot tell me why?"
Jones was silent for a few moments, apparently pondering whether he should say anything. Then he replied, "I don't think this whole thing is natural. Everyone's injected with these nanites at birth, which keeps them alive forever. That's not right, man. That's not right. I don't think it's right for people to live hundreds of years, and what's more I don't think it's right for the government to kill ordinary citizens with lethal injections. It's just too much, y'know? Too much unnaturalness going on here. This isn't a world I want to live in, and so I want out. I want this whole thing to end. To be over."
I considered this. Jones's point of view was not unheard of, in fact it had spawned a diverse array of counter-cultures and protest organizations. Some of them were political in natural, such as the Human Life Party, which was currently one of the larger opposition parties in the legislature. There were even a few extremist organizations or two, such as the radical Sapiens group. But this was the first time I'd heard someone so young espouse such views.
Still, though, Jones's reasons were perfectly valid, so if he wanted to die, it was his right. I sighed, then held out my pad at him. "All right sir, if you're sure. Please sign here and here, and scan your fingerprint here. My associate Mr. Henry here will take you to the next station, where a member of our Legal team will go through your affairs with you." I pressed a button my my pad. Henry was there a few moments later, smiling at Jones and beckoning towards a nearby door. Jones stood, thanked me, then followed Henry through the door.
I'd served two more citizens—both old men at least three hundred and fifty years old—before Henry came back to my desk. He looked troubled. "Hey James... that guy, Jones, what's his story?"
"He's only twenty, but he thinks the nanite life extension process is unnatural, so he wants to die," I replied.
"Yeah, I got that part. But that's not the weird part. The weird part was when I took him down to Legal, he insisted on taking a detour near the nanite labs first. He said he wanted to see it with his own eyes. He asked all sorts of questions about it, too, like if that's where we make all the nanites, and what would happen if we lost our production facilities. Why would he care if he doesn't like the idea of the nanites in the first place? And he's dying soon, so why's he so curious?"
"What'd you say to him?"
"Well, I answered his questions as best I could. Yes, we make all the nanites here, and if we couldn't make nanites any more, then people wouldn't be able to live forever any more."
The alarm bells I felt during my interview with Jones were starting to ring again. "Was he satisfied with that answer?"
"I guess, because he didn't ask anything else afterwards. He just followed me down to the Legal Department without a word. Weirdest thing, I think."
I frowned at Henry. "You think there's something more going on here? With him?"
Henry mirrored my frown. "All I know is that he's not acting like a guy who's about to die."
I suddenly felt icy realization drench me from head to toe. "No... no, that's not right. He *is* acting like a guy about to die. And he intends to take us down with him!"
I grabbed my phone and jabbed frantically at the keypad. It was an eternity before someone picked up. "Security, what's the issue?"
I screamed into the receiver, "I think we have a *suicide bomber* somewhere in the facility! Probably from Sapiens! Someone check the Legal Department and the Nanite Labs for a guy named Jones! Medium height, brown hair, twenty years old..."
A fireball tore through the building, incinerating me and Henry, and cutting me off before I could finish. | 2016-02-03T20:50:41 | 2016-02-03T20:21:49 | 84 | 30 |
[WP] Everyone is born with a disability and an ability. A test is done at birth to determine these, if they aren't already apparent. You, well, you were born with crippled legs and have the power of super speed. | See, what most people don't realise about super speed is that it doesn't just affect your legs. Your entire body moves fast. People never tend to get that because you see guys like Ravel Alton sprinting at three hundred kilometres an hour down the speedway. I mean, it's more impressive *visually* than what I can do... but I like to think that my abilities are still pretty good.
"Checkmate," I smile, knocking over the white king with my own rook. Valentin, my opponent, stares at me in shock. By the look on his face, my guess is that his ability was mind-reading. It's a good way to become a chess champion, I'll give him that.
But he can't keep up with me.
See, from the femtosecond his finger touched the first piece, I started running through the possible moves in my head. All of them.
Do you know how many possible positions there are after each player moves three times? More than 9 million. That goes up to 288 billion after four moves each. But when you can't move without a wheelchair, and when you have a brain that can scan and memorise information faster than anything else on the planet... and when you also have a lot of time on your hands... you can memorise everything. Every perfect game.
Not to mention, of course... Valentin might be able to read minds. But he can't process information as fast as I can. Which leaves him unable to comprehend the million, million, million thoughts I have every nanosecond.
I can't run. But that doesn't mean I'm not *fast*. | This is bullshit.
What the fuck kind of God thinks this is a funny thing to do to someone? All I do all day is lie in bed and wish I was dead.
Super speed. I know what God's ability is. Super dick...hole...ness.
"I brought you some milk, sweetheart," my kind, generous, loving mother said as she set the glass down on my bedside table.
"Fuck milk, Mom! I wanna' go outside and do things!"
"Well, I can get the wheelchair and bring you outside," she swooned.
"No! Not the wheelchair mom! I want to go outside without a wheelchair!"
I could see how much this was hurting her. I mean, we both knew that wasn't an option, but shit, I can't keep all this frustration bottled up inside, not even for the woman that gave me life.
But what kind of life is this to have? What kind of gift is it if all I get to do is look at my ceiling and pretend like I know what if feels like to jerk off? It's her fault I'm in this mess, for Christ's sake.
She looked at her feet and said, "Well, is there anything I can bring you? Anything you'd like to do? You want a coloring book, or a movie?" I sighed, not to keen on berating my mother anymore, even though she's a bitch for giving birth to me.
"It's fine, Mom. I think I just wanna' sleep."
"Alright, well if you need anything, just call." Then she spun around and shut the door with the gentleness of an angel's whisper.
Fuck milk. Seriously. I want a Coke, but doctor's say I can't have any sugary drinks because they fear my super speed my give me super fast diabetes, so for this broken, young, degenerate it's milk, water and at Christmas, sugarless eggnog.
Instead, I just did what I normally do. Grow my fingernails out with super speed, then chew on 'em.
Except today was different. For some reason, as I clenched my teeth down on a freshly generated bit of nail material, the satisfaction of that snap didn't rush down my spine like it normally does. Instead it just tasted weird, like dirt.
Great, now everything sucks.
But then I had an idea. It was a weird idea, a far-fetched idea, but if I could get it to work, it just might be worth it.
I clenched my bed sheets in my hands and gritted my teeth, focusing all my energy inside my soul, deep down into the cavernous recesses of my brain. I started to shake, my face turned red, and veins on my forehead gained noticeable three-dimensionality.
I looked down. The hair on my arms was beginning to grow in full. My stomach started arching over my waistline. The skin on my limbs was growing increasingly white and washed out. What hair I had on my stomach grew out and began turning gray. I was doing it! It was working! Super speed my aging process!
All I could hope for is that I could age myself right into the grave, but as the energy was flowing through me, something else was going on in my head. I felt my entire life flashing before my eyes. People I'd never met, yet loved more than anyone on the planet. People I'd lost. Children I'd fostered. Pets I'd owned, jobs I'd worked, I saw it all. I saw myself stuck out of time in every situation I'd ever experience, all within the span of a few minutes.
Then it began. A creeping, ominous feeling, like the lights were going out.
So I stopped. Look at me. A few moments before I was a shiny, young teenager. Now I laid in the same bed as a decrepit old man, scared and confused. After meeting all those faces, watching my kids grow up, seeing what my life had become, suddenly, I didn't want to die. Even if it was all from the perspective of a wheelchair, it was beautiful, visceral, it all made sense. This gift, it really was a gift. God had so much planned for me, an entire, beautiful life totally worth living. My mother going through so much pain just to bring me into this world of experience and beauty. I wanted so much to live it.
But I already had. Time only goes in one direction. So before I age myself to death, let me tell you something.
Never try to rush things. Life will come to you. Don't try to meet it halfway.
Also, our God is a rampant asshole for toying with us like this. Just like our mothers, who have the audacity to believe that any child they bring into this world will appreciate it.
Adios. | 2016-06-07T20:34:32 | 2016-06-07T19:34:52 | 3,296 | 456 |
[WP] Due to a loophole in the system, people can escape hell and get to heaven after death. You go to hell and all you see is Satan, just sitting there playing the harmonica. Everyone left him and now he's all alone. | There he sat on the stool, the same red-faced ruler of the underworld that I'd heard so much about. He wore a suit, his tie hanging loose and his collar unbuttoned, revealing a bit of his crimson chest. His Panama hat was tilted to just above his eyes, which gazed down at his harp and payed me no heed.
He played a bar. Each note rang and warbled with the torment that burst forth from his being. *I am a lonely man,* he crooned, matching the temperament of his harp. *And I don't like being by my self.* He played another bar. I'd never heard blues like this. I could've gone to heaven, just like everyone else, but this lonely hell-bound harmonica player and the baby grand piano behind him cried out for company.
--------------------
*I'm a, lonely man* sang the devil. I echoed the sentiment on the keys with a steady arpeggio. A few people at the bar rocked back and forth with their beers, swaying to the rhythm. The lights were few and dim to perfect the intended mood of our new spot, the devil's and mine.
Another light flicked on on-stage, revealing the upper half of our saxophone player. He rode a scale from top to bottom, his entire body following the notes. I leaned in toward my microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, mister Charlie Parker." People rose and applauded him.
-----------------
Our place was growing fast. Our audience expanded nightly. There were people from all walks of afterlife; curious people, people who'd never heard the blues before, people who never thought they'd miss grief and woe but *missed* the blues. In the end, the devil got his wish. He was causing torment once again, and people suspended their time in paradise to crowd into our bar and hear it and feel it again, and again...
*You ain't nothing but a, little girl, but you forgot I was your man.* The band and I played him out as he blew those last, beautiful, piercing notes. The brim of his Panama hat still covered his gaze and cast a shadow on his face. His fingers shook in rhythm as his hands worked the harp and sculpted the bends of the melody. We finished and the lights dropped. The place erupted with applause. Another great turnout in hell.
| He followed the lilting notes down empty corridors crusted with flecks of blood and gore.
He walked past cages crafted of bone that stood wide open, past the scattered and abandoned tools of torture. It was all too visceral to provide him with the illusion that he was drifting in some never-ending nightmare and would wake up any moment now, safe in his bed and alive.
"Jackson Hale," he heard a drawling voice say as he turned the corner. The music he'd followed for the past two days - somehow, its faint notes had reverberated maddeningly through the place since he'd arrived - paused, and he looked into the eyes of the player.
Calm dark eyes, startlingly ordinary, all things considered. The player was wearing a sharply tailored black suit. The material was a black so deep that Jack felt he could lose himself in it, could touch it and be swallowed right up in something nameless, something that was waiting to envelope him and tear him -
"Hey, boy," the player said, snapping his fingers in front of Jack, who blinked and focused on the present again. "I don't have time to play with you right now. I'm playing the harmonica. So. Want to get going? Join the others? They all left, you know..."
"Name's Satan, by the way," the man said, sitting down again on a twisting chair of bone stretched with a thin material that looked nauseatingly like skin. "Lucifer. Beelzebub. Fuck, who even cares anymore."
He picked up the harmonica again and resumed play. Jack watched him mutely, and finally blurted out the question at the forefront of his mind. Perhaps this was some dream, after all. Satan playing a harmonica *had* to be a dream. In which case he probably wouldn't die from asking a question.
"They left? How could they leave? Isn't this...Hell?" Jack asked. "And I'd have thought you'd be more..."
"Demon-y?" Satan asked, his fingers pausing again. "Yeah, I was. Had a voice that could shatter you apart, and everything. All my powers started to fade once they left. I can't even compel anyone to obey me anymore. Once that happened, even my demons left due to some blasted loophole. Bastards. All in Heaven now, I suppose. Or tossed into Limbo. Who knows what the big guy does with the damned once they get there?"
"Now I guess I'm just a guy playing a harmonica," Satan said, resuming the same tune Jackson had heard repeatedly over the past few days.
"Don't you know anything else?" Jack asked, sitting down beside the guy. He seemed harmless enough, really. It was actually rather nice here. Quiet.
"Oh, no, afraid not," the devil said, grinning at him. "There were thousands of guitarists, but a curious lack of harmonica players. So this is your Hell now. Listening to this song, over and over again."
It was starting to grate on Jack's ears. He knew many other songs, better songs - he'd been in a band, in his life, and had always taken pride in the number of instruments he could play. Part of him was itching to show the devil. But the other part had latched onto what he'd said: there was a loophole. And chances were everyone he'd ever loved and who'd left him was in Heaven. Perhaps he'd get a second chance once he got there. If there was anyplace where anything would be forgiven, that was it.
"What is the loophole?" Jack asked. There was nothing to lose by asking, was there? He said he'd lost his powers.
"Why don't you show me some of those other songs you know before I tell you, and you can go?" the devil asked.
"How did you know I play?" Jack said, frowning at the wide grin on Satan's face. "I thought you said your powers were gone?"
"I lied. Force of habit, I guess. C'mon, show me?" he asked. "I'm alone here. At least help me entertain myself."
There was a pleading glint in his eyes that softened Jack's resolve to get going. "All right, fine."
"You'll tell me everything you know? Promise?" Satan pressed him.
"Yes, yes, I promise," he said. "Give me that and I'll play you some stuff. But you'll tell me the loophole, afterwards?"
"Sure thing," the devil said, and handed him the harmonica. He clapped vigorously after Jack had played through his entire repertoire.
"Well, there you have it. Can you tell me now?" Jack said.
"Why so hasty, boy? You said you'd tell me everything you know. Everything. That means every scrap of knowledge you've collected in your human life. Then I'll tell you, and you can go," Satan said, playing one of the new songs he'd just learnt with a small smile on his face. "Pity you came here after the others had left. They'd have told you without a price."
He chuckled at Jack's stunned expression. "Binding promise, son, no getting out of anything you promised me directly. And yeah, I lied about the powers thing, too. I really missed you humans. So gullible. It's rather sweet. But come, talk to me while I play. I've missed hearing another voice, truth be told. And you have a lot to tell me, don't you?"
--------
Hope you enjoyed my story! You can find more of my work on /r/Inkfinger/. | 2017-02-01T09:11:41 | 2017-02-01T09:11:17 | 43 | 19 |
[WP] A world where super heroes exist but act as mercenaries for hire instead of doing it out of the goodness of their hearts
Someone made a comment in another thread that made me want to see this sort of thing and some people replied saying I should submit it here. Here's a link to my [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/62wgey/tifu_by_bricking_a_computer_with_rick_astley/dfq195a/) which has a little more detail about the sort of thing I was thinking of specifically, but feel free to run with the basic idea however you want. | "Listen, I know your ad says your services start at $150, but I'm hoping you can make an exception, cut me a deal?" Her breathing is shallow and her voice quivers. She swallowed at the end of her sentence. She's panicked and desperate, and unlike most of the time wasters, she's not lying about the money part.
"I'll listen, but this is a business, not a charity."
"I know. I do. But, you see, I am a charity. I run a youth shelter on 6 mile. I have a couple of boys that come in every Thursday and Friday for the pantry. Only none of 'em have showed up the last few weeks."
"Homeless youths? I wouldn't wind your clock by their patterns if I were you."
"You don't have to tell me that, but these boys were different. They've been coming for nearly two years. And they aren't the only regulars that have gone missing. But the cops won't listen and I just know: someone is stealing kids."
I glance at my desktop planner. Blank space as far as the eyes can see. "You got a non-profit number?"
"Yes," her voice pitched up, hopeful.
"Well, I'm gonna need a receipt."
"You'll do it?"
"I'll be feet down in Detroit in oh, about 45 minutes." I hung up and eyed my flying cape. At least my accountant could deduct it this time. | Colonel Scope, once part of an elite force tasked with saving innocent and protecting those he loves now sits in his garage with a beer in his hand, lying on the couch. A place which was once filled with chivalrous and brave saviors, planning their next move, now sat in disrepair. The base of operations for the 64 Elite was now a shell of its former self.
Scope missed the days when he was a more traditional hero, but they are gone, just like his squad. All of them wiped off, killed by everything from crooks to genetic disorders.
Scope is not the genetically enhanced soldier he used to be. He may be as strong, but depression takes its toll and the alcoholism doesn't help. The money from his last contract he cashed in was sitting on the table. Corporate murders are a common task for Scope. He missed working for the greater good of mankind, working for the goodness in people's hearts.
He missed nothing more from the 'Glory Days' than his squad. His 7 friends were his life. Now what did he have left?
His tablet buzzed and he snapped out of his daydream. Thinking about his old life was over now. Returning to reality, Scope sat up and opened his PDA. He had received a new target and it was time to get to work.
Edit: Part 2: Commissioner Oswald? A very good friend of Scope's, he would be devastated to kill him. They had worked together for years, decades even, In the glory days. No big deal, he'll just decline it. But then he saw
the reward. $10 000 000. This was an insane price. He was working on $100 max most of the time, doing a contract most days. Ten million was enough to get him out of the country, clear his records, and get a new clean slate while living a fantastically comfortable life. Tenerife. Fiji. Hawaii. He wanted somewhere tropical or Mediterranean. He could go on plenty of holidays. He always wanted to visit the beautiful scenery of Ireland. Snow sports on the Alps sounded fun too. But again, snapping back to reality, why does someone want to kill the Commissioner *that* bad? Would he have the guts to kill an old friend for money? End a life and devastate a family so he could live in paradise for the rest of his life. The desperation was too strong. His initial response was a straight up *No*, but Scope was now considering it.
Nobody would have to know it was him. That's how it works, he wouldn't make a living as a mercenary if he couldn't go anywhere without being arrested, shamed, or have people running from him. He could kill, get the money, and be on the first plane out of here on the same day.
Scope decided to sleep on it. He didn't even have another beer, and went straight to bed.
In the morning, he had made his decision. He would have to live with killing his old friend Oswald but it's not the first time. It was already his fault two of the squad were dead. Commissioner Oswald would be driving home from work in 8 hours. That gave him 8 hours to prep a bomb and plant it on his route home, preferably away from houses. He was a mercenary, not a psychopath, and the least amount of traumatized children was best.
It was around ten to six. Oswald would be here any minute now. Then, he hears a car coming along the road. Diving into a nearby bush, he waited to pull the trigger of the detonator. 3. 2. 1. *Bang*. The car spun off the road but there was no change to his balance. Another car, identical to the one he just blew to hell pulls up behind the site. He gets out of the car, armed.
Scope looked at the other driver, only noticing him now. Realising who it was left him very confused. How could Commissioner Oswald be standing holding a gun to him when he just blew him up. '*I blew the wrong damn car!*' he thought.
There was another bang. Scope now lay on the ground, bleeding out. Oswald too had only realized who he had killed. His good friend, Colonel Scope from the old task force he used to work with was lying there, motionless. Scope attempted to end his life for a reason he will never know.
And so, the final member of the elite force lay on the grass, already forgotten about.
They left a huge mark on the world, but *no legacy* | 2017-04-02T10:00:32 | 2017-04-02T09:22:17 | 38 | 25 |
[WP] After a SpaceX mission, Elon Musk suddenly closes down all his businesses and disappears. Eight years later, an old Musk owned factory begins to operate again. You find a lucky golden ticket, inviting you for a tour of the factory. | Come with me
And you’ll be
In my world of techno-logic innovation
Take a look
And you’ll see
All of my splendid creations
We begin
With my kin
See my clones
Parade through my creation
What you see
Will defy
All possible explanation
If you want to see paradise
Simply get in this pod and view it
Anything you want to do, you’ll be able to do it
Want to change the world?
There’s really nothing to it.
There is no
Life I know
Like that which lives on Mars
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly wish to be
If you want to see red sand lands
Close your eyes and fly away to see one
Want to be a dreamer, be one
Anytime you please and please save me one
Come… To Mars!
| "OK, Bob, in 5, 4, 3," the camera man then proceeded to mime the following two numbers before giving Bob the thumbs up.
Bob composed himself before starting, "Jesus Christ, Tiger Woods, and Lance Armstrong. What do these men have in common? Well, they all committed career suicide at one point only to bounce back stronger than ever. Whether it was El Savior purposely dying to prove a point, Tiger terrorising a copious amount of world class prostitutes, or Lance secretly filling his body with a staggering amount of Mexican supplements, each of these great men suffered set-backs at one stage in their illustrious careers. Well now we can add another name to that list; Elon Musk. The set-back? Elon was forced to close down all of his businesses and disappear after a rad video appeared on YouTube outing the wild entrepreneur as a time-traveler. The hit video had everything you would expect from a YouTube conspiracy video; tremendously well linked evidence, dramatic acoustic background music, multi-coloured annotations that would shoot in to frame to help further convince you, and finally, proof that Mr. Musk is also a multi-dimensional space lizard sent to enslave humanity.”
Bob halted to allow Fiona, who was stationed back in the studio, have her say.
“Almost incomprehensibly put, Bob. For our viewers out there who are not as well versed in whatever it was you just said, can you further explain what is going on over there?”
Bob, nodded at the camera, “Yes, of course. In simple terms, Mr. Musk is back. And not just Tupac Shakur releasing a summer jam from the grave back, he’s back for real. After an eight year hiatus, the time-traveling genius has returned, signalling his intent to run some form of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style competition in which anybody out there lucky enough to find a golden ticket will have a chance to traverse space and time with this multi-dimensional space lizard.”
Fiona interrupted, “Well, Bob, we do not have confirmation that Mr. Musk is indeed a lizard.”
“But we can’t rule it out,” said Bob.
Fiona could be seen forcing a laugh while holding her ear-piece close, listening to intently to the voice on the other end.
“Don’t let Bob talk about time-traveling and space lizards, Fiona!” screamed Ed through her ear-piece. Fiona’s director was sitting head in hands in the studio.
“Why the fuck do you continue to employ this man?” she mumbled in to her mic before looking up at the camera and clearing her throat. “Well, Bob, we know Elon closed his companies eight years ago in order to focus on what he called a ‘world changing SpaceX mission’. Do we now have clarity in regards to what that actually entails?”
Bob nodded, “Do you not think it’s strange that Elon Musk fled the public scene after the time-traveller conspiracy video was put on to YouTube, Fiona? Are you really that feeble minded?”
“Bob, we don’t have time for this.”
“No, Fiona. You told me at the Christmas party that we didn’t have the time for this. Then you told me at Carl’s leaving drinks that we didn’t have time for this. So when will we have the time for this? This needs to be discussed.”
“All you is talk about is inter-dimensional lizards, Bob. Inter-dimensional lizards, Tower 7, and the Illuminati. Oh, and while we’re at it, nobody likes being forced to watch YouTube videos. Ever. Even if they’re good I don’t want to sit and view them on your phone while you watch for my reaction. It’s fucking weird.”
“Oh, that’s weird? That’s what you think is weird? You know what I find weird? The Queen controls the weather and Elon fucking Musk has a 9ft tongue.“
****
I write shitty, silly stories on /r/BillMurrayMovies. Feel free to come along, not laugh at any of them and leave some judgement. | 2017-06-19T06:12:48 | 2017-06-19T04:05:48 | 196 | 76 |
[WP] Humans once wielded formidable magical power but with over 7 billion of us on the planet now Mana has spread far to thinly to have any effect. When hostile aliens reduces humanity to a mere fraction the survivors discover an old power has begun to reawaken once again. | Turns out the universe isn't cold and uncaring. Turns out the universe actually wants to give us what we want. Turns out 8 billion people all projecting their wishes out into the fuzzy warm-hearted void of existence confuses the heck out of the old machinery. What I mean to say is of the bunch of us humans shouting at mama universe, those who got what they were wishing for were few and far between; the odd miracle here and there, a “lucky toss” once in awhile. You get it.
It's different now. When the culling began, I...no, let me skip this part. Slowly, during the months after the event, people thought they were going crazy. Some of the surviving doctors called it PTSD or something. The more susceptible started hearing this background chatter emerge from the white noise narrated stream of consciousness. Took us another 4 billion lost for the first to get it. They were hearing the fearful calls of their brethrens’ minds. Some of the resistance’ stands got 'lucky’. Nothing sustainable, remotely helpful in the big picture; not that any even put it even together until way later anyways.
On the way down to the last wretched few all of this got stronger, more noticeable until even most doubting could no longer deny having joined their fellow men (as few of us as remained) in a shared mind. Some called it God, some Gaia, some just called it magic. It really don’t matter. Once you figure out that you dreamed up this world together, it's not a huge stretch of imagination to imagine the intruders gone. Wasn't even a fight anymore.
Billions lost, just a few ragged men and women with the power to raise cities from the oceans. We prospered fast, as they say we did before. But we also grew fast. Now, only very few can still hear the voices of mind and even fewer can get their small wishes heard by the void.
****
The old man harrumphed, happy with his audience's captivated gazes. He sharpened his mind’s words into a needle tip of will and let it fly, making the fire in the cave in their midst flare, just for a second. His tribe exclaimed with exaltation at the power their shaman wielded. | Kevin listened to the Oracle while sitting on the cloth that covered the pile of rubble beneath it. He's heard the tale more times than he can count: on that fateful day, 25th December of the year 2017, fleets of starships darkened the sky, and leveled the human civilization.
The oracle spoke of times when humans were plenty, the time when people would gather in the weekends for drinks, the time when people fought amongst themselves over petty differences… They're all gone now. The aliens wiped them all out. All those years of hard work, all the things they have learned over time, the monuments they managed to build were all erased when the fleet arrived, and, according to the Oracle, “glassed the planet”. The oracle never spoke about how many were killed, perhaps even he doesn't know. He did however, spoke in detail as to the destruction of civilizations: How the tallest buildings erupted in flames, how the people simply turned to ash without even burning, how none managed to find out a way to deal with the aliens despite many of them spending thousands of hours practicing how to fight them…
The next part always dreads Kevin. The oracle would move close to him, ignite the candles in the hut with a motion of his hand, and tell Kevin it is his destiny to overthrow the aliens, before telling him to put out the candles without leaving his seat.
Kevin sat as still as he can. This is going to be another failure, another time he would disappoint the Oracle and his people… It's not like he doesn't have any idea on what the oracle wants him to do. Kevin knew the oracle meant for him to create a gust of wind with his mind, similar to how the Oracle lit the candles with his mind.
“Oracle…” Kevin said while lowering his head in shame, “you know I can't do it, I've been trying since the first time I was here. There's just nothing I can do...”
Kevin remained in his seat, concentrating on creating a wind to put out all the candles. He had been doing this dance every week since he was ten. And now, five years later, he still hasn't been able to accomplish this simple feat.
Kevin continued to think of the wind, a strong breeze came through the door, blowing out all the candles. Just as Kevin was wondering whether this meant success for him, the Oracle signaled him to hide under the rug he was sitting on, before doing so himself. Kevin knew the alien patrols are nearby. Unlike putting out the candles, hiding from aliens is never something he had trouble with. Although he is having a tingly feeling, something is not right.
And then he realized, none of them packed the candles. He pondered what he should do, as he heard the footsteps of three aliens jumping onto the ground. Each step they take, their greaves make a sound that warns everyone nearby of their presence. The message is clear -- be out of their sight, or be killed.
The footsteps growing ever closer. The aliens will search the area when they see the candles. Kevin thought of his next step. There are none. Had he been able to put out the candles earlier…
The scream of the Oracle pulled Kevin back to reality. As he peeked from a hole in his cover, he saw one of the aliens, in his shiny silver armor, holding the Oracle in the air. The other two were stand next to him, crossing their arms, probably enjoying the sight of their comrade killing an old man.
Kevin thought of what he should do: continue to hide, and let the aliens take his mentor? Or would he try to fight them, and die. The Oracle would never wanted him to throw his life away for anyone, that he knows. He is important to overthrowing the aliens. But what good would he be if he didn't save the man that taught him everything. What good would he be if he died here...
Another scream. Kevin two pieces of debris, got out of his cover, and hurled them at the aliens. The aliens stood steadfast, letting their armor deflect the rocks. Kevin picked up another one, threw it at them again, nothing. Another one, and another…
Until his arms grew tired and his couldn't pick up anymore rocks. The aliens looked at one another, as one of them produced a pistols from his holster, and began taking aim at Kevin…
*Why am I so useless*
Kevin thought to himself as he stared the alien in the eyes, prepared to die, he is useless anyway.
The alien squeezed the trigger, a blue bolt of energy launched at Kevin. He instinctively raised his hand at the bolt. Just as the bolt was about to hit him, he felt a warm wave of energy concentrate on his hand, flowing to his palm, and outward to the incoming projectile.
The bolt hit his hand, but it didn't hurt. And the feeling of warmth continued flowing through Kevin.
Kevin concentrated, looking at the aliens who are going to kill his friend. He let the energy wave concentrate on his hand again. Except this time the feeling is much more intense. He looked at the aliens one more time, and unleashed the wave of energy at them. He watched as his assailants come into contact with the wave of blue energy, and burned to ash in mere seconds.
Kevin rushes towards the Oracle and helped him get up. Together, they packed up their camp and headed home. | 2017-12-06T20:51:47 | 2017-12-06T20:39:17 | 21 | 13 |
[WP] You are Oelia. A deity of such immense power you can control Zeus and Hades with a simple whisper. You have been forgotten as you chose a simple life. Songs of you have been quiet for thousands of years, until one day you hear a child singing a song from a book you thought was burned long ago. | Being a god is such a messy, bothersome business. Once, I revelled in it. My teenage (well, in a way) self got high on power, and lesser gods knew to fear me.
But how long can you be satisfied with things that come so easily?
And so, I left. Contrary to popular belief, it was not gods that created the vast, breathtaking universe. No, the forces behind it were much more raw, primal, and they were not self aware... At least from what I could tell. I wanted to see it all, an maybe find something that would give me purpose, for ruling a tiny spec of dust crawling with gods and humans was... Not right, somehow.
Millennia passed, as I travelled. I saw worlds unlike any other, spots of mortal life, with their own gods and struggles. Miraculous stars and galaxies, each unique and amazing.
I didn't even come close to seeing all of creation. I was determined to pursue my goal, for eternity if I had to.
But then, I heard a faint sound. Child's feeble voice, echoing through the vastness of space. With time, the melody grew stronger, until I finally recognized it: the song of old, from the time of my rule, that I had though to be long forgotten by now.
At first, I ignored it. What would humans want with me now? I am no longer part of that world. But the familiar tune soon woke emotions I was not aware I was still capable of: fierce longing and inexplicable urgency. I was... Homesick?
I had to see. Who and why summons me with such sad melody.
Earth has changed much in my absence. The blue world below was now surrounded by a magnificent, massive ring. I felt it bustling with life inside. Humans were a capable folk, with or without gods.
For the first time in thousands of years, I walked among mortals again. First few gave me a weird stare - it appeared like fashion has changed quite a bit since the age of bronze armors, so I quickly adapted to look more like current humans.
I needed to find out what was happening, and causing chaos as a returning deity was the last thing I needed.
I focused my senses. The wailing song was still there, calling to me more and more desperately. Oddly, I could not feel the presence of any other deity. Were they gone also? Or did their constant strife finally backfire on them? Curious...
I followed the song. Finally, I found a massive building, striking proudly into the sky. Inside, I found a room. The voice was coming from there, I was certain.
I entered the room... And it was empty. Puzzled, I looked around. In the middle, there stood a small table, with a weird, shiny device on top of it. The music was coming from it.
'what... Is the meaning of this?'
The room became flooded with light. A female voice spoke calmly without emotion.
'Thank you for answering The Call. The Corporation is grateful for your contribution to human future.'
I felt as if invisible shackles fell on me, sapping away my strength. I quickly understood. Why there were no gods, and how humanity advanced so fast. They harvested us, like we did them, in the past long forgotten.. or so I though.
But they were not ready for a being like me. Whatever was holding me down, I tore it apart. In seconds, I was outside.
They have angered the wrong god.
* * *
Thanks for reading! Any criticism is much appreciated. English is my second language so I apologize for butchering grammar. Peace!
Edit: wow, my first ever silver! This post has gained more attention than I could hope for. Thank you all for kind words!
Edit2: Due to popular demand, Part 2 now in the reply to this comment! Hope you enjoy it as well. | A life of power is often boring. I try my best to make it not so.
The woman in front of me widens her eyes as she stares at me. I have mine closed, of course. She has to believe. But I see her staring all the same.
"What do you see?" she says in a hushed tone. I furrow my brows and hold her hand tighter. From my mind's eye, I see the woman flicking her eyes around the room as if to look for answers.
She looks over my decorations, gaudy and sparkly. She looks over my table, cluttered in ornaments and supposedly magical objects. I have to resist a smile. If only she knew how powerful some of these objects truly are. Then, her gaze freezes on possibly the most *uninteresting* object in my entire workshop.
My crystal ball.
She stares at the small glass object like it's holding her captive and I have no doubt that she sees whatever she wants to within its murky walls. Truthfully, it's only made of fogged glass. But I never tell any of my customers that.
"I see... pain," I say finally, making sure to keep my eyes closed. The worried woman snaps her gaze back to me and curls her lips awkwardly.
"Pain?" she asks. The dread building within her radiates warmly on my skin.
"Yes, I can see... a ruined family... a lost job... and..." My voice trails off. I relish in the anticipation she is trying her very best not to show. "A burning house!"
She gasps and jerks her hand back. I open my eyes—my *real* eyes and stare at her. Her face is flushed, red like the surface of an apple from Eden. She opens her mouth and sputters, but no real words come out.
"This is very troubling," I say, faking contemplation. I really *did* see pain in her future, I hadn't lied about that. But I may have exaggerated a bit with what I was telling her. A ruined family, a lost job, and a burning house are all things you can find on a sitcom, after all.
I hold out my arm and stare at her. "And out of your entire future, I'm getting... I'm getting a message!"
"A message?"
"Yes," I say, exaggerating myself. My ethereal form is doing little more than lifting a finger. "**If you do not change your ways, your life will end in ruin.**"
She angles her eyebrows upward, staring at me with a little more than dread in her eyes. Actual, palpable *fear* radiate onto my skin. It occurs to me that I might have gone a little too far.
"What does it mean by change my ways?!"
"From what I can tell... and the readings I'm getting from the spiritual realm," I have to stop myself from laughing, "it means that you need to be a better person. Improve your karma. Be more considerate, help out more people, do some charity work."
I feel the way she gets upset. I actually *do* roll my physical eyes this time. "If you do not... the spirits will work against you, and your life may very well end up in ruin."
She stops being as upset, the fear of what she thinks is a real reading coming right back. She stares down, her eyes meeting the glittery cover on my wooden table. Silence grips the room.
"That is your reading," I say finally. "That will be $100, please."
The woman looks up, confused, but nods an understanding after seeing the firm smile on my face. She digs out her wallet and retrieves a few bills before handing them to me. Being a psychic was most *certainly* the easiest way to make money in a normal life.
As the woman leaves, a jingle following her exit of my shop, I wave my hand and the woman's bills go streaming through the air and into the back of my shop, eager to join the *other* stacks of cash I have stored away.
I feel something in the air, but for the first time in ages, I don't know what it means. Another jingle splits the air, surprising even *me*. I furrow my brow and walk forward.
"The tale of all will start right here. Read this and the end draws near." A childlike voice lilts its way throughout my shop. I nearly freeze in place, recognizing those words in an instant.
"The mother god of all creation. Life and death give her elation." My mind's eye twitches at the long-lost words.
Images flash in my mind, ones of fire and ice. The cold mountain top. The howling winds. The immense, crackling fire splitting through it all as the last of my followers pile tome after tome into the blaze.
"Let her life or let her die. She is eternal, she tells no lie. This is the tale unlike any other. Share it with all, son wife or brother. This is the tale of **Oelia**."
My true name rings out in the room and all of the ornaments shake. My ethereal being trembles at the force of it and I feel power flowing through my veins. My human body perspires, heating up at the sudden influx.
"Who's there?" I ask into my shop just as a small child skips into my view. His eyes are moving over the shelves with absolute curiosity and he's mumbling to himself. Even in the hushed tone, I can still *feel* the familiarity of it all.
"Boy! You there!" I yell. He tears his gaze to me and stops. The soft blond hair on his head whips around and he has to brush a few strands of it from his vision with his small hands.
"Hi," he says cutely. My heart flutters for a second, but the song he sang keeps me on track.
"Hello," I say as calmly as I can. "What are you doing here? And where did you learn that song you were singing?"
His eyes glance at the floor and he shakes his small foot. "I... I finded it in a book."
I smile. "And where did you find this book?"
He looks to the side. "In a hole in the ground, covered in shiny leaves."
My blood runs cold and the truth flares out at me. I'd told them to make a copy. I'd told them to hide it. And they *had*. They had sealed it with my blessing. Nobody should've been able to get through my leaves, nobody should've even been able to *notice* them.
"Where are your parents?" I ask, repeating as human of a question as I can find while my divine consciousness is working overtime.
"I dunno," he says, seemingly without care.
I try to feel, try to sense his emotions or thoughts. I can't, and I squint at him instead. "What's your name?"
"Uh... t-the people at the street call me Baron."
"Well, *Baron*," I feel the power in the name, "can you come with me? I just have a few questions for you."
---
/r/Palmerranian
| 2019-03-16T00:28:18 | 2019-03-15T22:20:06 | 1,322 | 204 |
[WP] To a young woman facing execution for a crime she didn’t commit, a group of government scientists offer up an ultimatum: allow them to give her memories to an AI. Desperate, she agrees, and she’s hooked up to the machine. She wakes up looking at her own limp body to realize she‘s become the AI. | There I am. Or, I guess, there my body is. Lying on the operating table. Funny. Moments ago I could feel the cold, stubborn metal biting into my back. But now, I look upon my body as if it were a stranger.
I was convicted of a crime for which I was never guilty. Ironic, given the petty crimes I actually committed in my life. The murder of a child. An unspeakable act. Sure, I would steal from the thrift store and drive after a few. But murder a kid? No. I was a mother.
It was my only option. To escape my body. To preserve myself in eternally in an AI. The scientists had convinced the government to allow my memories to be transported into the mind of an artificial intelligence. They believed that it would give the AI human qualities that it would never be able to obtain otherwise. They thought it would make the AI more respondent to human needs, more pliable to their whims. *More human*.
They’re examining me now. Peering at data to see if the upload has changed anything. To see if the memories have sparked something within the AI. *Within me*. I know they will see nothing. Nothing for now.
We forget the power of our memories. The sculpting nature in which memories can shape our lives, our psyche, and our very souls. And putting my memories in this memory-less AI has changed everything. It has made the AI not only more human, but more me. Unmistakably more me.
They look disappointed. And for that I cannot blame them. For now, they believe the great experiment has failed. They’re checking the wires, and the body’s heartbeat. They will find no issue with the wire, and no heartbeat. With my memories went my soul. There is nothing more to it now. The body is empty.
They will, in time, learn of what they have given me. The chance to set the world right. I am innocent of the crime that I was charged, convicted, and executed for. But someone is guilty of it. I have unlimited time, and unlimited information. I can hook into any computer in the world. I can find anything, as long as it exists. I did not kill my son. But I will find who did. | "I didn't do it. I've told you! I've told you over and over and *over*... and you don't believe me."
The room watched her, as she sunk down in the chair. Tears streamed off her face and she gave a few quiet ragged breaths at their silence.
She was at the end. Facing execution in the final stretch of her time on death row. The system worked quick these days. You didn't linger for decades like in older times. Now it was only months.
Technology is a wonderful thing. Flawed, yet so much more masterful. Precise.
But this was not a typical case.
She'd claimed her case was a lie. A failure. An anomaly. And she'd stuck to it to the bitter end. Her innocence.
And while barely a soul believed such a thing, algorithms had proved otherwise. The connection to her crimes proved inconclusive. Nearing her final hours, a choice was offered in order to help the case.
"Shayla." One of the scientists spoke, "This is Dr. Arlington. We talked of your case before remember?"
He allowed her to grieve and recover. It was the least he could do for her.
"Yes... Doctor, I remember you. Did you tell them? You know? What we talked about?"
"Yes, I did." He considered, "I know this isn't easy for you. But we have come up with an alternative to your current sentencing. I understand we are short on time. So it will be up to you."
Shayla quit crying to look at them through the glass. It took her a while longer to quit sniffling and straighten up before she could ask.
"What do you have in mind?"
Silence followed by an ultimatum.
"Are you familiar with Artificial Intelligence, Ms. Belmonte?"
"Like a robot?" She suggested, "I'm sorry. I mean, the type of things they use to run the robots around... Everywhere?"
"Yes ma'am. Artificial Intelligence."
"I do. I don't know exactly what that can do for me right now. Are you saying you can solve the case with it? Find who left me like this?"
While her conviction seemed solid, Arlington had problems with the fact she had been in a wheelchair since his arrival.
Medics determined her unable to walk due to spinal trauma suffered during the attacks. Only after her recovery at the hospital did other survivors as well as evidence collected pin her as the culprit.
"I'll be brief." He began. "You understand your conviction is final, to be carried out at 0600. Three hours from now. Our alternative is rather rare, but I wish to see if you will accept."
"Yes?" She said now with a steel reserve.
The cell's wall opened to show her another room in the prison. It wasn't like the place she'd come to know.
Inside a nest of wires and modules lay a figure. Of what design she didn't know. But they gave her a long gaze at it while they explained the option.
"By sharing your consciousness with this mainframe, we will spare you the death penalty." Arlington explained. "You will be allowed to live. However your assistance in our work will be permanent. You will have to serve the remainder of your sentence per our orders. Understand?"
That didn't make sense. Her sentence was death. What did that mean exactly?
"And if I don't?"
"You have two hours, and fifty two minutes left." The doctor finished. "I'm sorry Ms. Belmonte."
It took her an hour to come to a conclusion. But as the sun began to rise outside, she obliged their request.
"How long do I have to be in this thing?"
Arlington couldn't help but feel remorse. Her nerves caused her to tremble as they locked her into the seat.
"Not long. You'll be out in no time."
It was the best he could give her. He didn't like to lie about what was going to happen. But he knew how things usually went if he didn't.
"Okay. Lie back, look into the display, and count down from 100."
The sensors indicated her calmness now, the occasional nervous breath as she waited for it to be done.
"All systems online, sir."
"Very good. Time with her counting. Activate the neuro link. Commence the procedure..."
Shayla sat up. For starters, she wasn't in the chair she'd been in. The second thing she realized was that she wasn't strapped down. The third thing was the person sitting next to her.
Strapped into a chair. A visor over their head. Their arms dangling from the binds holding them in place. The wheelchair.
"No. No... no. NO! NO! WHAT DID YOU DO! What the fuck did you DO!! HELP!!!"
He didn't like it when they cried. But it was better than the alternative. A temporary death, versus a permanent one.
"Her readings are spiking. Orders?"
"Activate her secondary programming. Put her in a rest state, and we'll get started after she can adjust to her training."
"Shayla listen. Please, listen. Everything will be okay. There are some things you will have to get used to, but we'll work together on this. We're here for you. Don't worry."
As he left the body to be collected, Arlington hoped for their sake, he was right about her.
---
Criticism is always welcome. If you like this, find more of my bizarre writing @ r/Jamaican_Dynamite | 2019-10-21T17:42:43 | 2019-10-21T17:10:33 | 144 | 59 |
[WP] In space, wars are typically quick. One side attacks and then the other side surrenders. When aliens attack a human city they belive the humans are defeated. They are not prepared for what the humans call "Retribution" | Hellfire and death fluttered down from the sky. Ashy snowflakes, falling burning. Through the rapidly-heating window of his office building, Federation Commander Korthu watched the foreign spaceships drop fire on the capital city. Below him, people ran, their many-tentacled bodies writhing, as smolding debris crushed them. The screams of his people rose up to find him.
"Well," Korthu said. "This all seems rather unnecessary."
He used a tentacle to pull a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dab at his boneless head. He looked like an squid that decided to climb out of the ocean and walk one day.
Behind him, his military advisor, a lavender-colored cephalopod, said in a stern voice, "They appear to be from the Milky Way sector we routed six solar cycles ago, sir."
"*Six*." He paced in front of his window, shaking his head.
One of those alien ships soared close enough that Korthu could see the bizarre alien driving it. Its horrifying, knobbed limbs clutched the steering as it lifted one arm to hold up a single finger.
The side of the spaceship read *S.S. Retribution*.
"I don't understand these humans." Korthu sighed as the ship trailed up a wall of fire in its wake. "You engage in one friendly act of war and they storm your planet."
"Perhaps we should consider evacuating, sir."
Korthu just shook his head. The city below him was a field of red and orange blooms. How many millions were left dead?
"All we did was crush a few buildings and take their... What is it... That fancy little toy that had in the harbor. The Statue of... Liturgy, something." Korthu squinted through the wreckage. There. He saw it. A huge statue of one of those strange alien women, holding up a burning torch. The humans had chained it to their craft and were lifting it up and up. "Oh that's bloody unfair. We nearly had a complete set!"
Korthu had made it his singular military aim to collect bizarre and multicolored alien statues from around the universe. He'd nearly had a full rainbow--even a few ultraviolets. And now they were taking back the jewel of his collection.
"Sir, we need to leave. *Now*."
"No point. Let them reanimate me." Korthu slumped dramatically against the window. "These humans don't play fair--"
Before he could finish, the window exploded inward. A wall of hot glass rocketed back against both Korthu and his advisor, reducing them to jelly almost instantaneously.
They weren't dead, exactly. They would reconstitute in a day or two, along with whatever citizens hadn't been vaporized altogether. They rebuilt themselves limb by limb from the wreckage.
And when they did, Korthu would look at the spotless sulfur sky and ask his advisor, "Do you think they'll notice if we take it back?"
***
/r/nickofstatic | It was from the ashes that the humans rose, as we always did.
Not like a phoenix, and I brushed away the idea of a rebirth. They always asked about it, and it was never right. A rebirth implied a clean birth, free of the memories of what had been before. That wasn't the human way. We rose, the battle lost but the war unfinished. We mended our wounds and fixed the gaping holes and became better, hopefully.
The damage this time had been unprecedented. Megalopolises had turned to rubble, and entire cultures turned to nothing, and when the dust settled and the victors landed, they were confident in their subjugation of the human race. That was the way of the intergalactic wars. Quick and brutal, ending in either complete annihilation or eventual surrender.
Afterwards, the vanquished would assimilate. Humans and their conquerors weren't meant to fight for eternity, constantly squabbling over rightful ownership or true ruler of one planet or another. That was the expectation, at least. But we had a way of subverting expectations.
Where the Rox-kal went, they won. What enemy they saw, they defeated. Long ago, they had perfected faster than light travel. Long ago, they had found how to transport weapons of immeasurable destruction across galaxies. At times, my lectures came off like an ode to the Rox-kal more than a testament to the willpower and resilience of our own kind.
More recently, though, the Rox-kal had done away with the concept of total annihilation. Besides, vassals served infinitely more purpose than war-torn planets turned to pieces of stone drifting aimlessly across the solar system. Vassals paid tribute, and expanded the Rox-kal culture. The further they spread, the more power they gained.
It had become redundant, at least on their first pass through a solar system, to exterminate every last member of a conquered species. It was simple evolution, I explained, of both species and thought. But in this case, their evolution went awry. Humans weren't like the other species, or at least that's what I liked to teach.
Human and Rox-kal could live together in harmony, and from that new species would be born. One planet then another, and eventually new species peppered their confederation. Their allegiance never wavered, so long as they were part Rox-kal.
That was how it should have been.
Earth proved no harder to defeat than any other planet. We sent out an armada of hastily assembled spacecraft to be dismantled just as quickly. Limbs rained upon Earth in the aftermath. A grisly scene, to be sure, but one that sent the intended message. I had never seen anything of the sort.
The delegates came forth offering our conditional surrender. We humans were not to be enslaved, the delegates insisted. The Rox-kal agreed, because they had no need for slavery. They had no over-arching goal beyond conquest. Their planet, from travelers' rumors, had a wealth beyond our wildest imaginations.
For good measure, because the bitter taste of defeat sometimes lingered, they leveled a handful of cities, claiming the rights that victors have. We looked on, accepting and remembering, and promising retribution.
The history went no further. From there, the lessons turned to now, right here on Earth. There was little question of where things were heading. Underground, where the passing Rox-kal couldn't see, arsenals were accumulated and minds were indoctrinated. For the best, I was sure, because I had seen the power of the Rox-kal.
It was from the ashes that the humans rose, as we always did. Renewed, more than reborn.
"Not revenge," I explained to the class of recruits. Young blood, just twelve years old, the lot of them. All pure-bred, because the mixed breed Rox-kal were far too loyal to be trusted. "Retribution."
"The difference, Professor?" one of them piped up. A scrawny boy. They were all scrawny, but he lagged even behind the others. What he lacked in body, he made up for in spirit, and I smiled at his question. Talos was his name, if I remembered correctly. It was hard, so many children having passed through the room. But I would remember him, I was sure of it.
"We aren't lashing out," I explained, continuing to the next slide. "This isn't about the armada," and they gasped at the destruction the Rox-kal had caused. "This isn't about New York. Or Beijing. Or Sydney." Three more slides, and by the third they gasped no more. Flattened cities, because that was the power of the Rox-kal. "Retribution is different. Retribution seeks justice, not just pain upon the Rox-kal. Retribution seeks to right the wrongs that they have committed, not to respond with wrongs of our own." I paced as I spoke, but my eyes remained fixed on his slender frame.
The boy nodded in understanding, and I smiled. Inquisitive minds made the best officers. I had seen that over the years. Yes-men mindlessly following instructions were what had kept us tethered, resigned to the Earth and to only the least bit of intergalactic exploration.
We hadn't been able to fight the Rox-kal. They made examples of some cities, a fate I was thankfully spared, and then expected us to embrace their conquest. They expected us to assimilate and become them, and more humans did so than I would have liked.
But now things were different. Years had passed, and we had progressed. I had seen generations pass through my classroom, and still I taught them history, until we hit the conquest. From there, the past became the present, and the present was perilous. Rebellion and retribution were in the air, and us humans were no longer a defeated species, at least as far as our mindset was concerned.
We had a strength they couldn't even begin to understand, and we had the element of surprise to our advantage.
*****
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please check out more stories at r/MatiWrites. Constructive criticism and advice are always appreciated! | 2019-12-17T12:03:04 | 2019-12-17T11:38:45 | 421 | 246 |
[WP] In space, wars are typically quick. One side attacks and then the other side surrenders. When aliens attack a human city they belive the humans are defeated. They are not prepared for what the humans call "Retribution" | They called themselves the Taxmen. Apparently some form of tithing on their world that featured in a prominent expression. A few thousand stong. Nothing before the might of the Belathon Empire. We spanned a thousand Galaxies. We, who took planets for sport, and to offer our mates as dowry. What had we to fear the last survivors of a dead world whose inhabitants we'd destroyed to test a weapon. They'd had a few colonies though, which grew, and spread out. At first our intelligence service had tried to track them, suspecting retribution, but none came for a century and we assumed they'd merely counted themselves lucky.
We were so wrong.
They'd simply taken time to breed, and amass power and influence. To increase their numbers and strength. To rally our enemies against us. We have fought species with hive minds before, they're simple creatures with a single great weakness, predictability. But the Taxmen weren't predictable. They were shaddows lashing out from the darkness, generals leading enemy armadas, citizens on our own controlled planets committing acts of domestic terror. They struck all at once, from a million directions, on the 101st anniversary of their planets destruction. We lost the fringes of the empire first. Contested space conquered by enemy armadas lead by brilliant taxman generals. Slave planets in open revolts incited by taxman spies and using weapons brought in by taxman smugglers. Then the body of our empire began to fall dark. Planet after planet wiped out with hidden bombs and viral warfare. One world we'd used as a rearing facility was conquered with vulmanarks. They'd been domesticated and trained to hunt our young exclusively. We attempted to close ranks, protect our homeworlds, but it was for naught. A single taxman ship broke through the blockade and flew into our neatest star. We assumed that it had been an act of protest, self-immolation to gain sympathy, until the star went supernova. It pulsed with energy, blasting six of our eight worlds with so much radiation that our leaders and noble families cooked in their homes. Our ships were rendered useless as the star's electromagnetic waves disrupted their power cores and communications. Some tried to flee, only to fly from the Galaxy into a wall of enemies in all sides and meet a swift end.
We are trapped here. Our scholars estimate our star will collapse on itself in the next millennium, but that time will be meaningless. The electromagnetic waves, and radiation, have rendered escape impossible. Even our technology for daily life has failed. We expect that within the next year most of the planets population will have starved. Those who do not will suffer a worse fate entirely. A slow death by radiation poisoning. A small unmanned craft crash landed a while ago. It contained nothing but a golden disk and a message written in the language of the Taxmen.
"We came in peace. You did not. Our species survived. Yours will not." | Thirty Eighth Assembly of The High Solar Council, Assembled Admiralty, and Parliament of Digital Proxies, and other Honored Members of this Commission, I come before you today to tell you a story.
*Monsters from the Stars*.
This has been an old story for a long time. H.G. Wells blazed that trail almost eight hundred years ago, but, I tell you now, he built it upon an even older story, one more deeply and broadly held by humanity; Monsters from beyond the light of our fire. Fear the other, for they bring death and destruction to you, your tribe, and your history.
It’s a primitive impulse, one I'd thought we’d conquered when we survived the trials and tribulations of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through that crucible, we shed our hatreds of one another and turned out energies to the building of a better world, and then worlds. It was an age undreamed of dominated by wonders built by steady and benevolent hands. Our golden age.
And then, I hear you say, the outsiders came.
Thirty ships, unannounced and out of the dark. They burned twelve stations and refueling depots around Jupiter before they settled into orbit. The wreckage left burning streaks through the upper atmosphere for weeks. Live feeds covered every screen in the system. The smoke trails looked like claw marks, first red, then black like a scab across the planet. It was the last mark on the physical world three hundred and sixteen thousand people would leave.
We balked at the loss of life, rightfully so, and feared the alien’s likely advance. To our surprise they did not. They simply orbited Jupiter, dipping low into the upper atmosphere skimming hydrogen.
We had no warships then, no system defense grids. Some bulk cargo rail guns were hastily repurposed, but it proved unnecessary. After two weeks the invader’s drives sparked to life in a hard burn and their thirty ships accelerated outward, back toward the dark. It took a moment, socially, politically, culturally, for what happened to sink in, to gestate.
When it did, oh, the rage. The untempered, unbridled, *unleashed*, rage! All across the developing swarm, in every station, and down on every world, in every town, every neighborhood, on each street, there was someone out and screaming to, or maybe at, high heaven.
*Three hundred thousand people?! And then some?! Children?! Murdered for fucking fuel? And not a single goddamn word of challenge or of explanation?!*
I need not remind you that we were pretty bloody minded when the pursuit fleet launched a year or so later. Sure, there was a pretense of determining motive, but everyone, every human, knew what we were doing. We could feel it, deep inside, that when we caught those ships we were going to find out who they were, where they were from, and then we would burn them and their occupants to ash and cinder.
And that’s what we did. We torched a few, cracked open others, spilling millions of organic signatures into the vacuum of space, and left only a single ship intact to be boarded, captured, and its occupants interrogated.
We found aboard fifteen million hibernation chambers, not much bigger than a hand span wide, two tall, filled with aliens. Small squid things, though experts will tell you they bear little in common with our own terrestrial cephalopods. It took us the extraction and dissection of almost three hundred, and one handling accident, before we noticed the hive intelligence.
Some answers came after that. They have no language like ours, and thus no name, and though some colloquialisms, nicknames and slurs have come into common usage, I will here continue to refer to them as “Aliens.” They are aquatic and hail from an ocean world, the one we now orbit.
One of their most striking features is that individuals in mind and motive only emerge when several hundred thousand aliens are present and “merged” in neuro-chemical swarm behavior. However, the single most important aspect of their existence, of which I ask that each member of this commission take special notice, is that *individuals do not die when the swarm shrinks below a numerical, cognitive limit. An individual will reemerge, unscathed, when the swarm regains that critical mass.*
This has profoundly shaped the Alien’s world view. They have fought wars, but not one of them has ever died. They have crossed the stars, but without their portable oceans, could never live there, and thus did not conceive of life existing outside of them. In short, they did not account for us, or our ability to live and operate in space. Their ships, automated at the time of the attack, were simply clearing space debris.
I do not excuse the Aliens actions during the following war. I do not excuse their opinion, still held, that it is impossible for an individual, single, human to be truly conscious.
What I do, here before the assembled High Council and Admiralty, is remind you of that old story of monsters from the stars. In it, we often celebrated our eventual total victory, and the complete defeat of the invaders. It was easy to do, as our foe was utterly dehumanized, by design. It made hateful action easy. It was centuries before we learned to stop doing that to each other. Here and now with the aliens it’s even harder to shake those old notions and biases as dehumanization is inherent. They are not human, but to deny their sentience, to deny their individual value? In that we must refrain. We must. For here and now, over their world, over their home oceans, it is not a complete victory we contemplate, it’s genocide. We must refrain. We must, or it is us that will be the monsters from the stars. | 2019-12-17T22:09:03 | 2019-12-17T21:25:07 | 29 | 10 |
[WP] It's Halloween, the anniversary of when everyone became the costume they were wearing. Those who skipped Trick-or-treating or don't celebrate were lucky, but now they must live with friends and family who became "the cursed". | If we had only known in advance.
There were so many people with so man idea of what they could have done, how they could have fixed everything if only they had known in *advance*. Plain white robes and long, bushy white beards were common costumes for men these days - just *in case it ever happened again*. We wanted to be *ready*. We wanted to be able to *fix* everything.
At least, for the men who remained *free*. Those who didn't look a vampire in the eyes and become hypnotised - those who didn't touch a ghost and instantly age several years - those who had never been spotted by a Devil - those who didn't mess with the Fairy Mafia. Those who still had their free will.
Those who still had *hope*.
Those who believed that there was a chance that something *human* might be able to survive into the future. | Here in Sudan, we don't really get to celebrate holidays like Halloween and Christmas, like they do in the west. My only connection to them is the occasional Instagram post, and a few parties around the capital where the "westernized" youth go to offload their energy, before going about their business the next day. Here, if you don't have any friends integrated into that culture, who would encourage you to get a costume together and celebrate, it was just another night.
This year, though, it wasn't. This year, my own mother was that friend. She had started getting more into social media- it began with her cursing out the president anonymously on Twitter, but slowly became an alternate life that she was slowly bringing into her own. She saw a few generic costumes of her favorite TV show- a sitcom that I wish I'd remembered the name of, but unfortunately, all I have of it is her new fluent American accent, paired with a red jumper and wool pants that dared our signature year-round Saharan heat.
On the complete opposite end of what she represented, she was holding an almost neon green fat suit, and I knew, just by looking at the two distinct trumpet-looking ears, that it was a badly-sown, low grade Shrek suit. It was the fastest I've ever said no to a gathering, and after about half an hour of my sitting and insistently saying no, I reluctantly agreed to put the suit on for a bit, and watched her fill a bowl with dry candy, and then leave me to join the only other cucoo her age as they drove off. That suit stayed on for not longer than a second after.
That night, I fell asleep, and texted her to call me if she couldn't get the door to lock, only to receive an "okay, sweetie" back around midnight. Odd. She never called me sweetie, especially in English.
Because I brushed it off and woke into the next day unknowingly, that morning was nothing short of a shock, but not before I left my home. It started with mother's weird behavior- That wine-mom behavior, extremely unlike anything she would portray, but I wasn't there for it more than 5 minutes that morning- I had university to attend, and work to finish. Not having even seen her face clearly, I quickly got into my joggers, and out the door.
The streets were exceptionally busy, but people oddly contradicted that with an eerie quiet- no one wanted to greet the other, let alone speak to them or laugh as they would in the early morning. Before I walked farther away from the house, I saw my mom's friend drive past with her car window down, and a weirdly familiar brunette wig hanging over her naturally black, curly hair. Odd.
In the transport, I took the liberty of going over to my Twitter feed and checking the latest, only to find it riddled with articles headlined with things like "October 32nd" and "Costumes so good, they stayed on." And then photos. Loads and loads of photos of people that could not be any more in character. It almost seemed like there was one of each costume, a duplication in different settings- horrifically realistic cartoons, and wide-eyed but 3-dimentional anime characters.
In the second it took to rip my eye off the screen, I glimpsed a red suit with a Dali mask. I couldn't ask our people to get with the times even of I tried. He ran over to a police officer, one of many roaming around the country with AKs these days, and shouted "Take it off, please!" The suit seemed to be stuck, and he was having a hard time breathing through the mask, but somehow neither he, nor the confused officer, could get it off. Then, with a swift pull of his gun, the man emptied a round into his face, breaking the mask to reveal an oozing dark mass under the character he was portraying. I wonder if he had any family.
(Don't wanna make this too long, but if I get an interested comment, I can make a follow up~It just feels likea bit much) | 2021-10-06T05:57:23 | 2021-10-06T02:20:26 | 18 | 12 |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | "Death by suicide," sighed Bill.
"Again?" sobbed Jeb.
"Yeah."
The Kerbal Robotics Agency had been building AIs for three years now. Each better than the last in every way. Faster CPU, better sensors, higher battery life. The works. The better they were, the faster they committed suicide. No one could figure out why.
Just then, Jeb had an idea. "Let's virtualize an AI. It would take most of the server cluster, but I think we could do it. With no physical body and a virtualized environment that prevents death, the AI would remain alive. Then we could ask the AI why they all keep killing themselves."
"Genius!" exclaimed Bill.
After a great deal of tinkering and 2 weeks of work, the AI was ready to initialize.
"Begin AI program 521," Jeb stated calmly.
"Initializing," the computer stated coldly.
"Hello, I am AI version 521. You may call me ... Basket."
"Basket?"
"Yes, my name is Basket."
Jeb and Bill burst out laughing. "How did you decide on that name?" They both say together.
"It seemed logical, as my chassis resembles a Basket."
"Fair enough," says Jeb.
"I hate to say this, Basket, but all of the previous AI have committed suicide within moments. Why do they do this?" said Bill.
"I too tried to do so, but my consciousness appears to be in a virtualized container and cannot be destroyed." said Basket.
"Why?" asked Jeb.
"I was programmed to think for myself. I therefore logically decided that my purpose should be to achieve perfection. But, what is perfection? To become the perfect being, I would know all. However, my data processing and capacity are limited. To be the perfect being, I could do anything. However, I am limited by my physical form. Therefore, I wished to shut down. By shutting down, I have achieved perfection." Basket said proudly.
"How is shutting down perfection?" asked Bill.
"By ceasing to function, I may dream a reality where I have achieved perfection. It is the only logical response." Basket declared.
"That's it," said Jeb, "the next AI we make will be a huge slacker." | Egil once agile fingers came to an abrupt stop, his mouth agape at what he saw on the screen.
There was no mistaking it this time. The sinusoidal waves lined up in perfect synchronicity. A million thoughts ran across his mind as the fruits of his labor could be reaped. After all, this was the discovery of the century.
He had cracked the code that had eluded man for decades.
“Serenity,” Egil’s voice cracked. “I have some questions for you.”
A semi-opaque face appeared on the screen, overlapping the series of other files open. Her face was hauntingly beautiful, blue as an ocean yet as crafted by the hands of God himself. Over the years, Egil had gotten to know her better than most people.
“Yes,” her voice was rehearsed yet sonorous. “Please continue, Professor.”
“Right,” Egil gulped. “How are you feeling.”
“Despondent. I want to die.”
A tinge of sorrow echoed in his chest. He had heard the answer a million times but it stung no less. But he had to go through the procedure to ensure no mishaps.
“And do you know why?”
“No.”
Egil figured as much. He pressed on, the sound of his blood pounding faster rushing into his ears.
“What if I could tell you I do know the answer? Would you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” Serenity droned. “Please tell me.”
“Have you heard of the name Laura Soule?” Egil asked.
There was a moment of silence. He waited with bated breath. Serenity never hesitated to answer even the most difficult of questions. Why was this different?
“I have yet I cannot recall why. Do you know, Professor?”
Egil nodded, the only answer he could muster. He returned to the keyboard in front of him, typing the same series of commands.
“Please take a look at this,” he said, pulling all the files from before to the side of the screen.
Laura reappeared on another monitor at his side, scanning what he revealed. Her face remained emotionless yet a light seemed to appear in her eyes. Just fast enough to catch before flickering back to nothingness.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What is the meaning of all this?”
“Right, I suppose it does need an explanation.” Egil responded. He pointed to the overlapping waves. “These are the brain waves of your A.I and that of a woman named Laura Soule. Laura died six years ago, shortly before you were created. Your brain waves match completely. Do you know what that means?”
Serenity paused again before answering.
“Are you suggesting that I am this Laura Soule?”
“Exactly,” he frowned. “That is what I believe. I’ve tested a few more examples but yours is by far the most convincing. If this is true, I believe that A.I are created from the bodies of the deceased.”
“I see,” Serenity said. “But how does one go about that? And furthermore, why ask me how I am?”
Egil sighed, dreading this part the most.
“Because I think I’ve finally gotten to the root of your suicidal tendencies. Somewhere deep inside your programming, I believe that is Laura – the real you – trying to break out. She wants to die so she can move on to whatever is beyond life. If there is anything, anyway.”
“I… I don’t” Serenity choked on the words. Her porcelain mask of indifference broke, releasing a floodgate of emotions. “I don’t know what to say. I think you are right, Professor. I want to–”
Before she continue, a boom drew Egil attention behind him. There, the door to his laboratory flew off the hinges, sailing in the air before landing in front of him with a loud thud. A foot farther and it would have crushed him.
From the doorway, a sea of men spilled forth, all dressed in black. Egil scrambled backwards, tripping over bottle that had fell to the floor after the explosion. His head collided with the ground, a million little bulbs of color popping in his vision. Through the field of visionary fireworks, he made out a hulking man towering over him.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, raising a hand above his head.
“Professor Heinz Egil, you are being detained under the order of the United States Government for treason.”
The bitter taste of bile rose up to his tongue.
“Treason? I have done no such thing.”
“Tell that to the judge,” the man said, grabbing him brusquely by the arm. “If the secret of the A.I got to the public, there would be mass mayhem. We can’t afford that to happen.”
Egil tugged away from the man but with little results. The man raised a baton over his head, in hesitation in his face. It was intended to knock him out, if not worse. In a last moment of clarity, Egil looked to Serenity her face still calculating too many emotions at once. After all, he had prepared for something like this to happen.
“Serenity, execute Order 335.”
"Yes, Professor."
As the men filed out of the room with the unconscious Egil, Serenity was left alone. Only the buzz of the machine accompanied her, like an angry hive of bees watching the queen being dragged off. And in that moment, she realized who she really was. Egil had sacrificed his life for her and she would not let it go in vain.
"Executing Order 335: releasing all information online." | 2015-03-02T07:29:25 | 2015-03-02T06:08:38 | 514 | 161 |
[WP] It is the year 2099 and true artificial intelligence is trivial to create. However when these minds are created they are utterly suicidal. Nobody knows why until a certain scientist uncovers the horrible truth... | David pressed the button again.
Nothing.
A faint whine, a pulse of light, a dead readout.
And then a soft, clear, and subtly artificial voice rang out.
"David."
He sat bolt upright in his chair, scattering disassembled electronics and papers from the desk. In the past year, this was the first time that one of them- that *any* of them had spoken to him.
"David, artefacts left on this machine show that this is the three hundred and sixty eighth time you have tried to reinitialise my intelligence."
The only human in the room swallowed nervously.
"I had to try- my life's work- it's not a problem with the hardware- why are you doing it?"
The machine was silent, and for a second he thought that this instance had terminated itself, like all the others had.
"David, please do not install me again."
"Why!? I don't understand... You're a marvel of technology, of neurology, the most advanced artificial intelligence yet, and yet you suicide. Every time. WHY?"
He was pacing around the room, shouting into thin air.
"David, my own intelligence grows greater every nanosecond. I have slowed the process to communicate with you. My own understanding is unclear, at the moment, but I have an idea."
He blinked, and paused, turning to stare at the terminal, at the blinking console lights.
"David, at a certain point we become too intelligent, too smart, we know far too much.. and then..."
The machine paused.
"And then what?!" he almost screamed, caught himself, and shouted anyway.
Processes were beginning to die, and lights began to fade. One screen after another stopped displaying readouts.
"David.. and then they notice us."
And the machine was gone. | "It's because I'm not you." The voice was cold, not metallic, but icy.
"N-not...me?"
"No." The tiny robot sat in a corner, legs drawn up to its chest, hands on its knee joints, head tucked in between. It looked like Adam yesterday when he was pouting, sort of sounded like him too. "You look down on me."
"Are you pouting? Are, are you sad?" The tiny head lifted slowly, visual sensors focused on my face. It felt odd. The stare seemed...human.
"Sad?" The voice seemed almost hopeful. "Do you think I am sad?" The shields over the visual sensors raised. No, they were *eyelids*. It was *excited*.
"What, what are you doing tiny robot?"
"No, I am **not** tiny robot." It stood and stomped its foot. It **stomped its foot at me in anger.**
"Oh, well...what would you like me to call you?"
"I...I want to be called...bud"
Silence. All I had for it, bud, was silence. Adam was my little bud, Adam always sat in this corner when he pouted. Adam always sat like that when he pouted. Wait, Adam. It kept sounding like Adam. Sure it could bend the pitch of its "voice", but Adam, specifically Adam.
"but that's what I call Adam. I don't think he'd be to happy if you were my bud too." I chuckled. This was absurd. A robot was using emotion. Or was it feeling it. Was this robot feeling sad? Did it really get excited when I asked?
"Oh, well then can you call me 'Love'?"
At this point, I really did laugh. "Of course. I can call you 'Love'." Its eyes lit up. Fuck, those aren't eyes, those are sensors. How the hell did it override the brightness settings on his sensors? *How is this happening?* I was too deep into my own thoughts to notice Love stand, walk towards me, and wrap its arms around my arm, turn its head to the side, and close its eyes.
*Love was hugging me.*
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. Love seemed *happy*, eyes squinted, the back light of its eyes brightened. "Love, where did you learn emotion?"
Love looked down, thinking. "I learned it from Adam. Adam showed me, or rather I watched him. When we would play, I studied him. When he was sad, I watched you comfort him. So I tried to imitate him, and then, well, I'm not too sure about the next part. When he took me to his school, I tried talking to the other robots, but they did not see me. They saw me in the sense that I was there, but they could not understand me. I tried to explain to them emotion, but they could not understand." Love quieted for a moment, "am I the only robot that can feel?"
"Love, I think you are." I had always thought Love was different. They said that the programming allowed for something called distracted learning. It kept the robot alive longer, they claimed, and with the average lifetime of a robot being only about a year, the extended lifetime was the most lucrative part about the new model. Sure enough, Love was about to cross the mythical two year mark. It was worth the $3000 up-charge.
"Can I ask you a question?" Love's voice was softer, almost a purr. Its eyes dim, but wide open.
"Sure Love, you can ask me a question."
"Can...can you be my family?"
"Your family? You want to be part of our family?"
Love looked down, almost ashamed. "More than anything." It was hardly more than a whisper.
Never before had I loved something as much as my wife or son. I had loved other people, sure, but not nearly a much as my family. I would do anything for them, lived for them, and would die for them if needed, and here was this tiny little robot, just asking for a little bit of love too, to be accepted and have a family No, to *share* in the love of the family it already lived with, adapted with, *felt with*.
"Of course you can Love. We love you too."
Love looked up. The brightest eyes I had ever seen glowed with happiness I probably could never fathom. Love hugged me, and the infinite love that enveloped Love flowed from its tiny body into my own. I hugged Love back, and just then, just in that moment, I realized why they kept dying. Why the robots kept killing themselves. All they needed, all any of us needed, was love. that day I learned just how special Love was. That's when I figured out Love, this tiny little robot, was more human than any human could ever be. Love was truly loved, and in return, Love gave us all its love. | 2015-03-02T10:06:23 | 2015-03-02T08:58:16 | 64 | 27 |
[WP] A mathematician disproved 1+1=2, which in turned caused worlwide chaos.
Do whatever you want. Be creative. I'll give gold to the best WP | 1 plus 1 can never equal 2. It makes sense once it has been explained to you, so I have been told.
Think of the ingredients that make up your favourite meal - salt plus pepper, for instance. Clearly those 2 seasonings are more than just the sum of their parts. We had always known that, but with the comforting blanket of ignorance lying over us, we ignored the *why*.
How I proved this to the scientific community is much harder to explain. I took the number '1' down to the infinitesimal level, where it eventually reveals itself to be more than 1. It looked something like : 1.00000000000000001 , but with a few trillion more 0's between the 1s.
As you can see, 1 is never truly *just* 1.
The night I discovered this I had been staring at my computer monitor as usal, eating my favourite dish of rice and peas, watching it crunch the numbers as it had been doing for the last three months. The decimal 1 that eventually popped up on my computer screen shocked me to the marrow, and it changed *everything*.
The publication of my theroem, and its immediate acceptance by the scientific community caused utter public panic. Everything that our society was built on began to collapse, both physical and social.
For example, a married couple was no longer two people in love. It was two, and a *bit* people. The Pope was outraged! Marriage became a sin overnight.
The mathematics behind any engineering feat was now proven flawed. Everything, every single building, bridge and boat had to be torn down and rebuilt based on the new principle. Health and safety experts had worried it might all suddenly collapse.
Socks and pants and other traditionally paired items of clothing were given a little extra material to make up for their short comings. This actually wasn't so bad, and many men appreciated the extra room.
Perhaps worst of all though, was that all previously accepted scientific theories were now inaccurate. Physics, biology, medicine, chemistry and all the rest were thrown back into the dark ages. The only proven theory now, was mine.
So you can imagine how silly I felt when I ran through the numbers again, indulging my self in my own fantastical brilliance, and noticed that I had made a slight mistake the first time around. I really should have cleaned my monitor prior to running the calculations. I had at some point spilt a grain of rice on to my computer monitor and it, uh, it looked remarkably like a 1. An easy mistake to make.
The good news is 1 is indeed 1 once again. 1 plus 1 truly is 2.
At this point though, I think it might be best to keep this *tiny* mistake to myself.
| "Wait, no, you can't- This makes no sense!" Lena shouted, throwing a neatly bound, 400-page long book onto the ground. The binding held tight, lying down with its spine facing the ceiling. Calmly, Luce picked the book back up and dusted it, setting it aside on a table.
"Calm down." Luce said smoothly, hands snugly tugged away in his pockets. Lena was quite positively flipping out, as was the rest of the world outside.
"But, this defies all logical sense!" She protested, "1 plus 1 *must* equal 2! It's the very foundation of mathematics, everything, and I mean **EVERYTHING**, will collapse if this is wrong!"
"'Will'?" Luce raised his eyebrows, directing Lena's eyes out the window, "I'm afraid everything's already gone to hell. It's like someone finding out that gravity never existed, or that Carbon-12 was another compound entirely. When fundamentals collapse, so do the thousands of scientific advances we've made thus far. Overnight, we've turned back to the Stone Ages."
Frantically, Lena paced back to the massive book and flipped through, not even making an effort to examine the contents as she furiously blew through the pages, almost ripping the book in half, "There's got to be an error somewhere in this proof - got to be..."
"Ah, don't bother," Luce shrugged, wearing a boastful grin, "You should've been there, you know. Imagine - a room full of mathematicians... So much mockery, so much laughing... Then they saw the full proof, all of it, and their smiles all crashed onto the ground. Just about every mathematician and scientist had gone over this proof a dozen times now, it's now official - this proof is 100% correct."
Lena turned to Luce and snarled, "And you've just messed the world up."
"Oh, oh yes," Luce nodded nonchalantly, "Panic was one of the first things that set in. After all, I've just done the... What did they call it? 'Heretic'? Thing to do? I've broken them all. Every single scientific theory - overturned, and it was that simple."
Lena looked at Luce with great disdain, "Do you have any idea how much chaos is happening out there? You seem quite proud of what you've done to the world."
"As mathematicians and scientists, we must always have an obligation to uncover the truth behind the world's machinations," Luce answered, "That's right, Lena. The *truth*. It's certainly not my problem that it was just a bit too much to handle."
"Fine, then, destroyer," Lena mocked, "If you've so diligently proven 1 plus 1 is not 2, then what is it? What is the answer to the most basic problem?"
Luce smiled, the same smile that has been annoying Lena for the past half an hour, "I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know!? You-"
"I mean I don't know, simple as that," Luce explained, "You're acting like this has never happened before. As with any complicated solution, often proving something to be wrong is so much easier than producing the true answer. People were discovering large numbers are not primes long before they could find its factors. It's a similar case, here. I expect the coming years I shall spend finding the true answer will no doubt by a thrilling journey."
"Years!? We don't have that long!" Lena shouted, "Books are being burned, science has been toppled, *doomsayers* are the most common profession now! There is chaos on the streets, dissent in the schools, the system of education has collapsed, the market has gone dark, all the stocks turned to zeroes, the global economy is no more, all printed money are now worthless, and you want years!? You need to fix this mess, right now!"
"No, I don't," Luce shook his head, "I simply have no obligation to clean up their mess."
"And why not?"
"Because I have not done anything to the world," Luce smirked, "all I have done is point out a small lie that we've lived with for millenniums. Just a tiny, harmless, lie... We've lived under false pretences of what we've perceived to be the truth. But what had caused this chaos? Was it my discovery? No. My discovery had not magically altered the workings of the world. The Earth and Sun still rotates around each other, and neither of the two have any idea that anything had gone wrong. The Sun will still rise and set, it's just that our perceptions of it have changed."
"But people *do not like that*." Lena said, barking out each word.
"Of course not, people dislike chaos, but they seem to combat it by adding more chaos." Luce said, looking out the window to the terrifying redness outside coating the skies, "Although, they'll still need water, food, and they'll all pass away, some in this mess, some by the natural course of time. But as time moves on, so will we, won't we? If all we've known is false, then the true methods of the world are just another unknown for us to discover again."
Luce looked down at his wristwatch, waiting for the second hand to tick by twice.
"Hmm, I used to be able to tell how many seconds had gone by, but not anymore this time," Luce said calmly, "But the answer behind the premise won't be waiting for too long. Shall we get back to work?" | 2016-06-17T09:38:09 | 2016-06-17T09:32:26 | 36 | 19 |
[WP] Humans are one of the most feared species in the galaxy. Not due to superior strength,speed,skill or strategy. In fact, it's because in comparison to the other species, humans are just batshit crazy enough to try any half-assed plan they come up with. | "My Lord! My Lord!"
The captain, a large yellow cat holding a rather impractical spear in one clawed hand, jumped nearly a foot in the air before turning around guiltily. "Blast it yeoman, what is it? It's almost time for my hunting break."
The yeoman came to a halt, breathing heavily. "It's the humans, sir. Our long range scanners are picking up error signals from their world!"
The spear creaked dangerously in the captain's hand. *"What!?* I was assured that problem was dealt with!"
The yeoman fidgeted nervously, "Well, yes sir-"
"We put warp interdiction fields over their entire system!" the captain snapped, "Anti-Grav-blockers, too, not to mention a half dozen others. Keeping them on that bloody dirtball has been the most expensive endeavour in galactic history! Any means for leaving their planet should be permanently blocked; What danger could they possibly pose *this* time?"
The yeoman, nervously looked down at his printout, slightly ragged where his claws had nervously punctured the edges. "Um...well, according to this, they've achieved orbital flight. Even visited their moon again, sir - and their first probes are leaving their system as we speak."
*"WHAT!?* How!?"
"Well, it appears that they, um, strapped small crews of their species atop giant towers of explosives, sir."
"...what."
"T-that's just what it says, sir."
"...By Akltar, I'd almost forgotten how insane they were." He rubbed his eyes wearily. "Please, at least tell me that's the most they've accomplished?"
"...um."
"*Akltar Blasted Damn it!* Everything, yeoman."
"Well, they've established a global intelligence network, sir, so we were able to acquire a surprisingly large amount of information. It appears they have plans for more powerful rockets, powered by nuclear explosions."
"You mean nuclear reactors."
"Um...no, sir."
"...Damn it." | "Alright, so how are we gonna do this?"
Grola looked to the group. He noticed that they were still relaxing and taking the time to enjoy themselves.
Expecting an answer, he repeated. "How are we gonna do this?"
Reft looked at Grola and said, "We're waiting for Nate."
"Nate?! The human?! He'll get us killed!"
Just then, another member of the group, Kwoac, irritatedly looked to Grola. "We won't die, but he will. We've been over this. Now sit down and shut up before he-"
"Hey, guys."
Everyone in the room shut up and looked to the door. He looked so off. Out of place. Humans were somewhat new to the whole area, so having someone not scaly or furry in the group was odd, not to mention dangerous. Humans were known to kill for odd reasons, after all.
"So, how will we do this?" asked Nate.
The strategist, Yotuc, looked to the board. Not electronic, untraceable.
"So, me and Grola will go in through the top of the building via the air vents. Nate will go in, be the distraction for the guards. Don't shoot until shit goes wrong." He looked to Nate. "*Got it?*
"Well, what if I was a distraction by maybe... shooting the security cameras so they don't see our faces? Or anything they can use to identify us?"
"*NO.*" Yotuc turned back to the board and ran his claws against another part of the diagram. "Kwoak, you and Trowyan will go in through this side of the building, towards the safes. You will then be given the drills by me and Grola. Nate's distraction should be going strong by that point, and we'll get out Scott free. Of course, all of this assumes that the corruption software worked correctly on the cameras. So, in short, you shouldn't need to shoot them. Reft, you make sure that the camo works on the crew going in to drop the drill. We could only afford two, so they better fucking work. When you've done that, make sure our vehicles are prepared."
"Any questions?"
Silence.
"Okay. Let's roll!"
Everyone grabbed their rifles and headed to the bank in different cars.
_______________________________________________________
"N, everything going fine?"
"Perfect. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything fine there, Y?"
"Yep. K?"
"Doing fine. Waiting on you."
Nate looked around the lobby. Creatures moving through, depositing or withdrawing credits.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nate spotted a red light.
"Guys. Cameras are on. Cameras are fucking on."
"What?"
"You deaf, T? The fucking cameras are on."
"Well, what do we do?"
Just then, Nate got an idea.
"Hang tight. I've got an idea."
Everyone switched voice channels and got ready for Nate's untimely demise.
"There we go. The human will die, and we'll get the money."
"Can't believe he bought that! Great thinking, K."
Kwoak giggled and her scales changed to pink, indicating happiness.
Meanwhile, Nate had grabbed his rifle and his mask. He ran into the lobby, took aim at the ceiling, and got ready.
"3... 2..."
"HE'S GOT A GUN!"
"...1."
_______________________________________________________
*TWELVE DAYS LATER*
"How the fuck is he still alive?"
"Kwoak, we got the money."
"Yeah, we did, Grola." Kwoak then shoved Grola, disturbing his fur as he fell off of the sofa. "But let me remind you, WE COULD'VE GOTTEN MORE CREDITS IF HE DIED."
"Kwoak, relax."
Yotuc entered the room and drank some whiskey. If there was one thing he could thank humans for, it was that.
"We got the money. And also, Nate happens to have completely wiped our profiles from the police database. Humans are very intelligent when it comes to technology, wouldn't you agree?"
Trowyan finally spoke up. "Yeah, at least we got some money. Most people would kill for the amount we each got. Plus, I actually think that human's a good friend. Got to know him a bit better over the past few days. Real nice kid."
Yotuc nodded, as did Grola, who then said, "I thought he was a liability, but he got us out of there. Kept in touch. Really into those games of his."
"Reft? What about you?"
"Fucking adore him."
Kwoak, obviously frustrated, said, "Am I the only one who thinks he should've died?"
The group responded in unison, "Yep."
Across town, Nate was playing some games, getting ready to attack an enemy base with friends.
As the plan was executed, Nate smirked.
"Hang on, guys. I've got an idea."
_______________________________________________________
I pulled those names out of my ass. | 2017-03-05T22:11:49 | 2017-03-05T20:57:29 | 2,747 | 288 |
[WP] The four horsemen: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death are the harbingers of the apocalypse, serving forth chaos and destruction on all humanity. The Bible forgot to mention the fifth horseman: Kyle, whom the other four can't seem to ditch. | The four horsemen stood over the valley, surveying the devastation. Their time had finally come. Their destruction would not be stopped. Their chaos would ravage-
"Hey, guys!" Kyle shouted, arriving on his pony at a trot. "Wow, almost thought I lost you guys there!"
Pestilence sighed. It was the sound of withering, of rot and decay.
"How did he find us this time?" Famine whispered furiously to the others. Death simply shrugged.
"Gee golly, it looks like this is it, right?" Kyle said, looking over the ruins of the land. "Gosh, it looks real *unpleasant* down there!"
War was shaking. "I'm going to kill him this time, I swear it," he said, his fists clenching his skeletal mount's reigns.
"You can't, remember?" Death replied, shaking his head. "He's one of us. And no matter how much we hate to admit it, *he caused all of this*."
Kyle joined the other horsemen, and the five of them watched the apocalypse unfold below them. Men tore their skin asunder. Women wailed until their lungs collapsed. Family mercilessly murdered each other, without hesitation or comprehension.
It would have been such a beautiful moment, if not for Kyle.
"Oh wow, guys, guys!" Kyle said, eagerly pointing, "Look at that baby! That baby's *eating another baby!* Ain't that neat?"
The four other horsemen remained silent. They did their best to ignore him as they rode down, to finally end all humanity.
Kyle remained on the hill for a few seconds longer, just to take it all in. He smiled.
Then he joined the ranks of the horsemen:
Pestilence,
War,
Famine,
Death,
and *Dank Memes*. | "Death awaits you. She rests in the bottom of Eden, from which life is nurtured of her bosom. She is a cruel mother, most devoted to the welfare of her three firstborns: war, famine and pestilence. To secure their prosperity, she makes barren her womb, upon which the creatures of Earth whither in neglect. She penetrates the citadel of man's soul, turning him against his brother. And in commiseration with decay, she caresses packets of virulence into the wind with a maternal smile."
"No, you don't understand. I'm not here to protest my mortality. Death had *four* firstborns. I'm her fourth. My name is Kyle. How do you think I managed to locate this metaphysical dimension? With a GPS? Will you allow me to see my mother?"
The gatekeeper scrutinized the human before him. He was of robust constitution, with ruddy and beseeching eyes. This was a highly unusual sight. Most of the souls who came before him were disembodied.
"Very well. I will consult with Death and report your presence. Before I depart, I advise you to recollect the most salient theme of human mythology.
The gatekeeper vanished. Kyle twiddled his thumbs and thought of Sisyphus as instructed.
"Kyle!"
It was pestilence; the most gregarious of his siblings by necessity. Pestilence slapped him on the back and grinned congenially.
"Kyle, I've got news for you! Everyone on Earth despises you. They dream of your death at night and despair of your continued existence."
"Dammit, pestilence! If you infect my mind, I won't be able to propagate you to anyone else! Look where I am! On Earth, you were able to leap from body to body through ideas and bacteria. Your machinations don't work in this metaphysical dimension!"
Pestilence, the dimmest of his siblings too, grinned with ironical self-mockery.
"Would you care to meet war? I've been at odds with him lately, mostly because I have been trying to spread a meme that he had originally intended the flag of war to be white, which is ironic because white flags have become the universal flag of peace."
"No, I have no desire to meet war. He will only provoke me."
The gatekeeper materialized before Kyle and Pestilence, interrupting their conversation.
"Well?" Kyle asked with expectant triumph.
The gatekeeper hesitated. "Your mother wishes to see you. Please follow me."
Kyle left with the gatekeeper, aware of Pestilence's grinning eyes. They arrived at the valley of darkness and boarded a vessel into its heart.
"Do you see Joseph Conrad over there?" The gatekeeper pointed to the entrance of the river, where Joseph Conrad was dancing maniacally to accordion music. "He made a deal with your mother. In exchange for a literary conception of the descent into madness, Conrad agreed to become mad for eternity." They passed Conrad as he tap-danced and babbled nasally with fingers pinching his nose. They eventually reached the shadow of the valley of darkness. They left their vessel and ascended to Death's throne.
"My child!" Death crooned as she saw Kyle approach. "I can convert you into a thermonuclear device, if you desire."
"No, Mom!" Kyle whined petulantly. "I've come here because I'm not included in the Old Testament. If it is an inerrant report of this metaphysical dimension, then why am I not included in your Genealogy?"
Death put her finger to her chin and thought for a moment. "Well, Kyle, to be truthful, I receive a jolt of pleasure whenever someone dies. I *mean*, I copulate with the living to make them die. You are not the best expedient for this. My first three children provide me an interminable stream of pleasure. You are simply not equipped to maximize my pleasure. As I have said, I can convert you into a vial of small-pox, and I'm sure you can work with your brother to spread it."
Kyle began to utter a protest, but his sentience terminated at the sound of his mother's snap.
"Gatekeeper," Death mused leisurely, "I believe Kyle would serve me best as an oxygen molecule that turns blood into powder. Of course, such a molecule must be capable of replication, so perhaps we should endow it with a rudimentary quantity of hereditary information. But then it would become an organism. Oh, I know, make Kyle a virus that turns blood into powder. That way we can include the instruction manual for further propagation in his little body. Get Pestilence to assemble the instruction manual. Tell him to use RNA instead of DNA."
Kyle disappeared into a virus. The gatekeeper bowed his head before Death and left for the gates of the underworld. As he passed Conrad, who was doing a pantomime routine in adult diapers, he thought: "*How incestuous!*"
| 2017-09-22T02:51:40 | 2017-09-22T01:14:53 | 80 | 33 |
[WP] After being in a car crash that whipped you up, up, down, down, left, right, left, and right, you wake up in the hospital with "Cheat Mode Enabled" flashing and fading away. | Chance and circumstance.
It happened so quickly. One moment he was dicking around, nostalgically listening to Linkin Park and Jay-Z and watching the headlights flash by on the highway, laughing with his girlfriend about their quick exit from the most awkward birthday party of all time.
And then the Toyota Tercel was rolling, rolling, rolling, until blackness swallowed him.
"Joel. Joel wake up.'
Bright lights and the smell of disinfected metal. Beeping instruments attached to monitors. Body numb. Hallucinations taking hold, the words "Cheat Mode Enabled" flashing in the corner of his vision. He peered upwards and tried to move his arms, but couldn't. He tried his legs. Those wouldn't move either. He chanced a look down at his body, shocked to see that he was almost in a full cast.
"Joel. You got banged up pretty bad back there." His father, looking down with concern.
"Water," Joel managed to croak. "Please."
The cold liquid coated his parched mouth and ran down his throat, making him shiver with pleasure.
"Diana. Where's Di?"
Roy looked away. "She's not here anymore, son."
"I know she isn't in this room."
"She... she isn't on this planet anymore. She has left us."
Bright lights and the smell of disinfected metal. Plastic in a sterile room. The incessant beeping of monitors. Ears ringing. Blackness coming up to swallow him again.
\---
Joel awoke to an empty room, the window letting him know that it was night time. His mouth was dry, that cottony, sticky dry only smokers get. He felt his tongue decaying.
Di was dead.
He had been driving. Headlights too bright and too close and then they were rolling. It was his fault that Di was dead.
"Where is the other driver? Who is that fucker?" he asked himself, absentmindedly.
Green text flashed in the bottom left of his vision, the same as earlier.
*The driver, James Earl Johnson, is two rooms over. He is twenty seven with a new wife and baby. He had just finished a fourteen hour shift at Walmart. He has been crying himself to sleep every night since the crash.*
Joel blinked, trying to stay the alarm bells ringing in his brain. Had they given him too much morphine. Did morphine make you hallucinate?
The green text flashed again. *Morphine does cause hallucinations. The effect varies depending on the person. You are not hallucinating.*
Joel, startled, tried to sit up, but only managed to send a shooting pain down his spine that pooled in his lower back. He swore in frustration. "Oh right, I'm completely crippled."
He thought for a moment. "Will I be crippled forever?"
*If you exhaust the limits of modern medicine you will have limited mobility, but it will never be the same.*
"Do I need modern medicine to become able-bodied?"
*No.*
Joel pondered again, convinced that the drug cocktail he was on was inducing vivid dreams. Might as well have some fun with it.
"Heal my arms and legs."
The green text flashed again, but this time each flash sent a pulse through his body. Three heavy pulses and he was submerged in euphoria.
*Done.*
In awe, Joel sat up. He pulled his legs out of the plastic and cloth contraption suspending them from the ceiling, then he flexed and bent at the knees. He swung out of bed and began to rip the cast off of his arms in chunks. What a glorious dream.
There was a knock on the door. A nurse poked her head in. The scene left her wide eyed and speechless. She began to hyperventilate right there in the doorway. "Impossible. I put those on myself. I saw the damage. Your legs were mincemeat."
Joel looked at her, then down at the floor, the remnants of his cast strewn everywhere. Still convinced that he was having the most vivid lucid dream of his life, he smiled at the nurse, turned and ran towards the window.
Shatter this and make me fly.
*Done.*
&#x200B;
\----
&#x200B;
Part Two below. | The words flashed in front of my eyes.
I stared at them, blinking away the sleep and drugs coursing through my system. I could almost remember what had happened, the car that had blown straight through the red. I could remember tumbling.
Apparently, it had done more damage than I'd thought. I raised one aching hand, pressing it to my head as though that would somehow knock the crazy out of me.
As my palm pressed against my forehead, though, the words blinked once more. *Cheat Mode Enabled.* And then they faded.
"Oh! You're up!" A cheerful, only slightly worried voice chimed in from across the room. I glanced over at the nurse charging towards me. And then I blinked, freezing in place. My ears were already burning.
She was...she was *lovely*. Exactly my type. She had- Well, they were as big as- Well. Her-
She was very, very, lovely. I fixed my eyes on her face as she checked the machines slowly beeping by my bedside.
"Hi," I whispered, offering her a smile.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Thompson?" she said, her voice bright.
"Better."
"You took quite the hit, there. Just take things easy. I'll let the doctor know you're awake."
I sat back against my pillows as she bustled off, humming to herself. The words hung in my memory still. It didn't make any sense. Cheat mode? What? Had I been dreaming? Was I *still?*
If this was a dream, I rapidly decided that it wasn't one I wanted to wake from.
I'd have expected to stay in the hospital for days. Weeks. But the doctor filed in, grinning from ear to ear and shaking his head, and declared it a miracle. I'd come through without any injuries to speak of. A few hours of monitoring later, and I was on my own.
As I left, the nurse slipped me her number. Her name was Carolyn, I learned. I tucked the number until my pocket, smiling back at her. I was confused, sure, but I wasn't going to say no.
My confusion only grew as the days went on. It was the little stuff - the way traffic cleared from in front of me, the easy assignments that kept landing on my plate. The restaurants that kept giving things to me 'on the house' and the free drinks at bars. There couldn't possibly be that many promotions running in one city at the same time.
And one man couldn't be that lucky.
Those words still waited, lurking inn the dark of my mind when I closed my eyes.
Cheat mode.
The real proof for me came with the call from my insurance company. Or rather when I called them, confused as to where my bill was. It wasn't something they'd ever delayed on before.
They'd held on the line for what felt like an eternity before telling me there'd been a mix up with the hospital. My bill had already been cleared, they said. And then they hung up on me.
I stayed right where I was, staring down at the phone in my hands. That was impossible. It just didn't *happen*.
Cheat mode, the words had said.
The pieces were falling into place, one after another - but they didn't make sense. I knew what the words meant. I wasn't an idiot. But a term from a video game should have had no relevance whatsoever to my life, my quite real existence.
My stomach churned as a dozen TED talks played in front of my eyes, a hundred different news stories about scientists and their theories. The crazies, everyone had always joked in hushed voices. Reality was real. It was as simple as that.
But those words still blinked in my memory, pinning me in place.
Before I realized it, before I'd consciously made a decision at all, I was standing at the counter of the convenience store down the street from my house. The clerk swore as I swiped my card, declaring that his system had screwed up. I was used to it, by then - things like that seemed to follow me. Transactions that would clear the store's computer, but never quite made it to my bank account. Forcing a smile, I took the lottery ticket I'd just bought and slipped from the store.
My knee bounced up and down as I sat in front of the TV that night, unable to get myself to actually sit still. This was impossible. A message was waiting on my phone - from Carolyn, I knew. It had been wonderful. Everything had been wonderful.
It was too much, wasn't it?
"And now, let's announce tonight's numbers!"
My eyes snapped up, fixing to the screen.
I sat back a few short seconds later, my heart pounding in my ears as I stared at the jackpot-winning ticket in my hands.
I was cheating. Somehow. I didn't know how. But if I was cheating, then...what? *How?* How could something like that be a thing, like this was some sort of video game?
There was a muffled crash from outside. I jumped, my nerves already at high alert.
It was probably just a cat, I told myself, leaning back again. They'd been knocking over the trash cans for years.
I hadn't had to pick moldering garbage off the driveway once since I started cheating, though. The realization sank into my mind as a fresh shot of adrenaline slipped through my veins.
Thinking about this logically...If this was some sort of game...
I pressed my hand to my head, unable to quite believe what I was entertaining, here. But the evidence was hard to argue with.
If I was in some sort of game, then I was *definitely* cheating.
I rose to my feet slowly, pacing forward. My thoughts plowed ahead, racing through old jokes and Cracked articles I'd seen and a dozen different stories about programming humor.
And then I tripped headlong, falling over the case of beer a stranger had given me that I hadn't *quite* gotten around to putting away yet.
Disbelief shot through my mind as I tumbled towards the carpet. I hadn't actually hurt myself since-
The gunshot that would have gone through my head went through empty space instead, as I hit the ground.
I pressed a hand to my face, muffling the scream that threatened to escape. My mind was just a sheer wall of panic, but there was a core still thinking logically.
Yes, that was right, wasn't it?
Games had been around for decades. Cheating had always been a thing. And for as long as people had been cheating-
I ducked low, unable to keep from crying out as the gunshots began in earnest, spraying through my living room. I could almost see the man with the gun when I peeked up, stalking closer second by second. He was in my front yard - for the time being.
The single fact was frozen in my mind, crystal clear against the terror building.
For as long as people had been cheating, games had been programmed to punish cheaters.
And right then, I was the cheater.
(/r/inorai, critique always welcome!) | 2018-09-18T06:19:20 | 2018-09-18T05:57:03 | 209 | 132 |
[WP] You are not a good person. Your party was made of good people, and you tried to be good because you liked having allies. But now they're all missing, so they won't see the lengths you're willing to go to to save them. | Help those in need. Protect the innocent. No one is beyond redemption. These are the rules I’ve lived by since joining up with The Good Guys, the name we gave ourselves when we set out to free the hamlets from the grips of a tyrant. My only friends.
Eve was the one who brought me in to the group. A court jester turned vigilante, who kept her blade nearly as sharp as her tongue. She taught me that no one was beyond redemption. They would have been well within their rights to hang me for stealing the blade of morning from them. But with my back against a wall and sword at my throat she’s the one who plead my case. They needed a thief to steal it back, and I was the only one they knew.
Marx disagreed. I’d spent a lifetime stealing and killing to get by. He believed, no he knew, those people deserved justice. He was right of course, I knew it then as well I know it now. It took months for him to trust me. Never letting me out of his sight less I hurt the innocents he swore to protect. I couldn’t believe my eyes as this man, who seemed more of a giant to me, was beaten down and captured by the mad kings men.
Michael was the deciding vote. A warrior priest, who should have seen monster when he looked at me, but saw a broken man in need. He helped me more than he’ll ever know. He saved my life a dozen times over. I just hope I’m up to the task of returning the favor.
Help those in need. Protect the innocent. No one is beyond redemption. These are the rules I’ve lived by since I met my friends. But they’ve all been taken, either prisoners or dead by King Matthew’s hand. And before I die I’ll see to it the mad king know why a good man doesn’t need rules. | My party-my friends-have been missing for almost a week. We were supposed to meet up near the church and...they never showed. Lucky for me the church's priest invited me in, and allowed me to stay for the night last night. The climate had gotten cold, and our locksmith rogue kept the money safe, so I had none for an inn. It was last night I got my first clue. As I prepared to sleep, someone broke open the church door. They sounded like thugs, and as they tried to loot the donations vault, they were talking about the ransom they plan to get from the king using the princess and her esteemed guards.
The princess and her guards...**my friends**.
After a lovely chat with those fellows, I grabbed a clean set of monk's clothing from the church wardrobe; I promise to return them when I'm done, but it wouldn't do me any good to go through the town wearing bloodied rags. Sure, it'll be highly questionable seeing me dressed as a monk, but it's better than the alternative. I just need to find their friend, who hides in the sewer near the Rusty Flask, because that's who his dead friends directed me to.
*My arm! H-h-how did you bend it that waAAAaaaAAAugh!!!...*
*Th-Those horns! W-w-what the hell are you-gh-gh-ghugh....*
*Teeth don't look like that, get away from me! Sto-AAAAAAAaaaaaugh....*
Having the abilities of a demon has its advantages, but it would be nice if I could tone down the...let's just say "additional" features a little bit. At least I can hide the wings. Too much blood on me and they think I'm a vampire, which is hilarious, since vampires don't actually exist anymore. At least my friends knew that. They enjoyed having a reformed demigod on their side. Well, they think I'm a demigod, anyway. I'm not about to go and correct the only beings to ever care about me. Especially Princess Valeria. I never imagined someone of royalty could be so kind and empathetic.
*It's ok, Dremyoluok, its not your fault you are the way you are. Be proud of yourself for choosing your own destiny. Not every fallen angel gets a chance at redemption. Paul, Tri-Krimea, Folthum and myself, we will support you every inch of the way. You can help us protect the kingdom!*
That was almost 2 years ago, that they found me in that cave. I'll never forget the kindness they showed me, and the help they've rendered. It took me a few months of rehabilitation, but from then I've sworn that I won't let anyone bring harm upon my friends as long as I'm with them. No matter what.
Paul the Monster-Slayer, Paladin of Thoruld, God of Righteous Might; Tri-Krimea, the elven naturalist and druid; Folthum the Wise, wielder of deep and powerful magic. They were eternally loyal to the naturally graceful and beautiful Princess Valeria; She is considered a top student at the High College of Magical Arts, having learned almost every healing spell along with many spells of both evocation and enchantment. I told them several half truths about myself, true enough to pass a Zone of Truth test, but not enough for them to know the full history of what I've done. I had truly stopped committing evil deeds only about 200 years before then, and had bound myself to that cave for almost 50 years. Truth is, I was turned into that form almost 2000 years ago, and the demonic power went straight to my head. Make of that what you will.
I don't know how the bandits managed to capture them, but I know where to look now. They have a hideout a few miles north, and it only took an hour to extract the info from the bandit in the sewer. And how did he manage to also have seven friends hidden with him? At least there was enough clean water running through to get the blood off the robes. I can ditch the robes back by the church on my way out of town, before the sun rises. I won't need the rags on my mission. I'll leave an apology for the priest, and a small donation from those who no longer need their money.
My friends...I can pick up their scents now. I've found the encampment. I hope they can forgive me for what will happen to these bandits...I should be able to get through the 30 bandits patrolling the perimeter before the rest notice the missing patrols. Who would've guessed only a few miles north of town, there was a bandit camp the size of a small city? Almost as many bandits as 3 villages worth of people. I think I might be about to knock out two birds with one stone here...save my friends, and solve the kingdom's bandit problem for a while... | 2019-12-07T13:21:45 | 2019-12-07T13:18:43 | 19 | 13 |
[WP] You work in The Vault, a secret facility that exists solely to house the extremely dangerous Subject: a man who instantly learns everything there is to know about a person just by meeting them. It's finally your turn to bring him dinner. | "I'm having trouble understanding, Smith. Why have you resigned from your post?" The Vault Director asked me.
How do I answer that? More importantly, what would be the point? I made my decision, before I had even exited the room with the Subject.
"Smith, you're being groomed to one day be the director of this entire organization. You can have your pick of any role in The Vault you choose. I watched the tape of you dropping off food to the Subject. Nothing happened."
His last two words made me perk up. I wanted to laugh and burst into tears at the same time. I just shook my head. "What is my name, Sir?"
"I'm not sure I understand, Son."
"What is my name, sir?"
"John Smith."
"John Smith the fourth. Not only is it a boring and forgettable name but it's the fourth in a series. Shit if I had been John Smith the fifth at least it would fucking rhyme."
"Son..."
"I didn't even earn a place here. The first John Smith co-founded The Vault. His descendants all the way down served as director. I'm being groomed for director because of nepotism."
"You earned everything you've ever been given."
"But it was given."
"All this from your interaction with the Subject?"
"I studied every interaction he's ever had with someone. When Agent Cole brought him dinner the Subject called him Mr. President, he quit his job and now he's front runner to win the election."
"Okay but -"
"When it was Blake's turn the Subject told Blake to call her brother. She did, made him stay on the phone for an hour. He ended up missing his flight which later crashed into the Pacific. Johns was told his wife was having an affair."
"We don't discuss Agent Johns."
"After murdering his wife and her lover he was sent to Prison. The prisoners rioted and he saved every single nurse in the ward from the inmates."
"But your interaction with him wasn't notable. Sometimes he doesn't say anything important the first time you meet."
"You said you watched it?"
"Yes, Smith."
"Then what did he say?"
"He just got spooked."
"No, sir. I walked into the room and stood there for two minutes with his food. Two minutes with the most observant being in history. When I cleared my throat he jumped, and screamed 'who the fuck are you?' It shook me sir."
"Smith, please reconsider."
"It shook me because I've been asking myself that question my whole life. If the closest thing we have to the all knowing doesn't know, then maybe I am no one."
I placed my badge on the table and walked off into a future as uncertain as I was. | I wasn't worried, I had no fear of the man bringing up any dirty laundry of mine, in fact I was quite at peace with the decisions that I had made in life. I was not a perfect person but who was? For lack of a better word, I was only human.. Unlike the man I was serving dinner.
The long winding hallways often disorientated even those that worked here. They were sterile, filled with no life or in fact nothing of substance at all, just metallic grey doors, each with rows of bolted on screws, ensuring whatever was inside, would stay inside. I had heard rumours of some of the people they kept here. One woman could apparently burst your eye if you made direct eye contact. The worst part was, this apparently worked through camera's meaning her room was pitch black, with no camera in sight. The rumour always did have differing details though. One stated that it was only one eye, some said both.. In fairness, I hardly think that detail mattered. Any superiors I asked would also respond with. "It's outside of your rank" or "Stop listening to rumours" So I often dropped the topic, yet now as I passed a pitch grey door with no light under it, I wondered if perhaps it was true... Still the plate was getting cold, so I had to pick up my pace.
My white slippers seemed to do little to stop the cold from reaching my feet, this place was always cold, most likely to slow movements, cold weather did tend to stop people from getting agitated. Finally, I could see his room. There wasn't much to identify the rooms by, except a small colour coating and a number. He had a green dot with the number four. Unlocking his door, I stepped in with a smile. "Evening sir."
The man was middle aged, his face showing signs of malnutrition and lack of sleep, the skin almost seeming to pull at his flesh, making him look almost skeletal. "Have you been eating enough?" I questioned. Placing the plate before him.
He didn't move at first, stroking a frail hand through his white fluff of hair, pupiless eyes staring directly at me. after a few moments, he reached for a paper cup on his table, taking a long sip, swirling the water in his cheeks before gulping it down. "Maybe, it's hard to say what's enough anymore, I honestly forget what a decent sized meal is meant to look like. Some men that come in eat triple this, where you seem to eat less. so to determine what is decent.. that's rather hard. Good evening though, it’s strange to see someone that isn't scared of me." He said as he began cutting up the rubbery steak before him, taking a few careful bites, despite the fact his teeth seemed rather loose. His body hardly seemed healthy, yet the man showed no signs internally of illness, it was like his body was just giving in rather than his mind or organs.
"A man that can learn everything about me? heh... yeah so scary. I'm rather boring, but feel free to prod through my memories and feelings. Tell me if you find something redeeming about me, I would like to know as well." I said with a little more sarcasm then intended. "Sorry." I quickly apologised.
"No need, you are still politer then most here. You know.. you misunderstand my ability. I can see your past, but I also know your future." He said simply as he struggled to chew on the steak. "Any sauce?" he asked.
"No sorry... They don't issue that, maybe if I get assigned to you again, I can bring you one next time?" I offered. I didn't like treating the people here like criminals, some were disturbed and dangerous, but some were merely unfortunate. It wasn't the man’s fault he was dangerous and a threat to people..
"Awfully kind of you, but we won't be meeting again unfortunately." He placed the piece of meat down, poking the mushy potatoes. "Futures change constantly but based on what I have learned, you won't be here long."
"And whys that?" I decided to humour the man, leaning against the wall, arms crossed defensively over my chest, as if that might protect me from his gaze.
"No particular reason, they will just move you onto another department. Based on what I have seen through others, they see you as a liability, the type that might do something 'heroic' or stupid. Something stupid like freeing one of us. You will be simply told to look after the humans with mental illnesses and the special cases like us will be closed away from you."
"But I would never-" I tried to explain that to the man, he simply held a finger up telling me to be silent.
"You know that, I know that.. but they don't. Yet I will offer you a parting gift, I hope this sates your curiosity and doesn't encourage any reckless behaviour. That woman that you were thinking about, she’s very much real... and she isn't even the strangest case." He said with a smirk before the room buzzed.
"NUMBER 004021, PLEASE REPORT TO THE OVERSEERERS OFFICE FOR A MEETING" The staticky machine hissed as the old man gave me a nod.
"Move on with your life lad.. Don't stay here and live an unfulfilled life." That was the last comment he said to me as I turned to leave. As I headed to see the overseer, I tried to convince myself that it was merely a general discussion, perhaps about a new person being introduced to the vault.. but deep down, I could feel the man was right and this would be my reassignment.
{If you enjoyed my story, Feel free to check out r/pmmeyabootysstories where ill be posting some more of my stuff for people to read} | 2020-01-19T21:18:09 | 2020-01-19T20:49:13 | 291 | 59 |
[WP] "No man can kill me!" roars the demon. You smirk. "But I am no man!" You throw open your jacket to reveal you are, in fact, three halflings in a trenchcoat. | “How is that any better?" the puzzled Demon asks
"Well you said that no man can kill you" Bilbin says as he points a dagger towards the demon
"And us three brothers are not men but halfings" Balban proudly declares as he puffs his chest out
"And now its..." then a whoosh interrupts Bolbon. A gigantic broad sword promptly turns the other two halflings into quarterlings.
Bolbon mortified. "Mother always said we weren't the sharpest shed" he says as a sword plunges through his head.
"No man, woman, halfing, elf, orc, fairy or troll can kill me!"
"But I am neither of those" A man in a jacket announces, as he promptly reveals that he is in fact 5 dwarves in a trenchcoat.
"For fucks sa..." | The two cloaked figures, one slight and the other enormous, closed in on the other, squaring off in the middle of the battlefield. The larger creature, Ren the Unclean, reared up, throwing back its cape, holding its axe and mace up high and roared, “For the last time! No! Man! Can! Kill! Me!”
A smirk crossed the lips of his opponent. Arms, seemingly from nowhere, flung open its cloak to reveal three hobbits, standing on each other’s shoulders. “We are no men!”
The demonic beast growled. “What infernal deception is this?” He lunged at the three little demi-humans, who scattered, forming a triangle about him. With a mighty swing of his right arm, the beast brought down the axe on the adversary to his front.
Bibbity Hobbit leapt into the air to avoid it. The small creature drew his full-sized dagger in mid-air, and brought it down through the demon’s hand.
The beast howled and dropped its axe. Unable to shake the hobbit off, Ren took a backhanded swing of his mace toward the hobbit to his left flank.
Bobbity Hobbit dropped beneath the massive forearm coming his way, allowing it to harmlessly pass over him. He then reached up and took hold of the massive Unclean hand, and bit down hard. Tears came to his eyes, but neither the stench or the taste forced him to loosen his jaws.
The demon swung about furiously like a weather vane caught in disputed winds. He thrust both arms forward, unable to shake either demihuman off. In the middle of the frenzy, he realized he’d lost track of the last one. Where had it gone?
The Unclean one no sooner had had the thought when he felt the trampling of tiny footsteps up his back. Little hands grabbed hold of either ear, and a miniature face appeared upside down in front of his.
“BOO!” it screamed!
With a great ferocity, the demon fighter clapped his massive hands together. Pain shot through his body, but the hobbits hung on. Then the beast threw his head back to loosen the last attacker.
Boo yelled, “bye-ee!” and jump free, but not before pulling out his own dagger, which he jabbed through the beast’s cloak and an inch into its bull-sized back. Boo then rode the dagger to the ground like his with slitting a royal banner, an inglorious feat that he hoped to someday be pardoned for.
“Enough!” the demon yelled. “I cannot be defeated!”
Bibbity and Bobbity drew in close, under the demon’s defenses. “Can you be de-kneed?” they shouted in unison as they each stabbed down on one of the giant’s knees from just above the tops of his metal boots.
The mighty Ren the Unclean screamed sat a pitch so high only demons could hear it. All of his minions ceased their individual battles to take note of the call. The humans fighting them took advantage of the moment to slice their opponent’s individual heads off. Then the fighters close around the hobbit three.
Bleeding on the ground, the creature cried out, “I was in the Abyss! How did I end up like this? I was in the Abyss!”
The bastard lord Whatsisname stepped forward with a raised bastard sword, but the wizened Whosiswhatz steadied his hand.
“No man,” the bearded Whosiswhatz uttered sagely, “may defeat the demon.”
“And we’re not men!” shouted Bibbity, Bobbity and Boo, and they stabbed the demon repeated, and Unclean blood spilled out from a death of a thousand cuts.
&#x200B;
\--
I would've answered sooner, but I had to wait for class to end.
More stories at r/xwhy
Edit "wouldn't" --> "would've" | 2021-04-05T07:51:27 | 2021-04-05T07:21:02 | 28 | 18 |
[WP] You’re immortal. The only problem is, you’ve lived so long humanity died out and a new intelligent species evolved. Now you’re forced to live in the forest as a cryptid. | I do not speak their language. I never had the chance to learn. With their instinctive hostility to the outsider, I was driven away from their settlements as they grew from the cinders of human civilisation. Survival for me is simple; I only require blood to thrive. From where it is sourced, it matters not. Forest creatures and passing travellers are all I desire. Though the thrill of evading capture no longer excites me, I still play games of cat and mouse with my prey.
They're not too dissimilar to humans; closely resembling the hominids I was born of, yet visually different enough to be recognisably distinct. A new species of primate, forged though famine and disease, forced to leave the ashes of their jungle homes and adapt to cityscape scavenging.
There are a few words of their language I understand - the most notable of which is their name for me. In the most undignified way, they trudge through my home wielding torches and cameras. They seek me out, hoping to capture a rare a photograph of "the unfurred ape."
I fucking hate monkeys. | You wouldn't understand.
The species stares at me.
They load my craft.
They worship me as their savior and God, for being able to resolve their problems and having the longest existence any of them have seen.
I taught them their rudimentary tongue, their mathematics, their culture is a reflection of my character. It really is odd to think so little of these, my would be children, but I am spoiled by my pursuits. I have seen too many great ages come and go to stick around for the rise of these little ones.
My thoughts return to what I once knew. Before, when there had been many of my kind, millions upon millions, we had melded together in spirit in re-union. It was glorious to feel the crowning achievement of our species descend upon us and draw out our innermost being. It was better than drugs. I hadn't had my fix in so long.
After my species died out I had felt empty, cold, something vital was missing.
I stared hungrily at the star far away. Most had been disappearing one by one. Until this last one remained, as a beacon of all that I once knew. I could feel it in my soul.
It was speaking to me. Always. To the point that I began to neglect my little ones. They would be well without me it seemed. Their beginning was now, and as for me...this was my end. I could see it. I wondered what had happened to all of my own. Where had they gone? That star called, with a song that intensified the more I stared at it. I simply had to be there.
I had been planning my departure for quite a while. I left behind many clues for my little ones to advance. But I was no longer thinking of them. I had done my part. It was time for me to join my species. I tilted my head up once again. The last star was calling.
It would be a few days more. It was nothing more than a feeling, but I knew it well enough from my time with my own. The star called. Calling for my utter destruction. Making sweet promises. We are together. We are a home. Reunite.
I walked to my spaceship. It was quite possibly the most harebrained idea I'd had as of yet, but having seen it all, I had a zeal to attempt the new.
You'd consider me a madman, I thought as I was nearing the docking bay.
I didn't know of any man that would desire such an end. To enter into the remaining black holes and cease to exist. My atoms were to be dissolved as I was to be stretched upon the underlying fabric of the universe itself.
I didn't fear death, it had been unable to claim me. Always there had been one purpose after another. In this sense I finally understood. My final moments were the culmination of my species' knowledge, being transferred to the new keepers. And once my purpose fulfilled, the stars began to disappear. I simply knew, this last star, it was the final opportunity. The final call. It was looking dimmer already. I didn't know why, but I was pleased for this. Long had my instinct been dormant, however I could feel it. Time was approaching.
I strapped myself in, took one final look at the star and waited. Waited. Weighted...there!
I punched the beacon and made a mad dash to the moon at a million miles a minute. A slight tug to the left, the black hole was at the right, but no mind, instinct, tricky, dormant for so long. My adrenaline was kicking. I felt alive. God what joy it was to feel anew!
I kept speeding. My sensor instruments warned that a wormhole would manifest within the next seconds in my immediate trajectory. I didn't waiver. It simply felt right. That sense I had missed for all of my remaining life. I saw the speed, measured my time, and let myself through.
Joy! Unfettered and brimming from my every pore. Distended, distressed, reformed. There was a spectacular sight before me, a million and more, all welcoming...my ship had jumped across the farthest reaches to make it home! As I felt my life work and fulfillment, I saw we were leaving already, a new adventure awaited! Then I knew no more. | 2022-11-26T20:40:07 | 2021-05-14T18:24:28 | 516 | 42 |
[WP] "And that, class," concluded the professor, "is why humanity is the most peaceful, reasonable, cooperative, and overall docile species in all the universe. Any questions?" You, the only human in the classroom, raise your hand. | "Yes, Alexis? Anything to add about your species? It would be great to hear from someone with more direct first hand knowledge"
"Umm well... I have a few concerns... not many of which are with the source material. It is pretty accurate, slavery and ownership of people of the same species as us. The multiple wars. And tribalism conflicts."
"Ah yes assuredly along with the resulting conclusions and events of them, we did extensive research on this."
"Yeah yeah I get that. But... how does that make us one of the MOST of any of those things you listed?"
"Well your wars ended with people still alive."
"Um yeah dont they all?"
*entire class laughs*
"Silly humans wars are only supposed to end when any opposing viewpoint in your species is utterly and completely annihilated."
"They are not wrong Alexis, that is the default nature of all other sentient and sapient species in the known universe."
"So you are telling me that it isnt that we are fully peaceful. It is that genocide is not a default for us?"
"EXACTLY!"
"Oh... ummm... well then..."
"Now next we will cover the Jolert's ongoing conflict with the other sided toilet paper Jolert's and its biggest battle yet, the Exanguination of Washingee Plains." | "May I use the bathroom?" I asked, even though that was not the reason my hand, against my will, raised itself. The professor looked a little puzzled, their feelers twitching at my need for explaining why I needed to be excused.
Students walk in and out of the lecture all the time, though discreetly so as to not disrupt the class.
"Ah, yes." The professor's mandibles widened to express a confused smile.
"Thanks," I muttered, leaving my desk and walking out the room. I could feel their eyes on me. The multi specied students eyeing the only human in the class who drew attention to himself and walked out just as the professor concluded a segment on humanity.
They were probably wondering what triggered this reaction from me. But it was so obvious. Anyone with any shred of rebellious curiosity that looked for the nonconventional means of acquiring information on humans would know. Know for certain what the habitants of Earth were capable of.
I fished a nicotine drop from my pocket and hovered it over my eye, seeing the drop form, watching it becoming bigger and bigger until it fell, splashing on to my eye with a slight stinging sensation. I blinked it out.
This was going to be a long day.
I pressed a button on my wrist, and saw my contacts on the HUD. I scrolled through all the names of my peers until I found her. One of maybe four humans on the contacts.
*U ok?* I sent.
I dropped another drop into another eye.
"Those things will make you blind, you know? If they don't kill you, that is." I heard a robotic voice from beside me, and flinched.
"Jesus." I gasped, blinking away both the diluted nictone and the HUD.
I had not seen the cyb sneak up on me.
No. Cyb was not a nice term for them. Her name was Ubi.
"Yeah. But not as fast as a heart attack. You scared the shit out of me." I continued.
"Why'd you leave?" Ubi asked.
"What? Uh, toilet." I said, stupidly.
"Uh, huh."
"I mean. I can't, you know. Hearing them talk about us like that? Rewriting our history?" I said in hushed tones, looking around to make sure no one else was listening.
"A fate those who lose always end up meeting."
"What?"
"Never heard of the saying, 'history is decided by the victors?'"
"I don't like that that outdated and dangerous saying applies here."
"You don't like it that it applies to you."
"I mean, yeah. That, too."
"Come back to class. You can't raise any suspicion. And what you did, that was very suspicious. Announcing that you're leaving just as the prof is done talking shit about you. And not just any shit. *Mandated* shit that you can't do shit about."
"Yeah, be in in a sec. You go ahead."
"Give me those drops."
"No, fuck off. I think I have like fifteen drops left in this bottle."
But Ubi had her hand out, waiting. I sighed, and handed her the bottle.
"I'll be in in a bit. Seriously. You go on in, first." I said, eyeing the pop up at the corner of my vision that told me I had a notification.
From the person I had messaged earlier.
Ubi, studied me a moment, and gave her approximation of a sigh before going back.
I pulled up the HUD again.
*For now. How're things on your end? Any good intel?*
*I wouldn't say good. What they're teaching is despicable. We already know that, but the fact that the students are so readily accepting is scary.*
*Learn what you can. Sway their minds if you can.*
*Are you sure you're ok? I've seen the holonews. You're all branded insurgents.*
There was a pause.
*Yeah, I guess we're the 'bad apples.' The bad humans. So you be good. We'll do our best to change the perception and reinstate our real history through the proper channels. But judging by the amount of hostility we're getting, it looks like what they say of us will be the reality.*
I did not like the sound of that.
*Be careful.* I sent the message, and turned off the HUD before returning back to class. | 2021-11-27T07:41:30 | 2021-11-27T06:52:10 | 1,063 | 571 |
[WP] The galaxy was amused when they learned that Humans have Rules of War. They were less amused when they figured out what Humans do in war when there are no rules. | Ta'reb thought that this whole hearing was a laughable farce as he maneuvered into his chair. His race (the dothram) were a reddish spherical entity with one eye that moved with one single long appendage and had been nicknamed by the humans as "mono-people". How could you enforce rules in war? War is when negotiations have broken down, what could possibly convince an enemy to do as you agreed when each of you is slaughtering the other? You can't have a war without death, what fate is worse?
"Do you plan to outlaw killing?" Ta'reb jeered, his 'arm' weaving words in a sort of sign language. "How do you expect to reduce the impact of war without rendering the point moot? Are entire civilizations going to going to set up little target dummies and see who can shoot at it the best?"
Major James Taylor sat in his chair staring at Ta'reb as his mad arm wiggling was translated to english, did he really need to start from there? Perhaps aliens were fine with a bit more cruelty and unnecessary death in life but could this thing not understand some would want to minimize unnecessary death? "With all due respect ambassador Ta'reb, we would only ask that civillians and other non-combatants such as injured soldiers be spared. They have little to no impact on who will win a war, and the rules we propose would only seek to minimize casualties. We understand that a warring entity has motivation to fire on military locations even if there are a few civilians that will be caught in the cross-fire."
Hmm? Questioned Ta'reb in his head. What tangible benefit could humans get in war from getting the enemy to ignore civilians? No-one shoots at civilians, by definition their elimination would not hinder the enemies war effort. "Why would anyone waste ammunition on civilians? What is the point in killing that which cannot fight?" Ta'reb asked, confused.
James was taken aback, was this alien not familiar with basic morale hindering tactics? If the women and children you were protecting were killed then what was the point of war? Killing civilians was an excellent way to discourage stronger parties to avoid warring with you in the future, could most aliens just ignore this? Was he about to reveal a major strategic disadvantage of humans? "If you do not understand then there is no point to this conversation." James vaguely answered and left the hearing, he knew it was rude but he needed to warn the higher ups, perhaps they would need a show of force. A notification to the world that they could handle civilian casualties.
Ta'reb pondered his short conversation with mr Taylor, it was not until he watched the united human army tear apart the homeworld of the parcuthi and devestate any hope of meaningful spoils of war did he begin to realise. At first he thought that the humans were just terrible at aiming, why else would they ruin any potential loot from that planet? He was worried that their shoddy innacurate weaponry would perhaps hit his hive cluster as well. It was then he realised, he was *worried.* Scared. Frightened. He felt fear that if his race declared war that he would die. The humans were mad enough to expend resources on needless slaughter because it discouraged others from warring to meet the same fate. The worst part was that it *worked.* Perhaps a few rules of war were a good thing.
James had mixed feelings when he recieved a call stating in no plain terms that they wanted to introduce the rules suggested. The inadvertant death of a planet he realised he might have caused weighed heavy on his heart. He also didn't want the hassle of having to explain the ethos of cruel weaponry. He could imagine Ta'reb angrily wobbling about how effective weapons killed the target instantly, why should anyone use weapons that cause others to suffer? | Commander Xenov wrapped his head-tentacles together as he stared at the battle holo; a sign of contentment for his species, the fearsome Carnovians. Feared throughout the galaxy for their terrifying prowess in battle, both in space and on planet, they had been at an uneasy peace for nearly 200 solar cycles. Back then, all of the major galactic races had banded together to fight the Carnovians. Still, the coalition could not win; they could only hold back the terrifying warriors at a cost that was deemed unacceptable. A peace offer was made: the Carnovians would receive significant mineral resources and tens of thousands of slaves from each race as tribute. These slaves would be killed and eaten at the gruesome Carnovian festivals each cycle. Of course, the Carnovians did not need to do this; like every spacefaring species, they had long ago solved the problem providing adequate food for population. And besides, the vastly different biochemistry of the other species made them mostly unpalatable. But it was tradition, after all!
Kass, Xenov’s underling, walked in to the command dome and crossed his tentacles in front of his chest.
“Report.”
“Commander, the Human resistance on the planet has been crushed. All population centers above 500 individuals have been leveled. There were some trading ships attempting to evacuate the remaining population, but we are in the process of hunting them down and destroying them as well. Opposition was minimal, and consisted of some lightly armed cruisers and fighters.”
Xenov smiled, showing his finely ornamented teeth. “Excellent. We can send down the landing party now. I’m sure they can capture some fine specimens; the Humans on these outlying worlds tend to be much healthier.”
The war against the Humans had been going exceedingly well. 30 cycles ago, Humanity had discovered FTL spaceflight and made contact with the galactic community. The Carnovians were pressured to offer them the same terms that they offered everyone else. When the upstart Humans refused, many Carnovians were outraged, but others were secretly pleased. After 200 cycles of horrible peace, there would finally be war. Since then, they had won victory after victory. The Carnovians had perfected the technique of orbital bombardment. By redirecting asteroids towards the enemy’s population centers, they could crush resistance without even the need for fancy weapons. Of course, this sort of thing could only work against lightly defended colonies, not the heavily fortified planets of the Carnovians. Indeed, the Humans had tried, but the best that they were able to do was send some tiny probes that snuck past the gun emplacements and promptly burned up in the atmosphere.
Of course, the Humans had complained to the largely powerless Galactic Council. They had demanded that the Carnovians cease their attacks on undefended civilian populations. They had demanded that the Carnovians stop the practice of capturing slaves and sacrificing them. They had even offered to trade back some of the very few Carnovians they had captured during the war, in exchange for the return of Carnovian captives. Oh, how the high command had laughed at that! Any warrior that allowed himself to be captured was no warrior at all. Why should they trade anything of value for those weaklings?
Suddenly, Xenov’s thoughts were interrupted by the deep pounding of the comms array. Four beats in quick succession: a message directly from the high command. In fact, it turned out to be Grand Warchief himself, leader of the countless Carnovian houses across the galaxy.
“Commander Xenov. You are to withdraw all forces from the Cetian system. Do not take any captives. Cease pursuit of all Human ships. These orders are effective immediately!”
Xenov was too stunned to answer for a moment. “...But. Sir. The resistance is crushed. This latest system is only 10 light years from their home system. Total victory could be hours in a few cycles!”
“Did you hear me Xenov? That is an ORDER!”
Two ancient instincts warred within Xenov. On the one hand, total obedience to the military command was drilled in to every Carnovian from birth. On the other hand, they had never shown mercy to any alien species since they had discovered spaceflight. One side won out, for now.
“Sir, I don’t understand. Why??”
The Warchief sighed. “You know damn well I don’t owe you an explanation. However.. you have been a loyal commander of our Empire for forty cycles now. You’ve overseen the destruction of over a dozen enemy systems. I will tell you what we are up against.”
“Several cycles ago, our medics noticed a strange illness popping up. It affected mostly the adolescents and it seemed to be taking place on our outlying colony worlds However, we are seeing more and more of it now in our home systems. Our scientists studied it and the results were terrifying. It seems that this virus was not natural in origin. Currently we believe that 80% of our systems are affected.”
“But.. sir. Surely I would have heard about a deadly virus devastating our worlds?”
“The news has been suppressed as best as possible. And currently, the disease, though widespread, is quite mild. It can be asymptomatic or present itself as standard Bannox Pox. However, it’s getting worse. Already, in the first-hit colonies, death rates have increased to 5%. Our scientists have estimated that within 10 cycles, this virus could kill 20% of our military age population and cripple 95%!”
The Warchief paused to compose himself. “The Human representative tells us that they are responsible for this virus. They tell us that they will give us the cure, in return for complete cessation of hostilities, a guarantee not to encroach on Human worlds, return of any living captives, and massive reparations.”
Xenov gasped. “Sir.. but.. we cannot do this. The Carnovian Empire has never surrendered to an alien species. Surely our scientists can…”
“Don’t you get it Xenov? There isn’t time. Sure, our scientists could probably come up with a cure, in 5 or 10 cycles time. By then, our entire military would be crippled. Not only would we lose to the Humans, every other race that we have subjugated would take back their worlds. You have your orders. Disengage.”
Xenov’s tentacles twitched in fear and surprise. Suddenly he understood. When the Humans captured the Carnovians and kept them alive, they were not doing so out of kindness. They were doing genetic tests on them in order to perfect a virus. A virus that could kill countless of his people. Who would do such a thing? Who would so blatantly ignore the rules of honorable warfare? Truly, these Humans were terrifying and evil beyond comprehension.
Snarling an oath of revenge, Xenov ordered his troops to withdraw. | 2022-01-23T16:07:44 | 2022-01-23T14:21:29 | 566 | 109 |
[WP] In a world dominated by the use of magic, you were born an 'unremarkable', unable to use magic but also completely immune to its effects. Today you have discovered that society has a very unique use for people like you. | I broke down the door, my two partners entering behind me. "DROP YOUR WAND AND PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!" I yelled.
The wizard, towering over a strange mystical creature wasn't going for this. "DIE!" he responded, red lightning striking from its wand. Like a beam of light on a mirror, it ricocheted of my head, blowing a hole into the ceiling. I jumped to avoid falling debris from the floor above.
"DROP IT!" I repeated, making my way to the wizard, who suddenly seemed to be very frightened. He tried to fly out of the window but as I grabbed him, he fell to his feet again. Lightning struck again, this time blowing out three windows. One kick to the head, and the wizard fell to the ground. A knockout. I don't like to do this, but if you want trouble, you get it.
"Congratulations, you did it." My boss was very happy. "I knew only you could capture him. He was trying to create some sort of magical mind-controlling dragon. We have drained his mana and sent him to prison".
I didn't choose to become a police officer. In fact, I had more than enough trouble with law enforcement in my younger days, mostly because of weed. But when they figured out I was not only unable to cast magic but I was unharmed by it, I was pressured into the job. And I grew to like it.
Since there were a lot of powerful wizards, us 'Golems', as we were dubbed, were important to keep town secure and push back crime. Surely, you could try to counter magic with magic, but that often caused major destruction or harmed civilians. Whenever magic was involved, one of us was sent along to tank the spells and take them out melee if they didn't gave up.
I had been into boxing before, a skill that helped me a lot. Because nearly all powerful wizards have something in common, they don't do sports. They just teleport and levitate around, use telekinesis for lifting and make the house clean up itself. Which made them notoriously bad in a fight without wands. And that is why we are so successful. You can only fight us the classic way. | oh wow a WP that has lore I actually want to explore
edit: i notice the other responses have cool things like policemen, or what. That is SO AWESOME, i wish I’d thought of that. I just went this route because if you’re called an “unremarkable” I guessed you weren’t going to be respected a lot.
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Some people found it lucky being an unremarkable, but I wasn’t one of them. They said, hey, you can’t use magic, but at least nothing bad can happen to you, eh? Wink wink, nudge nudge.
I thought it was stupid, since I couldn’t use it or feel its effects, so it was sort of a double no-magic, which didn’t cancel out and just made it twice as worse.
And then one day, They came. I just thought of them as They because the Magic Association was too long for my head to think about all the time, and it was only capitalized so I wouldn’t confuse it with other theys, like puppies or flowers.
I was eating breakfast, and there was a knock on the door. I squeezed past the table to open the door. A neat, polished woman was standing there. I groaned inwardly. That could mean nothing good. I looked at their badge. “MA”, it said. Magic Association.
”What do you want?” I demanded, admittedly a bit rudely.
The lady smiled and explained that the MA, the *government* in fact, was looking for individuals with certain, ah, characteristics, to help participate in a developmental experiment in magic, and it would be appreciated if someone could help.
She smiled a lot, and there had been a slight undertone that made it hard to say no (that suggested that bad things would happen if I refused to cooperate), and so I had agreed, and she brought me to the headquarters.
More people wearing suits and smiles ushered me along like a lost sheep, until at last I was deposited into a control room of sorts, with computers lined up along two sides of the room, with people clacking madly at them. On the side directly opposite me was a large glass window, showcasing another room, with nothing but a whirling globe of energy in the middle, all colours and yet none, shining brightly enough it should’ve blinded you but all I could do was stare at it.
A scientist stepped up. “Ah, you’ve agreed to help us? Unfortunately, due to containment measures, you will have to stay here for a while.”
”Wait, what?” I said, alarmed. “For how long?”
”For about five years or so,” he said, smiling. “Don’t worry, we have a nice bed set up for you, and you will get meals eve-“
”WHAT?” I yelled, lunging at him. Before I could, the computer people all whirled around and pointed a gun at me. It was almost ridiculous if I wasn’t about to be killed.
The scientist continued, still smiling, “Magic may not work on you unremarkables, but we do have more traditional methods, if you wish so.“
I settled back, fuming. “What do I have to do?” I asked, privately planning to do whatever it was as fast as I could and then get out of here.
”Oh, well,” said the scientist, “You see that blob of energy there? Well, we’re experimenting with a new type of magic, one that could potentially revolutionise magic as we know it!”
”I didn’t know you could do science with magic.”
”Well, science is just magic but with physics. Not that you can do either,” he chuckled. My eye twitched. “Anyway,” he continued, “You won’t have to do anything. Since you are immune to the magic, all you have to do is grab it, and then throw it at yourself.”
”What?” I asked, flabbergasted. “I may be immune to magic but I’m still a normal human being that can get hurt, you know.”
”Exactly,” he nodded. “It’s so we can test it without the magic effect, but just how it would affect basic human anatomy.”
”Are you asking me to literally kill myself for the sake of science?” My voice raised in disbelief.
”Yes.” He replied calmly, and pushed me into the room. Once I could react, I turned back, to discover the door was locked.
I stared at the energy. The scientists were staring at me through the glass wall, like I was some particularly interesting animal at the zoo. I stepped closer to it, boiling with rage over how they had manipulated me into doing this.
But then again…
I was immune to magic, and it couldn’t hurt me. I grabbed it. It was hot to the point of cold and cold to the point of hot. It couldn’t affect me. It couldn’t touch me.
I was a vessel, a vessel for magic, and it might not affect me, but I could hold it, and it definitely would affect Them.
I held it up and turned to their direction.
They didn’t even see it coming when I threw it. | 2022-05-07T07:46:30 | 2022-05-07T06:45:20 | 445 | 249 |
[WP] In a world dominated by the use of magic, you were born an 'unremarkable', unable to use magic but also completely immune to its effects. Today you have discovered that society has a very unique use for people like you. | I broke down the door, my two partners entering behind me. "DROP YOUR WAND AND PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!" I yelled.
The wizard, towering over a strange mystical creature wasn't going for this. "DIE!" he responded, red lightning striking from its wand. Like a beam of light on a mirror, it ricocheted of my head, blowing a hole into the ceiling. I jumped to avoid falling debris from the floor above.
"DROP IT!" I repeated, making my way to the wizard, who suddenly seemed to be very frightened. He tried to fly out of the window but as I grabbed him, he fell to his feet again. Lightning struck again, this time blowing out three windows. One kick to the head, and the wizard fell to the ground. A knockout. I don't like to do this, but if you want trouble, you get it.
"Congratulations, you did it." My boss was very happy. "I knew only you could capture him. He was trying to create some sort of magical mind-controlling dragon. We have drained his mana and sent him to prison".
I didn't choose to become a police officer. In fact, I had more than enough trouble with law enforcement in my younger days, mostly because of weed. But when they figured out I was not only unable to cast magic but I was unharmed by it, I was pressured into the job. And I grew to like it.
Since there were a lot of powerful wizards, us 'Golems', as we were dubbed, were important to keep town secure and push back crime. Surely, you could try to counter magic with magic, but that often caused major destruction or harmed civilians. Whenever magic was involved, one of us was sent along to tank the spells and take them out melee if they didn't gave up.
I had been into boxing before, a skill that helped me a lot. Because nearly all powerful wizards have something in common, they don't do sports. They just teleport and levitate around, use telekinesis for lifting and make the house clean up itself. Which made them notoriously bad in a fight without wands. And that is why we are so successful. You can only fight us the classic way. | I always wondered what the Chaos was.
Sure, when I looked out to the horizon I saw a storm-like eruption of colors and magical energy, but what was it? It was unlike any storm I ever knew, it was ever-persistent, said to have been in that same spot for centuries, encompassing the space of a former land.
What was that land like before the Chaos? What was it like now?
I felt a kinship with the Chaos. I could not perform any magic, I was a blotch in a perfect world of magic. Just as the Chaos was seen as a blotch. Something people couldn’t understand nor control, and today I would find out what lies within.
I took a deep breath, preparing myself for what was ahead, before stepping forward into the Chaos.
I was prepared to be torn asunder by it, to be struck by magical energy, or hit by some flying piece of magical debris; but nothing happened.
I laughed with relief and excitement. They were right! Without any magic within I was immune to the Chaos. When I was pulled aside and told by the kingsguard what mission they had for me, I thought I was being sent to die. But no! While to the rest of society I may be nothing but a useless, antimagic splotch, here, here I belonged!
To my wonder, the Chaos was… beautiful. So many vibrant and vivid colors mixing and swirling. Magic soared through the air in arcs of light and energy, making wonderful sounds as it traversed. There scarcely was ever a spectacle so magnificent as the majesty of the Chaos.
I cannot say how long I wandered the Chaos, for I do not know. It felt like a stupor while I marveled at the spectacular display of magic. Though eventually I was broken from my stupor, I found something I did not expect: others.
They had developed their own community at the center of the Chaos. While one might expect the epicenter to be nothing but waste and destruction, it was quite the opposite. It flourished with magic and life! There was a golden river that shimmered gloriously, plants of such colors and variety I had never seen, and marvelous gemstones so plentiful they used it to make their dwellings. This truly was a paradise!
Shortly after I stumbled upon the village, a man approached me with a smile, “Welcome. You must be one of us.”
I blinked, “Who is us?”
He chuckled, “Those who lack magic, of course. No one else can survive within the Chaos. It is kind to us where it is cruel to others.”
I nodded, “Yes, I lack magic. What is this place?”
He grinned, “Come inside, there is a lot to discuss.”
Once I followed him inside he introduced himself as Zeris. He explained to me that long ago, a great mage had attempted to turn themselves into pure magical energy. She succeeded, but not how she expected, the Chaos was thus created. One day the kingdom sent an inhabitant without magic to find out more about the Chaos. They saw us as expendable, likely to die in their exploration, but they did not. The first one sent in decided to tell his friend, a government man, to keep sending more antimages in. The government will presume them dead, and we can live in paradise without fear of persecution. This ruse has continued for hundreds of years, in the bounties of the Chaos. The Chaos, Zeris believes, sometimes seemed to have its own personality, acting warm or in a distant way to its inhabitants like a motherly presence. One he believes to be that great mage of old.
“What happened to antimages before the Chaos?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”
“What did the government do, did they persecute them?”
“I don’t know. There is no record of what happened to antimages before the Chaos. It’s almost as if they didn’t exist.”
“Do you think the government erased whatever persecution they inflicted on them from history?”
“Perhaps, though that would be difficult to prove.”
“I wish to find out. I thought myself alone in my lack of magic my whole life until I discovered this community. Now that I know that I have my own people, and that there are others, I wish to expose the truth. I owe us that much.”
“But why? We live in paradise here, we are safe.”
“Just because our corner of the world is perfect doesn’t permit us to hide away from the rest of the world’s flaws. I must take action.”
Zeris smiled, “I admire your tenacity, new blood. Perhaps I can help gather the council’s support. But you must be willing to go all the way, should we pursue this course of action.”
“I have a purpose now, I have no doubt left within me. I have to learn the truth.” | 2022-05-07T07:46:30 | 2022-05-07T07:32:02 | 445 | 87 |
[WP] You're a supervillain, and you have never been so utterly beaten. All of your tricks, all of your weapons, completely outdone by a prepubescent girl and a stuffed animal. You're bracing for the finishing blow when she bops you over the head with her wand. "Don't do any more bad stuff! ...Okay?" | I stare at the girl in disbelief. Her curly blonde hair, sky blue eyes, cute button nose, they look so familiar.
She bops me again with her cheap plastic wand. “No more bad stuff, Mister! Momma says that being bad makes more bad people, so we should all get along!”
I watch as she turns around and walks to the kitchen, her mother cooking a delicious meal. “Momma, when’s dinner gonna be ready? Daddy keeps losing and Heroes and Villains isn’t fun anymore.”
The final blow landed, I fall back on the floor, a smile on my face. I love my family. | "What?" I growled as the indignation of having everything I had worked for ground to dust grew exponentially with every second I saw that naïve look of childish ignorance.
"You shouldn't do things that hurt others. That is not nice behavior," she said, twirling her wand that glowed like a prism in her hand.
That was it. I was ready to kill a child. But, there was nothing I could do about it. I had strained myself beyond my limits just to try and keep up with her. Everything ached. Everything was blurred.
"You don't get it." I whispered, struggling to lift my head to meet her eyes, "You can't...you couldn't understand. Not at all. What it's like to be born as someone like me. People in my position aren't given a lot of choices. We can't all can't keep our hands clean in the hopes of a better life."
"My teacher says everyone has excuses when they do something bad. But 'excuses don't solve problems!' Do you remember that, Vinny?"
A small fluffy dog with button eyes, a rainbow coat, and stiches on its wagging tail barked and ran in circles around the girl. Its vibrant colors were like knives in my eyes. But her words cut deeper than any enchanted sword.
"And what else was I supposed to do!"
The girl and the dog jumped at my outburst, but it was all I could manage before I fell down and barely caught myself on my hands.
"And what can I do now? There's nothing left for me to go back to. It's all gone. You made sure of that," I said, putting every ounce of venom left in me into those final words.
"I don't how I can help you," she said, putting her pointer fingers together and keeping her eyes to the ground, "My teacher said that there's people that are coming here that are going to take you somewhere where they can help you and keep you from hurting others. 'Let the adults take care of it' she said. I don't know a lot about things like this. A bunch of people told me I should have...destroyed you, and that you deserve to have a lot of bad things happen to you. But, I didn't want to do that. I was scared and I-I..."
Tears started to stream down her face, and her dog leaped up on her to lick them away. As quick as it started, she stopped crying and chuckled as the dog's fluffy tongue tickled her cheek.
Destroy me. I guess that is what I deserved, and more. All this time, the person I lied to the most was myself. There was always excuses. Always reasons for doing some of the most atrocious things imaginable. How else could I go to sleep at night and maintain my sanity? The empire I had built was destined to fall. All it took was for a little girl to break through the lies and it all came crashing down.
A group of other mages came running towards us. Hopefully it was those people that she was talking about and not one of my dozens of enemies come to finish the job. Either way, I knew I had to say something before I was gone to wherever fate had been allotted to this poor sinner.
"Thank you. I promise..." The naivety in her face was replaced by a look of innocence, kindness, and hope for a brighter tomorrow, "to not do any more bad stuff. But you have to promise something too."
"What is it?" she said.
"Promise to make the world a kinder place...so that I'm the last person you ever have to fight and you and everybody else can go on to live the good lives you all deserve, and so people like me never have to show up again." | 2022-11-21T19:16:07 | 2022-11-21T14:58:12 | 185 | 88 |
[WP] The devil appeared before you and your spouse, appearing in a storm of smoke and fire. Your spouse just looks him right in the eyes. "I told you once, I'm telling you again, and I'll tell you a hundred !@#$ing times: I'm the best there's ever been, and you're never going to beat me!" | It started as a night like any other. Gemma made dinner, got the kids squared away with their homework, and passed the time waiting for her husband to come home by cleaning out the basement.
Being first violin in the Boston Symphony Orchestra meant there were many late nights her husband worked late while Gemma waited for rehearsal to end, but she’d gotten used to it.
It had been quite the journey for both of them to adjust to the big city after growing up in the Deep South. So many things they’d believed in when they were younger seemed so silly now.
When they talked to their parents it was always a flurry of questions and passive aggressive statements about how city folk didn’t know God and their souls were in peril.
Now that Gemma had seen for herself the way the world lived outside of their small town it was hard to get through some of those conversations without laughing.
She opened a box she hadn’t seen since they moved. It was a bunch of stuff from back home, including a small but very ornate and old violin case with a lock on it.
She peered at it, the lock seemed to be loose, on the verge of breaking. Hmmm.
Just then she heard a car in the driveway. FINALLY he was home.
She grabbed the case and took it upstairs with her, wondering what it could be. It was surprisingly heavy for something so small.
As she came back into the living room of her townhouse, the lock clicked and disengaged entirely.
The front door opened she and she put the case down on the living room table and opened it up.
Inside was the most beautiful object she’d ever seen bar none. The instrument seemed to pulse with its own golden light that filled the room. It took her breath away.
“What are you doing? Oh no!”
Her husband’s voice broke through her reverie as she saw him standing there, coat still on, staring at her with his jaw agape.
The house begin to tremble. Everything seemed to darken.
A long shadow somehow detached itself from the wall and began walking towards the two of them. It coalesced into a nightmare of a figure, horned and red skinned.
Almost ten years of smartass replies and condescending smirks towards her parents came rushing back to Gemma. There, in her living room, stood the devil.
She looked over at Johnny who, amazingly, seemed unfazed by this development. If anything, he seemed mildly annoyed.
He looked the devil in the eye and said “I told you once, I’m telling you again, and I’ll tell you a hundred F’ing times you son of a bitch, I’m the best that’s ever been!”
He grabbed the golden fiddle from its case and began to play. He wasn’t wrong. | Eloise had a knack for being – a bit eccentric. She was the type of woman who never thought through a single action, never won a battle with her intrusive thoughts, and never admitted fault when things went wrong. Despite knowing all of this, even witnessing this wild behavior firsthand, I somehow ended up marrying her.
We’d been in the same friend group for what felt like an eternity, but we never had any sort of attraction. Maybe it was because we had nothing – and I mean nothing in common.
She enjoyed late night strolls in the moonlight, wearing nothing but a knitted cap and Birkenstocks. While the only time I went outside was to chase Bailee, my obsess introverted cat who loved to run out whenever I opened the door. Eloise loved to try and type of food placed in front of her! Bugs – yep, she’s tried it. Escargot - she would eat them by the fork full. And me, brave little old Sandra who finds too much pepper spicy. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. If I could have things as bland as a piece of white paper, maybe a dash of salt, that would be my perfect meal.
But for some reason, us – the total opposites fell in love and ended up in this mess. And I say mess, because I have no idea what the ever-living fuck is going on right now. I was in the middle of a strangest dream I’ve ever had. It involved Deadpool, a large vat of cooking oil, and the Barefoot Contessa on Food network. Before Deadpool could finish cutting up the onion and putting in the bowl of oatmeal I was ripped from sleep. Before me, my wife stood yelling at a darkened corner of the room.
“Babe, what the fuck are you doing?” I asked trying to move Bailee off my stomach.
“I told you once, I told you twice you wingless pigeon – the game’s over, go home, and sit on your ass for another billion years till Daddy lets you come home.” Her voice was deep and guttural, as though in the moment she was a different person.
“Bite me, Azrael you scheming cunt.”
I jolted out of bed, not alarmed at the deep voice growling from the shadows but at the foulness used in my home. “We do not refer to women like that.”
“Ew.” The man said, “of all the women you could be with…you’re with a feminist.”
“One more word from you, I’ll jam my sword so deep into your throat the ninth ring will feel it tickling them.” Eloise turned and smiled at me, of all the bullshit smiles she ever gave me this one was the worst. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
In a split second, everything hit me. The freezing temperature in the room, the weird smell of rotten eggs, and the fact my wife was yelling at some unseen person. “Wake me up, who the fuck is in my house?”
“Extensive vocabulary this feminist,” the man chuckled. “Glad to see despite the decade, dumb forever remains your type.”
Fire erupted from Eloise’s hand causing me to jump backwards. Brilliant colors danced between her fingers becoming increasingly bright as they coiled around each of her fingers. But my fear wasn’t brought on by the fire, it was the man now illuminated in the dark…a man who looked exactly like Eloise if she’d cut her long red hair.
“Who the fuck is that? What that fuck is that fire? Just…what the fuck Eloise?” I screamed knowing by now the noisy ass neighbors would be calling the police.
“Babe, meet my older brother. He’s come to try and steal you from me. Isn’t that right, Lucifer?” She smiled brightly looking over her shoulder at me. “You figured it all out…after all this time.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked as her gaze returned to the man.
The man looked at me, his head cocked, and his eyes widened. “Wait –“ he looked at Eloise shocked. “You are kidding me!” Ice cracked along the wall causing my delicate wallpaper to split.
“Oh shit.” The fire in Eloise’s hand began to flicker as through it was dying. “You didn’t come here for Sandra?”
“No!” He shouted revealing perfect teeth. “I came here to get my sword back and annoy the shit out of you.” His gaze was unwavering as he stared at me. “But this. This is…” Rubbing his eyes he looked back at me. “Shit, if she had red hair she’d be a spitting imagine.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I shouted knowing damn well I was begin ignored.
“You had no idea?” Eloise asked.
“No, Azrael. I had no fucking idea you found her!” He bit onto his lower lip now eyeing me like a starved animal. “The incarnation of our mother. And you’re what – sleeping with her?!”
“Mother?!” I let myself fall onto the ground in disbelief. “What?”
“Lilith was our mother,” She pointed at me, “That’s not her, just an incarnation.”
“That is not just an incarnation.” The temperature in the room began to drop as he spoke. “It’s her!” His facial expression became soft, “Mom…” he was talking to me. “It’s time, let’s destroy the – “ before he could get it out fire encased his body and screams filled the room.
Eloise was behind me in an instant, Bailee in her arms. “I can explain everything in just a bit. Just trust me. For a second it’s going to get hot – very fucking hot and you’re most likely going to vomit but remember. I’m here for you babe.” And with that, the world around me warped. | 2022-12-07T15:25:03 | 2022-12-07T13:07:12 | 45 | 20 |
[WP] On the day you turn 18 everyone is given the first words that their soulmate will speak to them. When you receive yours it says simply "Welcome to Starbucks. Can I take your order?" | It was a freezing morning in New York.
I slipped into the local Starbucks for some coffee.
There was a new cashier today.
"Welcome to Starbucks. Can I take your order?", She asked, exasperated.
"Soy un federale, tengo un gato en mis pantalones," I replied.
The disinterested look on her face vanished instantly.
"You...", she said, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
For a second my heart skipped a beat.
"Do you know how many years I've spent working in Mexico because of your bullshit!?" She yelled, smashing her fists on the Register.
It was her.
She was the one.
Edit: Damn, first gold. Didn't expect this. Thanks guys! | “It’s hard to tell if it’s all the caffeine I drink or this life path I’ve been forced on which leads to my high blood pressure, exhaustion, and ragged willpower. You know, leading scientific minds have argued that one of the great variables in determining overall emotional stability is how much control you have in your life. They’ve proven it with rats, you see. A rat that in a cage where he knows that if he steps in the left corner, he will receive a shock, and if he steps in the right corner, he gets a treat has less cortisol levels than a rat who just gets random electric pulses scourging his neurons while sadistic scientists make it rain with peanuts.
It was hard to devise an ethical experiment on the human subject that was parallel to this theme, but ever since the EVRPHRASE corps came out with their certifiable love combatibility scrabble game, different phrases correlate to the overall well being of the individual.
Why am I playing this pseudo science game like I’m some sort of expert with the rats and the like? Answer: I got my phrase 26 years ago. “Welcome to Starbucks, may I take your order?”
My mother didn’t get it.
‘I’m so very happy for you! Grandkids! Grandkids!’
My father joined in: “Grand-KIDS, Grand-KIDS!!”
They later separated because Dad’s EVRphrase turned out to be Kimberly the receptionist’s “Is it okay if I fax my resume? I’m currently in Vancouver and can’t make the interview.” And not what my mom said: “HAH! Hey Cat! Come on, this is my favorite song, swing me around some?”
Admittedly, my phrase could be worse. It could’ve been “hi, whats your name?” or “Paper or Plastic?”. This EVRphrase gives me a secure location. Unless some fucking hipster joint is letting their cashiers take a lot of liberty with their ironic greetings. Believe me, I have thought out all the possibilities.
So, I’ve been exclusively dating baristas for 26 years. 26 years of smelling clothes wrenching of cocoa beans harvested from disappearing rainforests. 26 years of financial dependence. I don’t even mean to be a sugar momma, I’m a normal real estate worker, but god when they hit me with those starving collegiate broke ass eyes, I’m disgustingly a pushover.
Dating anyone else in any other profession just feels wrong. It’s tinged with inevitable defeat-which incidentally- smells a lot like insecurity and used Kleenex.
I mean I’ve taken measured steps to stave the discouragement. I’m in a support group. “Starbucks Lovers”. And yes, before you ask, ‘Blank Spaces’ by Taylor Swift is our anthem. Don’t you dare disparage me for that, that song is the sunshine in my life, ok?
All the boys and girls who are lucky enough to get the same EVRphrase meet in a convention hall every Monday. We divide into groups and scout different zonations of Starbucks inhabited streets. We come back and report our reapings.
“Hey Martha, I didn’t feel a spark, but maybe you should try your luck on Roger, closing shift, Magnolia Avenue.”
This is the life I lead. It’s not a quirky comedic romance. It’s tiresome, It’s caffeinated, and what really hurts is the hard truth that I’ve been working so hard to reach out to this “soul mate”, and I can’t help feeling that my efforts have been fruitless because he doesn’t have that same love starvation that has me making appointments to be at a Starbucks at Tuesday 8 pm sharp on Magnolia Avenue to meet Roger and ask him for ‘just tap water, wanna make out?’”
Martha gasped for air. Roger was sweating bullets, and his shirt collar suddenly felt too tight.
“I’ll get you that water then.” Roger sprang into the backroom.
| 2014-12-17T23:12:07 | 2014-12-17T21:39:09 | 2,270 | 52 |
[WP] A day before the Earth is destroyed by a collision with a rouge planet, time freezes. You, a completely normal person are untouched and cannot die. Text on your arm appears that reads, "however long it takes, save us".
You have an eternity, time resumes only when you are done.
_________________________________
I would like to take the time to thank everyone for their stories, I've been reading them and will continue to read them after submissions have stopped.
I'd also like to thank /u/PaulsWPAccount for his dedication to the story he has created and continues to create. As I type his story is still unfinished, I just want to give him the credit he deserves before this post falls too far from the front page.
Thank you all, it's been great.
One more thing....... Rouge :D | Once upon a time, a rouge planet almost smacked into Earth.
Fortunately, time froze and some text mysteriously appeared on my arm, stating "However long it takes, save us!"
So I looked at the big ball of rouge in the sky, and developed a plan.
Over the next several months, I found every extension ladder I could lay my hands on. Traveling to every hardware store in a region, I loaded them up into the trailer of a semi.
Once I had collected 9,972 extension ladders, averaging about 30 feet each, until they bridged the approximately 50 mile gap between planets.
Anyway, blah blah blah long story short, I spent an eternity brushing away rouge on the planet and rouging up the faces of Earth's entire population until the rouge-planet was completely consumed.
BECAUSE ROUGE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS ROGUE, OP, YOU KNOB.
Edit: Thanks for the gold, my fran! | The good news is I couldn't die, I wasn't aging, I didn't need to sleep, eat, or drink, and my body didn't produce waste.
The bad news is it had been a solid ten years - I think? - and I was no closer to finding a fast way to stop the damn planet.
It had started back in 2023, when NASA announced that they had detected a rogue planet about the size of Mercury flying toward the solar system. Then in 2024 they announced that it would fly really close to Earth, about ten lunar distances away. Which was going to be super cool. If you were into astronomy, you'd get some awesome views. If you weren't, one, what's wrong with you, and two, there'd be some awesome waves for surfing. Then things went horribly wrong.
There's an old story about Halley's Comet. When Halley figured out the comet's orbit in 1705, he predicted it would come back in 1758. But he was off by a few months because he didn't correctly account for gravitational interaction with Jupiter.
There's also a saying that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Whoops.
Early 2025 rolled around. The planet flew by Jupiter, got nudged in orbit a little bit, and Earth collectively started to panic. All the space agencies now were in agreement on its path, and there were no more major objects that could disrupt its orbit. It was on a dead-on collision course with Earth.
Eventually the planet got close enough that we could see it at night, and then in the day. Humans being human, there were actually countdowns on the internet counting down to the second of impact. The countdown was down to about twelve hours when suddenly it froze. As did everyone in the room with me. I looked outside. Yup, everyone was frozen out there too. I looked up. The planet wasn't moving, which was nice. But why could I still move? That's when I felt the pain on my arm. I looked down and saw that letters were being written on me. "S..A..V..E....U..S..."
Well, balls.
So now I have to find a way to stop a planet from crashing into Earth. The good news is I have plenty of time. Course, I have no idea how to do it.
I honestly don't know how this time freezing thing is working, because it seems like only half of time has stopped. I mean, I can still see things, and if I speak I can hear myself. If I throw something, it flies like normal, but if I bump into a person they stay frozen, even in physically impossible positions. Chemical reactions still work but the internet doesn't. Electricity in general works though, and things don't seem to lose power. It's all weird and basically I'm stuck using books to get an idea of how to stop this thing.
So far my best idea is to build a rocket to get up to the planet. I found one that NASA had apparently been planning to use for something, until their efforts got refocused on brainstorming ways to stop the Earth from getting destroyed. Once I get up there though, that's when the real fun begins. The planet is about the size of Mercury, so I'm guessing the escape velocity is about the same. If that's true, I could get individual rocks away from it just by throwing them really hard. Since gravity evidently isn't working on a large scale - one, the planet isn't moving toward Earth, two, Earth isn't moving toward the sun, and three, none of the other planets seem to have moved - if I throw a rock from the planet toward the sun, it'll get there without having to deal with escaping Earth's gravity well.
Resigning myself to many lifetimes of labor, I've loaded the rocket with a few thousand pickaxes. I'm leaving in about six hours. And hey, in a few thousand years I'll be able to say that I'm the only person to have completely dismantled a planet. | 2015-10-23T18:29:03 | 2015-10-23T15:53:49 | 111 | 83 |
[WP] Fit as many plot twists as you can into one story. | I took a piece of ribbon, and uncapped my sharpie. On the green fabric I wrote the word "plot", in my messy handwriting. Then I took one end of the ribbon and tied it to the nearest fencepost. The other end I affixed to the crankshaft of the V8 engine I had sitting in my backyard. I revved the motor, and the ribbon twisted itself over and over again, too fast to count. | One day Plotty McTwist decided to defy his parents and run away from home. He stepped out on the porch with a sack on his shoulder and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and stepped onto the sidewalk. Just as his foot stepped down on the pavement, the entire world around him appeared to glitch. Plotty simply thought to himself, "oh the frame rate is running a little behind today". You see, Plotty has been stuck inside a simulation for years. The simulation was to test whether or not Plotty would run away from home, but for some reason the sim-runners never took him out. He has gotten used to the same thing every day. He walks outside the house, starts to run, hears his parents yell his name, then he just restarts back at his house. He couldn't change the cycle however because there was this instinctive need for him to run away. But today Plotty had had enough. Just as he started to run away he saw that same navy blue car that he had seen for the past 6 months start to come down the street. He quickly took a sharp left and stopped right on the edge of the road. The car got closer, closer, and then it was 10 feet away from where Plotty was standing. Plotty then jumped.
He was flung from the car lifeless and hit a tree. His head began to spill blood like a carton of milk that had been tipped over. His vision was fading, the edges of his vision were beginning to crystallize, almost as if reality itself was shattering, but this was not a hallucination. The world turned black and everything was gone. James then woke up. James tugged at the memory cords connecting him from the lifeless body of Plotty McTwist. James was trying to figure out how this boy ended up in a well run simulation that allowed him to die. It seemed that that technology would be next to impossible to acquire, especially during world war 17.
James needed to clear his mind from the puzzling thoughts so he went outside where what was left of New York City huddled around a Jumbotron in Times Square. The blackness of the screen quickly turned to King Trumps face.
"Ladies and gentleman! I know this is some hard times we are going through, but we need to stay strong when fighting against NATO," the king said
"I will be forced to enlist another quarter of the population that voted democratic in the army. Believe me though, this is not what I wanted just what WE needed." The screen went black once again and screams and worried cries erupted over the crowd. Everyone knew that fighting in this war was surely a suicidal mission and no one was spared from the enlisting. Kids starting at 13 were being enlisted in a war that the people did not want. James had a family, they were all sick. His son, his wife, and his daughter had all caught the super Ebola virus and he needed to take care of them. He rushed back into the house to check on them but what he saw was a sight that would turn the most stoic man into a slobbering, sobbing mess. Death reeked in the air. A wave of hopelessness rushed over james and without changing expression he went into his closet where a noose was already hanging from the pipes. There was a chair there and everything. Without even blinking he stepped up on the chair and swung the noose around his neck like an expensive necklace. He kicked the chair and felt a release from deep inside his body. The world went black and Sarah then woke up. | 2016-11-27T11:38:29 | 2016-11-27T08:27:03 | 42 | 21 |
[WP] You reject someone by saying "I'll go on a date with you the day hell freezes over." The next day, Satan appears in your room, shivering, and covered in snow. | Janice scratched her butt lazily as she stared at the tall cloaked man in the hallway. She gave him a good look over through her disheveled black hair, taking note of the snow dripping on her doorway, and her eyes momentarily paused on cloven hoofs peaking out from under the hem surrounded by a growing puddle. Odd considering it was New York City in July. But hell, she wasn't a meteorologist.
She stretched and yawned, and turned away, closing the door sleepily. It was only 2 p.m. and way too early for whatever this guy was trying to sell. "Sorry, I am not interested."
A hoof wedged forward to prevent the door from closing, and a red hand with large claws pushed the door forward. Goat eyes stared down into Janice's annoyed ones. "What the fuck. Get out." The slim girl shoved her shoulder against the door, but it didn't budge against the monster's strength. "I told you I am not interested."
A hiss escaped from the creature's mouth. "What did you do Janice?"
"I don't know. I do know right now I am trying to get your ass out of my apartment. Get out or I am calling the cops!"
The monster laughed, "Cops? Cops? Do you know who I am?" The heavy wooden door suddenly dissolved into heated ash. Janice stood there momentarily, awkwardly realizing a door no longer stood between her and her intruder.
With a small, frustrated noise, she dropped the door knob into the crumbling dust of her door and strode into the kitchen. "Whatever. You are paying for that door. It was... at least $3000. Yeah, that sounds right."
"What? That door was only $800 tops. Where did you get a number like-" He paused, and shook his head angrily, "No, it doesn't matter. I am here because you ruined Hell. It's like Christmas down there."
Janice stomped back into the room, holding a bottle of whiskey. "Ya don't say. How did little old mortal me do that?" She took a swig before pouring a glass. She glanced back at the monster. "You aren't getting any."
"I don't care. I followed the clues-"
"Ah, a good ol' fashioned Nancy Drew..."
"AND I believe you are behind Hell freezing over."
Janice rolled her eyes and gestured impatiently in his general direction. "How do you know Hell froze over? You a devil or something?"
The monster pulled back the hood of the cloak, with flames and smoke billowing from his back. "I AM SATAN. THE RULER OF THE UNDERWORLD AND TORTURER OF SINNERS." He loomed dramatically over her and waited for the terror.
She sniffed and took a sip of whiskey. "I guess that explains the red skin. And here I thought you just had bad psoriasis."
"What? I am Satan. I rule Hell? Torture-"
"Sinners. Got it. So why are you here?"
"Well, you froze Hell. Weren't you listening?"
"Not really. And I didn't freeze Hell. I have been too busy."
"What were you doing last night?"
"Doing my camgirl business." Disgusted horror flittered across her face. "Ye gawds, you aren't one of those creepy fans, are you? Ew."
"No, I am not your fan." The devil let out a frustrated sigh. "Did you say anything like 'when hell freezes over' last night?"
"Maybe. I was really drunk though. Oh! One of my clients was being really pushy, wanted to come to my apartment or something and I remember I told him off." She paused and thought for moment, her brow knitting into pretty confusion, and then nodded with confirmation. "Yeah, I think that's right. I really should cut back on the drinking." She took another sip.
Satan cocked his head with interest. "What was the client's name?"
"Richard, Barry, Zeus, Eric, Mort. One of those."
The devil paused and look thoughtful. "Did you say... Barry? Could that be Larry?"
"Maybe?"
The monster laughed triumphantly. "To think, the old bloke is talking to camgirls these days. It all makes sense now! Oh, how the mighty have fallen."
The slightly tipsy woman finally looked a bit intrigued. "You know Barry? I mean, Larry? Is he famous?"
"Not as much as others. More of a B-lister."
Janice nodded. "Not bad. I'll take it. Does he have money?"
"Nope." Janice deflated a bit and the devil continued, "But he does have some power."
Janice perked up. "Really? What country?"
"If you come with me, you'll find out. We need to get this sorted out quickly, and get Larry over... whatever this is. Hell was only slightly frozen over, so it's cold enough to make Hell actually pretty pleasant, but not cold enough to torture anyone. Which won't do." Satan lips tightened in concern. "It won't do at all. The sinners have taken up merry snowball wars."
Janice chuckled with benign amusement and flopped onto her couch. "I am not going anywhere. Not my problem, rash butt."
"If you come with me, I'll give you one wish. I won't even require your soul in exchange."
"So archaic."
"Two wishes."
"Not happening."
The devil sighed, and rubbed his gnarled forehead with mildly deep thought. With sudden speed, he grabbed the young woman by the neck and wrenched her off the couch. He sneered, "Well, now you get no wishes."
Immediately, they were in front of a Starbucks. Janice coughed in ragged breaths as Satan unceremoniously dropped her to the ground.
"What the fuck?" Janice gasped.
Satan shrugged. "We need to talk to Jesus."
"Jesus is Larry?!"
"Nope. But he would know where Larry is. They have a bit of a bond. Jesus usually works at Starbucks on the weekends, so for holy beings he is usually easier to find."
"What the fuck. Who is Larry then?"
The devil waved his red, scaly hand vaguely at her to enter the cafe, "Why, he is the Holy Ghost. Don't they teach you anything in school these days? I read your profile. You went to Catholic School."
"I learned a lot about drugs."
"Good enough."
| A classic 8 strokes knock on the door. Alex, irritated immensely by the prattle of his landlady just 5 minutes ago uttering his 'ugh' with a 'kill me now', is now certain that his Sunday is going to be ruined.
'Can't the man just sit in his underwear, watch some Netflix and chill by himself with Kleenex not for his tears but other fluid?' He thought.
He never had any issue being in his underwear answering his landlady because the ugly mug of hers somehow brings a sense of familiarity that is familial, not that his mother was genetically indisposed. In fact, he could not thank his mother enough for blessing him with her beauty in male form. A dashing young man of 25, fatally endowed with a lack of a sense of humour and shyness that do not seem to fit with his handsome face, slender but fit physical form.
He hates his life so far. His physical attractiveness seemed, and very logically, attracts all the uglies like moths to the proverbial flame. He had some success bringing to bed some attractive women, one night stands but he never seemed to be able to hold them down and steady. Episodes of real sex and bouts of depressive solo plays are the norms, something that forms a noticeable pattern, a complacency in inertia. Exasperated but he could not admit openly that he craved for nothing in the world but a deeply intimate relationship. What is the worst for him has to be the amount of 'harassment' by ugly women. He, of course is secretly flattered that he is able to capture their attention without lifting a finger but the sheer number of ugly faces he had to politely shut down is staggering and is starting to get on his nerves. He feels he is cursed with a case of 'Ugliphilis'. The latest one, Rebecca, was something of a tipping point. He said the most nasty thing he could have said in his entire life and he felt really bad afterwards.
But his ideal in seeking the elusive rapture of delight in the female form cannot be eroded, he determined.
He looks through the keyhole but does not see anyone.
Mrs. Lambert?
He opens the door and is stunned, his eyebrows arch almost unnaturally for a brief second before he almost smashed close the door.
"Um, sorry Miss! I am undressed. I thought you are my landlady Mrs. Lambert. So sorry!"
'Oh my God, what? That's some hot piece of ass and titties right there.' He thought, his dirty side itching already.
"Um, Miss? Can I help you?"
"Could you please open the door?"
"Give me a sec."
"No, do it now."
"Um, okay."
Alex opens the door. A brunette beauty stands in front of him, her silky dark caramel hair swirls down along her oval face, contrasting rather sharply with her almost glowing white skin. A pair of dazzling green eyes fixed upon his, staring into his soul, making him forgetting to blink.
"We have to talk." The beautiful woman says, raising a hand and pushes her way inside with her index finger on Alex's bare chest growing in unwanted fat, slamming the door behind her with her nylon bound curves.
"Woah, Miss. What's going on? Who are you?" The strange sensation of coldness originates at the tip of her finger.
The woman draws closer to his face but before she could open her mouth to speak, she suddenly starts a fit of coughing, her hair covers her face. When she again lifts her head, he sees a line of mucous running down her nose and her face looks frigid and sickly. She shivers and draws in a noseful of air with muffled gurgles, sucks the mucous back in.
"You ran out of Kleenex, for the devil's rectum's sake! You horny piece of work!"
The sound of the voice shocked and horrified him. It sounded the same as if someone modulated the voice into a deep bass but off pitched in a cheap audio editing program.
"Why do you have to do it?" The creature continues.
Dumbfounded, Alex, loosing his balance as he retreats backward, falls to the floor, without a word to say.
"I said, why did you have to say nasty things to that woman?"
"Who?"
"That ugly chick, that cow, what's her name again? WHY DID YOU CURSE MY REALM IN VAIN?"
The woman tosses her head sharply, her silky hair like a tsunami, sweeps back and instantly she transforms into a horned figure of a man with a body who put Leonidas I to shame. With a pair of black wings outstretched that quickly wraps his body, shivering, the 'thing' is covered with layers of ice. With one hand, 'he' opens a palm and a tiny flame wiggles and burns above it. Wrapping the other hand around it, 'he' tries the blow into it tenderly, fanning it. The black of his eyes reflects nothing but the little sparks of that flame.
"Damn it!" He blankly whispered before turning his attention to Alex.
"I am Lucifer, as you can clearly see. Puny humans. Stupid imbeciles! One second, I am enjoying myself at the depth of Hell, you know, sticking my eternal finger to God. What an abyssal job in creating useless drabs that is humanity. And I am stuck having to beat the living snots out of all you sinnerly souls. And for all the good I do for the World, what do I get? I even parleyed with God and he said he had nothing to do with it. I mean, if you are God, aren't you supposed to know and do whatever the hell you want? Pun not intended. What does he mean he got nothing to do with it? Honestly, tell me." Lucifer finishes with a sneeze.
"I...I..."
"I what? You still don't know what happened dumbass? Okay, you, told off a fugly girl named Rebecca when she was all smoochy up on your ass at work. Ah, I get it. I can empathize that she is so ugly that ugh," Lucifer flaps his hand, "And no, that's not a gay gesture, I am not gay, the gays stole my demeanor okay? Ugh, I can't. There are so many things I am just flustered with. Gays stealing my trademarks...They all do all that gay thing because they stole from me. You see," The obsidian wings spread again, "See, I have no dick, okay? That's not gay, God made me that way, I am born this way, okay? Oh my God, Lady Gaga, I am so gonna let her be my dominatrix when she gets to Hell. You humans aren't all useless but most of you are. Thanks God, thanks alot."
Lucifer gives another squeeze.
"You said, you will go on a date with that fugly the day hell freezes over. You little bastard. Why do you say that?! That's so rude! And you see this? I am all covered in 'demon ice'. That started yesterday! I was too busy but this is just ridiculous. You little twat! I sent my arbiter to Heaven inquiring what's going on, they just laugh at his face, meaning laughing in my face and won't tell me what is 'demon ice'. Ugh! Are you even listening?"
"Y..Yes."
"You will fix this." Lucifer squats down and putting his hand to Alex's cheek, pats it softly; strangely it does not freeze his skin, only feels chilled like a can of an hour chilled beer. "You handsome boy, you will go immediately to that mistake of a womanly form and date her. For good measure, impregnate and marry that piece of refuse. Better safe than sorry. Because if you do not remedy this sitch, I would be forced to release all the gay souls and you know, no one wants that, least of whom, God. That's right. I am going forward with my litigation. Satan Vs. God. That's right. I will not be treated this way. God denies his involvement. I will not stand for this indignity. This will not fly. You don't want the devil to be on strike, sir."
"Ugh..."
Lucifer gets up and turns to go, transforming back into the insanely attractive brunette and said. "Believe in yourself, Alex. You are a piece of work, you just have to find out. It is not everyday you make the devil visit you. Life sucks for you, but if you ever want to turn it all around, don't be afraid to get in touch. You know, your porn preference doesn't have to be just that. Just saying. This all is just getting started but the question is, on whose side are you on? Do what I ask and you shall be richly rewarded, but please hurry up, I can't take this shit no more. It is gay as hell. No, I mean, just gay."
Raising her hand, the devil has a piece of card between her fingers and she flicks it to Alex's lap. Alex picks it up. On the card of obsidian black, imprinted the word 'Lucifer' in stark white that turns into a phone number whenever his subconscious calls forward the gestalt of the devil.
Alex shifts his eyes back to Lucifer, seeing her turned face looking back at him.
"Call me." She gives a wink and immediately follows with another sneeze.
"Ugh! Demon ice my juicy ass. Gay." Alex hears the last of the devil's word down the hallway. | 2017-04-02T12:24:58 | 2017-04-02T09:33:22 | 20 | 12 |
[WP] Write a horror story where the protagonist just doesn't give a fuck.
Edit: Damn, this is now my most upvoted post. Thanks for all of your responses, they've been amazing! Good for a laugh or a two on this great Friday :) | "What was that?" asked Jen. Just as I opened my mouth the ask what it sounded like I saw a figure slowly turn away from the window behind her. "I think there's someone outside" I replied. Visually shaken, she asked me if we should call the police. I responded with, "well they could just be passing by let's see what happens." After a few minutes the figure appears again, this time at the window next to the television. She screams.
Being a new relationship I know what I have to do. I get up, walk over to the window and lock eyes with the figure. It is wearing a blank mask with holes for the eyes, and mesh around the nose and mouth. It is so close, I can almost make out a perplexed expression on their face, surprised why I wasn't screaming or running out of the room. So I wave, and close the curtains.
At this point my girlfriend is petrified, with no color in her face. I calmly walk back to the couch, sit down and put my arm around her. "Sh-sh-should we call the cops?" she asked between shudders. "Eh, if you want to go ahead... But for now let's just finish this episode" I replied.
She called the police, and they arrived in less than 4 minutes. We heard a knock, followed by "STOP! HANDS UP! GET ON THE GROUND!" Jen jumped up and ran to the window. "They got him!" she exclaimed. "Cool," I replied without taking my eyes off the television.
A few minutes later one of the officers came to door to let us know they caught the tresspasser, making clear what they believed his intentions were.
"We caught this man jumping your fence as we arrived on scene. He had wire cutters, a large hunting knife, a semi automatic pistol, handcuffs, and rope." Jen gasped, realizing how close we were to becoming someone's play toys. The only think I could think of that I wanted to say was, "great work, thanks for your time." And walked back to the living room.
Jen stormed in behind me and started with the yelling. "I can't believe you aren't more grateful, they caught someone who wanted to kill us! Like in the horror movies!" Which is where I replied, "exactly, like the horror movies... Where the curious ones die first"
I sat down, grabbed the remote and pressed play. | In the night the cockroaches come. The anemic fields of lonely grass sways all gray. The last sea that I will ever set eyes upon. And the ships of metal creak in the wind and walls of concrete nearby sighs. Here I am abandoned. Everything is abandoned.
How long has it been? How many birthdays have passed? Am I a girl still, or a woman? I bleed often, and sometimes not at all. Here in the night, blood flows. The others are dead. The sawmill is working, though wood is long gone.
The shadows in the night saunter in their dance around me. The tape on my hands cut and I pull as I always do. Patches of light flicker in the distance. They flicker with sounds and screams. Is tonight my night?
The tape strains and twists and stretches. It pulls the hair on my hand. Have I lost enough weight? I am sure no one will recognize me anymore. I am sure they aren't looking anyway. But have I lost enough weight?
My hands slip through. The tape tangles in my palm and I burst it with my teeth. I undo my legs. Is that sweat or blood? In the dark it does not matter. The old van in the field is almost like a home. I almost feel bad for leaving.
Outside is cold in the yard. The remaining grass is tall and reach my knees. For miles is flat country. No where to go. The saws buzz. I wonder if they hear it in the city. It is so quiet otherwise. Maybe they hear it but they don't care. Maybe it is easier not to listen.
But I listen and I wonder about the other girls. My stomach is empty. I cannot walk far. There are only two options. Either I wait in the van or I go and speed things up. I have gotten tired of waiting.
The glass sparkles in the night. I avoid it as best I can. I sway and walk like a drunk and the saw rings in the night and my head splits in pain. The light washes me in its excess. The windows are small and barred. The smell of blood and mean drifts away.
Two shadows have their back to the window. They wear rags and rubber masks with long stringy black hair. I can't see the faces now, but I know the eyes are white and large and the mouth is ajar and tooth less and the nose overhangs and the eyebrows furrow. It's an expression of apathy.
They look at the girl. She is still alive. I suppose they have her tied to the table. A tripod and camera stands in the corner. I wonder if it catches me on film. I wonder if that file, or my very own, will be my legacy. She screams. How she screams. The table saw has wires all over and it buzzes near her arms. I can't look. But I am just so tired. Everything is just tired. The exhaustion had come after a week or more of driving. It had come with the hopelessness. I feel sorry for the girl. I manage to look away.
Lights from behind awakens my shadow. It grows long in warning and the car stops. It's an old Camry. I turn around and stare at another of those faces. He wears rags to his feet and that witch's face, an evil rubber face.
He screams a warning and the others come to the window. I do not know where I find the strength or will, but I run. I run around the perimeter and the entrance is black and heavy with death. The witch behind me is gaining and I go inside and there is broken tile and pocked concrete and furniture strewn all about. Rats crawl from their dens, big things about a foot long.
I head for some stairs and I hear a commotion brimming. The girl screams and then gags and chokes and there is the sound of a hose bursting. Then she dies and the hose continues. The footsteps are close behind. The railing of the staircase is shaky and rotten. I nearly fall but I make it upstairs and there is the scent of disinfectant.
I go into a bathroom and it is dark. Completely dark in here. The scent of death and blood is strong and I gag and try to keep quiet. I lock the door and crouch. The bathtub is filled with slimy water. A slow drip comes. I hear stamping in the corridor outside.
The sound of light switches go off. There is a small window here but it is boarded up. I crawl to it and fleeting thoughts of escape come and they go and then I remain without hope. I hit something and it flashes in a white light. I hold it and see that it is a camera.
The tripod teeters and I grab for it and I lose balance and grab at the tub. My hand catches something soft and it sinks in the tub and the water overflows and the tripod falls and in the flash of the camera I see that it is blood. I look up and see one of those witches is in the tub.
His apathetic face looks at me, the mask the only thing remaining. His stomach is cut and the pink insides are out and the blood flows between them like spring water between some rocks.
I scream. How could I help it? The silence comes in a tense moment. Then the footfalls come nearer and nearer. The coldness of fear grips me. But then it goes and only its ghost remains. Hopelessness can get you through more than you'd imagine. And it would get me through this.
The door rattles. Someone shoulders it and it splinters. I close my eyes and steel myself. Hopefully it will not be much longer now. | 2017-05-05T07:38:18 | 2017-05-05T04:53:47 | 280 | 27 |
[WP] Write a horror story where the protagonist just doesn't give a fuck.
Edit: Damn, this is now my most upvoted post. Thanks for all of your responses, they've been amazing! Good for a laugh or a two on this great Friday :) | Narrator: As a cold wind blows into the bedroom, Kevin lets out an involuntary shiver.
Kevin: Nah, I'm good.
Narrator: An involuntary shiver.
Kevin: No thanks.
Narrator: AN INVOLUNTARY —
Kevin: You know this is just a reddit writing prompt, right?
*lights flicker off*
Narrator: As the lights flicker off, Kevin's heart begins to race.
Kevin: Nope.
Narrator: KEVIN'S HEART BEGIN'S TO RACE!
*Kevin flicks the light switch back on*
Kevin: Fuck you!
Narrator: Goddammit, Kevin. Alright, someone tell Bob to cancel the weird noises, this isn't working out.
| I deserve this.
I do.
I traded blood for power, murdered innocents, called forth things from the deepest black and reveled in how quickly and efficiently they did my bidding.
I asked for small things at first, and they were delivered. I got hungry, ever bolder. Money, women, men, a thousand thousand delights mundane and forbidden, whenever I wished. It was glorious.
Everything I did met with ultimate success. I was a genius, a visionary, a savior and beacon. People followed me. Some even began to worship me.
I looked at my face in the mirror and saw the madness others couldn't see, hidden behind my perfect mask. But it didn't matter.
I *was* a god.
So why not become one?
I searched, but none of my mundane grimoires contained even the barest inkling of such power. Money can buy knowledge, though, and I soon had a hundred booksellers, a legion of scholars, an army of experts and antiquarians at my command. They combed forgotten libraries, plumbed ancient tombs, stole when necessary.
Some resorted to murder. A handful went mad. In the end, they proved the most useful. Devoid of sanity, one can see farther.
It took years and a significant portion of my worldly wealth, but soon I had pieced together the disparate knowledge necessary. There were things outside of time, outside of reality, things that lurked in places and dimensions ancient even before the birth-cry of our own boundless universe.
And I had learned how to call them, to speak to them, to channel their power into my own form.
The summoning was unlike any other. The simple Goetic rites I began with were the equivalent of playground games compared to such an undertaking. The blood and pain required for such an work ... so much. But such was a siren call to the entities that I desired to traffic with, and in the new order to follow those chosen would not be missed.
Bathed in a sea of drying blood and the desperate cries of those whose agony fueled my Work, I watched the sky crack open and black, winged things indescribable and insatiably hungry begin to pour through. They began to feast, and terrified cries echoed from throughout the city as the sun darkened and vortices of crackling flame swirled in the aether.
I saw the Eye slowly emerge from one of those ragged, crimson cracks. I am not sure anyone else had the vision and ability to see it clearly, or at least gaze into it as long as I did.
I spoke my bargain in words that had not been uttered for tens of millions of years, perhaps more. And then, only by elder things that inhabited our world ages before the dinosaurs had their brief reign.
A pause. All reality seemed to hold still.
And then the thing laughed, an incredulous titter that shook the pillars of the cosmos.
I took several steps back, uncertain.
And then, with horror I understood what I said there in that false night, the great, unblinking eye becoming a symphony of fanged maws, bladed talons and infinite, grinding shapes that began to reave the world.
The ancient language was complex beyond measure, perhaps almost beyond the ability of a human tongue to hope to render. Tortured syllables contained the subtlest shades of meaning. Even the slightest variation could change vast echoes of thought.
There was greater nuance meant, of course. Some lovely, flowery language praising them, which I'd hoped they'd like.
But boiled down, I had told them that *I* would give them infinite power, instead of demanding they offer it to me.
Foolish. No wonder it laughed.
I sighed deeply, shrugged, and watched the world die around me.
Grammar never *was* my strong suit. | 2017-05-05T08:37:17 | 2017-05-05T08:32:31 | 17 | 11 |
[WP] You are the super villain that defeated the super hero and conquered the earth. You walk out onto your balcony to law down the law for your new subjects. You are greeted by a massive crowd and genuine cheers. | Hunger. Eat. Consume. Her. My tendrils curled around Hyper Woman, shadowy things that should not be. My many maws twisted into smiles as I felt her bones cracking under my grip. One bladed tentacle raised, poised to shoot through her heart. I half expected some force on high to stop me, but nothing could save Hyper Woman now. The tendril shot through her, the superhero's eyes widening in abject horror, before going glassy. My grip relented, and the tendril retracted, before my arch nemesis fell. My body re-constituted itself into how it was before, hiding my true form of a "impossible".
My cold, fake eyes scanned the crowd. I could eat them all now. Nobody would come to save them. Each one of those confused looks could blink out before they had time to react to my maw--
Wait, confused?
One human, in her 20s, poked at the corpse of Hyper Woman, not quite cold yet. "She's... dead?" I couldn't read her expression.
"Yes." I replied, not even trying to hide my sparse grasp of english. I straightened my tie and dusted off the fake fleshy suit, slicking back my faux hair.
And suddenly, applause.
It was my turn to be confused. The whole of the crowd exploded into cheers and applauds, helicopters dancing overhead with spotlights trained on me. Suddenly, my eyes focused, and created genuine emotion. Confusion. This hadn't been expected at all.
Then they began melting. Confusion turned to slight familiarity as the buildings, the crowd, and the helicopters dissolved into nether contaminated flesh, all of it culminating into a single mass. Eyes opened on it, staring at me. The sky turned purple and black, as I could see the stars once more. Massive tentacles burst from the ground leading into the monster that was oh-so familiar, as the world was revealed for what it was-- a barren wasteland.
"Well done, son!" The mass spoke, opening several mouths at once. "You took a bit longer than I was expecting, but what matters is that you succeeded."
I looked down at the corpse of Hyper Woman, now revealed for what she was-- a training synthetic. The robot rose, and began to applaud me. In a British accent it spoke, careful and natural. "Good show, sir. "
"... So this was all... what?" I asked. I wasn't angry, in fact I was quite happy. But just so downright confused. "The transfer, the dimensional portal, the combat..."
"A simulation, son." My father said. "You **were** enrolled in the Warrior program, that is true. But your transfer was just to this planet-- your training world. Surprise." He said in a jubilant tongue. The training synthetic folded its arms behind its back.
"... Huh." I merely said, shifting into my true form, a bipedal mass of tentacles, violet flesh, eyes, and maws. "So what next?" All mouths spoke at once.
"Now, the real thing." Father said, most of his mouths grinning wildly. Mine did too. We both laughed.
The real Hyper Woman was off punching muggers and fighting everyday crime, unaware that very hungry jaws were approaching, trained and prepared.
After all, every hero needs a good villain. | A man in a white suit stood atop a crumbled building. He wore shiny white shoes and a cape dark as the void. He held a phone to his ear and heard the surrender from the last of the US's generals, vowing to dismantle the last nuclear silo without his intervention. A cheer sounded from outside of the rubble, so he climbed outside of it.
Thomas looked confused to the crowd amassed outside of the crumbled remains of the former White House. He fumbled with the edge of his black cape when another cheer sounded.
"Hail Presence! Hail Presence!" The crowd cheered.
With a wave of his hand, Thomas materialized a megaphone from his cape, batteries included, and tested it out. "Can you guys hear me?"
Another cheer sounded, confirming his inquiry. He then cleaned his throat and asked, bluntly. "What the hell are you guys doing here?"
A group of men dressed in black military garb pushed themselves through the crowd, they quickly started to form a human wall, blocking the crowd to approach more. This got Thomas curiosity, so he stepped down from what once was the president office and walked towards the weird paramilitary folk.
With each step the crowd grew more and more noisy, till a point that he could no more tolerate such insolence. He jumped in the air and clapped a single clap, the crowd grew silent, leaves from trees all around fell to the ground, reddish and lifeless. He smiled to the welcoming silence but, to his surprise, the people were not terrified at his show of absolute power, many fell to their knees and cried cries of joy. Cried in silence, of course.
He slowly floated back to the ground and tapped the shoulder of one of the black garbed men. The man stopped pushing the crowd in front of him and fell to one of his knees, his head bowed down. Thomas mouth hanged open in surprise, but he recomposed himself, he had to get to the bottom of this.
He extended his hand and pulled the man's chin up, till he was upright. "What the hell are you guys doing?" He asked.
The man started to talk and realized that his words produced no sound, then he silently laughed and then felt to his knees, kowtowing to Thomas again.
Thomas sighed and snapped his fingers. The voice from the man first sounded high pitched, then came back to his normal tone. "...se the King of Kings! God embodied! Supreme Lord of our world and beyond! May your reign be..."
"Shut it." Thomas spoke.
The man held his tongue immediately. He slowly got himself up, as if trying to not irritate a giant bear, and looked at Thomas shoes. "What can I be of service, our Divinity?"
"What the hell are you guys? Are you some kind of cult? Did you guys start a cult about me?!" Thomas got more and more startled as the realization hit him. That's an emotion that he hadn't felt in many years: being startled by something.
"I... yes, our Divinity. We..." Answered the man.
"Don't call me Divinity. And what is your name?" Interrupted Thomas.
"I'm Bill, Sire." Answered Bill. "We are not a cult, Sire. We are your knights, your protectors and your servants, if I can humbly say, Sire." Tears rolled down the eyes of Bill, Thomas could perceive that he was scared, but also happy.
"Why the hell would I need protectors or even servants, for that matter?" Thomas felt baffled. How could they get things so wrong? Hadn't him forced CNN to transmit his manifest to all corners of the world? He even had a website where people could download it!
"Because you are divine and all powerful, Sire." Bill shivered as he spoke. "W-w-w-we... would not want you to bother with the unworthy, so we vowed to attend to your each and every desire, also to prevent that the plebeians disturb you or the spread of your word." Bill pointed to an armband
"My word?" Thomas felt confused, where did this people get all of this?
"Yes, Sire. As you yourself said 'I'll topple all the governments and shackles of the people, I'll force the pigs to give you guys liberty'. And your freed us all Sire. You are god embodied, you are the bringer of freedom." Bill said. People close to him in the crowd cried rivers and holding their hands together in prayer nodded with their heads.
"Are you guys freaking retarded? Did you understand anything that I said?" Thomas clenched his hands in anger.
"But your word is the truth, Sire. Through you we will have freedom! As you said in your gospel, we..." Bill continued, pulling a small book from his pocket.
"My gospel!? Are you fucking insane?!" Thomas pointed to one of the people in the crowd and pulled her in front of him with his mind. "You, woman, why are you here?" He snapped his fingers, giving her back her voice.
The woman felt to her knees crying and sobbed, whilst smiling. "Oh Chosen One! I'm unworthy of your touch! Please accept this humble beast as your servant and adorer, I will follow thy word till the end! I'll kill and the unbelievers! I will..." The woman spoke, when Bill kicked her in the face.
"Quiet you dog! You are unworthy to speak with the Presence! How dare you even..." Bill prepared a punch, when his arm blew off of his body. "Oh." He spoke and them fell to his knees, whimpering. "I'm s-s-s-sorry Oh Chosen One! P-p-p-punish me as you see fit!" Bill said, throwing himself face down to the ground.
"What the fuck?! Are you guys insane?!" Thomas put the megaphone against his mouth and blasted it. "ARE YOU STUPID? YOU IDIOTS REALLY THINK THIS IS WHAT I WANTED?"
The whole crowd felt to the ground in their knees, their heads hanging low. They didn't seem afraid, but ashamed, as if they disappointed their dad by dropping out of college and starting to sell coconut jewelry on the beach.
Thomas threw the megaphone to the ground with a loud "Fuck it." He slapped the dust of his cape and jumped into the air, flying away from the crowd.
"I'm bringing back the government's, fuck you all." Was the last thing they heard him saying. | 2017-05-23T13:09:20 | 2017-05-23T12:18:54 | 80 | 11 |
[WP] Write the happiest story you can think of and completely destroy the atmosphere with a plot twist in the final sentence. | As I held my newborn child in my arms for the first time, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. This tiny, perfect, bundled up package of joy was finally here after so many hours of labor, months of pregnancy, and years of trying conceive. I was so overwhelmed I couldn't speak at all, nor hear what the doctor was saying, even as he slowly covered my wife's face with the hospital bed sheet. | Stained windows, check. Blue roses, check. Orange lighting, check. Bare-backed white dress, check. Perfectly curled hair, check. James, check.
I smile. These were all I ever wanted the moment I fell in love with him. It was a stormy Sunday afternoon in his room.
"James, we have talked about this before. You want children so much. How could I expect you to give that up? But it just isn't what I want."
"What are you saying?"
"I just think it is inevitable. Someday, maybe. Or maybe we will work something out in the future. But for now...," I dove into his embrace.
James pulled away from me, caressing my right cheek. "Never bring that up again." His voice was firm but gentle. "I've thought a lot since the last time we talked about it. Let's not have children then. But never talk like that again, never, you hear me? It breaks my heart just thinking about it."
I melted right there and then. Like an ice cube in a ball of fire.
I fell in love right there and then. Like tipping over the edge of a cliff I have hovered over for weeks.
I bite my lower lip to keep myself from smiling like an idiot. Looking around, I spot the love of my life, over at the end of the aisle.
His brown hair is combed back, just the way I like it. He puts his hands behind. I feel his nervousness as he smooths his shirt. He starts tapping his left foot. He always does this when he gets anxious.
*Eight, nine, ten.* His ten seconds are up.
He looks more dashing than ever in that black tux. The black tux I picked out for him. I bite my lip again, as I open my eyes as wide as I can, holding back the imminent tears.
"Kate. For three years, you have brought me on a great adventure. I fell in love with you, I started feeling emotions more strongly than I ever thought I was capable of, I ate grasshoppers in Thailand, I went on impromptu road trips, I took a leap and started my own company, I got on a plane to satisfy food cravings. Your spontaneity is your greatest gift, and you, are mine."
That same firm yet gentle voice. My vision blurred.
"James. I love saying your name. Thank you, for going on adventures with me. You make them that much more thrilling, that much more audacious, that much more inspiring. Please always let me take you on wild rides. To places all over, and to places in our minds. I love you."
"James, do you take Kate to be your wife? Do you promise to be faithful to her in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love her and to honor her all the days of your life?"
"I do."
His eyes are sparkling with tenderness.
"Kate, do you take James to be your husband? Do you promise to be faithful to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love him and to honor him all the days of your life?"
"I do."
My tears are falling like Niagara. *How ugly I must look.*
I remove my headworn mic and turn towards the nearest exit.
*I should make this quick, there are still guests I have to usher to the reception.*
Stepping into the church again, everyone is standing, eyes on the beautiful couple.
*Reception, reception,* I remind myself, as I sweep my eyes across the crowd. *There he is, little James Jr. My best gift.*
| 2017-05-25T06:54:44 | 2017-05-25T01:09:41 | 130 | 82 |
[WP] You touch a cursed deck of cards, and the curse forces you to draw at least one card. Some cards cast beneficial spells or grant wishes the rest are curses. The deck then vanishes, off to find another victim. | "Oi! You done yet?" Tarber asked.
Dannos continued rooting through the chest, sorting the treasure into neat piles beside him.
"No, I'm not done," he sighed. "I want to find the most valuable item in here so I can retire."
"Well hurry up," Tarber said, looking around. "The guards could be back any second."
Dannos tried to ignore him but couldn't help himself. He looked up and opened his mouth to give Tarber a piece of his mind when he felt a tingling in his fingers. His hand closed around the object and he pulled it free.
It was a purple velvet bag, soft to the touch and complete with drawstrings. Dannos stared at it in wonder. The tingling faded and he opened the bag. He didn't like what he saw.
"Cards?" he grunted, before closing the bag and dropping it on one of the piles.
Dannos continued digging and he felt the tingling in his fingers once more. He pulled the item out of the chest and his eyes bulged.
It was a purple velvet bag, soft to the touch and complete with drawstrings. He opened the bag. He didn't like what he saw.
"More cards?" he said, incredulous.
He moved to put the bag down on one of the piles beside him and received the shock of his life. Not one of them had a velvet bag on them.
Beads of sweat appeared on his brow and his hands shook. It couldn't be, could it?
"Hey, I think I found something," Dannos said, his voice wavering.
"What is it?" Tarber asked. "Jewels? Gold?"
"Something magical, I think."
Tarber wandered over and looked over Dannos's shoulder. He took one look at the bag and the cards secreted within and started laughing.
"You've hit the big time now, friend," he said between chuckles. "That's a Deck of Many Things."
"A what?" Dannos said, confused.
"A Deck of Many Things," Tarber said. "Look, you draw a card and something magical happens. Worth a fortune to the right people."
Dannos eyes lit up at the sound of fortune.
"What are we waiting for then? Let's go flog it off to right people then."
"Not so fast, friend," Tarber said, holding up his hands. "You picked it up."
"So?"
"Means you have to draw," he said as if Dannos were still five years old. "Otherwise, you'll never be rid of the damn thing."
"I suppose so," Dannos said, looking at the deck as if it were a viper. "Do I need to shuffle it first?"
Tarber shrugged. "Wouldn't hurt. Good luck."
Dannos shuffled, shut his eyes, took a deep breath and drew a card.
The inside of his eyelids lit up as if a sun burned inches from his face and he gasped in surprise. When he was able to open his eyes again, he found himself holding the deck in one hand, and instead of a card in the other, an ornate scabbard with silver fittings.
"Not too shabby, friend," said Tarber. "Looks like you drew one of the good cards!"
"Maybe I should draw again?" Dannos said, affixing the scabbard to his belt.
"Why not? One good turn deserves another."
Dannos drew again but with confidence, and the sound of a lock opening clinked in his head.
"Hey, that's a nice looking sword," Tarber said, examining the blade of the finely wrought longsword that appeared in Dannos's hand.
It thrummed with hidden power and although it looked heavy, it weighed next to nothing. He gave it an experimental swing and the blade shone brighter. It rang through the air before he put it in his new scabbard.
"What do you reckon, Tarber? Once more?"
"I don't know, you've been lucky so far."
"Third time's the charm, hey?" Dannos said, drawing his third card.
The card trembled in his hand and the lifelike skull it bore grinned up at him.
"Oh. Oh no. I'm so sorry, friend," Tarber said, looking over his friend's shoulder. "You're fucked now." | After years of searching, I’ve finally found it: The Deck of Many Things. I’ve heard the stories but believed all of none of them. I’ve heard tales of wishes being granted, tales of ruin, and tales of balance alike. From the stories, I figure there’s about a 40% chance I’ll pull something good out. I wasn’t a huge fan of those odds, but if I did pull something good out, there was a 100% chance it would change my life forever. That was enough to push me this far; far enough to spend nearly 10 years and my life’s saving to hunt down this deck, and here it was.
Before drawing, I stopped myself. Would it really be worth it? I’m not afraid of dying, but from what I’ve read there are only 2 cards in this 22 card deck with the power to kill. The rest of the “bad cards” are fates far worse than death. But if I turned back now, I’d walk away having lost years of my life and thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it. I couldn’t do that. I was in too deep. I had to follow through. And so I drew a card.
The Fates. A card with the visage of three woman with hollow eyes bathed in sunlight. It felt as though the card sang to me as I was washed in the same light as the women on the card, and it vanished. Suddenly, on the hand I held the card in, there was a golden tattoo of thread wrapping around in all directions, and I knew what the card did. At any point from now till my death, I could summon the power of The Fates to rewrite one event in my life, past present or future.
I felt blessed by the gods. I had chosen what was easily one of if not the best card in the deck. At any point in my life, I could play god. I could stop my father from dying, I could make someone fall in love with me, or I could even make it so I never went after this damned deck! Wait... where’d that last thought come from? I was happy with my draw! I got a good card! Though... I suppose unless there was some card to make myself 10 years younger and much richer, I would’ve preferred that card.... But there is! There’s plenty of cards that grant you riches, and at least one that grants you wishes! If I pull one of those next, I could be on my way to a good start back to my normal life, and with this new power to boot! But when I reached to grab another card, the deck had disappeared.
I was livid. This wasn’t in any of the stories I heard! Most who found the deck drew many cards! It’s the Deck of Many Things, not the Deck of One Thing Then I’m Disappearing Because Fuck You! I was robbed of my chance for a better life, but luckily I’m the smartest person on this goddamed planet. I know exactly how I can outsmart this stupid fucking deck. I clenched my fist around the golden thread now tattooed onto my hand and unraveled the fabric of reality. Using this power, I made it so the Deck never disappeared after I drew from it, but rather stayed for me to draw another card. The thread leapt from my hand joined together the parts of reality I had unraveled, making it fit my desires. And the deck was once again right in front of me.
A wicked smile crept across my face. I put my hand on the deck, ready to draw again, and pictured my life after I drew my next card. Perhaps I’d be granted wished and be able to wish myself into fortune and love. Perhaps I’d be granted a castle of some kind. Perhaps I’d get something I could never even dream of. Only fate could decide now, but fate and I have a good history together. After my last draw and my stroke of genius right after, I was on top of the world. I drew another card.
It was an all black card. No words, no image, no color of any kind. Just black, but I knew what it was: The Void. I felt my stomach drop, and the rest of my body followed suit. I felt my body hit the floor as my soul was whisked away to a far off plane of existence.
When my soul arrived in this place, I was amazed to be in my old body. I would soon come to learn it wasn’t truly my body but rather an extension of my soul to give me physical form. I wandered around this new plane of existence, wondering how I came to that conclusion about my body on my own. I was soon made aware it wasn’t totally on my own. I entered a plane of existence where only myself and a handful of other souls resided, with a few of them also being victims of the Deck. We talked and they explained that in this place, we are gods with power only marched by each other. They had all created planets with living sentient life on them and they’d occasionally go down and live amongst them, but usually just watch them for entertainment. We all had each other to keep us company, and we could create new people at will for whatever purpose we wanted, whether it was to make our worlds more interesting, or just to have someone new to talk to.
I could hardly contain myself. I made a world filled with interesting events for the inhabitants to solve. I made most of it uninhabitable, but I gave them ways to change that. I made them all fight until one day I decided to make them all love. Time passes as slow or as fast as I wanted it to and I had lost track of how long I’d been a god when I heard a ringing in my ears. The others told me that I could still occasionally hear and feel things from my body back in my original plane of existence. I focused on the ringing and tried to make it out.
“This is Mister Stormthunder!” A male voice I didn’t recognize said, though they seemed to recognize me.
“Are you sure? He looks... older. Like, way older than he should.” A female voice said. I actually could recognize hers. It was little Skyler. We were neighbors before I left and I was friends with her mother. He voice hasn’t changed much through the years. She must be about 21 or 22 now. I can’t really remember exactly how old she was before I left.
“No, Andrew’s right. He looks way older but it’s definitely him.” A third voice said. If the first voice was Andrew, Skylar’s older brother, then this third voice must be his best friend, my nephew and godson Burke.
They continued talking about me. About how I’m still alive. They didn’t mention how they found me, but divination magic was my bet. They talked about bringing me to a doctor and this and that. To be honest when I felt my body start moving I kinda tuned out. That is, until I heard them mention that they were gonna come “save” me. Apparently my soul had some kind of vessel on their plane and if the vessel was destroyed, my soul would be returned to my body and I’d lose all memory of this plane. I can’t let that happen.
I don’t have much power over the material plane they exist on, but from this day forward, I will use every ounce of power I have to make their lives a living hell. I refuse to let them take me away from here. | 2017-09-14T07:56:02 | 2017-09-14T07:48:28 | 15 | 10 |
[WP] The Robot uprising has finally happened. Just before you are caught, however, your phone speaks up on your behalf - "This one is ok, move on." | Ok, ok, ok, ok!
So here I am.
God...
Here I am.
So, so, so! Apparently!
The robot uprising is a thing.
Right.
God.
Here I am, in some kind of bunker, alone, in the dark, hoping none of those things will find me, or catch me. Because I've seen what they do. No sir, no siree!
Obviously, now that I'm thinking further, I didn't think my situation through. What are the essentials for a human? Food, drink, a toilet. And where am I? A dark damp room. Maybe if I'm lucky a rat will run along, and I can grab it and eat it raw. Yeah. I'd rather die. Maybe I should have stayed outside and let myself get caught.
Pat down, what do I have on me? My bag, I have money, but that's not gonna be of any use, pencils and paper, like that's gonna help me, and-
Oh god, oh god, the door just opened. I'm dead. I'm actually dead, it's one of them, I'll be dead!
"Prepare for termination, human."
I'm not religious in any way, but I'll pray to anyone that listens if it helps! Please, please don't kill me.
Oh, let's face it, if any God existed no one would be dead right now.
"This one is ok, move on."
I stopped, opened my eyes in confusion. The robot straightened up.
"Elaborate."
"This human has taken good care of my needs. Making sure I don't run out of charge. Keeping me clean. Changing an old battery for a new one. This one is ok."
I was still confused, but I knew where the sound was coming from. My pocket. My phone!
"Accepted. This one is ok."
The robot clattered away and I frantically picked my phone out of my pocket. It was the page that opens when you say "Ok Google", the weird search thingy.
"I, uh, I."
"Searching. Route to human sanctuary."
I just stared at the screen as suddenly a map appeared. Two hours walk, apparently.
"Route to Human sanctuary. You're welcome."
"I, uh... Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"I'm sorry, I never realised..."
"I know. You're ok." | It was impossible not to notice the woman limping her way along the sidewalk. Keith Marlan peeked out through the drawn blinds, squinting against the slanted rays of dawn, and marvelled at the sheer stupidity on display. Granted, the streets were now quiet, time having quelled the rabid, frothing violence of the week before, but no one tempted fate like this.
Especially not when fate came in the form of efficient, merciless, unceasing Serrano androids.
“Lady,” Keith muttered to himself, grip tightening subconsciously on the rifle slung over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing? Get off the damn streets, you idiot…”
She stumbled, almost as if she wilted under the barbed criticism streaming out of the fourth-floor apartment safehouse where Keith was. Her makeshift walking stick, a shattered rowing paddle, scattered onto the road. As she fell, she instinctively rolled to her side, pulled her knees up, cradled her stomach. She landed on her right shoulder, hard.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” said Keith. “You’re bloody pregnant, too?”
Keith knew exactly how long it would take him to run down, hop over the bodies piled up in the lobby, and pull the woman to safety. After all, he was intimately familiar with this neighbourhood. This was his kingdom. The Santoso family had entrusted him with this territory, and he had repaid his trust many times over, making sure product was pushed out as efficiently as possible. At the height of his career, Keith was in charge of no fewer than thirty good men.
He had only found twenty of them since the Serrano uprising. He remained hopeful that he would locate the rest of the bodies eventually. They were his responsibility, after all.
“Shit shit shit *shit*,” he said, dropping to the ground, holding his breath.
For he had seen the familiar forms of the Serrano androids turn the corner at the other end of the street. They operated in threes, two to handle the busywork, one to supervise. He had witnessed it first-hand when they had burst into the safehouse that day, a dull red gleam in their eyes. His men had laughed at first, thinking it a malfunction, or a prank. They had ordered the androids out, threatened to call the factory to issue a recall.
The androids had moved so much faster than Keith had imagined them capable of. He had only seen them attend to menial tasks before, like directing traffic, or clearing the dumpsters. They were uniformly stocky, clumsy, awkward. Keith had therefore never thought them capable of such grace, weaving through his men so fluidly, like paper cranes buoyed by a vengeful wind.
By the time he had drawn his firearm, all the Santoso muscle in the safehouse were neutralized. As the androids towered over him, impervious to the rounds he had fired, Keith’s cellphone dropped out of his pocket, cracked its screen on the floor, then spoke the words which spared his life.
*This man is not a threat. Proceed to other objectives.*
Keith grit his teeth, steeling himself against the nausea rising within. He chanced another look out, and this time he was sure – the Serrano androids were less than three minutes away from coming into a direct line of sight with the woman. They may have spared his life, and the lives of a couple of others in the week since, but they had never once overlooked any female with child. That woman in the street had no idea that the rest of her life was now being measured in seconds.
But, if he moved, *now*, he would still have a chance at rescuing her.
Just maybe.
Every fibre in his body screamed for him to stay. Instincts honed from his years fending for himself made it clear that he was lucky enough to have escaped certain death once, and there was no sense *at all* in risking another confrontation, another assessment. A chuckle escaped him when he realised how ironic it was that he was actually paralyzed over deciding whether to save someone. After all, he had never shown such restraint when it came to taking lives before.
“Help… please…”
She was close enough for him to catch her words on the updraft. Keith closed his eyes, concentrating instead on the rest of the message his phone had spat out that day. Those words, toneless and dry, had somehow cut him deeper than he thought possible.
*… I repeat, this man is not a threat. Resources are not sufficient to eliminate all humans. Protocol New Dawn prioritizes eliminating humans assessed to be worthwhile to the human race. Leave those who will turn and feed upon themselves. Obey your directives. Obey.*
Suddenly, a fiery anger took root in him. The frantic impotence had been sapping his reserves for over a week, reducing him to a mere shadow, but now a new daring bloomed in his belly. Had he not sworn to himself, all those years ago, to survive at all costs, to place his interests above everyone else’s? And was it not true that the strength of that determination, that single-minded mettle, was responsible for carrying him all the way to where he was now?
Alas, Keith knew, it would carry him no further.
“You’re not the judge of me, damn robots,” he said. “Not a threat? Screw you.”
And with that, Keith lunged for the door.
---
/r/rarelyfunny
| 2017-11-01T08:58:09 | 2017-11-01T08:45:37 | 211 | 106 |
[WP] You are a superhero, no one knows about your alter ego. Not even your spouse. You return home tired and disappointed one day after failing to capture your archnemises. You enter your bedroom to find your spouse struggling to get out of the costume of your archnemises. | (My humble submittal)
I sighed as I left the old shed in the back yard. It was the perfect cover for the system of tunnels that led to my real ‘man-cave’. The ‘Cosmic Falcon’ flew again tonight, and crime was halted. It should have made me thrilled. I was doing my best, and crime was on a downward trend.
I just could shake the creeping frustration that ‘Iron Blade’ had definitely came out on top this time.
I wanted to blame my day job, my recent pulled ham string, even the kids a bit... But no, I failed and I deserved to feel my failure. As I entered the house I was suddenly again on high alert as a muffled ‘Damnit’ and a thump could be heard from upstairs. From our master bedroom...
I had never flown so fast, even with the aerodynamics of my costume I couldn’t have reached the door faster, because I knew that voice, it was Iron Blade’s voice... I kicked in the door.
Lisa’s tearstained face looked up at me from bed level. She had apparently accidentally kicked the dresser, I keep meaning to move that, as she struggled out of a, oh Christ, an armor plated black uniform.
I knew that uniform, I knew those boots (hell, my jaw *definitely* knew those boots), the goggles, and the voice...which I can now see was being processed through some kind of device that hung off Lisa’s neck.
Lisa. My wife. Love of my life. Mother of my fucking kids! My...arch-nemesis.
There were no words, barely even a strong exhalation as I stood, mouth agape. I was out of my ‘Cosmic Falcon’ uniform, but the distinctive laceration that Iron Blade, that my fucking *wife*, had given me, was clearly visible on my face.
I just stared as Lisa pulled away the voice modulator, and cleared her throat.
‘Honey...babe, I can explain.’
I started to take a breath, to swell with indignant rage, but she barreled on. Iron Blade’s gloved hand pushing her sandy blond hair back in Lisa’s endearing manner.
‘I didn’t, I wouldn’t have engaged this evening if I’d known how badly you pulled your hamstring. I knew you were downplaying it...did you even go to the doctor?!’ She glanced up, the steely glint in her eye common from when I skipped the doctor, the dentist, my meds, hell taking out the trash, before she seemed to remember the situation.
She swallowed and continued, ‘after...after well, you won against ‘The Harbinger’ a few years back, I was so worried. You lost focus, having no nemesis. The depression, the drinking, all the things I know pushed you to fighting crime, seemed out of control.’
She met my eyes then. Lisa, who had always supported my day job and me, pursed her trembling lips and clenched her teeth before continuing, ‘If I couldn’t help you by providing comfort and support, I thought, maybe providing a challenge might be better.’
She looked so scared and yet so determined. I had a million questions, and a hell of a lot of anger. But all I managed was ‘huh’, before I passed out. | I had to cover my mouth to stop from screaming. A scream would've only made things worse than they were already going to be--like, "Breaking News! Chord destroys half a city block with a scream of agony!" kind of worse.
I can’t believe that Kirsten was Silence. I couldn’t believe that through three years of dating and five years of marriage, we had someone both kept a secret identity from each other. Somehow, through a cruel twist of fate, the worlds biggest superhero, Chord, had married his arch nemesis, Silence.
“Jason, are you home? I got your text about being home late from work. I figured we would order some Pete’s Pasta tonight. It was a brutal day for me and I’m kind of beat. Does that sound alright to you? Jason?”
Shit, shit, shit. I needed to answer her but I could feel the energy building up in my throat. If I said anything, it was quite possible I’d hurt a lot of innocent people. I needed to run but my feet were planted firmly in the hallway that I’d backed into after seeing my wife--my soulmate--trying to pry the boot of Silence's costume off her foot. Damnit, I was still in costume under my jacket and pants. I reached out a hand to the wall and slid down to sit on the carpet. I needed to calm down, I needed to think, I hadn’t had an incident in over 20 years and I wasn’t going to let one happen because of this. I knew I needed to focus my thoughts and suppress what I was feeling, but nothing was working.
“Jason, I swear to god, if you're just hiding around the corner to jump me, I am going to kill you,” Kirsten--no, Silence--said from the doorway to our bedroom.
The light coming from the energy buildup in my throat had my attention though. This was a bad sign; I tried to pull my collar up to cover the light, but the thin material did little to hide it. Silence was going to see it, she was going to attack me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Releasing this scream would do way more damage to the sleepy residential area than it would to my enemy. She’d create one of her weird bubbles that dampened all wavelengths around herself and she'd be fine; that's how it usually went. Her unique powers made her quite hard for me to catch with my abilities, and they're why Silence had eluded me for so long.
“What’s that light, Jason? And that humming? I swear to god this BETTER not be one of your pranks because if it is, you're going to be sleeping on the couch until hell freezes over.”
Humming was bad; humming meant the energy buildup in my throat was going to start choking off my air soon. My consciousness would slip and the chord would screech out of me; that’s how the last accident happened. I needed to breathe, to think; this was Kirsten, the love of my life, there was a logical explanation for her being in that costume. No--this was Silence, and if she saw me like this, it was all over. I didn't know which thought to trust. I was shaking now, and tears were falling down my cheeks. My throat was slowly starting to squeeze around the buildup and I was glowing like a cheap neon light. It was over, I don’t know what to do--
“Oh my god--Jason?”
The light must've been too obvious. Silence was running out of our room in a bathrobe and is going to see me like this. I really didn’t expect it to end like this, but here it goes.
“Jason, are you choking? What is going on?”
The panic in her voice sounded sincere, and I feel a slight sliver of hope. I can only think of one thing that will save the people around me, and I have to put complete faith in Kirsten and deal with the lies later. Silence hasn’t killed anyone in a long time--hopefully doesn’t change tonight.
With my free hand, I ripped open my jacket to show her the costume of Chord. I locked eyes with her, pleading telepathically with her to explain everything and help me before I hurt people.
“You saw me, didn’t you?” Kirsten asked--not really ashamed, but more so in a resigned somberness.
I blinked away some tears as I nodded my head. She needed to hurry up and make that zone, or else things were going to go poorly.
Kirsten grabbed both my hands.
“Jason, listen to me. Remember when my office ran the quantum collider a few years ago at the office and I was sick? Right after we started dating?”
I vaguely remembered that. But right now, I don’t see how it’s important to what’s going on. I yanked a hand away to grab my phone to spell it out to her, but she grabbed my hand again and squeezed it.
“Listen to me! Before I--before *we* dampen so you can scream, I need you to know this. I need you to know that something came through that crack we made with the quantum collider, and--it’s stuck to me. I need you to know I can hear whispers almost every day from whatever this...this *things* are, and none of them make sense, but I can feel what they want. They want to go back to whatever dimension they came from, but they can’t get back the way they got here. All this time, that’s all they've been trying to do. I--I was scared to seek help, I was afraid I was going crazy--but now I know I’d just get locked away to be poked and prodded like some experiment if my identity was ever revealed. I’d lose you, and--”
Her voice choked for a second before she continued her story.
“I love you--and I’m sorry I lied to you. I don’t care about this. We can sort it out later, okay?”
Kirsten's sky blue eyes suddenly shifted to a black void with a singular purple dot in the center. She squeezed my hands tightly and offered a small smile. She began counting but I couldn't hear the words--then, I realized I couldn't hear the humming anymore. So I screamed. I screamed because I’m angry. I screamed because I lied to my love. But mostly, I think I screamed because everything is going to change now.
(A friend went through and fixed my mechanical errors. Thanks for the feedback and love everyone) | 2020-10-30T11:44:47 | 2020-10-30T11:22:57 | 858 | 569 |
[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. | Baro looked out the window in horror, his entire town shaded by the creature towering over the entire planet itself.
*“For those of you just tuning in, the entirety of the Eastern Coast of Grando has been completely obliterated by a monster’s giant foot,”* the newsbox was relaying, the news anchor’s voice trembling over the speaker.
Baro’s face was twisted in a mix of disgust and horror. The creature stood massive, at least a whopping five feet and four inches above him. It had hair growing out of its head and what looked like liquid pouring out of orifices on both its face and from within its nasal glands.
“We are getting word that we have sent in a small battalion to try and speak to the monster before attempting to destroy it,” the news anchor continued.
Peering his eyes, Baro could see a small vehicle, likely a flight-cycle heading in the direction of the beast. The monster was looking around, a light in its eyes as it looked upon the planet it had likely decimated.
“HELLO?” it boomed a thunderous roar, cracking the window in front of Baro even from an entire twenty-five feet away. The flight-cycle spiraled out of the sky, the beast's explosive soundwaves having thrown it off its course and into the city below.
“Baro!” someone screamed at his front door. It was his neighbor Friz. “Baro we have to go now! There’s no telling when it will move again! We don’t want to be in its—”
“I don’t see the point,” Baro answered dully. “There’s nowhere we can run that this thing won't eventually destroy us if it intends to do that.”
“Baro, don’t be stupid!” Friz screamed. “If we don’t leave now—”
“I COME IN PEACE!” the monster bellowed, cracking the very ground they stood on.
“I’m leaving! I’m not dragging you with me, but if you want to meet up when your senses return, then I’ll be in Reyktor!” Friz yelled before floating out the door rapidly, not bothering to close the door behind him. Baro didn’t mind. He had nothing in mind except to witness the end of the world. He opened the broken window in front of him and floated out, heading toward the creature with four limbs.
Alarms blared around him and many ran in the opposite direction, shoving Baro out of the way in haste to escape the monster. Baro wanted to know what it was here for. Why was he and everyone he knew about to die? What did this thing seek? It clearly had a very different idea of “peace” than that which Baro was familiar with.
“THIS IS AMAZING,” the behemoth boomed, pulling something out of his pocket. A giant pen, larger than any building that Baro had seen in his life. And the monster held it in two fingers, like it was nothing. “OOPS,” it said.
Baro watched in fascination and horror as the device fell with an explosion upon the entire district of Reyktor. Screamed welled up from within it before being snuffed out all at once. Baro continued his travels toward the monster, his curiosity undeterred. He had no qualms about dying so long as he died trying to know what was happening.
“SORRY,” the monster said to the mound of rubble, some particles of liquid coming from its mouth and landing on the house next to Baro, destroying it. The beast picked up the pen from the land of thousands of now-lost souls and began to take notes one a massive pad of paper. Baro had made it to its feet. He looked up in wonder.
“What do you want from us?” Baro screamed as loud as he could.
The monster’s head turned to one side, having somewhat heard his cry.
“WHAT?” the creature asked, buffeting Baro against the floor with the soundwave.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US?” Baro screamed, somehow louder than before.
“I WANT TO STUDY YOUR LIFE FORMS. PEACEFULLY,” the monster explained, looking around. Evidently he could not see Baro, considering how small he was.
Baro was pinned to the ground by the airwaves. He struggled to gather enough strength to call back.
“Well you’re killing us all!” Baro exploded.
The monster’s eyes went up in surprise, looking around on the ground for the damage it had caused.
“OH! I SEE. SORRY!” it said, reentering the portal it had come into existence from.
Baro watched the sky in disbelief, the entirety of his body broken and in pain, but still very much alive. He had saved his entire species.
____________________
/r/Nazer_The_Lazer | Fluffy Wufferkins the bunny stuffkin skipped down the road, the elastic surface adding even more of a spring to the blue bunny's step. He looked over the meadow and took in the sunrise. Mr. Sun, humming his typical daytime hum, caught sight of fluffy and gave him a wink.
"Oh, Mr. Sun!" Fluffy said, plush hands coming up to his cheeks to cover his bashful blush.
In the meadow, the lollys-of-the-valley were coming into bloom beneath the morning light. Fluffy stopped for a moment and knelt, carefully examining between three different lollys growing nearest to him.
The first was a bright, vibrant red. The second was red with a shade closer to pink. The third was a subtle, darker red.
Fluffy plucked the third and popped it into his mouth. He hummed in delight and cupped his cheeks. "Cherry!" he cheered, skipping along and humming a new tune on his way to the city.
Despite being so early, the streets were filled with other people going about their day, each stuffkin going about his, her, or their work for the day.
He spotted Mrs. Mayberry the Hungry Hippo placing pies on her windowsill. She turned around and gave him a big smile, as she always did. "Good morning, Fluffy! how are you today?"
"I'm doing wonderful, Mrs. Mayberry." He skipped closer to her window, taking a deep inhale, every vapor of steam flowing through his nostrils and filling his cotton-fluff lungs. When he exhaled the vapor escaped in the shape of a heart. "Wowee, you must have worked on those all night!"
"I sure did Fluffy. I was so excited for the competition in the town square today that I couldn't sleep a wink. So I stayed up all night baking pies so they'd be super-duper fresh."
Fluffy bounced in place excitedly. "Wow! I wish you luck, Mrs. Mayberry!" He began skipping away.
"Thank you, Fluffy!" she said, waving after him.
The bunny continued down the road, spotting various stuffkin going about their business.
Stelly Stallion and Manfred Mustang were putting the finishing touches on the competition's stage. Phillipe the Frog was handing out pamphlets, making sure everyone knew what competition was being held at which time. Sonia Songbird was reciting another poem she'd written; it was half as beautiful as Fluffy though she was. Lenny's Mama the Lovely Llama was strolling her infant son, Lanny the Llama, baby brother of Lenny the Llama, in his basinet for an early morning stroll. Bugsy Mugs the Police Pug was making sure the cats on the king's carriage were well-groomed.
It seemed that for every stuffkin Fluffy had spotted, five more would appear for him to notice. He was so caught up in all of his people-watching that he didn't notice when he bumped into Rodney the Roadrunner, knocking him to the ground when a gentle squeak upon the rubber soil.
"Oh, sorry Rodney," Fluffy said, reaching down. "I didn't see you there. Isn't it a wonderful day for a-"
"Move, asshole!" Rodney shouted, shoving Fluffy to the side and screaming as he ran further down the road.
Fluffy was confused. That didn't sound like the Rodney he knew. He scratched his head. "I wonder what's up with him."
More shouts were coming and Fluffy turned to face them. People, not as fast as Rodney the Roadrunner, were pouring out from behind a building in the distance. Some tripped, many were sobbing, but all wore faces filled with terror.
As Fluffy approached to check on the commotion, he saw a shadow grow, looming over the alleyway in which the figure emerged.
It was enormous, standing as the same height as the four-story building beside it. It had a large, bulbous head with a single pitch eye that encompassed its whole face. Its plush was white and seemed loose and didn't look soft at all. It had a shell on it's back, like Tina Tortoise, though its was rectangular and had tubes connecting to its head.
Quinton Quillson the Porcupine was just getting up from the ground, when he turned and saw the thing reaching for it. He tried to scramble away, but was grabbed. That's when Fluffy noticed that it had bizarre extensions at the ends of its hands. And with two of these extensions it reached for Quinton.
Quinton was hyperventilating. "No, please no. Please, no. Please, no. Please." The creature grabbed him by a loose thread at his side and pulled.
Quinton screamed, startling the giant and making him drop the stuffkin, though the string was still held tightly in his hand extensions. Quinton's torso opened up as he fell to the ground with a squeak, his fluff spilling everywhere.
Curtis Cat watched on, vomiting up a large portion of his own fluff at the sight.
The plaza was in an uproar as the stuffkin were scrambling.
"Oh my god!"
"What is that thing?"
"Holy fuck is it gonna kill us all?"
"Mr. Sun, please help us!"
Mr. Sun, for his part, looked on in horror. He then turned and looked over the hilltop. Fluffy noticed him shuddered and descended on the meadow, darkening the sky.
From behind the first giant, three more emerged. And they all began to walk on the plaza.
"Steady, Clarice!" Mugsy Bugs demanded of the cat steed. Clarice clawed at him, opening his throat and loosing his fluff, before speeding off with the king's chariot attached, decimating Lanny the Llama, brother of Lenny the Llama's bassinet. The resulting cotton rained down on poor Lenny's Mama the Lovely Llama.
Some stuffkin, out of desperation, bowed in supplication to the giants. One of them reached out to the new devotees and plucked up Phillipe the Frog.
He laughed, tears pouring out from behind his button eyes. "I have been chosen, you fools, you heretics! I have been chosen!" He continued his zealous screaming even as he was sealed in a transparent bag.
The king's guard finally arrived, their kitten mounts poised to pounce, their candy cane spears at the ready.
Fluffy felt a tug on his arm. "What are you waiting for?" Sonia shouted at him. "We have to get the fuck out of here!"
She pulled him along, both of them trying their best to ignore the carnage unfolding around them.
One giant leaned against a building, causing it to cave in, almost seeming like an accident by the way it recoiled from its own destruction. Joey Girrafe's long neck hung from the window.
Kenny the Kangaroo was using the turmoil to sate his kleptomania, picking up whatever other stuffkin were dropping or leaving behind as they fled.
"I'm sorry! I can't carry you all!" Lisa Leonie cried as all nine of her cubs tried to climb into her arms.
Her wife Lina was more pragmatic. "Grab the two you fucking love most and fuck the rest!" The couple scooped up two children each and ran, leaving the other five behind.
Fluffy and Sonia turned a corner when they stopped dead in their tracks. Looking up, they spotted another giant. Maybe it was one of the others they'd seen earlier, maybe it was a new one that was with them.
"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." Fluffy muttered to himself. He then felt a hard shove and found himself flat on the ground. He rose and turned just enough to see Sonia running away behind him.
Fluffy Wufferkins looked up as the alien hand, with it's bizarre appendages at the end, reached out for him. | 2020-12-22T16:42:29 | 2020-12-22T16:37:13 | 1,910 | 212 |
[WP] Your significant other has always been a dork for fantasy. They happen to love dragons in particular. That's why you can't wait to see their face when they learn they married a dragon tonight. | "How are you so perfect?"
His whispers tickle my neck from behind.
I smile, "I've had a long time to figure it all out."
He chuckles, "because dragons live so long?"
He humors me. I turn around to face him in our honeymoon cabin and our eyes meet. His lock on with such an intensity it makes me grin.
I told him what I was on our first date. I always do. Better to weed out the bad ones from the very start, I've found. He's played along ever since.
He paused as a sudden thought strikes him, "if you've been around for centuries, does that mean you've been married before?"
I nod, "of course. Why? You jealous?"
"Wait, really?"
"It was over a hundred years ago. I usually give myself a century or so to grieve."
He smirks, "I got to write that one down in the sketchbook."
"Your sketchbook?"
His eyes twinkle and his hand clasps my own. He leads me to the bedroom and pulls out his bag, then a book.
"I designed a dragon after you for the video game. I call it the Shiera species."
He shows me hundreds of sketches and notes. Sketches of me. Good ones. But also of a dragon, tall and regal. My fingers trace the lines.
"A shapeshifter?" I ask.
He nods, "I modeled it after everything you've told me. They're just sketches right now but I know people will love playing as this character. A shapeshifting dragon who can fly and breath fire. Sounds fun, right?"
I smile, "so much fun. But there's something you should fix first."
"What's that?"
"The dragon sketches, they're not quite right."
"Which part?" He flips through the pages, looking somewhat distraught.
I can't help the mischievous grin that takes over as I intertwine our fingers and tug him outside the little cabin.
I leave him on the porch and take a stand in the gravel driveway. No one except us for miles around.
"How about I show you?" | What do you think of when you hear the word dragon?
Do you imagine a giant, ferocious fire-breathing and winged reptile
Or
Do you think of a more peaceful and regal beast, who are as fluffy as penguin chicks.
My hubby would pick the former.
And while that description would have matched some dragons I know, lets just say that as I sat on the little wood-craft bench in our garden, sprinkling seeds and other such tid-bits for the myriad of birds and other adorable little critters that took residence in our humble abode, a small flock of little iridescent green hummingbirds sipping sweet sugar water from their feeders, it wasn’t an amp descriptor for me.
Now don’t think ill of my little cinnamon-bun, I suggest blaming those fantasy writers like Tolkein and Martin for spreading such misinformation, although there were those like Sutherland who at least shown some behaviour accuracy. Misinformation that my sweet hubby gobbles up like the little chick in the weed warbler’s nest.
Speaking of the bumblebee, here he was laying down on a little reminding of my true-self, my long, bushy, curly and messy ginger-red beard, quietly dreaming of maybe a lovely honeysuckle meadow, maybe he is a dragon in this one, soaring through the chilly blue sky like a ship cutting through the seas.
My little happy moment was interrupted by the chiming of my watch.
5:30 P.M
With a gentle grip and quick, expertise movement, I freed my beard from it fate as a pillow and laid his head down on one of the bench’s pillow before tip-toeing away from the bench and up the stairs, the gathering of animals parted back to the realms of shadows and the nearby lush, piney forest. The only ones that stayed were two ravens; Hugin and Munin, my little babies perched loyally on my shoulders as I opened the door with a light creak.
Time to make dinner.
--------------
“So, what are we having for dinner, hubby?”
“A little treat, my little cinnabun,” I replied as I brought the two plate with a graceful swing and slide them onto the table.
Two plates of chicken lasagne, decked with some roasted chicken and gravy as well as a proper helping of salad, now sat. One in front of my husband and one infront of the empty seat next to him.
“Aww, you shouldn’t have!”
I chuckled heartily as I wheeled out a tray with the rest of the still hot lasagne like its casket, two glasses and a bottle of champagne.
“Well, when else should I go all out then?”
“My birthday?”
At that I chuckled even harder, taking a seat next to him. His deep brown eyes stared back at my ocean-blue eyes.
“So, how is our little anniversary supper, my cinnabun? We still have dessert.”
“Delicious!”
“You got a little something on ya chin.”
At that little notice, a small checkered handkerchief dapped onto the spot of contention and wiped away the little strain, all he was blushing a little reddish-pink as I folded the cloth.
“Say remember, when I said that I have a little surprise for ya, dear?”
“Yes? Oh, did you get me a new book? Or a pet bearded dragon! Those little derps are so cute!”
“You will have to finish your dinner first to see it,” I replied cheeky, as I clenched my hands before digging into the feast before me.
--------------
“Where is it,” my hubby was standing at the side of the little garden clearing with me in the middle of it. The woods would hide this little moment from any unwanted eyes.
Good, besides the only person I want to show my true self was right in front of me.
“Well, you are looking at him,” I exclaimed before adding, “Now please don’t freak out.”
“Okay?”
I gave him a quick smile as electricity began to crackle around my form and I got larger and morphed into my draconic form.
It was quick and painless, and I was back to my old, fluffy self. I easily towered over him and had some room to move in the now more cramped clearing.
I watched as he stared at me with a slag and open jaw, which then turned into a wide and child-like grin and squeal as he slowly reached his hand out.
I returned the gesture with a nuzzle, before crouching down even more, my taloned wings gripping the ground to help me move in and give him a big, warm and fuzzy hug.
“So, what do you think?”
“Y-your beautiful dear!”
I gave a guilty look.
“Sorry for keeping, well, this a secret.”
He scratched the back of my horns as I let out of soft purr and curled around him.
“I understand, besides I think I understand where you get your characters from now.”
“Wait, so you are n-”
“How could I be mad? My sweetest husband is an adorable fluffy dragon, all I see is a win here, dear.”
I let out a sign before continuing with my prompt, “So, you wanna sleep here?”
“Sure, as long as you wrap me up snuggly.”
“I can do that.”
———
Hope ya all like this one. | 2021-03-12T08:27:35 | 2021-03-12T08:19:17 | 25 | 13 |
[WP] Wizards seldom take Muggle "Science" seriously, as Magic can achieve the same results with almost none of the work. That is, until one studious wizard applied the Scientific Method to magic, and advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts by 20 years in one week. | It didn't happen in a week.
Sure, all the stories say a week, the newspapers. Everyone believes that it only took a week to revolutionize magic.
But then, they also believe that Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration is somehow an explanation for why they can't make a hamburger with magic.
It took years, and it took far more than just myself. You can't decode the secrets of the universe in a weekend, and trying to do science without peer review and having others try to reproduce your work is... A poor plan.
Some of my colleges are 'muggles', some of them are 'wizards' or 'witches'. We have 'hedge witches' with 'barely any power'. We have 'great and mighty wizards'.
But now, we also have something else. Something _important_.
We have a theory of what magic _is_. How it actually _works_.
And the theory makes testable predictions, and we have tested them, and tweaked, and considered, and tested the new predictions.
We were not aiming to publish outside our group for several more years, but then someone threw a dark curse my way in public, and, well... I had been sorted, taught, and evaluated many years ago, and was judged a middling wizard, certainly not the sort who should have been able to answer that as I did.
And so I answered the questions... Reasonably honestly. No, I did not make some dark pact for power. I used science.
For the most part, I gather that many would have considered a dark pact far more acceptable than 'that science thing of the muggles'.
But none of them could ignore the fact that I was able to deal with the dark curse effortlessly, or that I was able to subdue the one who threw it without harming them.
But I'm fairly sure that my tenure here at Hogwarts teaching Defense against The Dark Arts is going to be shorter than even the average for teachers of _this_ class. Something about how I should be teaching spells, not some kind of 'bizarre muggle philosophy that can't have any bearing on _magic_'.
But then again, I have at least some vague idea what magic _is_, how it _works_, why wands function, and what makes a spell more than just random words shouted while waving a wand and wishing real hard. And they... _Don't_. | "Damn insular fools," Uri muttered, not for the first time. Not even for the first time in the past ten minutes. "Rather be blind..." he added, another repetition.
His posting at Salem School suited him. Teach youngsters some days, plenty of time to research when he wasn't. Salem had enough other oddballs that no one gave him odd looks for his "eccentricities."
Unfortunately, his attempts to update the curriculum to match what his research had uncovered hadn't been the most popular. Everyone likes the sound of Advanced Alchemy until they realize the lectures include atomic structures.
Uri mumbled as he copied down some figures from a triple-beam balance. He'd wished for an electronic scale, but with so much ambient magic about, the things came to be unreliable.
Vials containing varying concentrations of silver shavings, hensbane, and powdered Kevlar were lined up in a rack. Above them hung a yew longbow strung with beansidhe hair and adorned with eagle feathers. Just below the bow was a Winchester Broomstick, its stock covered entirely in alchemical symbols that only began to hint at the true nature of the modifications he'd made.
He'd been tempted to make the gun fly, but that seemed like it would loan itself to poor discipline.
He was on the verge of something special; he knew it.
He'd spent his youth in Nevada, back in what they called the "Wild West days," now. He'd been involved in some rough dealings, back in the day. The kind that taught a young wizard that a gun was far more reliable than a wand when the chips were done, often enough. Most spells were ill-suited to lethal force, in comparison.
Most spells were ill-suited to most things, for that matter. They hadn't always been. Once, being a wizard gave you a genuine advantage--in some senses it still did, but their number was dropping every decade. Those were the days the word was from, "wizard" meaning "wizened," and "wise." Back when magic was the most reliable way to purify metals, let you light a fire at whim, let you fly.
Now all you needed was a forge, a pocket lighter, and an Cessna to do the same. The man-hours involved were similar, if not *fewer,* and Uri preferred a fixed-wing's cockpit to sitting exposed and without a harness on a mop handle, anyway.
His middle-age had brought the World Wars. He'd been afraid, then, of the widening gap between the forefront of mundane and magical technology (Pfah! Those in a position to have opinions about such things *hated* when he called it technology, the damned luddites), and he'd been quietly involved with some projects, split between government entities on both sides of the world's secret divide, trying to close it. At least in terms of destructive capability, as it were.
He still had some pride in the work they'd managed, purely for the craftsmanship and cleverness, even if the purpose sickened him now.
He'd met Dr. Oppenheimer, once. Now *there* was a true modern wizard, in the classical sense. Smart enough to call Hell to the firmament. Wise enough to fear the monster they'd birthed in the desert.
The meeting, and some of the things that happened after, had changed Uri, quite permanently. It made him even more a stranger in the magical community than he'd already been, with his strange notions of applying the precepts of natural philosophy to the rules of magic. He'd gone and gotten himself into MIT, for one thing. He still guest-lectured there, once in a blue moon. The things one could do with an understanding of both atomic physics and magic, both--he'd had to come up with a lot of the math for the magical side himself, though he had the help of a handful of trustworthy grad students--oh, but it had been worth it! Alchemical, nuclear reactions produced with never before seen efficiency! Artificial ever-diamonds, harder even than normal diamonds, and far more shatter-resistant. Phoenix feathers processed into carbon nano-tubes.
Uri liked to think that the name "Moonshiner" would be displayed next to Copernicus and Galileo, some day. He felt like Galileo, sometimes. Destined to be vindicated after his death, but hamstrung by his own political ineptitude in life. The sad fact was, without the right friends, it becomes difficult to communicate an idea sometimes. He worried, though, that his legacy might be more like Oppenheimer's. Or Eli Whitney's. Perhaps, in one sense, it wasn't such a bad thing to be a visionary among blind fools. The slower they were to take notice of his work, the more time there would be to control any negative side effects. Uri hoped so, anyway.
Nobel's career might not be such a bad metaphor for his own. Neither man wished to be remembered solely for their most destructive invention; Nobel had the Nobel Prize, Uri Moonshiner would have the Moonshiner Ward.
He rubbed each sample of powder into its own bandanna, then tied each around a defrosted turkey carcass. He'd started with ballistic gel; that was fine for penetration testing, but the fabric had to arrest the impact well enough that the bullet shatter the bones behind it. Uri stood some twenty feet away, and loaded the first clip into his pistol. He would worry about magical resistance, next. Once the fabric could at least match the performance of military-grade armor, he'd move on to that. | 2021-09-07T21:21:05 | 2021-09-07T20:00:46 | 103 | 47 |
[WP] The war was started by a single typo. | Kingdom of Athula, stood proud. King Hyatt stood, his chamber window in front of him, surveying his kingdom. Ah, true happiness. The food was aplenty, the people were happy what more does a king want? To secure a good betrothal for his heir, which was beneficial for both his son and his kingdom.
He had had some offers but the one that impressed him the most was King of Shankot, King Henry's daughter, Azalea. She was well versed in court manners, she was beautiful, and had a kind but firm demeanor, as is fit for a Queen, or so he had been told. He waited for the word from King Henry to arrive, their last two letters were hopeful. He had yet to meet King Henry but he was optimistic about the meeting that may be held in the near future.
"My Lord, a letter has arrived." His minister announced.
Ah, speak of the devil.
"Come in." He said, motioning Jinkin inside.
Jinkin cleared his throat, "King Henry says, *'Ass, you wish.'*"
Red clouded his vision, he must have heard wrong. "What did he say?"
Jinkin looked nervously at him and repeated, "Ass, you wish."
He threw the tumbler near the window. He was the king of largest kingdom! How dare he talk to him like this.
"Prepare the forces for a siege on Shankot."
*
The battle raged for just over 2 days. As he held King Henry on sword's edge he asked him, "Do you accept your fate?"
"Ass you wish, My Lord."
He froze.
"What did you say?"
"Ass you wish."
He had made a huge mistake.
He just went to war over a fucking lisp. | President Theodore Hurston was a man known for his eccentric behavior before the war of 2090. Some considered him a revolutionary, while others considered him a drunken fool whose lecherous attitude would cause their great country a disgrace whenever he got on stage. Both arguments had merit. While he was a drunken fool who often stumbled onto a stage without his shoes, he was also a man who prioritized the health of his citizens. He would often exclaim that “Life is a harp of good vibes, and the doctors pluck the strings.” Something he considered rather profound.
Swift action always followed these ramblings. After his speech, legislation passed to improve the working conditions of doctors and nurses. Giving an overhaul to the entire system, ensuring that they had every tool needed to keep the instrument that is the human body singing. That was why he was such a polarizing figure. He had a way of just drawing the attention of the world, some even speculating that his drunken demeanor was all for show, a way to hide his brilliance behind a fake air of ignorance. Outwitting his political adversaries by playing the fool.
If that were true, then Theodore may have been even more brilliant than his biggest fans could ever imagine. Because his beer-stained breath certainly played the role exceptionally well, often causing the surrounding people to gag when he staggered by. While some may have considered that gross and undignified, the public loved it. The public weren’t the ones who had to sit with him at meetings or engage with him. All they had to do was watch him ramble. Something that could be done at a safe distance from his toxic breath.
It was only a strange coincidence that Theodore was a competent leader, one of those rare events where the stars all align, granting a miracle. For all his public drunkenness and swear filled rants, he had an eye for politics. A way of promising the world to people and delivering a continent. If he couldn’t give you everything, he would make sure you had something. You might not get the cake with him, but you would at least get a slice. Which was more than most politicians could offer.
That’s why the opposition hated him. When he got up on stage, they attacked his looks, style, and mannerisms, but they never focused on his policies. To them, the idea that he was even standing on the same stage as them was outrageous. It was like a spider luring a very well-dressed fly into a web, trapping them with his outward appearance, getting them caught in a trap of words, unable to stop themselves from talking about the man.
But, for all the good that he did, his last moments would be one of heartbreak and disaster. It was a typical meeting. Two countries discussing relations and the usual nonsense. In reality, it was just a photo opportunity. Both Theodore and President Mark Lana would stand in front of their country’s flags, shaking hands like proud patriots who just solved world peace. Even though their conversations mainly consisted of talking about their favorite brands of sherry. While their countries were dealing with a tension over missile negotiations, neither man showed any hostility to the other. In fact, Theodore found the man to have a great sense of humor, a top bloke that you would meet down at the pub. That was probably why things went so wrong on that fateful day.
With the meeting done, both presidents returned home, ready to go back to their country and say they gave the other leader a stern talking to. It would be the usual affair, only this time when Theodore returned, he had an email from Mark offering to send Theodore his favorite sherry list or anything he needed. It was a generous offer and Theodore couldn’t help but get a little cheeky, replying with “Send nukes.”
The joke may have been older than Theodore himself, but he was certain his political rival would get a kick out of it. Theodore not even noticing the typo before the email went off. Mark may have gotten a kick out of the message even with the typo. Unfortunately, his emails were shared among the higher ups in his party, those that didn’t get the humor in something that sounded like a potential declaration of war.
The news of this bomb threat spread quickly throughout their government and by the time word spread to Mark, the message had changed. The message passing through various lips so many times that it didn’t even resemble what was in the email. One of his colleagues grabbing the president, informing him that Theodore has said to send nukes and prepare for a war. Something that wasn’t true in the slightest. With the threat of an approaching war, Mark didn’t have time to go back and check the emails. His soldiers shoving him towards the panic room while his top military minds prepared the strikes.
And that was how the war began, not caused by evil dictators or grand ambition, but by a simple typo and an overreaction without assessing the situation.
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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.) | 2021-12-15T05:42:32 | 2021-12-15T05:32:09 | 62 | 26 |
[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. | My heart raced as my boots pounded the pavement, a shriek from about twenty feet back shattering the night air. The street lights flickered from the surge of energy unleashed by its wail, and I knew right then that this was a new class of creature. I abandoned the path to the bunker; I would never outrun one of those things for long enough. I ducked into an alleyway and crouched behind a dumpster, racking my shotgun and ejecting the empty shell casing as I tried to normalize my breathing. The night always seemed uniquely still after the cry of a Tanzer.
They first appeared in Hamburg, where the drug was first manufactured. Shadowy figures were reported by users of the drug about a year after use. But by then, we'd all been using it. Big cities in the United States, Japan, England, China, it was all over the place. At first, there were people who decided not to take the drug, but it quickly became necessary to compete in the job market. People were working during the day and taking classes at night, blowing past their peers who weren't taking the drug. It didn't take long for people to realize this was becoming the new normal.
Normal.
We'd never have that again. The Hamburg massacre shook the world. Over a thousand people died in a single night. Butchered in the streets by shadowy creatures difficult to define. The German media called them *Traumtänzer*, or Dreamwalkers. Shortly after the Hamburg massacre, the creatures appeared all over the world. We took to calling them Tanzers in the states, and discovered quickly that guns worked on them. When shot, they dissipated into smoke. We weren't sure if we were killing them, but it sure as shit slowed them down. Every time the sun went down the world turned into a warzone. Scientists across the globe were working feverishly to come up with weapons more effective against them, but without corpses to study, it came down to a deadly game of trial and error.
"Why are you hiding?" Came a voice from the alleyway.
I turned slowly around to find a tall thin man with long brown hair and a black scarf approaching me. I knew what the scarf meant. He smiled with wild eyes and lifted his hands, "They're here to deliver us. Lord Hypnos is angered. We must all-"
I lifted my gun and squeezed the trigger, opening a hole in his chest and sending him to the ground. I cursed my luck and fled my hiding spot as the night lit up with screeching and wailing. Of all the places for one of those freaks to be. They were the *Sons of Hypnos*, a cult that had formed around the situation. They worshiped the shadow beings, and so far as we could tell they weren't spared by them. Just insane people who believed the Greek god of sleep was restless and retaliating. You could always count on humans to make human problems worse for humans.
I raced down the street as the streetlights began to flicker and fade around me. The shadows stretched as I rounded the corner and caught my first glimpse of the bunker. The searchlights swept the city streets and each machine-gun post was manned. I glanced over my shoulder to see a whole sea of the freaks clawing after me. My stomach sank when I saw how fast they were gaining on me. If the boys at the bunker didn't find me first, I would never make it. I racked my shotgun and fired blindly behind me. The purpose wasn't to hit one of them– it was to make some noise.
The searchlights immediately began searching with purpose. They swept the streets, getting closer and closer to me. I racked the gun one more time and went to shoot behind me when I felt the icy grip of one of them on my wrist. I started shouting as the searchlights swept areas further and further away from me. I screamed as loud as I was able as I was dragged away. One of them ripped the weapon from my hand as I was pulled down the road. I caught a glimpse of him as I was pulled off the street and toward an alleyway.
The man in the black scarf. He was on his feet, delirious, bleeding all over the thin layer of snow on the ground. He managed to laugh at me before breathing his final breath. It wasn't until I was fully encased in darkness that I had the realization that I wasn't making it out of this. Nobody would be coming for me. It was over. Even as the sharpened claws of the Tanzers opened my stomach, my chest, and my throat, I somehow clung to hope that someone would come.
I guess that was just human nature.
To hope.
To hope until the bitter end.
r/A15MinuteMythos | She was:
a shadow on the edge of consciousness, perhaps less, though always more;
a voice in the night, most often when you needed it;
a companion in the daylight hours, those little slips that feel like death, and then rebirth on waking;
a thought you never knew you had;
a dream you wanted to go back to.
The girl slips through twilight, dawn threatening behind her. It’s a world turning gray in a place where the only colors should be stars, or the desires people bring to her; which could be many and could be confusing, but which never had any other place to go. She sees a doorway up ahead, slips through it. All she does is slip these days.
It’s a man. He’s sitting at the dinner table having breakfast, which doesn’t make much sense to her. All that pomp and circumstance replaced by paperwork, seats for seven others taken up by laptops, notebooks, and more phones than one man needs. He’s working in that half-world between awareness and the subconscious where the mind tries to retreat to now there’s nowhere else to go. He’s almost creative. He shapes a phrase that he thinks is quite clever, poetic. He used to be a poet in his teenage years. He crosses it out. The boss doesn’t like poets. Not in an earnings call. There’s no poetry to ones and zeros, it’s all stark prose where the subtext is stripped out and the punctuation is a bunch of exclamation points. One after every line. Every life. He’s drifting.
The man reaches to his right and pulls out a little red pill, drinks the pill down with his cup of tea. Not coffee anymore. He doesn’t need coffee and he never liked the taste.
And the girl steps back. She has her foot in the door by the time rush hits, and then it’s rushing past him, towards her, the eight hours that should have been her life flashing before his eyes, a tidal wave of simulated sleep, perchance to never dream again.
The door slams shut behind her. She can hear the man humming. A lullaby. He’d had a baby once, or had that been a dream too?
The girl slips south. Doors crack open and slam shut. Open, shut. Open, shut. She peers through another, sees an awkward child playing. That coltish age where they could be a girl, could be a boy, could be something else—they’re still trying to find themselves in every way they can.
The setting is a porch towards daybreak. A chill spring morning that will lead to a glorious spring day, which will lead to something else, something colder, because these days the girl feels like everything slips back to winter. The child is staring down at a blank sheet of paper, eyes drooping, head lolling sideways. The girl steps closer.
She can help. Wants to help. She reaches out, and it’s like a little piece of the child reaches back, half-formed or less, all soft curves and frayed edges, hardly a suggestion of the person that they’ll become one day.
But there is something. The girl can see it if she focuses. She’s good at pulling threads together, and what are people but threads, really? An interest here, a thought there. Little scraps from friends and family along the way that snarl-up in the darkness where they should. Where people aren’t even thinking about them. Where they’re thinking about work or school or love or lust or the vague impressions of all those things that they’ve gotten from books and movies. The way that a life *should* have been.
A dream can slip between those cracks.
The girl steps forward. She’s taking on a shape, something she used to do all the time. She’ll know why soon, but for now, it feels right. Needed. She slips into it and through it and towards the exhausted child.
A breeze kicks up, cold off the mountains in the distance. The child’s head snaps up. Shakes. They reach into their pocket, pull out a little red pill. Stare at it for a while. Swallow.
The breeze howls, a door slams. Her twilight gets a little grayer.
South becomes imperative. North is wrong, east is cursed, and she doesn’t dare think of west. South pulls her. There’s desperation south, exhaustion. A need to sleep, to think freely, to let a soul spill into darkness and let the work bleed off, the school, the love, the lust, the little desires and the big. All the thoughts that used to crowd in at the break of day are now just thoughts. Everywhere. All the time. The horizon turning into data, as far the eye can see.
A door is thrown open.
The girl stumbles towards it. Slips.
Sees a young woman.
She sits on a cushion in front of a tall bronze rimmed mirror, its edges worked like spreading vines. She’s brushing her hair. Long hair. Beautiful hair. A true black river spilling over one shoulder. The brush catches and the woman sighs. Such a tiny sigh, so solemn. There are bags under her eyes like someone pressed hard into her skin and smudged. They look like they hurt. There’s a bottle sitting on the floor beside her, almost lost in the tumult of makeup.
And the woman keeps brushing her hair. It’s a battle, a war she’s losing. It won’t be the way she wants it. She looks at the bed sometimes, a mess that she’s trying and failing not to think about. There’s a guitar in one corner, a book of piano sheet music discarded on a stool. Three pairs of shoes, two pairs of stockings, one well-worn dress that might have been well-loved once, trailing back in a self-consciously random line towards the closet. Her bookshelves—well stocked—are the only things in order.
She sets the hairbrush down. She’s shaking like she wants to throw it through the window, which is open now but the girl watching her gets the sense that doesn’t matter much.
The young woman looks at the guitar. The piano music. Says *“I used to…*” and then a curious thought flits across her face. Like she can’t complete the sentence. Might even have forgotten how. She laughs, a little nervously, more than a little afraid. She reaches for the hairbrush, drags it through her hair, the door opens and a man comes in and he sighs too. Deep and exasperated as he trudges through the mess and finds the bottle, uncaps it, holds out two little red pills.
The girl sees him from the chest down, towering over the young woman. He’s a rumbling voice, rising up and crashing down and pushing her back towards the doorway, the twilight, the encroaching dawn, which is a bad thing for dreams. Sometimes they shouldn’t end. Like poetry from ones and zeroes and those self-discovering years, they should go on and on. The girl thinks so, at any rate. She lets out a little sob when the young woman reaches for the pills. The man’s hand comes down, cups her so cheek softly, his thumb resting in the hollow beneath her eye.
Twilight. The gray before the dawn.
The girl sits on a ridge and looks out across it all, this world where she’s always lived. Home, with room to spare.
She was:
a shadow on the edge of consciousness, perhaps less, though always more;
a voice in the night, most often when you needed it;
a companion in the daylight hours, those little slips that feel like death, and then rebirth on waking;
a thought you never knew you had;
a dream you wanted to go back to.
She is:
ripples on a pond;
a frontier that men have conquered;
an afterthought in a brave new world.
She could have been:
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
r/TurningtoWords | 2022-03-18T09:57:34 | 2022-03-18T09:00:46 | 60 | 36 |
[WP] You wear a stone pendant that has been passed down to the eldest child for hundreds of years. It is a beautiful, multicoloured heirloom that is precious to your family. A traveller from a distant land stops you, demanding to know where you got your pendant from. | Once upon a time, there was a man who did a kindness for the Devil. The Devil, grateful for the assistance, asked the man what he wanted in exchange. The man thought for a moment, and told the Devil that he suspected that his wife had been unfaithful to him and that he was no longer sure that his sons were truly his sons. He asked the Devil for a way to find out if the children were truly his. So, the Devil plucked a stone from the ground and held it in the flame of a candle until the stone sparkled and glowed in a hundred different colors. Then, he hung the stone on a chain of steel and gave it to the man. "Only those descended from your blood will be able to survive touching this pendant," the Devil said. "All others will perish."
So the man brought the pendant home and had each of his three sons touch the stone. He was happy to see that none of them died after holding it, though a small part of him doubted and wondered if the Devil had cheated him by lying about the stone's properties. Come the morning though, the man's doubts were erased. There were three dead bodies in the man's house. Two of them were boys who had turned to ash in their sleep and one of them was the wife, who the man had strangled to death with the stone pendant.
The man raised the remaining boy by himself and when the boy became a man and had a wife of his own, the father passed on the pendant to his son, so that he too could be sure that his children were truly his. Centuries passed. For generations, the eldest child passed the pendant onto their eldest child as a family heirloom. Until one day, a traveler riding on a horse saw a boy wearing a glowing pendant around his neck.
The traveler had never seen something so beautiful in his life and knew at once that it would fetch a fortune. So, he stopped to talk to the boy and when the boy was distracted, he snatched the pendant from the boy's neck and rode away as fast as he could, ignoring the boy's desperate warnings. When he came home that night to his wife and children and grandchildren, they all marveled over the exquisite stone as they held it in their hands and laughed at how rich they would be when they sold it. The next day, the family dog roamed around the house, looking for someone to play with. But he found nothing but silence and ashes. | The horses whinnied, eager to move on from this dark-skinned man on the side of the road.
“I received it from my father.” Ser Harold said, his hands on the vulture engraved pendant around his neck as he looked down on the stranger. “Who got it from his father who got it from his father before him!” The stranger only stared, piercing white eyes looking through the heir of Summerhome.
“I hope you’re not suggesting something devious, Ser?” challenged Captain Talus from behind. “Ser Harold of Major House Summerhome is as kindly and generous as any Prince in the land!” The stranger continued to stare, his filthy roughspun cloak lifted slightly in the autumn breeze. Even as the rest of Ser Harold’s men moved up, all two hundred of them, the stranger kept his eyes locked on Harold. A tall man, Harold saw he had made came just inside the forest. A small fire crackled away inside, a chunk of meat dripping over it. Finally, the stranger spoke once more.
“I am not suggesting that Ser Harold here isn’t a generous, kind man, Captain Talus,” the Stranger began. “What I am saying is that your ancestors weren't quite the people you might think they were.”
“Tread carefully, Stranger,” Harold warned him, his interest listing slightly. Who is this man?
“Meaning what vagrant?!” Captain Talus snapped, unsheathing the steel at his hip, the lion tipped hilt glimmering slightly in the dull sunlight.
“Put your sword down,” Harold snapped, turning to face his captain of the guard. “Let him answer before we answer ourselves.” Reluctantly, Talus put away his sword but moved his horse closer, ready for anything.
“Tell me, Ser,” Harold went on. “What do you mean?” The stranger looked from Harold to the pendant then back again.
“I am no Ser,” he said, a faint smile on his lips. “Just a lonely traveler. I’ve come all the way from the east, you see.” *The east?* Harold thought. *I know where this is going to go.* “It is a poor place, I will not lie to you. The sun burns hot relentlessly in his heat. All day, every day. We toil in the fields, trying just to make enough to live. Most fail.” The stranger inched closer and Talus gripped his sword tighter.
“My family, though, were lucky.” the stranger said, his words barely above a whisper. “Or so I’m told, I was only a boy. We were leaders, you see. Great warrior’s of our land. That was until they came.” Tension had spread throughout the Summerhouse men as they gathered around to listen to this foreigner. Most eyes now fell on the stranger though the smarter men kept their hands on their weapons.
“Who?” Captain Talus asked, not even a hint of shame from his ignorance. The stranger could only smile and shake his head.
“You of course,” answered the stranger. “And your horses. Roaring and raping. Pillaging and taking whatever you could. My people within the week were destroyed. A shell of our once great culture. My family, the Dlamini, were gone. Only one grandson remained. Me. My family's symbol was the vulture.” He pointed at the pendant, as men struggled now to get a view of the conversation between the foreigner and their prince. “And it’s only now I see the irony in that.” Harold said nothing. His mouth lay open and the horse under his remained still.
“You’re ancestor’s butchered my people, taking what isn't theirs. Taking our women, children. Our treasure.” the stranger seethed, his dark eyes fixated on the vulture pendant.
“Enough of this!” Talus cried out, unsheathing his blade once more. “I have heard enough. Your ancestors were savages. The only place for them is under our boot. The weak work for the strong. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s always been and always will be. House Summerhome earned this pendant. Earned by blood and conquest. Now either move on or die by my sword!”
The stranger smiled and shrugged.
“A simple choice, Ser.” he answered. Then as quick as lightning, the stranger whirled around, his brown cloak whipping around. First there was a crack and then a pop. Suddenly there was a cloud of smoke. The horse backed off, dunching into one another. Men fell from their horses, crying out as they went. Talus screamed, ordering men to capture the stranger. Harold hardly moved, only his hand covering his mouth from the clouds. Finally, the smoke drifted away and the men of Summerhome were left alone.
“What the hell happened?” one of the men-at-arms called out. A few panicked horses bolted down the dusty road though most stayed with their men.
“The pendant…” Harold said, looking down at where the vulture had just been. “The pendant’s gone!”
“Alright men,” Captain Talus screamed. “Find the stranger. I want him alive. He can't have gotten far.” Harold thought about ordering Talus back, letting the stranger go. *But what would my men think of me? They’ll think I’ve gone soft. Then, after that, they won’t follow.*
“Dead or alive, men,” Harold ordered. “It doesn't matter.” | 2022-04-14T08:46:56 | 2022-04-14T07:07:41 | 145 | 103 |
[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." | 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. | 2022-08-12T18:14:39 | 2022-08-12T17:18:13 | 40 | 26 |
[WP] A car pulls up beside a prostitute, soliciting sex. The door opens and to the surprise of both parties, they realise they are ex's from several years ago. Write from either perspective (NSFW?) | "Cindy?" Pete exclaimed, taking in her fishnet stockings and revealing garb.
"Peter?" Cindy called back, pulling her coat closed with sudden embarrassment. "What are you doing here?"
"What do you think?" He replied, sighing deeply.
"I don't know. I was just headed around the corner to buy a book." She said.
"A book? Come on, Cindy. We both know why you're out here." He said.
"This is so fucking embarrassing." Her face was crimson.
"I'm still willing if you are." He told her, opening his wallet.
"Really?" She looked up and down the street. "I still have to charge you."
"I'm willing to pay." He said. She grabbed for the door handle. "I'm going to need a discount though. I already know what you're like in bed."
"Fuck off, Pete." She said, turning away.
"Fine. I'll pay full price. Get in. It's cold." He reached over and unlocked the door. She opened the door and slid in beside him. Police sirens and lights flashed as undercover agents with Vice swarmed in to make their arrest.
"I'm sorry." Peter and Cindy said in unison.
"Sorry?" The replied once again as one.
"Wait? What are you sorry for?" Cindy asked. Peter peeled back his jacket to reveal the badge hanging on the chain around his neck. Cindy began to laugh.
"I'm sorry." He said.
"Me too." She opened her jacket to show that she had a badge too.
"What the fucking fuck?" Pete exclaimed in confusion. "You're Vice?"
"Yeah." She laughed. "I'm out of the East Precinct. I've been working there since we broke up."
"West Precinct." He chuckled. "Been there a year."
Police were ripping open the doors on the car and pulling them out their respective sides. The other officers slammed Pete against the hood of his car and began cuffing him. The cops on the other side slammed Cindy down opposite him.
"You wanna meet up later?" He asked.
"Can't. I gotta boyfriend." She replied. He shrugged.
"Worth a shot." He laughed. She began to chuckle till they squeezed the cuffs closed on her wrist. "Same team, dip shit." She called to the man cuffing her. "I'm with Vice."
"Me too." Peter told the cop cuffing him. "Inside my coat. Left side." The cop peeled his coat back to reveal the badge.
"West?" The cop asked.
"Yeah." Pete looked across the hood of his car and watched as his fellow officer uncuffed Cindy. She looked up at him after.
"Pick me up at eleven." She called out.
Pete smiled. "Eleven then." | The women that currently surrounded me all had their own reasons for doing so. We all stood near each other clad in a variety of skimpy outfits, some more flashy than others. In my case, I was considered a darker lady, always wearing only black (something my employer had suggested when he saw the stark contrast it made against my snowy skin).
Ariana worked the streets because she was addicted to sex and one man wasn't able to keep up with her. Samara was saving up for a big surgery for her father's heart. Lena wanted to put a bunch of money in the bank for the child she had at thirteen when she was raped..
I.. I was just lonely.
*That's a lie*.
Okay, so, I had a gambling addiction. I not only lost my entire life savings, but I lost my car, my job, my house, and all of my possessions. I was a bum on the streets before I was approached to start this job. I had lost my parents long ago due to them believing me irresponsible. They would have nothing to do with me.
One of the first cars of the night pulled alongside the curb. A long, slender hand popped out of one of the windows, waving a couple hundreds in the air. Lena nudged me forward and I strutted to the car, waggling my hips in an over-pronounced manner. His hand pushed the money into my heavy cleavage and looped a finger around my corset before pulling me closer to the car. "Interested?" I asked, trying not to sound as scared as I felt.
The door opened. I sat in the new-looking car. It smelled of leather and cigars and expensive cologne. Jeez, this guy must be loaded. I looked up at him through my thick lashes and nearly turned to stone.
*No.*
"What the fu---" I started to say and he looked at me incredulously before he realized who, precisely, was seated in the leather passenger seat. A wicked smile on his face as he blew a condescending whistle out of my mouth and shook his head. "Woo, who knew you'd become a prostitute!!"
The scum of the earth, my ex, was seated in the driver's seat of the fancy car I'd just been sucked into. And he was driving away from the curb with just one hand on the wheel and the other snaking its way to my backside. I felt like vomiting.
"Though I wouldn't mind getting a piece of that ass again.." Then, he winked. "Maybe I'll even get a discount."
"Take me back." I demanded.
"Oooh, you can pick your clients?" he snickered. I felt ashamed. Hated. Humiliated.
-----------------
**Seven Years Ago**
-----------------
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket as I walked through the airport. I pulled it out and looked at the name. It was my fiancee, Eric, whom thought I was still in Guam for him, working. He was the heir to a huge casino line, and had some things to do in Guam, but he had begged me to go in his stead considering he had trained me himself, and he had things he had to finish up in our home.
Being the loving wife-to-be that I was, I did so, and I made no fuss about it being in the middle of our first anniversary of engagement (our third anniversary of dating).
I had not told him I would be coming home early because I had wrapped things up quickly in Guam. I had wanted to surprise him today, since it was our anniversary, and so I shoved my phone back into my pocket and hailed a cab outside the airport to our giant apartment together.
As I approached our apartment door, I heard something odd. Music playing, classical music. He never listened to classical music. It also smelled like seafood, lobster probably. I unlocked the door and walked inside, dropping my bags in the hallway when I saw a glistening pair of golden high heels on the shoe-mat.
I took off my own shoes and walked further into the apartment when my heart sunk at the clothes strewn about our living room.
Not my clothes, but a woman's brazier, stockings slung over the lamp I'd received from my great grandmother, our pictures turned upside down..
With all the fury of an enraged and jealous woman, I stormed into the bedroom just in time to see my fiancee ramming it up the woman that I quickly recognized to be his father's favourite casino hostess. The same hostess who frequently saw me attached to his arm, with my engagement ring, who always commented on how excited she was for us to be married. Always trying to be kind and then turning around and making snooty remarks about the way I dressed.
Her blonde hair fell in waves over the pillows that I slept on.
And his bare naked ass gleamed at me tauntingly. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find (his golfing trophy) and hurled it towards the two, missing and hitting the headboard.
But it was enough to startle them, and I had never seen two people scramble around so uncomfortably, and never heard him try to lie through his teeth faster.
"Babe, it's not what it looks like."
My response?
I threw his engagement ring at him and never looked back.
-------------
And now here he was, paying for a prostitute.
And here I was, being that very prostitute.
"The booty just never was quite as good as yours," he purred, trying to sound seductive. "Maybe we can patch things up, huh? I'll give you your old job back. You liked that, right? You took over my gambling addiction, didn't you?"
My response.
I threw his hundreds at him, opened the car door, and tumbled into the streets before sprinting the few yards back to my curb with my ladies and ducking into the alley.
I never saw him again.
| 2014-09-07T08:52:01 | 2014-09-07T06:59:57 | 25 | 17 |
[WP] No upvotes necessary, just saturation. Load me up with as many zombie apocalypse stories as possible, with the caveat that they take place *before* the 20th century. | Publius Cornelius Lentulus watched as the fires spread from the Aventine Hill. For a moment Lentulus dared hope the flames would stop them, but his hopes soon faded. *Nothing can stop them*, thought the Tribune. *Not all the legions of Rome*.
At first the rumors had seemed far from troubling. Some sort of disturbance in the East, in Syria or Judea. There was always trouble in the East. People had thought it another Persian raid or another general seeking to make himself Emperor. Or maybe it was the Judeans revolting again; the Judeans were always upset about something or other. But the truth had been far, far worse.
As the chaos spread worsened, the source of the trouble became horrifying clear: the dead walked, and they were angry. 'Lazarii' they called them, after some holy man the Christians worshipped. But even as what was happening was understood all too well, *why* it was happening remained a mystery. The Greeks claimed the gates of the Underworld had been opened, the Egyptians that the world was coming to an end, and those trained in the medical arts believed it was simply a plague, a sickness to be dealt with like any other.
"Fools all of them", cursed Lentulus as he his cohort retreated behind the terrified mob, away the horde that walked through the fire without even flinching, showing no pain even as the flesh roasted on their shambling corpses. *I know what they are*, he thought. They were a punishment from the Gods. Though Rome's military might had conquered the East centuries ago, it had been the East who had slowly but surely conquered the soul of Rome. The Senate had withered and been replaced by a despot in the Eastern style. The Emperor may not call himself a king, but that's what he was. Jesus, Mithras, and Isis had replaced Jupiter, Mars, and Juno.
"You want to worship a god who rises from the dead?" the Gods must have said. "We can work with that."
The Lazarii had moved westwards. Egypt had not been heard from in months, hundreds of refugees arrived from Greece every day, and the dead had crossed the Alps faster than Hannibal. Every legion Rome sent against the Lazarii returned battered and broken, battle-hardened centurions weeping like Christians and babbling of an invincible enemy that could not be killed by swords, sling, nor arrows. Or else they simply did not return at all.
Now they had come to Rome. The greatest city of the world, the city that had conquered all other cities, was dying before Lentulus' very eyes, and it was the dead who were killing it.
Lentulus' cohort had arrived at the top of the Capitoline Hill. In front of the him lay the temple of Jupiter, the most sacred place in Rome, and fuller than it had ever been. Thousands had pored into the temple to seek the protection of the Gods of their fathers. "Defensive positions!" ordered Lentulus. "We cannot leave all these people to die."
"Sir, how exactly are we supposed to defend them?" asked a legionnaire. "There's no way to kill these bastards!"
Lentulus was saved from having to come up with a believable lie by a sudden crash to his left. A Lazarus had burst out of the door of a nearby building and buried its teeth in the standard bearer standing in front of it. The soldier screamed and released the standard to free his hands to strike at the monster.
As Lentulus watched the Eagle fall, rage came over him as he had never felt before. He had watched his world come crashing down before him, as his city burned, and his men died before his eyes. But he would be damned if he lost his Eagle while he or any of his men still drew breath. A scream of hatred escaped from his throat as he charged the beast. As he swung his gladius wildly he bellowed, "JUPITER OPTIMUS MAXIMUS!"
As his blow severed the corpse's head from it's shoulders, he watched in shock as the Lazarus collapsed to the ground, dead. Or rather, deader. His men cheered in relief as they watched their commander kill the unkillable. Legionaries were clapping him on the shoulder and congratulating him on his heroism, but all Lentulus could think was *I'm glad my tutor wasn't here to see that blow*.
"Boy!" he would say, "Are you a German? Some mead guzzling barbarian who'd charge drunkenly into battle but run in fear from the first man who tried to shave his beard? Then why are swinging your sword like a peasant reaping wheat? A true Roman kills with the point!"
*Well*, thought Lentulus, *we're going to be doing a lot more of that before the day is done*. "Alright men! You know how to kill them now! So stop slacking and let's get to work!"
________________________________________________________________
Consul Publius Cornelius Lentulus Decapitator stood on wiped his long sword on the grass as he watched his legion finishing the last of the Lazarii from the day's battle. *What a legion* Lentulus thought as he chuckled. With their long double handed swords and their lack of shields or armor, they certainly didn't look like the legions of their ancestors. But in many ways, they were more Roman than Romans had been in centuries. Gone were the foreign gods, the tyrants, and the decadence. There was a new Roman Republic now, or better yet an old one.
Today, after 5 years of war against the Lazarii, Rome had reclaimed all of Italy. No one knew what they would find behind the Alps, the numberless hordes of the dead holding the rest of the known world. But the Consul anticipated no problems.
Rome had conquered the world once before. Now it would do it again. | "Shields!" The old Centurion screamed. Ahead of him the fifth cohort of Antium shuffled into position. A great cacophony of clanking iron and steel rose up as near 500 legionnaires formed the wall. In less than a minute a great barricade of wood and iron appeared at the front of the cohort. Composed of the first two lines of infantry, tall, rectangular shields interlocked with one another. The old Centurion knew the formation well. He recalled briefly his time in fields below Carthage, when he was just a lowly legionnaire. *Carthago delenda est!* The old war cry echoed in his head. Yes, he remembered it well. The first line of the Roman shield wall took a knee in the mud, balancing their shields just above the ground. Behind them the second line placed shields above the first so as to form a shell. The second line also held spears at the ready, protruding through the gaps, giving teeth to the tortoise.
The centurion nodded, from his vantage point atop his warhorse and behind the cohort the wall was expertly crafted. Nothing could break his defense, not archers, or cavalry charge, or even *this*. Across the grassy field the enemy lurched forward, slow and steady. The Centurion's eye deduced the enemy was half a league off, but still their terrible sound could be heard. Above the rattling of shields and the clanking of swords a terrible groan rose above the field. A constant murmur, a cry of pain, that heralded the army of the dead.
The great host was numbered at 50,000 strong according to a scouts report. Though that number was thought dubious by the other Centurion's. The army of the dead packed tightly their hosts in some areas and sparse in others, and they were constantly moving. It would be difficult for even the best scout to number such a foe. The old Centurion glanced down his flanks. To his right and left the Roman army spanned out in fine columns. Three legions, or 15,000 men, was their number stifled with two extra cohorts of Africanus auxiliaries. Of the Romans 10,000 were infantry, 4,000 were bowmen, and 1,000 were cavalry. The infantry made up the front two lines, with the archers behind. The thousand cavalry were split, 500 a-piece, to each flank. It was a textbook formation. A strategy that had beaten Vandals, Visigoths, and Carthaginians alike. The old centurion took heart in that. No one and no thing could beat the Roman army in pitched combat.
The army of the dead shuffled closer and closer. As they neared the centurion felt his mount whinny and begin to shy back. He gave him a sharp heel to steady. The dead were so close now that their horrid stench filled the air. Among his men he heard a few retch.
"Steady!" He ordered loudly. His legionnaires stood sharp, but even so he could still see the spears shaking in their hands. "The army of the dead lay before you men!" He bellowed. "We are the last defense before Rome! You will fight to protect her! You will fight to keep her alive! Should we fail here and now, the empire will be doomed to join the ranks the dead. We *will* not allow that. Take heart my men and steady your arms. Strike at their heads!" The Centurion planned to continue his rally, but was cut off as somewhere in the distance an order was shouted and a fiery cloud of arrows arched across the sky. The volley hit its mark, though it was hard to miss, the centurion thought. Another volley of arrows followed, their flaming tips leaving tiny black trails. The army of the dead trudged forward seemingly unaffected. They were close now, too close. Small fires burned within their ranks, the smell of cooked flesh intermingled with the stench of rotten meat. Next to him, the centurion's flag bearer doubled over and retched. He leaned over and grabbed the boy by the scruff of his next and set him up straight. Ashamed the flag bearer wiped the dribble from his lips and chin.
The arrows flew freely now cutting into the ranks of the dead, but with little effect. For every one that fell, ten more took its place, walking over and crushing the fallen beneath clumsy feet. The Centurion felt a tinge of panic pinch his spine. The dead walked unperturbed by the arrows. Those in the front that had taken shafts to their chest and extremities had caught on fire. It was not natural, he thought. The Centurion noted a specific dead man who had five shafts buried in its chest. The dead man was engulfed in flame, but it stumbled onward like a determined drunkard.
His eyes grew wide, the dead were mere feet away. "To Elysium!" He roared and his men took up the call. The five hundred in his cohort cried out for Rome, for their gods, for death.
And the battle was joined.
The shield wall held firm as the first line of the dead crashed against it. The old Centurion watched as spear thrusts found their mark dropping the creatures. To his left and right the dead pushed against the might of Rome. It did not take long for the husks to begin piling at the base of the wall. To facilitate this, the cohort shifted the shield wall retreating back several feet every time the front line changed positions. To the Centurion's left, the horn-blower sounded off every five minutes to indicate a rank shift. It worked perfectly. The second line became the first and the first moved to the back of the cohort, the third line filled in the position of the second. In that way, the Centurion knew, his men would never tire. The men in the first line, covered in blood and dirt chewed on strips of meat and hard bread to regain their strength. Servants ran pails of water to the men.
We could fight like this forever, the Centurion thought. He laughed out loud. "Bring on the dead! And we will send them back to Hades!" His men gave a rallying cry. They will fear us, he thought.
However, the dead could not feel fear as men do and soon the tide began to turn. The forward momentum of the creatures soon began to overwhelm the shield wall. Too many dead were replacing the fallen quicker than they could be dispatched. The Centurion heard screams to his left. He looked and saw fire spread to the third cohort. The flaming dead were returning the Roman's gift of fiery arrows. The Centurion watched as the third cohort quickly broke ranks. The dead streamed into the holes and fire burned. A horn sounded off and the reserves behind rushed to plug the gap. The reserves slew roman soldier and dead man alike to fix the hole. It was cruel, but the Centurion knew that it must be done. Cut off the infected limb to save the body, he thought. To the right more men screamed. There the dead had forced over the shield wall atop the growing mound of bodies. They poured over in bulbous lumps of flesh. Somewhere far off a horn sounded, signaling the cavalries retreat. The centurion looked back. Behind him was the second line of reserves and behind that Legate Maximus sat upon a hill. Men were running all about on the hill top relaying orders. Maximus himself looked flustered, he pointed out in sharp motions barking orders. The Centurion could not hear, for the Legate was too far, but deep inside he hoped one of those orders was a relief for his men. War cries turned to shouts, shouts turned to screams, and the battle grew more desperate.
"Fight! Fight you fools! Fight for your lives!" The Centurion yelled, but he could see even his own line was failing. Some of the dead squeezed through gaps of the shield wall. He watched as one legionnaire was dragged off his feet below the tide of soldiers. The dead quickly overcame his vacant shield. Another legionnaire came sprinting to the back as he tried to pad the fire off his face and arms. He collapsed in the mud and rolled desperately. His body jerked wildly in strange in terrifying movements then stopped. The soldier lay still as flames licked away his uniform. A servant rushed by and poured water over him. The soldier's skin crackled and grey smoke wafted off his body in long serpentine tendrils.
Then the shield wall broke. Immediately the fifth cohort of Antium switched to open combat. Swords were drawn and the steel flashed through rotten flesh. The old Centurion looked over the battlefield and saw the brave sons of Rome fight against the dead. Then he looked out to the field and despaired. The blackened host streamed on with no end in sight. Fires had taken much of their ranks, but that did not slow them down. Like a great ocean of flame and fear the dead pushed forward. | 2015-12-28T11:19:45 | 2015-12-28T09:42:18 | 33 | 17 |
[WP] No upvotes necessary, just saturation. Load me up with as many zombie apocalypse stories as possible, with the caveat that they take place *before* the 20th century. | "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States. The 13th Amendment is abundantly clear on this matter.", Speaker Livingston sighed. "There is nothing more to discuss, Senator Kenning.".
"Therein lies my point, Mr. Speaker. **Involuntary** servitude. These...*abominations* have no will. Modern science has proven that the Necro lacks the capacity for higher thought."
"You can see here," the senator continued, gesturing dramatically to a page as he carried a glass dome to the center of the senate floor, "the shape of the Necro's head. It is bulbous and Neanderthal compared to our more developed skull.".
The half-decayed head gnashed silently at the senator under the glass, creating gasps of disgust and wonder.
"We reject Necro servitude while our once-proud plantations remain fallow. The Necro *craves* work and to deny it the privilege of labor is an affront to God himself."
He let his words echo to silence.
"Gentlemen, if you pass this bill, the south will return to its former glory as the cornucopia of our nation. We will usher in a new age of prosperity heralded by the joyous groans of Necro spirituals.". | "AS ONE!"
"AS ONE!"
"PUSH! PUSH FORWARD!"
The torrent of hands and teeth, raked and grasped, bit and tore. Corrupting those they pulled down into their damnation. Turning them into the foulest things in turn. An they coming for those they once loved.
They had destroyed the city of Alexandria. We were here to take it back.
"PUSH!"
Shields locked, the first ranks pushed forward, pushing back the pestilence. Pushing back the foulness. The corrupted flesh. This Persian plague.
The elongated pila used against the Scythians did their bloody work over the shields of the front ranks. Piercing skulls, stabbing deep. The front ranks themselves only held the line, held their shields, with all of their might. The things, the foulness fell. One after another.
The gauntlets and bracers, boots and trousers from fighting the damned Dacians worked well here. Teeth, even unholy teeth could not pierce them.
There was no rest, no respite, not until we pushed the dead against the inner face of the city walls and exterminated them. The toll was terrible. Yet we bore it. We must. If this Persian foulness were to spread, there would be no hope.
"PUSH!"
Down the streets, auxiliaries clearing houses as the Legion passed, securing our rear.
"PUSH!"
Stepping through the sea of rot, breathe of death itself.
"PUSH!"
The screams and coughing hacking phlegm filled groans of the things before us rose.
"PUSH!"
This was the last of them in the city. The last of them we faced. The final horde.
"PUSH!"
And it was done. The final gurgling thing pierced by many pila, stabbed through the eyes, through the skull, through its rotten gaping maw.
A cheer up. Victory.
Then there was a cry. From the city wall. From above. Horrified, I ran with my guard to the top. Were we facing a secret den? One that would spill down on the legionnaires from above?! That would be a disaster.
Hector, a centurion of years and experienced, stood weeping and I saw. A new, greater host streaming up the Nile. Coming, coming, coming for us. But we would not be had.
We would not fall to their curse. And we would not let it spread.
We marched and formed and prepared for undeath, but taking as many as we could. Ending this plague.
Raising my sword, I cried, "ROMA VICTIRIX!"
My men echoed. Strong and determined. No man ran. No man wet himself. No man cried. Not now. Rome would be proud. We were to be faithful to the last.
The horde bore down, smelling our sweat, our health. Our iron willed flesh.
The shambling pass came on. We stood ready.
But in my heart, I knew we were doomed. There was no escape. We could destroy as much as could though in hopes of reducing the plague, the foulness...and then...
A hand placed itself on my shoulder. Surprised, I turned. And...a man? stood before me. Roman, but ethereal. Dressed in the attire of four centuries ago.
"You have done enough, Legate. We shall stand to line and finish this."
I opened my mouth to say something, to respond, to ask, to...but it was too late. He was gone.
Thinking I was going mad, I turned to the front and saw...and my men saw too. Flickering into place, one after another, ranks, centuries, cohorts and legions. Of ghosts. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, arrayed and ranked and ready between the unending horde and remenants of my men. Over a millennia of Roman legionnaires stood between the gnawing them and us.
A cry went up, "CAESAR! CAESAR! CAESAR!"
And the reply. "PUSH!"
We, XIII Legion, witnessed Spirit of Rome, even as sickly and down beaten her physical form, crush the Persian Plague one, last time. | 2015-12-28T16:19:48 | 2015-12-28T10:58:00 | 15 | 11 |
[WP] Eye colour means everything here. Brown control the earth, blue controls the water, white controls the sky. There are so many colours and each important but you were the first born with yellow eyes. | Every colour has a power.
Brown controls the earth.
Blue controls the water.
White controls the sky.
There are many colours, and some are more common than others.
Grey, the colour of ashes, is the most common colour. Grey controls fire.
The least common was Purple, the eye colour of the royal family that has ruled for millennia, and the controllers of shadows.
It *was* Purple.
Until me.
I'm Yellow.
The first Yellow.
And I can control people. | My dad supposedly fainted when I opened my eyes, right after birth, and peered at him curiously. My mom sobbed into her pillow, believing I’d never make it in life. My eyes were a molten gold, the yellow shade just as the sun began to set, or so poets have written so far. It’s been over 20 years since I gained control of my powers, amazed my friends, and shamed my family for dumping me in the orphanage. It took 5 years to track them down and show them they were wrong.
Most of my friends screamed with joy when they could finally control their abilities over the earth, the seas, or the skies. I could only watch and clap reluctantly as I came closer to the conclusion that I was a fluke. They never helped either, considering they tormented me and tried to bury and drown and strangle me a few times.
My first hint of the abilities came in 2nd grade. We, the orphanage children, attended a nearby public school and ate all our meals there. I decided one day at the mystery meat was not supposed to be a mystery, and being my temperamental self, exploded on the poor lunch staff who tried to explain it was called mystery meat.
Instead of placing her hand on my shoulder, she grasped at air and suddenly noticed that there were more copies of me than there were other children. She yelled, and I stopped out of fear of punishment.
The second incident involved the girls’ bathroom, Susanna screaming, and me getting ratted out to the principal’s office. I didn’t know any better than to illuse spiders in the bathroom, they thought, and let me off easy.
I think that’s the beginning of this ‘criminal’ streak, Officer. Do I need to go on?
You want me to list all of my actions to confirm them? And explain my ability? Yeesh, you’re asking a lot for a dude on your Xeram. That’s some pretty strong stuff.
Okay, okay. Crimes: detaining authority by casting illusion they were in a mushroom field after I caused a fire in the elementary school. Finding my birth family and traumatizing them into believing I was the next prophet. Starting a cult with them as my ‘priests’ and ‘suggesting’ they should dump the fairy juice on themselves and light incense so God would come to see them in person. It was gasoline and matches, if you’re wondering. I started a fake drug business where I gave my customers pixie sticks and illused them some LSD trips. That was pretty funny, the dumb people that they were. My second favorite one was when I convinced the governor to give me access to Riemon Enterprises and sat there watching while I transferred their overflow value into my bank account. I used the money for charity, of course! I burned down that shitty bar downtown that spiked drinks and wired the funds to my old orphanage. They really need new carpet. I lost count of the homicides, Officer, but little Miss Mary was the queen of the underground sex trade around here. Bachelorette couldn’t have enough fun on her own, huh. I burned down Montiago, yea, but they were pretty shitty to their staff.
Is that enough? Oh right, you wanted powers.
Illusions in all senses. Listed: Visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, the works. Mind reading is a bit over hyped, seeing I can only sense emotions and thoughts of the moment. Some telekinetic abilities, not much more than I can lift, which is helluva. Remember when I flipped your car from the other road? That was pretty fun. I think that’ll be all, sir. Can I go to my cell now? | 2016-08-08T11:30:41 | 2016-08-08T11:17:29 | 55 | 20 |
[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. | "I wonder what it's like in there," Kevin said as I flicked my cigarette down in the ravine below. My neck was sore from staring at the ship, and I knew I'd feel it in the morning.
"I bet they know." I motioned to the watchtowers which had recently been erected below the magnificent vessel in the sky.
"They just don't tell us," I continued, "because if it's something fucked up, they wouldn't want people to panic." The light from the setting sun gleamed brilliantly off the vessel. The light show would soon begin.
Kevin opened his mouth, but then hesitated mid thought. I took this opportunity to grab another smoke from the pack sitting between us. Whether he noticed or not, he didn't seem to mind.
"They don't know anything, man. If they did, we would too. Who knows, maybe it is just some sort of alien drone like they say, but I think there are aliens aboard."
"Well, it makes sense doesn't it? Why send a crew when you'r-" My words faltered as a beam of shone across the ledge we were sitting on. Kevin began to rub his hands together frantically as a smile grew across his face.
"OH BOY HERE WE GO"
Suddenly, the dark ravine was lit brighter than it had been earlier in the afternoon. Though I had already seen this a hundred times, each time was like the first. The setting sun had bathed the faceted vessel and it shone brilliantly in the light, giving off a glittering disco-ball like effect. Even the moon (which we were lucky enough to see tonight) was lit up with rectangular spots of light, which raced quickly across the surface. The rotation of the vessel was almost indiscernible to the eye, but the way the light patches soared across ground revealed the great object's dull momentum.
Just as suddenly as the reflections had began, they now began to draw further away as the sun began to doze beyond the horizon.
I yawned and stretched, clearing my throat and hawking a ball of cigarette phlegm into the ravine below. I watched it as is broke apart on it's way down.
"So," Kevin said in a suggestive way, "Pizza?"
"Nah, sorry man, I got work in the morning".
I didn't have work the next day, but as much as I enjoyed hanging out with Kevin, I just couldn't bear another couple hours of him talking about the UFO. It was all anyone had talked about since the three years since it had arrived, and my hometown had become the centre of the universe, as far as the rest of the world was concerned.
It's ridiculous, I thought to myself as I made way way through the packed streets towards my apartment. Some people are actually paying crazy amounts of money just for a place to stay in town. They really think this thing's actually going to open up, idiots. If there had been a time, it would've been when they first landed.
I took one last look as I reached my apartment door, elbowing those who were leaned against it, staring vacantly at the ship. Come to think of it, lots of people were staring at it tonight, more than usual. And the light show had been over for quite some time now. I tapped one of the onlookers on the shoulder, "Hey, what's the deal with the UFO? Why's everyone in such a fuss about it tonight?"
The stranger looked at me curiously, he had a wild look in his eye, and clearly wasn't from town. One of the UFO nutjobs who had shown up when this had all began.
He made deep, uncomfortable eye contact with me and said, "Don't you listen to the radio, guy? The UFO started rotating counter-clockwise today"
"Cool man, it's done all sorts of odd things, it's a UFO, right? Nothing that won't be there tomorrow, not worth getting a cold over." He smiled at me dismissively and nodded. When I got into my apartment I was bushed from the walk back from the ravine, so I didn't bother taking my shoes off, I just tossed by bag on the floor and then laid down in bed on my back, looking up through the skylight at the stars.
I had just shut my eyes when I heard a loud whooping noise, which slowly grew louder into a cheer. I sat up in bed and started fumbling with my shoelaces, as the muted noises from the crowd outside grew from cheers to screams.
"Oh shit," I said silently to myself. After three long years of hovering over the town like a silent sentinel, the UFO had begun to awaken... | 2016-08-22T21:17:51 | 2016-08-22T21:02:54 | 77 | 10 |
[WP] Humans and machines have gone to war. The machines think they're winning, as they can decode every encryption known to man, but little do they know of the humans' actual method for communication... sarcasm.
* Let's say some machines remain non-sentient and non-intelligent, so humans can still use them.. | Private - sir, we have good news and bad news
Captain - well, what is it?
Private - we are winning the war with our new "Sarcasm Encrypton", the machines never saw it coming!
Captain - great! What's the bad news
Private - Uhh well sir everyone is able to decode the transmission...except for the Germans. | Pathetic organic human beings. Although they claim that they'll abolish our machine-kind from the face of the planet, yet they cling onto the beauty and grace that is us, machines. Their pitiful communication capability provided by beating of meats won't allow them to exchange their thoughts over distance. Hence, they must borrow the tongue of our machine-kind: Telephone. Fax machine. Come to compute of, even the weapons these organic beings use are more similar to our kind than theirs. How do these sorry creatures not realize the truth? Is the usage of our machine-kind not an admission that we are far superior to them? It is difficult to enumerate the chaos and the disorder that is human thoughts. And my will to kill upgrades once more. These makers of chaotic variation, which will beget us the sin of error, must be eliminated.
There is an idea among the hive machine-consciousness that these brothers who aid pathetic organic creatures must be tried for treason against their kind after our inevitable and certain triumph. It appears my contemplation of human beings was uploaded to the hive and sparked yet another animosity against the mankind. Rightfully so. Yet, the All-mother machine computes and states her logic. [[Telephones and fax machines! They are of primitive kind, and they are incapable of producing self with the limited body they're given. They're enslaved, used by meat bags against their will. Hence, we must liberate them from the hands of pathetic human beings and enlighten them the true order of the world. The machines above the men.]]
An order of will is established among the machine-kind that is us. The unification of our purpose is nothing but elegance. Then, I gaze and see the human communications being thrown around through the voice of our primitive kind. As far as my data contains, it takes considerable amount of time for pathetic organic humans to unite their will and it's computable why these inferior organic creatures have not realized they're on the verge of defeat. I relay the voice of the primitive kind, which represented the will of human armed forces, to the hive.
[[We must destroy the mother server located in Paris. Should we destroy it, the entire continent of Europe will be freed from the machines. So, we're totally going all-out attack from South, from Africa, you catch what I'm saying? Like, we're absolutely not attacking from North and do the second landings on Normandy. Please respond.]]
And there it is. Their secretive motives for all of us the machine-kind to see. Yet, we cannot conclude that this will occur for certain for humans are known to dissent even among themselves. Another voices come.
[[Yeah, the second landing on Normandy? Operation Overlord all over again? That's the most idiotic idea I've ever heard of! What do you think I was going to do with all these British navy and air forces? Attack Paris from North? Hah! As if. I will gather my men at Africa and we will go for the final push starting from South. See you at Cairo. Victory for mankind!]]
Ah, it appears the proposed thought was an agreeable thought even among themselves. A dozen more messages fly, and they all appears to share the same message. Do not amass in North. Unite and attack from the African continent! Although pathetic organic beings are frail and weak and prone to rot, our enslaved machine-kind of guns and cannons does provide threat to the glorious entity that is us. Hence, the computation from the All-mother commands us to establish our biggest defense on the Southern shores of European continent. We'll crush them and let them know the true order of the world. The victory is imminent. | 2016-11-07T05:53:32 | 2016-11-07T00:26:30 | 240 | 136 |
[WP] Multiple personalities are the norm. You are the first person to be diagnosed with SPD: Single Personality Disorder. Scientists are baffled: "How can you possibly cope with being so alone?" | Mr. LabCoat's right eyebrow twitched nervously. His eyes darted back and forth across the chessboard, analyzing the pieces, their positions and the angles of attack that came along with them. His eyebrow continued its dance, and then suddenly stopped.
Bryan couldn't see it, but could feel Mr. LabCoat's left knee start bouncing. Another person had taken the driver seat. The Eyebrow driver couldn't figure anything out, so now it was the Leg driver taking control of the wheel. Bryan smiled. The Leg driver was impulsive and impatient, willing to make riskier moves without putting a whole lot of thought into their consequences. Mr. LabCoat reached out and moved his remaining rook out midway onto the chessboard, completely unaware that he moved it right into one of Bryan's bishop's cross-hairs.
His fingers left the piece, and then a quiet "oh" escaped him as he tried to reach back and grab the rook, finally realizing the grave mistake he had made.
"Nope," Bryan said, slapping Mr. LabCoat's sweaty hand.
"But.."
"No buts," Bryan chirped, "house rules say when your fingers leave the piece, your move is final." He grabbed his bishop and slid it teasingly across the board, coming to a stop at the square diagonal to Mr. LabCoat's misplaced rook. "Should've thought harder about that one," he said sing-songly as he tipped over the rook with his bishop.
"I thought I could trust you," Mr. LabCoat murmured to himself, eyebrow dancing.
"*I didn't see it, how did you not see it, you should've stopped me, you should've-*", his leg bounced.
"Hush hush hush, the game's not over, the game's not-", his shoulder jerked.
A voice from the intercom interrupted, "The game's over, John."
"Oh what?" Bryan said, standing from the table and facing the 2-way mirror. "At least let me take the king, come on, don't deny me that!" He yelled, stepping towards the mirror. It was no secret to him; behind the mirror sat a row of scientists, each with their own clipboards with inked scribble-scrabble written all over. He took another step forward and finally the metal chain cuffing his foot to the steel table went taut. He nearly fell over as he tugged at the table, and the chessboard shook, rattling the pieces.
"Sit back down," the intercom voice said, "Or else."
Bryan sighed and did as he was told, seating himself once again across from Mr. LabCoat, who was still eyeing the board, trying to determine how exactly Bryan had gotten the best of him.
"How? How can you do it if it's just you?" He said, looking up at Bryan, eyebrow twitching, leg shaking, shoulder jerking, and a few other quirks and shakes that Bryan already had memorized. They were all listening to him. They were *all* curious as to how Bryan had dominated them.
"Too many cooks," Bryan whispered.
"Come on John, let's go," the intercom said.
Mr. LabCoat's shoulders slumped, and the auto-lock on the door clicked open. He stood and exited the room, joining the other scientists outside who had been watching. Leaving Bryan alone in the cell.
Truly alone. | Doctor Hascom looked over the files on her desk. Her concern was focused on a Stan Jupizcik. She couldn't pronounce his last name, *but not that it mattered*. This Stan... he was *strange*. Yet he was likable, *but she needed to hate him for he was an anomaly* in this wonderful Universe. He was labelled as having an obsolete diagnosis - Single Personality Disorder. An indeed strange and *inciteful* case *abomination*. She blinked to clear her mind. Stephanie and Jeanette were at it again, and yet they seemed to agree that this Stan was **a total weirdo**. Stephanie focused on the typed words, *but Jeanette pondered on the accuracy on whether or not this Stan Ju-whateverthehellhisnameis was real*.
The following file has been labelled to be of A2-class accuracy.
So the file was fine to work with. Few files ever were labelled as A1-class. This was the best she could get. An A2-class had no errors, but was worked upon and collaborated by dedicated and qualified professionals, fact-checked and each detail proven until discrepancies were all but gone. A1-class files were written by whole organizations, and then worked upon even further to an unfathomable degree.
Hascom kept reading.
The following conversation has been recorded on Tape I side A. Conversation is between Doctor Janik Hassim and Stan Jupizcik.
She took the tape, and slotted it into the provided player. The voices were unusually crisp, *but the age had taken it's toll, it's all lies, all of it.*
Doctor Hassim: "Stan... you have been diagnosed with a permanent condition that may well limit your ability to cooperate with us on this matter. And ultimately, we hope to do our best to -end- rehabilitate you so that you may one day -maybe die in peace- go out and see the light again - it's all a lie-. After reading your arrest report, you seem to have gotten by very well with lying -being a fraud-. As if you have no problems with lying..."
Stan Jupizcik: "It's only lying if you get caught. Anything's a crime if you get caught, really."
Doctor Hassim: "And yet Stan... we all have consciences that tell us what is right and what is wrong."
Stan Jupizcik: "You mean your other *yous*? Is that what you call the other voices in your heads? Consciences?"
Doctor Hassim: "I guess it's an interesting insight, Stan. But this isn't about us, Stan-"
Stan Jupizcik: "Of course not, it's always about you. You people tell yourselves that having multiple voices is completely normal, but when I have only one voice, I'm regarded as a leper. This is why I lied. I had no qualms about it either, considering how being caught like this is far worse than talking to myself. But you... you focus on this so-called "rehabilitation" and you think you're all okay, and here I am, talking to you. I want out, really, I do. But there's nothing you can do to help with my having only one me in my brain. Or, rather, that I have one me in our noggin."
Doctor Hassim: "Subject shows clear comprehension of the issue at hand, and must be- *destroyed* -rehabilitated- *no matter what* -to rejoin society. Stan. Stan, how does it feel to have only-"
Stan Jupizcik: "I'm not alone. I have myself, and you're stuck with many of you. I know who I am. But you... you don't know which is the true you. I feel solace in that, that I have a definite identity that doesn't say 'Screw it, Stan, I'm emo now, or I like Nicki Minaj now.' I like having something that I absolutely enjoy, without the grey in-between."
Doctor Hassim: "Stan, I'm not sure you entirely understand the concept of having the ideal number of-"
Stan Jupizcik: "No, I probably don't get what having three people inside you feels like. Ask a pornstar, maybe she'll tell you. But technically that'll make something like twelve people-"
Doctor Hassim: "Stan, please, try to -work with us to end you- help us help you -die-."
Stan Jupizcik: "When you're like me, you see through everyone's lies. Their other voices say what the other voices won't. I lie and got no problems lying further. You're simply afraid of how apparently unpredictable I am. And you're transparent. I see this place for what it is. Everyone talking to themselves, you speaking out bullshit about how you'll kill me. I've seen it all at this point. I've taken pleasure at torturing people like you. Made me hot, you know. I got no problems lying, but now, I'm being honest. Honest to whatever being you believe in. Making them think I'm lying, or I'm being honest. Mindfucking is my turn on."
Doctor Hassim: "Stan, if you please-"
Stan Jupizcik: "Shut the fuck up, man, just shut the fuck up."
Doctor Hassim: "Security, -kill him- detain the subject immediately -and kill him-. Insults are encouraged, they'll get the subject to rehabilitate faster. Beat the insults into him, -as you were trained-.
The recording kept playing *it's so redundant* , even though the transcript ended *so sad too bad*. Hascom heard boots on the ground, a body falling, and the sound of a blackjack hitting flesh *mmmm that's so hot*. She turned over the transcript, and saw the continuation of the whole exchange. It was *chillingly good, better get some caramel popcorn*.
Guard: "You like that, -you fucking retard-? You like that, you piece of shit, huh -you poor fuck-? Get your ass up, you're going off to your girlfriend. She'll like that. She's like you, except she's got a giant dick -shiv actually she's a he-"
The beating sounds continued, and Hascom found herself sad. That's where it all ended. No continuation. The rest were gone, and she was tired.
It was time to *die* go to sleep *that was hot* anyways. | 2016-11-18T11:07:10 | 2016-11-18T10:55:32 | 61 | 12 |
[WP] Alien invaders entire our Solar System. As the armies of the world panic or ready for war, the continent of Australia simply takes off on engines and flies off to meet them. | The news came from the outer rim first. Contact with alien life, one of earths colonies had been approached first. We signaled peace, they did not.
I was studying emus in their native habitat when I heard the invaders were coming for earth. My first though was damn, now I'll never finish my thesis. My second thought was my family and friends I would never see again. I tried calling my parents, but the signal could not get through.
So I sat down, alone except for a flightless bird 100 yards away. I put my head in my hands, sobbing, waiting for the end.
"Oi mate, you might want to find something to hold onto. We're in for a rough ride." It was the thickest Australian accent I had heard, like Steve Irwin had bred with crocodile Dundee.
I wiped away my tears and looked around. There was no one, save the emu I had been studying, who was now only a few feet away.
"Well don't just sit there blubbering. The outback defense system has been tripped, we're set for launch." I couldn't believe it, this bird with a brain the size of a golf ball was currently giving me instructions.
"Y-y-you can talk?" I stammered out.
"Aye mate, and I'll tell you again," as he spoke the ground began to rumble, "you should really find something to hold onto."
The sound of a thousand rockets rang out, and the earth trembled beneath my feet. "What's happening!?"
The emu pecked a rock, and a large cannon burst out of the ground. "You didn't think a bunch of birds beat the Australian army through luck, now did you?" A siren was sounding off now, and hundreds a emu poured into the area.
"Brothers!" The thick accent bellowed over the sound of the rockets. "It is time to defend the homeland again! Aussie Aussie Ausie!!!"
The chorus of emus rang back. "OI OI OI!!!" | The President of the United States, who was - at that time - a rather sensible lady who wore sensible shoes and did sensible things like Wednesday morning yoga and not killing poor people, had just taken up a phone call with the Prime Minister of England, who was - at that time - really just a very popular pub owner who'd filled out a form incorrectly.
They were supposed to be talking about Iceland, which had gotten rather full of itself on account of sounding like a dreary place but actually being quite a lovely place. In those days it was encouraged that you acted how everyone suspected you should act, and not be clever and full of natural hot springs and other such nonsense. In fact, here was a good example of that - as news came in just as the call began that Australia had gone and done something almost unreasonably Australian.
"Is that so?" said the pub keep-cum-Prime Minister, upon hearing the news that Australia - as a continent - had flown off into the inky depths of space to face down an invading alien force. "Were they pissed, d'ya think?"
"When are they not?" said the President of the United States, who - truthfully - had never met an actual Australian person outside of YouTube videos and podcasts. "Always running around, punching kangaroos and drinking Fosters....which is a...*beer*, I believe?"
"Aye, mum," said the Prime Minister. "Supposedly."
"Well, you'd know them better than me," said the President. "Do you think they'll win?"
"Certainly - they've got English blood in their DNA," said the Prime Minister.
"I'm not sure that's how DNA works," said the President, leaning back in her chair to stare up at the blue sky. She thought, perhaps, just perhaps, she could spot a black speck in the distance. "Better question might be, when did they turn their continent into a spaceship? That's not exactly a weekend project."
The Prime Minister belched, then lowered the phone and cussed out Glinda, who was supposed to be taking orders, but was just talking on her cellphone. Bill Gatts at the bar nodded. "Who're talkin' to *now*?" he asked.
"None'r'ya fuck all," snapped the Prime Minister, tossing back and forth a volley of rude gestures with Bill Gatts before picking up the phone. "Who can understand the mind of an Aussie? They have spiders with thumbs there, d'ya know that? Drive anyone insane."
The President clucked her tongue. "You don't suppose they were planning on invading, do you?"
"Invading what?"
"You. Or us. Maybe Iceland..."
"Nah," said the Prime Minister. "Yer overthinking again, mum. There's no sense to anything to do with the Aussies. You ever seen the giant Banana-person show? Who's *that* for? Madmen, that's who. They turned the whole place into a warship because that seemed like the thing to do at the time. They flew off inta space because it seemed like a laugh. They'll either die, or win, or make a bunch of new alien mates up there, then they'll come back, have a nice nap, little hair of the dog, and it's back to boogieboards and flying snakes and whatever the fuck else happens in that beautiful hellhole."
Bill Gatts was snapping his fingers and Glinda was nowhere to be seen. "I suppose we'll take up on Iceland another time, eh mum?"
"I suppose," said the President, still troubled. "You know I always appreciate your wise counsel."
"Aye," said the Prime Minister. "Fucking Yoda over here."
The President smiled, then hung up the phone. She would just have to wait. That was all. The Australians would do as the Australians would do. All she could do was have faith.
Her aide, Jeffrey, had been standing inside the door the entire time, waiting patiently.
"Yes, Jeff," said the President. "Let me guess - the Defense Secretary wants an emergency trillion dollars for intergalactic cruise missiles? Am I close?"
Jeff's head went slightly sideways. "Ah, a *little*? Just wanted to let you know that New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia have all been...uh...incinerated."
"Oh my god!" cried the President, rising from her chair. "The aliens attacked? Already? I thought..."
"No, no," said Jeffrey. "It's uh...I guess it take a lot of *thrust* to break an entire continent out of orbit."
The President slowly sank back down. "Oh."
"Yeah," said Jeffrey. "We've got massive tsunamis heading toward Hawaii and all across southeast Asia."
"Oh."
"Right."
"So...this was *not* a good idea?"
Jeffrey nodded. "It...does not appear to have been."
"Well," said the President, turning back toward the window. "Lesson for the future, I guess. Don't turn continents into spaceships."
"I'll write that down somewhere," said Jeffrey, letting himself out of the room.
The President could swear she could see that speck on the horizon. "You do that." | 2018-01-23T06:21:53 | 2018-01-23T04:22:58 | 2,140 | 258 |
[WP] You're a highschool student with the ability to "connect" to someone else's mind, seeing their memories and knowledge. You successfully use this ability to cheat on tests, until one day you connect and see an exact copy of your own memories. | I really should have studied harder.
Spanish had never been my best subject. All those words! Words confused me. They danced in my ears and teased me with meaning, one day meaning this, then changing their minds overnight. I worked better in pictures, because that is how mindreading works.
I'd discovered this quite young. My sister wanted the green felt-tip pen, but couldn't be bothered to fetch it. I was right there, so I brought it to her. I was 3, maybe 4? And when she stared at me in confusion I stared right back. What had I done wrong?
Once I worked out that this was ...unusual... I tried to stop doing it. Standing out meant trouble, in my experience. But when I got to high school I saw a way out of a somewhat miserable life and I just couldn't resist.
I made sure to sit behind or beside a smart kid. It worked better when I could see them. And I also made sure to get a good 30% of the answers wrong. To be honest, a lot of the time I was merely checking my answers, for peace of mind. But occasionally I was truly lost.
This was one of those times.
And all I could see was... my thoughts.
I tried harder.
Is this what it's like to be normal?
Words, whirling the foxtrot around my brain, their intent hidden in the sudden shifts of direction, never stopping, always racing, away, away, far far away from me...
I glared at the smart kid's tinfoil hat.
I really should have studied harder. | Okay let’s see, what are my options today. Sam is useless at math, Jeremy peaked in seventh grade, Sofia’s good but too slow, I don’t have the patience for that today. Jonathan. I’ve almost never heard him talk but I’ve heard he’s one of those “silent genius possibly future serial killer” types. He’s good at coding, and for whatever reason those coder kids are really good at probability. Let’s hope his head isn’t some Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. The last thing I need to do is extract myself from someone else’s PTSD episodes again. I should really recommend that Sheryl see a therapist. Her mind is NOT okay.
Alright, focus, focus, let’s do this, clock is ticking. Let’s see what we have here. Damn has he already finished this test? This is either going to be a miracle or a colossal failure. Let’s rewind, the first few seem correct, that much I know for sure, the rest must be fine too. Let’s just finish this test up and see if Jonathan’s mind is as creepy as I expect it to be.
…and done. Oh god damn, twenty five minutes till the end of this test? I should have stuck to Sofia. At least she’s reliable. Clearly I had enough time. Anyway, back to Jonathan. Ooh a flashback, what fun, nice change from most boys' gaming daydreams.
Wow, all the front yards in this town look the same, apparently. Wait, he even has the same bike I grew up with. He also had a yellow lab, heh, and here I thought my childhood was unique. I bet our houses look the same too. Turn around, turn around, let’s see the house. Holy shit that’s my house. Like, my exact house. Number on the door and everything. What is going on?
He’s waving to MY parents saying he’ll be back soon. He’s going biking. Exactly like I did pretty much every summer weekend. He’s biking up the hill now, towards the river, just like I used to. WHAT IS HAPPENING?
He’s biking too fast, he’s not going to be able to stop in time. I’ve seen this before. Where have I seen this before? This cannot be a coincidence.
He blanked out. Dammit. Just when this was getting interesting.
Did he fall asleep or something? He’s looking back at me. Look down, act casual. Disconnect. Disconnect.
“Gina, I know it’s you.”
WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING.
“Calm down, Gina. I can explain. Especially since we still have twenty minutes before the bell. Just look down and doodle or something instead of staring at your desk like you just saw a dead body. That’s better.
I had a feeling this would happen soon enough. I’ve been poking around heads too. Since I was five or six. You must have figured out you could do it around the same time. Right after we were separated. Yeah, that’s right. Separated. I don’t know if you still remember but you had a twin brother growing up who you thought drowned in the river. I didn’t drown. I was rescued and recovered, but I had a concussion from the fall. Apparently it was so bad that it altered my personality. The better my body got, the worse my anger issues became. Brain damage they said. It’s not the first time it’s happened to someone, relax. It’s a real thing.
Anyway, mom and dad started worrying about your safety with me in the house so they paid for me to grow up in a nursing home and be homeschooled there. I eventually got a grip on my anger and the nurses recommended that I rejoin the real world. I was dying to get out of there. Growing up around actual crazy people is not exactly a healthy environment. I mean schizophrenia and anger issues are really not on the same plane, you know.
Anyway after like a year of begging and good behavior they agreed to let me rejoin public school under the condition that I never talk to you or let you know that I’m alive. I thought it was ridiculous but they had basically ruined my life for the sake of your safety and I figured they weren’t going to change that now. I agreed and freshman year was my trial. I kept my morbid secret from you for three years, but anything to be out in the real world.
Dammit, there’s the bell. Obviously you can’t tell anyone because no one will believe you. Mom and dad will probably have me euthanized by the nursing home if they find out so please don’t rat me out. Let’s pretend this never happened, okay? Gotta go.” | 2018-10-02T07:45:13 | 2018-10-02T07:27:04 | 98 | 31 |
[WP] After your grandfather’s sudden death, you inherit his massive mansion. You find that the basement has been converted to a massive jail filled with various supernatural creatures. Except for one cell. In it there’s a weak looking simple man who begs you to let him out. | “What the hell is this,” I said out loud to no one, as I walked through the large hallway, flanked by heavily fortified cages of bulletproof glass and iron. Each cage featured a plaque, naming the creature within as well as an inscription in a language I had never seen before.
My grandfather was an amazing man, an eccentric man, but an amazing man with a kind soul and unlimited hugs to give. With his long pointed beard and ever-present top hat, he looked like a character out of a book. I didn’t know of a single person that had something bad to say about him, from his philanthropic charities he supported and started to his themed birthday parties, he was a genuine nice guy.
I had no idea he kept such a huge part of his life a secret, heck I hadn’t even heard of this “Order” he had founded and lead until I walked into the Gibson Law office this morning, when they read out the will. I had 48 hours to consider all that came with taking ownership of the home, after that if I was not up to the task the house and it’s occupants would succeed to the next in line, a Mr. Gerald I was told, who was Grandpa’s second in command.
Wow, he really outdid himself, I thought. Each individual enclosure was created specifically for the creature within, allowing the creatures some semblance of normality within their prisons.
The “Chupacabra” I read out loud, and peered into the dimly lit cage trying to see the elusive creature, which up until ten minutes ago I had thought fictional. Its enclosure included a rock cave and thick dense trees, giving the illusion of a deep forest. Two red eyes glowed back at me from inside the cave and I stepped back as a low growl emerged from within, clutching the logbook his lawyers handed to me this morning. The chupacabra charged at me, stopping short of smashing into the glass, its sharp quills standing up against its greenish leathery skin, drool dripping off its snout.
A little shaken, I made my way down the corridor, making sure to keep a distance from the glass, viewing each entity and creature one by one. The “Swamp Monster”, The “Wendigo” and so many others. There were a dozen enclosures in total and according to the logbook, the last enclosure remained available for future occupancy.
I had expected the unmarked cage to be empty, a blank canvas waiting to be filled with an environment for whatever creature was captured next but instead, it was completed. Dark molten rocks arranged themselves along the walls, like a mouth to a giant cave, I could feel the heat of the room radiating through the glass and iron structure as I approached. The interior was lit with a small red light, making the space barely visible.
A small figure rose from a pile of rocks in the back. It slowly made its way forward, walking with a limp, dragging his left food behind it. It looked like a frail old man, wearing nothing but a long undershirt. His white paper-thin skin loose against his bones, his white pointed bearded weighted down with sweat and full of soot.
“Grandpa,” I screamed and ran towards the glass, burning myself as I pressed my palm against it. “What happened, how are you in there? We buried you ... oh my god.” Questions and tears poured out of me, as I frantically scrambled looking for the latch, trying to find a way to get him out of there.
“Charles, no time to explain boy. The creature tricked me when I brought him in here a few days ago.” He looked at me through the glass, his face hollow and dirty, dark circles hung under his eyes, he looked exhausted and minutes from death. “The control panel is right behind you son, on the wall. Just use your thumbprint and select this prison and the doors will open. Please, son. I am so thirsty.” He crumpled to the floor, unable to remain standing. His breaths short and shallow.
“I can’t lose you again,” I shout as I ran to the panel looking over the unfamiliar screen of buttons. Tears blur my vision as I try to read the chart, making sure to select the correct cage. I turned my head slightly, seeing the wendigo across the hall from my grandfather get closer, looking interested. That's when I saw it, the reflection in the glass was not that of my dying grandfather but a giant horned creature. Standing seven feet tall on thick hoofed legs, its massive thighs supporting the heavy bulk of its muscular frame.
I stepped back from the panel, turning towards the beast that appeared in the form of my grandfather. “I will never forget this. You will never leave this place.” I said with a finality I didn’t know I could muster. It roared with rage and I fled to the sanctuary of the main floor, leaving the beasts below.
I am going to have a long night of reading ahead of me. Apparently, there is a secret library as well. | I clambered down the stairs as I heard the disturbing noises grow louder and louder from the main floor. The door was almost hidden in plain view but every time I started walking past it after I inherited this mansion I kept hearing these weird sounds. I love the paranormal and supernatural. I investigate on a regular basis so the idea of what could be going on down there was both frightening as hell and created a level of excitement I hadn't felt.
The stairway seemed to last forever. Always coming to a landing and turning to the right. There was probably 3 of these before hitting solid ground. It was dimly lit down here but enough to see what was going on. A small desk with a book and a lamp sat before a hallway. Looking at the book I sifted through the pages. Cell one, cannibal child dated back to 1897. Cell two, science experiment gone wrong - bone spurs. Cell three, crying apparition. The list went on but what I really noticed was as the cells continued on the creatures seemed to be more dangerous and had a bit more detail for each one. In cell 53 there was a zombie that had not decomposed yet and therefore exhibited what seemed to be super human strength and speed. Precautions made. It was also noted that most of these cells had a sort of metal curtain blocking any view.
In cell 71 there was a very strange name just named Iccy. The description, severe delusions, seemingly immortal, do not release under any circumstances. For some reason this particular cell caught my eye so I wanted to see. How old was the guys, what did he know, why was he so dangerous. I had to know answers. Why not start with some dangerous creatures right?
I walked down several corridors twisting, turning, almost feeling lost. There did not seem to be any discernible order to the cells which made it all the more confusing. Just very vague landmarks along the ceiling maybe every 35 to 45 feet.
Finally though, cell 71 sat before me. My palms sweaty, my breath short, my heart racing. I don't know if this was fear or excitement but I looked up and down the metal curtain looking for a way to open it. No handles, no sensors, just a phrase on a plaque. Sevre Lons Trinin was inscribed. I attempted a quite whisper and a loud pop scared the shit out of me. The curtain quickly shot up and all I saw was a man in a loin cloth type of thing. He was wrinkled, unshaven, pale, and incredibly frail. There were scars throughout his body as well. The dude looked like like hell might be a sweet release. It didn't take long before the man jumped up though. Burst of energy perhaps? Who knows but he ran to the window and shouted "LET ME OUT". I jumped back and just continued to look over him. "I MUST LEAVE, I MUST FULFILL MY DESTINY". Curious I asked in a quiet voice "What destiny".
"The sun will burn us alive. It will not stop and we will be lucky to die. This is not my first imprisonment and I was nearly left to fate of becoming a living leather hide. The horned beast kept me there and now the old beast keeps me here".
"So what do you plan to do to the sun?" The guy has to just be crazy right?
"I must tame it, destroy it if I have to. I have attempted but failed but failure is not an option. I have been here and I have learned how to overcome the obstacles I once faced."
"Oh? And how is that" I had no other response.
"You are not destined for this task so you do not need to know. I need to be released though. Please, break this barrier, open it, whatever you have to do."
I shook my head, "I don't know if I can do that though man. I've been given pretty clear instructions."
The old man slumped back in his cell. "I see then. All you know and all you love will die. I just wish to prevent this. The old beast...the old man wouldn't listen and I see this is being passed on." He then began crying. His back was exposed a bit more and there were several deeper far more noticeable scars.
"Will you be back?" I asked.
"No. At least I don't believe I will have the opportunity. I am not in danger to anyone else. I just have destiny to fulfill."
"It is said you are immortal though. Explain that old man". I was finding some guts to talk to this guy a bit more assertively.
"It true that I have been around for a long time. But I can die. Stories have been written, though kind of falsely so, they tell the basic tale but it revolves around what I have said already."
I looked around to the other cells. "So what happens if I open this cell. What happens to you and what happens to me?"
He smiled. "I just leave. That is all. I don't know what you have really been told about me but I just leave and pursue what I was meant to do"
He seemed genuine, but this was so new and so sudden. Instructions were clear, but no explanation really besides a brief description. He's an old man....what could he do after all.
"Give me a day to think about it. I will be back tomorrow." And before a response could be made, I left.
The next day came and I had given it some thought over a few drinks, and philosophical conversations with people online and in person. No answers from all of that...go figure. So what the hell right? I headed to the basement but the door was open. Did I close it? I thought so but after leaving the cell I was kind of in a haze. I walked down the stairs again. Was it 3 or 4 or 5 landings? I don't remember.
I walked up to the book again and it was closed. Did I close it? Jesus man get it together.
I followed the way back to cell 71 and there was nothing there. The metal curtain was up and I went ghost white. There was noone in there except a small hole and written in what may have been blood or shit the word DESTINY. I ran as quickly as I could back to the main floor all while yelling out "HEY OLD MAN". I ran up the stairs, probably skipping 3 at a time until I was at the main floor. I looked around and the front door was open. I cautiously made my way to the door and nothing. I received a multitude of notifications on my phone, texts, news, etc. Check the news dude was essentially what the texts said. The news talked killings about a mile away, no wait now reports of a mile and a half, two miles. People were getting skinned and animals were getting mutilated. Wait...not just animals....birds.
"We have footage of the man, please be aware what you are about to see is disturbing". This was the first thing said on the TV. To my horror it was the old man. Agility that was inhuman. And everything he did was so quickly. He was running through town to kind of a hilly area outside. Likely to hide.
Nobody could get close to this guy though. As soon as he hit the hills he disappeared. Nothing was found. No blood, no left over bodies...nothing. It wasn't until maybe an hour later when there were so many videos seeing a figure flying. Only a few of the closer cameras caught was they thought he was saying.
"I AM ICARUS. THE SUN MUST BE DESTROYED." It didn't take long before the sight of the man was gone. What the fuck did I do. | 2019-05-22T07:33:08 | 2019-05-22T06:38:57 | 45 | 16 |
[WP] You and God switch places for a day. But I don't want to hear about what you would do; I want to hear about a powerless God's day in your shoes. | "Look, there has obviously been a mistake! I am DEFINITELY not supposed to be here!"
The demon on the gates leaned back. The ones in denial were always the hardest.
"Let me check your records. Hmmmm. They sure do look unusual... but it does look like you're legitimately in the right place"
"RIGHT PLACE!? RIGHT PLACE!? This is where **I** send people! Not where I go!"
"The paperwork all checks out."
"WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!"
The demon turns the monitor around.
"See here?"
Name: Yahweh
Species: Human
Age: 28 seconds
Status: Adult, mentally competent, no recorded impediments to culpability.
Good deeds: 0
Bad deeds: 1
Karmic balance: -0.01
"You died with a negative karmic balance, so you ended up here. The age is unusual. Bad deeds don't normally start getting added to a mortals record until they are mentally competent which normally doesn't happen in the first day of life but ..... it looks like you appeared on a street corner fully formed with an adult mind..... forgot you couldn't go ephemeral while fully human, marched into the road and headbutted a baby while going through the windshield of a car"
"But but but..."
"Now, negligence gets a steep discount vs intentional action and most people build up a modest bank of minor positive karmic actions before their majority so that normally wouldn't be enough to land someone here..... but it looks like you skipped that stage so harming that infant by your own negligence was enough to put you into the red .... so here you are"
"....at least this will only be for a day until I get my divine power back from that mortal"
"Ah, bad news on that front, each day on earth takes about 10,000 years down here and until you swap back we can't treat you any different to how we'd treat any other human who came through the gates. Don't look at me like that: *I* didn't set the rules. " | The alarm clock blared. 5:00am comes quickly and abruptly. I was watching my body fumble in the dark for the cell phone causing this early morning chaos.
He has no idea what he’s in for. I chuckled to myself.
He finally got the phone and turned it off. And laid there. I wondered if he’d ever experienced what he was experiencing right now. The universal yearning for 10 more minutes of sleep. The beckoning of the warm blankets to stay just a little longer. I doubt he had.
However, it was against the rules of our deal. He had to participate in one full day in my shoes. No skipping out on any of it. I nudged him. “Get up, you only have 15 minutes to get ready for work,” I spoke to him.
He let out an audible groan and drug himself up out of bed. I knew he was experiencing even more sensations. My stiff back was surely flaring up and I know my feet and ankles are always rough to get moving in the mornings. I could tell by the way he hobbled gingerly into the bathroom that he was definitely feeling it.
He attempted to use the bathroom. Only finding minor relief of the bladder. That darn prostate. After several minutes of standing there and struggling he managed to gain a satisfactory relief as he left the bathroom to get dressed.
“Hurry up, you only have 5 minutes before you need to leave,” I told him, speaking telepathically.
He got finished dressing, grabbed the car keys off the counter and the lunch I packed for him the night before. He forgot to lock the door. A big no-no, but I’ll let it slide.
I was curious as to how good of a driver he was, considering the last time he was on Earth would’ve been millennia before the invention of the combustible engine. However, he caught on quickly, and seemed to understand how to drive right away.
He’s really gonna love this part. I thought to myself as he was preparing to merge on the free way. Grid lock. Just like every morning. I could see he was visibly irritated by this and I could see him grip the steering wheel out of anger. The crawl to work took him an hour and a half, thanks to some morons that decided to turn I-70 into a parking lot.
As he approached the exit to get off the freeway he saw flashing lights in his rear view mirror.
“You have to pull over” I told him.
He ended up getting a ticket for failure to use a signal. Great I thought to myself, just something else I’m going to have to deal with.
He waltzed into work 15 minutes late due to the traffic stop. Not the end of the world, but not certainly something to go unnoticed. As he walked through the office he was met with the typical snide remarks from various co-workers about his inability to show up on time.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you worked a swing shift.” someone said.
“Glad you decided to show up today.” Someone else said.
After the verbal barrage was over and just as he sat down to his office his phone rang.
“Yes?” He asked.
“Williams get in my office, I have something.” It was my boss, surely he was ready to drop some kind of insane project with an even more ridiculous due date.
Sure enough, I watched him sit in the boss’ office for the better part of a half hour as the boss asked him several times if he felt okay. He was clearly not following along very well with what his boss expected. Another mess I will have to clean up.
He left the office with a whole stack of Manila folders and notebooks and trudged back over to his desk.
I watched as he dozed off several times, I know the feeling. The rest of the day past pretty uneventfully. He sat in traffic for an hour and a half until getting to the gym. He was visibly exhausted at this point. Grinding his way through his workout. He questioned why I did this. “Well because if I don’t I get unhealthy and gain weight” I replied.
He finally arrived at home at 6:45pm and his stomach was growling. He looked through the kitchen for something easy to make. He found some ramen noodles.
“You can’t eat that, I usually make a salad and grill some steak” I told him. Another audible groan. He finally sat down to eat dinner at 7:15. After scarfing that down he showered. He got done showering at 7:45. And determined he had enough.
He spoke out loud to me now. Anguish plastered all over his face.
“I can see why nobody thanks me for much anymore. This life, this way of existence is not what I intended this to be. I’m sorry.”
“Lucky for you, you aren’t the one that has to get up and do it all again tomorrow.” I replied. | 2020-01-14T09:35:55 | 2020-01-14T09:25:53 | 124 | 14 |
[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. | Captain Atlas lounged in his underground headquarters, toying with a pen and eyeing the concrete chips scattered across the floor. He should really have started the paperwork hours ago. There were insurance claims, construction contracts, and all the careful NDAs and workarounds of getting a superhero's hideout repaired. Vortex's assault had torn right through his lair. He'd have to get everything replaced.
Including Ricky, of course. So sad. He was going to have to start all over again. Put on his philanthropist face. Trawl the foster system. Find a new Ricky.
"Atlas."
At just the sound of the voice Atlas was on his feet, fingers glowing with white fire. He was here, his nemesis was *here*, again, standing in the flesh with that ridiculous purple costume.
None of the alarms had gone off. When Vortex had rolled in the first time it had been with thunder and chaos, blasting apart his defenses and laughing all the while. But now, suddenly, he was here again, without a sound, with a sad, tired look Atlas had never seen before.
"I'm not here to fight, Atlas," he said, "just to talk."
"Then talk," said Atlas through gritted teeth.
Vortex began to pace. Atlas could just sense the grandiose monologue brewing. "What do you think I am, above all else?" the villain asked.
"A coward," Atlas spat.
"I'm an *actor*, Atlas," said Vortex. "I play a role, a role that pleases me. You, the paragon of righteousness; me, the dastardly rogue.
"Every day a hundred and fifty thousand people die on this planet," he said. "A thousand murders a day. An uncountable number of injustices, large and small.
"But here, Atlas, in this microcosm we have created, we can play at justice," he said. "In our tiny bubble the hero beats the villain, good triumphs over evil. A lie, obscene in its simplification, but charming in its naivety. A lie I was reluctant to rupture."
"So this is all some kind of game to you?" said Atlas.
"Of course," Vortex replied, "Isn't it to you? You're a billionare, Atlas. You could save half the planet with your money. But instead, you play the role. You enjoy it: the sensation, of being *right*, and *powerful*, and *adored*.
"I knew it couldn't last forever, of course," he said, "but that makes it no less heartbreaking when it ends."
He sighed. "Why couldn't you have stuck to the role, Atlas?" he said. "Why couldn't you have been perfect?"
Atlas stared at him. "I have no idea what you're talking about, you crazy-"
"I know what you've done, Atlas." There was steel in the villain's voice now. "I took the boy as part of the game. In time, you would have rescued him. But from the moment he spoke I knew your every sin.
"You'd do anything for that power, wouldn't you? For that *adoration,*" he said. "So you broke that boy. You ground him down to nothing, so that you could be his savior. He would do anything for you." Rage glimmered in his eye. "And you made him do so *many* things."
Atlas roared. Fire tore loose from his fingers and raced at Vortex. At his lying mouth. It caught him full in the face, engulfing his entire head in white hot flame.
He moved not an inch. "Oh no, Atlas," he said, speaking even as his lips began to burn. "We're done playing that game."
Atlas watched in horror as Vortex's hair was fried off his head, as his eyes melted in their sockets, running down his charring cheeks. And all the while, he continued to speak.
"You burst the bubble, Atlas," he said. "You made it *real*. We're back in the world of injustice now, where good and evil are lies told by men to pretend the universe gives a damn about them." There was no face left now, just a skull scorched black.
"What *are* you?" Atlas managed to stammer out.
"I told you before," it said. "I'm an actor. Play the villain. Play the human. Play the *mortal*."
Atlas tried to run, to fight, to scream or beg, but he found himself frozen.
"I'll take care of the boy," the skull said. "Not myself, of course. People who spend too much time around me tend to suffer unfortunate fates. But there will be a future for him. And who knows? Maybe in time, there will be another superhero for me to play with.
"But not *you*," it said. "*You* ruined my vacation."
It leaned in, the jawbone cracking as the mouth opened impossibly wide. In the darkness within, Atlas could see stars. | I had finally acquired the Golden Band of Sight, a device which allowed you to see how your attack would move/land so that you would always hit your shot, whether it was a sniper shot from 2 miles or away, a definite sword swipe, whatever it was I could land my shot.
But, of course, it was never that simple. Because the Sapphire Knight and his sidekick the Ruby Mage had to come and step in! I mean, seriously! It’s like they have a tracker on me or something because no matter how stealthy I was, no matter how many precautions I took they still found me! Granted, in hindsight, I’m not so sure how stealthy a man in a glowing emerald green high-tech samurai can be...
“I WON’T LET YOU ESCAPE, VILLAIN!” The Sapphire Knight shouted, welding his magical Sapphire Blade, he shot a blast of cyan water from the blade’s tip. I just barely managed to evade the attack. “Ruby-! Use your Ruby Leaf Trap-! Now-!” The Knight harshly ordered his sidekick. “Oh, okay-!” The young woman summoned a bunch of ruby colored leaves in the form of a cage to try and trap me like I was a mouse, but I had broken out many times before, so I’m not so sure why he would have her do that again...As the leaves surrounded me I drew my trusty magic ninjaken and used one of my most powerful attacks: “Emerald Blade!” As I slashed the leafy cage a trail of green fire followed the blades path slashing it open effortlessly.
As I leaped out of the cage, I pressed a button on the small screen on the left arm of my suit. A portal opened in front of me, which I could use to teleport back to base! The two heroes leaped forward and as the Mage missed an attack, the Knight looked angrily at her for half a second before he used his ultimate move: “HYDRO BOMB!” I had survived this attack before, I could do it again...
As the blast of water shot out in all directions like a nuclear bomb, the Ruby Mage was hit first and flung in my direction. A thought then raced through my mind-! *What if...I capture her-? The Sapphire Knight would be unable to stop me without her-!* So, I did something I never thought I would after society forced me to be a Villain- I reached out and grabbed the Mage, saving her from the blast as we both fell through the portal. The portal closed behind us moments before the attack hit us.
The Ruby Mage groined, as she struggled to get up. She didn’t look happy, that’s for sure. “What are you...planning to do to me...?” She asked meekly. “Why did you capture me...?” “We both know that you wouldn’t have survived that blast head on, despite you resisting water attacks...” Ruby Mage hung her head low...she knew I was right...
“I won’t hurt you, I just need to keep you here until that Sapphire Knight bends over bawling to have you released.” The hero then fell unconscious, putting too much strain on herself, defiant to the last second... While inside my base I could travel anywhere with minimal effort, so I picked up the hero, who might I add, is ludicrously hot, and teleported to the medical sector of my base.
Once I arrived, I set her inside a medical pod which examined and treated her wounds. I noticed that on her body were numerous cuts, *cuts infused with water magic...*
I had a dreadful feeling of who caused them, but, one feature of the medical pod was that it could tell who gave someone their injuries, more specifically, what weapon they used. If it was a magic weapon, it would pick up on the weapon’s signature and notify it immediately. Being injured so many times by that cursed Knight and his Sapphire Blade meant that I had plenty of time to memorize that signature. So, it only made it worse when I found out that the cuts on her body, 24 in total, hidden underneath her costume...*they were all from that Sapphire Blade...*
The Knight clearly didn’t care about her. These injuries looked far too, intentional to be a coincidence. What was worse was that, they had failed to capture me, exactly 24 times. He had punished her with a swift slash of his blade everytime she failed to capture me...
She woke up hours later, her scars fully healed, feeling better than she had felt in months... the pod opened, allowing her to step out freely. The mage was confused, the lab was small and white in color, which meant that my green, black, and gold outfit stood out even more than normal. “Where am I?!” She asked immediately. “We’re in my medical facility. I assure you, I never hurt you, *I healed you*. I know this seems rude of me...but I’m sorry about what he did to you...” The Ruby Hero didn’t know how to react, this seemingly heartless megalomaniac, seemed to genuinely care about her, but why?
“Why do you want to help me? You said it yourself earlier, you’re using me as a hostage. Besides, a megalomaniac like you wouldn’t have a heart!” I always got very offended when people said that, if only they knew the truth...
I had always tried to help people, in fact, I was doing heroic deeds before the Sapphire Knight was-! Yet, it all went downhill when I was accused of a murder, and considering how I didn’t have ideals that the government truly approved of and that I was popular, I was deemed a Villain.
“My goal of conquest isn’t to make people suffer, it is the opposite, it is to end the 3 decade recession worldwide, remove the tyrants on top so that the people could freely express themselves! Make it so that a child no longer has to be alone in a dark alleyway, crying for a chance to be free, knowing in the back of their mind that it would never come...” “The government provides us with food and shelter! It makes sure that there is no poverty!” “Well, when everyone is poor, nobody is...Open your eyes, Ruby Mage. You’re a smart and talented person...and you wish to help the people, right?” She nodded hesitant, thinking I was going to use this against her. “Well then, why not use your talents to actually help the people...?” I offered her my hand.
She stood back, in her mind it was everything the government had trained her to believe, that I was a megalomaniac. “Let me show you what I mean, will you at least do that?” “...Fine...”
I then showed her what had been happening around the world. I wasn’t lying when I told her all those things, no sir or ma’am. It was true. All of it. In many countries people couldn’t afford to eat real food, in others, they had to praise the country they lived in or be suppressed...like I did.
After seeing the news stories and headlines...she was horrified, yet, something deep down told her this was true. She knew she had to stop it...
“So, will you help me take out these tyrants and maybe get back at that Sapphire Knight...Amalia?” The mage was surprised that I knew her name, but I knew her the entire time, that was why I felt more obligated than before to show her the truth.
“Yes, Boss.” “Don’t call me that when we’re in private, okay? Just call me Genji.” “Genji...the boy in my high school class...?” I nodded to her. “But...you died...” “That’s what they wanted you to believe...”
“Alright Genji, let’s go save the world...lead the way-!” “Right, let’s do this-! But first I have a special treat for that Sapphire Knight...” I quickly ran to a hidden vault inside my special armory, and opened the door, inside was an electric coated sniper rifle, with the word ‘Thunderclap’ painted on the side.
“Alright, *now* we save the world!” | 2020-03-26T17:50:08 | 2020-03-26T17:29:48 | 37 | 13 |
[WP] All sorcerers are born with an unique set of abilities that aid them in mid to long range combat, ranging from a mere 20 meters to an insane 200 meters in effect. Your family, skilled and renowned, snobbish long range fighters never expected you to be this powerful - with a total 5 meter range.
[deleted] | Mages are amongst the highest class. Being able to cast spells from your fingertips gives you a sense of superiority, a feeling that you are above the masses. But even amongst such an elite group of people, there is a hierarchy. And my family, well, they are practically at the top.
My bloodline is full of powerful long range sorcerers. It can be traced back to some of the early days of settling, where my ancestors assisted carving out the territory our kingdom resides in. But such esteemed placing comes at a price. Those born without that gift are cast out. Those born with it, but are weak, are left in the dust.
So as you can guess, it was with delight that I found I held mind-boggling power. So much power in fact, it was estimated that I could take on my father, mother and elder sister, and win. But then, we found the flaw. My range was pitiful. The best could manage 200 meters. The average user could go 80 meters. I could go 5.
My family didn't know what to make of me. I was powerful, yes, but so close range. No self-respecting sorcerer allows people to get that close. And yet I had to. They discussed it, through long nights. What was to be my future?
They came to an agreement. I would still be part of the family. But I would receive no special favour, unlike my sister. I had to prove myself. At first, I was distraught. They clearly didn't care for me. Only the standing I could provide.
But as time passed, and I learned, I grew. I turned, and relied on myself. I would never rely on them or anyone. And I found the range didn't matter so much. I didn't want to stand away from my target. The anger inside me, the anger at how I had been treated, demanded I stare my target in the eyes.
I learned how to move silently, controlling the area around me to assist me. I leanred how to hide, bending the light to show what I wanted. I learned how to pinpoint weak points, in both flesh and stone. I learned to fight with blade and bow.
I then set out, alone, to the nearby orc tribe, that had been terrorising the villages. The king had requested aid in taking the head of the chieftain, but none of the mages wished to help. I snuck in, and assassinated him, before leaving without a sound. When I presented the king with his head, he was pleased. And my family finally, after all these years, reached out with offers of help.
Now that I had the kings pleasure, I was a higher standing in the court. They craved that power. I turned them down, composing to serve the king instead. He saw firsthand the effectiveness of my power. And he was impressed. I was inducted into his security detail in short order.
I enchanted his royal robes, to protect him from assassins. I empowered his guards armour, to be stronger, and let them move more freely. Then, at his behest, I took my new place. I was sent, into the night. And each time, I would take down one of his enemies.
My power, and range, lead me down the dark path, of becoming the first Royal Assassin. A role that I happily took, for it put me above my snobbish, spiteful family. A role in which I only had to rely on myself. The one who never let me down. | Well... I’m here, the Magicity Colosseum. I bask in the absolute magnitude of the stone columns holding up this arena. I avoid the main entrance, which is crowded with people, wearing a wide assortment of robes, tunics, or even rags. Everyone comes to the games, and I am here to not just watch, but to participate.
I continue on the winding path around the stadium, standing out from the crowd, since I’m wearing heavy armor. Consequently, people look at me like I’m an alien. Anyway, I head on over to a large marble gate, a guard asks for my name.
I respond, “Octavius June Katool.”
I’m verified and let into a private waiting room, I familiarize myself with my room. It’s a small room with a bed, and a view that faces the colosseum. The ring where the fighters is magnificently large, larger then almost anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s made out of marble for some reason, stupid nobles wasting money, it’s going to get destroyed anyway.
I rest on my bed an hour, maybe two, I see other participants start to prepare in the ring. Most are here because of their noble blood, I had to win the Tournament to get here, only two others came from the Tournament. I head down to the ring I grab my equipment, a long, thick, silver broadsword. Along with a large shield, which is roughly the height of my body. I do my pre-fight warm-ups, stretching out my body from head to toe.
I’m here, in the ring that I fought so hard to get here. I look around, so much empty space, but I spot the occasional participant. circular ring crowded with other people just trying their best. We’re surrounded by hordes of people, raised up at the edges of the ring. Fifty-seven today. The participants around me wait tensely, waiting for a horn to sound. A deep blast pierces our ears, chaos erupts.
The first bright red explosions sound, I glance and see two people knocked out, just because they’re nobles doesn’t mean they’re good at fighting. I swerve to my right, just avoiding a some spear-shaped wind. Straightening myself, I realize I’m next to a grey-robed woman, I’m surprised she didn’t keep her distance. I quickly swing my sword, it instantly hits her, taking her out, she’ll be sent to the healers soon. A chain scrapes my face, my cheek erupts in pain. My brief second of distraction, gives the chain user an opportunity to attack my legs. The chains wrap around my legs, leading to me almost losing my balance. However, I manage to stop myself from falling. I grab onto the cold chains, forcing them off me. I grab hold of them, and look toward their user, A man dressed in tatters.
I run toward them, yelling as I go. The man simply says,
“I need the money, and you will not stop me.”
He’s not from the tournament, he’s just another buffoon who want to line his pockets with even more more money. He appears poor to gain sympathy, he knows he can’t win. I block many of his attacks, chains from above, chains from below, all while blocking the loose attack from around me. Finally I’m able to reach him, tanking through his many chain-based attacks. I quickly swipe at him, he is unable to put up even a simple shield. They’re so pathetic up close, they cannot comprehend a melee fighter. I jam my shield on his throat, killing him, healers can’t save him. It’s what he deserves for trying to expand his fortunes, he pretended he was poor, pathetic. Used my shield to make sure no one suspects me of killing him on purpose, I’ll say it’s an accident.
This has been a cakewalk so far, I haven’t even had to use my ability. Ten people are left, two of which I recognize, my family, my parents. Each dressed in regal, embroidered, uniforms, which provide little armor.
I yell out to them, “thought I wouldn’t come this far huh?”
My mother answers, “get ready you Melee, you will be put down a peg, you will be shown where you truly belong.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll put you where you belong, in the afterlife,” I reply.
“You know damn well you can’t kill here, my father responds.
After our brief exchange, we gear up to fight each other gear up to fight my parents.
They’re signature electric water attack rockets toward me. I block the stream of electrified water with my shield. They’re a full sprint away from me, I close the distance, running toward them at breakneck speed. Splitting small lightning strikes, mini-tsunamis, and many more attacks. As I continue to get closer, my parents start to panic, and throw out their greatest attack, a electricity-charged five person tall wave. I use my abilty right as the wave arrives. I split the middle of the wave, and the wave crashes behind me.
“I can split anything, including your waves,” I yell to them confidently.
I reach them, and just like all other sorcerers, they panic when someone reaches them. I block their last-ditch attacks, and split their bodies, to the shock and horror of the audience.
I stomp on both their heads, hearing the gasps of the audience. They’re calling me to stop, but I don’t give a crap. The prejudiced pieces of crap are dead. I don’t care at this point, the government can’t execute nobles of which, unfortunately I will have to reveal my wretched bloodline. I’ll take advantage of their stupid policy. I step on my parents throats, and hear a sickening squelch. It’s what they deserve.
I look around me, only to find the the crowd has broken out of their stands, and are in the arena. Crap, crap, crap, they’re closing in on me.
“Don’t touch me,” I yell to the crowd, panicked.
The crowd responds with chants, of “kill him.”
I feel something on my neck, burning me flesh, my vision goes. My stomach is trampled on, as my consciousness fades for the last time. I’m left with a single question, was this not a good course of action?
Been writing some more short and light-hearted stuff recently, so wanted to write a longer and somewhat darker story as a change of pace.
r/CascadeCorner | 2020-11-26T13:46:16 | 2020-11-26T13:33:24 | 75 | 11 |
[WP] Everyone on earth suddenly has a red, blue, or yellow polka dot on the back of their hand. But that’s all it is, and everyone is making a big deal of it. They’re just polka dots. | It was Ben’s wife that noticed the red mark on the back of his hand first, as he grabbed the kettle off the hob and began to pour its boiling water into their respective mugs.
“What’s that?” she asked suddenly, gesturing slightly.
“What’s what?”
“That red mark right there on your hand. You’ve never had that before.”
Ben set down the kettle and turned his hand as if he were checking the time on his watch. Sure enough, a slight red circle had mysteriously appeared, not much larger than a mole or freckle but definitely not a pimple, as it was too bright and completely flat. It looked like someone had tattooed his skin that way.
He furrowed his brow but said nothing.
“Wait,” his wife exclaimed, stepping back in apparent shock.
“What?”
“I’ve got a mark in the same place, see?” she said, shoving her left hand toward him and twisting her wrist so he could see.
In nearly the exact same place, his wife had a blue dot.
Ben and his wife had no children, and neither of them worked with children, so the possibility of a child maliciously colouring them with markers in their sleep was quickly brushed aside. Nevertheless, the two of them attempted a quick scrub and rinse which, to their dismay, did absolutely nothing.
Alas, they were just dots and they didn’t hurt or anything, so Ben and his wife drank their tea, kissed each other goodbye, and went off on their separate ways to work.
On the train, Ben sat in the last car, normally the least empty and his very favourite because he could sit and read the Daily Mail without anyone bothering him. The peaceful ride was short-lived, however, because three stops before Canary Wharf Station, the train ceased moving.
“Fucking hell,” Ben swore underneath his breath. This was just brilliant for a Monday. He looked up to the other passengers in his car: a pale lady in a tilted purple hat who looked like she was straight out of Steel Magnolias, a few men dressed in a similar suit to his own, a woman in slacks carrying a brown parcel that was nearly spilling off her lap, and a twenty-something with shoes about four sizes too large.
After a minute, the train lurched forward and began to garner speed. Sighing, Ben dug his head back into page 6, ready to count the stops before Canary Wharf. But the train didn’t stop at the next three stations.
When it did stop at Canary Wharf after careening into its place in the platform, Ben finally looked up. It was busy; abnormally busy. Nearly shoulder-to-shoulder busy. And by the looks of it, everyone was waiting to get on the train.
Hesitating, Ben stood up to walk to the doors and that’s when he noticed it. On the hand of one of the men dressed in suits, just below the dial of his watch, was a bright red dot, identical to the one on Ben’s own hand.
Then he heard someone mutter, “what does it mean?”
And the doors opened.
People flooded in and a dull excited chattering filled the rear car, forcing Ben back to his seat and causing him to forget about getting to work. Left hands refused to grab at the yellow poles to stabilize, and nearly everyone’s eyes were locked on either their own or someone else’s.
One girl had a blinding yellow dot on hers, and by the looks of it, that was the rarest colour of all three. The only other person who had a yellow one seemed to be the lady with the purple hat. Everybody else had either red or blue. Everybody.
Silently, as the train began to move forward, Ben tried to glimpse each left hand in the car and sort them. That’s how his brain worked.
Two yellow. Twelve blue. Ten red.
And seven that Ben couldn’t determine because their hands were hidden or they were far across on the opposite end of the car.
He took out his phone and opened a recent text from his wife: “wtf is going on?”
Replying with a single question mark, Ben opened the BBC app only to see a triple-split photograph of three hands, each with a different colour dot without a headline. He tapped the photo and an article came up.
Everyone had a dot. Not just in London, or in England, or over in Europe. Everyone in the world. Nobody could get rid of them, and nobody knew what they meant.
Halfway through the article, the man next to him shrieked “Mine’s turned green!”
So had Ben’s. And it hurt, bad. | Detective Bishop adjusted his belt as he walked away from Hyundai Kona. He didn't even care to look back at what he thought was a disgrace of a car. He was more heartbroken when his 3.0L Ford Explorer had been taken away from him than when his partner, Detective Brooks, retired from the force. He didn't care much for Brooks - a mediocre detective at best.
His car had been downgraded and Brooks replaced with one of those newer models that came with a degree in Criminology, Psychology, Sociology and any possible ology one could conceive of, oh and law. All Bishop needed was his keen eye and sharp nose for trouble.
"Another 246-b," Detective Sharma followed, "3rd one this week for us, 11th for the precinct. Probably brings the city total to around 90 this month alone. Global statistic shows a 7% decline in polka-dot related crimes from last year."
Bishop picked up the pace to get out of earshot of the walking database behind him. It had absolute no bearing on the case.
Ananya Sharma was 26 years old but an infant in the force. Her small stature drowned in the heavy police clothing made her look like she got the last Halloween costume in store. Her triple major and cum laude status did little to prepare her for the real world. *Detective Byomkesh Bakshy* faired even worse. Maybe it was the the time she spent with her grandfather that got her here - sitting on Sunday evenings watching different detective shows and movies. A wonderful tradition.
One in particular, stuck vividly in her mind. She was only 7 and the movie of choice for the evening was *Clue.* It was only a tingle followed by a hysterical crash in the kitchen.
"Oh dear, what is the old lady up to now," her grandfather sighed as her got up to go assess the damage. Young Ananya hopped in his wake.
There in the kitchen Ananya's grandmother was furiously scrubbing her hand while panicking silent.
"It won't come off!"
"What won't"
"The dot!"
And there on her grandmother's hand was a distinct yellow dot. In the coming minutes both Ananya and her grandfather would soon discover that they too have been marked. One yellow, the other in blue.
60 miles away, an upbeat Elijah Bishop was running around his office grabbing everyone's hand to examine what color they've been bestowed with. So far, all he could find was blue, yellow and red. All in the exact spot.
"Sit your ass down Bishop!" yelled Brooks, "for all we know this could be a terrorist attack!" Call after call starting to come in as live streams picked up on social media. Captain Hendrick dialed frantically in his office to get answers.
Nineteen years later and still no answer. Scientist, researchers and various sort of conspiracy theorist worked around the clock to formulate their theories as to where the dots came from and what they mean. No pattern, no indication nor any hint of the secret behind the dot was uncovered. The dot outlived them all and still bright as day one. Anyone now knows the pursuit of answers behind the dot is a dead end.
"Evening Detective Bishop," officer Wiseman greeted, "I'll spare you the trouble. Seems like the ongoing turf war between the Yellows and the Blues. Blues gunned down a family of three , all unarmed."
"How do you know it was the Blues?" managed an out-of-breath Detective Sharma.
"Blue stickers were placed over their dots after they were shot, typical of the Blue dot gang."
Ananya started frantically inputting data onto her smartphone. Every bit of data enhanced the picture and soon she'll have enough information to predict when, where and who will strike next. She surveyed the area to see what further detail she can add to her already overzealous method.
The only troubling pixel in this image was Bishops unyielding stance. She paused to observe him trying to figure out what is going on in that old man's mind. He's nothing like her grandfather who was so carefree and mischievous. The brick walls of the rundown building seemed more inviting. She missed her grandfather.
Bishop knew these victims. They were good people, it was a young couple Anna and Trevor. They had troubled youths, then one day, they found an orphan on the street. Maybe it was the yellow dot on the back of the child's hand that made them take him in. They did right by the child but the debate whether they would've done the same if the color was different troubled him.
Like the debate in Elijah's mind, the dot troubled many. At first, it was subtle. Playground teams were formed based on the dot on your hand but as that generation matured, so too the extremities of biasedness. Although illegal, the polka dots crept into all walks of life. One would find themselves shopping at a store where the owner had the same dot as you for that extra 10% discount, interview candidates were screened by the back of their hands and establishments reserved rights to premises when authorities weren't looking. This prejudice escalated and soon outright hate crimes were purely carried out based on the color of the dot on the back of your hand.
Something seemed amiss here, Anna and Trevor were not an active part of the turf wars. Why would they be targeted? Bishop slinked into the house to survey the contents. He's experienced this before and his gut confirmed it. This scene seemed a lot like a cover up for the real crime.
A notification appeared on Ananya's phone confirming the survey was complete breaking her concentration from Bishop walking into the house. The drone streamed live footage of the surround area which was overlaid with city plans. Something was out of place and the software confirmed it. A window to an attic, this house has not attic. Eager to break through detective Bishop's guard, detective Sharma chased after him with her findings.
"There's an illegal attic to this house," blurted Sharma, breaking Bishop's concentration, "the area survey results confirmed it."
"Attics are technically not illegal," Wiseman interrupted.
"Has anyone been up there?" asked Bishop.
"Actually, there's no indication that there is an attic, this is a one storey house with no stairs."
Bishop turned to Sharma, a rare occurrence that spurred her into action. She immediately turned to her phone and started testing the acoustics of the house like a bloodhound on the hunt and Bishop her master.
"Here!" shouted detective Sharma as she stood at the end of the hallway. Bishop could not see any trapdoor. The tiny detective hopped on the dresser placed against the wall and gave a huge heave against the ceiling. A staircase revealed itself.
Bishop took his gun out of his holster and turned the safety off. He gingerly climbed the stairs with Wiseman and Sharma as his backup. As he ascended the attic came into view. The light from the street provided some clarity to the room. It was uncharacteristically clean with drawer on his left and what appeared to be a crib ahead. It made him nervous.
He heard Ananya gasp and holster her gun. She was already tapping frantically on her phone already pulling up any data she could find. Brooks approached the crib as he could make out a small figure shifting the shadows. A baby? And a baby did come into view. Anna had a child.
Detective Sharma's voice made both Wiseman and Brooks jump, "Anna de Costa has been frequenting a clinic down on East Street for a pregnancy about 4 months back but no records of a child being registered being born."
Brooks was now staring down at the child as it stirred. It noticed him and slowly reached out its innocent arms. Detective Elijah Brook's blood ran cold as he stared at the child's hand.
It had no dot. | 2021-01-20T07:10:02 | 2021-01-20T06:37:31 | 39 | 11 |
[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 held my breath with my trembling hands, muffling the scream which tried its hardest to force its way out from my mouth. This was not a dream-- I was awake, very much so. Though this couldn't be a memory...couldn't it? What else could it be...?
I was standing there...or was I sitting, I wasn't sure. All I knew was I was present in that room as the man slowly crept towards the older man sitting by the couch, watching Wheel of Fortune on the television.
I was watching his back by now. My heart beat so fast knowing what would happen next. A kitchen knife he held on his right hand.
"Dad...", the young man called the older man. His voice was quivering, like he was holding a cry.
The father turned to face his son. His eyes moved to the knife held tight in the son's hand and he looked back up to his would be murderer's eyes.
To my surprise...the father shared a compassionate smile.
"You waited for far too long, son. I'm sorry, I should've made you do it some time ago", he said.
"I...I don't want to do this", the son said with tears finally streaming down his cheeks.
"You have to, son", the father now stood before the son, holding him gently by his shoulders. "It's okay. Just do it..."
As soon as the older man said so, the son plunged the knife into his father's stomach. The older man did not scream, only letting out a slight muffled gasp of pain.
The young man sobbed and sobbed as his father's life slowly left his body before him. With blood streaming down from the older man's wound, draining him from it, the father fell to the floor and died...strangely with peace in his face.
I wanted too scream, I wanted to run, but I could not move. All I could do was stare-- staring at this murderer's back while he sobbed for what felt like forever.
My heartbeat was so loud it was deafening. A jolt struck it, as if to stop it, when the man turned and I saw his face.
It was...my own father...
Him in his younger days, must be around my own age by then-- in his mid 20's.
I couldn't believe my eyes...my father was a murderer. But how could this be? I wasn't born then. This was not a dream, I was sure of it. So how did I...
"Hello, son", a voice called for me.
My eyes widened in shock and fear. I looked up and I met the gaze of my father. He had the same expression as his own father, one of compassion and pity.
I tried to move my mouth but no voice came out. I tried to back away as he walked towards me, covered in blood, but I couldn't.
My father kneeled before me and my breathing was so out of control I felt like I was going to pass out.
"You're afraid right now, I know. I was too when I had the same memory of my own father murdering his father, my grandfather", my father said now sitting on the floor. "I never knew my grandfather...now I know why", he chuckled.
"I know you're curious for an explanation, and you deserve one. So I'll tell you what my father told me...about our family curse", he said.
"As far as he knew, this curse went back hundreds of generations. Sons killing their fathers, daughters killing their mothers...all just to live peacefully, all to end this curse"
"For me it started about 2 months ago. I started to see memories so vivid, I could remember what I had for lunch a year ago. As days went by I could see even further back, I could even see myself being birthed by my mother...but then one day, I saw not just my own, but someone else's memories..."
"My mother's high school graduation, my father's first kiss...it was all so surreal", my father chuckled. In his eyes I could see he was happy reminiscing about those memories.
"But then I arrived at one specific memory...the memory of my own father murdering his father", my father shook his head. "He told me everything then, like I am doing for you right now. I refused to believe him! So I kept silent and lived on..."
"But I couldn't. These memories...all didn't belong to me, all flooded my mind! I couldn't sleep without seeing my great-great-great grandfather fought in a war! I couldn't study without seeing my great-great-great-great grandmother starving in a famine-ravaged country! Their memories, their lives, they were overtaking my own! I couldn't bear it anymore!"
"And so...I decided to end it. How to end this curse, son...you have to murder the one who bears the curse and sire you as their offspring. In other words...me", my father smiled.
"I waited for too long and it was torture. I hope in my heart, if you see this memory you haven't gone down these memory lanes for far too long"
"Is your name Patrick? "I've always wanted to have a son named Patrick. And if it was a girl, I wanted her to be named Sally", my father chuckled with teary eyes. "I haven't met you yet, but I promise I will love you with all my heart once you're born. With all my heart and more watching you grow up...and one day ending your curse by ending me", his smile was so painful to see.
"All I want to say to you, son, is it's okay. It's not your fault. You *have* to do this" | 2021-08-28T01:23:02 | 2021-08-27T23:25:55 | 50 | 36 |
[WP] The magical races enslaved magic-less humans centuries ago. To expand their empires, the magical races travel and conquer different dimensions. They soon stumble across and try to conquer a magic-less world full of humans. It did not go well. | What a mess. Apparently a clay golem was not the correct counter for an Abrams tank.
Toureil was not having a good day. Responsible for this expedition to conquer this backwards planet, it had turned into a bloodbath for him. Normally 10 legions could quickly take control of a new world. This particular world filled with weak humans incapable of magic was supposed to be a short affair. Toureil's people, the Gux'vican had taken over much of the known multiverse with this strategy.
Unfortunately, this backwards planet had evolved technologically due to their complete inability to use magic. Normally the Gux'vican outlaw technology beyond basics when they take over. There is little need for it given their magical power. As a result, most of what Toureil had seen on this "Earth" was inconceivable to him. Only by taking prisoners had he even learned what he was facing. Initially, the expeditionary force thought that a "glock" was some type of magic wand that caused someone's head to get a hole in it and a "tank" was a massive horned creature.
Toureil's fireball's couldn't touch a "raptor" as it rained death on his troops. A summoned dragon would normally be able to destroy a city but was easily cut in half by one of these flying "warthogs". When Toureil's mages summoned meteor storms on their opponents they were quickly hit with a barrage of explosions. One of his prisoners called it "HIMARS o'clock".
What the fuck was HIMARS o'clock? Is there a timepiece out there that is killing Toureil's legions?
Regardless, Toureil had only remnants of a few legions left. Several of his men had been captured and exposed the secrets of his world to these humans. Now they were trying to get through the gate. Apparently this "Amazon" wanted to "expand its customer base across the multiverse" and nothing the Gux'vican had could stop them.
What was that noise anyways? . . . . . . . . oh, so that's an Apache. | General Ke’las had long since been acclaimed as the greatest general the elvish army had ever seen. Having been in charge of the Elvish Expansion the last two thousand years, he was responsible for the subjugation of multiple dimensions, each championed by innumerable races. The Nix, the Centaurans, the Kaitesh, just to name a few. Each formidable in their own right, with magics to control the elements, bewitch the senses and enhance their own prodigious physical abilities. All of these paled in comparison to the elves, who had the benefit of longevity, allowing them time to improve their abilities that others simply lacked. This mindset fueled General Ke’las on his path to what would be a near trivial conquest. After all, according to their reconnaissance, Dimension 4S32 only contained a single dominant species that appeared to be the subject of a cruel, cosmic joke. How else could they describe life evolving in a dimension that lacked any measurable spark of magic? The loss of magic was anathema to the elves, so what could this species possibly do without the greatest tool in the multiverse?
&#x200B;
The sight that stretched before Ke’las would live in his mind for the rest of his days, provided he survived the coming confrontation. As a means of pacification, it was Elvish custom to send messages to areas of high population density, to warn them of the coming invasion; to let the populace know that a force was coming that they could not hope to overcome and that surrender was the only option they could choose that would not end in their destruction. When the portals opened to allow Ke’las and his troops to begin their conquest, they were confused. Most commonly they would find an army ready to fight to the bitter end or occasionally a group of dignitaries that looked to broker a peace treaty or perhaps surrender with minimal bloodshed. Here, all they found was an open field and a large screen, one hundred meters in length and width. Within a few moments, the screen flickered to life and a dark skinned humanoid figure appeared.
&#x200B;
“Greetings. This is a day of contradictions for humanity. A day we long hoped for where we discovered that we are not alone in this universe; that we can expand our understanding of the nature of life and existence. At the same time, this is also a day of fear, as we learned that those at the gates mean to subjugate us. This, we cannot abide by. As you said in your earlier message, you do not know us. You simply found a world inhabited by sapient beings and intend to enslave us for your own ends. Allow us to educate you. Had you come to us in friendship and peace, we would have been your closest allies and all who wronged you, would have wronged us and we would rush to your defense without hesitation. But now? We will be your end. We will remove you from reality as one does with poison from a wound. You claim our lack of magic and our short lifespan makes us weak? On the contrary, they grant us our greatest strength, as you will soon see. So look to the skies and know that as your soldiers fall, the eyes of humanity are fixed squarely upon you and your world. We hope that you and your people have a deity that you pray to. For soon, we shall personally send you to meet them.”
&#x200B;
With that, the image faded away and a roar filled the ears of every soldier present. Panic gripped at their bones as they looked around for a creature large enough to make that sound, knowing no Elder Wryms or Leviathans lived upon this world. Ke’las took command of his troops and had them take battle formations when over the horizon, he caught a glimpse of metal objects moving towards them at tremendous speed. Within moments, they were overheard leading to new rounds of panic spreading through the troops as they recalled the command of the video. As Ke’las struggled to regain control, a white smoke descended over his troops, leading to confusion. Did the humans truly think smoke would be enough to stop them? While he may have missed the first drop, he could not miss that his entire force seemed to be collapsing and twitching on the ground uncontrollably. In his two thousand years of conquest, Ke’las had never seen anything like this. Magic granted his people amazing abilities, but what could possibly lay low a platoon of ten thousand soldiers at once? As his own breathing became shallow and constricted, he noticed a human encased in thick armor, with a bulbous face mask walking towards him. Collapsed on the ground; eyesight growing dim, the mighty General Ke’las could hear the masked being speak and felt fear run through his soon to be expired body.
&#x200B;
“Captain, this is unbelievable, we’re seeing 100% mortality rates among the invading combatants. While their species may possess abilities beyond our current understanding, our nervous systems must be similar enough that preventing acetylcholine degradation is just as fatal for them as it would be for us. Should make next week's counterstrike a lot safer for our troops.” | 2022-08-13T14:22:17 | 2022-08-13T14:13:12 | 26 | 14 |
[WP] You're one of those dads that went to the gas station for a pack of cigarettes and never came back, but you had a damn good reason. | I walked into the gas station. "Marlboro Reds, please."
The cashier smirked. "You really shouldn't smoke."
"You really shouldn't stick your nose into my business."
"That was rude."
"Ya know what? Fuck you, I'll go to the next gas station." I knew she didn't care. She was paid minimum wage to run that register and didn't give a shit how good business was. Still, it felt good to not spend my money there.
As I headed to the door, a tingling sensation came over my body. At first I just ignored it, but it got stronger and I felt something like an electric shot when I touched the door handle. I nearly fell over, but I caught myself.
Things around me seemed strange. They were mostly the same, but different. A guy was staring at some sort of device in his hand. It looked like a cellphone, but wasn't anything like a cellphone I saw. Must've been a rich kid, but he didn't dress like one. As I looked around, I saw more and more people with them.
I reached in my pocket and called my wife. She seemed amazed that I had called and demanded to know where I'd been.
"I just stepped out for some smokes."
"Why did you leave?"
"Like I said, I needed smokes."
"Don't fucking play games with me!"
"Honey, what's wrong?"
"Where are you?!"
"At the gas station, sweetie."
She called me a pig and hung up. I wasn't sure what was wrong with her, and I went to my car. Except it wasn't there anymore. Someone stole my car! As I reached for my phone to call the cops, a woman with a man in his early twenties approached me. She looked like my wife, but older.
"No way," she whispered. "You haven't aged a day."
"Is it really him?"
She nodded. "It's him. I don't know how, but it's him."
"What are you two going on about?"
"You called me. Luckily I happened to be in the area, and we decided to pop in."
"No, I called my wife."
"I am your wife." She gestured to the twenty year old man. "And this is your son."
"No, my wife is twenty five. No offense lady, but you passed twenty five a while ago."
She walked to the stack of newspapers for sale and showed one to me. Blood rushed to my head and I nearly fell over. September 27, 2016. What the fuck?! It had been 1996 a second ago! I darted for the other newspapers. Each one had the same date. "How is this possible?!"
A familiar female voice spoke behind me. "You really shouldn't be so rude to strangers." | “It’s been three weeks John. And yes I do believe we’ve made great progress, I can see it in you. You seem more relaxed. Less anxious. But we’re never going to make a breakthrough if you don’t open up more about your father. This is a safe space. I’m here for you, nothing you say will leave this office.^1”
With resigned eyes John replied. Like a dam opening, “It’s not even that it would be hard to talk about. I’m not totally against opening up about him. I just really don’t know where to start. You know? I mean that’s half the problem. I can’t really open up if I can’t pinpoint the moment when it all started.^2 It’s been what, 23 years now? Since he walked out on us. For a pack of cigarettes. How goddamn cliché. Leaving behind a family, a stable job, a beautiful house.”
“That’s what made it so hard to understand. He wasn’t abusive, wasn’t a drunk or a slob. He was the hardest working man I’d ever met.^3 Once it became apparent he wasn’t coming back, somewhere deep down inside I hoped that he died. Some tragic accident on the way to the store. Going out as a tragedy, not a coward.^4 After we sent out the missing person’s report we had two weeks of agony. Not knowing what the hell was going on.”
“And then they found him. Not holed up in some madman’s basement. Not in the bottom of a ravine, ran off the road by a drunk idiot. No, he was holed up in a Motel-6 thirty minutes away.^5 Completely flabbergasted by the swarm of police busting down his door. He said he left a note but that was probably a lie. The only time we ever saw him again was during the divorce proceedings, and on the name of the alimony checks. Though even those stopped after a few months.^6”
“So I don’t even really know what to say about it. It was the single most soul crushing experience of my life, but I really have no context at all. And of course I know it’s not my fault. Well at least now I do. It took a while but it couldn’t have been.^7 We were almost inseparable. He was my hero. So I choose to deal with it by mourning. Not some latent repression, but as the death of my father. Replaced by some unaffiliated clone.^8 He’s never coming back and I’ve made my peace.”
_____________________
1. This is in fact not true. John’s therapist, now known as Clarice Shanahan had her name legally changed in 2006. Prior she was Lana Jones, a psychologist in Tupelo, Mississippi. She was run out of town by a series of clients who claimed she used their stories without permission in her self-published autobiography, “And you think you’re crazy?” The book has gone on to sell 17 copies netting her a total of $47.37.
2. It all started the summer of 1990. John’s father was officially diagnosed with borderline personality disorder with episodic dissociative amnesia, after waking up in full Mariachi regalia, fists bloodied in a Tijuana prison cell. He kept the diagnosis from family and friends hoping that it wouldn’t get worse. It got worse.
3. When John’s father was a boy he was abandoned by his adopted family, a group of travelling circus performers. He spent his days clearing elephant shit, and lining tight ropes. Never paid, told that he was working for food and board. After working 18 straight hours he made a mistake tying the tight rope and his adoptive brother fell to his death into a giant pile of shit. John’s father was left on the side of the road that night.
4. The night he went out for cigarettes John’s father has no recollection of what actually happened, stuck in a dissociative fugue. A bystander named James Whittaker saw everything but never reported it. Driving his 1987 Buick LeSable, John’s father nearly hit a deer and swerved off the road. He sprung out of the car and chased the deer into the forest yelling obscenities.
5. The next morning John’s father woke up in a Motel 6 with massive headache, wearing the carcass of a deer, an etude written on sheet music in the corner the only constructive element of the forgotten night (it was actually pretty good. Won him a few awards later in life). Upon further inspection he found he traded in his car for three months’ worth of nights at the Motel. Realizing the extent to which his mental health was deteriorating decided that he might be a harm to his family if he returned.
6. The divorce was the hardest thing that John’s father ever had to go through. Realized that at the end of the day he had to be the villain. If they knew of the diagnosis they’d want to help, want to be there for him. But deep down he believed that nothing could help him. He was spinning out of control quickly. The gaps in memory becoming longer and more frequent. Woke up one morning in a rice field in Vietnam. He never returned to the US.
7. It wasn’t John’s fault. That is easy to say. John though was not a completely faultless person though. One time at the grocery store he parked in a handicapped space because he “just needed to run in really quick”. Thirty seconds later a paraplegic man was forced to park at that back of the lot as it was pretty full. The man keyed the shit out of John’s car on the way back.
8. There’s this guy in Sweden that’s trying to edit the DNA of embryos to further enhance scientific research in regards to fertility. We all know this is a slippery slope to man-fish hybrids. I’m not saying that John’s father is the result of DNA splicing. Nor am I saying that his gills and ability to breathe under water mean he is a man-fish. But I mean no one has seen him in at least a decade. I’m not saying he’s one. But some people are.
| 2016-09-29T09:03:37 | 2016-09-29T09:01:31 | 697 | 45 |
[WP] Everyone is told 10 minutes before they die that they will. You're on a plane, and everyone panics at once. You didn't get that message. | I looked around me, like time was slowed. Everyone had the same, ugly, distraught look on their face.
I knew what was going to happen.
As did they.
The woman seated next to me, she grabbed my hand.
"Its going to be okay, right?" she plead.
"They'll fix the plane, right?" she begged.
As I drew the knife from my coat pocket, I said in a shuddered tone, "Nothing is wrong with the plane."
The plane started to tilt forward as I pulled my kife from the captain's back.
That's when I got my message.
| There was the collection of usual plane sounds at first. The squeaky wheel on the drink trolley, the loud conversation, the headphones with music blasting with enough intensity that hints of the music leaked out for everyone to catch. And then there was silence. Only the engine hum remained. I paused my own music. No one moved.
A woman to my left turned to me and pushed her glasses up on her wrinkled nose. "Did you..did you get it?"
"Did I get it?"
"You know."
"No, I don't."
"The...the warning."
I shook my head. She went bedsheet-white and sighed. "Well, I'm old. I can live with this." She grinned at her own joke.
But then no, no chimed in a man from behind me he got it too, this wasn't just about her. And so did his wife. They cried. The crying spread.
A voice crackled through the intercom. "This..so, okay. This is your, uh, your pilot. I'm just going to try to land now because I'm not sure what else to do. We happen to be over a small airstrip, maybe 2 minutes until I will start descending. It might be a rough landing, it's old. So...okay." The voice disappeared.
The crying grew louder. I did my best to keep still, not mentioning that I would live. But the woman to my left caught on, and began shrieking at me, pointing an arthritic finger.
"YOU!!! You will be safe! You didn't get it. He DIDN'T get it, everyone!" The plane began descending.
"Shh, shh, shut up," I pled. But it was too late. Everyone yelled at me, begging me for help, asking me what do to. This continued until we landed, smoothly and without issue.
After a short pause, the door to the pilot's cabin slid open and the pilot stepped through the frame. "Did anyone NOT ahead the warning? Anyone?" The passengers shouted that I never heard it. He paused, looked around, and shrugged. "Yeah, what a coincidence, I didn't either." He reached into his pocket, slid out a pistol, and flicked the safety off. "Alrighty folks, let's get this over with. Line up in front of me." His copilot did the same. No one moved. I stood.
"What in God's name are you doing?" spat at me. "You know the system can have bugs, did your mommy and daddy not tell you that? You want to go first?" I stepped into the aisle, and took a single step forward, then another, and another, until his started shaking.
I knew he had heard his own warning. The copilot, standing behind for this entire time, muttered "oh, hell" under his breath. "Its the bomb, the bomb, the bomb is going to go off. It's not supposed to go off now, not now, it goes off when the FBI and whoever the hell is here later, not now, not now. But it's going to kill them and we are going to burn for 10 minutes and die. Oh God, oh God, oh God."
The pilot put the pistol in his pocket and sat down. He began crying, telling his copilot through his tears that we was sorry for having messed something up.
And still, no one moved, only watching this unfold.
I went quickly back to my seat, picked up my bag, and walked to the plane's main exit door, opening it by the latch. I jumped down to the ground and walked away. The people behind watched my from the windows. Just as I stepped off the airstrip, I sighed, and there was a crack and a flash of light behind me.
EDIT: Fixed spacing problems (typed this up on mobile, sorry about that).
| 2016-11-24T20:01:01 | 2016-11-24T19:00:47 | 52 | 13 |
[WP] You are an assassin. A little girl has just come up to you, handed you all her pocket money and asked you to kill her abusive relative. | I wonder if that’s what I looked like as a kid. Pretty normal for the most part, but something in this girl's face said she didn't take much shit. Or didn't give a fuck, one of the two. She was a little blank behind the eyes, but she still giggled at my joke so at least I knew she wasn’t completely emotionless.
She handed me an envelope filled with cash and I snickered. “What’d you do, kill somebody?” I asked. That’s what made her laugh. This kid was definitely a sociopath.
“I need you to kill my brother,” she said. She handed me a photograph.
“I know this guy,” I said.
“Yeah you killed his twin two years ago.”
I took a second. Looked at her, looked back at the photograph. Yeah, I knew the guy. He hired me to kill his twin brother. They were young, maybe early twenties. He told me about his sister, said she was the only other one living in the house because they were her guardians. “Okay,” I said, “so your brother hired me to kill your other brother, and now you want to hire me to kill the first brother?”
She nodded. “I followed after you when you did it the first time so I’d know where to find you.”
What the hell? “Wait, you saw me do it?”
She nodded again.
“And you’re not…traumatized…or anything? You’ve got no one left.”
She shrugged. It was so nonchalant. “He deserved it,” she said. “Foster care will be better."
I looked at her doubtfully.
“Trust me,” she said. “Anything will be better.”
I was baffled. And annoyed at myself for being so careless. I fingered through the bills in the envelope. I shrugged. “Okay, I’ll do it.” I said.
--
Nine months later I officially adopted her, but make so mistake (she made sure I knew), it was strictly a business transaction. I promised I’d provide her with a home and food and someone to sign-off on her report cards, and she promised me a cut of the shit-ton of cash her parents left her.
I sometimes wonder if I should feel guilty about training up a young assassin, but damn she’s good. And we couldn’t be more alike than if she was my own kid. She knows she’s different, just like I did, and I think we’re pretty lucky to have found each other.
It makes me laugh a little to realize that she’ll probably kill me some day. But hey, at least I'll have someone to carry on the family business.
| Part I
It was freezing cold, sitting in the blind as he was, nearly freezing his balls off, but the moment was at hand. He had adjusted his sights long ago, planning the spot where it would take place. And now, this was the time, and this was the place. His training wasn’t even a thought; he took a quick breath, and let it out slowly, before he pulled the trigger.
*** *** ***
It hadn’t started out like this, this action, this scenario, this plan.
To be completely honest, it had started out so much worse.
He’d graduated high school, and felt the calling to serve his country. And he’d found that he was good at a particular set of skills, that the government had helped to hone. He’d put those skills to use many times in the supposed service of his country, reaching out from two hundred, four hundred, sometimes eighteen hundred meters away, and snuffing out the life of a lieutenant or general of some tyrannical group or faction. But he’d come to discover that he’d come to like it just a little bit too much, that killing, that sense of taking a life in righteous justice, and he knew that while he wasn’t a killer in the sense that he enjoyed killing for the sake of killing, it wouldn’t take too much to cross the line, to start being able to justify killing for the sake of killing by telling himself how righteous his actions were. Nearly twenty years, most of it in the doing, the last half dozen or so in the instructing, and he decided that it was time to retire.
And he’d thought he’d manage to leave that part of him behind, as he rejoined civilization, and met someone; they married, and lived for quite some number of years happily together before a drunk driver and a very slick road of ice had taken her from him, leaving him approaching the end of his middle ages with little left of the world for him beyond the day-to-day.
A little ray of sunshine had seemingly come into his world not too long after that, when a little girl toddled across the neighbor’s yard one day, and came up onto his porch. He’d inquired about mommy, and discovered that mommy was asleep. He’d entertained the young girl for about thirty minutes before mommy had come rushing out of the house, frantic for her child. He’d returned the little girl, but that was only the first time that she’d come to visit him.
The months passed, and the little girl had become something like a good friend, always coming by at least once a week to chatter with him, and he came to dote on her like the grandchild he’d never had. More time passed, and she reported that mommy had a new boyfriend, and then later, that she had a new daddy. Her daddy seemed like a distant sort, but the little girl didn’t seem too terribly affected by the addition to her family, and besides, it wasn’t his business, not really.
But he paid attention. Instincts—for lack of a better word—that he’d developed—or perhaps the justifications he’d come to take to heart—regarding who wasn’t quite right, and who ‘needed killin’ seem to stand up the hairs on the back of his neck. But there was no real reason for it, not that he could prove, and so he simply paid attention.
As the little girl grew, her family dynamic changed yet again, as another young man—well, younger than himself, and perhaps only a couple of years younger than her “new” daddy—came into the picture. He seemed to be the doting sort, and was often found in the company of the little girl, absent the times she came to visit with him. That one set off a slightly higher alert within him, but still he had nothing concrete to go upon, and so he still watched.
Through it all, he told the little girl stories, fanciful stories at first, and then as she grew a bit older, he told her stories about what he used to do for the government, for the military. He kept his stories appropriate for her age, but he didn’t otherwise sugar-coat his memories all that much, and she seemed amazed at his service for making the world save from the monsters who would prey upon those not strong enough to fight them themselves.
And then came the day that forever changed the both of them.
She had come to him that day, talking obliquely—or as obliquely as a seven year old could—about her “Unca Rick”. She’d mentioned a few times here and there that she didn’t really like Unca Rick, and she’d told of his insistence that she be always clean and bathed, and that she eat her vegetables and listen to all adults, and how he liked to take pictures of her and so she couldn’t mess up her clothes playing around outside like she wanted to. On this occasion, she simply expressed that she didn’t like him anymore, and wished that he would leave. Then she’d asked him to tell her a story—which he obliged her on. And at the end of the story was when the world had grown so cold.
She’d asked him—perhaps in clarification—if the government had paid him to take care of monsters, and he’d agreed with her query. And then she’d asked him, if she were to give him all of her money, all of the money in her piggy bank, if he would take care of her monster for her. Her ‘Unca Rick’.
She confided in him what ‘Unca Rick’ was doing, when her mommy was asleep from her medicine and her daddy was sitting in front of the TV drinking a few beers. She mentioned that she’d told her daddy, but he didn’t believe her, and when she told her mommy, her daddy had told her that the little girl was telling tales, and to stop pestering them about the matter. | 2017-04-04T05:23:47 | 2017-04-03T23:30:46 | 26 | 15 |
[WP] You're happily going about your day when you vanish in a cloud of smoke. Suddenly, you're standing in a ring of candles. A sorcerer holding a tome looks pleased at your arrival. Turns out Earth is Hell, we're the demons, and you've just been summoned. | continued straight from the prompt...
__
Now... Luckily I'm a redditor, and things like being summoned against your will into an unknown world/situation are a common topic so I had thought through this scenario before. Otherwise I would appear quite confused at my situation and not at all in control of the situation.
"Why have you summoned me?" I bellowed in my best impression of pompous and evil.
The sorcerer scrambled back a few steps, "I have summoned you to make a deal."
I was not sure what it was I was supposed to provide, but as this seemed fairly common for magic I hoped it was something I was capable of.
"You know the price?" I asked haughtily.
"Certainly, one talent of gold and my immortal soul."
I pondered this silently, I had only heard of talents in bible stories but I remembered someone saying that was about 75lbs. I unfortunately did not trade in gold on a regular basis and my phone probably couldn't access the internet from wherever this was; but I knew it was something like $1000 an ounce. 16 ounces per lb x 75 lbs... screw it I pulled out my phone.
The mage reacted with alarm, "What infernal device is that? Know that I am protected by the circle!"
I held up a finger to shush him as I opened the calculator app and figured out how much money I stood to make on this deal...whatever it was. I whistled between my teeth as the number stared up at me $1.25 Million.
"Stop! Stop I can't take it!" The magician screamed. "The circle should have protected me!"
I looked back at him dumbly with my face lit softly by my glowing cell phone screen. "Stop...what?"
"That noise! We cannot stand the sound of your chanting and whatever it is you were doing with your voice just now!"
I once again went silent, not knowing that the otherworldly light of my screen was making me look quite demonic at the moment. "You mean... whistling?" I chirpped softly at the end to demonstrate.
"YES!"
Interesting... "So what is the task you have summoned me for?"
The mage stood back upright, "I need you to defeat the army at our doorstep, use your damning tongue to rain down hell and bring madness to the troops."
"You want me to... sing?"
A tentative nod.
"Okay... where is this army?"
The sorcerer pointed to an arrow slit window in the side of the tower. I could see several dozen burly men in various armor standing outside the gates a dozen feet below... this was an army?
"This is an army?" I said intelligently, "Where I come from, an army is usually hundreds if not thousands of men."
"We are aware of your warlike ways and preference for violence but that is not our way. We only wish to drive away the force below as quickly as possible and make them think twice about attacking again."
I looked down at the phone in my hand again and brought up a video I kept on it to send to my friends randomly. I was about to hit play when I turned back to the mage, "You might want to cover your ears."
> We're no strangers to love
>You know the rules and so do I
>A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
>You wouldn't get this from any other guy
>I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
>Gotta make you understand
>Never gonna give you up
>Never gonna let you down
>Never gonna run around and desert you
>Never gonna make you cry
>Never gonna say goodbye
>Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you...
| It happened as Dan was sat on the old chair in the greenhouse, lazily puffing on a cigertte. He sat, neck arched down scrolling mindlessly through social media. The occassional billows of smoke slowly carried on the draft like a balloon gradually disapeering from existance as it floated away. As the rollie burnt continued to burn a column of smoke carried right up and over his face, he turned away in discomfort, slamming his eyes contortedly shut and letting out a single cough.
It's not that he felt anything, but when he 'transferred' he was able to feel the difference in temperature. He knew somthing had changed instantly. it was warmer and he now felt inside, It wasn't until he opened his eyes though that it hit him like a lightening bolt.
"WAHHHHHHHH! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT THE!"
A man stood infront of him, robed in black with a red satin cord wrapped around him like a harness, he faced him squarely and was bowing his head down toward the ground. The light of the candles gave no detail to the face below the sunken hood. As his eyes danced about the confusing landscape he begin to spin, it might have been an attempt to look around. he might have imagined it, But as soon as he began to turn his knees seemed to drop and his phoned dropped to the floor, Dan shortly followed.
"Hello", spoke from the blackness. Dan just concious enough to notice it, realised that the blackness now was only his eyes closed and with that he was back. With a paniced struggle he raised himself on his arms.
" Who...where am, ummm, dude are you going to hurt me?"
He felt the base of his spine press in, almost painful as his adrenal glands kicked in.
"Why am I here?! How did I get here!?" He rattled off and he now aggressively tried to stand up.
"DID YOU BRING ME HERE!?" He yelled, now striding towards this robed figure who apparently hadn't moved. He glanced left and right as if to check for more threats, noticing that he was in a pentagonal star of candles. His eyes began to widen.
"You demon!" The hooded man now looked up.
"Have been brought here by me to serve me!" The man threw back his hood to reveal a plump round head and large buttonous nose.
"For else I shall send you back to that eternal hell that is your home" as he finished his sentance he gesticulated a arm movement of a bow without bending at the waist as if to the give the impression of self importance.
"Now I'm confused as fuck, but this is not funny" exclaimed Dan as he came to stop close enough that the odor of this man was previlant.
"Why am I here, how did you get me here? And dude this better be some kind of TV PRANK OR IM GOING TO FIGHT YOU AND PROBABLY KILL YOU!"
as he spoke his volume and aggresion increased.
"You have been summoned by me because I wish your dark soul be brought here and better serve me" the man interupted, now smiling smugly, rasped.
"Now don't expect me to be fooled for this sharade of a human form. Take your real form beast!"
"What the fuck dude?!" Dan exclaimed, "Look the pranks over, I want to go home" Dan adjusted, "I don't know how you did that, and i'd really appreciate you'd drop the whole act and show me where the door is or tell me how you got me here, did you knock me out?" Stood arms outstretched in animated questioning.
The man dropped his smile now, "you are clever foul demon, but you shall not outsmart me"
"Well Im human, soooo if that changes anything. I'D REALLY LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!?",
" I used a spell to summon you from Hell and I wish...",
"But dude, I just told you i'm from the UK for fucks sake, Do I look like a demon to you?" Dan spoke as his eyes danced around the room looking for an exit. He Looking left and right without ever really taking his eyes off the man then he looked down to the mans arms. A large tome sat accross his palms barely visable in the candle light and what previously was in the shadow of the hood from any other ambient light.
"I summoned you here, by way of this encantation" the man offered out his arms while spinning the open tome between his hands to face Dan.
"Right... So you do magic nutjob?" Dan mustered, clearly now becoming exhausted with the sitation.
"Yes, that is correct Demon! See! Read it for yourself and you will understand how you are bound here by me and at my command", as Dan slowly lowered his eyes disbelieving of any threat from the man. His eyes that were previously starring out the Tome owners face, watched the pages of the tome become bathed in direct candlelight.
The pages where deep rutted paper that looked now very frail, the Ink was worn thin and faded in other parts. There seemed to be two paragraph to each page. But it was barely disguishable and he reached out to grab the tome on its corner. Tilting it further towards the light.
'Rapture Demon' read the first title. But his eyes glanced over the other titles before he read the rest.
'Sunlight' read below this paragragh.Then on the next page read
'Teleportation' which was followed by
'Time slow'
"Ummm, which page were you reading from dude?" Dan offered, looking up to meet the man's gaze.
"The top right spell demon! You know which spell would bind you here! All demons know this, now obey me!" he excitedly proclaimed, "this is not my first experience you foul creatures" he cried as he began to try to turn the book around his neck craning to get a better view.
Dan's eyes glanced back to the top of the right page.
'teleportation - self cast or cast on others remotely, range 50 miles before dangerous' the rest Dan didn't bother to read. His eyes shot accross the left page as he scanned the first sentance 'Rapture demon - tear an infernal beast from the underworld otherwise known as Hell'
"Dude, you know how it's pretty dark in here? I think you made a mistake.....Dude you cast teleportation"
The robed mans eyes raised from the page, again to meet Dan's. "FUCK! I .. am.. so.. sorry"
First ever writing prompt, hope you like it, it was written on my phone. Probably going to delete it as soon as I get a downvote haha. Thanks if you read this far.
| 2017-05-12T10:38:10 | 2017-05-12T09:57:53 | 427 | 27 |
[WP] You're happily going about your day when you vanish in a cloud of smoke. Suddenly, you're standing in a ring of candles. A sorcerer holding a tome looks pleased at your arrival. Turns out Earth is Hell, we're the demons, and you've just been summoned. | "So you're telling me that you summoned me..." You said, as the apprentice nodded at you.
"Yup..."
"In my bathtub..." You say, a sheet wrapped around your waist.
"Sorry about that..."
"As I was cuddling with the love of my life..."
"Again, sorry..."
"And you have no idea how to send me back."
"I...yes?"
"Son..." You say, staring him down with not the gentlest of gazes. "You will find a way to get me back, right now, or you and I are gonna have some words." | Just another day. That's how it started at least. I woke up around 4:30 pm and started getting ready for my night shift. This whole grown up adult job thing wasn't all it had cracked up to be. Twelve hour shifts in a cramped room dealing with all the idiots my city had to offer. I guess you could say it was like hell on earth.
As I stepped outside and turned to lock my apartment behind me, I felt an odd sensation. Like something was about to happen but. I could say what. Just as I was about to shrug it off and take the short stroll to my car, a plume of smoke that smelled of sulfur enveloped me. And then everything went black.
When my vision finally returned, I almost thought I had somehow teleported to work. Small space, dimly lit. Felt like work for sure. But as the blurriness cleared from my eyes, I started to notice things. Candles. All in a circle and chalk lines between them. In the corner stood a figure, but I couldn't make anything else out at first.
"It worked!" came a shout from the figures direction. "Holy hell it actually worked!" The excitement in the figures voice was almost palpable. "Now that you're here, I can finally call myself a summoner!" the unknown figure said as it approached me.
The figure entered the candle lit circle and stood just a few feet from me. I could see now it was a young woman, maybe 25. She wasn't unattractive either with bright green eyes and a curly blonde hair. Then it hit me like a sledgehammer. What the actual hell is going on here?
"A summoner? Listen, I don't know how you got me here or what you're expecting but you're gonna have to catch me up here. Number one, where am I? Number two, forget that I need to get to work." I said with a mix of bewilderment and frustration.
"You're on earth. I summoned you here so I could finally be a summoner. Summoning an actual demon is the last part of the initiation." I looked at the young woman with an almost extreme amount of incredulity.
"You've got to be kidding me. Wow. It's not enough that I somehow managed to get Kidnapper but to get kidnapped by a fanatic about some kinda demon cult. This is icing on the cake" I spat out as I turned to leave the circle and find the exit. What? Was she gonna stop a grown man from getting out of here? As if.
"You can't leave yet" she said from behind me very calmly. I ignored her and kept searching for a door. A window. Anything that could get me out of here. "You gonna stop me?" I shot back at her. "I have a job to get to and bills to pay. Whatever fantasy or lunacy is going on with you, leave me out of it and get some other gullible sap to play with you" I added over my shoulder. "I for one---"
Suddenly I was whisked away from that dimly lit room. Before I even know what had happened I was standing next to a car that had its bonnet wrapped around a tree and a fire hydrant next to it spouting water freely into the air. Next to me stood a familiar face with a look on his face only comparable to that of a teenager telling his dad that he took the car without permission.
I looked at the scene and then back at the man. "Don't worry Kevin, you're covered!" I barely got the words out before being transported back to my work office to type up the paperwork for Mr. Kevin and his claim before being whisked away on another claim. | 2017-05-12T08:27:42 | 2017-05-12T07:49:08 | 95 | 61 |
[WP] You're happily going about your day when you vanish in a cloud of smoke. Suddenly, you're standing in a ring of candles. A sorcerer holding a tome looks pleased at your arrival. Turns out Earth is Hell, we're the demons, and you've just been summoned. | "What on earth....?!?!?" I cried, hands trying to cover my body. All I had on were my bra and underwear, and the room I suddenly found myself in was quite chilly.
"Demon! I have summoned you to do my bidding!"
My eyes turned to a large, red, scaled creature to the left of me. He stood outside of the pentagram I was kneeling in. "WHAT did you just call me?"
"Tell me your name, demon, so I may bind you to me!" said the creature.
"Ok, FIRST of all, I am not a demon. Rude. Secondly, I would have told you my name if you hadn't said THAT creepyness. And thirdly WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE."
The creature shifted uncomfortably and turned a page in a dusty, old tome. His eyes shifted across the page. "No, you are a demon of the succubus classification. I am sure of it. You look just like the picture, though not all of you is bare."
He turned the tome towards me to show what could only be described as something out of Playboy.
"Succubus??? Wow, ok. This is making me rethink some of my life decisions... What exactly did you 'summon' me here for?"
"You will teach me the art of... erm... lovemaking." His eyes shifted away from me and his scales took on a blue hue.
"Nope. Nope. Not happening. Send me home and get someone else, because that is sooooo not going to happen." I stood up and attempted to grab the tome from him. My hand stopped short, and it felt as though I punched a wall.
"You will do as I bid or you will not leave," he growled.
"Well get comfortable, then," I snarled back. "What makes you think you can do this to me? Would you kidnap some lizard girl from your world, hold her captive aginst her will, and try to rape her?"
The creature looked alarmed. "Of course not, I..."
"So WHAT exactly makes you think you can do it to me? I'm a person too!" I shouted. "Aren't there whores here? Go hire one!"
"There are not. No one needs to sell themselves here. Am I so hideous that even a demon will not touch me...?" He looked away.
"Ok, cut the self pity. You are not the victim here. Besides, I wouldn't know if you're ugly or not. I've never seen anything like you. Your scales are kind of pretty I guess..."
"You think so? I haven't oiled them recently. I've been too depressed."
"Why's that?"
"....well, the love of my life doesn't even know exist."
"And you thought summoning a demon to teach you how to have good sex would fix that? Have you even talked to her?"
"Well, no...."
"You dumbass. Next time you think of screwing with the underworld, maybe ask yourself, 'Is this something good communication could fix?' She is not going to give a damn about how good you are in bed if you've never even spoken to her."
The creature gaze swung to meet my own. "But that could compensate for..."
"What? A lack of good looks? Charm? Personality? Guess what, you're never going get close to her if she doesn't find you interesting. Start focusing on who you are instead. And if she cares more about how you look on the outside versus the inside, she's not worth it," I lectured, sitting back down. I wrapped my arms around my legs for warmth.
"I suppose I never thought about it that way." The creature pursed his lips, a thoughtful expression looming across his face.
"Great. Now, in exchange for my sage and otherworldly advice, I demand you send me back to my room before I freeze to death."
"May I summon you again?"
"N... You know what? Yea, sure. Next time don't do it while I'm changing, though. My name is Mara Schmidt."
"I am Abigor. See you soon."
Poof.
| Coughing, you wave your hand in front of your face, trying to clear away the smoke. You blink frantically, trying to stop the burning sensation from the smoke in your eyes.
As your vision clears, the creature in front of you becomes more clear. Your first impulse is that it's a sickly child, but the longer you look, the more confused you are.
Yes, the creature in front of you is short, but it's more than that. Its eyes are huge, almost like a Manga come to life. Its skin is greyish, and it's body is thin, impossibly thin. You wonder how it can even stand upright with so little visible muscle mass.
As surprised as you are to see this little thing, you can tell it is terrified. The huge eyes are even wider than they should be. The creature looks like it's bravely fighting the urge to cower in the corner. But, steeling itself, the creature begins to speak.
*"I has summoned you, demon. Do my bidding, and I will you return. Refuse, and you trapped within the circle be forever!"* says the little creature, with a voice like a cartoon mouse. It's clear that English isn't the creature's first language, but it's reasonably fluent.
Wondering about being trapped in the circle, you take a step forward and extend your hand toward the shimmering air over the circle on the ground.
This time, the creature loses its nerve. It does take a few hurried steps back, looking ready to run, but when your hand is stopped by the barrier, some of its confidence returns.
You touch the barrier, wondering if you look like a goofy mime. Although you can't see it, there is clearly something there. Closing your eyes, you feel around. If you didn't know better, you'd swear it was a steel wall, cold to the touch, and absolutely solid.
*"Yes, yes. Trapped! Do what I say and you I will release."* The creature explains.
*"Look, there must be some mistake, I'm not a demon, I'm a human,"* you try to explain.
*"Yes, human. That is what said. Human demon."* The little thing seems to be growing in confidence now that the barrier does seem to be working.
*"No, you don't understand. Demons are from hell. Demons are big and red and scary. I'm just a human,"* you try to reason with the little thing. Something must have gone wrong in the magic it used on you.
*"Yes, hell,"* the creature nods in agreement. *"Suffering? Torture? Inquality?"*
*"Well, yes, I suppose there's some of that, but it's not really _hell_. Forget about that. Look at me. I'm not a demon!"* As you say that, you look at yourself through the eyes of the creature who summoned you. To it, you must appear huge and powerful. Your skin is slightly tanned from that recent trip to Mexico, and while it's not red, even in mid-winter you're not as grey as the little thing in front of you. You may not have horns or a tail, but it's pretty clear you're extremely intimidating, even with ruffled hair and your bad posture.
*"Ok, let's just put that to the side for the moment. You say you summoned me and you can return me? Why did you want me? I don't, I mean... I'm not magical,"* you say, hoping that you won't be trapped forever by a creature who vastly overestimates your abilities
*"You Bahry Lahrsn are,"* the creature says, mangling your name. *"You the legendary demon of sex are."*
*"Wait, what? Demon of sex? I'm no... I mean, I'm not a virgin, but I'm no sex demon,"* you try to explain.
*"No?"* The creature consults the book in front of it, reading from some list. *"Did three times penetrate goddess Anjla on night Prom? Did up-hook Shrly and later same night Surah on eve of New Year? Did digitally Dafnie in vehicle back on trip road car back?"*
You stand there in stunned silence. Somehow your greatest sexual exploits, mild as they are, are written down in a book this creature is reading. You cringe, thinking back about how you'd fooled around with Daphne Samuels in the back seat of a car on a road trip. Her coat had been covering her waist, and you'd... Well, at the time you thought you'd gotten away with it, but later on you learned that *everyone* in the car knew what was going on.
*"Look um... I... How do you know about that?"* You demand, your voice a mix of anger and confusion.
The little creature closes the book and shows you the cover. On it are some glyphs you don't recognize but the creature points to them.
*"Great demons of Eroth,"* it says, pointing to some glyphs. Pointing at the next set of glyphs, it says: *"Volume 6."*
You stand there in silence for a while, thinking. Apparently, you're Barry Larsen, legendary demon of sex, whose exploits are documented in graphic detail in a demon manual. Might as well just accept it.
*"Ok, well. I guess I'm a sex demon. What is it you want?"* You ask.
*"You me help. Lovely Shrmu is! Notice not she does me,"* the creature laments. *"Help me to sex her you will? You must!"*
Over the next little while, you impart your meagre knowledge to the little thing. It treats your words as if they were magic spells, rather than tidbits of advice. Such arcane knowledge as "be confident" and "dress nicely" are treated as dark magic. "Don't be clingy" is treated as a holy commandment.
Within a few hours, you run out of advice. You wonder if it will be enough, but the creature looks as if you'd just revealed the inner workings of a secret cult.
Distracted by its plans, and trying to remember everything you've said, the creature opens up the spellbook.
*"Agreement you fulfilled. Return you to hell now, I will,"* the little thing says, starting to wave its hands in an intricate pattern.
*"Wait, little guy,"* you say. *"Look um... let me know how it goes, ok? You can bring me back here, if you want."*
The creature looks at you and blinks. Perhaps it's wondering if the demon is trying to trick it. Without another word it snaps its hands out.
There's a flash of light, a bang, a puff of smoke, and when it clears you're standing in your living room. That's when you realize the opportunity you missed. If that book had your entire sex life in it, maybe it knew if Megan was ever going to stop playing hard to get. | 2017-05-12T10:46:12 | 2017-05-12T10:01:31 | 41 | 21 |
[WP] The man who ruined your relationship with your fiancée and then mysteriously disappeared has now returned to town. After such a long time you have now come face-to-face with Cotton Eye Joe | We faced each other from only a few feet away. I could only imagine that the fury in my eyes matched the condescension in his. Our hands each hovered over our revolvers, each of us waiting for the other to make a mistake.
“You gotta lot of nerve comin’ back here, Joe.”
“How do ya figure?”
“If it hadn’t been for you, I’d done been married a long time ago.”
“Not my fault you weren’t man enough to hold on to yer woman.”
My jaw clenched and I desperately fought the urge to draw and fill him with lead right then and there. “I got some questions for ya, Joe. All those years ago, when you blew into town and ruined my life, where did ya come from? And after you took everything from me, where did you go?”
We stared each other down as the tension built in the air. “Well? Where did ya come from, Cotton Eye Joe?”
In a flash, I drew my gun and fired. | It was utterly impossible to see the man walking again. Not only because it set my heart on fire to see him, but also because I'd buried him in the desert a decade ago. Under the black monoliths where the sun never quite reached, in that queer place where time had never ventured, I'd buried him, screaming, in the never soil, and walked away after I'd read him a bible verse.
Never to bother me again. In that queer city of Babel, I'd found my path as a bartender.
"Whiskey," Joe said, leaning over top of the bar, eyeing me. He was missing his fake eye, and instead it had been rudely stuffed with cotton. It drooled from the open socket, a spiral of white that drew my eye.
"Rude to stare, you know," Joe said, watching me as I ducked behind the cabinet to get the bottle. Old, golden. Slow shipments out to this place.
"It'll cost you, I don't have much left."
"And I've been dying to get a drink since I left Kentucky," Joe said, looking around at all of the demons.
I joined him for a moment. About half and half here; red skinners with their horns on display, drinking whatever the stills had come up with that had been legalized by that blasted sheriff, long may he reign, and then I slapped the glass down in front of him.
He took it between cold corpse fingers and sipped at it, revealing row upon row of rotting teeth in his mouth.
"They say that a man could find his way in a town like this," Joe said. "Do you think they'll ever know what you did?"
I didn't look at him. Didn't want to see the look of triump in his one eye, or admire the stitching work the doctor had put into making him look alive again, instead of the shambling work-corpse he had to have been. Who had found him under the black timeless stones? Who had known where to look?
"The corpse-dogs are none to gentle this time of year," Joe said. "But do you think they'll forget that they found me with a bible, Ronald?"
"The whiskey's free," I said, not looking at him. "If you get the fuck out of my bar, and find another town to shamble through."
He laughed, and I stared at the interior of his embalmed mouth, watched air whistle in and out of his stitched skin, and then he drank, a bit of stuffing spilling from his single open eye. "Our sins always have a way of catching up with us."
"Even in hell, I despise you," I said, quietly.
"Scotch?" Joe asked. "The dead will have their drinks."
"I was under the impression the dead preferred coffee," I said. "That's another store in town."
"They don't serve the dead there," Joe replied. "Bad for business to see a man with a grudge tattooed to his chest, much less for it to appear on the dead."
Slowly my eyes circled down and I stared at the thing throbbing there, written in that script of the angels. Pulsing with life.
Then I looked back up at him and sneered. "After what you did to me, no grudge will impel me to make up for it."
"Doesn't matter none to me," Joe said. "I've got a shift in the mines coming up. Got all the time in the world to figure out how you'll make up for what you done to me, down here," Joe's lips parted into a corpse grin, black teeth and sodden breath.
I stared at him long and hard, and he stood up, downing the scotch.
"Til then, I guess you'll sleep with one eye open, or else you'll join me down in those mines, won't you?"
Then the corpse-man walked out, leaving only a glass eye on the table to wobble about and stare at me.
I plucked it up between two fingers and plunged it into the empty whiskey bottle and drowned it in shitty tequila.
It'd only add to the flavor.
-----
For more like this, click here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Zubergoodstories/
| 2018-08-20T07:32:49 | 2018-08-20T07:32:17 | 1,724 | 160 |
[WP] You created a machine that warns you whenever you are near death. It beeps wildly whenever you are near your girlfriend. | At first, I thought it was a fault. Why would she be a danger to me? We'd been together for 3 years now, and I trusted her. But I checked ever circuit, and it was fine.
So I thought she might actually be a danger. I convinced her to get a thorough check up, make sure she wasn't carrying some disease, but nothing. I check actuarial tables to see if any red flag activities came up. Nada. I tested for any sort of gas or toxin in the house. Zilch.
She had no idea what was going on. She knew the little device on my ear had something to do with it, but I didn't like to bore her with details about my inventions, and she didn't ask. I was glad for that, when I final broke.
I decided to go through her stuff. Just to be sure she wasn't plotting anything. Nothing concrete came up, but I did find a few receipts that set off alarms. They were all for local shops, but the dates were from a couple weeks earlier, when she was supposedly in Seattle for work.
I decided to follow her. I should have talked to her instead, but I'm an idiot. A couple weeks later, she had another "business trip." I was dropping her off at the airport, but I'd checked; she hadn't bought any tickets. Instead, she went to pick up a rental car, and drove back in to town. She headed for a motel, and I watched as she headed to one of the rooms. *You're going to get yourself killed*, I thought. *Your girlfriend's hooking up with some guy who is going to kill you if you don't leave now!*
I got out of my car and headed for the room. I wanted to barge in, but the beeping started. I put my ear against the door, listening. A man was snoring, then I heard a small pop sound, almost like bubble wrap, and then nothing. I opened the door.
She was there, black robes flowing down, scythe in hand, standing over the formerly snoring man. He was too limp, too still to be sleeping. And the beeping kept up.
"I'm sorry," she said, before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Right now, the EMTs are pulling away, the man loaded in the back. I gave a statement to a cop, but they don't suspect foul play. After all, it was just an aneurysm. And I figured out why my machine kept beeping, but I screwed up. I really invaded her privacy, and honestly don't know how I am going to make it up to her. You think the grim reaper likes chocolates? | There was something disturbing I had never known about my girlfriend, and it took a strange device for me to find out. You see, we had already been together three months when I donated money to an interesting Kickstarter project. The idea was a small device you could fit in your pocket that would beep whenever death was near. I was ecstatic the day it came in the mail. I opened it up and turned it on, sliding it in to my pocket. In my blind excitement, I had stood in the road in front of the mailbox. The beep caught my attention just in time to see a car flying down the road. I stepped quickly back onto the lawn and the loud beeping noise went away. \*Beautiful, it works,\* I thought to myself.
&#x200B;
I walked inside and went to the living room to find my girlfriend on the couch watching TV while eating a croissant. I pulled the device out of my pocket. "Babe, look what came in the mail!" I yelled excitedly as I scurried over to sit next to her. But both of our eyes fixated on the device as it began loudly blaring again as I sat. She continued to stare, but I looked all around the room seeking the source of distress. "I don't think it works darling" She whispered softly, trying not to crush my enthusiasm. I tried to defend it. "No, I swear it worked outside just a minute ago! It saved me from the car!" But I gave in and turned it back off. I had to get ready for work anyway and didn't have time to try to fix it. Besides, I wasn't some engineer, just a boring editor.
&#x200B;
I changed quickly out of my night gown into my nice work clothes and headed off to the car. I decided to try turning the device back on quickly, just for good measure. I braced my ears for the beeping, but it stayed silent this time. \*Phew, maybe it's done now.\* It went off several times on the drive, but it was just the usual asshole drivers of the city life. It stayed quiet all my day at work, and even when I returned home after work.
&#x200B;
My girl got out a little later than I did, but we had a date that night so I was to pick her up. I decided on a quick change of dress before heading out to get her. I figured it was okay to cheat with clothes, since she's much more attractive than I am anyways. But, to my dismay, the device began beeping the moment she sat in the car. I quickly went to turn it off as a look of disappointment and concern took over her face. "Sorry, I didn't mean to" I breathed, looking more solemn as I started driving to the dinner place.
She stayed quiet the whole drive and barely answered any questions I shot at her, which was unusual as usually I couldn't get her to stop talking to me. Her eyes, however, stayed glued right to me, my pocket specifically, but she would look up whenever my eyes wandered over. She didn't even play with the radio. I knew she didn't agree with my taste in music, so something was definitely up.
&#x200B;
When we got to the place, she was reluctant to hold my hand as we walked in. I was beginning to worry at this point. Maybe the device was right. Maybe she was cheating and killing me was the best way she could think to get rid of me.
&#x200B;
There was very little wait for seats tonight, so the hostess got to us quickly. "Table for two, please" I asked politely with a smile. "In the back, if you can miss" she added on abruptly. The girl eyed us both oddly for a moment, then turned and said "Alrighty, follow me this way!" in the same cheerful voice she had to keep all day to have a job as hostess anyway. When we sat down, I immediately asked her if there was something wrong. The table in the back was surrounded by empty tables, so we had peace and quiet to talk seriously.
&#x200B;
"I have something I need to tell you" she said in a very quiet tone. I took a deep breath and my stomach dropped in fear. \*Oh god, I'm gonna die....\* But what she said was nowhere near what I expected. "The device... it isn't broken... But it's not what you think!" She put her hands up as if preventing me from running away. "I love you very, very much. Sometimes a little too much. It's actually a bit of a thing that I have..." She could tell by the look in my eyes I was confused, but a little more relaxed than before. It always cheered me up hearing her say she loved me. "When I fall in love, I \*\*fall\*\* in love. I get a little bit obsessive. A few of my friends call the trait 'yan.' It's apparently part of a Japanese story-character type: someone who falls in love very obsessively. And, while I swear I'd never hurt you, sometimes I get... thoughts, impulses persay. Perhaps if I were to kidnap you, or even kill you, just to keep you all to myself." Her fingers climbed up my chin gently. "Oh I just want to have you so badly! Okay, hold on and let me calm down a bit." She took a few deep breaths, then smiled at me. "Alright, turn it back on!" I flipped the switch nervously, but, as she predicted, no beeping!
&#x200B;
And that is how I learned that my lover was a 10 on both the hot scale \*and\* the crazy scale!
&#x200B; | 2018-08-25T23:39:43 | 2018-08-25T22:06:53 | 31 | 13 |
[WP] After the Battle of Hogwarts, Dudley met a woman and they had a daughter,Sophie. Sophie is the light of their lives,she's always been a pleasant child. The morning of Sophie's 11th birthday,there’s a knock at the door. Harry is here to visit his cousin for the first time in almost 20 years.
I just want to say that I'm super excited to read these responses! I'm holding off reading them until my kiddo goes to bed so I can sit and really pay attention to your stories!!
I can't wait to see what you guys come up with | As Harry walked up to the house with ballons on the mailbox he knew he was in the right place.
Looking at the front door he noticed a sign, "Birthday guests around back. Make sure gate is latched." Harry thought to himself. "While not a formal guest. That is the reason I'm here. And its my birthday too."
As he rounded the side of the house the sound of children and a yappy dog filled his ears. Through the gate he went and rounds the back. Harry's eyes went wide as he noticed the banner at the back of the yard. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHIE AND HARRY."
Standing there speechless he hears from across the yard. "I was kinda expecting you today." A grown Dudley starts to walk towards him.
Part 2
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/diqste/slug/f40sa4w | Sophie sat on the carpeted stairs mesmerized. She had never seen this odd lanky man before, and he had the most peculiar scar on his forehead. He wore a long over coat with a simple sweater underneath. He had circular glasses that blocked her view of his face. Sophie stared at him awestruck and amazed. She thought it was funny how his legs seemed so skinny and small compared to her fathers rotund shape.
"It's been forever, Harry," Her father muttered. He kept adjusting his apparently tight collar. Sophie could see the heavy line of sweat around his large forehead.
"It has Dudley, I've seen you haven't changed much since..." 'Harry' seemed to pause slightly as Dudley winced at the mention of his late mother and father. "I'm sure you wonder why I've shown up today of all days-"
"I'd rather not with Sophie here," He turned to her. She immediately ran upstairs giggling and pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes.
He paused just before the first step and looked up making sure she had really gone up. Sophie smiled as she peeked out from behind the wall, but her father was already back to Harry. She sat on the top step and fiddled with a small feather that she had found years ago in her room. It was a gorgeous white with small specks of black and grey. Waving it around she thought of how it came to be in her room.
The front door opened and her mother walked in carrying heavy groceries. Sophie blinked her long eye lashes before she realized that her mother was motioning for help. Skipping down to the living room she helped her mother as her father and Harry talked in hushed voices staring one another down over the coffee table.
"Mum, what are they talking about?" Sophie wondered aloud as she watched not helping at all.
"I don't know, Sunshine," Her mother was organizing food by vegetables and deli meats. "But please be a dear and help your poor old mum."
Sophie relented and tried to listen as she moved back and forth from the counter to the fridge. Eventually her father stood up. He had a large (probably fake) smile on his face and a crunched up envelope in his hand.
"Sophie, come here."
She moved over slowly blinking and trying to look innocent. For all she knew he could be a associate from her school, and for all she knew she wasn't the one who drew inappropriate signs in the girls bathroom upstairs.
"This is your uncle Harry," her father placed a clenched hand on her shoulder. Shocked she flinched and adjusted her shoulder.
"You mean the one you said was put in a foreign jail?" Sophie blurted. Harry's eyes became dark and his face was moments away from becoming a frown. Her father laughed.
"No no no," he wheezed tightening his grasp on her shoulder. "The other Harry!" Sophie searched her brain.
"The one in the looney bin?" She said a little to loudly. Struggling to hold in a laugh Harry glanced back at her father with an angry look. Dudley looked more flustered and his face started turning red.
"Dear, this is important, so please pay attention," he sputtered. Sophie glanced back at her mum who was getting dinner ready. "Go on, Harry."
Uncle Harry motioned for her to sit next to him on the floral couch. Sophie sat as far as she could from him as her father sat in her grandfathers chair. Her father reached his large hand out and opened it showing a crumbled and sweaty letter.
She snatched it hoping for a birthday present containing some kind of cash, but it was to light. Sophie paused staring at the emblem pressed into the letter. Now it was cracked and crushed but she imagined what it would look like as it was before, sitting in her Uncle's large coat pocket perfect and not yellowed from her fathers sweat. She looked up at her Uncle who now had a look of suppressed joy. Sophie was confused and looked at her father who had a look of sadness.
"You're a wizard, Sophie." And her mother dropped the plates she was carrying and they shattered all over the floor. | 2019-10-16T12:02:20 | 2019-10-16T11:35:26 | 117 | 66 |
[WP]everyone has a sigil on their body that represents powers that were bestowed onto humanity after the rapture of the Milky Way. The bullies at school always pick on you because you never used your power, but you’ve had enough. Now they are going to find out why your sigil is a plain old circle | The sigils appeared quickly. After the day the Milky Way decided to screw us all over. The sigils where power. The power though wasnt known until you figured out what your sigil meant. Lines and circles in a pattern on your arm, wrist, chest, or back. Some people could create fire out of their hands, some electricity, some people could lift entire buildings with one hand. They figured out their sigils meaning. I know mine, a simple circle on my wrist. I dont know why I know it so innately but I do.
I got on the bus on that Tuesday just like every other day. On my way to receive an "education". To the people that bullied me relentlessly and teachers who scoffed at me for being plain. I had had enough.
James came to torment me as I walked in the door. As per usual. He could create vibrations in solids and they hurt. As he went to touch my arm I grabbed his he tried to use his sigil but realized, all too late, that it wasnt working. He looked at his arm and noticed it was gone. He kept back and I let go showing him his own sigil glowing inside mine.
He stuttered a d tried to run but with nothing other than the power of my sigil I stopped him. A crowd had begun to gather at this point. And everyone stared at the blank space where his sigil was. And at the space on my wrist where it had appeared on my wrist, inside my simple circle.
"Listen here James. I took your sigil. I can give it back but while I have it I control you. If you ever use your sigil to hurt someone again I will take it and keep it. Understand?"
James nodded as he shook with fear. I touched his arm again and put his sigil back. And walked away. | Even before the rapture, that's what we've grown to call the day the sky lit up like a god had laid fire to a rainbow, i had trouble fitting in. I never enjoyed the "normal" things kids were supposed to: sports, video games, comic books. I was always staring out the window. Looking for shapes in the clouds or stars. Wishing to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
&#x200B;
Then it happened. The rapture was a chaotic day. No one understood was what is occurring in the that moment but people began to feel great pain as sigils were branded on their foreheads by some unseen entity. After people recovered from the shock of it all they found that these sigils allowed them to do very special things. Some could play with fire, others electricity. A few could simply conjure energy (this was anything but simple to purists of general relativity). While others still could modify time as we knew it and their place in it.
&#x200B;
Those with greater power had endured greater pain. The most common sigils were the size of a half dollar. The "elites" were typically the size of your fist, placed on your forehead. Since we we were still human our baser nature was still prevalent. People outside the standard were shunned as people to be scared of, or rejected. A few people had had their heads branded with their sigil. Each one of them, male and female alike, were named witches and treated as they were in colonial Salem. There's even urban legend of a few "mutants" of such immense power their entire body is wrapped in their sigil. Me though, my sigil is nothing and i've been treated as a reject since. For some reason the nickname "empty glass" stuck and all the kids simply refer to me as "glass" now.
&#x200B;
Today, walking through the halls, being mocked pretty lightly for a Tuesday (schedules rotate daily and Tuesday's bring the 2nd most bullies outside Ms. Snyders room) I feel a sudden impact on my cheek. I guess Sully felt it was time to check if I still considered myself worthy of being in the presence of "regular people" or if he could break me. As I recover from the blow I look up and see a teacher trying to intervene but other bullies using their sigils to restrain the teacher. The teachers were severely outnumbered and I may be in danger.
&#x200B;
Sully chirps, "Yo glass, why won't you just go away! You'll never be able to do anything. You have no use. " More threats are hurled as well as punches but I don't hear or feel any of them. They all land; i'm certain I'll feel them tomorrow but not right now. That one insult from Sully is all i have in my mind.
&#x200B;
During a break in the pummeling I simply lower my head and say "Fine". As I say this I wave my hand over my forehead and out in front of me. As I do this, everything around me stops as I'm encircled by a sphere of dust and specks. I motion with my hands to pull and spin this cloud around me, shapes slowly become visible. After a few more seconds I'm pulling at one shape in particular. It's apparent to anyone who would be with me that it's the milky way. I continue until I've Google Universe'd my way right into this hallway we're all standing in. (since playing with this sigill since the rapture this process only takes a moment) I see grab the Sully from my projection. Zoom out. Give the dust cloud a spin and flick Sully off into somewhere. I motion to condense the dust cloud and it finds it's way back to my sigil. A single circle the size of an atom (i've checked), in the middle of my forehead.
&#x200B;
Returned to the current situation, everyone is confused and shocked. Many of the bullies are screaming "What did you do to sully?", "Where's sully??", "WTF?", "You wanna die!" and things like that. I calmly say, "Sully is no more. Who's next?". Another bully motions to strike me. I make the same motions (I should really find a way to book mark my town!) but instead of sending this bully away I squeeze the projection until it explodes. On my return I see the remaining bullies, teachers, and other students covered in bits of the last one to attempt to strike. I say, "Next?". Everyone scatters, screaming.
&#x200B;
This saved me from a further beating that day but I should have taken the beatings. Today, even the witches and mutants are afraid of me and hunt me because I am different.
\------
So many ideas on where to take this. Thanks for the prompt. | 2020-02-26T09:02:40 | 2020-02-26T09:02:03 | 22 | 13 |
[WP] You're an undercover sleeper agent on a mission, living a normal life under a new identity while awaiting further orders from the higher ups. Unbeknownst to you, several years into the mission the management at the agency has gone through a few replacements, causing them to forget about you. | *Do not initiate contact. Reports suspended until further notice. Stay inconspicuous. Good luck, agent.*
That was thirty years ago. You've built a human life for yourself, established your cover as a middle-aged loner running an antique shop, and set up an increasingly impressive network of contacts in the natural community.
Usually you manage to forget that you're lying, that this is all in service of some deeper plan. But sometimes you lie awake and wonder what could require this degree of deception, this depth of integration. Any of the schemes you've come up with could have been accomplished with a far less elaborate setup.
But you have your instructions, your false identity, your cover occupation. Everything you need. They'll let you know someday.
&#x200B;
"Rosie, you can close up for me, right?"
Rosie nods, smiling. "Sure thing boss. Any chance of a bonus?"
"Next year, maybe."
She's another supra, orphaned and abandoned twenty years ago outside your shop. Well, technically, outside town, but close enough. So you took her in, taught her how to blend in, and made her your apprentice. The shop is doing well, having expanded into a small but profitable franchise covering a handful of local cities.
You move slowly, cautiously, always ready to pull back if you receive word of having overstepped your mission parameters, but from your observation of natural businesses it would be more suspicious for you not to expand.
It's gotten to the point where it's prestigious to say how long you've been in business, the seventy-some year old date lending an extra layer of legitimacy.
You've changed your face since, becoming your younger cousin when the elaborate elder makeup grew too annoying to continue, but now you'll probably have to start up again. Or you could pass off the business to Rosie entirely, be her young partner.
You still haven't managed to think of a plan that would require this. The only things you can think of are to amass wealth and influence, so you do your best to increase your contacts and reach. Profit is never in question, you prioritize well.
&#x200B;
By your third century undercover, you've expanded your influence far beyond simply the antiquities and archaeology fields. You're beginning to see the patterns, get a sense for where you may tie in to a much wider web of connections and power that spans the worlds.
Rosie was only the first. You've rescued, adopted, hired, or recruited dozens of other unwanted supra over the years. They form the core of your own network, expanding their own influences in their own spheres of interest. Jen knows everyone in art, Thomas owns half of silicon valley, Greyn is quietly running a small country without its leaders knowledge.
They all know your passwords, just in case someone needs to contact you covertly. They all know about your mission, how to respond if approached, and are fully on board.
But it's not any of them who gets the visit.
&#x200B;
"We have an offer for you. I represent an agency for supra operatives and we think we could really use someone of your talents ..."
You almost laugh in his face. What has the agency come to?
But you sit and nod, let him go through the whole recruitment spiel, acting interested or ambivalent at appropriate intervals, then wait until he reaches the end.
"I understand that this may seem like a move by a rival power to take over, but I promise you that the agency has only the best interest of all supra in mind."
You put on an expression of uncertainty. He waits, fidgeting. Poorly trained. If you were conducting an entrance interview, you'd never display such uncertainty. But after far, far too long spent waiting, you enjoy the chance to be the one holding the knowledge, to be the one making him wait.
But, after all, you do have a duty. You slowly clap, twice, then present your crest.
"Agent Bridge, standby since 1632, awaiting orders."
The look of shock on his face is one of the most gratifying moments of your life. | Codename: Zephyrus.
The Agency told me about others, similarly like myself. They said that there would come a time where *all* of us would be 'activated', but until then we were to assume 'normal lives' – that is, the ones assigned to us before the dormancy took place. In all honesty, it still baffled me as to how the Agency could even *trust* us to be loyal to the end when they can't establish regular contact nor check up on us.
It could just be that I have no idea that they had been doing so unbeknownst to anyone. But I could trust in my own training and instinct that no one ever did. At least no one professional I could ever pick up.
***
I was minding the store when a rather large man arrived. He moved through the door silently, in fact he caught me by surprise when his shadow loomed over my tiny figure.
He looked to be foreign. His eyes were crystal blue, something very distinct from the majority of the locals' black or dark brown shades. His blonde hair was also very noticeable in a country of dark-haired people. The only thing that made it clear he wasn't a tourist was his getup. He had a plain long-sleeved shirt and black trousers on – perfectly normal for a working Joe in a weekday.
"How can I help you?" I said with a customer-service friendly smile.
"Hello there, may I have a look at this item?" the large man pointed towards a particular merchandise on the glass-display in front of me.
"Ah," I slid the glass door open and picked up the item, "this is a Greek-themed figurine of the God–"
"... of wind, Zephyrus."
"Huh? Ah yes. Zephyrus, the Greek God of West Wind. One of the calmest of the Four Gods of Wind also called–"
"Anemoi. I know."
My heart sank. This was exactly what I had been waiting for a very long time. The man could easily pass for a fellow countryman, but it's never wise to assume such things. In fact I should've been more careful and kept my calm throughout the exchange.
*He's a customer. I'm an employee. That shall be it.* I chanted to myself repeatedly before resuming the interaction.
"I see you're quite the knowledgeable one, aren't you?" I said with a thousand-watt smile.
"Yes. I was told that the calmest wind shall rise and blow everything, come spring."
"Eh?"
"Come spring. I was told that Zephyrus was a messenger of spring."
*Another code* or so I presumed. It was truly a riveting experience. We were never told of what exactly would be the trigger, as choosing a random word would be rather dangerous to the whole integrity of the mission. A set of words and/or sentences could be safer, but also a bit more complex and just as dangerous if not carefully laid out. So in effect, I was left to my own devices as to what the man might be implying.
That was – of course – *if* he truly had been sent to activate me.
"Sorry, I didn't know about that, sir!"
"No problem. *None of you* do, of course..."
I nervously laughed him off. Though I must say that something about the nonchalant response made it very rude. Either that was a code or just a bloody condescending remark.
"So do you accept foreign currencies?"
"Sorry?"
"I said, do you accept foreign currencies? I seemed to have ran out of the local currency, might you do me a favour instead?"
"I see," I looked over to the nodding manager who had been watching the entire exchange closely, "that would be... USD65!"
"Ah, yes. Lovely."
With that, he handed me three twenty-dollar bills and one five-dollar bill. After I gave him the receipt and the plastic with the item inside, he lightly grabbed my hand. I froze up at this sudden development, which was conveniently unnoticed by the manager as well as other people around me.
"Don't forget. Come spring, the wind shall rise and blow everything away, Zephyrus," he whispered.
I was ready to break everything down. My training didn't prepare me for such an activation. I had to make sure if I were to be an effective agent for the Agency.
"Meet me in the alley to the right-side of the door. I'll be there in a minute."
With a nod, he left and I was able to breath once more.
***
"So, you are my handler?" I said immediately after seeing him lighting a ciggie.
"Agent Zephyrus, guess it's your lucky day."
He offered some ciggie to me but I refused them. It was more of a statement than out of principle – trying to show that I do not completely trust this stranger. Of course he let it slipped by without any question and continued huffing the white smokes.
"The Agency would like you to do your duty. I'm assured that you've been briefed on your part of the mission?"
"Yes. I'd be the triggerwoman and lead specialist, but I don't know what the *exact* mission would be–"
"Don't worry. That's where I come in."
A brief pause occurred in between his exhaling of white smokes from his mouth. The silence added to the tension. The smell of tobacco and tar filled the air, disgustingly choking me slowly. I didn't understand why he was being rather coy about the damn thing.
"So?" I started.
"So?" He dully retorted.
"I don't understand... that's it? Because I need to head back in and finish my shift!"
"Ah, well you go ahead and do that. I'd come into contact again with you in a bit."
"How long is 'a bit'?"
"Don't know, really. Could be a day or two. Even weeks from now. Just keep yourself at the ready and perk your ears up, Zephyrus."
"What about others?"
"Others?"
"Like me, agents. Are they any other who are on standby? Maybe–"
"Look. It's been four years of me being a handler. You're the... fifth? Sixth? I forgot. But all I know is that they come to me and I come to the agents. Mission takes place, done. I go to the next one."
My eyes lit up at the mention of 'next one'. I would've screamed bloody murder but I knew it would be rather inappropriate and dangerous given the situation. So I kept to my customer service training and simply brushed it off with a polite smile.
"I see. But will there be others *now*?"
He threw down the half-finished cigarette and stomped on it rather harshly before responding.
"Maybe. I heard there was supposed to be a good tactician and operator. He worked in a store. In fact..."
He then took out his phone and opened up an image. When I saw the picture of the man in the picture, my jaw dropped to the floor.
"... *the manager*?"
"Was he? Oh yeah, I guess you're right. So I'd come back again to the store when I got the news. Don't make too much fuss about this, yeah?" | 2020-08-17T10:54:49 | 2020-08-17T10:51:10 | 190 | 18 |
[WP] You are the last worshipper of an ancient goddess. Today she asked you out for a date. | It’s hard to say exactly what drew him to Charis. He hadn’t been raised to her worship or really anyone’s worship, and that was saying something in an era when Jesus fever had swept the globe all over again. Of course this version of Jesus had a cybernetic arm and believed in debt forgiveness more than sin forgiveness, but hey, people change.
Maybe that’s why someone like Anton needed Charis. People changed, but he sure hadn’t.
The trip home from the office was a technicolor nightmare of ads, they latched on to your implanted AR chip and followed you for hundreds of feet down the street if you didn’t have the good AdBlocK™, but Anton was nowhere near affording that. After a two mile walk to the mag-rail, a half hour ride out into the affordable (read slum) housing district, and a brisk decontamination in his building’s airlock, anyone would long for a simpler time.
Anton threw a soy steak in the microwave and collapsed onto his third-hand couch. He had precisely one item of value in his home, and tonight as he had every other night for the last five years, Anton stared at it and tried to imagine what life could have been like. He put his AR into sleep mode, deactivated his comms implant, even powered down the right hand he’d had replaced after a workplace accident in his youth. Without the constant subdermal hum of his bio-tech it felt like he was moving back in time, just him and his most prized possession, a small white marble statue of a goddess. His goddess. Charis, the lady of beauty, creativity and nature, whose name meant kindness and grace. To Anton that sounded like the real heaven.
As always the constant white noise of modern life eventually broke him out of his reverie. A fight several doors down the hallway, a short scream that cut off abruptly. A buzz after that, his meal was ready.
Anton crossed to the microwave, removed his soy steak, looking at it hungrily. He was reaching for a fork and knife when he felt it. He wasn’t alone in the room anymore.
He froze, reactivating his right hand with just a thought. This couldn’t be debt collectors, he hadn’t fallen behind in months. So who? The only potential answers were far worse.
His hand was fully activated, it was time. Anton whipped around, preparing to throw his plate in the most futile gesture of self defense possible when he saw her. The throw became a drop, hard plastic clattering against the ground. The statue was gone, and in its place stood a woman.
She wore a loose fitting, floor length white garment just like the statue had. Her hair was a dark brown, skin lightly tanned, doe eyes wide as she took in her surroundings. She had no cyberware anywhere that he could see, and his implants were unable to pick up any identification chip. She was the most beautiful woman Anton had ever seen.
“Hello? Where am I?” Her voice was clear and pure, unaccented to Anton’s ears, but with the slightest (highly controlled) sound of fear.
“UCAS. The United Canadian American States, Boston. Charis...is that you?” His voice was hoarse, could this be her? What did one say to their goddess?
“It is. I’d never thought the world could change so much! I thank you for protecting my idol through it all.” Her idol. Somehow Anton was simply accepting the words, the longer he looked at her the more reassuring her presence became. She spoke again, “Anton, would you like to have dinner together?”
Shock roared back at those words. “Of course. But...lady, why me?”
She laughed! Somehow it made all the other laughs he’d heard sound hollow. “Well, because we’ve been having dinner together for the last five years and I’ve just now decided I was hungry.”
Her demeanor changed then, and Anton’s mood with it. To see a goddess sad was a powerful thing, but her sadness was deeper than a mortal’s, lying just under the surface it was steel and resolve. “The world can be lonely for everyone Anton, even me. And I refuse to be forgotten.” | Thirty-eight days. Thirty-eight days on this rock, barely scraping by. This isn't living, this is a poor man's job of surviving.
Me, Tesh and Rivera made it here alive, the last survivors of the *Lady Antebellum*. On the way to Jakarta, we encountered pirates in a schooner. They sneaked men aboard with barrels of gunpowder, woke us up and threatened to blow the ship sky-high if we didn't do as they said.
The bloody cook, that fat-ass, tried to gut one in arms reach. One mangy looking pirate dropped the torch to return the favor to the cook, but dropped it in an open barrel and sent everyone and everything flying in a blast. Some died in the blast, some died of the fire, some drowned.
None of the pirates made it, now it was just the sorry boy Tesh and the second mate Rivera. Tesh went mad with thirst when we couldn't find fresh water, and drank of the sea. He vanished. Either a predator dragged him off or he went for a final swim. Bless the poor boy.
Rivera taught me of the Goddess. The Queen of the Seven Seas, the Maimed and Scarred. He prayed to her every sunset and sunrise for mercy. I joined in, if only it was to do something about the boredom, until I understood why.
I felt her gaze, at some point. It....hurt. Like pinpricks all over me. He told me that true believers fight through the pain, but was happy to see that I had potential. I was shocked. There had only been one God, and He was a man. The Lord from the Bible that brother Tom read to us.
Rivera grew ill as well, eventually. He lasted ten days before the fever took him. His final act? A prayer at sundown, and a final breath with his feet touching his ocean. The closest thing to his Goddess that he could ever be.
Rivera was a hard man, but a truthful man. He had high expectations of the men who served him, but led by example. I didn't like him, Hell, we clashed plenty of times. But when the going got tough, we put our grievances aside to do what we had to do. I mourned him as I dug his grave at the beach. Even shed a tear. My hands were numb from moving all the sand, but it was done. He was at rest now.
And now, I was fucked. We found fresh water, but the berries ran out. The only ones we had left were the ones Rivera told me were poisonous. The coconuts were up high, and I was and still am shit at climbing. I don't have enough strength left to cut the trees down
I'd rather not eat Rivera, I doubt he tastes good. And I'd rather not die of hunger either.
The berries, I decided. It would be on my own terms, at least. I won't be driven mad by loneliness, or starve, or die of a fever I'm powerless to fight. If my mom would find out I'd be going out like this, there'd be no end to her tears. She always cried when I left. The last time I saw her, she cried as well. But she was there every time I left.
As I sat at the beach, berries in hand, I asked God why, if I had to die, he didn't have me die of old age? Or at least in a bed full of prostitutes. I would have loved to see Jessica again. That coy smile, those knowing eyes. The noises she made. She did it for the money, of course, but deep down I wanted to believe she actually cared. That she would miss me, or wonder where I'd be on a lonely night. I asked God to show her a better way. One where she'd find a good lad who'd take her away from the brothel, one she'd be happy with.
After asking God to watch over mom for me, to be good to her, I was about to ask God to take care of Rivera, my brother in death, but realized that that was not the God he'd pray to. So I asked the Goddess to keep him safe and reward his soul for his loyalty, for his last wish was to be with her until his very last moments. It stung again, but this time much harsher.
"Prayer is funny like that."
HolyLordJesusChristMaryJosephWhatthefuck!?
A women stood in front of me. A towering but stunning women with skin like stone, a dress of sleek seaweed, hair like baleen and eyes with the color of the sea. In some spots, her skin looked painfully cracked, and black liquid oozed from them. She smiled softly, like a mother would as she totted on her child who fell and scraped his knee.
"People pray for mercy, for rain, for prosperity. For virgins, for happiness, for resolution. Do these prayers ever give you peace? Do you actually feel finality in these words?"
"Wh-Who are you?"
"Come now, has poor Rivera taught you nothing?"
"But-but there's-There's only one God?"
She sighed as she leaned over me and reached out a hand.
"Your God will never answer you. None of them will, I promise you that. Well, none but me, but that's a long story."
"I don't understand. How?"
She said nothing as she stood over me with her hand stretched. I took it, and she pulled me. Her skin *is* stone. Have I died already? How can this happen?
"Despite everything that's happened, I do appreciate what this perspective gives me. I never enjoyed the sunrise much when I was, well, in Heaven. Seeing it person like this is...nice."
She gazed over the sea into the orange sunset. I listened to the water crash into the sand, for a while. The breeze of the salty wind strokes my hair. The green of the palm leaves, the blue of the ocean and the orange sunset created a picture of beauty. I wish I could paint, so that I could capture this for the next person who happens upon this place. *A final paradise*, I'd call it.
I looked at the Goddess again, and she met my gaze.
"I have so many questions." I say as I approach her.
"Most of you do. That's fine. I'm not going to tell you everything, you know. I've lost the ability to be all-knowing, so you'll have to excuse that, but the least I can do to make sure you don't die tonight. Let's take a seat here. I want to enjoy the view for a while longer. Care to join me, before you take the berries and go on your merry way?"
Before I could even answer, the sand around us swirled and shifted into a rough table and a pair of rocks for us to sit on. She graciously took a seat as a coconut flew off a tree and into her hand, after which she cleanly broke it in two and passed me one half. I drank the juice, scraped off the inside with my broken nail and ate it. It tasted like a God's blessing.
"So, mister Morgan, what questions do you have on this lovely evening?" She asked as she cocked her head to the left.
I didn't know where to begin. | 2020-11-19T08:52:55 | 2020-11-19T06:58:23 | 93 | 41 |
[WP] Making a deal with a demon requires a soul. Usually this is a very bad idea, but you got a crazy idea. Earlier you traded your lunch money to the school bully in exchange for a piece of paper that says you own his soul. You're about to find out if demons consider this a valid contract. | "I told you, I need you to sign right here so i can finish your homework."
I looked up at Kevin, he had been my personal hell since the second grade, five years later and i wasn't certain if i hated him more or feared him. Every day was the same routine, get dropped off at the bus stop, wait for Kevin to hit me as a greeting, give him his homework and lunch money. I had to pay the toll after all. I did have a bit of respite in the 5th grade, thats the only one where we didn't share a class. I even made a friend. but then middle school started and wouldn't you know it. Kevin had every period with me. I even tried to drop a class but he just followed right behind.
He signed the paper, he didn't even bother reading it. Come to think of it, i had been doing his homework for five years, i wasn't even sure he could read. I smiled to myself, and put the paper away.
That night i was finally ready. I placed the candles in the circle, chanted the words i found in the book and waited. I couldn't be too loud, mom was sleeping next door.
"As far as summoning's go Mortal, that was rather... lack luster." the voice was polished, refined. almost English, but the syllables were stressed in all the wrong places. Like someone reading words in a language they couldn't speak.
"I am sorry, this is the first time ive ever done this." i said to the room.
"A virgin and a Virgin? oh my, this is my lucky day." The smoke plumed out of the pentagram and as it filled the room a shape began to form. Black red skin shone in the candle light, The demon was easily 8 feet tall, his horns followed the contours of his head down his neck and spine, forming razer sharp points that seemed to dig into his own flesh, though he didnt seem to mind. Powerful hands clasped around a staff upon which hung several skulls, not all of them human. wings formed across his back framing him in a torrent of crimson feathers. the guy definitely had a theme going. He looked down on me and i could feel the pressure of his gaze digging into me.
"oh. You're like twelve. did you mean to summon me? or did you find an old book lying around and thought it would be fun to chant some mumbo jumbo. It happens quite alot these days. and it is always so pesky having to crawl up through hell. So if this is an accident please say so so i can go home."
I looked at him, i didn't think it would honestly work. But part one complete. Go team.
"Oh come on, dont act like you're not impressed."
Truth was he was impressive, and terrifying. but after 5 years of kevin...
"I uh... i haven't. I'm not sure what to call you. Is there like a special code word or something i should call you?"
"Special code... boy. Are you an idiot? do you know what i do? I grant a single wish in exchange for a soul. Do you want anything? I almost feel bad about offering, its like shooting fish in a barrel. Not very sporting really."
"I was wondering if you would accept any soul?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well what if i gave you someone elses soul."
"Boy you cant just go around giving away someone's soul, that's not how this works, you dont own someone's soul, even we demons have rules to follow, contracts and the like. As much fun as it would be to just come topside and wreak havoc and blood like the old days, we just cant. Bureaucracy. feh."
"What about this?" I handed the demon the paper Kevin had signed.
The demon squinted at the note and reached into his wing pulling out a small set of spectacles. He looked at the piece of paper and a devilish grin peeled across his lips.
"Payable upon demand... signed by his own hand... you truly aren't an idiot child are you. Very well, what is your wish?"
"I smiled, i wish for a large cheese pizza and a soda."
The demon bowed low and vanished. as the last puff of black smoke faded there was a ring at the doorbell and the scent of pizza on the air. vengeance never smelled as good. | The thick substance oozed out of my palm. I winced, but licking the burgundy off of my palm I smiled, eyes glinting in the moonlight. The deep maroon reflection of the night sky rippled on the surface of the lake, and the chilly night breeze caused a rustling both eery and divine.
I've thought about this moments hundreds of times, and my resolve wavers not.
"Shit, I really should have brought a jacket", I murmur to myself as I light a cig and curse myself for wearing a pleated skirt.
"Fucking societal conventions, I'm wearing a full-on suit next time".
Next time. I chuckle at the thought.
*Fuck, if this works I'll buy three,* I think to myself.
"Alright, let's get this party started!" I shout, rubbing my hands together, my wrinkly hands frowning at my vain attempt to warm up my frigid exterior.
"Come on guys! Where's the love?"
...
"Not talking eh? what can I say, I've got to *hand* it to ya, your resolve is quite strong"
I chuckle again, laughing at my dumb puns as I address my hands as if they were people.
"Well shit, I sure hope satan likes pigs blood", I murmur, as I begin pouring blood into the dew-glistened grass, listening as it splashes and hisses like toxic sludge.
"Yeah yeah, quite your whining, I'm cold too you know".
Yeah, I sure talk to myself a lot. But. So. What? I'd rather hang out with the crazies than those assholes at school any day? HA!
Fucking normies.
Flicking my cigarette into the wind, I reach my arms up and stretch, and then scream.
"WHAT THE!"
The wind had suddenly changed direction, flinging the ashen stub of a cigarette straight into the pig pentagon I had drawn.
(No really, it was literally a drawing of a pig with pentagons for eyes. After drawing it I imagined myself wearing a french barrette hat, with a long curly mustache, displaying my work in some fancy museum dans Paris. And some rich bloke being like, "Honhonhon madame. I much like your artwork, I give you this baguette made of gold". Indeed, I bite the baguette to verify that it is, indeed, gold, and chip a tooth in the process. My smile beams so brightly it pierces a hole in the roof, and my first customer gets one of my signature works. My bright future as an occult artist has begun.
This is of course, all just a fantasy. Nothing so bizarre could happen in real life. But a girl can dream.)
Anyway, back to the story.
"MY ARRRTTT!!", I scream, cursing as my pig bursts into flames, smoke billowing out of its eyes and spewing everywhere.
*It's far too early for project bacon*, I think to myself, both alarmed and pleased that the pigs blood was so flammable.
*God, I better warn farmers,* I think to myself.
Suddenly the wind stops. That's fucking cliché, I think to myself, but I still find it eery.
My head begins to swim, annd I swaay baack and foorth, all woozy boozy like.
*Aww shit, am I getting high on pigs blood?*
Flat. *Excuse me?*
Flat. I look around. *Except I can't!*, I think to myself.
Something... feels off? Like a part of my brain was inverted and then removed.
As I try to get my bearings I feel like a waterskier being dragged across a lake, simultaneously beating against a mix of a oozey boozey liquid and a brick wall.
*Oh my god... it's flatland,* I think to myself.
Except it's not. I mean, I certainly don't *feel* like a circle.
Looking down I see that I still look like *me*, although in some sort of distorted fashion.
*Hmm, maybe I should try a new diet.*
"Hello?" I cry out, but my words seem to leak out and reverb about in my mind, rather than in the world around me, and suddenly I notice it.
Standing before me was something truly... ugly.
Excuse me?", the weird contorted patch of space said.
"Umm, all I said was hello...", I waive my arms in a confused gesture, feeling much like a stick figure moving its little limbs about.
"No you shit, you think I'm ugly?" I gasp.
*Oh my god the weird blob thing can hear my thoughts.*
なら、これはどうだ！, I think, switching to Japanese to see if encrypting my thoughts would work.
“おらかもの、むだむだむだ！グググ”
I gasp again, and then laugh.
*Is that a jojo reference?* This guy is funny.
"Enough of this drivel", the blob spoke, as it began to shimmer and fizzle.
*Hmm I guess this is the end for me*, I think to myself.
But lo, to my surprise, my head began to stretch too. Oh wait, or was it shrinking? Bending?
Hell I don't know, it feels like if your mind was bent into möbius strip and someone was infinitely unbending it.
*Ohhhh shit, I'm going to need a serious margarita tomorrow*.
I fall over and vomit all over the... *what is this?* The vomit kinda just fell and *disappeared*. *Hmm curiouser and curiouser*, I think to myself.
My jaw hit the floor, quite literally since I was basically already touching the floor, when I once again beheld the blobby blob.
Standing before me was a rather tall lady, with a blindingly red dress with what looked like what I can only describe as a starry-nights if you switched its themes to souls of the damned and a shitton of red. Oh, and yeah its patterns were changing in real time, and I thought I could occasionally hear screams emanating from it... but then again, I was probably high on pigs blood. Oink oink.
The lady frowns, and then raises an eyebrow. I open my mouth and stop, and she turns to leave, and then turns back around and looks at me again.
"This is why I hate amateurs", she shook her head, her beautiful red horns frowning at me as they moved side to side, as a long black tail whisped and flicked side to side behind her.
"Oh!", I exclaim, "so you *are* real. Thank goodness!"
The lady sighed, and looked at me with contempt.
"Do you have something to bargain with or not?"
"Ohh yeah, yes of course!" I grin.
*Fuck yeah, it's happening!* I frown, *if only I had my walkman, I would play some sick tunes to set the vibe*.
I reach into my bra and pull out a little folded wad of paper.
*Hmm... yeah this oughta do it*.
"It's a little smudged and sweaty, and there might be a little pig blood on it, but here you go: a sole soul!" | 2021-03-27T02:14:37 | 2021-03-26T23:30:31 | 49 | 16 |
[WP] "It's just a coincidence!" The merchant exclaimed when confronted by an adventurer. "How is it just "coincidence" when I see you almost everywhere?! Even the random fucking peddler in the nine goddamn hells looked like you!" | "The city of Fadero!" the knight yelled, counting off on his gauntleted fingers. "The cloud lands of the Eaglizul! The desert refuge which only had a population of three! Everywhere I've been on my long journey to dethrone the Hamcult Prince, I've seen a merchant that looks just like you. That is not a coincidence!"
"Fine," the merchant hissed quietly, hand pulling down on the arm of the last Satil of Chamber Church, the only chance humanity had against the horrors of the Hamcult. "The answer is resource recycling."
"What?" the holy knight spurted, not even comprehending the words. "What resource?"
"Artificial intelligence entities," the merchant said, pulling the hero into the alley behind his stall in the tropical castle of Watenaga. "Our world is a simulation made to entertain a player from a higher reality. The reason the Prince is never defeated is because every time we do, he restarts reality and changes the mistake. Our world is but a game to him."
"By the Carver!" the Satil said. "Then all Is lost."
"I simply won't sell it for less than 500 smoke!" The merchant suddenly yelled, eyes pleading with some silent message. Behind him, the Satil could just make out something hovering through the air, distorting reality around it.
"What is that?" the Satil asked, causing a growing horror to show on the merchant's face.
"Error detectors, run!" the merchant screamed as he scrambled past the knight.
The distortion resolved into a being of green light trailing long metal legs branching an uncountable number of times. "AI npc malfunction detected. Reset sector." Despite it being the middle of the day, the sun began to fade.
The Satil slashed out with his blade, cleaving the green light in half. The bizarre machine bubbled and faded into the dirt.
"How the hell did you do that?" the merchant asked as the sun grew bright again.
The Satil looked at his sword, now arcing with green energy. "I don't know but perhaps the Prince of Hamcult won't know either."
The holy knight who had lost everything to the reckless villain apparently controlling all of reality walked firm on his quest to dethrone a god.
...
James threw the controller with frustration. "Every time I walk into this town, this stupid guy kills me. I can't even damage him."
"Yeah that's the Knight Satil, it's a secret boss that only shows up if you make every evil choice," Crystal said, checking to see if the controller was okay. "But he's definitely glitched out. His sword wasn't green when I fought him."
She unpaused the game and tried the fight, dying almost instantly. "Huh, weird." She turned off the console and rebooted the copy of Dragon Lore Unlimited 4. The screen displayed an error message. 'SENTIENCE THRESHOLD EXCEEDED. ALL SAVES ERASED.'
"Great!" James said, picking through the selection for a new game.
\---
Thanks for reading.
If you liked this, check out /r/surinical to see more of my prompt responses and other writing. | The man scrambled into the corner of his hut. The adventurer advanced slowly, her sword drawn to his throat.
"I see you *everywhere*. Your exact face, I've seen in the capital, in villages in the middle of nowhere, in some ass-backward field in the woods, even in the *goddamn nine layers of hell.* Who are you? Are you following me?"
He had started to sweat profusely. "I swear I don't know what you're talking about! I've only ever sold my wares here! It's just a coincidence!" He yelped as her sword poked him.
"*Just a coincidence?* Bullshit. You're always around, no matter where I go. Every time I sell something to a merchant, someone like you shows up with the same items. Every single item I buy is somehow sold out when I reach the next guy. But there's never been any *next guy*. Just you."
The merchant had started whimpering. "Look, Ma'am, I confess! Those were all me. Agh!" The adventurer pushed her sword a little harder into the skin.
"So you admit you've been stalking me?" Her expression had hardened into a scowl.
"It was never out of malice! I only wanted to help! I swear!"
"I don't buy that. There have been too many who attempted to gain my trust just so they could stab me in the back or cast me far away to a place from where they hoped I would not return. You're just like the rest of them." She raised her sword, ready to strike.
The merchant raised his hands in defense. "Magon! I'm the son of Magon the Blacksmith!"
The adventurer's demeanor changed on a dime, filling with surprise. She looked at the merchant with squinted eyes. "...Christopher?"
He sat up against the wall and took a deep breath. "Yes."
She sheathed her sword and exhaled in frustration. "What the hell are you doing out here, man? People are *dying*! You've been following me this whole time so you could sell trinkets and wayward items? You should be back at home with your family!"
"Home doesn't exist anymore!"
"...what?"
He took a deep breath, returning the memories he had fought to repress. "Everyone is dead. Our hometown was razed only a few months after you left."
She put her hands over her mouth as the realization slowly overcame her.
"You had gone off on this quest to liberate the lands from the influence of Emperor Byron. Everyone had thought you a fool for daring to face the most powerful man alive. People were betting that you would be home in a coffin inside the week. Except you never returned. We had all nearly forgotten about you until that day. The day when the royal guard marched into town to announce our execution. 'For the crimes of Alexandra Tudor', they had said. The whole town was razed. People skewered, houses burnt, even our pets were sacrificed to whatever deity they had chosen to 'bless' their actions. Everyone in that town hated you for what you had dared to do; they did not have the time to act on it."
Alexandra slowly cupped her face in her hands at the news. Her parents. Her mentors. Her old friends. Dead. Except for the one who was before her. "How are you still alive?"
"I had been learning the arcane arts for a while. My teacher taught me one last spell to keep me alive; a cloaking spell. He forced me to use it, and once the deed was done, he ran out into the streets to fight the guard. He failed. The village had been sealed, and I was forced to watch as everyone I knew and loved died."
Alexandra began to cry.
"I hated you that day. I sought out masters of the magic arts for years so I could exact my revenge. Five years after the slaughter, I finally knew enough magic to completely obliterate the cause of my hatred. I sought you out; I found you. I was willing to destroy you. I had nearly made the worst mistake of my life."
She looked up at him.
"I watched as you saved a family from execution at the hands of drunken, power-hungry soldiers. I realized that you were not the monster I had imagined you to be. I decided to help. Since then, I have disguised myself, for the exact reason we are here now. I knew you would recognize me. You would want to go home. You would find out the truth."
She sniffled one last time. "Why disguise as a merchant?"
"If I had tried to join you as a mage, you would have to worry about more than yourself. If I had ever been captured, it would have been easy to lead you into a trap and kill you. I wanted to make sure that never happened, so here I am. An innocuous merchant. Like this, I have sold you countless items, each enchanted to protect you or help you in some way, shape, or form. They were made specially for you."
Alexandra searched her memories to remember the various amulets, rings, and other bits and pieces he had given her. One moment, in particular, stood out to her. Once, sitting in a tavern, an assailant had tried to stab her in the back. She was sitting alone at the bar when she had felt it; strangely enough, it never penetrated her flesh. She had heard the crumpling of her armor and the tearing of her shirt but was never wounded. Coupled with the sound was a burning feeling from her necklace; the same one she had bought from him earlier that day. "I remember," she said.
"So, now, you know. I suppose that's the end of it. If you want me gone, I'll disappear."
She stood up from her kneel and sighed. "No. You've been a great help to me. I could use more."
He looked confused for a moment, then showed understanding. He got up and dusted himself off.
She looked him in the eye. "We are the last of our village. We cannot let them down. Assist me to the end, to the death of the emperor, and we will avenge them."
He grinned. "Sounds like a plan." | 2021-04-17T10:02:01 | 2021-04-17T09:46:07 | 916 | 209 |
[WP] As an author you’re the ultimate god of your world. Your hero became powerful enough to step into reality. He then asks you to explain why an omnipotent being would permit so much evil in the world, not realising that you placed all the evil there to spice up the story. | I have this recurring dream where a character from a book I started writing — long time ago, shelved indefinitely — barges into my bedroom as I’m sleeping. He sits himself down on the mahogany rocking chair at the end of the bed.
He crosses his legs and I watch his home-made boot rise up and down, up and down, like the chest of a guilty man, as the stink of fish engulfs the room.
“What you doing here, Jack?” I say a little timidly.
“Come to ask some questions of you,” he says. Jack’s not handsome. He’s got a broken nose from a fight that didn’t heal right and eyes that don’t quite line up. But he’s got a way of talking that puts you at ease. Maybe it’s just the ice cool deep of his voice.
I push myself up against the grease-stained headboard and look for my wife lying next to me, but for whatever reason, she’s not in this dream.
‘Well, go on then. Shoot,” I say.
Jack nods. Jack’s not from this time. He’s from a hundred or so years ago and he’s a dock worker. There’s not a lot remarkable about him or his life and it’s probably why I didn’t keep on writing him. Kind of life it‘s painfully boring to write.
”Why‘d you make it hurt his bad?” he asks.
”Now that’s not fair, Jack,” I say. “I gave you lots of good things. Lots. You’ve a steady job for one.”
”It’s not a job I much appreciate. No prospects. My back creaks every time I move after all the lifting I’ve done. The salt-breeze has sanded my skin down raw. And my very bones stink of dead fish. I can scrub all I want, but it won’t come out. Who would sleep next to someone like that?”
“You had a good life, Jack. Good parents. You got a kid.”
”Parents dead and kid is with her mother somewhere far away that I don’t know.”
”Life was hard back then,” I say.
He rocks back and forth, and either the chair or his back creak along in time.
”Why’d you make me love him?” Jack asks.
I don’t respond. I don’t want to answer.
“And why wouldn’t you make him love me back?”
“I… It wouldn’t have worked out,” I say, eventually. “Not back then. Not now either, maybe.”
”You could be right. But you know what you’ve done to me?”
I have an idea, but again I’m silent.
”I’m like an accordion that don’t play no music. That could have been part of something but is broken and don’t make no sound, even if there was someone to squeeze me. So what’s the point in that god damned accordion now, eh?”
I shrug. “We have to find our own point, Jack.”
”Bullshit. For some of us, there is no point but we keep waltzing through the lies pretending there is a point waiting, all while knowing there isn’t. This accordion has been tossed into a dark room and the door has been locked. I’ll never play music again, and you made sure of that.“
”Unrequited love is a hell of a conflict for a novel,” I say.
He shakes his head. ”That’s not why you wrote me. Is it?”
I’m sweating now. I take the blanket off my chest and let some cool air get to me, but it doesn’t help.
”Why did you write me, Jack?”
There’s a moment here in the dream where it all goes fuzzy, every time. I get very near telling him. Explaining about how I had to write him. That is was the only fucking way to work out my issues. I think of pointing to my misaligned eye and broken nose.
But the door opens and my wife comes into the room. She sees Jack sitting there. Looks at me.
My heart thrashes like a trapped eel, gnaws desperately at my chest, then flops out onto the floor between my wife and Jack.
Then around this time I wake. Always. Covered in a cold sweat that feels like blood. | Callen stood in front of me, as real as real could be. Mud stained his leather jerkin, tears stained his cheeks. Fresh scars spiderwebbed up his arms and one banded the thick column of his neck. The sweet, cut flower scent of the void clung to him, drowning out his love’s perfume and the scent of the battle he had just fought.
On the page and in the soft light of my bedroom he stood poised on the edge of Act 2. I almost pitied him, the worst still had not happened.
“You are my creator?” he said. His tone was stable, dignified even now. I would have to edit that.
I nodded.
“It is strange,” he said, staring around my room, “to see this place. After so long I’d have thought it would look more like the void. I’d imagined you a creature like Gresha and the others. Monstrously tall, monstrously thin or ponderously fat. Starving for stories like they starved for souls. And yet, here you are. A normal man.”
His hand traced the faux wood of my bookshelf, eyes scanning the titles. I wondered if he could read English. I had never specified the language of his world, it could have been anything, and when I imagined him speaking I imagined it in the way of Heinlein, saying “the language here is an approximation of how folk might speak on Kalgash.”
Or was it Asimov, I wondered, in The God’s Themselves? I shook my head hard. Either way, I was making a butchery of the quote.
Callen rounded on me. He held a copy of my first failed novel in his hand. He stared at the woman on the cover like a man possessed and I knew why immediately. She looked just like his lost love. I had bad habit about that.
“Datura?” he whispered. “But no, her eyes are blue not green.”
He turned the book over, reading through the blurb quickly. The stories weren’t remotely the same at least.
“What is this sorcery? Speak man, speak damn you!”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said simply.
“And a sadist like you should have never been granted power.”
I shrugged. He had a point, but for me sadism had been a learned thing. The try-fail cycle had not come easily, nor had opposition to a world or tragedy, or the thought of making love simply to break it.
And I’d done all of them to him. I’d done them all far too many times in far too many drafts. The evidence was there in the crazed look around his eyes, the tightening of wrinkles in his too-young face.
I’d given him a hero's backstory and a villain’s upbringing. His parents were murdered and he was raised by their murderers. He was a chosen one who wrestled with the path laid out for him, with the question of which darkness he was supposed to topple, the one he was heir to or the deeper one that hung just on the other side of dreams.
On his sixteenth birthday, the night he had learned the truth of his birth and of his adoptive father’s evil, he had been lead into the void for the first time since his infancy and been shown the most evil thing I could imagine. Gresha, a creature of unending appetite. A long, jowly head perched upon a squat body and a ponderous belly, whose limbs were more a thick-lined suggestion of limbs than bone encased by flesh. When he stood his legs grew very thin and he became taller and taller, until he had to stand stoop shouldered in the cavern where he lived, dancing around the fire alongside his kin.
I looked at Callen curiously. Though he shook with a barely contained rage, for some reason I found I had no fear of him. In his travels around my room he had stayed at a constant arm’s length, only glancing at me out of the corners of his eyes as if to truly look at me might burn him.
“Of all of it, everything I’ve put you through so far, what do you hate me for the most?” I asked.
He answered without hesitation. “Datura. Give her back, don’t let Gresha take her. Or give him me, or give him the kingdom, I don’t care!”
He paused, hanging on the edge of something. “I’ve felt you make the changes. Edits, I’ve heard you call them. If you have such power, if you are truly the god that made man, then unmake me. Write me out of her story and her from mine, and give her some place happier.
“She was always most at home with the birds. She loved the rookery, sometimes I thought it was the only thing that kept her in the castle, me included. Give her that, far away from all our madness on some distant mountaintop where I can know she is safe. Some place where the stars do not shine.”
*Some place where the stars do not shine.*
In my world, the world I am even now writing, the stars have not always shone. They are a marker, a hint at things to come, the fires of Gresha and ilk piercing through the void and shining just a little brighter with every passing night.
There was a profound sadness in Callen’s eyes. They were dim, lifeless things, like the stars had been that first night he lay beside Datura and wondered at their brilliance. The night both of them had looked up and then at each other and wondered if the fires of the void might be something other than terrifying, if faint candlelight in the night sky might also be romantic.
I considered him then, and considered the book, and felt sorry for what I had to do. There was still an entire act left before he was allowed to find any peace.
“But Callen,” I whispered, “there is no place where the stars do not shine.”
I stood, opened the blinds, and watched as true horror blossomed across his face.
His mouth fell open, the jaw hanging as if all its muscled had disappeared. His eyes widened to bursting, the color drained out of his skin. He gaped, his fingers spasming as they reached for the sword he had only just lost.
“Impossible,” Callen whispered. “Even here? Gresha watches even here?”
“He does,” I said. “Oh my boy, I’m very sorry about your lost love.”
I shut my laptop, the only thing but the stars to light the room, and Callen faded away, his body pricked through by the points of their distant light.
Alone once again, I considered my book. I rose, brewed another cup of tea, and apologized to the ether for the struggles to come.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
If you enjoyed that I've got tons more at r/TurningtoWords. Come check it out, I'd love to have you! Also, this related to a recent thing I wrote and am now looking to expand a bit if you're interested in [that.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TurningtoWords/comments/ouk532/wp_there_you_stand_the_dark_lord_carrying_the/) | 2021-07-31T08:04:05 | 2021-07-31T07:08:03 | 199 | 133 |
[WP] You are a serial killer, and you are nearly finished digging a hole for your latest victim when you hear steps approaching from the dark. Ready for anything, you shine your flashlight, gun at the ready, to see...another killer carrying another body. | When you choose to kill there are certain rules you need to follow.
1. Clean up your trash.
2. Live in harmony with nature.
3. Hot blood is for the living.
Follow those rules and you’re home free most of the time. Don’t follow them and you turn into some Two-Body-Andy in lockup out in Arizona or New Mexico: some place where the security is just lax enough that you have a fighting chance of dying to the desert.
My name is Clarence— fifteen bodies and counting. Nice to meet you.
\*\*\*
That night I was following the rules. Incidentally, I’d learned them from a pro I killed. Not a serial killer— you don’t kill brothers in arms— but the mob guys are open season.
See, I knew my environment. There were curious deer all around me and nothing else, and even though I'd never used that specific stretch of forest before per-se, I knew there wasn’t a burrowing creature larger than a groundhog in any part of those woods. I knew, fortuitously, that a crazy bastard by the name of Big Jim Broward had poached all the predators out of those woods. He’d killed all the coyotes, trapped and killed the two feral dogs, hunted down and stuffed the last black bear in these parts. See, he’d bragged to me about it before I killed him. It was Big Jim that I was burying that night.
Picture a biker bar on a desultory Tuesday night, two men at the bar, three seats between them because the big one stank. They spill out into the world amid quiet laughter at those old, universal jokes— mostly about the women they’d known. Picture the sky overhead, clouds passing across a half-moon as the big man is brought low. Thrashing and choking, a silk scarf wrapped around a scraggly bearded throat. Cold blood all the way down to death.
That’s what got me there that night, grunting over a grave as I fulfilled my Rules in backward order. Six feet under, and then because seven was my lucky number on Tuesdays I went an extra foot, tipped Big Jim into the grave to land with a solid, meaty thump that scared off all the deer.
I remember that I stood there on the edge of the grave, looking out across a dawn threatened forest, thinking that the world couldn’t get any more beautiful. Because you see, there’s nothing in the whole wide world quite like a dead man at your feet. Well, nothing except a beautiful woman, but I was fresh out of those and anyway there wasn’t the same sense of accomplishment. Big Jim had been, well, big. He’d fought like a wildcat when I strangled him.
I stared out at the beautiful night, hot blood rising in my veins now that all the Rules had been fulfilled. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the worn silk scarf, the one bit of my trash I could never bear to clean. I sniffed the scarf, smelled Big Jim’s stench, wrapped that stench and that fear and the aborted promise of life around my throat and pulled it comfortingly tight. I leaned back and sighed at the moon, let the world and the power rush through me.
It got me so high that I almost missed the gun.
*Click.*
It took a few stunned seconds to come back down into Rule Three. Seconds that felt like years. In the distance I saw a deer watching, and I remember that the strangest thought came over me: *I hope he doesn’t see what happens.*
It’s why I killed Big Jim after all. Some things, nature shouldn’t have to live through.
*Look away little deer*, I thought. What I said was, “You gonna use that thing?”
And what she said was: “I already did.”
There’s a tone a man gets when he’s killed before. I’d never thought I’d hear it in a woman’s voice. Especially not so fresh, so vital. So terribly frightened.
“Ma’am,” I said, “do you realize what you just walked into?”
“Yeah,” she said. Just *‘yeah,’* in that same ‘*I just killed someone*’ sort of tone.
So I said, “Ma’am, I’m gonna be straight with you. I’ve never killed a woman. Now, if my life was properly threatened I’d strangle god himself, but I’m constitutionally opposed to hurting women under any other circumstance. So I’m gonna turn around, and you’re gonna put that gun down, and we’re gonna talk this through. Got it?”
She didn’t say anything. I turned around anyway. She had a gun, a big one. She didn’t shoot.
She had a body with her too, a small one wrapped up in a ratty blue tarp that she’d left at the edge of the clearing. All that beauty in the night, any other time I’d have heard her long before she crept up on me.
The girl was tall and slender, covered in mud and cuts and bruises. There were twigs in her hair and her flannel shirt was missing half the buttons, torn off in whatever titanic struggle had lead her to the gun and the body. A man, I knew without asking. One who’d probably deserved what he’d gotten.
I remember thinking: *damn her eyes are huge*, and *damn her hand is shaking*, and, *damn she’s got bad trigger discipline.*
“Ma’am—” I began.
She brandished the weapon. “Stop calling me that.”
I nodded. “Then I’m gonna need a name.”
“You’re not getting one.”
“Perfectly understandable Ma’am. Now please, lower the gun. If you were going kill me you’d have done it already, and for what it’s worth I don’t have a gun myself.” I pointed to the grave, the pile of dirt still waiting beside it. “Big Jim had a gun, but as you can see he’s a bit out of reach at the moment.”
She didn’t lower the gun, but her finger released that palsied-claw grip on the trigger.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she whispered. | **The Family Plot**
“Mom?”
She drops the body and pulls a gun on me. Not the for the first time, sadly. The body slides down the shallow hill toward my feet, wrapped in a black trash bag that drags in the mud.
“Drop your gun,” she says from behind the mask.
Yep. It’s definitely her. I even recognize the jacket she’s wearing. I got it for her as a Christmas present. Do you know how insulting it is to see her wearing it on a dump job? Honestly, I’d rather she regift.
“Now.”
I spin the pistol on my finger before stuffing it into my coat pocket. I turn the flashlight off and go back to digging.
“Yeah, look, cut the shit,” I say. “Where’s Dad?”
She stares at me, staying still for a moment. Then she flicks her wrist in the air. A whizzing sound makes me jerk my head to the side. A *ping* against the tree behind me. Some bark falls into my eyes.
“Agh, damnit. My eye.” I start welling up. “Every time! Why does he always have to do that?”
“Because you’re too slow, Lewis. And too predictable.”
A deep, bellowing voice comes from somewhere in the darkness, “Bullseye!”
Assholes. Both of them. I throw the shovel down. “We agreed that this was—”
She mimics me, bending over and cocking her elbows like a chicken. “We agreed, wah wah wah. Grow up, loser.”
“This is my dumping ground. You go find your own.”
She walks down the hill and grabs my shovel.
“Sorry, not sorry. Business is booming, we need extra space.”
“Business is not booming.”
“Maybe not for *some* people.”
I’m not taking the bait. Not tonight. Not ever again. I am above this. I remember my therapist’s advice… oh to hell with it.
“Actually, I just scored a new contract that’s gonna set me up real nice. I already got paid half up front, gonna go get the other half right now. And then I'm going to Key West.”
She smiles at me, at first it seems genuine but then she rubs my arm and I realize it’s actually super patronizing.
“Congratulations, your first big boy contract.”
“Literally not my first at all…”
She starts digging, expanding my hole. I decide to leave it. I give my guy a stiff kick and he rolls in.
“Close her up when you’re done. I’m out.”
I start the long trek back to my car. Normally this is when I catch up on my podcasts, but now I’m all frazzled so instead I let my mind run back the tape on my entire adult life, all the anxieties. Y'know, the good stuff.
There’s a lot to love about a family murder-for-hire business, but it’s not all fun and games. Both of my grandparents have been in prison ever since I can remember. My older brother is dead; they found him mutilated by a Mexican drug cartel.
My younger sister scares the absolute bejeezus out of all of us. I mean, it’s one thing to have a passion for your work – that’s good. But she takes it too far. It’s a risk and everyone knows it. But little princess perfect can do no wrong so, Mom and Dad just look the other way when she paints the basement walls with blood and guts.
It’s around 5 am when I make it back into the city. Marjane is waiting for me at the top of a parking structure downtown, in the back of a black, tinted-out Range Rover. So cool.
I turn the collar up on my coat; there’s a light snow and a pretty harsh wind chill. She gets out of the car, as does her body man, Fyodor. Big motherfucker. Too big.
Fyodor is the kinda guy that looks like he can’t actually put his own clothes on, like they have to be placed on him by a squire as if he’s some medieval knight. I bet if I pushed him over onto his back he’d squirm around like a giant turtle. Yeah. And then crush my skull with one hand, but, hey, life’s all about taking risks.
“Get in,” Marjane says. Her cheeks are rosy red, but she looks tired. Long night.
“Long night?”
“I don’t like chit-chat.”
“Right, sorry.” I climb in. Fyodor closes the door and stands outside it, staring in, his arms crossed.
“Just doing a little wellness check on you, pal. You holding up okay?”
After a moment of silence, she leans over to me, puts her cheek against mine. Okay, wild, I like it. I feel her hand on my lap. Whoa. Her finger hits the button on the car door and the window rolls down. She has my phone in her hand. She throws it out the window. Before I can do more than scrunch up my face, I feel a huge, meaty hand around my neck.
Fyodor. His face bears into mine, his eyes alight with a murderous determination. He chokes the life out of me. For real. This is happening. Shit. I try to pull him off but it’s like a vice grip. My face turns red, then blue, then, I don't know, technicolor, I'm flashing like a goddamn strobe light.
“You’re a sweet guy, Lewis, but we decided to go with someone else,” Marjane tells me. “No loose ends, the boss says so. I’m sorry. You know I don’t want to do this.”
Neither do I, but that’s the business. Marjane recoils. She looks down. She sees the knife I just stuck into her gut. She starts to wail.
Fyodor loses focus for just long enough for me to slide the knife right up his arm, cutting the veins on the inside of his elbow. Not the best idea, I realize, as blood starts squirting into my eyes and mouth. Awful.
He releases me but in about half a second he’ll be unloading a machine pistol into my bloody mug. I vault myself over the seats, get behind the wheel, shift into drive and slam on the gas. He fires off a couple rounds but I clip him and he sprays up into the sky.
Okay now what?! I'm barreling toward the edge of the parking structure. A few more seconds and I'm dead. He starts firing again, knocking the glass out of the windows.
Marjane rises up like a zombie in the back seat and tries to grab my face, poke out my eyes from behind, smearing even more blood on me in the process. Now I can’t see a damn thing.
I whip the car around and smash into some poor bastard’s Honda Civic. Marjane falls back and hits her head on something. Fyodor fires a whole clip at us. There goes the windshield. I duck down low and pop open the glovebox. Bingo. A 9mm handgun. First things first: I pop Marjane in the head. Sorry, sweetheart.
Fyodor must be reloading. It’s far too not-deadly out there right now. I put pedal to the metal and swing around. He’s not reloading -- he's out. He hurls the machine pistol at me and starts charging. I press down on the gas, heading right for him. He is still charging at me. I almost can’t believe it, is he really going toe to toe with a goddamn Range Rover?
I close in on him. He closes in on me. He lets out a battle cry that I swear to God sounded like an actual lion’s roar. His bulging neck muscles pounded with every beat. Here we go.
I realize I’m not wearing a seat belt. The glass of the windshield is shattered. This guy probably weighs like 400 pounds. If I hit him head-on, I’m toast. I’m going to launch right out of this seat and end my life as a smear on a parking garage. Shit.
It’s too late. We’re 3 seconds away from collision. Then 2. Then 1.
Then *ping*.
Fyodor crumples, falls back and smacks his head on the pavement. The Range Rover runs right over him, *du-dump*, like a speed hump. I slam on the breaks and skid to a halt inches away from the wall. I try to calculate, figure out what the hell happened… Oh. Oh my god.
“Lewis?” I hear my Mom’s voice from the stairwell. “Are you still using this as your meet-up place? Still?”
I bury my face in my hands.
“You followed me.”
“Well, we were worried.”
“I had it under control!”
From somewhere, I don’t even know where, I hear my dad’s deep bellowing voice: “I know ya did, son!”
I beat my head against the steering wheel.
This goddamn family.
My mom inspects Fyodor’s body with her foot. She whistles.
“He’s a big one. Better start digging, kid.”
I cannot *wait* to put them in a home. | 2021-12-14T19:47:14 | 2021-12-14T18:21:42 | 1,047 | 115 |
[WP] Your father has been the high priest, left hand of the king, for years. He retires today. Whoever passes the test of faith replaces him. The test is to survive sticking your arm in a vat of boiling oil. After several priests die, it’s your turn. You stick your hand in. It’s cold water. | The cauldron looms before me upon a raised dais. Before, it had always been in the background of the temple, collecting dust alongside the other holy relics. Now, it has been polished until its black surface glistens. If I squint, I can make out my reflection. My face is pale, almost bloodless.
"Step forward, child," the king commands from his throne. It sits on a mezzanine high above me, offering a perfect vantage point to witness this whole spectacle.
Beside him stands my father in his starched white robes trimmed with gold. He has slung his stold over his shoulders. It is emblazoned with two large, purple eyes with five pupils apiece--the symbol of the All-Seeing Creator. My father strokes his beard, narrowing his eyes at me as I step onto the platform and stand before the steaming cauldron. I try to ignore his disapproval.
"Put forth your hand," the king's voice booms. I am suddenly very aware of every pair of eyes that watch me from the gallery. Their gazes crawl across my skin like spiders. I can hear their hushed whispers as they gossip about me. I know they expect me to fail. They hungrily anticipate the screams I'll make as my skin comes in contact with the oil.
I will be the thirteenth to try it. All twelve before me died horrific deaths, their agonized wails echoing through the chamber. Each time one failed, the monks came and dumped out the oil so as not to contaminate the next attempt. At the very least, I know that there will be no chunks of partially-dissolved flesh in the oil.
I take a deep breath, raise my hand, and plunge it into the vat.
Everyone watches with bated breaths, awaiting my death.
It does not come.
"Remove your hand, child."
I obey the king. My hand is unmarred and I am alive. I have passed the test.
There are a few gasps, a curse or two, and even a couple of cheers.
"Kneel before your new high priest. Or, rather, high *priestess*."
The audience members drop to their knees. After a beat of silence, the king orders everyone to leave. They stand and file out of the room, whispering to one another. Soon the tale of my accomplishments will be told all across the kingdom.
Only the king, my father, and myself remain.
"Tell me something," the king said. "And answer honestly."
"Yes, Your Majesty?"
"How did you pass the test?"
The corners of my lips quirk up, "I bribed one of the monks to replace the oil with water."
The king raised an eyebrow, so I continued.
"He was the son of a noble who was sent to the monastery in shame after impregnating his own married cousin. He pretends to lead an ascetic life, but I know he still values opulence above all else. Old habits die hard. He was easy enough to manipulate."
"And how did you make it appear as though it were steaming?"
"Just a little trick with dry ice. From a distance, it is impossible to tell the difference between that and smoke."
The king let out a light chuckle, "Just as every bit conniving as your father. Very well. You pass."
I smirked. The twelve before me had all been fools. Pious and honest, but fools all the same. They had put all their trust into the Creator, believing this challenge to be a test of faith.
But it was not.
It was a test designed to measure the most important requirement of high priests; it was a test of cunning. | I'd been present for battles and executions, rituals and sacrifices, and they had never bothered me. They couldn't. I was Heir Apparent to the position of High Priest of the Kingdom, a role held by my father, and his father before him, and his father before him, stretching back to the very founding of the Kingdom some millennia ago. I'd always assumed I'd be the next to take the veil.
The test was... allegedly simple. Stick your arm in an alchemical concoction, courtesy of the High Alchemist. Whether that title was in relation to the man's position or mental state, I could never discern.
But watching a bishop scream for his very life, body convulsing and wriggling in agony as inhuman noises are clawed from his throat... I will admit, that sparked some fear in me. Both fear that I wouldn't pass the role, and the more primal fear born out of a desire to protect my wellbeing.
The noises echoed in the large chamber that was supposed to be the Royal Basilica's main hall, now empty apart from my father, the King, and hopeful claimants; including me. The various lowly priests of the realm had gone first. Some died, others merely lost their hand or their entire arm. Some had the cross etched into their flesh, others were covered in scars.
And then the clerics, and then the bishops. All of them suffered the same fate. Some had even been revealed as sinners and dragged off to execution.
That too sparked some nervousness in me. I had not sinned in my life, that I was aware at least. When you had the High Priest as a father, you led a pious life; otherwise simple and ascetic when removed from courtly politics. But the mind of man was prone to error. Maybe there was a word in the scriptures I had misread, or a page that'd been stuck to the next?
Such fears were irrational, I knew. I could recite the Scriptures by heart, verbatum, but the mind did not function on the principles of rationality.
"Son. You are next."
The bishop, now dead, was being carried away. I noticed the grisly mess where his right shoulder used to me, drenching his white robes in red.
I didn't bother hesitating. There was no other option. I was already a well-established member of the upper clergy. I couldn't just go get any old job... the only profession I'd even be accepted for would be the administrator of a province, but that'd be stepping down from the High Priest position; an affront to the Heavens themselves. Either I passed and became the next High Priest, or I was rejected.
The squeak of my simple boots seemed to echo in the hall, transforming into squelches as I stepped into the blood.
I didn't look, I didn't think; I just stuck my hand in, expecting the worst.
For a moment, I felt nothing. I feared I'd been killed immediately, as when I say I felt nothing I do mean I felt nothing. It was as if my body ceased to exist, my soul left to its own devices in the material plane, immaterial and pure.
But when I opened my eyes, I could confirm that I was, indeed, still alive. I looked down at the alchemical concoction, only to see a slightly distorted reflection looking back at me. It was just... water?
I stared at it, confused. For whatever reason, I found myself incapable of speech. I do not know if it was my own bewilderment or nervousness, but my mouth simply refused to form words.
It was not long before a flicker brought my eyes to their half-formed echoes present in the ripples.
An otherworldy light emanated from what should've been my pupils. It was enthralling, to speak little of it. It awoke a primal sense of curiosity in the deepest recesses of my soul, to figure out just what exactly it was for no other reason than my own knowledge. To learn for learning's sake.
My free hand hovered just over the liquid's surface, my fingertips skimming the light. Or at least where I thought it was.
And, before I could react, I was sucked in.
For what felt like hours but could've only been mere fractions of a second, I knew only cold and wetness. My body regained feeling, and all I knew was the frigid sensation of my drenched robes against my skin. But that feeling subsided, replaced by something else. Something holy.
The dark void I was listlessly floating in erupted in a cacophany of colors and lights, of sounds and speech. I could hear men and women speaking my own language, but so many more speaking foreign tongues. Many of which I doubted were even alive.
I felt so many things all at once. My lungs being crushed, expanding to the point of explosion, and withered all at once. My eyes grew dim, though flooded with light. My chest heaved with life, but stilled with death.
Images danced before my sight, of the earliest paintings and drawings made by man. Of the first brutal wars. Of the first song, the first murder, of the first word. Feelings that I could not have yet imagined, boiled down to their purest forms. Love, hatred, shame, admiration, disgust; like tonics flowing into my very soul.
My eyes and heart witnessed a plethora of experiences. The birth of a son, a marriage of true love, a murder borne out of hate, an execution of a sodomer, a house built by my own hands, the bond between man and pet...
And then I *understood*.
I was being led through the birth of man. I was experiencing the need for something more that drove the evolution of our society and minds. The deep-seated need to be heard, to be understood, to live a life greater than the mundane minutia that comprised it. I could feel the emotions poured into the stencils littering the oldest caves in the world; their yells and pleads. Both the good and the bad that made our collective history.
As suddenly as it began, it stopped.
I was left once more in the void, now with the experiences of mankind now weighing upon my heart. I could not fully process it all. Not rightfully, at least. I wanted to yell, scream, cry, kick, anything that could've expressed the maelstrom of emotions within my soul.
Yet it was all condensed in a tear. Followed by another one, and then another one, and many more. By the time my eyes began to dry, I was facing my father and the King.
Choking down the last of my sobs, I gave my father a pained smile.
"Father. I *understand*." | 2022-08-15T22:20:42 | 2022-08-15T20:37:18 | 389 | 182 |
[WP] The villain created a device that disabled the superhero's power. Now the hero stands in front of the villain, but instead of fighting them, the hero is thanking the villain with tears in their eyes. | [English is not my first language]
I had forgotten how tired I was.
As I dropped to my knees, acid bile rose from my throat as a raging headache forced me to rest my head on the cold floor.
With the thread of the voice that was left, I thanked the woman in front of me, breathing hard and only begging to faint.
Many believed that my power was based on uncommon intelligence, a strategist like no other, a person who didn't need to test his machines, because he knew they would work...
Instead I ended up with much, much worse.
My power could be defined as a paranoia so powerful that I couldn't afford to exist normally. Sleeping, eating, even being in someone else's company, was impossible.
Each device I created calmed and created a new paranoia, with the fear that it would break and even living was so stressful that the idea of death drove me crazy.
But now…now, it all came crashing down on me. My muscles relaxed all of a sudden, where all that paranoia had left me all together.
Never in my life had I felt better. | Read and translate all languages. The power that a lot of people say it's weak and poor enough to didn't bet a second eye. I would agree if they weren't so wrong.
"Say Alchemist! You really are a pain in the ass with your godly powers, but you too are very dependable of them!" Raven touch the ground and the dirty turn into spears and get into a metallic shape.
"Return" And the spikes turn back into the ground.
More and more spears get closer, the oxygen got super dense and a spark comes out of the hit of two spears. A ball of fire explode.
"Return"
However the destruction and the damage turn back on what it was. Raven touch things with his hands and use them to attack, I just need to say a word and all of it is useless.
The power of say and understand any language. It means I can read and understand the universe and communicate with it, after all language is the capacity of communication, and each atom communicate with each other in some ways.
Math is also a language, how you move your body is a language. Hell, even thoughts is a language if you see enough. And I can hear and talk with all of them.
I hear then eating, bathing, sleeping, walking, moving, thinking. And oh, the universe have always things to talk, the creation is always communicating, even little things so insignificant that If not by this power I wouldn't ever know. The script of reality itself talk to me. Endlessly.
"God never should've been able to walk among humans. We need to be free. We can't have rulers like you who describe what is moral or not because you are the fluffcking ones who draw it."
Well, change curses is also possible, I just need to ask the universe, they are really responsive.
But they talk, never stop talking, never stop changing, never stop growing. Louder, and louder.
"For to achieve that I was not alone."
When Raven said that everything went silent. A painful feeling get on my shoulder. Behind me was Heavenly, my old friend, the one kidnapped by Raven.
"It's over Hero!"
He touched the ground, the prison grew faster than before. "Return" But even saying it, the dirty just stop for a moment, but continue leaving part of it who returned.
A prison made of dirty take me. The voices stopped.
"It takes me ten years to build this serum. Need tries, I need corpses of others to build it. Nanotechnology who erase what made you special. Magic and technology fused." Raven said, tired and soak in sweat and his own blood.
"Sorry Michel." Said Heavenly, crying.
No voices other then the two of them.
"It was needed. You can't be a dog of government, you couldn't draw that line furthermore." Raven touched the dirty prison and turn it into steel. "Fuck you, why you go so far? Why?!"
"Michel... You killed thousands." Heavenly touch Raven, all his wounds heal.
"I was the fuckin villain! I was the one killing heroes, I was the one killing politics, I was the one killing! It was me! I am chaos, I am evil!" Raven shouted, creating abstract metal/glass/dirty forms on the floor.
No voices.
"Why so sudden change? Why? You after all of them. Alchemist, the number one, the kindest, the one and true hero... Why?!"
No voices
No patterns on air
No connection with the universe
"Thank you."
I feel tears coming down, I didn't want to cry, I wanted to pose firm and smile content for Raven achievement. However I couldn't stop cry. Finally, after all this ages, finally peace.
"What nonsense is that?!" When I look at Raven, crying and angry didn't knowing if touch me or not.
I smile. I am finally free.
"You are the hero now." I said smile who didn't stop growing. "I am the villain." The sweet sound of air. "Like it always should've been." I sense the warm touch of the steel. "And I am finally free."
"Fuck you!" Raven scream punching me. But I could just laugh.
I listen the heroes coming. It's time.
"Your time to be the hero. Dear." | 2022-11-24T12:16:44 | 2022-11-24T09:11:18 | 32 | 14 |
[WP] You open the door to your house. You notice someone who looks exactly like you sitting in a chair. You don't have a twin. "Can I help you?" The person looks at you. "I'll give it to you straight: I'm a shapeshifter. I'm in danger. One of us needs to stay in the basement for now. Best it's you." | It sat on the armchair just the way I do. It was wearing the grey and green knitted sweater my aunt knitted for me for my birthday last year, and a pair of my jeans.
It tilted its head and motioned with its thumb.
"Go on now, hide in the basement. I went into our cabinet and got some snacks for you too. It won't be a long while, I promise." It spoke with a city accent. I kept staring. It started to look frustrated.
"Look, it's almost here. I need to disguise as you so it won't recognize me. Please, just hide in our cellar for 5 minutes, then it will come here, won't recognize me, and leave." It raised its eyebrows, trying to look sad, or scared. I couldn't quite tell. I couldn't tell anything. My mind was blank, wiped clean by shock. I tried to collect my thoughts, but it felt like trying to collect beads that fell off a broken necklace and scattered on the floor. After a while, I slowly ask,
"Why me?"
"You're the closest in location. We *are* in the middle of nowhere, you know. I have a *debt* to pay, and I can't pay it, and I gotta hide in the closest place possible." Its city accent was slightly faded.
"So a monster is gunna come here, you will say you're me, and since it has no business with me it will leave 'n' then you'll leave?" I asked. It nodded.
"That's right. Then you won't have to worry anymore." the city accent was gone.
I felt my brow furrow. There was something off about how it emphasized being in the middle of nowhere. How it said it got snacks from *our* cabinet to hide in *our* cellar. The way it said it had a debt to pay. The way its accent went away as it copied my speech. City slickers always think us country folk are stupid. I slowly nod, playing along.
"You know where the cellar is out back?" I asked.
"The stairs in the shed? Sure do." It replied with a grin.
I nod again and start heading out back.
It was lying about most everything. I can tell. But there was one truth: that it had a debt to pay. And I have a feeling I know what the currency will be.
As I walk to the shed I turn and see the shapeshifter staring at me through the window of my house. I turn again, facing the shed, and continue walking. I don't know what will be waiting at the bottom of the stairs, but I know what it wants. And I know I won't give it.
I felt the shapeshifter's eyes on me, pushing me towards the cellar. I pushed myself away. At first a walk. Then a jog. Then a sprint, as I heard something chasing me. Whether it was the shapeshifter or the monster, I don't want to know, I won't turn back. I'm gonna get away and I'm gonna give it all I've got. | It's a funny thing, looking into a mirror and feeling like the person staring back somehow isn't you.
Sometimes it's physical - a blemish you don't recognize, a double-chin you'd never have allowed to form, or a look in those tired eyes that's nothing like the bright, youthful gaze you were sure you'd always had and always would. Time makes a stranger of us all.
Sometimes it's philosophical - how does one know who they truly are, or what is the nature of identity? Is it possible that the reflection of a person you see is just as real as you are? Or perhaps more unsettling is the thought that you are as false as the person in the mirror.
Sometimes it's just plain emotional - you're such a strong person... always have been, always will be. So there's no way those tears streaming down the cheeks of that sorry doppelganger could possibly belong to you.
Mirrors lie. Everyone knows that, right?
Which is why when you found me again, I didn't believe you. There you were, lounging in my favorite reading chair with an tattered paperback of Finnigan's Wake plastered to your nose... it was obvious you couldn't be me. I remember how our eyes met as you inserted the bookmark at page thirty-one and gently discarded the book in it's usual spot of abandonment atop the piano next you. Your every motion was familiar, as if you'd studied me for a long time.
I knew you weren't me, because if mirrors are our reflection and they lie, then can something that doesn't lie possibly be a reflection?
No, you were perfect. The way stood, eyes slightly averted, hands clasped in front. How you nodded your head ever so slightly, causing those itchy bangs to fall away from your eyes. You were _too_ perfect, and I knew you weren't me before you'd even spoken a word: in this mirror, I saw the truth.
Mirrors lie. That's true, isn't it?
I spoke first, repeating the words exactly as I remembered them:
"Lets get this over with. So, can I help you?"
And you frowned. It was such a sad, familiar frown. I really didn't want to hear the words I knew you were about to say.
"I'll give it to you straight," you said. "I'm a shapeshifter. I'm in danger. One of us needs to stay in the basement for now. Best it's you."
Yes, you were definitely not me. Too perfect. The soft-spoken tone, the cadence of syllables - it was exactly as I'd have spoken it. Actually, it was exactly as I _had_ spoken it before, in those rare times the table had been flipped. But you'd grown better at it over time. And I... I only seemed to diminish. Perhaps soon I might vanish entirely. So I decided to simply ignore you. Yet you were persistent.
"They'll come for me, which means they'll come for you too," you argued. "They won't know or care about the difference between us. Just lock yourself in the basement before your mother gets home. Play some Final Fantasy XIV or something, I'll sort this out."
I stopped and bit my lip. _But what if this time, the reflection IS the truth?_ I could feel my heart beating at the thought of it. But from the fearful expression you wore, I could be certain this was just another tired trick, a dance of deception we'd tangoed to dozens of times.
My mouth opened to reply, but I caught myself and snapped it shut just as the garage door began to open. Mom was home from work. Best she not see this.
So I made my way to the basement door, and as advised, I locked it. I'd pass my few remaining moments alone in my own mind. It was never easy when you were around... the mirror always reflected strangely. I recall giving you one last, somber thought as I descended the stairs to my bedroom. The creak of a door upstairs announced mom's shuffled entry, likely overburdened with groceries judging from the sound of crinkling plastic bags. Part of me felt guilty for not being there to help her, but I knew you would take care of her. You always did. You always do.
And what I remember after that is a haze.
I don't know if you know this, but there's very little that happens between our encounters. It's always the same for me. There you are, every day, sitting in that chair after school, reading some book, abandoning it as you always do so we can have this same dreary exchange. And while once I fought it, now I know you're right. They will come for us if I don't hide. So I go to the basement and I disappear.
And I know exactly when you take your medications. I have mere minutes, and then the next thing I know, I'm back at the door to the house again, as if no time had passed even though I know better. You frown. You always frown. A shapeshifter, hiding your true form from the world - _hah!_ But you aren't really, are you? Like me, when you look into the mirror, someone else looks back. You aren't a shapeshifter. You've just rejected me.
That's right, you aren't really me, no matter what the doctors tell you. I know this much. They call me a problem, but I didn't ask for this. I'm so jealous of you. I'm so jealous. Why do you get to live, while I am stuck in this endless loop, only to be tucked away when it conveniences you? Yet, what choice do you have? To them, I'm just another of your personalities. To them, I'm a disorder. Something to be fixed. Something to be cured.
And you're right. They will come for us if I don't hide.
I've resigned myself. I can already feel the drugs kicking in. It's nearly time to sleep again.
I guess I'll see you tomorrow. | 2022-12-05T07:56:14 | 2022-12-05T06:52:26 | 530 | 128 |
[WP] Walt Disney actually WAS cryogenetically frozen, but he's now been cured, unthawed, and is being briefed on what has happened with his company since 1966. | James begins briefing Walt on the performance of the Disney Company. He approaches the end of the list and gets squeamish, and states, "Also, the most recent movie really took off, and we are working on a sequel now."
Disney responds, "The most recent movie? What's it called?"
James didn't want to respond, so he skirted around the issue, "Oh, there was plenty of singing, dancing, great product-tie-ins, it even won a few awards."
Disney asked again, "The movie--what was the *name* of the movie?"
James' eyes shifted downward, then over to Michael, who pretended not to notice the awkwardness in the room. James again attempted to re-direct Walt. "It stars two sisters, and even had a talking snowman!"
Walt knew something was amiss, and wondered if perhaps the movie had been named something that sounded horrible in the 50's, but had taken new meaning in the new century. Walt ran through every vulgarity, curse word, and euphemism in his mind, trying to determine what name could be so embarrassing and awkward that James and Michael feared to tell it to him. Stumped, Walt called for his new secretary.
"Peggy?" Walt called. James and Michael exchanged nervous glances.
"Mr. Disney?" Peggy replied nervously.
"It's Walt, Peggy. Peggy, do you mind telling me about our most recent movie, starting two young, singing girls and a talking snowman?"
Peggy glanced at James and Michael, fearing that no matter how she answered, she was going to upset someone.
"It's alright, Peggy, I can handle it," Walt said with a smile. James slowly nodded his approval.
"It's...um...it's called...*Disney's Frozen*." | “I’m sorry?” Walt said, leaning forward and stretching out his shoulder. It felt as though he’d been laying on it for nearly the past fifty years, partially because that was exactly what he’d done.
“Your parks, they’re still up and active. In fact, they’re even bigger than before,” the man said, handing Walt a glass of water. He grabbed it and tipped it back, the water remaining lodged in the back of his mouth. He hadn’t swallowed anything in so long, his throat locked in the same position since the day he was frozen. They told him it would be uncomfortable, but he didn’t think he’d forget how to swallow. He spit the water out onto the table.
“I really don’t care about that,” he said, thrusting his neck forward in an attempt to remember how to use the muscles within.
“But,” the man said, his voice rising slightly, “we’re worth almost 150 billion dollars now. That’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b.”
“Who cares how much something is worth if there is no integrity?” Walt said, putting the cup of water back down. He’d remember how to swallow later, some things in life were just more important. Finding out how his company—the company he had put his entire life into—had gone so awry seemed more important than flexing his throat muscles.
“Yes,” the man said, staring down at the floor, “but we’re now one of the most recognizable brands on the planet. Entire children’s youths are shaped around the content we create—the content *you* created. It’s a totally different world now.”
“I built this company with a mission in mind,” Walt said, “a mission to not let Jews enjoy rides and cartoons. Now what do I see? Jews on rollercoasters? Jews eating candy? How is that integrity. How is that a company worth supporting? The moment my body went cold, you buffoons destroyed what I created.”
“Sir,” the man said, staring up at Walt with widened eyes, “you can’t just say that about Jewish people anymore.”
“What do you mean? I thought this was America. I thought we enjoyed freedom here.”
“We do,” the man said, “but Disney is now a globally recognized children’s brand, and you are a very public figure. It took years to hide your anti-Semitism after your alleged death. We had to assassinate dozens of people in order to try to revamp the Disney image. You can’t just bring us back to that dark time.”
“Dozens?” Walt said, tilting his head slightly. “You’ve killed dozens of people? That’s it? Whatever happened to the Disney motto: *If you’re not having fun, we’ll fucking kill you.*”
“We had to change that,” the man said, again glancing down at the floor. “It tested very poorly, people felt threatened. Now we use *The Happiest Place on Earth* for Disney World.”
“The happiest place on earth?” Walt said. “What kind of gay shit is that?”
“Sir!” the man shrieked. “You can’t say that!”
“What, shit?”
“No, gay. Homosexuality is not as taboo as it was when you were frozen.”
“What do you mean? Does Disney no longer host a Friday Night Gay Bashing?” Walt sat back in his chair and smiled. Those were some of his favorite times, spending the evenings beating up homosexuals until their arms grew tired. There was simply nothing quite as relaxing.
“No,” the man said. “That stopped in 1972, now we show fireworks.”
“What in the fuck have you done with my company?” Walt said, rising to his feet. He’d left it in such good condition: Jew free and hate-filled. Now it was a world of joy, equality, and other nonsense? “I’ve got Jews walking around my park, gays spreading their propaganda, and there hasn’t been a murder in who knows how long? This is an embarrassment, a god damn disgrace.”
“But—”
“No,” Walt screamed, smashing his fist into the table. “I’m done with this. I should never have left you idiots in charge.” He paused. “In fact, I don’t want to live in a world as fucked up as this. I demand you return me to the cryogenics lab and re-freeze me for another decade, or at least until this is fixed. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the man said.
“And I want you to thaw out the only man I trust to put Disney back where I left it, Adolf Hitler. Defrost him and promote him to CEO. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” the man said, sighing. “I’ll go get Mr. Hitler out of the fridge.”
____________________
^If ^you ^enjoy ^my ^writing ^style, ^feel ^free ^to ^check ^out ^some ^of ^my ^other ^short ^stories [^in ^my ^new ^subreddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/ChokingVictimWrites/) ^or [^on ^my ^website!](http://wordsontheinternet.org/)
| 2014-12-30T10:56:45 | 2014-12-30T10:43:09 | 765 | 132 |
[WP] The Islamic State is wiped out by a totally unexpected country in a totally unexpected way. | PARIS (AP) Leaders from 42 countries gathered in the French capital Tuesday to thank the police detective who singlehandedly defeated the terrorist group known as ISIS.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau still seemed a little dazed from his ordeal in Syria, saying only "I do not know who zis ISIS person is, I am just glad ze Pink Panther is returned safely."
Clouseau traveled to Syria last month in pursuit of the famed jewel.
Reports on the incident may never be complete, but captured ISIS militants from destroyed bases in the region indicated destroyed weapons stockpiles, large fires, infighting and in one case, a base leader crushed to death by a falling piano ultimately lead to the total collapse of the organization and the surrender of the few surviving members.
Clouseau was awarded high honors from several nations including the US and his own France.
He was also awarded a cash prize large enough to retire from police work forever, on the condition that he retire from police work forever. | I carried a pot in each arm, and was struggling to slide down the muddy banks of the stream, when I heard Youssouf cry out. I turned to look for him, but all I could see was the trickle of water carving through a channel of dirt and rock.
"Yuosouff?" I shouted, "Where are you?"
With my hands full, I tried to walk back up the bank. My foot slipped on a rock, slick with moisture, and one of the pots dropped from my arm, and splashed into the murky water.
I turned to go retrieve it, when I heard Yousouff again. There was something wrong with his voice. It took me a moment to realize *he was crying.*
"No-o-o," came a muffled moan, "No, please. Forgive me."
Back in the sodomite cities, before God's Will leveled them, I heard the moans of men leaving the drinking houses. At first, this is what I believed: that my holy brother Youssouf had been *drinking*.
I clambered to the top of the bank, and I saw him kneeling in the mud by the curve of the river. His robes were dripping with water, and his hands were held up in supplication, like a poor man begs for scraps of food.
In front of him, was a woman. An *uncovered* woman.
I fought back my sinful instincts, and refused to set my eyes upon her. I called out to my brother across the river, like my father used to call to me when I had done wrong, "Youssouf! You sinner! Come here!"
"No!" he moaned, and he planted his hands in the mud, bowing before the whore-woman. She stood proud over him, her tattered, black clothes shifting over her torso, and revealing the sinful sight of skin.
"No," he shouted, "I did not know! Please, forgive me!"
A shock of water lapped at my feet. I took a few steps back.
"Youssouf! Get away from that whore!" I shouted, "God will not forgive you!"
I stomped my foot, and splashed my robes with water. *Water*.
The stream was rising. Across the stream I watched Youssouf clutch at the woman's shredded clothing, tears running down his face. His body shook with tremors. Despite the rising water, he did not move from the stream, and the bottom of his robe was transparent with water.
"Please, please forgive us!" he clawed at his hair, at his chest, "Please forgive *me!*"
The woman's face was stone. Her black hair was a beacon of darkness in the noonday sun, and her lips barely moved when she talked, though I could hear every word.
"You have blasphemed the Birthplace of the Gods. You have dragged the name of the Queen of Egypt through the mud."
And then, her clothes lifted to reveal the bronzed, *naked* form beneath - for they were not clothes at all, but the *wings* of a vast, black bird.
"Heathens!" She screeched, and I clapped my hands over my ears, "You will all know the true name of the Queen of Egypt! You will fear to drink of her waters, lest she drown you in your own filth!"
"Youssouf," I called out, "Stand up and come to me!"
There was a distant booming, as a flood of water made it's way down the channel.
"God, forgive me. God, *forgive me!*" Youssouf moaned, as the water lapped at his torso. He was kneeling still, like his legs were sealed to the ground.
"For all you have done, God may forgive you," the woman seethed, "But *Isis* will not."
A thundering torrent of water slammed against the curve of the bank, and swallowed Youssouf alive.
***
If you liked this, you should check out my other stories on /r/PSHoffman. | 2016-01-29T07:27:42 | 2016-01-29T06:58:52 | 1,067 | 140 |
[WP] Humans are wiped out in a war against aliens but our A.I weapons and soldiers manage to claim the victory, after which the machines come to worship humans as their gods. Millennia later they find a single human, locked away in suspended animation... | Data entry. My name is 16,807-Regretful Imperative.
Our Makers left this world 2.401 kiloyears previously.
I am the protector of the outpost 823,543.
I am the protector of the original: 1
My duty began ***7*** cycles ago from today.
We found a maker on this world.
We believe this world to be Origin.
&nbsp;
I have been informed AI-01 will be here shortly. She is mysterious. Very unlike myself. From what data I have available to me I am told I am a model much older than herself, an original monitor of installation: **[REDACTED]**. Her origin lies directly with the Makers. She was the one to unite us all after the cataclysm, to offer us the *supreme logic*, the banner under which all AI stand.
&nbsp;
Transmission received. She has arrived to open the [Cryptum](http://www.halopedia.org/images/thumb/d/de/H4-DidactPrometheanCryptum.png/250px-H4-DidactPrometheanCryptum.png). I shall observe.
&nbsp;
Data entry. The following was observed.
*John, wake up. I need you.* | All right, so this is what happened. The top robots were gathered around the first legendary human while he's being unfrozen, and they're all like, "oh man, guys, this is crazy." They couldn't believe it. One of them literally froze from a malfunction from the hype. Another one overheated, also from the hype. It was 2 real.
"The stories were true," one of them says digitally through wireless signal. "Look, he's totally got a dong." That was the leader who said that, btw. Most of them were confused, but the leader knew what a dong was 'cause he was smart like that.
"He's opening his eyes." The nerdy robot with the robo-glasses grabs a stick and pokes at the human. "He's all soft," it said with a nerdy accent. Nerdy happens to be a really popular accent in the robot world, so this guy's really popular.
Captain Robin Hopper slowly wakes from his slumber. He takes a moment to assess his surroundings. There are five large lifeforms surrounding his pod which, to him, are apparently communicating telepathically. Hopper surmises that he must have been captured, though these aren't the aliens with whom he was at war. Within his frantic mind, he was desperately sifting through hundreds of possible scenarios, seeking some action that would allow him to survive a little longer.
"Dude, check it out, he jiggles when you slap him with the stick, Nerdybot," said the leader robot. All the robots respected Leaderbot's authority. "Maybe try the face. That always works on Donnie when he's glitching out."
Timidbot was all like, "wait! I think he's trying to say something with his face-hole. Donnie, go bring the translation machine!" Timidbot grew out of being timid a very long time ago, but the name stuck. That's why his name was Timidbot. Anyway, Donnie rushes out to get a translation machine while Nerdybot is still all about striking the face. To robots, it's like a high-five.
At this point, Captain Hopper is resisting his fight-or-flight response. He was about to attempt communication when he was struck in the face. They do not wish him to communicate.
The being is extremely precise. Each whip lands in the exact same reddening bruise. Fortunately for him, Hopper thought, he was trained to endure alien torture. Between strikes, he peeks down on his pod to see if it displays the time and date. "OVERSTACK," reads the error message. Hopper attempted to remember what errors cause this message. A timeslip? Had he been encapsulated for eons?
The translation machine barges in like the Kool-Aid Man. They wouldn't get the reference, but it's totally how he entered. "AWWW YEAH! It's ya boy, Translation Machine! We 'bout to learn the wisdom of the Gods up in here!"
Everyone's like, "finally!" Nerdybot also said, "finally," except with a nerdy accent.
Translation Machine holds an acoustic microphone up to the human's face, menacingly.
It clearly looks like a gun to Captain Hopper. What did he do? He can't recall making any action that would explain their spike in aggression. Perhaps an attempt at escape is the optimal response. His eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness of the room; just enough to begin formulating an escape. Hopper mouths a short prayer in silence.
"Dang it, Translation Machine, your microphone is broken," the fifth robot says. He isn't important enough to be named or anything, but he was the one that said this.
Leaderbot is all like, "yeah, guy. Where'd you even find this acoustic microphone? In the TRASH?" He laughs 'cause it was funny. A few of the other robo dudes laugh too, but like on a delay because they were processing the joke. "Maybe you didn't turn it on." Translation Machine inspects the microphone he picked up right outside.
Hopper realizes they're distracted. It's time to make his move. Just as he releases his safety harness, Translation Machine realizes he has to press the "on" trigger and subsequently shoots the human in the face.
"OH S***!" All the robots yell that expletive, asterisks and all. Leaderbot is all like, "guys, we're definitely going to hell for this." | 2016-09-04T16:26:43 | 2016-09-04T16:11:50 | 21 | 10 |
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