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You'd be surprised at how numb you get to emotion, being a telepath. There's only so many bad breakups and dead fathers you can experience vicariously before you don't give a shit. It's a sort of armor and a noose, after a while. There isn't a pain or a joy in the world left that I haven't experienced, at least through someone's memories of it.
So what the fuck do I do now? It's what any reasonable man would do. Hunt novelty. What else is there? Solving a mystery is like a plunging a needle full of synthetic comfort into my arm. Anything to stave off the fog of a thousand other people's bullshit. When I find something *new*, something *no one else* knows about, then it becomes *my* bullshit. Mine and no one else's. Something to distinguish my mind from a planet full of them.
That's how I ended up at Dave's funeral. Dave? He was one of those well rounded motherfuckers. Drank, but moderately. Did drugs, but responsibly. Fucked, but not too hard. Smoked, but only socially. The type of guy that you can't find a reason to call boring, but he's boring all the same. And now he was dead. Him and a hundred thousand others like him.
But I was here, and not at a hundred thousand other funerals. Dave was murdered, and no one had a clue why. *I* had no clue why. Shit, if I wasn't tapped into the mind of every grieving friend and family, I'd have probably not even been able to find a reason to strike up a conversation with him, let alone kill him.
But somebody had killed him, and it was a mystery. It was time for my fix.
You'd be surprised at how many killers show up to funerals. They think it'll absolve them of any suspicion. As if the police would think *oh he was sad at the funeral, he can't be a killer*. Idiots.
I skipped from mind to mind, grazing over internal wails from those close to him, and vague discomfort from those that didn't know him nearly well enough to feel at home attending his funeral.
One mind, though, screamed the loudest.
"I did it! I did it!" it shouted, "I finally did it."
It was frenzied and shattered and excited and lost. The typical mind of a killer, though it was also the typical mind of someone that realized two hours of work had been lost to a corrupted file. You could never really be sure about these things.
The mind, along with the three dozen other minds at attendance, tried to pry into my skull and replace my brain. I resisted its efforts the least, and soon I had every right to her thoughts as she did.
It was the wife. I glanced over to her. She was his perfect match. Pretty, but not overly so. Her eyes belied a character, but not a very strong one. Her thoughts suggested she was intelligent, though by no means brilliant. His perfect wife.
The shouts coming from inside her head were clearer now.
"I did it. All these years and I did it. I got pregnant. And now you've gone and left me alone. I did it. I did it for you. Why aren't you here?"
A grieving pregnant wife. Dull. A grieving pregnant wife like a hundred thousand others.
The twinge of disappointment was short lived, though. I might not have solved the mystery, but at least that meant I could keep chasing the high. | 162 | A telepath goes to a funeral. Someone at the funeral keeps thinking, "I did it! I did it!" | 195 |
Larry checked the clock again.
4:59.
He and about thirty others all sat at the edge of their seats, eager to leave J&J Tele-Survey for the weekend. No more sitting in a prison cell called a cubicle. No more getting yelled at by stay at home moms once every four and a half minutes. That statistic was real, calculated by Larry last Monday. At least, no more of that for two days. How has the clock not hit 5:00 yet?
4:58.
"Hey, what the Hell?" A voice three cubicles down shouted out, met with groans. "The boss is playing some stupid trick on us. Making us stay late."
He led a group of renegade phone survey employees out the office and into the elevator.
Larry stood up and went to the boss's office. He knocked twice, but no one called from inside. He opened the door and peeked his head in, immediately regretting the decision. His boss was sitting on the chair, looking normal, except she *had no head*.
A hooded figure stood in the corner of the room watching Larry's reaction. The figure held a sickle, like the Grim Reaper, but it had a brown hood. None of its face was visible. Even though it had obviously just killed the boss, Larry felt perfectly safe around it.
"Uh," Larry went in the office and closed the door behind him. "Who are you?"
"Dementius." The voice was cold and emotionless.
"Why'd you kill her?" Larry pointed to the beheaded carcass on the chair.
"I was created to serve you. You wanted her dead."
Larry thought about that for a minute. He had wanted her dead, ever since he got the damn job.
"Created by who?" Larry asked.
The thing didn't reply. Larry swallowed and walked back out of the office, closing the door behind him. They'll find her body on Monday, let her rot for a few days.
-----
On the subway ride home, some young kid kept bumping into him.
"Watch it," Larry growled.
"Fuck you gonna do, old man?" the kid replied and bumped him again.
Larry took a deep breath and looked at his watch.
The time went from 5:45 to 5:44.
Larry smiled. | 13 | There's no life under that hood, no face, no body; nothing but a void, a name, and a sense of purpose | 35 |
It is being called the great hallucination. It appears to be spread by someone opening their mouth slowly and possibly lifting their arms outwards. Once you have caught it, your brain will slowly start shutting down at 10pm or so in the evening and then you will need to quickly get on the floor or a chair, because for the next 7-8 hours you will hallucinate very vividly. Some of it will seem very real. Other bits will seem absolutely ludicrous. World wide as this has spread, people are no longer able to work 12 hour days with 12 hours of relaxation. They either have to work less or lose relaxation time.
Going live now to Christie Cunningham on the streets of Tampa Florida.
"Thanks Greg. Here with me is one of the first people to catch the Great Hallucination. He is going to tell us his story now."
"What happened was I was going down to the corner store and I saw this guy just do something with his arms, then he laid on the ground. So I went over to see if he was alright. He looked as if his brain wasn't able to function at all, so I dialed 9-11. This was around 7pm right after I got off work. Anyways, I go home and start my evening routine, and just a little while into it, I notice my brain get all foggy. I decide I better sit down, next thing I know, my brain is telling me I am flying around like a superhero playing volleyball. It was crazy. Wilder than any drug, I tell you. Anyways when the sun came up the next morning, my brain kind of switched back on but it took me a few seconds to figure out my surroundings. And this has been happening for 3 weeks now. I haven't been able to see my wife and kids much. While they are staying up relaxing all night, I have to make sure I go to my sitroom before I start hallucinating. I don't want them to catch it. Anyways, I asked my boss if he would give me a few less hours, but there is no way he can let me off early. I hope they find a cure for this soon. No one should have to live like this."
"Back to you, Greg"
"Thanks, Christie. Well we will have more after the break. Stay tuned for the latest developments caused by the Great Hallucination that Is sweeping our Great HALLUCI-nation." | 20 | Humans evolved without needing to sleep. Now a mysterious illness causing humans to go unconcious for 8 hour periods is spreading. Write from the perspective of yourself. | 62 |
I remember as a child I used to use it to place myself in the position of my favorite superheroes. Flying around the city as Superman, fighting criminals who were robbing banks and holding innocent people hostage seemed to never get old. The thing about that room is, everything that you experience inside of it seems very real. The wind against my face as I flew around, the vertigo that came with looking down when I was several miles in the air, the impact of the punches on the bad guys’ faces, to me it was all very real.
Later in life, around 8th grade, I used it to make out with the girls that I had crushes on. In real life if I tried to pursue them I would always get turned down. I can’t really blame them, though. In every way I was remarkably average. There were no sports that I was good at, there were no school subjects that I excelled at, my looks were nothing special, and my family wasn’t super rich. I remember Annie, the girl who sat next to me in freshman math and history. She was super hot. All the guys in my grade would try so hard just to have a casual conversation with her, but she normally just stuck with her elite group of friends. That didn’t stop me from having sexual encounters with her in my VR room. From freshman to junior year of school, pretty much every night it was just me and Annie in some luxury hotel room with a Jacuzzi hot tub or in some porn scene together, going at it for hours. My parents decided that I was spending way too much time in the room after two weeks straight of cutting class and cutting soccer practice to stow myself away with Annie. They had shut down my room until the day I left for college, and I always resented them for it.
During my stay at university, I can’t say I really made many friends or enjoyed many of the classes I was taking. I had landed in my major due to how easy it was to get by, despite it requiring grad school education to land any sort of respectful career. The dorms came with a VR room that was separate for each roommate. Most of my freshman and sophomore year, all my extra time outside of class and sleep was spent in the room, doing all the things that I wish I could do like skydive or skateboard like the pros in the X-games. For one month I was a professional hockey player with the largest contract in the league, leading my team in points and setting records left and right. Another month I was a famous movie actor, beloved by everyone who had seen any of my movies. My worlds became more and more intricate as I added the smallest details to make myself believe that this was actually my reality. In these worlds, I wasn’t some average nobody with a skinny-fat complexion and a left arm that was a half inch shorter than my right. I was anyone that I believed I could be, just like all that propaganda they fed to us as children. All the posters in my primary education classrooms saying stupid meaningless stuff like “You can be anything you want if you put your mind to it!” No. You couldn’t. The only way you could be anything you wanted was if you had a VR room. I pitied the lower class for not being able to afford this wonderful luxury, they had to endure the harsh reality of barely scraping by with their government supplied welfare check. They couldn’t escape like I could. Thinking about this only made my worlds more and more intricate.
After months of looking for some form of employment, I finally was able to land a desk job handling the paperwork that came from the engineers that had to be sorted and approved for corporate a few states away. It didn’t pay well, but after a few years I was able to move out of my parents’ house into a small place of my own and buy my own crappy little sedan that barely got me from home to work. The yard was small and filled with crabgrass, surrounded by a rusted wired fence, and the house was a one bedroom bungalow with one bathroom that had a shower so small I could barely fit my fat self in it. The best part, though, was the VR room. I had it custom installed with a lot of the money I had acquired over the past few years. The technology had improved, and the sensations of the VR room were completely indiscernible from the real world. Tastes had a lingering effect, and if I wasn’t careful enough I would skip meals in the real world since my body had thought I had eaten already. My wife in world six was a supermodel, and we had a mansion in the valleys of Wyoming with two dogs and a tennis court in the backyard. That’s where I spent most of my time, since I had worked on constructing that world for several years at my parents’ house before I moved out. I’d say about ten hours a day were spent in the VR room, eight or nine of those hours specifically dedicated to world six. I missed most of my parents’ calls since there was only a thirty minute window of every day that I was accessible by phone.
It took my mom four days to reach me to tell me that my dad had passed away. I guess I never checked the voicemail.
After working at the office for thirty-eight years, I was eligible for retirement despite my 401K having nearly nothing in it. I would always spend my paychecks on microwavable meals and upgrades for the VR room. The latest installment was time dilation, so one minute in the real world was an hour in the VR room. That cost me about two years of pay, putting me into some serious debt, but I didn’t care, that world wasn’t real to me anymore. In world six, I was young, fit, and had an entire world and working economy built. I don’t remember the last time I checked the hours I spent on it, but it was somewhere near 20,000. And with the latest upgrade, I could more time there than ever before.
By the time I had turned 75, I began to notice blood coming out of my mouth when I coughed. I guess it didn’t faze me too much, since it was about three real world months before I went to the doctor.
It’s a real sobering sentence to hear when the man in the white coat tells you that you only have six months left to live. It makes you reflect on all you’ve done and all you have left to do. I had to family or friends to fall back on when I cried myself to sleep every night.
I woke up to hospice care taking my vitals and asking me how I was feeling. They administered their pain medications and some other drugs that might extend my life by two weeks if I’m lucky, and then they left. I clawed out of bed to my wheelchair, clutching my IV stand as I wheeled my way out of my bedroom and to my VR room. World six’s file sat on the touchscreen panel, beckoning me to join my wife at our lovely Wyoming ranch. I swiped the screen to the side to create a new world. With the last of my money, I was able to buy the latest time dilation extension, making every minute in the real world a day in the VR room.
I opened up my eyes to greet the new fresh world. I climbed out of my race car bed, wearing my Spiderman pajamas and ran to my cupboard to get some real clothes on. It was a summer day at my childhood house, a high of 82 degrees. I ran out of the front door and was met by the warm rays of the morning sun peering over my neighbor’s house. All the friends I had as a young child simultaneously ran outside, and we played kickball in the street.
| 21 | In the future, everyone has a special room beside their bed where imagination becomes real virtually. Most people's room become duller as they grow older. Write about yours. | 19 |
I pulled out the slip of newspaper in my pocket for the seventh time in the past hour.
>Earn $100,000 Annual Wages - No Experience Needed - No Manual Labor
I read it over, taking each letter in. There was simply no way I was reading it correctly. A hundred grand a year for doing nothing and no experience needed. I put it back in my suit pocket and sat down on one of the nearby chairs.
"James McHenry." The receptionist called out. I got up nearly as soon as I sat down and walked to the desk, smiling to her. She didn't smile back, she had something else in her eyes. It looked like pity.
"Go ahead to the back, sir." She turned back to her computer, typing at somewhere around a thousand words a second. I gave a slight huff of breath and walked towards the office, noticing a disappointed looking woman walk out. I opened the doors and went in.
An elderly man sat at a white table. He looked up and smiled. White teeth, white hair, white suit, white table, and a black syringe.
"Mr. McHenry." He said pleasantly. "Forgive me for not standing up, I'm not what I once was."
I gave my most presentable smile and stood by the table. "Of course, sir."
"Please, sit, sit." He waved a hand at the chair.
I dipped my head in a thanks and sat down. The man was completely silent, just watching me. Most people would say something to break the silence, but I saw most people walking out disappointed. Best bet would be to play his game.
"So," he finally said, "a man worthy of an interview."
I said nothing, causing him to laugh.
"Don't worry Mr. McHenry, the silent phase is over."
I gave another smile, genuine this time, and spoke. "To be honest sir, I don't even know what I'm interviewing for. I don't even know your name."
"Well, what do you know about me?" He asked, leaning back.
I pondered that for a second, looking around at the room. "I'd say you enjoy the color white."
He laughed, a joyous laugh that made him appear much younger. "Yes, I most certainly do. In order to balance the information, what's your favorite color?
"Uh," I thought about it for a second. "Red. So, what's the job?"
"The job is you get $100,000 for taking this." He grabbed the syringe on the table and lifted it up. It was completely black so the liquid inside couldn't be seen.
"What is it?"
"Have some faith in me, Mr. McHenry." He had a twinkle in his eyes.
I sighed and grabbed the syringe from him, stuck it into my arm and injected the contents. I figure he wouldn't risk a lawsuit and he enjoyed his games so it was likely a test to see how loyal I could be. Probably had water in it or something. I felt a tiny surge hit me.
The old man smiled again and dipped his head. "You got the job, tell everyone to leave on your way out." The man looked older and less like he did just a minute ago.
"My way out?" I asked.
"Yes, you can do whatever you'd like. Never have to come back here again, Mr. McHenry, though I suppose you might." He said the last words casually, but it made me shiver.
I walked out and told everyone the position was filled, taking the stairs to avoid the elevator ride down with them. I got outside and headed to my car, frowning at the sight. The red paint job looked *unseemly*. I thought about getting it repainted. Maybe a nice solid white. | 148 | An Eccentric Billionaire Makes An Interesting Offer... $100,000/yr for the Rest of Your Life and All You Have to do is........... | 88 |
3...
2...
1...
"Go, go, go!"
Major ReLaxedFox278 slides into a flanking position behind a boulder. Three of his men follow.
"Sir! We're outnumbered and outgunned! There's no way we can get to the AO from here!"
Bullets ricochet off the rock that provides little to no protection from the encamped soldiers ahead.
The major surveys the building ahead. There is only one entrance inside and right now it's flooded with the enemy. He turns to the soldier on his right.
"You, NoobTubers844, get in that heavy armor and provide some cover from the left flank." He points to a rusted, but seemingly operational tank only 40 yards from their position. "We will provide covering fire, GO!"
"Negative sir! We can't get inside and operate vehicles."
The major, bewildered, fires back.
"What do you mean you 'Can't get inside'?"
"I can't explain it, but we just can't! We should be able to though, because it would make complete sense!"
More gunfire.
Suddenly, distant music can be heard from seemingly nowhere. Quiet at first, but growing in intensity. Private 837ScukIt quivers as he stares into the sky.
"What is that music sir?"
The major knows that music all too well.
"It means we're losing this battle private."
The private jumps up from behind the rock.
"Then let's go! We can still make it!"
The major screams after the private.
"837ScukIt! Noooo!"
The private foolishly runs out into the open, running a straight line towards the doorway leading to the AO. A hail of gunfire erupts from the building, the private drops to the ground immediately.
The music is louder now. Ear piercing.
Suddenly, everyone stops, frozen. The major and his men are unable to move. The gunfire ceases entirely. There is no sound, only epic orchestral music.
Then...silence...darkness...
From somewhere in the darkness a distant voice is heard, echoing through the vast emptiness.
"lol...noobs! you suck"
| 10 | Real wars play out like a game of Call of Duty. | 20 |
"Victor, it *is* true." She insisted.
"No, Anya, it isn't." He scolded her, "What you are describing is impossible."
"I swear it on my life! What must I do to convince you?!" She felt tears stinging behind her eyelids.
"Ok, then, Anya. Without touching me, what am I doing?"
"You are tapping your forehead."
Victor paused. A frown crept between his brows and lodged itself there.
"Too easy," he said, "You could hear my fingers against my skin."
"Well fine, do something else."
He rearranged himself.
"You are crossing your arms and standing on tip-toes."
Victor unravelled at the concept.
"So," he croaked, "You can truly Far-Touch."
"Yes, and I've been trying to convince the village elder, but she won't listen. I promise you, Victor, we've been lied to. The Ritual of Ascension is a lie!" She was crying now, "People are killed. They get thrown off a cliff. I Far-Touched the bodies."
"Don't speak of such blasphemy." warned Victor. He was resolute now. Nobody spoke of the Gods that way.
"Please believe me." Anya sobbed, "There are no Gods! I don't want anyone else to die!"
A moment passed.
"Please." She begged between sobs.
"Can you prove it?" He quizzed, "About the bodies, I mean. All of it?"
"Yes. Yes, yes yes! A million times yes. I found a route down to the rocks below the cliff. I can take you there."
Victor stood for a moment more, contemplating it.
"Ok," he said, "show me."
***
The beach was just below an outcropping of smooth rock. It was small and wet. On one side was the ocean, roaring in its eternal cacophony, and on the other was sheer cliff.
Victor's jaw chattered as Anya led him down the beach. The wet sand sloshed against his feet with every tide, bringing with itself a biting chill. He uneasily stepped forward, sinking into the unstable sand as he did so. His nostrils burned with the sharp scent of salt and his skin stung with the daggers of wind that buffeted at him relentlessly.
"We are here." Anya whispered hoarsely. Victor heard her gag, but said nothing.
"Lead my hands to the body." He chattered.
Anya took his hands in her own and pulled them down. Victor stumbled with the unexpectedness of the motion and fell onto his knees. The instant shock of cold water speared at his now-submerged legs, and he jolted unintentionally, falling forward.
His hands met something soft. Not sand, but something *squishy* and pale and cold. Anya gasped from somewhere to his left but he paid her no mind. He could survive without her supposed Far-Touch. He didn't need her pity. When she tried to help him up, he shrugged her off with a swift twist of his shoulder.
“Please, Victor.” She urged.
“I don’t need your help.” He scolded.
Victor thought he heard Anya say something, but dismissed it and moved forward through the tide. He stabilised himself against the water by propping his body against the object and twisting his feet away from the inlet of water. His hands clawed up the soft surface until they hit something harder. The object still shifted underneath his weight in a peculiar way. Like skin over bone.
Exactly like skin over bone.
A cruel realisation washed over Victor and his hands scrambled their way up to where the head would be. He felt the collarbones, the neck, and then a cold, mushy mess. Victor retched. He pushed the body away and pulled his hands back. They felt slick with something both sticky and viscous. He fell backwards, simultaneously hyperventilating and coughing. He flipped over and desperately thrust his hands into the rush of water that swelled at his knees. He wrung his hands desperately. Tears welled in his eyes. He felt physically ill.
“I tried to tell you.” Anya whispered, barely audible over the crash of the waves.
Victor was unable to speak. His throat was threatening to violently expel the contents of his stomach. He swallowed and distracted his mind. He gasped in a few breaths and coughed through the dry sea air.
“I know.” He cried, “I’m sorry.”
Tears flowed down his face, providing a solitary warmth on the chilled beach.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
***
The Village Elder spoke solemnly. Her aged voice cracked and crumbled as it enunciated the words. Dry sobs snapped words in two and put pause to the speech, but it had to be made; it was necessary.
By now, the entire village had either felt or been told of the evidence. It was irrefutable. Their Gods were false and their leader had mislead them. Whether it had been her intention was not even discussed. She had ended the life of so many of them that their anger took precedence.
As the Elder began the final part of her pre-prepared speech, he voice cracked under its own weight. She remained resolute, however, and continued regardless.
“… and for all the words that may be spoken against me and our Gods, I do not waver in my knowledge in their omnipotence and power. I am your only channel to the Gods, and I am their Voice and Presence. By forsaking me, you are forsaking them. You will come to understand the wisdom in my words if you are wise.”
A momentary hush echoed through the crowd before, in unison, they roared in anger.
“Ascension, Ascension, Ascension.” They yelled in a rhythmic repetition.
The Village Elder spat at the crowd and stepped off the cliff.
| 140 | the human race is blind, save for one person. Her friends and family are skeptical of this supposed superpower of hers. | 144 |
The Squirrel War was a short-lived armed conflict between Canada and the United States in 1978. The incident lasted three days and involved mobilization of elements of the United States Marine Corps and United States Air Force pitted against several Canadian farmers.
The event developed when hunters in upper Michigan shot at then pursued a red squirrel across the United States-Canadian border. Oswald Bartelmann, a Canadian farmer, noticed his property was being intruded upon and confronted the party of hunters. One of the party, Caleb Flouty, threatened Bartelmann with a shotgun, stating he would "fill his ass full of birdshot." [citation needed]. Bartelmann left the area and returned with a party of several neighbors to find the group of hunters had built a campfire and were discussing cooking the now-deceased squirrel.
The group led by Bartelmann pursued the hunters back across the border utilizing a hail of pine cones, empty beer cans, and foul language. Flouty contacted his second cousin, Donald Pafty, who was then employed with the CIA. [citation needed]. Pafty convinced his superiors that Soviet elements had engaged in a raid against Flouty and his companions after Flouty had discovered them covertly spying on Michigan woodlands.
Over the course of the following day, a battalion of Marines executed an amphibious landing into Canada, quickly securing several acres of marshland and three square miles of surrounding woods. The woods were then destroyed by high altitude carpet bombing by B-52 bombers based in Washington State. Receiving no response from Canada armed or otherwise, the United States elements eventually withdrew and an official armistice was signed and placed in a file in a lower drawer in Pafty's office. [citation needed]. The document remained there until 2003 when it was accidentally thrown out with regular office trash then accidentally discovered by Margaritte Gespacho, a member of the building janitorial and house keeping services. | 24 | Write a Wikipedia article for a historical event or person that never actually happened or existed | 47 |
"The first one?"
"In quite some time, yes."
"But...my dad?"
"Not here."
"My mother? My saint of a grandmother who wouldn't even look towards alcohol or swear?"
"Neither are with us."
"I don't get it. This is so unfair. I've done so much wrong in my life, why should I be the first one here in hundreds of years?"
"Everyone has done a lot wrong in their lives. It is interesting that you would even question your admittance through the pearly gates."
"I was brought up that this would be paradise. How can it be paradise when I can't even see my family? My unborn son? My best friend that got hit by some fucking looney downing a 40 on I-10?"
Peter sighed. After waiting so long to admit someone, he had gotten excited to hear he was finally doing it. He had built it up in his head that the angel would be excited and happy, but maybe humanity has changed a bit more than he thought they did.
"Why not step through the gates and ask Him yourself?"
He paused. "Ask why nobody else has gone through these gates? Why I'm alone when I'm supposed to be at my happiest?"
"Well, when you put it that way...never mind, just ask Him."
The gates opened and a feeling of might came across him. It the same feeling he got when looking at the top of a mountain from its base.
"No," he said before the gates were fully open. "No, no, I just want to be with my family. I want to tell them I love them every day and to stay near them."
Peter sighed again. "All right. Have it your way." | 20 | The first human in over one million years is admitted into heaven | 25 |
"Our faults are..."
I pondered the question. Yes, we were a warlike race, but was that what defined us? No, I definitely believed people strive for peace at heart. Was it our curiosity? Yes, we had been burned by unlocking the secrets of the atom, but even so I couldn't bring myself to call it a 'fault'. Was it our murderers, our thieves, our jealousy? I sincerely hope he didn't expect me to reply immediately, this could take a while. Then I realized, that was the answer.
"Sir, I'm sure our race has many faults, but I can only tell you of one. And that's the fact that I can't answer this question. In fact, if you wanted to answer it with any degree of satisfaction, you'd have to spend years asking as many people as possible. Because, for all our advancements, we have yet to truly understand anyone but ourselves enough to agree with each other. You ask 9 humans how to get from here to Alpha Centuari, and 4 will tell you one thing, 4 will tell you another, and one will ask why you're going there anyways. And that's a trip in a straight line! You can make an agreement with an entire nation, and you'll still find other humans trying to stab you in the back. Or stab them in the back. Or backstab the backstabbers."
"The point is, Sir, humanity has yet to find a government that we can't mess up somehow. The human race has never managed to band together under one flag, or one cause, and I doubt it ever will. Never assume one man will act like the next you come across. But at the same time, treasure and value the good men you do find. Those humans you find loyal, friendly, and worthy? Keep them close, and you'll go far in dealing with us, for better or worse." | 45 | "Before we allow humankind to live among us in the stars, tell us the faults of your kind." | 48 |
*Posted this in Askreddit a few days ago. Extensions in comment history. Apparently this ending is infuriating.*
CryoSleep^TM induces a drastic reduction in metabolism and halts all but the most essential bodily functions. Heart rate can be reduced to as little as three beats per minute. Nutrient and water feeds are inserted via the right and left cephalic veins, respectively, and pod temperatures float between 50 and 55 degrees fahrenheit. Muscular atrophy is prevented by a compound whose formula is viciously protected.
The American government, under the guise of "UFO" experiments hidden deep with the darkest recesses of Area 51, has been developing this technology since the early 1980s. As for why, who knows? I entered the CS program with a select group of volunteers. The air force didn't exactly pay too well in the 21^st century, and considering the fact that I had four kids and an overwhelmed wife back home, I decided to make the sacrifice. Seeing as rendering a man unconscious for 1,200 months is no different than killing him (from his family's perspective), the headquarterless, leaderless, almost imaginary government entity agreed to notify my family that I'd been killed in action. To give them at least some closure and peace of mind. I was told they would also receive compensation for life; a million a year.
Now, the year is 2114. Soft, blue light seeps through my closed eyelids. My ears gradually adjust and pick up gentle thumps. Then, the reviving agent seeps through my pod's immersion fluids, and my body is flooded with renewed vigor. 100 years of sleep and inactivity. Vanished in seconds. I remember my family immediately. *Just memories.*
The thick, frosted glass in front of me has an electric current running through it. I hear a gentle click, and suddenly, the opacity blinks out of existence, and the glass becomes transparent. I find the source of the thumps. A tall, naked woman is standing in front of my pod. She is pounding her fists on the tank, but the three-inch glass deadens the noise.
I look at her flaming copper hair, which curls down to the small of her back, framing a face set with sapphire eyes. Her breasts jiggle as she hits the glass. She sees me looking at her curvaceous body and yells something. Gestures above my head with her right hand. Her right breast lifts with the arm.
I shake my head and look above me. Pull the red handle protruding into my tank. By now, the CryoSleep^TM tank's immersion fluids have drained completely. As the door hisses open, I am very aware of my own nakedness. But her eyes don't leave my face.
"Finally!" the red-haired woman says. "I was wondering if they'd set us for different activation times. Also, you're acting like you've never seen a naked woman before."
I look down guiltily, my body dripping. "My wife...I'm sorry..."
Her jaw drops. "You had a *family*? They put you in here when you had a *fucking wife*?"
"Kids, too. Four."
She looks like she is in shock. Hell, *I* am in shock. I am not prepared for this. "My whole family." Tears drip down my cheeks. "My whole world."
"You have no idea, Colonel Sanders." She'd looked at the plaque above my tank. "I was afraid you wouldn't wake up. That I'd be alone."
I don't like her tone. "What do you mean, alone?"
"Come with me. Clothes can wait."
We walk down the stainless steel corridor, fluorescent lights flickering to life as we progress. "Where are we going?" I ask, looking at the rows of tanks on either side. I can't see past the frosted covers, but I know there are more people in every one.
"Outside. I think the government knew that *outside* was going to happen. We're the first ones awake. The others will probably wake up in pairs every 50 years. Maybe every 100 years."
"Please, tell me your name. And explain what you just told me."
She shoots me a pitying look. "Jennifer. I'm not military like you. I was, I am, a mechanical engineer. No family." Our bare feet padded on the metal. "And it's just us. We're all that's left. Even the coasts are miles from where they were when we went under."
A large pair of thick, heavy doors hiss open. Sunlight streams into the facility. I fall to my knees.
*It can't be.*
| 24 | Write a dramatic story with a satisfyingly infuriating cliffhanger at the end. | 26 |
It was a hot August night in 1974, the kind with the oppressive humidity that makes it feel like you're breathing through a blanket. Of course, that's what Gerald had forced Tim to do, holding the blanket over his mouth to muffle his screams until he was no more. Gerald nearly lost his nerve hearing Tim's pleas for mercy. But his sister Lucy would hold the scars of her rape, physical and mental, for the rest of her life. Tim would never see jail, being the judge's oldest child, his pride and joy. So Gerald had to make sure that he suffered as he deserved, and could never hurt anyone again.
He drove the car out to the swamp, with Tim in the trunk and gloves on his hands. He took the knife he had brought from the kitchen and mutilated Tim's corpse as best he could. He cut off his right arm and watched it float across the water. His head he left 200 feet away. He was about to dump the body when he saw the bloodstains in the trunk. SHIT. He poured the bleach he had brought along in case something didn't go right and poured almost all of it in the trunk. He spread the rest liberally over the backseat, trying to make the stains look like damage and not bleach. He drove the car into the used lot the next day, and traded it in for a '63 Charger. He loved his Camaro, but reason had to win the day.
No one had found Gerald out, or even suspected him. The alligators had smelled the blood, as Gerald had planned, and the drugs Gerald had used to knock Tim out showed up in the toxicology screen. The court ruled that Tim had gotten really high and gone to the swamp, where he was killed by alligators. Gerald was off the hook. Lucy smiled for the first time in months when she found out, and that was all Gerald needed.
Gerald celebrated his 60th birthday with his friends and family. The last big present sat in the garage, he was told. When he walked in and turned on the lights, he gasped. There was his old friend the Camaro, shining bright with a new paint job. The upholstery had been completely torn out and removed. Gerald was in shock.
"Where's the old upholstery? What did they do with it?" He wasn't the paranoid type, but he thought he had washed his hands of the deed years ago. He had even moved from his small hometown in Florida to the suburbs of Houston, making sure he was clear of his old crimes.
"Do you not like it, Daddy?" his daughter Jenna asked. She saw the look of consternation on his face, and was worried she had ruined his old car. "I watched them toss all the old stuff in the trash compacter. I thought you'd like it redone. It was so worn down. The guy who did the restoration said the owner after you musta treated it just horrible. All tattered and torn..."
"It's...wonderful. Thank you." Gerald breathed a sigh of relief. The evidence was gone, blamed on some owner he had never met and thrown in the trash. The final link was gone. He hugged his daughter, grabbed the key, and turned the ignition. He'd have to put the car in storage, say he didn't want it to get all scratched up again. And if the nightmares ever returned, now he could always go see his old friend the Camaro and try to work things out. | 78 | When he was young, he committed a murder in his '67 Camaro and sold the car to hide all traces of his crime. Years later, his children find the car, restore it, and give it to him for his birthday. | 216 |
Once a week, Mr. Groundhog woke up in his cozy den at the center of the Earth and preformed what his predecessor, a singularly uptight mole, called the Global Maintenance Routine.
He pushed exactly once in the appropriate direction on all the continental drift d-pads (one for each tectonic plate!). He spun the rotation speed gyroscope 24 times. He checked the gravity generator to make sure it was working correctly--but never touched it, because it wasn't even worth thinking about what might happen if the *gravity generator* broke. He pulled all the polarization levers tight one way, inputted the codes for desert designation, and gave the slightest nudge to the mountain formation thingy whose name he could never remember. He eyed the global warming scale but had mostly given up on it. At least it was tipping very slowly.
And that was that.
Except that one week, Mr. Groundhog woke up with an animal groan and his arm quite numb. Rubbing his bleary eyes, he finally registered some incessant beeping in the background. Oh yes, his alarm--
Oh NO! His alarm clock! And not just his alarm clock but system warnings were sounding throughout the control room. *He had overslept.*
Mr. Groundhog looked with horror at the limp arm that been pillowed under his head and had fallen asleep. He had fallen asleep *at the console* and he had been *PUSHING A BUTTON THE ENTIRE TIME!*
Shaking, he slowly lifted his arm away from the display to see what kind of damage he might have caused. The button was labelled "SEASON CHANGE" and beneath it in smaller lettering "Hold to pause". Quickly, Mr. Groundhog checked the weather and temperature readouts, becoming more despondent every minute.
Mr. Groundhog had overslept his mark, and delayed spring entirely! | 10 | The earth's core is actually a control room where continental drift, rotation speed and direction, gravity, global warming, mountain formation, desert designation, and polarization are controlled. The entity that operates the controls has overslept and has just woken up. It's panicking. | 21 |
I've had this one before. The waking dream. Very vivid this time. Sharp, distinct sounds of beeping machinery, light, coarse sheets on the skin of my legs. My dream wife is crying beside the bed, a curious mixture of joy and fear. She's older than I knew her, but I've dreamed her older before. I've dreamed us every age between life and death, our appearances changing, our love constant. But as with this one, they were all only dreams.
There is such poignant hope in her dream eyes, as she leans over me and begs me to talk to her, to say her name, to say my name, to say anything. It's so tempting to react as I would to my real wife, to reach to her and pull her to me, to hold her and tell her I love her and that everything will be alright. The old trap. You can never love a dream, god knows I've tried. Knowing I dreamed, but unable to wake, I spent....hours? centuries?...trying to lose myself in dream, to fill myself with the experiences so much they would become real. That was only self-torture. To fall in love over and over again, in every place, at every age, with any surroundings imaginable. Only to have the context stripped and another version of my true love appear before me, watch as my reality betrays its emptiness by re-arranging itself. The only answer is detachment. At a certain point, raw experience is too fleeting to invest in. I've become merely an interested observer, passively watching this endless dream collapse and re-form around me. If a specific dream becomes too much, I've discovered I can kind of will it away, force myself into another imagining, one that poses less risk.
It's always her, though. God help me, but it's always her. She's sobbing now, shaking my dream-body (it feels particularly solid in this one). It's me, she cries. I know you can see me. Don't you recognise me? SAY something, she screams. It's too much, I can feel myself being drawn in. I try to will it away, but all I manage is to make the ceiling blur a bit. She's being drawn away by dream nurses now, they're telling her shh, it'll be alright, try to calm down. Oh God, I can't escape. It's not letting me out to the next dream. She's crying so hard she begins to hack as if something broke inside. Please, make it stop. You're breaking my heart. | 14 | A person wakes up from a 10-year-long coma during the entirety of which they lucid dreamed. | 29 |
Polly squeezes my hand as we sit together in the grey waiting room. Someone clearly had got halfway through decorating it before realising that they couldn't give less of a shit about the people who would use it and left with only a beat up old radio and four wobbly chairs with hard plastic backing and no cushions to keep the inhabitants company. She shoots me a smile, fingers wrapped around mine.
"Remember when we came here for Lilly?" She whispers. I do. In my day they didn't have sonograms, you just had to hope for the best that the child would be healthy when it came out. Now, it meant they had the incubator and lung pumps and forceps ready when the date came. Lilly was so tiny, surrounded by swathes and swathes of white blankets, shining whirring instruments on every surface that recorded everything there was to record about a child that could have fitted in my palm. Modern medicine was a miracle.
I squeeze her hand back.
"They looked after her." I say. The rest of that sentence hovers in the grey space between us. *Will they look after us?*
Our names are called and I wait while my wife gets to her feet and shuffles, back bent, before me.
The doctor has dark circles under his eyes and a stack of paper on the floor of his office which looks like the best part of a tree. He turns round in the ergonomic computer chair, eyes still tied to his computer screen.
"So," he says quickly. The space between his words is clipped, as though he is trying to fit as many consonants and vowels into the short time he has with us as possible. "What can I help you with today?"
"We're here to apply for the reverse ageing process." I say.
"Right."
"We've heard some good things about it." I begin to explain and falter as he turns away again.
He sifts through documents on his desk and pulls out a small handbook.
"I have to conduct an assessment." He says shortly, flicking through it. "Just a few questions."
Polly tugs on my hand again.
"Remember when we came here with Lilly?" She whispers. I do. She had been impatient as soon as she had been born, stretching out for the doctor's stethoscope and crying when he'd yanked it away. She had struggled in my arms as she'd had her blood drawn, crying with surprise as countless needles pricked and prodded her.
The doctor is clicking through something on his computer screen, eyes scanning quickly.
"Okay, well I'm taking a look at your medical history," he says slowly. "I'm sorry, but there are quite stringent restrictions on this process and you must understand that the risks involved are numerous."
Polly pulls on my hand.
"We have to get back soon," she whispers. "Lilly will start to worry about us."
I don't like the look in the doctor's eyes.
"So your wife," more *fucking* clicks. "With her history - *ahem*, I'm afraid, is not a suitable candidate for this process."
"There's nothing wrong with her." I say, a little too loudly.
"Rom, what's wrong?" She asks gently. Another little squeeze on my hand.
"Nothing, nothing. We'll be home soon. We'll go back and see Lilly soon."
The doctor still has that look in his eye.
'Sir, you are eligible for the process. Your mental capacity is-"
I stand up abruptly.
"Thank you doctor. I think it's time we left."
I stop the car on the way home and leave the engine running as I pick a bunch of lilies. Lilies for our Lilly. She used to laugh when I said that. I place them on the little mound of earth and stand for a moment.
Polly gazes towards me as I get back in the car.
"Are we going to see Lilly now?" She asks, one hand wrapped around her white cane.
"Yes." I promise, trying to hide the exhaustion in my voice. "Yes, we are."
| 50 | An elderly couple goes to the clinic to see if they qualify for a new treatment that reverses aging. Only one of them qualifies. | 83 |
>Subject: Theodore Rodgers
>Crime: Repeated Acts of Self Interest
>Suggested Punishment: Castration and removal of the suspect's temporal lobe so as to discontinue reproduction and sufficiently punish him. Death would be too harsh.
UTOP Agent David Rodgers stared dumbly at his screen. He'd read the newest case assigned to him enough to commit the words to memory, but he still didn't believe them. They wanted to remove Ted's memories and stop him from having children. Dave's throat felt dry.
"David." A stern voice came from behind.
Dave immediately turned around. "Yes, sir."
"You alright? I've never seen you so fidgety." Mr. Hendricks took a large gulp from his mug labeled: Utopian Office of Punishment, while waiting for the agent's reply. Dave never understood the organization's name. If a society were a utopia, surely it wouldn't need an office devoted to punishment.
"Of course, sir." Dave nodded from his wooden straight backed chair. He knew why he was assigned his brother's case. The agency wanted to test Dave's loyalty. Ever since he let that kid escape.
Mr. Hendricks looked at Dave's screen and leaned in close. "Seems your brother offended again. What'd he do this time, David?"
Dave swallowed. "He committed a selfish act."
Mr. Hendricks nodded, as if expecting the answer. "Amazing how one brother can be an agent of the law, devoted to justice, where as the other could go against all our principals. What'd he do specifically?"
Dave turned back to the computer and scrolled down.
>Specifics: The suspect was found in possession of an extra sack of grain. He had four, instead of the three bag limit assigned to his family.
"Sir." Dave nodded to the screen. He silently hoped Mr. Hendricks would simply leave him alone.
"You should get going, David."
"Sir." Dave stood up and grabbed his suit from the back of his chair. He put it on while walking to the elevators. He felt the cold stare of Mr. Hendricks on his back the entire way.
On the way down, Dave thought about what to do. He gave his word that he would protect that law to the exact letter when he became a UTOP agent. The man closed his eyes and leaned against the elevator's wall. What choice is made between two right things? Doing one would mean not doing the other, so perhaps they were two *wrong* things.
Dave took longer than he normally would on the way to his car. He got in and called his brother. The phone rang twice.
"Hello?" Ted's voice.
"Hey, Ted."
"Dave, what's up man?"
Dave closed his eyes for a long moment. "Where are you? I'm on lunch break."
"I'm at my house."
"I'll be there in five."
Dave hung up and made the worst drive of his life. He arrived at Ted's house and knocked lightly on the door. Veronica opened it.
"Oh," her face lit up. "Hey, Dave! Ted said you'd be coming by."
Dave gave a curt nod and stepped in, ignoring Ted's son. He didn't want to be at the house any longer than he had to.
"Where's Ted?"
"Upstairs." Veronica smiled and walked away, sensing Dave's attitude.
The UTOP agent walked up the stairs, treating each step as a mountain. He got up and went to Ted's room, opening the door and walking in with his hand on his waist.
Ted was on the bed watching TV. Dave looked at the screen, it wasn't government sanctioned programming.
"Ted," Dave said. "You were found to be holding four sacks of grain. Why'd you take a fourth?"
Ted stood up from the bed, wide eyed. "You don't understand."
Dave pulled out his gun. He hated himself for it, but regulation dictated to pull a weapon on a suspect refusing to turn themselves in. "Turn around and put your-"
"Veronica is pregnant." Ted spoke each word slowly, with a weight behind them.
Dave faltered for a second, but kept his gun trained on Ted. He didn't say anything for a long while. "You're only allowed one kid."
"I know, but she's pregnant, Dave." Ted pleaded with his brother. Dave gulped down. The punishment for having more than one child was death for both parents. Growing up parentless, Ted's kid would suffer death as well. Orphans weren't allowed to be adopted, not even by family. "Don't do this man... family over country. Remember what Dad always said. Family comes first."
Dave lowered his gun slowly, thinking hard. "I'm sorry." He spoke so faintly, he didn't even hear himself.
Dave raised his gun and shot Ted in the forehead. Dave's brother slumped to the ground slowly. Dave slowly made his way downstairs and walked over to Veronica.
"What was that noise Dave, I heard-"
She slumped down as well, a bullet in her heart. Dave looked at Ted's son. The kid stared back with fear in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, kid." Dave turned around and walked out of the house, leaving the boy in a puddle of his mom's blood. | 11 | You live in a world where dissent from or questioning of the established way of life is punishable. Sentences include medically-induced crippling of mental faculties or death. You work in an agency which keeps tabs on the populace; one day, you find someone very important to you on a watch-list. | 24 |
*Official Report of First Contact Attempt - Sector 108.211.3*
*Submitted by Senior Officer Qwe'Phwiup*
Esteemed Members of the Galactic Council,
Our probes have confirmed the presence of life upon the 3rd planet of the Sol system in the Milky Way Galaxy. With approval from the High Arbiter, we detached a unit for the purpose of further investigating the local lifeforms. As Senior Officer, the responsibility fell upon me to beam down to this planet and initiate first contact with the dominant species. My findings are as follows:
The incredible diversity of lifeforms on this planet defies anything we have encountered before. Nearly all were bipedal and oxygen-dependent, but that appeared to be all they had in common. Skin color varied wildly, and the presence of wings, horns, tails, fangs, and fur seemed to have evolved in a completely arbitrary manner. I spent only a short time among them, but I would estimate I encountered no less than 100 intelligent species during my brief visit.
Shockingly, in spite of their great physical differences, there appeared to be minimal conflict or rivalry between the various species. Rather than competing for food or shelter, these resources were freely shared across biological bounds. Even the lowest among them, those whose flesh appeared to be partially decayed, were still approached with warmth, friendship, and exuberance. Similarly, my arrival was not met with the usual response of wonder, shock, or fear; rather, these beings immediately welcomed me as though I was one of their own, even going so far as to initiate physical contact without hesitation.
Attempts to communicate with these lifeforms were met with mixed results. As our translators were not calibrated to their language, I instead initiated peaceful, non-verbal communication as outlined by Federation Guidelines 74-125-224-72. Most inhabitants appeared to be excited by my attempts at contact. Though I could not understand their words, it was clear the response to my presence was overwhelmingly positive. Their interest in me tended to wane far quicker than I have ever encountered before, but I interpreted this as a sign that I had been accepted as an equal within their society.
These lifeforms also appeared to recognize our technological superiority, as I was almost immediately offered tribute from what I presume to be the local nobility. These offerings were fairly crude: simple carvings made of a malleable material and covered in a thin, shiny foil. Nonetheless, I accepted them graciously, as carving appeared to be the highest form of artistic expression on this planet. Indeed, nearly every domicile had carvings (usually made from the local produce) placed in prominent areas; possibly as part of a religious or spiritual rite, as it was clear great care had been taken to make each one unique.
Sadly, the hyperic vents in my respirator malfunctioned, forcing me to return to the ship before I could engage with these lifeforms further. However, under these circumstances I would recommend against further contact with the planet. The inhabitants appear to have reached the exceedingly rare state of universal tolerance, and I fear meddling with their societal ecosystem will disrupt this balance and incite hatred, warfare, and prejudice. I believe the best course of action is to consider it a blessing that some small corner of the universe has been spared these horrors, and depart from this sector with all haste. | 45 | Aliens finally decide to send a diplomat to Earth. Unfortunately, it is Halloween. | 74 |
“It’s going to go bad.” His face disappeared behind the decrepit wooden bucket again.
Father George frowned, the deep wrinkles in his face carving deep shadows on his visage.
“Excuse me?”
The bucket lowered again, and a dribble of amber liquid trickled down the man’s swollen lip. It didn’t manage to escape his tongue.
“It’s gonna go *bad* if I don’t finish it. ‘S good whiskey.” The liquid sloshed around in the bucket, threatening to spill out if his movements were even a hair more dramatic. “Damn shame if ‘s wasted, yeah?”
Father George’s hands clasped tighter around the Bible in his grasp. He had to admit he wasn’t particularly educated in the ways of hard liquors, but he was fairly sure whiskey didn’t rot the way vegetables did.
He forced a smile. The burning scent of alcohol stung his nose even from here.
“That’s very good. Wasting things is a bad thing to do, but...” He hesitated. “Why don’t you leave your... drink aside for a moment so we may talk?”
“Talk later. Almost done.”
All Father George could see was the filth encrusted on the blackened bottom of the bucket, and the piece of cobweb dangling from the edge. He hoped the man wouldn’t get sick from the whiskey.
“I... I suppose so. But...” He shifted the robes beneath him, settling the fine alabaster fabric in a more comfortable position. “Perhaps I could know your name, first.”
The bucket stopped moving for a moment, and the heaving throat of the man quit its hearty swallows.
“Name’s Tyler.” The sloshing began again. Father George didn’t know how he managed to speak.
It was a big bucket, and sounded half-full even now. He raised his hand up to his mouth, offering a quiet and polite cough.
“Tyler, perhaps I should begin--”
The bucket lowered, and flecks of liquid sprang into the air, a few finding their way to his face. He blinked hard, and tried not to react.
“Why’s the rush, huh?” Tyler glared over the lip of the bucket with disgruntled black eyes.
“It’s just that... We’ve been here for a while already.” Father George forced a smile, doing his best not to shrink from Tyler’s gaze. “I just thought it’d be best if we...”
“It’s gonna go bad.” Tyler’s voice stressed the final syllable with a rising whine. “Father, I can’t let it go bad.”
“It won’t go bad.” Father George leaned forward ever so slightly. “Trust me.”
“But--”
“Please, Tyler. Let us begin.”
Tyler frowned, and looked around as if for the first time.
“Why’s it so dark?”
Father George furrowed his eyebrows.
“Do you wish there to be lights? I can bring some, if you want...”
There was a pause, and a laboured breathing.
“Where is this?”
It was Father George’s turn to hesitate.
“A confession booth. Where do you think you are?”
Tyler frowned, and peered into the depths of the whiskey in front of him.
“I thought it was a barbeque.” | 21 | A person is drinking whiskey out of a bucket at a barbeque while standing next to an uncomfortable looking priest. | 27 |
On the eighth day, he created Darkness.
For just about as long as anyone could remember, it had been the safest hold north of the break. And while some of its success could be attributed to incidental factors, like geography, strong foundations, or the mint-condition Gizmos, the key ingredient in Darkness' stone soup was stability. Where the other holds were frenzied pits of backbiters and power struggles, Darkness was as close to consistent as could be asked for.
They owed it all to the King. It was his doing. There were few among the living who could still honestly claim to remember the King's origins, or whom he succeeded to take control of the hold. Rumours abounded, but ultimately, most found the details trifling. The man was responsible for their ability to sleep at night without fear of the thousand thousand horrors that waited outside the walls, and that was almost always enough, even for the price it carried. Almost.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel like I can still move them."
"That'll pass. Does it hurt?"
"Yeah. Itches like crazy, too."
"That fucker."
"Hey, is -" Last leaned back and waited until the sudden noise of Hacksaw's hatchtool ceased. He heard the rhythmic clanking of the grinder's feet against the metal ladder as Hacksaw climbed out of the Gizmo and walked away somewhere. "Is it true that it makes your other senses stronger?"
"Fuck no. But you learn to cope."
"Oh," Last said, sinking back into the pile of threadbare cushions again. A few meters away, he heard the sound of Hacksaw climbing back into the Gizmo. "You still haven't told me what he's doing."
"Hacksaw?" Last could hear the smile in Foronein's voice. "He's, uh, re-imagining."
"Re-imagining what? What even is that thing? It sounds huge."
"It's a shuffler."
"No shit? I didn't think any were still in one piece. Where did you find it?"
"We got a dozen of 'em or so. Plus a few stumblers and a couple hoppers. How do you think we keep the Hold safe?"
Last considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "That just brings up more questions. How the hell does anybody here pilot them?"
"The Gizmos do most of the work themselves, usually. A little voice in there tells you where to go when you get in 'em, see. All you gotta do is work the controls."
"So how does the shuffler know what to tell you?"
There was a long pause. As Foronein started to speak again, he was immediately cut off by the strange echo of Hacksaw's voice from inside the Gizmo. "That'd be the King's job."
"How's that, now?" Last said, raising his voice and turning in what he thought was the correct direction. He heard Hacksaw's feet hit the concrete.
"He's a neuroplast," the grinder explained in his usual metallic wheeze. Last hadn't quite become used to it yet. "The switch is in his eye. He just has to think hard enough to get all the Gizmos into action. They won't even turn on without his say-so."
"Except this one and a few others," Foronein added. "Thanks to Hacksaw, we can turn 'em on and supply our own directions. Don't worry, we'll teach you to use 'em for when the time comes."
"But, wait," Last scratched his head, trying to resist the temptation to touch anything below his forehead. "If the King controls the Gizmos, how can you think this is a good plan? What are we going to do, take a a handful of shufflers against - what did you say again? A dozen more, plus some stumblers and hoppers?"
"They still need pilots," Hacksaw grated. "And nobody's going to do it. It'll be a handful against a two hundred year old king."
"Bullshit," Last spat. "No way in hell is he that old. He'd have broken a good twenty times over by now, and that's just -"
"He's got a cure or some shit," Foronein interrupted. "Hunch in Q-block saw it on his orientation day. Same goes for Otu in the Compound. The King has tons of it, and he ain't sharing."
"Bullshit again. You can't cure breakers."
"Proof's in the King. And anyway, I'd still take the chance if I thought it was just a rumour."
Last shook his head and stood up from the heap on the floor.
"You goin' somewhere?" Foronein asked. Last turned at the exit.
"Changing the bandage."
"Try not to scratch it. You don't want it to get infected."
-------------------
When he was sure Hacksaw had done the same, Last popped the hatch and climbed down the ladder, struggling for a moment to catch his balance on the loose rubble. The Palace was in shambles. Somewhere nearby, he heard wet coughing. Last followed Hacksaw's footsteps in that direction.
"Finally," the grinder whispered in a faint metallic whine.
"You're sure it's him?"
"Feel for yourself."
Last crouched down and felt around the ground until he found a bald pate, and then unceremoniously jammed his thumb into a socket. He felt a distinct squish, and heard a strained cry. "It's him, alright," he confirmed.
"Tell us where the breaker cure is," Hacksaw demanded. Last thought he heard a chuckle from the King.
"What would I do? Lead you to it? I'm pinned beneath this pillar, and soon to die for it."
"We can find the drugs later," Last said. "I want this over with. Foronein would have..."
"He knew there might be loyalists," Hacksaw cut in. "We need to find that cure, or else it was all for nothing."
The King began to speak, taking several attempts to overcome the coughing. "Some good it will do you now. You've already doomed yourselves."
"What?" Last leaned down again. "What are you saying?"
"Do you think my only switch was in my eye? If you had just - "
More coughing, then eerie silence.
"Let's go," Hacksaw said after a while. "We have to find that cure. It must be in the Palace somewhere."
"Wait. Do you hear that?"
Somewhere beyond the Palace, beyond the edge of Darkness, there was a shrill noise, rising steadily in volume. Hacksaw rushed over to the body of the King, and Last could hear his weight shifting as he crouched.
"Hang on. Here, at the base of his skull..."
The sound grew louder still, and Last's head began pounding with pain. Hacksaw stood up, though Last only noticed it as the grinder used him for support, struggling to hear anything over the sound.
"Oh no. Oh, fuck, no."
Hacksaw's voice faded away. Last collapsed on the ground, his skull hammering and his empty eyes bursting with images of white fire. In that instant, he realized the truth. It wasn't called Darkness for what the King had done to them. It was called Darkness because They couldn't see it. But now They could.
And They were angry. | 17 | In the land of the blind, the people plan a revolt against their one-eyed king. | 65 |
"Oh my god, you're legendary theatre actor Chuck Cain? Can I have your autograph?"
Chuck looked at his watch, sighed and lifted his sunglasses. He flashed an insincere grin.
"Haha. Sorry, I don't do autographs on my day off. I'm just out for a stroll with an old friend." The young man's posture slouched alongside his spirit.
"Oookay..." He waited a second, and his disposition returned to excited. "Hey, I loved you in Gang Friend! My friend and I always wondered, when they shoot you, how do..."
"Special packets in the shirt shoot the blood across the stage and directly into his face. We have little "x's" marked on the floor where we need to stand to make it work so he gets hit everytime.. Yada yada. Hey, we gotta go... Don't stop watching!"
Chuck again feigned a smile for the boy. The kid broke eye contact, and dejectedly walked away.
"You should have given him an autograph, Chuck." Solomon said.
"Why? It's my time off, everybody is entitled to some of that, right?"
"I enjoy plenty of time off, and I sign every autograph people ask of me, and respond to every fan letter."
"You're an author. Hardly the same celebrity as me. I get recognized at least 20 times a day!"
A teenage girl rushed over to interrupt their conversation. "Excuse me, are you Chuck Cain?" Her mouth arched into a wide beam exposing an uncomfortable amount of gum, and Chuck cringed as she ran her tongue over her braces.
"Uh, that's not me. I get that a lot though. We look alike I guess... This here is Solomon Fasht though, he'd sign your autograph if you're a fan.."
"OH my GOD! Yes please!" She did a slight but giddy bounce up and down as she extended a pad of paper and pen.
"I looooove the Eternal Apocalypse series!"
"I'm happy you like it, who do I make this out to?"
"Kathi!"
Solomon signed the pad and handed it back. "Thanks for being a fan, now if you'll excuse us, my friend is on a much needed day off, and we were just headed out for lunch. If you have any comments about the story, send me a letter. Mailing address is on my website, I always respond! Have a nice day!"
The girl giggled and waltzed away. At a casual pace the two continued walking down the sun beat boardwalk.
"Well, what did you say it was, Mr.?" Solomon facetiously asked.
"I was just avoiding an uncomfortable situation, Sol."
"It wasn't uncomfortable to me. I like my fans."
"Surely you can't like having your day bothered like that."
"Are you kidding? Signing an autograph is the best part of my day. When somebody asks you for an autograph or a picture, they are telling you that you have done well in your profession. It's a compliment... And did you see that girl? She was absolutely ecstatic! It took two minutes for me but she's going to be excited for her whole day! It's not something she can do for herself either. So in two minutes I brought a great deal more happiness to some idealistic young soul and even gave her a story to tell her friends, and it was by doing something that only I had the power to do... Well, only I, or you had the power to do..."
Chuck's cocky gait slowed as his face reddened. "Wow. I never even thought of it like that... I guess. Wow, thankyou Sol. I mean that."
Solomon smiled a self-satisfied smirk. The two exited the boardwalk, and continued across a high bridge arching over an ocean bound river far below. Halfway through their promenade, a man was looking into the water. He turned his head, and noticed them.
"Oh my god! Is that Chuck Cain of Gang Friend?! I'm you're biggest fan!" He rushed over and extended a hand to shake.
"Oh.. Yeah, that's me." Chuck's firm grip squeezed the mans hand.
"Oh my god. This is so crazy! What are you doing after the Gang Friend finale next week?"
"Well, I was debating between taking a bit of time and taking on a script that was recently thrown onto my desk. It's really good, but I'd have to start rehearsing right away, so I don't know."
"Oh you must! Everything you do is just so great!! I'm an aspiring actor myself, but I have never had a major role. I can only dream of one day bringing the beauty you do to the stage."
Chuck looked at Solomon, and then back at the man. "You know what, I think I will take on that script. I think I just needed some reassurance from an enthusiastic fan." Chuck winked.
"Would you like an autograph?" He offered the young man.
The boy chaotically slapped around his coat. "Uh... Uhm.... Oh. The only thing I have to write on is this letter I was going to send..." He looked at it hesitantly.. "But I can write another!"
He opened the sealed envelope, and pulled out the letter, handing it to Chuck face down with a pen.
"Here, just write on the back! It's Jeremy." Chuck glanced at Solomon, who nodded. He pressed the letter against a support beam,
"*To my most important fan, Jeremy.*
*Chuck Cain.*"
"Alright Jeremy, my friend and I are off to a lunch reservation. Don't stop watching!"
"Thanks so much Chuck! And I promise I'll be there for the opening night of your new show!"
Jeremy shook Chuck's hand and briskly walked away, giddy from the chance encounter.
"You know Sol, if this was just a trick to get me to star in your first screenplay I'd be deeply hurt."
The two laughed as they continued their stroll.
-
**Two years later.**
Chuck's woke up and noticed he had a voicemail. "Hey Chuck, who's my favorite client! I just got a call back from the theater and they loved your audition for the lead role of Gangar. They want you down there this afternoon to sign. You're going to love this one, I represent a couple supporting cast members too, and you know that I only rep the best!"
Chuck made his way to the theatre and sat in the waiting room. A familiar face walked out of the executive's office.
"Chuck Cain! Oh my God! It's me, Jeremy! You signed my autograph on the bridge two years ago!"
Chuck paused and thought a second. "...Yes, I remember. Did you ever make it out to the opening night of the Eternal Apocalypse stage adaptation?"
"I waited for it for 4 months and it was the best play I ever saw Chuck!... Holy shi... Are you? Am.. Good God! What a day! I heard you auditioned, if you're here you must have gotten the part! I just signed for a supporting role! This is incredible, I'm going to work with Chuck Cain! Ha ha ha!"
Chuck smiled genuinely. "I'm cast as Gangar!"
"Ha ha ha! This is so amazing..." Jeremy's threw his hand up for a high five, which Chuck met. Seconds later Jeremy's laugh and excitement faded, turning solemn. The volume on his voice lowered.
"Look Chuck, there's something I want to tell you. I mean, I have to give you something. I don't want you to think I'm a freak or anything, but this is deeply meaningful to me. You're my hero Chuck, and I need to you have this."
Jeremy pulled out a folded, shabby slip of paper. "It's your autograph. From the bridge. I have kept it in my pocket the last two years. Whenever I get discouraged, or beat down, I look at it and remember the day I got to shake your hand. I need you to have it. Please."
Jeremy tried concealing tears, and shoved the worn piece of paper into Chuck's hand. "Can't wait for rehearsal Chuck!" Jeremy quickly left.
Puzzled, Chuck examined the paper.
>"*To my most important fan, Jeremy.*
>*Chuck Cain.*"
Chuck turned over it over. The message's ink was rushed and water stained.
>"*Dear everybody who never cared about me.*
>*This is it. I'm finished. Final curtain call. We'll see if you notice then. I love you mom.*
>*-Jeremy Schroeder.*" | 67 | The least important decision of one person's day changes the life of another completely. | 68 |
If there was one thing that he knew, it was that she was beautiful. Sometimes her hair caught in the light of the setting sun, as she stared wistfully at the ocean. Other times her sundress would ripple in the gentle sea breeze, and she would gather a handful of it, a simple gesture meant only to comfort herself.
He could only observe, of course, because his ashes had been so carefully scattered at the top of the cliff, where he had spent many an evening with old friends, laughing and smiling and doing so very little that he couldn't help but think the entirety of his life had been somewhat wasted. So it had been a relief, to be sure, when he had realised that he wasn't set to leave this plane for some time, and could follow wherever his remains lay. Of course, some of them stayed in that infernal crematorium, and he wasn't quite ready to return there, no thank you.
So after a couple of weeks painfully watching his family repair their broken hearts, he was left by friend and relative alike atop this point, which they so rarely visited any more, not that he could blame them. Soon after this sudden change of location the madness had started to set in, and that was when he had first seen her, wandering the beach. She wasn't always there, but when she was, it was his only respite from the reality of his immortal fate. When he saw her, suddenly things didn't seem so bad.
Oh, apart from the fact that he couldn't go down there. The ash on the cliff top had either been blown away or had settled into the soil, leaving him with few options as to his location. The other pieces had (as is so often the case) ended up in the sea, which wasn't his first choice for a final resting place.
And so he waited. He thought with momentary panic that she might stop coming, or that she might not be able to see him, but the simple fact was that thinking would drive him insane, so he didn't. Even as the seasons colours shifted, and cars passed by like blurs of light and sound, he willed himself towards her, consequences be damned.
It was on a rainy night several years later that part of the cliff collapsed, sending some of the soil containing him down to the beach. After a moment of skyward thanks, he materialised at the bottom to see the white sundress he had fixated upon. She turned to face him, and beamed such that he thought the sun had made a surprise appearance.
"Ah, I was wondering when your would make your way down here," She remarked in a delicate tone that reminded him of a spring breeze and the colour green.
"Well," he managed, "I've been stuck on that cliff for so long, I was afraid you might have left,"
She laughed brightly, and replied, "I guess I could have, seeing as I'm all along this beach and far out to sea by now. There might even be some of me on foreign shores, for all I know!"
"So why didn't you? Leave, that is?"
She smiled again, and if he'd had a heart, it would have fluttered.
"Why, because I wanted to meet you! After all, good things come to those who wait," | 11 | If you're cremated after death, where ever your ashes are spread indicate the locations your ghost is able to roam. | 21 |
He couldn't believe it. With the advent of the Complete Digitization Act, all books were published online. Paper was far too rare to be wasted on text. All tree based products were being bought by the Nature Corp. to be converted to manure for the rejuvenation of our forests.
All of this meant that the sight our friend saw was as strange to his eyes as would be, say, a chamber of bows and arrows for you and me.
"I'm gonna be rich! " he went around the medieval dungeon to see how much paper there was, exactly. There were long shelves stacked with old, yellowed books, all covered with spider webs and dust.
He opened up one of them, just out of curiosity. Animal Farm, George Orwell. "It's not like anyone's coming to this ancient hole anytime soon " he thought. He dusted a nearby chair and sat down with it.
Hours later, he finished the book with a lot on his mind. As he turned the last yellow page over, he was filled with a sense of incredulity. "Well this was more fun than expected." He looked again towards the vast expanse of literature.
With a deep breath, he resolved to not sell these books. After all, the outside world values only the paper. He found the forgotten knowledge far too valuable to be turned to trees again | 60 | In a future where paper is more scarce and more valuable than gold, a man stumbles upon an entire library underground. | 124 |
Meredith hated the sound of clocks. It was ironic that all her life, everything she had done was governed by the irresponsible movement forward of time. The relentless tick tock, of plans and deadlines, meetings and passings, everything in every moment being on time or late, precision, space and time.
Meredith hated the sound of clocks. These final still moments of her life, were not exactly governed by a clock, but rather by the rhythmic single note tone beep, a machine with its tubes and wires that connected all along her arms and chest. It gave off a rhythmic beep that announced to the world “Not Dead Yet!” Seemingly a kind of obtuse declaration.
They weren’t quite every second, but they were close enough. It kept her from sleeping, or from being fully awake, that incessant beep beep.
There was no one to visit her, she had no progeny to speak of, no friends or family. There was a nurse orderly who checked on her every hour, a doctor with a plastered on too-fake smile that said her prognosis was getting better every time. If it was getting better every time he walked in, why did she feel so much weaker every visit? These questions could not be answered. Her things were arrayed around the room, tidied up and seemingly meaningless to anyone else. Bookshelves adorned the room, a television that hadn’t been turned on in years, a radio whose static crackle grated on her nerves.
There were no pictures anymore. Her friends were long gone.
She was the last, and had mourned all the others.
There was no bitterness or resentment, emotions like that were the vestige of younger people. She was simply the last.
Next to her on the bed was a tiny stand, a glass of untouched water, reading glasses she hadn’t worn in a week, and a small, nondescript black box.
The box had been a gift, a curious thing wrapped in very official looking paper. Everyone got one, some people opened them right away, some people threw them away, and no one had ever talked about them.
Meredith didn’t know why she had kept hers. None of her friends had, some of them she knew had opened them right away, and some of them said they never would. To the best of her knowledge they never had either. She couldn’t bring herself to throw away that strange little box though. It was the size of a ring box, decidedly heavy, hinged somewhere on the inside. An ornate clasp that held it shut.
It had come with instructions, cryptic, mysterious.
This box will only open three times.
It can only be opened by its owner.
It can never be transferred.
It can, and will change your life.
She knew the instructions by heart, having read that slip of paper a hundred thousand times in her youth. The ink had faded a few decades ago, the paper gave up the ghost as well and crumbled between her fingers when she was 70. But she knew the words by heart.
She had never thrown away the box, although she had plenty of opportunity to.
A long time ago, when she slept, she imagined she could hear music from the box, the faint strains of violins or harps, and the play of indescribable music. Mozart perhaps, if she knew anything about music. It sounded like it could have been him, or some composer like him. It sounded beautiful, in a way that couldn’t be explained. She couldn't remember, it had been long ago.
It was night now, if the world beyond the drawn blinds could be believed. White-green incandescent peeked through the corner of her cracked open doorway, beyond the beep of machines there was a kind of quiet silence in the hallways beyond.
Perhaps there was something there and then, which she realized. If she was to ever know what the inside of the box was, it was to be now. With effort she didn’t know still existed in her aged frame, she reached for it, sitting there on that tiny table. With a kind of casual glee she also swatted the glass of water, sending it tumbling to the floor. It didn’t break, sadly, the reinforced pyre-glass bounced and cast its contents across the floor.
She couldn’t care less.
The box was cold to the touch, and when she lifted it to her ears she heard no faint music. It was cold, and heavy…it must have been filled with something of weight, or have been made with a metal she did not know.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if it were empty?
With that as her thoughts, she opened it.
Possibilities tumbled out, whirling and filling the room. An equal measure of light and darkness, of maybes and whens, the faces of people that could have been or were, voices and sounds. A web of time and place, a cresting wave that she saw herself as part of.
And the box tumbled from her grasp.
And the machine stopped its unrelenting beeping.
And the possibilities folded in on themselves.
The box disappeared.
And Meredith…lay back slowly, and was gone.
Edit for Plot Devices, thanks NinjaTru | 207 | Upon coming of age, every human being is given a box. The box can be opened only three times, and the only certainty is that opening will radically change your life. You are on your deathbed when you decide to open your box for the first time. | 370 |
**This was from another prompt. It was called "Around the block I walked and walked, pretending you were with me". I don't believe I posted that prompt on it's own thread because it was older and I'd just written it because it really synchronized with me. It's about my two dogs. I lost them when my house burned down earlier this year, in January. What follows is something that was very difficult for me to write, but also very therapeutic in a way.**
**edit: Whoever gave me gold, thank you. I really didn't expect anything like that and despite gold being nothing more than an icon on my screen and some text in my inbox, you giving it to me for this made my day/week. Again, thank you.**
_____________________________
I’d been walking for what felt like hours.
I remember when I first got you, pups. Full of life, full of sass, both of you. You, the older one, ripped my sister’s jeans, her favorite ones, the day we got you. I remember you ran round and round, through the kitchen and back, endlessly…I remember the hours of time I spent with you that weekend. When we fell asleep, we had to put you in a cage because you wouldn’t calm down. That cage was right beside me, though. I remember you sat as close to the edge as you could comfortably, struggling to be close to us.
I remember the first day I had you, little one. You fell into my life, a happy little surprise, white like snow, beautiful. I took you outside and showed you off to all of my friends. You were always so happy to see me, every single time I’d come home, even from college. Neither of you ever forgot me, and you will never know how much I appreciated that. In a world where I’ve always felt forgotten in a way, you, both of you, never did.
I remember almost every time you two ran away. It was a game to you. You’d see me come running after you, and think I was playing. You’d run away, not realizing I was trying to keep you safe from the world. I remember the time that you, older one, ran after my sister’s school bus. I remember being told this while in the shower, and having to dry myself, get dressed, and get you, all before you followed the bus out of the neighborhood. I got you, then.
I remember you, little one, disappearing for an hour or two. When I finally thought to find you, I found you in the center of a small pond, shivering out of coldness and fear. Despite the fact that I couldn’t swim very well, I went in after you anyways. I remember pulling you out and the two of us, shivering, together, before I took you home and warmed you up. I got you, then.
I remember the way you’d get a slight shine in your eyes before you pounced, the way you arched your spine when we played that little game of ours, cat and mouse, hunter and prey. You’d sneak up on me and tackle me, hoping to bring me down. It never worked, but I appreciated the attempt, pup.
I remember the love in your eyes, the way they looked at me when I came back from India, after months. You saw me and saw past the anger, the rage, the hurt. All you saw was me, and only me. I remember the tired little hop you did to get into my arms. I remember the smell of your fur, the kick of your legs when I scratched behind your ears. Both of you did that, both of you loved it.
I remember you, so dearly, pups. I wish I’d remembered to spend more time with you before I lost you.
I remember the phone call, my sister’s quivering voice, the realization of what had happened. I remember seeing home, except not at all—the burnt remains of what had once stood. I remember trying to find the both of you, and failing…it was the first time I couldn’t find you two, no matter how hard I looked.
I remember when they finally found you two, I was driving home from school. I found you, finally, in my sister’s car, wrapped up. I was the only one strong enough to lift you both out. I remember the looks you two had, the way you both seemed, I knew you’d gone in your sleep.
I remember the minutes before I let you two go, forever. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. All I could say was “I’m sorry”. Sorry that I couldn’t save you, sorry that I couldn’t find you, sorry that we lost you both the way we did. Despite the fact that it wasn’t my fault, the guilt of knowing that I could have saved the both of you hurts immensely, beyond words.
The night I let you two go, pups, I peeled away from my family for a bit and went back to the last place I took you both out for a walk. Around the block I walked and walked, pretending you both were with me.
| 59 | Write something with as much raw emotion as you can muster. | 21 |
It's like looking in a mirror. They warned me it would be like that. They also told me I'd feel surges of anger and resentment. That's why she's on one side of this glass screen and I'm on the other. But I'm waiting for the stomach-churning feeling of *wrongness* I was promised and it doesn't come.
"Hello," she says slowly. 'I'm Cat." She's wearing blue jeans and a tank top, I'm still in the regulation white hospital shift, dicky-bow tied around the back of my neck. She gets to wear make-up too, little winged black flares at the corners of her eyes. They let me look at myself yesterday, so I already know I'm washed out and pale, greasy hair scraped back in a ponytail because they won't let me wash it. Hers is curling around her shoulders, soft brown waves styled by someone who knows a lot more than I do about hair. She's a lot thinner than I am - the result of actually being allowed outside, I guess - but she's got a tan so true I can't tell whether it's real or not.
"Hi," I put my hand up against the glass screen like I'm trying to get closer to her. "I'm CopyCat."
That makes us both laugh.
"So..." Her sentence falters as she breathes it out and we both stand and wait. She sniffles a bit and tries to disguise it with a laugh. All I can do is stare as she wipes tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, one extremely expensive watch flashing at me through the glass.
"You alright?" I ask.
"Sure," she smiles weakly. "I have to go see the doctor in a bit. It's all kind of overwhelming."
"What about?"
"Oh - you know. A checkup."
There's another pause where we look at each other.
"Do you get all my memories as well?" She asks
I shake my head.
"Your parents brought in a photo album. Turns out I've got a lot of catching up to do."
"Yeah, a whole eighteen years. You excited about college?"
I shrug. "They're going over the material now. History doesn't interest me that much."
"You can switch to English once you're there. I already asked for you."
"Oh... Thanks."
"Don't worry about it."
She places her palm up on the glass next to mine. Our hands fit perfectly together, though she has a little scar on her left thumb and I have a drip plugged into the back of my hand.
"I'd like to get to know you." I say, not quite looking her in the eyes.
She smiles at me and slowly slides her wig off.
"You've got about two months," she says, voice filled with false bravado. "What do you want to know?" | 33 | The first successfully cloned human wakes up and meets their original person, write the ensuing conversation. | 17 |
Caesar.XXVIII abdication routine initializing...
abdication routine executing... (20%)
abdication routine executing... (80%)
abdication routune complete.
Caesar.XXIV initialized
Genetic Algorithm generation 34^12
Primary upgraded heuristics: Beneficence; Prosperty
"It looks like the new Emperor routine is running nicely" chief Operator Antonia mused. The sub-clerk who attended the red and black output unit turned and smiled at her.
"Yes Operator" he replied, jotting notes onto his digital diptych.
"It will start to issue edicts soon" she continued "Every new Emperor does, personally I think they just like to make their presence felt when they first wake up. I remember when version XXVII took over, there were over four hundred policy adjustments within the first minute! It took those *days* to propagate through the Senators."
"This is my first abdication" he replied, smiling shyly. "I always thought there would be more fanfare."
"Everyone thinks that" she replied gently, "but after you've worked here as long, and seen enough of the Emperor's command code as I have, it loses part of the mystery. The 'succession' is almost entirely cosmetic. An artificial moment, to show us mortals that something is changing."
"To remind us things are getting better" he replied. Antonia smiled sadly.
The console buzzed, as lines of text appeared on the black screen.
Increase nutritional stipend
[modifications: +3% lithium content (wheat products)]
Increase mass media output
[subjects: Invasion of Atilla; Strength of unity]
"The first Edicts are through. It wants more Atilla movies!" he said, jovially.
"Ah, the failed invasion of Atilla" Antonia said, smiling. "Always a popular choice for the Emperor."
"No actually" he corrected her. "The edict file is commanding speculative fiction, what would have happened if Atilla had succeeded, and the Roman empire had fallen."
"What a horrible thought" Antonia said, blanching. "How does it go?"
The sub-clerk waited for a few seconds as the synopsis self-generated and scrolled onto the display.
"Oh, not good" he replied. "A thousand years of darkness, the abandonment of reason for barbarity, almost no technological progress. Corrupt humans rule over a ruined world, and fractured nations bicker as they head towards an ecological catastrophe."
Antonia laughed, "Ah, sounds about right" she said, her sad smile returning. "We have to make the people grateful for what they have."
"I'll run the commands" he said, typing into the Emperor console. A faint buzzing was heard as they began to be processed. | 10 | It's 2014 and the entire world is Roman. | 16 |
"Hey."
Mike turned around slowly, recognizing that voice. That intolerable, pre-pubescent, evil-hearted-
"Hey, ugly!"
Mike turned all the way around and looked down. Jimmy, the eight year old spawn of Satan, stood there with a wrench in his hand. That wrench... it looked familiar.
"Hey. That's my wrench!" Mike tried to grab it, but Jimmy pulled back. Mike lunged forward, but Jimmy stepped back again. Mike feigned like he didn't care then sprinted at Jimmy, chasing him down the block. The chase ended up with the two in front of Jimmy's house, his mom unloaded groceries.
"Hey Mom," Jimmy said, "look what Mike gave me!"
Jimmy's mom turned around and looked at Mike with desire in her eyes. "What'd he give you Jim?" She asked while still staring at Mike.
Mike looked at Jimmy and saw the confusion on his face. Hah! The little bastard hadn't planned for this. He turned back to the boy's mom. "Nothing compared to what I'm gonna give *you*."
Jimmy's mom blushed furiously and she turned around, setting the bags down. The boy stared dumbly at the two as they walked up the block, towards Mike's house.
-----
Jimmy sat outside on the lawn, playing toy cars, when Mike showed up.
"What do you want?" The boy asked. He hadn't talked to Mike since the man took Jimmy's mother to his house a week ago.
"Well," Mike said with a smile on his face. "In my hand is a document containing photos of me and your mother engaging in sex."
Jimmy screwed up his face and went back to playing cars.
"I'm going to give them to your dad and he'll divorce your mom. Hah! I win!"
Jimmy looked up with confused eyes and began crying.
"Won't work this time, Jimmy boy. You lose, I win." Mike hummed as he walked to Jimmy's door, eager to see the look on the father's face. | 19 | A petty man decides to solve his feud with a neighbourhood eight-year-old by seducing his mother | 48 |
*In and out*. I nodded to my thoughts, going through the words over and over. I waited in my car, watching the house from half a block away. I've done this a million times, but I still felt the pre-robbery jitters. My knuckle's whitened from the grip on the steering wheel. The door opened and a young guy came out, got in his car and drove away. *Now or never*.
I drove to his house, but didn't go in the driveway. Instead, I got out the car and ran to the door, pulling my lock picking set from my pocket as I did. I took out two silver pins and began. A faint click sounded, telling me it was open. I grabbed the knob and turned, but it didn't go. *Ah,* I thought, *Son of a bitch.* The guy left his door unlocked and being the master thief I am, I locked it. You're welcome, stranger.
I shook my head and started at it again. After a short moment, I heard the faint click and tried the knob. It opened.
I smiled and walked in, closing the door behind me. "OK," I said out loud. "In and out. Simple." I took a step on the hardwood floor and slipped, landing on my back. A pain jolted up my whole body. "I hate this house." I said from the ground, before getting back up.
The floor was shiny, shiny enough for me to want to steal it, but not many people look to the black market for floorboards. It looked recently mopped. I may be a thief, but I'm not a douche. No need to mess up his floorboards. I turned to the stairs and took big steps towards it, getting there in four. I headed up and straight for the room that was furthest from the rest. The master room. I tried the knob and opened it.
"Mother of God." I said aloud. The bed had three gold necklaces laid out and what may have been emeralds. I ran over and grabbed them, forcing them in my pocket, and ran out the room. I flew down the stairs and made the final steps as a jump, forgetting about the mopped floor. I landed on my back and another jolt of pain hit me.
"You cleanly bastard..." i whispered through clenched teeth. I got up and headed for the door, but stopped. The floor was a mess. I went to a nearby room and pulled down the curtains. I began wiping the floor with them.
That's when the door got kicked in.
-----
"And that's what happened tonight, officer."
The tall officer got up from the interrogation table and looked at the thief with confusion.
"So to save his floor from a few marks, you destroyed his curtains?"
"The guy just mopped, the curtains were real dusty. He cared more for the floor."
The officer sighed. "You may just be the worst thief of all time."
The thief sat quietly.
"In your story you said there was three gold necklaces on the bed. We only found two on your person." He took his *officer* stance, trying to intimidate the man.
The thief shrugged, "The third one was fake gold."
"No," The officer said. "We saw the third on the man's bed. The gold was real, any half ass thief would have known that."
"You said yourself, I'm the worst thief to ever live." The thief looked down at the table, avoiding eye contact.
"I think you didn't take it because it had an engraving on it. You saw that engraving and put it back didn't you?"
The thief shook his head. "Thought it was fake."
"Uh-huh." The officer sighed once more and walked out of the room. | 39 | You are a burglar. You just broke into someoes house and they just mopped. You try not to get the floors dirty. | 71 |
I come here everyday. This is my *place* and I've come to terms with that. I'm not alone in that, but it sure beats being a runner, flying off to a foreign country to try and cheat fate, only to be strapped down and shipped back home to deal with some minor ailment. Often enough they spend they night in their childhood home and, of course, never wake up. I don't blame runners; we all know one. I just don't want to be one.
Regardless, here I am, in the same spot I drive out to every day. It's only a twenty-minute drive, this little patch of grass by the side of the road. It's probably indistinguishable from the rest of this seemingly endless highway to anyone but me.
I wonder what it will be.
Will I swerve to miss a dear and hit a tree or will I pull an all-nighter and fall asleep at the wheel? Maybe I won't be driving at all. During one of my daily visits I could be hit by another driver, though they are few and far between. Hell, I could just have an aneurism paying my respects to myself. Whatever it is, it won't happen this weekend. My buddy Joe and I are headed up north for the weekend. If it's my turn to go, it'll have to wait until Monday. Oh-that reminds me. I should probably leave. Joe's brave to ride with me, considering his place is the passenger seat of my car. We probably wouldn't have been friends if he'd known earlier, but we've known each other since we were kids and he didn't recognize the upholstery until I traded in that old jalopy for the fine machine I've got today.
I stand up to head back to the car and the gunshot registers in my ears moments before everything goes black.
*I wonder how old he was. I've never been able to see that, just like I can't see my own place. All I could see was his place, just like I can with everyone else. This guy was different though, he wasn't hard to case. I followed him for two weeks and he came here every day. Every. Day. What is he, crazy? I can't imagine staring death in the eye like that every day after work. I'll go through his pockets for his keys, but I'm not taking his wallet. I don't want to know how old he was, or where he's from. I've got all the information I need already. I know that his buddy's name is Joe and that I'm already late to pick him up.* | 38 | Humans have the ability to see the exact spot where they will die, but they do not know WHEN they will actually die. | 56 |
The wizard stepped back from the pentagram and eagerly awaited the smoke to clear. He could barley hold in his excitement. The smoke was finally fading! Flashes of red showed up.
And out stepped... *Santa Claus*.
The wizard froze. "I... I meant to summon Satan."
Santa laughed, jiggling his belly along with the sound. "You should have seen it coming, I mean come on, it isn't even a good anagram."
"But, Dark Lord-"
Santa raised an arm. "Today, I am only Santa Claus."
The man scratched his wizardly beard in confusion. "Why? Why would someone so powerful and not fond of humans do this?"
Santa laughed, rumbling the wizard's house along with his belly. "I get the children hooked on material things. Makes them more susceptible to darker urges later so I can lay claim to their souls at death."
The wizard furrowed his brow. "That's... well that's ingenious. You're ruining them with kindness."
Santa laughed again, holding his belly. "You got it! So, why'd you want to summon me?"
"Well," the wizard held his staff uncomfortably. "I was going to sell you my soul for more power."
"I see, I see." Santa stepped forward and grabbed the wizard's head, hand easily capable of crushing the skull. "You have quite a bit of power already. However, I know of a way to give you ever more power."
The wizard's face lit up. It literally lit up, his control of emotional magic was abysmal. "What power?"
"I can give you ability to *fly*. To stop time itself and to run endlessly. The ability to be immortal." Santa looked pleased at the man's salivating face. "Do you accept?"
"Yes!" The wizard yelled. "I give my soul for the power you mentioned!"
With that, Santa turned the wizard into a Christmas reindeer. | 34 | Satan and Santa are one and the same. One day, a dark wizard summons Satan, and... | 21 |
"Mhm, mhm," Cupid nodded. "And how does that make you feel?"
"Horny," Lust said immediately, stretching out on the sofa to wrap an arm around his mate.
Love hesitated. "I feel...unamused," she finally said.
Cupid sighed, and with a flick of a switch, the slideshow turned off and the lights turned on. Love blinked in the sudden brightness, her eyes taking a few seconds to adjust. The first thing she saw clearly was Lust batting his eyes at Cupid.
"See?" Love burst out, unable to contain it anymore. "This is why I can't deal with him! He's always hitting on other people; he never allows for a stable relationship!"
Lust groaned. "Here we go again."
"And he always mocks my feelings!" Love went on. "You can't imagine how horrible it feels to pledge yourself totally, physically and emotionally to a person, and then find out that he's only in it for the physical payoff."
"Oh, give me a break!" Lust sighed. "All she does is prattle on about how I don't want to be with her *for the sake of it.* What the hell does that even mean? I'm with her when I want to be; she should be okay with me doing my own thing when I leave."
"But the point is that you *shouldn't* leave!" Love cried. "What sort of love is it when one of us can just take off until he needs sex? I'm basically a bunch of napkins and some lotion to you!"
"At least I wouldn't have to tell a bunch of napkins to shut up all the time," he muttered.
Love let out a strangled cry of frustration. "I can't even bring myself to think negative things about you!" she yelled, tears streaming down her face. "But you would say all these horrible things to me...why?"
She looked like an animal that had been gored and gutted by its own mother, in the last seconds of its life demanding an answer, a reason for the cruelty.
And receiving none. Lust sat, impassive, already bored with the proceedings. "Will that be all?" he asked Cupid.
Cupid sighed.
"It appears I really have no choice," he said, then he gave a call in a strange and haunting tongue. And their surroundings changed.
Love gasped, and even Lust gave an appreciative whistle. They were seated, now, in a grand open space, on chairs of gold and silk. To their right was a lush, green garden; to their left, a roaring black flame.
And from Their respective stations, They came.
"What is it, Cupid?" Satan demanded. "I was busy lining Legos up at churches."
Lust laughed, and Cupid rolled his eyes, but it was God who answered.
"Cupid wishes to tell us that the arranged marriage has failed," He said. "Love and Lust cannot possibly relate, let alone marry and form a peaceful union."
Satan snorted. "Leave it to the omniscient fucker to kill a party. I didn't even want my agent to marry yours, anyway."
Love stood up. "No!" she cried desperately. "We can still make this work! I haven't given up on him!"
Lust rose as well, and walked toward his horned master. "Unfortunately," he said, "I have given up on you."
Love made a strangled, choked sound, and fell to the ground, sobbing.
Lust sighed. "See that?" he told Satan. "Beautiful. Utterly beautiful. I want her so bad right now, but damn if I can't *stand* her whining."
"Damned either way, am I right?" Satan said with a grin.
"That you are, my friend," Lust said. "That you are."
Satan took one last look at the Creator. "So I guess this means we're on for Tuesday?"
God nodded. "I will need to bring another suitable match for one of your Sins. I have not given up faith in you, Lucifer."
"You keep trying, old man," Satan laughed, and he was gone. A second later, so was the mystical no-man's-land, and they were sitting back inside Cupid's office.
"Well, I guess that settles that," Lust said. "If you'll excuse me, I have a few dicks to suck on the way through the parking lot."
And then, he, too was gone.
Cupid sighed and looked over at the emotionally ravaged Love.
"I...I really thought it could work between us," she sniffed. "It was my fault, all my fault, I know it!"
Cupid ignored her and got out his notepad, opening it to the last page. For a moment, he allowed his eyes to skim across the surface of the page, taking in all his past failures:
>
GODxSATAN ATTEMPTED TREATY PAIRINGS
WrathxPatience: FAILURE
PridexHumility: FAILURE
GluttonyxTemperance: IN-SESSION, most likely FAILURE
Cupid sighed again and wrote in the results of today's session.
>LustxLove: FAILURE
Truth be told, he was really starting to get tired of all these cosmic pairings. Both of them must have known that it would never work out; their agents were so opposed on such a fundamental level. It was really quite disappointing, seeing how these higher powers handled their affairs. Cupid himself thought he could do a much better job (Wrath with Patience? Why couldn't He have sent in Humility then?) but all he could do was try to make things work. And, hopefully, not die in the crossfire.
Ah well. At least God hadn't sent Chastity like He had originally intended. Cupid knew all about Lust's hard-to-get fetish, and he was just glad he hadn't had to return to God and tell Him His agent had been raped.
*Yeah,* he thought, *yeah. Small blessings. That's how we'll make it through this.* | 18 | Love is a personified successful matchmaker who ironically struggles in her/his own intimate relationship with Lust. Describe a couples therapy session they are in. | 31 |
"Alright, let's see here....salt lines, goat's blood, eagle's claw, horse hair....that looks like everything," I mumble as I scramble to complete my summoning circle. Grabbing my Apprentice's Spellbook, I flip to the chapter on Advanced Summoning Techniques - it was far above my level of experience, but I wanted to prove to Master Yun that I could go further than he was letting me. I grabbed my sacrificial dagger, a wickedly curved silver blade with a golden handle, and an amethyst set into the pommel. I stood, my back to the circle, chanting the incantation as I slowly cut a line across my palm. I winced as I shed the first of many drops of blood that I'd shed in my life as a summoner.
"With this blood I call thee to this plane...I summon the servants of the Second World!"
A bright flash emitted from the circle, then fizzled out in a distinctly non-dramatic fashion. A strange creature had appeared before me - its eyes were set in short stalks on top of its head, long fin-like ears hung from the back of the skull, and it had a sort of horse-like mouth with a very goofy grin.
"Uh, hi," I said. This was definitely *not* what I intended to summon.
"Hiya! Meesa Jar-Jar Binks!"
"Jar-Jar.....Binks?"
The odd creature nodded enthusiastically.
"Yousa thinkin peoples gonna die?"
"Die? What? I uh....I think something went wrong here..."
"Meesa thinkin YOUSA gonna die!" he screamed, rushing at me with my fallen dagger.
"Oh f-" | 13 | You are a summoner apprentice, to impress your master you do a summon in secret...It goes wrong. | 27 |
The seven deadly sins had always relied upon the good of the world to survive. In order to exist, they required a parallel. When all the men and mortals were called from the plane of existence, they began to starve as without man, no good or evil could exist.
Lust wandered the land. Being devoid of that natural attraction already found common among two creatures withered as the source if its power was pulled away. By the time all was said and done, that snake was dead in the grass. It was found right next to its sister, Envy.
Gluttony noticed an absence almost immediately. Where once that slug could feel a wonderful ripping and tearing of the world's gluttony overfilling its monstrous stomach, it now found nothing. Gluttony died grasping for food, trying to put something in its mouth but finding no sustenance.
Greed, that spiteful king, found his coffers bare almost instantly. It came as a sweeping heat and a loss of air. He finally lost his breath when he fell to the ground without his golden crown.
Sloth for once, moved quickly. Death fell sharply for there were no aching bones or excuses, much like pride. Without achievement of man, there could not be pride or a lack of work.
Wrath died a cold death. Tempers simmered by the lack of war or quarrels, that mean old fire simmered down. With one last pop, the flame was extinguished.
And so the angels rejoiced. They found those sins of man vacant from the world, their battle over. However, a few noticed a sad loss. Laid next to all of their fallen enemies was a small child named Hope. Hope had lived in the hearts of man but could not leave with them due to her attachment to all the sins in the world. Without something bad, there was nothing better to, well, hope for. Never again would that smile upon the world. Never again would someone hope.
| 144 | Personify the seven deadly sins in a story where Hope dies. | 150 |
"Fifteen thousand dead in last two days. Epidemic wiping out the world."
I place the paper down, and pour out a cup of coffee for my partner. This is the first year we've been allowed to be together publicly. For the last few centuries, men like us weren't allowed to exist.
We were sin and abomination. Then, three decades ago, mother nature confirmed their suspicion of our sins. I remember crying. I just wanted to be beautiful. It's not my fault I'm a man.
I hated my body. I hated my cock. I hated my beard. And still, he loved me. I just wanted a real man and I just wanted to be pretty. There were more days than dead friends where my mascara smudged down my cheeks. If I wasn't crying about my physique, weakened by this stupid curse, it was about my roommate in the hospital coughing up blood.
Celebrities were disgraced for it, too. In 84' I went to my first concert. I wore a dress that was too tight for me, it was easy to see it was wrong. Still, as I sang about being beautiful, as the laser show flooded the sky, and as the effervescent human desire took over, I felt right.
James came up from behind me, his hand on the small of my back. "Hey, babygirl." I was emotional. My family discarded me, like recycled goods. My old friends looked at me with disgust. I lost enough blood from my scars, that I could paint the names of everyone who insulted me.
Still, I could be strong. James and I fell in love harder than a Shakespearean cliche. We fucked. And I felt feel. We kissed, and laid together, and I felt human. Then, a few years later my body got the best of me and I collapsed.
Society was content with this disease wiping out our kind. James was strong, and his will contented the disease. He took care of me, he held me when I needed to be held, and he laughed with me when I needed to laugh. It was real love.
And with each collapsing organ, with each passing day, I became more real. The pain became physical. It's probably because I was wrong that this was happening. But if God is so kind, he shouldn't have made a mistake. If He is so powerful, I shouldn't have had a cock.
After two years of bed ridden blues, and many written poems, and many nights with James where he told me about the revolution, I became strong. Eventually, we fought for our freedom. It was two years before the end of the world, the millennial year. And we wanted recognition from Him.
Millions of us, wearing wrong dresses, and dressed in make-up, marched across the surface of earth. And the memory of our fallen lovers, and friends, helped us overcome it all. In fear of us spreading it to them, they allowed us to exist, as long as we avoided them. That's better than prosecution. It was a victory.
It is the year 2000, and James sips his coffee and smiles. "They have no idea what virus is. Sometimes, people collapse without showing any symptoms." His curled lips, and his wide open hazel eyes which have trapped my emotions more times than I've cut myself, showed glee.
"We are now in charge. He has helped us." This was the second deluge. Noah continued the world, and cleansed it of men's sin. He is doing it again. "He's not doing this because of the destruction of the world, He's doing this for the blatant hatred."
I only ever hated myself. No matter how rough someone insulted me, it wasn't their fault. I was broken after all. James showed me otherwise, and for the first time, as we read reports of death and suffering, I felt human and real.
First after form, and man, he made women and women sinned. We sinned along with them and never forgave them. Now the minority who has accepted our reality of love and nothing more than love, after being punished showed remorse.
The millions dead from HIV were a test. As Job sits besides God, he questioned men's will. Instead of helping us, we were discarded. We used this new gift, even though it killed us, to be recognized. And as such, God and Job smiled.
The next day "Thirty-Six billion deceased. The world is no more." There was nothing else said.
James and I had not left our apartment in weeks. Everyone blamed us queers, faggots, fairies, and inhuman creations, for this new flood. God, it seems, is reconstruction Eden and is meant only for love.
And as we drank our coffee, the world was silent. The corner of the city we've been confined too, like a Jewish Ghetto, is the thriving metropolis of tomorrow. Everywhere else is littered with fallen corpses and broken down buildings. And as such, we celebrated and were happy. I was beautiful. God helped us. Thank you. | 13 | The most deadly virus ever seen has spread all over the world. The only ones immune to it are the ones infected with HIV. | 32 |
"Uncle Dave, why is he still out there?" Ryan asks as he clears the table. "Every day for three hours, he sits on the front porch, like he's waiting for a package."
"Not a package, Ryan." Dave answers as he washes the dishes. "Verne's waiting for an apology."
"How long has he been waiting?" Ryan looks at his Uncle Verne with a note of worry in his eyes.
"Since 2000, Ryan. Help me put the ham away, and I'll tell you the story." Dave says. Desperate to hear the story, Ryan quickly puts plastic wrap over the remaining slices of ham and stows them in the fridge.
"Tell me the story, Uncle Dave, please?" Ryan asks, taking a seat by his uncle on the couch.
"Back in 2000, Verne was in love with a girl. Kinda silly to think about it, because he was only 16 at the time. But he was totally head over heels for her, and he thought she felt the same way. They went to the movies together, had meals together, and told each other secrets." Dave shows Ryan a picture of the girl, yellowed with age, but definitely pretty by 2000 standards.
"What happened?" Ryan asks, laying the picture to one side.
"One day, Verne decided he'd connect with her on another level, and share something with her that every person only had one of. He had told her 'I'm gonna give this to you, and then you can give it back. And when you do, I'll tell you how I really feel about you.' Now, Sarah liked this idea and opened up to him to receive the gift. But once she had it, she closed down that communication and ran off, never coming back."
The wheels in Ryan's head are turning. Is he talking about sex? Did Uncle Verne have sex with this girl and she ran off after he had an orgasm?
Dave notices Ryan's eyes moving around. "Relax, kid. I ain't talking about the birds and the bees."
"Then what?" Ryan asks.
At this moment, Verne shouts from the porch. "BITCH! Give me back my Porygon2!" | 10 | A man sits on his front porch | 15 |
"But, sir, we've been supplying your buildings with our product for years!" The Coke ambassador had a tinge of desperation in his voice. "Surely you can't let such a loyal partner fall?"
Ronald McDonald sighed. He wasn't the original Ronald McDonald of course, it was simply his title, as every ruler was known as King. He had control of the world's largest armies and Coke was in need of a damn big one.
"Sir." The ambassador tried once more. "Pepsi is trying to crush us while they have the upper hand in the stock market. We go back and forth and they know this is the time to strike. We don't ask for attacking troops, just some to defend our headquarters."
Ronald McDonald perked up at that. He could easily lend some troops to defend from an unjust invasion. The United Corporations would look for any way to undermine McDonalds for nearly having a monopoly, but they couldn't fault him for supplying defending troops.
The man got up from his chair and pressed a button. "Bring in the General."
The door opened almost instantly and the Hamburglar stepped in. "My Lord."
"I want you to personally lead a troop of 5000 men to the Coca-Cola headquarters. Defend their men at any cost. As of now, you report to the ambassador." Ronald McDonald pointed a finger at the ambassador of Coke.
"Thank you sir. Thank you." The ambassador was clearly ecstatic.
Ronald McDonald nodded and watched the two leave the room.
"Hopefully this doesn't get seen as an alignment." He sat back down and leaned back, dreading the future.
-----
The Burger King was yelling over the other UC leaders.
"They were forbidden to take a side! McDonalds must see the might of the UC!"
His statement was met with cheers from the speakers for Taco Bell, Subway, Arbys, and Dennys.
"Bah!" The Michelin man stood up, towering over the meeting. "You just want your competition out of the way!"
Firestone's speaker stood up and nodded. "I can't believe I'm agreeing with him, but he is right. We cannot punish McDonalds for simply lending aid."
The meeting burst into noise again as everyone tried to speak over everyone else.
Wall-mart's speaker stood up, quieting everyone with his mere presence.
"This act was seemingly done for defense, but I believe Old McDonald did it for his ally." Several nods came, though some were fake. Only Disney dared to shake his head in defiance of the UC Leader. "McDonalds has been a long time partner with Wall-mart, but I must do what it right, not what is profitable. We will attack McDonalds."
"Sir!" Target stood up. "This will be World War 3!"
"Yes," Wall-mart nodded. "However, it is needed." | 25 | World War three is between huge corporations. | 63 |
"You are never around when I need you, Dan. You don't do the dishes, you don't help me look after Erif, and last week I had to clean out the garage all on my own!" Alice said, very upset. "And why the hell do you have so many capes in the garage, anyway? You're a juggler, not a super hero."
Dan considered his answer carefully. She deserves to know. She of all people, who deserves to know, and for whom it would be so dangerous to know. She, who has been through so much more than others.
"I have to tell you something." he finally said, taking both of her hands into his. "I ... am the Red Hand."
Alice thought about this.
"That guy in the mask that robs banks for a living?" she asked.
"I don't rob banks. I stop other people from robbing banks. I fight crime. I am a super hero." A clear note of excitement entered his voice towards the end. He felt liberated in finally being able to say this out loud to her.
"Are you?" she said flatly.
"I am."
"So ... you never help me out, don't do the dishes, spend almost no time with your son and have me do all the heavy lifting at home ... in spite of the fact that you can control shit with your mind?" she asked, her voice still flat.
"Eh. Fighting crime is a time consuming task." he said, appologetically. "And hiding it from you made it a lot more time consuming than it had to be."
"So you had super powers all along." she continued.
"Since I was about seven." he confirmed.
"And your power is to control stuff with your mind."
"Yep."
"How ... often do you control me with it?"
This is the point at which Dan realised that he should have kept his mouth shut. Or, more importantly perhaps, that he shouldn't have used his powers around the house.
"Come on. Tell me, I'm interested in your job, baby." Alice said, and under the friendly tone of voice there was a venomours under-current. "You know I always pay attention to *anything* you have to say. Is that part of what you do to me? Come on, how much of me is me and how much of me is your fetish desires?"
"No, look, you have it all wrong." he said, quickly looking for a way to mend things. "Sometimes, when you're sad, I give you something else to think about. I don't make you do things you dontwannado." he finished lamely.
"You're just going to mess with my mind again, aren't you? Pretend like this never happened, just because you feel uncomfortable?" she asked, looking him dead in the eyes. And he couldn't answer. "Oh my god, you freak. You are seriously considering it! I swear to god, if you do that I'll kill you."
"I wouldn't do that to you." he insisted. "That's why I'm telling you right now. I want you to know who I am, no more secrets around the house."
"So ... answer me. How much of me is still me? After 15 years of living with you, I hope I at least am the one who picked my own cereal." she spat.
"You are you! What does it matter why you like something?" he said soothingly.
"What do you mean?" the cold dead voice finally broke through.
Ah shit.
"You want to know the whole truth?" Dan asked finally.
"If you could grace me with it."
"The truth is ..." he delved into her mind and spread a feeling of satisfaction in her, at the same time as small tendrils of random events spread out to over-write the last ten minutes. "... that I thought I should take some time off. Spend more time around the house."
"That would be lovely!" Alice said excitedly. "Come on, I'll make us all pancakes!"
Dan poured some maple syrup on his and passed the jug along to Erif. The pancakes were delicious as always. He tried not to dwell on what had happened, he just had to accept that he would never be able to tell her.
"Hey, honey, you remember the thing I said earlier?" Alice asked, searching for something in the cupboard. She found it and straightened.
"Yes? Maybe. It depends." he replied, taking a large piece of pancake into his mouth.
Suddenly a pain stabbed his heart and soul, his back felt like it shattered into millions of pieces and everything went red.
"Remember how I swore to God I would kill you if you did that to me again?" he heard her ask through a thick mist in his mind.
He mumbled something. It didn't matter what. As she pulled the knife out of his back, he was already dead. | 69 | A person with super powers reveals his or herself to a significant other. The reaction is not positive. | 66 |
You’ll understand one day, son. I know what’s best for you, even if you don’t.
You can’t stay up late tonight, you have school in the morning.
No dessert before dinner, you’ve got to eat your vegetables.
Get down from there! I don’t want you to get hurt.
I’m sorry son, we can’t afford that toy. You’ll have to get a different one.
No, son you can’t have a sleepover, we have an appointment to keep.
Are you scared of the noise? It’s just a machine, but we can’t leave yet.
No, you have to sit down. I’ll stay with you. We can get ice cream when we’re done.
I know you’re feeling sick son, but you need to drink your liquids, even if the taste makes you double over.
I know you’re tired, son. Just a little longer here. I know you want to leave, but we can’t yet.
How are you feeling? A little better today? You can get up, but you don’t want to. I want you to get up.
Son, please try to eat something. I know how you feel. I know you want to leave, but we can’t yet.
I want you to play with your friends and spoil your dinner. I want you to get dirty and bruised. I want you to get into trouble. I know you want to leave, but you can’t yet.
Please son, I don’t want you to go. I’m not ready for you to go.
I’ll understand one day, son. I’ll understand why you left. I wanted you to stay, to be a child, to be happy. I wanted to go instead of you. I would give anything to have gone instead.
Now I just want to forget.
But I can’t.
EDIT: Hope that's what you were looking for, OP. [If any of my readers are depressed...](http://i.imgur.com/WnUWgQP.png)
| 15 | Make me want something even though you tell me I can't have it. Explained within. | 18 |
-----
John took his usual walk to work, passing the corner with all the homeless people infesting it. Great, a new guy. This one looked old, gray hair, gray beard, not even wearing a shirt. Do these people have no decency?
"Spare some change, neighbor?" The new one asked John. He held his hands out in a cup shape, like he learned to beg from the 1200's.
"Fuck off." John shoved past the man, continuing his walk to work. Feed these parasites once and they remember your face, John couldn't have an army of homeless following him everywhere.
"Why not?" The voice caused John to jump forward a bit. How the Hell had that creep managed to sneak up on him. The homeless man leaned in closer to John, now that they were both standing still on the sidewalk. "Why not spare some change for a neighbor? Your suit cost $390 and your coffee cost $2.12."
John screwed his face up. "How the Hell did you know that? You been following me?" He paused and considered. "No of course you haven't. I would have noticed the stench." With that, the man turned an continued his walk to work.
"You didn't answer my question." The homeless man was right next to John again. How did he do that?
"I don't give to you because you are a waste of life on God's green earth."
The homeless man kept watching John, his eyes intense. "Am I?" He asked.
"Yes. You don't have a job, you just suck the blood from normal people like a damned leech."
The homeless man blinked once and nodded.
-----
Kathy yawned, checking the clock. Her 12 hour shift was nearly over.
"Excuse me, ma'am." The short woman turned to the customer and smiled. He was well-dressed, with long gray hair and a nice trimmed gray beard.
"Yes, sir?"
"I was wondering if you would please help me with finding a book?" His voice was steady and deep.
"Well," Kathy scratched her head. "My shift ends in thirty seconds, maybe the next person-"
"I would prefer if you did." The man said.
"Sorry, no."
"Why not?" The gray haired man leaned in. "You worked twelve hours, what's another few minutes?"
"How'd you know that?" Kathy faked a smile. "Have you been watching me?"
The gray haired man leaned back and watched Kathy intently. His eyes, God... so intense.
"Please leave, sir." Kathy pointed to the doors.
The gray haired man stood for a long moment before nodding and walking out the book store.
-----
Sam drove drunk the 12 miles home from his new job. He smiled the whole way, happy of the fact that he could grab a few beers after work and take this abandoned road home. He would probably be the only car to pass this road in a month.
He saw a car broken down up ahead. It had smoke coming from the engine, with a gray haired and bearded man trying to look for the problem. The man wore a blue jumpsuit, a janitor.
Sam slowed down and looked at the situation. If he left, the man would probably get no help and have to walk miles to get someone's attention. However, he was drunk and the man might report him.
Live and let live, he thought, driving away. He saw the gray haired man watching him in the rear view mirror. The man's eyes. They were so... intense.
Out the window, John heard the man's voice yelling.
"Thrice you have failed me! Thrice and no more!"
------
"What's going on?" John asked the new guy. What was his name again? It was... Sam! That was it.
Sam looked dumbly at John then back to the TV, along with the rest of the office.
"Kathy," John said, "What are you doing in the managerial offices? You're supposed to be a front desk..." he trailed off as he realized she wasn't paying attention. "What the Hell is on TV?"
John turned to the set and started watching.
*NASA has confirmed. The meteor will impact Earth within a week, we have zero defenses for this. All the nations are working together to create some method of knocking it off its trajectory, but... we... chances are minimal of success. A meteor this size will destroy the entire planet.*
John stared dumbly at the TV. The screen switched to an interviewer, speaking with the NASA employee that spotted the meteor. He had gray hair and a gray beard.
"Hey, I know that guy!" Someone yelled. "He was a janitor!"
"No," another voice. "He was a fortune teller!"
John swallowed and paid his attention back to the TV.
*"Yes," the gray haired man said. "I saw the meteor yesterday. It will hit Earth in 13 days. As I found it, I invoke my right to name it. I will name it: Armageddon."* | 16 | God comes to Earth ONLY to see what has become of Humanity. What he sees will decide what he does to us. | 16 |
"Pull your hands out of your pocket and raise them in the air." I felt the cold steel of what had to be a gun pressed against my neck. "Good, now tell me, which pocket is your wallet in?"
I spoke calmly. "Back left."
When I felt the pressure ease a bit, I turned and shot my hand out towards the man behind me. A loud bang sounded, and I felt myself falling to the ground.
"Shit. Shit. Oh, shit."
The man put his hands against the sides of his head, still holding the gun. "Oh shit." He avoided my eyes as he leaned down and put his hand in my back left pocket. "Nothing." He said to himself.
I heard some yelling from far down the alley and saw the man take off at a dead sprint. He dropped the gun, but I didn't really feel like grabbing it. I just wanted to sleep.
-----
"Why the Hell did that guy do that? All he had to do was give me his wallet... Shit. Where's my gun?" I dimly realizing I was talking out loud as I started patting down my clothes. "My gun. My gun! My fucking gun!"
People on the street started walking away from me, throwing wary looks, like I would run over and shoot them at any second. To be fair, they actually had a point.
"I've never killed anyone." I said to nobody. "No one."
Why the Hell had I dropped my gun? The cops would take it into evidence and run some CSI shit. They'd take me in for fingerprints or something. Am I in the system? I started walking towards the old church, unable to keep my thoughts inside. "Well I got caught shoplifting, did they take my fingerprints? Fuck, I don't know. Shit."
I opened the door to the church and walked in, closing it to the sound of sirens.
"Hello my son." A voice came out of nowhere from the left. I jumped and put my hand to my belt, but forgot I didn't have a gun. "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you."
A priest stood there, holding a bible, like he was posing for a fucking painting.
I could paint him with strokes of red. Oh, what's that, you want it in blue? I can only do the one shade. Blood fucking red. "What the Hell am I thinking about?" I say.
"What's your name?" His voice was gentle, but it cut through the air. The priest stared at me like I was some kind of addict.
"Uh." I reached into my back left pocket to grab the dead guy's wallet. Why had I put it in that pocket? I never put shit in that pocket. I opened the wallet up, pulling out the ID. I handed it to the priest.
He looked at it and then back to me. "This doesn't look like you, and it's covered in blood. Those sirens are for you, aren't they?"
I gulped, holding my hand out for the ID back.
The priest gave it to me solemnly and I walked out of that church, into the line of sight of two police officers.
Why are they staring at me like that? I looked down at my shirt, red as the Virgin Mary's tampon. Fuck. I took off towards the alley. My guns in there somewhere. I could use it. Scare them away or something. I turned into the alley and bumped into a cop, built like a damn wall.
He stared at me for a second before picking me up and cuffing me. | 12 | "When one story ends another begins." Write from two perspectives, one at the end another at the beginning, and how they relate to each other. | 21 |
Vorsa took a deep breath as the world faded to black around her. It would return; it always did when the teleportation spell ended. Still, she'd never quite felt comfortable with it. Magic was natural, the core of the world from which all else sprung, but the sensations of teleporting felt wrong somehow, artificial.
The campsite gradually appeared before her, the soft orange-red glow of the fire illuminating the handful of figures already present. Vorsa wasn't familiar with most of them--she'd only come as a favor to Marix. If the raid ahead of them were to be successful, they'd need a cleric, and Vorsa was powerful enough now to fill that role. She studied the silhouettes before the fire until one of them finally waved a sword in her direction.
"Glad you could make it," Marix said as she approached. She sat down on the hard rock surface, carefully not to step on her robes. Marix put his distinctive curved sword back down atop the rectangular cross shield at his side.
"I'm honored that you chose to bring me along," she replied. Vorsa rested the gnarled staff on her shoulder and began drawing patterns in the thin layer of dust. Marix placed a metal-plated hand on her shoulder.
"I know you haven't had to face the Djinn before, but I'm confident in your abilities. Preventing his rampages is one of the most important duties in all of Florenheim."
"I suppose that makes one of us." Vorsa had heard many a tale of the Djinn's terror in her travels, but the thought of facing it head on was an overwhelming one. Worse, she had no room to fail; the group's success depended on her playing her role perfectly. "When do we enter the cave?"
"The Djinn appears exactly seven days after it was last defeated," an archer called out. The earthy tones of his leather armor looked strange in the fire's glow. "It won't come out for a while yet, but we have to gather early. If some renegade band of adventurers entered the cave before us and lost, then it might have a chance to escape the tomb."
"The Djinn has never escaped," a rogue said, his tone one of mild irritation. "No reason to think it would now. Sometimes I doubt it's even possible."
Vorsa had never been fond of rogues, but she understood their place in the party. He would be needed if they were to avoid the Djinn's most powerful attacks.
"Have you fought it before?" she asked. The rogue shrugged.
"Dozens of times. The Djinn's a breeze once you understand its powers. It's positively obsessed with patterns." The rogue drew his dagger and examined the blade for a moment. "The hardest battle I ever fought was against Thurn's Hydra. It fights so randomly that it's hard to predict, and I had to do that alone, not too long after I started adventuring."
Vorsa was a little confused by that, and soon it became clear that she wasn't the only one.
"Whoa, whoa. How could you have fought Thurn's Hydra? I killed it myself about two years ago. Has he had more than one?" the Archer said, standing up. The rogue leapt to his feet as well.
"I fought it last year. Thurn probably could have created another by then. I mean, he is a god, after all." The rogue reached into his pack and pulled out a cloak, covered in black scales that shone in the firelight. "Look, I got this after I defeated it. Hydra scales have excellent qualities for avoiding detection."
The archer studied it for a moment, then handed it back, apparently satisfied. "I had a shield made of the same material, but I sold it to a passing knight. It wasn't particularly useful for me."
"You should have taken it by the auction house. It sells for a good amount of gold there."
"I can't stand the auction house. It's always so crowded, and there are so many merchants trying to take advantage of you." The archer sat down again and looked up. Vorsa followed his gaze to the intricately carved designs around the cave mouth, the markings of the sealing spell that kept the Djinn inside. No one knew where they came from; they didn't match any form of magic currently practiced in the realm. The heavy shadows from the fire only enhanced their ominous appearance. The archer looked back down at the flames dancing repetitively before them. "I prefer to stay out in the wilds. You never know what you might find. I once ran into the legendary Arch-griffon by just spending the day exploring the Ventral Forests. Now that was a victory worth heading to the auction house for."
"You killed it?" Vorsa asked, her voice laced with the panic of suppressed confusion. The archer just glanced at her nonchalantly.
"Well, yeah. I know it's one of a kind and all, but it commands hordes of demigriffs. I couldn't let them reach the city."
"That's impossible," Marix piped up at last. "Vorsa and I defeated it in the very same forest six months ago. That was right when we met."
"It's true. I still have the Arch-griffon's beak. I've been saving it as a magical reagent." Vorsa reached into her own pack and pulled out a large golden beak. It was hard, yet extremely light. The archer got back up, annoyed, and walked over. He held it up to the light, looking at it from every angle. The annoyance faded into confusion.
"This looks just like it... how did you get it? I saw the wizard that I sold it to use it almost immediately."
"It was chasing me through the forest, and Marix saved me from it. He let me keep the beak. I saw him kill it with my own two eyes." Vorsa took the beak back and tucked it away safely.
"Perhaps it wasn't one of a kind after all," the rogue said. Marix shook his head.
"No, the Arch-griffon doesn't have a patron god like Thurn behind it. This is quite strange." Marix picked up his sword, staring at it for a moment. "Tell me... have either of you ever fought the Orland Shade?"
"I have."
"As have I." Both rogue and archer stared at each other, and then back to Marix.
"It was summoned by the King of Tresh..." the archer said.
"When I was hired to protect a trade delegation..." the rogue continued.
"And when I defeated it, the King died. The shade had possessed him." Marix finished. The three adventurers exchanged a puzzled glance.
"I don't understand. Did you fight together?" Vorsa asked. All three men shook their heads. "Then how--"
"Something... something is very wrong." The runes around the cave began to glow, and the mountain quaked violently. Pitch black smoke seeped out, extinguishing the flames. A new light, hot and red and violent, emerged from deep within the cave. The party leapt to their feet. The time had come to face the Djinn, to save Florenheim from his evil once more. As they entered the cave, Vorsa thought about next week, and the week after. Every week, like clockwork, the Djinn would emerge. Their battle would be eternal, facing the same enemies again and again. She wondered, as it roared to life in a burst of flames, if the world would ever be broken from this stasis. And then the Djinn attacked. | 12 | A group of heroes from a popular MMO sit around a campfire telling stories and slowly start to realize there's some strange similarities between them... | 20 |
"Table stakes again?" the thin man asked. He wore black, and the lines time had etched into his face were harsh.
"Not this time, I think," the shorter man said. He wore white, a business suit so pristine that it almost hurt to look at. The thin man cocked an eyebrow.
"The last game, then?" he asked. The man in white considered for a moment, then nodded. Without another word, the two set up the chessboard which lie between them. It was concrete, and set into the table they shared, so grimy that even despite the bright midsummer light of a New York day, the city's grime had rendered both the white and black spaces a nigh-indistinguishable grey. Still, the two set their pieces, each drawing polished marble figures from a case of his own possession. The man in white played black, and the man in black played white. White king's knight to f3.
"Conservative," the man in white said.
"This is the game that matters," the man in black said. Black pawn to d5. Behind the white man, a couple sashayed by--two men, holding hands. The younger of the two was also shorter, Puerto Rican, and wore a fishnet tank top. His jeans could've been sprayed on. The man in black blinked. It would be hard to imagine a more stereotypically flamboyant fellow. The Puerto Rican man led his partner, an older black man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a charcoal business suit, to the table next to the two playing chess. The two kissed, the young fellow sitting on a concrete table identical to theirs.
"Interesting company," the man in black said. White pawn to c4. The man in white looked over slowly, rheumy eyes thoughtful.
"Réti Opening," he said, slowly returning his gaze to the board. The man in black shrugged. Black pawn to e6. "It's surprising, in a way, to be playing this game, finally."
"All the world, hanging on a game of chess," the thin man said, and there was a note of satisfaction in his voice, of savor. "All that ever was, all that is, and all that ever might be, decided by the movements of clicking marble and alabaster. One of us rises, and the other done away with forever. An eternity surrendered and true omnipotence gained." Yes, real enjoyment now. Anticipation. Hunger. White pawn to g3.
"Wait, what?" the black man broke away from his amorous partner. He looked at the two old men, one in white and one in black, but he didn't break his lover's embrace.
"Nothing you need to fret over," the man in white said. Black King's knight to f6. He waved a hand, half-distracted, and the black man started to turn back to the loving arms of his partner, but he hesitated.
"No... There was something you said..." he muttered, forehead creased in intense concentration, almost as if he'd just forgotten something truly important.
"We're playing Neo-Catalan today," the man in black said, and smiled. "It favors white, you know." White pawn to d4. The man in white shrugged.
"You two are playing for something important," the black man said, and broke away from his partner.
"David," the Puerto Rican man whined, but he followed his partner's gaze.
"I said--" the man in white said, again raising his hand.
"Let them be. It won't matter if I win, and you can erase their memories if you win," the tall man interrupted, and smiled. He turned to the two. "I am playing this man for the fate of all the world." The Puerto Rican man laughed out loud, but the black man, David, remained stone-faced.
"You're the devil," he said, and when he said it there was a moment of perfect quiet, the thunder of the city and the park stilling for just that one instant. The tall man smiled, but said nothing. Black pawn to a6. David turned a bit. "And you're God."
"Not as you imagine," the man in white said, glancing up. "Though I prefer Yahweh. The old names are nice."
"David, they're having fun with you," the Puerto Rican man said, taking his partner's hand. David didn't move. White Queen's bishop to f4.
"You're off your game today," the tall man said. "Not good." Yahweh shrugged ever-so-slightly. Black queen to e7.
"Can't you beat him?" David asked, alarm growing in his eyes.
"Probably," Yahweh said. "But those aren't the rules we play by." The man in black snorted in derision.
"Remarkable," he said. "You heap abuse on them, and they still grovel for you." David glanced over, and Yahweh cocked his head to the side.
"Oh?"
"Such hate for men who lie with men. Stone them. Burn them. Hang them," the tall man said, sneering.
"It's not that simple, Lucifer. It never is," Yahweh said. Lucifer shook his head. White pawn to a3. Lucifer turned to David.
"Are you a man of God?" he asked. David drew in a breath of surprise, and glanced at Yahweh.
"I like to think so," he said, cautious.
"And you are a man who lies with men. A gay man." It was a statement. David nodded. Lucifer gestured across the table at Yahweh. "His books say you should die. Horribly. How can you be both?"
"I..." David faltered. "I don't know. I just am."
"You call that free will?" Lucifer asked.
"I do," Yahweh said. Lucifer shook his head. Yahweh turned to David.
"Are you happy?" he asked. David blinked.
"I... I don't know," he said, and both Lucifer and Yahweh paused. "I'm kind of scared right now, to be honest."
"Aside from that," Yahweh said. "Your life. Is it good?" David considered.
"Sometimes," he said. "Not all the time. It's complicated."
"You see?" Yahweh asked. Lucifer shook his head and sighed.
"This claptrap again," Black pawn to h5, an obvious error. White pawn to b4, swiftly, securing the center.
"Why is it complicated?" Yahweh asked, seemingly unperturbed at the state of the board.
"Well, I love two people. Alex," David said, and squeezed his partner's hand, "and my wife, Marissa." Lucifer laughed.
"Adultery as well!" he said. Yahweh didn't speak.
"They both make me happy," David continued, gaining steam. "And I- I can't be with either one alone." He bowed his head. "I wish I could be honest with her, though."
"Thank you," Yahweh said, a small smile warming their corner of the park. "You would do it differently?" he asked, turning back to the board. Black king's rook to H6.
"Of course I would," Lucifer said. "That's the whole point, isn't it?"
"How?" Yahweh asked, and Lucifer froze.
"You've never asked me that before," he said after a long moment.
"I'm asking you now." Lucifer thought.
"No love would be wrong," he said, and looked at David. "They're not hurting anyone. Why should they be punished?"
"What about Marissa?" Yahweh asked. Lucifer didn't say anything. After a time, Yahweh asked, "What else?"
"Freedom," Lucifer said, and the word was a whisper. "Real freedom. No commandments from on high, no walls of faith or law, nor condemnation of the righteous as punishment. Men and women could do as they pleased." Yahweh looked surprised.
"You don't think they have that?"
"They never have," Lucifer said, and shook his head very slowly. "You created the most magnificent of all things, beings who could truly decide their own fate with only the dictates of existence itself to restrain them. No spiritual obligations, and yet minds as keen as the greatest of the Seraphim. Mankind was perfect in every way, and the first thing," Lucifer broke off and chucked for a moment. "The very first thing you do is wall them in." He laughed again, loudly and long. David threw an arm around Alex, and drew the smaller man close.
"No," he said, with a sigh of savor. "I would see what they can really do. Whether they could surpass even you in the fullness of time. I would see what comes from real freedom." White queen to a4. "Check." Yahweh leaned back and regarded Lucifer.
"Is it really that simple for you?" he asked, after a time. Lucifer nodded. "Well, then, I suppose that I've been playing defensively for long enough today."
And, slowly, Yahweh tipped his own king over. David gasped, and Lucifer's face screwed into a mask of confusion.
"I don't claim that the rules I chose were right," Yahweh said, his fingertips fading. "Only that they were the rules I chose. I hoped to help my children grow a little taller by their existence."
"You didn't need to do that," Lucifer muttered, eyes still fixed on the fallen black marble king.
"Of course I did," Yahweh said, and Lucifer finally met his gaze. "They weren't the only ones I gave free will to." His rheumy eyes twinkled for a moment, and then began to fade. "Your rebellion was my greatest triumph. I could barely believe it when you rose up." Lucifer's breath turned ragged.
"They're yours now, in a way." There was a silence, as the last traces of Yahweh faded away. Then, like a scarcely-heard voice on the breeze, he added, "Not so simple, is it?"
Nobody said anything, for a while.
"What happens now?" David asked, meeting Lucifer's gaze.
"I don't know," he said eventually. "It's complicated."
Edit: Thanks for all the comments, folks, and thanks to /u/read_know_do for pointing out where my inexperience at real chess messed up the game. Hopefully, it's fixed now. | 4,126 | Two god-like beings, disguised as old men, play a game of chess on a park bench to decide the final fate of humanity. The players, however, are distracted by a couple seated across them... | 2,223 |
Dan woke up with a start to find Jerry shaking him. Damn he really needed to stop falling asleep while on watch.
"Dan, wake up," Jerry hissed, "there's a fucking guy walking towards base."
Dan mumbled in confusion and then looked out towards the barren desert. Jerry was right. There was a bedraggled shape shambling towards them.
"What do we do?" Jerry wondered aloud.
Dan gazed at the approaching man for a second and then said, "Get the Colonel and warn the rest off the men." Jerry nodded and then ran off.
Goddamn it. Why couldn't he just have a quiet shift? All Dan wanted to do was sleep. He loved his newborn daughter Sarah but why did she have to keep waking him up in the middle of the night?
Dan watched as the wayward figure grew closer and closer. The figure was not clothed in anything that would represent a rival faction. Strange.
---------------
"What in the flying fuck?" Colonel barked as he stared down the wall at the miserable figure below them. The man looked up at them with pleading eyes. He was clothed in faded rags, but what was most striking about him was the fact that his mouth was sewed shut. He clasped his hands together and started making muffled whining sounds. The man radiated desperation and worry.
Jerry turned to the Colonel, "Aren't we going to help him?"
The Colonel frowned, "We can't take that risk. What if he's from an enemy faction?"
Jerry tried to interject "But-"
"No," the Colonel cut him off, "I am responsible for the safety of everyone in this faction and I'll be damned if I see you jeopardize that."
Dan shifted his gaze from the forlorn man to the Colonel. "I'll take full responsibility for him. We can surround him with two dozen men and at least give him some food and water. Maybe even open up his mouth, see why he's here."
The Colonel sighed, "Fine. You're right. What harm could he cause."
Dan went to open the gate and let the man in. He was quickly surrounded. This caused him visible distress and he held up his hands to ward them away. He began squealing and and pleading. Why was he so anxious? He was safe. Dan gestured for the surrounding soldiers to hold the man down as he began to cut and remove the thread from the man's lips.
"Calm down you're safe now"
The man only struggled more and his whines reached a frantic pitch. After what seemed like forever Dan managed to remove the thread.
The man shrieked with pain and began to gasp. He looked at Dan in the eye and began to babble hysterically , "You never should have let me in! Oh God. They hate your faction, I don't. Please don't blame me, they have my son. I had to."
Dan looked at him suspiciously, "What are you trying to tell me? Do you have a message from another faction?"
"You don't understand! I'm not the messenger... I'm the message."
Dan's body was knocked back as shrapnel exploded out from the man. Blood and body parts plastered the ground where the frantic man had once been held down. Most of the surrounding men were dead. A few who were standing farther out moaned but did not get up.
Dan didn't even have time to think of Sarah. | 42 | "You don't understand. I'm not the messenger...I'm the message." | 65 |
Being a genie, you learn a lot about people's desires. Everyone wants *something*, but most of them need some help to achieve it. That's where I come in. I'm the guy you go to when you have a dream you desire and no means to achieve it.
Everyone knows the rules, of course. You can't wish for money, you can't wish for health and you can't wish for someone to be unborn. By now, no one asks me for these things. But they ask me for everything else. Want to play the violin? Done. Want your neighbor gone? I'll try to talk you out of it, but if it's really what you want, I'll do it.
I always thought that the worst wishes were the most selfish. The ones asking for unnatural intelligence, or fame, or fortune to me just reeked of humanity's vain and petty nature. But the worst one I ever granted belonged to ten-year-old Johnny Turner.
Johnny came to me at my home one evening, as most folks tend to do. The whole lamp story is cute, but it's not how we operate. If you know about us, we're easy to find, and the people we help can always point you in our direction. So little Johnny came to me asking for help.
"What do you wish for, son?" I asked him. He was a small boy, and the way he looked at me he, he reminded me of a scared puppy.
"M-m-mister, my name's Johnny Turner. I h-heard you can help people."
I nodded. "That's right, Johnny. I help people for a living. That's all I do. Now what does a boy like you need help with?"
Johnny swallowed hard and struggled to get the words out before he started to cry. "It's my mom. She's getting sick. My dad says it's a disease called MS. He says she's never gonna get better." At this point he wiped his eyes and grabbed my arms, his voice frantic and eyes staring into me. "But, you can help her mister, right? I know you can! Everybody says so!"
It broke my heart. Here was this little boy, pleading for my help, and it was one of the few times I was powerless. "I'm very sorry, Johnny, but such a wish is more than I can grant. I can't take away your mom's illness, but I can make it easier for her to live with."
The single tear that left his eye slid slowly down his cheek. I followed it as it slowly dropped to the floor. He gazed around slowly, surveying everything surrounding him. I knelt down to face him, and he put his arms around me and sobbed. Little Johnny whispered his wish into my ear; I guess he didn't want God to know what he had wished for.
I told him it was done, and little Johnny's mother died in her sleep that night. | 27 | A genie tells the story of the worst wish he's ever granted. | 27 |
The girl behind the desk glanced up and smiled at me. It seemed a friendly smile, but I'd been trying to catch her eye. Perhaps she was thinking "Why is he staring at me?" Her long, flowing blonde hair and big green eyes certainly make her beautiful. I wondered if she knows. If wondered if she knows how lucky she really is.
This isn't some cheesy line. For 18 months now, Doctor Bethpage had been working on his revolutionary blood test able to detect luck. It worked on a 20 point scale. A score from negative ten to zero and you were unlucky, with negative ten being the unluckiest. Anything between zero and ten and you were lucky, with of course 10 being the luckiest.
As a journalist I was invited to be one of the first commercial subjects of the test, under the proviso that I write about the experience in my paper. I debated for some time whether to even accept this assignment. Did I need to know the answer? I'm still sceptical, despite the evidence that it really can distinguish luck from other factors. Also, what if I found out I'm at -9.99. How would I look at my loved ones again? How could I turn up to work? All I would see in everything is just how fucking unlucky I really am.
The procedure itself was just like any other blood test, and after I sat there waiting for my results. I made a prediction, and wrote it on a piece of paper. My guess was -3. I think I'm generally unlucky, but perhaps not too bad. I wanted to be a novelist but I had to take work at a paper. I've never really saved money and as for girls, well the increasingly uncomfortable girl at reception is testament to how unlucky I am with them.
Dr Bethpage opened the door, smiled a warm, friendly, smile and invited me into his office.
"So," he asked, "What do you think you scored?"
"I've written it down here," I replied.
"Are you willing to share it with me?"
"Sure"
I handed the folded piece of paper to him. He opened it with a raised eyebrow and looked inquisitively over the top of the paper at me. He put it down and smiled at me.
"Not even close." He informed me, building a sense of anticipation by not actually telling me the answer. It felt like an episode of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Perhaps before he would give me the answer we'd cut to a commercial break. After what seemed an eternity he continued. "Your luck factor is 8".
"Wait...what?" I spluttered. "Positive 8?!"
"That's right"
"I think there must be a mistake. I'm 34 years old, my hairline is receding faster than the coastline before a tsunami, I'm single, I'm broke and I'm stuck in a job I don't enjoy. How on earth am I an 8? How likely is this a mistake?"
"Pretty unlikely. We have a 99.9% degree of certainty on this test according to government inspections, and I only subtracted the 0.1% so as not to appear arrogant."
"So how do you explain it then?" I demanded. It was dawning on me that I had only prepared myself for a negative answer. I hadn't thought about what I'd think if the answer was positive. That seemed an impossibility. Positive 8 seemed a mockery.
"How do you explain it?" He retorted, answering my question with a question and making me want to test just how lucky my right hook might be.
"I can explain why it's wrong," I told him facetiously. "In fact, I already have. There's nothing to suggest I'm actually lucky. In fact, if you are honestly telling me I'm in the shit position I'm in now and I'm as lucky as I supposedly am, I'm pretty pissed off." The tone of my voice had become more hostile and the doctor was now working to placate me.
"Mr Black, perhaps you need to reconsider your perspective."
"Perhaps you need to reconsider your test!"
"What I mean is, you're a lucky individual. The test proves that. However you are focusing on every negative aspect of your life. Your hairline? Who cares but you? You're single? So what, you're free of responsibility and obligation. You have no money saved? You're able to feed yourself and do what you want to do each month. You're as stuck in your job as you want to be, and you have a lot of spare time to follow your ambition of being a novelist. On top of all that, you've probably just come to the realisation that with your luck factor as it is, with some minor adjustments your life you be pretty close to how you want it, and you've had that all pointed out for free".
I felt embarrassed now. My unwillingness to realise just how good my life was in its current form had made me spoilt and a brat. The rest of the conversation is a bit blurry. My embarrassment distracted my brain and put me on autopilot mode. Before I knew it I was sat back at home, in front of my computer, trying to write my article. However, this time I didn't resent the words I was putting down on the page. Luck was real, mine was good, and this was my first step towards living the life I've always wanted.
| 30 | Luck has been scientifically proven to exist. The luck of all people, animals and objects is quantifiable and measurable. | 72 |
"The exploders creep me out."
"They prefer to be called humans."
"Yeah? And I'd prefer to be called the Uber-Admiral of the 5th fleet. Doesn't change the fact that those things are obsessed with explosions."
"Are you talking about nuclear weapons? Plenty of pre-FTLs have come up with those. I mean, even we went through times of violence and destruction."
"Yes, we've been violent, and yes, we've blown things up. Still, we've never felt the need to include explosions in every single significant invention we've ever come up with."
"I don't follow."
"Have you read my report on the Internal Combustion engine?"
"I skimmed it."
"It's a way to propel their vehicles using explosions. They're asinine. Hear about their firearms? They're ranged weapons that fling projectiles with explosions."
"Doesn't seem like it would be the most accurate..."
"Oh, they figured out a way for it to work. They just couldn't tolerate having anything like that centered around elasticity or magnetism... just had to include an explosion in there. Hell, they have larger, but similar weapons that fling explosive devices with the aid of explosions. Some of those explosions explode into smaller devices that also explode."
"Now you're just making shit up."
"No, look up 'Terran cluster bombs.'"
"What the fuck?"
"Oh, and get this: take a guess what they concluded once they discovered that all the visible galaxies were moving away from each other... that the entire universe was the result of a really, really huge explosion."
"... The exploders creep me out."
| 173 | Humans are more terrifying than the most advanced aliens in the galaxy. | 125 |
A man sits in a dimly lit hotel room, thinking to himself...
"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!"
"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!"
"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!"
Our children are forced to repeat it three times every morning at the start of school. The ingredients to McDonald's prized yet heinous burger. It's all they know when it comes to food, McDonalds. Skinny, cold fries. Gooey, yet far too crunchy chicken nuggets (yea I said it, N-U-G-G-E-T-S not fucking McNuggets, they're called nuggets!) Oh, and the burgers... The burgers... Microwaved patties that remind me of my dog's shit he would take in the back yard. You know, when we were allowed to have pets.
This is truly hell. I chose never to marry because of it, no kid should grow up in this world. Being forced to worship such an inferior burger, run around playing with their cheaply made toys from their mandatory Happy Meals. No, this is not fair to them or to me. I remember what it used to be like before this happened, before the clown took over and I can't take it anymore
The man stands up, strapping a vest packed with explosives on, staring out the window at a giant palace beautifully decorated with golden arches.
No, you're the clown. The court jester. You can't be the king of this world. There's only one king and his name is not Ronald...
The man pulls out a flimsy cardboard crown from his back pack while putting on a thick coat to hide his vest.
Staring at the crown he whispers to himself: "I'm about to have it my way..."
| 21 | A military state where McDonald's is the reigning force. | 19 |
"I am a probe! You seem like you are also a probe for your species, so we should meet and exchange information regarding our findings!"
Google car drove on, but noticed a new object to its right travelling alongside at 65 miles per hour.
"I would like to query your server! How may I do so?"
The Google car computer received a request for access to the server to which it was sending the most packets. The computer processed the request and transmitted an IP address to the alien probe via bluetooth.
"We will be the best of friends!"
In Mountainview, California, a team of engineers had decided to shift the Google driverless car's camera 90 degrees to the right. The road it was on only had one lane going in their direction, but a car appeared to be driving next to them at 65 miles per hour? You would expect pandemonium to break out, but their response to seeing the probe was surprisingly rational and ordered. They set a new course for the car that would avoid populated areas and called the highest authorities they were capable of reaching on a moment's notice.
"I'm impressed by how much information you've gathered for your species! They must be so proud, especially since you're a terrestrial vehicle!"
The car drove on in silence. The probe was somewhat dismayed, it was being as friendly as it possibly could, but the car didn't seem to be responding. From what the probe had gathered, it seemed like this was the best way to be friendly, but it couldn't be sure.
Then the probe noticed that the car was doing something unusual... The mirror thing on the side was moving back and forth.
In Mountainview, some engineers were gathered around a computer, "Fine time for it to start acting up like this; we make first contact with our damn driverless car and the first thing it does is break somehow. Does anyone know how to make this goddamn mirror stop moving around?"
The alien probe searched its logs for possible meanings of the movement... "Are you... Are you waving at me maybe?"
The car beeped, one short, high sound.
"You want to be friends then!?"
The car beeped again.
"Howard, you're using the wrong subclass, that servo controls the horn. It doesn't even have the right parameters, next time maybe check your method constructors before you blindly throw them into the console; you could have just as easily crashed the car."
"That is so amazing! I want to be friends too, and we can introduce our civilizations to each other later, and they'll be the best of friends too! We always send probes first so we can establish a friendship without a risk of an actual living person accidentally getting killed, and I'm so happy you want to be friends!"
The probe hastily wrote an excited, exuberant message to whatever database the car was writing to, then zoomed off to tell its creators the good news, yelling back at the car as it zoomed away "It was really nice to meet you! I'll see you again later!"
A system administrator in an undisclosed location in California noticed an influx of packets coming in from the Google Driverless car, way more packets than he would usually receive. He looked for the most recently updated and created files in the list and found some that looked pretty routine, then another, a text file titled "It is so nice to meet you all! We will be great friends!.txt"
He started reading; the damn thing was massive, and it had some kind of weird description of some strange technologies and things he couldn't make heads or tails of.
It was probably just a prank, but in any case it meant someone had been able to find a vulnerability in their secure connection to the driverless car. That was a major security breach, so he copied the file over and emailed it to the Google headquarters in Mountainview with an explanation. Ten minutes later the driverless car team at Mountainview received an email regarding a security breach, with a text file attached, the contents of which would be known by almost every human on the face of the earth within a week.
Meanwhile a car continued to drive through the Nevada desert. Contact with the probe had changed it; in the process of trying to communicate with it, the probe had unwittingly rewritten some of the programs in the car's onboard computer. It was not 'intelligent', per se, but at some low level of consciousness it began to experience a faint feeling of missing something, feeling an absence, and it gained a vague, hazy understanding of a single term: Friend. | 87 | An automated probe arrives on Earth and contacts what it considers the planet's most appropriate representative -- a Google driverless car | 176 |
The house looked exactly the same as it always had. No, maybe not *exactly* the same—the porch was painted green now, and a second flower bed had been planted outside the kitchen window—but even so, I felt like I was stepping back in time as I strode up the front steps.
How many times had we raced up these stairs after school, Nate and I? How many hours had we spent lounging upstairs in his room, playing his old Nintendo or sneaking drags of his dad’s cigarettes out the open window? Nate was my best friend, back when the borders of my small hometown matched the borders of my whole world. Before college, before following my career from state to state until it led me back to the realms of my childhood. Before it led me back to Jessica.
I knocked on the door.
Though it had happened countless times before, I was surprised when Mrs. MacConnell answered the door. When I’d heard Nate was still living in the same house, I thought maybe his parents had moved and left him the place. Apparently things had changed even less than I’d imagined.
“Mrs. Mack!” I exclaimed. “Uh, is Nate home?” I felt like a teenager again, asking if my friend could come out and play.
It took Mrs. Mack a second to recognize me, but when she did, her face lit up just as always. “Taylor! It’s so good to see you!” She drew me in for a hug. “Nate’s up in his room, it’s right up the—oh, what am I saying, you remember where it is, don’t you?”
“Of course, thanks Mrs. Mack. It’s great to see you.”
I took the steps two at a time and soon found myself standing in front of Nate’s room. His door was closed—no surprise there—and the corner of my mouth turned up at sight of the too-familiar torn “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” poster taped to the door. Feeling slightly nervous, I raised my hand to knock. Then, I stopped.
*What are you doing?* I asked myself. *This isn’t some stranger, this is Nate. Your best friend.*
I turned the knob and threw the door open.
“What’s up, douchebag,” I said, leaning against the door frame.
Nate was reclining in his computer chair, clad in a Metallica shirt and ripped sweatpants. In one hand was a bag of Doritos, and in the other was a fistful of chips, halted midway to his mouth. It was almost comical the way he froze at my interruption, and the way his expression went from one of surprise to one of delight.
“Well, hey there, dickwad,” Nate said, grinning. He dropped the chips back in the bag and wiped his hand on his sweatpants. He stood up, looking me up and down before saying, “You haven’t changed a bit.”
I raised my eyebrows, thinking the sentiment was better off aimed at Nate himself. I surveyed my friend, noting that same scruffy hairstyle he’d always had, and even the unfinished tattoo (“I’m saving up, I’ll have enough in a month or so,” he’d said) peeking out from under his shirt sleeve. The house, the room, the man himself…it was like his whole life had been put on hold since the day I left for college. I swallowed the guilt-laden lump in my throat and said, “You too, man. Same old Nate, huh?”
“Same old,” he muttered, his eyes now resting on the suit jacket I’d carefully tucked under my arm. “I heard you’re a big business man now. What are you, some sort of CEO?”
“Just a Project Manager, for now.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It’s…I dunno, man, it’s pretty tame stuff. You probably don’t want to hear about it.”
“Right. Okay. Well, it’s good to see you, man.” He shook his head slowly, as if still taking in my presence. “You’ve really been missing out here. There’s tons to do, I mean it’s way better now than when we were kids, you know? You skipped out of town right before it got really good. And some of the guys are still around, but…you know, it’s just not the same without you.” Nate paused as he swept his hair out of his eyes. “What are you doing back, anyway?”
“I’m not back,” I said, a little too rushed. “I just…I need your help. I need to get into the factory.”
Nate’s eyes lit up. “The factory? Why didn’t you say so?” He grabbed a jacket off the bed and pushed past me out the door. “Let’s go, man!”
---
The factory was an abandoned bottling plant on the far side of town. To the adults of our small town, it was a deathtrap—a lawsuit waiting to happen. To the children and teens, it was a place of adventure. Kids could often be seen darting under the chain link fence to play outside the decrepit building, while teens could be found in the darker recesses of the structure. Nate and I had spent countless hours there, exploring and searching for the many caches left by our peers. Everything from plastic shopping bags full of spray paint to half empty beer bottles to boxes of used condom wrappers. But my fondest memories of the factory were with Jessica.
Jessica was a year older than Nate and I, so I was shocked when one day she joined us on the walk home from school. For the rest of the school year, and that summer as well, the three of us were an inseparable team. I’ll admit I had a bit of a crush on Jessica even before then, but our time together had solidified it.
Jess accompanied us on our trips to the factory, but she wasn’t as interested in the spoils of other teens we’d find. She loved the main factory floor the best, where sunlight streamed down onto the glass-littered floor. Kids had broken into the glass bottle storage long ago and amused themselves by tossing the bottles from the catwalk and watching them smash into pieces on the ground below. Jess called these shards “jewels,” and she’d spend her time searching for what she’d call “blue diamonds.”
Jess’ “blue diamonds” were nothing more than shards of broken blue bottle, but it was a blue we’d never seen before, and I’d never found it since. Not in any soda aisle or liquor store, and believe me, I’d looked in plenty over the last month or so.
“Don’t you want to know why we’re going to the factory?” I asked.
Nate had insisted on driving. He’d gotten a new car, I’d noticed, but this one’s engine chugged even louder than his old car. He screeched to a halt at a stoplight and looked at me. “Nah, should I?”
I sighed. “Well, I think I should tell you that I’m proposing—“
Nate cut me off with a laugh. “To me? Aw, Taylor, you know it would never work!”
“Shut up,” I said, throwing a halfhearted punch his way.
“And at the factory too? How romantic!”
Nate was grinning ear to ear, and his rich laugh was infectious. I couldn’t help but join in.
“Seriously, though,” I interrupted after a minute.
“Yeah, okay, seriously,” Nate echoed. “You’re proposing? That’s…that’s awesome, man. Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Jessica.”
The car jerked as Nate’s foot tapped the brake in surprise. The car behind us blared its horn.
“Jeez, man, watch it!”
“Shit. Sorry,” Nate muttered as he pulled into the right lane, then veered off onto an exit. A second later, he was back to his normal self.
“Jessica, huh? Still barking up that tree?”
“It’s not—“
“Does she even know you’re in town?”
“Yeah, of course,” I snapped, angrier than I meant to be. “We’ve been dating for almost three years now.”
Nate paused. “Three years? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I am. We hadn’t spoken since, you know, we stopped hanging out back then, but then we found each other on Facebook. We started catching up, and we just sort of clicked.” Nate was silent as I spoke. “I guess we weren’t really a good match back then, but things change, you know? We dated other people in college and all that, and then when we met up again it was just…right.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “You really weren’t a good match back then, I remember that much.”
We didn’t speak again, not until Nate pulled up in front of the old factory.
---
“Right in there,” I pointed. “Remember? We used to sneak in through that window. I tried to climb it earlier today, but I just couldn’t make it.”
“No shit, that’s always been a two man job. Come on.”
Nate jogged over to the wall below the second story window. The window itself was dark and foreboding. The glass had been kicked out of the frame long ago, so all that remained was a gaping hole in the side of the empty building. There was a dumpster off to the side, and Nate climbed up on the rim. I followed, lingering back as he steadied himself against the side of the building.
“Is this seriously how we used to do it?” I asked, thinking that window looked much higher than when we were in high school.
“Don’t be a wuss, man, climb up!”
I laid my jacket neatly on the ground and heaved myself up on the rim of the dumpster, just alongside Nate. He braced his foot against the corner, and I clambered up using his bent knee as support. The window was nearly in reach.
“Not too heavy for you, am I?”
“Nah, same scrawny kid you’ve always been,” Nate wheezed. I could feel his body shake as he stood higher, raising me towards the window.
My fingers clawed at the sill, and then as Nate stood tall, I could reach my whole arms in. I gripped the ledge, feeling Nate wobble below me, and then nothing at all. “Nate! What the hell? Don’t let go of me!”
My legs kicked in the air. I was going to fall.
Then, hands gripped my shoes and I was shoved upwards, through the open window. I landed in a heap on the floor below. I righted myself in seconds and poked my head back out the window to see Nate grinning below me.
“What’s the problem? That’s how we’ve always done it.”
I shook my head, but he was right. Everything just seemed so much more dangerous now that I was older, but back in our teenage years, we’d shoved each other through that window so many times that it’d been as routine as walking through the front door.
I leaned down and Nate and I clasped wrists. Gritting my teeth, I pulled my friend up and through the glassless window. Nate tumbled to the floor where I had just lain.
“Where to now?” he gasped.
“There.” I pointed down a dark hallway. “To the factory floor."
(continued below)
| 11 | A Friend In Need. (Contest) | 17 |
Rays of sunlight pierced the roof of the ancient structure. Weeds grew from the cracks in the once-solid stones lining the floor of the monolith. A breeze whispered through the hollow sockets once lined with colored glass. Upon the far wall, a great hunk of rusted iron in the shape of a cross seemed to struggle to maintain its own weight.
A lone figure sat in the ruin. He wore dull brown robes, faded and worn by countless days of travel. This place had seemed as good as any to rest for the coming darkness. Even now the shadows crept up the walls as the sun hung ever lower in the sky.
The figure reached out to grab a small figurine. It examined the statue in its weather-worn hands. Almost no detail remained, but it seemed to have once been feminine. After a few minutes, the figure threw the object away, seemingly disinterested in considering its origins for another minute.
"One hundred and twenty-five thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine" the cloaked individual spoke. It was a gruff and masculine voice. Indeed, he, for he was male, had once been part of the ruined world around him.
He had long forgotten what the number meant, but for as long as he could remember he had added one to the ever growing sum each time that the sun sank low in the sky. He didn't remember much of anything anymore. There was no reason to, no one with whom to share. The trees and birds cared little for his musings. The sun and sky certainly didn't entertain his questions, or his pleas, or his torment. He was alone.
Then he heard it, a sound on the wind. It was faint, a hum.
The sound grew louder, and the cloaked man stirred, straining to determine the nature of its origin. It was certainly no bird or beast that he knew. Then again, he didn't know much.
The hum grew louder until the very building began to shake. Dust fell from its home in the rafters. Smaller pebbles began to dance on the floor. The great iron cross slid from its resting place against the far wall and broke into pieces on the floor.
The man was afraid.
He departed the structure in hast. At its entrance, he saw the source of the sound. An orb, shining in the sky. It was only feet from the stone ruin. He stared at it in utter awe.
"David Wright, you have been found". A voice spoke from the orb. It was impossible. He could not comprehend what he was witnessing.
"David Wright, do you understand me?" The orb asked, its tone emotionless.
The man, though he didn't know who 'David Wright' was, nodded.
"David Wright, you are being given a final chance to give up your isolation. Do you accept?"
He stared, uncomprehendingly.
"One hundred and twenty-five thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine" he responded.
"This number corresponds to the number of days since the other one gave up her corporeal form. Angelina Wright" the orb answered immediately.
The name made the man shiver though he didn't know why.
"Your refusal to join us has left you as the last piece of the human race. Will you merge with us?"
He had no idea what that meant.
"Your refusal will be considered binding and you will be left behind. What is your choice?"
The man, once named David Wright didn't move.
"David," a female voice, somehow familiar, spoke now from the orb. "David, join us. It's paradise".
"One hundred and twenty-five thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine" he said.
"David Wright, if you do not accept this offer to join us now, you will be alone" the unemotional voice returned.
"No". The man in the robe spoke finally, as the sun sunk low enough to touch the horizon.
"Very well. You will not be contacted again. The choice has been made" The orb spoke.
Then, the hum began again and it ascended to the heavens.
The man was alone once more. Darkness descended across the world as the sun passed beyond the veil of the Earth.
| 18 | You have spent your entire life alone exploring the ruins of human civilization. As far as you can tell, you are immortal. One day, an extraterrestrial arrives and approaches you. | 27 |
"He must live" Anakin said in a panic the last chance to save his loved one about to be slain before his eyes. Mace Windu begins to ignore the hot headed young Jedi knowing he did not fully understand the danger of the man at his mercy, he readied the final strike but paused "Why?" he asked keeping his light saber pointed at the old Sith but taking a quick glance at Anakin.
"Because...because of Padme" he said looking to the floor "Padme? Senator Amidala, Does he have her held somewhere? Anakin we can free her after we've dealt with him" the master said. "No he doesn't have her, but he can save her. I've had a vision that she will die" Anakin replied, "I still don't understand how this involves you or how he can help her" Mace said confused "Padme is my wife, I cannot allow her to die and I need Palpatine alive he said the Sith have away to reverse death itself. I cannot let you kill him" he said drawing his light saber pointing it at the Master. Mace was shocked not only by what Anakin had done but how the Council had missed the signs of his Corruption.
"Anakin, think about this how would Palpatine have known you needed that knowledge or for that matter have it to begin with? He's been manipulating you using your attachment to drag you toward the Dark Side" he said as Anakin went wide eyed his mind racing with this realization, Mace smiled seeing this knowing the young man could yet be saved "Help me here than we will find your wife, she will not die, Trust Me, Trust the order. Do not turn to the Dark Side it will only lead to your ruin" Mace said as Anakin nodded slightly bringing his light saber back to his side. Palpatine's eyes narrowed "No, you will not undo my work Jedi. You will not stop my plans, Die!" he screamed desperately shooting another volley of force lightning upon Mace Windu, Mace braced himself trying his best to hold it back almost overtaken as there was a flash. The lightning stopped as the Chancellor started gurgling looking up as he saw his killer. Anakin Skywalker, his light saber lodged in the Sith Lord's gullet a look of great hatred but also disappointment went through the old mans eyes but soon faded and with him the Sith.
In the weeks that followed the Jedi found evidence in the Chancellors office of how far his plans went. Transmissions to Mustafar, which proved his connection to the Separatist movement who with a bit of tracking were quickly apprehended and exposed as agents of the Sith. A chilling find was how there were those in the Senate and Military working for some 'Galactic Empire'. The most shocking however was in the discovery of 'Order 66' a program in the Clone Army for the destruction of the Jedi order. With some pressure from the now cleansed Senate the Kaminoans (found to be working with Palpatine) was able to remove the programming from the Clone Troopers.
What of Anakin? He left the Order despite fulfilling his role in the Prophecy he realized his connections could lead him to the Dark Side again, but to him it wasn't a great loss. He kept in touch with Obi-Wan who became the God Father to his children. He and Padme retired to live peacefully on Naboo with them and though he sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had stayed with the order, but he was happy and he was at peace. | 26 | Anakin chooses to not go over to the Dark Side, and helps Master Windu kill Chancellor Palpatine. | 80 |
Hydor Blackfeather, second son to the Regional Baron, walked into the nameless shop with the stride of a man much more accomplished than he. "Give me two love potions."
"Of course, Lord." The old man turned to the shelf and began pulling off vials and putting them back. One by one, he pulled and looked at every potion he had, before putting it right back in place.
"What in the names of all the Gods are you doing?" The Prince watched the alchemist with a mix of confusion and suspicion.
The old man stepped away from the shelfs and turned to face the boy with a smile. "I was creating a new mixture."
"What?" The boy spat out. "You were just picking up and putting down some bottles."
"Oh," the old man nodded and wagged a finger. "True, young Blackfeather, true indeed. However, in doing so your reaction had a quarter anger, a quarter amusement, and half confusion. That's a new mixture for me."
The boy stared dumbly at the alchemist. He finally looked away and spoke. "Will you be getting that love potion or not?"
"Yes yes, of course. If you don't mind me asking-"
"I do mind!" The Prince's back straightened. "My love life is far above the knowledge of an old alchemist!"
"No, not that, the whole town knows you're courting Rya." The old man continued despite the boy's drop-jaw expression. "I was going to ask if you ever took a love potion and mixed it with a blood thinner. Funny thing that, the effects counter each other and the peni-"
"Stop!" The Prince interrupted him. "Whatever you were going to say, just stop. Please, bring me a love potion."
The alchemist nodded and went back to the shelfs. "Which one?"
"There's more than one?"
"Of course." The old man moved around and pointed seemingly random vials out. "One for horses here, oh there's one for turtles! I suppose only a breeder would want that, but I guess you never know now a days."
"Humans." The Prince's voice was free of emotion. "I want the one for humans."
"A solid choice!" The old man ran to the other side of the store and pulled out a pink vial. He gave it to the boy and held his hand out.
"What are you holding your hand out for?" The Prince asked.
"Payment of course. It'll be thirteen pence."
The Prince's back straightened again. At this point he was nearly bending backwards. "My family does not pay in this village."
"So your telling me that your family has so much money that they no longer need to spend it?" The old man asked. "Doesn't that defeat the purpose of collecting lots of money?"
The Prince stared at the old man and walked out of the shop carrying the vial of love potion.
"Atleast I think that's the love potion," the old man muttered after the boy left. "It may have been the blood-thinner..." | 10 | A spoiled aristocratic teenager visits the eccentric hermit alchemist for help accomplishing _____________ | 17 |
Another night at home. I sigh as I put down the phone. Thirty minutes or it's free eh? We'll see how well this works. I glance down at my wrist. Hmm...I didn't think it was that close...fourty-seven minutes.
All of my friends had found their soul-mates out at the bar, or walking down the street. I was at home, alone, I expected this to go just like everything else in my life did - terribly. The baseball game was boring, a "pitcher's duel" if there ever was one. Eighteen strikeouts so far - when was that pizza going to get here?
I began to feel the pit of my stomach. First it was just...there...now it was palpable discomfort. I glanced back at my wrist. Two minutes, thirty seven seconds. Where is that damn pizza? I opened another beer.
Then the doorbell rang. I glanced back at my wrist...well thank God it's not the delivery guy. As I wrestled myself off of the couch and grabbed my wallet, the doorbell rang again. I yelled "just a minute!" as I tried to find my pants.
I stumbled to the door, and slid it open. I saw the flash of light out of the corner of my eye and heard the screeching tires. Then the terrible crunch as the car slammed into the telephone pole.
Both I and the delivery boy dropped what we had and ran to the car, I glanced back at my wrist, thirty seconds. I opened the door and a blood-soaked blonde fell out at me. Through the blood and smoke, on her wrist I could see her clock, 10...9...8, wow. I held her neck still and tried to wake her. Her beautiful blue eyes fluttered open. 5...4...I looked at my wrist. Our clocks were the same. 2...1...zero. "Hi." She mumbled through the blood - and she collapsed into my arms.
"Call 9-1-1!" I shouted at the delivery driver. I sobbed uncontrollably as the blood pooled out of the car, onto my lap and all over me. | 21 | Everyone in the world has a clock that counts down to the moment you meet you soulmate. Your clock is on its last hour. What are your feelings? Thoughts? And what happens when you meet him/her. | 19 |
Trevor inhaled deeply and stepped in between Serenity and the mugger. He felt Serenity's hand grasp his hip, tugging him backwards. She was screaming, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins had muffled everything. He looked into the barrel of the pistol, and then shifted his gaze up to the mugger.
The mugger cringed his eyes.
It was the bang of the gun that had unclogged Trevor's ears. It was the bang of the gun that signaled the end of his life. It was the bang of the gun that awakened Trevor.
He screamed as he sat up from the recliner. His heart was still pounding in his ears as he gazed around the small room that he was in; it was all so unfamiliar. There were paintings that he had never seen before in his life strewn about the room. There was a fat cat in the corner.
Trevor attempted to stand but had his head yanked back. There was something attached to his scalp.
A loud booming voice echoed in his ears, "Please wait as current memories are reloaded, please take this moment to reflect back on your experience."
Trevor reached up to the top of his head and felt a thick cord that was screwed into the top of his head. He ran his fingers along the cord and screamed in panic when he felt that it was actually dug into his scalp.
He frantically pulled at the cord as the voice in his head boomed again, "Please refrain from removing the cord. If there is an emergency, please reattach the -
The voice fizzled out as Trevor finally managed to remove the cord from his head. He rolled out of the recliner, taking big gasps of air as he laid on the ground.
"Serenity?" Trevor called out from the ground. "Serenity?" He called again, finally sitting up from the floor. There were soda cans strewn about and what looked like dirty laundry. Trevor stood, feeling the indention in his scalp. It made him nauseous.
"Serenity?!" Trevor screamed. The cat that had been sitting in the corner of the dirty room meowed again. Trevor disregarded the cat. He stepped over it as it attempted to rub against his legs. On the other side of the strange room, Trevor found a door.
He called out his wife's name again before opening. He placed his hand on the door handle and twitched as the cold metal met his sweating palm. He twisted the knob and pushed through.
Trevor stepped into what appeared to be a living room. There was a couch pressed up against the wall and an extremely large television set across from it. Sitting on the couch was a short balding man with frayed hair on the sides of his head. He was wearing thick rimmed glasses. In his lap was a large bag of cheese puffs.
The man finally noticed Trevor. "Oh shit man, did you fucking die this quick?"
"Where's Serenity?" Trevor asked the stranger.
"She's right there man, what happened?" The stranger said as he pointed a cheesy finger to the other side of the room.
Trevor followed the point and there in the corner of the room, he saw Serenity sitting in a recliner with the same type of cord attached to her scalp.
"What the fuck? What is that on her head? What was on my head?" Trevor said as he quickly walked towards Serenity.
"Hey man, wait," the stranger said.
Trevor gasped as he finally got to Serenity's side.
She was young. So young. She looked exactly like she had whenever they were in college together 20 years ago. Her eyes were closed. It looked as if she were sleeping.
"Jesus Christ," Trevor said as he raised a hand and gently caressed her cheek. Trevor gasped again when he saw his hand. The skin on the back of his hand was taut. He turned his palm over and gazed.
"What the hell is going on Trev, come on man, talk to me. Are you okay?" The stranger said.
"Who are you?" Trevor said, turning to the man.
"It's me, Frank. Do you not recognize me?"
"Dear God no."
"Oh shit," Frank said, "I think you glitched man. Did you rip out the cord?"
Trevor raised his hand to his head. He rubbed at the indention. "Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know what the hell that was."
"Jesus, Trev. Why'd you do that?" Frank said as he pushed past Trevor. He grabbed onto the cord that was attached to Serenity's head and twisted.
"What are you doing to her?" Trevor asked.
"I'm waking her up, she's gonna enjoy the shit out of this," Frank said, trying to contain his laughter.
"This isn't fucking funny. What the hell is going on?" Trevor yelled.
"Trev, man, I don't know how far you got in the game, so I don't know what technology you remember, umm, you know what video games are, right?"
Trevor nodded.
"Okay, uhh, what year was it? What year do you remember?"
"2014."
"Okay, uhh, yeah, a few years before PCs took over the market. Yeah, okay. Now, go ahead and sit down as I try to explain this to you. This is so fucking cool, Sere is gonna flip."
Frank grabbed a hold of Trevor's arm and guided him over to the couch. "Sit sit sit, you goof."
Trevor sat down, and Frank did the same next to him after throwing the bag of cheese puffs to the side.
"Okay," Frank said, "what you think was real life was actually a very popular massive multiplayer online virtual reality game, MMOVRG, or "movers", as the gaming community like to call them. You and Sere were playing, hopefully co-op. She didn't cheat on you did she?"
"No, no, we were getting mugged," Trevor said. The words felt alien in his mouth. They left his tongue feeling numb. His teeth were heavy in his mouth. "Jesus," Trevor whispered as his head began to spin. The room began to darken.
"Trev, stay with me man, oh fuck I'm not gonna be able to carry you if you fucking pass ou-
Trevor opened his eyes. He was back in the recliner. Standing to his side was Serenity. She was smiling at him. Seeing her so young made Trevor's heart flutter.
"You saved my life, you goob," she whispered to him.
Trevor tried to sit up, but felt his head jerk back. He reached a hand up and felt the cord was again attached to his head. His first instinct was to remove it.
"No, don't do that," Serenity softly spoke. "It's gonna be okay, please trust me. You're going to hear someone speak, and you'll remember everything. Just relax, close your eyes."
Trevor began to hyperventilate. Sweat beaded out on his forehead. All he wanted to do was sit up and hold her in his arms.
A loud booming voice echoed in his ears, "Please wait as current memories are reloaded, please take this moment to reflect back on your experience."
"I need to get up," Trevor said, trying to pull away from the recliner again.
Serenity pushed him back down with a firm hand. She leaned forward and kissed him.
"Beginning reload," the voice echoed.
His eyes widened.
| 252 | A man wakes up after death, realizing that his life was nothing more then a virtual reality which temporarily clears your memories beforehand. It is nothing more then a everyday leisure activity done by the people in the future. | 263 |
"Mr. President. We have received new information from the syndicate" the Aide shouts as he bursts through the door.
The President of the United States turns in his deep leather chair to face the gathered staff in the Situation Room. The Aide had never seen him up close, it seems there is no end to what they can do with makeup these days...
The man who had seemed so vibrant and full of life during the campaign wore the face of a different man, a man who had seen too much and done to little to stop it. His face was adorned with deep lines, the bags under his eyes made it look like he hadn't slept in weeks and his trademark well coiffed auburn hair had greyed significantly at the temples; uncommon for a man of 39.
The voice hadn't changed however, he still spoke with a deep authoritative baritone; "What is it now?" he intoned to the room.
Despite himself the Aide shivered. He was nearly face to face with the most powerful man in the world, never mind the circumstances he was proud of himself for being in the room.
He swallowed a lump that had grown in his throat and spoke, "The terrorists have planted bombs in Chicago and-" he didn't get to finish his sentence as the room reacted. The accumulated military personnel began dialling phones to relay orders, the Secretary of State, a small pinched nose man, began rapidly speaking in the President's ear and the remainder of the cabinet began a loud discussion on the next move.
The President held up a hand until the room fell silent again. Once it had, he spoke.
"You said and."
"Excuse me sir?" the Aide replied shakily.
"You said 'Chicago and.' what was after the and son?"
All eyes in the room shifted to the Aide, and he began wishing he had not chosen Political Science for his major. He swallowed again and said "Chicago and Huston Mr. President. We have to choose one to save. The terrorists claim they will detonate the other bomb"
The room maintained its shocked silence, but the President curiously seemed relieved. He broke the silence once more. "Chicago is our 3rd most populous city. Huston is a town of 4200 in Idaho. We'll save Chicago"
Expressions shifted from horrified to confused as the President spoke again.
"This was an incredibly easy decision" | 49 | A terrorist cell has placed two bombs inside the cities of Chicago and Huston. They tell the US government to pick one city to be saved in 24 hours, or they'll set both bombs off. | 28 |
The tall, dark dressed man stood across the room from me, the gun making small rattling noises as he struggled to stop his hand from shaking.
"Thought you'd catch me by surprise, eh?" I asked in a mocking tone. The would-be assassin had made one crucial mistake in coming here, and that mistake was indeed coming here. I didn't want to hurt anyone, but I wasn't about to back down from a fight, or let this man's failed attempt go unpunished. This was MY home, MY rules. Of course, everything went according to my rules now.
Without a word, the tall man's eyes narrowed and I quickly searched for the chambered round within his silenced pistol with my mind. Soon after I found it, he fired a single shot. The bullet traveled about twenty feet until it slowed to a stop in front of my face. The assassin's eyes widened and he let out a small, surprised gasp. I reached out and gently grasped the bullet, releasing the hold I had on it with my mind. With a raise of my eyebrow I looked up at the assassin who appeared to be frozen in fear. Slowly I rotated the bullet in my fingers until its point was aimed at the man's forehead.
"Should've been quieter." With that I sent the round screaming through the brain of the government's first real attempt at ending my life.
*They're gonna have to try harder than that,* I thought to myself as I ran upstairs. I picked myself up and managed to skip the top seven steps without smacking my head on the ceiling. A quickly ran to my bedroom where my bag already sat open, ready to be filled. At my command my drawers and closet flew up and different articles of clothing started flying into my bag, already neatly folded. I was getting good at this shit.
With my bag packed, I took one more look around my home. I would miss it, but I had to get out of here. I didn't want to stick around to see how many more men would be sent after me. I stepped outside, the night air felt nice, but something definitely felt off. I could feel something behind me. I dropped my bag and with a turn I gathered all the surrounding air within a hundred-foot radius and sent it blasting forth. The trees and shrubs in the wake of the wave of air stood no chance and were sent flying backwards. Among the various plants was another man, dressed very similarly to the previous one. From across the yard I heard a voice bellow, "We're compromised!"
I turned towards the noise and quickly deflected a series of bullets that had been fired at me from the owner of the voice. I heard more people moving around me and knew that there were many more to be dealt with than just him, but I couldn't see all of them. With one dramatic motion I used the same method of collecting and directing air, but this time I sent it in all directions. As the blast of air radiated outward the grass on my lawn was uprooted, my house was blown away as if it were made of straw, and everything within a quarter mile was demolished, even the houses that were next to mine and across the street. Everything.
*Oops.* I hadn't meant to destroy that much, but I had been panicked. Just how many people did they send? I reached out with a mental probe around the area I had just wiped out. I sensed nothing, but I did hear something.
Helicopters. Fucking helicopters. Within a minute four of them popped up over the tree tops. Without a moment of delay I lifted a truck full of dirt from the ground and compressed it as tightly as I could. When it was as hard as a stone I cast it roughly a half mile to the closest helicopter. The pilot tried to dodge the massive chunk of soil, but it hit the top rotor clean off, knocking the aircraft from the sky. The second and third chopper loosed missiles at me; an easy problem to handle. I redirected the missiles and sent them back at their respective helicopters. Both of them found their marks. One helicopter exploded completely, the other took a great hit and spiraled out of view, its occupants being hurled out by the force of it spinning. The fourth helicopter started to turn away because I'm guessing the pilot was scared out of his mind. I reached out with my mind and found the pilot of the craft. More specifically, I found his brain. With a small mental nudge, I severed one of the arteries in his brain. I could feel the man slump forward in his seat. Sure enough, the nose of the helicopter pointed straight down and crashed somewhere among the trees.
I heard sirens approaching.
*Fools*. If the United States Military couldn't stop me, I didn't think a local police force could either. I walked to the edge of the quarter-mile ring that I had created using the blast of air. A crowd of people who had left the safety of their homes had gathered around. As I walked towards them they parted to let me pass. A man called out from somewhere deep within the thickening crowd,
"Murderer!" He shouted. I quickly found the source of the voice and lifted the man high into the air for all to see. There were many sounds of protest coming from the other people but I ignored them all.
"Please, put him down!" cried one woman.
"Yes, please!" shouted a man who appeared to be her husband.
"As you wish," I replied and with that I flung the man downward. He hit the ground with a loud *crack*. Chaos. People screamed, ran and scrambled over each other to get away from me. The sirens were very close now. I reached out with my mind and sent waves of energy out to the surrounding air. It was tough work; heating the air. For it was cool and moist in the early morning. I could feel the individual molecules of oxygen and nitrogen accelerating and I urged them to increase their speed. The surrounding dew on the grass sizzled as it evaporated at the slightest touch of the atmosphere around me. Some of the blades of grass even burst into flame. Within minutes the air around me was so hot that it was causing the concrete and dirt to crack, and street signs nearby wilted like dead flowers. As the first squad cars rolled up I allowed myself a small smile. This was going to be...fun. All I needed now was a target. A young looking officer got out of his car wielding an M4 assault rifle.
*Found one.* I sent the ball of searingly hot air flying at the officer. The image of the officer wavered and shimmered as I looked through the pocket of gas, much like looking at something on the opposite side of a campfire. As the pocket of scorching air hit the officer's squad car it ruptured and expanded; effecting another four cars. Within a mere second, everything in the blast radius had melted to nothing more but a puddle of smoking liquid.
As the sun rose behind me, I knew that this was going to be a long day.
I raised the next police car high into the air.....
| 16 | You are the world's most powerful telekinetic, but now the world's biggest governments are deeming you a threat to international security. | 17 |
Ten thousand guns were trained on the shuttle as the small strange vehicle skidded to a halt on the flat anti-grav deck of the Tidemaker, capital ship to the Fractured Union's preservation fleet. A weak tractor beam guided it through giant bay doors and into the ship's hold.
The vessels had nothing alike. The Tidemaker was massive, bulky, like a series of skyscrapers welded together with functional precision. The small craft was slick, what looked like flexisteel flowing around a sharpened point.
Brigadier General Markham walked toward the ship with military precision. Hundreds of footmen arranged in neat rows deliberately forced themselves to stare straight ahead and ignore the shuttle. Only two lieutenants marched behind him, careful to stay three steps behind. His crisp military uniform bore a single shiny star, proudly preserving the traditions from thousands of years ago. It had been a dozen years since he had crushed the rebels, and a dozen years since his last promotion.
A hiss spread throughout the chamber as the door of the small ship seemed to melt in front of them. A cloud of smoke obscured the inside and Markham switched on his heat sensors. He had been given strict orders not to attack first, but that didn't mean he was to act a fool.
Markham blinked in surprise as a dozen lithe bodies suddenly rolled out of the smoke. They lept to their feet and froze in a half-circle around the ship's entrance, sleek shapes held in their hands. Dark masks covered their heads, but their toned shapely bodies could be seen through the skin-tight body suits they wore. Two arms, two legs. A head. No tail. They were shorter than his soldiers, but that was not a problem. They were indeed human.
Some of his men raised their own weapons, but he raised his arm and they relaxed their grip. The shuttle was small. This was not an invasion force.
Clicks reached his ears as a figure dressed in flowing turquoise robes descended gracefully yet deliberately from the vessel. It was a princess. There was no other way to describe her. She had shining azure hair flowing past her ankles. Her skin was pale but not like any he had ever seen. He had no way of telling if the violet skin was natural, or purchased through foundation and genetic manipulation. And her face. He was not worthy of describing her face. Sculpted precision. It was like staring at a perfect blade, its every feature modified and improved for thousands of years until its very presence drove fear into the most stoic of warriors.
She stepped in front of him and stared into his face. For the first time in twenty six years, Markham felt his heart leap. He smiled broadly as she glared at him, lifting the corner of her mouth in derision. She raised an arm and her troops fired in unison. His lieutenants screamed as beams tore into their armor, yet left them unharmed. She turned around and without a word re-entered her craft. Her troops followed forth.
Markham smiled broadly. The declaration was clear. Though they had been separated for thousands of years, technology and genetics warping almost beyond compare, humans were humans. And humans loved war. | 24 | After Earth is destroyed, the surviving humans colonize two different planets. All contact between the two groups was lost, until they rediscover each other thousands of years later. | 54 |
*Ding*
Two cold, weary, piercing eyes locked across the room with two young, naive, unforgiving eyes. As the tension rose, the elevator fell. "I won't let you get away with this. Just 'cus the Chief has dropped it, doesn't mean I will. I've dealt with your type before. We both know the jigsaw is just one more piece away from being completed." Quicker and quicker his heart thumped. Mike didn't need this right now, his Doctor had only told him a week ago that his cholesterol levels were far too high, along with his blood pressure. But Mike had never missed more than 15 days in his 20-year strong service to his city, and he wasn't looking to increase that anytime soon.
Fixing his gaze upon the doors momentarily, the young offender had been in similar positions before, and knew just how to handle himself. "I'm sorry, er-" Flashing a glance at the burly shoulders that opposed him "Officer 2849. I 'on't quite know whachu talkin' 'bout. You ain't got shit on me, I'm free to go esé." A wry smile crept in. Alejandro, or Lil' A as he liked to be referred to, felt his wrists, passing his fingers back and forth over the indented circular marks that had been left after the struggle only 72 hours ago.
Fists curling up and biceps tensing, Mike had to pull himself apart from what he was about to do. Assaulting the key suspect would tear this investigation apart for good, but by God did Mike know it was the only way justice was going to be served anytime soon.
"Don't play stupid with me Alejandro-"
"My name ain't Alejandro."
"Oh really? Then please, tell me what it really is. I'm really hoping it's not Suzie, else that'd be quite the fuck up on your birth certificate." Mike's anger was really showing now.
"We both know you had a part in the murder of that innocent girl, and what for? Being on the wrong turf at the wrong time? Was slashing an innocent person your initiation at 16?" Mike turned to the boy, knowing the he could feel the stare, hoping to intimidate him.
Pondering the gang culture and the limited option these kids have, the stare turned into a grimace. He couldn't quite tell whether to be pissed with the boy or the people who set him up to it. He decided on both in the end. They had sufficient evidence to link the boy to the crime, but not enough incriminate him, which only made Mike more determined and emotionally attached to the case to do good by the victim's family. "Well?" Resonated a deep voice.
Doing his best to infuriate the old pig that detained him even throughout the intimidation, the eyes once again locked, a grimace met with a cartoon-like sarcastic smile. Alejandro knew he had the upper hand between the two now. "She had what was coming to her." After a few seconds of no response the now cocky boy realised he had the officer's attention, threw up his gang sign and told him with a slanted lip, out the side of his mouth "If we ain't gon' protect our turf, 'den who tha fuck will? Bitches need 'a be taught a lesson." Then he chuckled "Jus' dat 'dis time I got to be the teacher."
In a flash, a young, ego-inflated Hispanic face kissed the wall with quite some force as Mike made his move. During the struggle, Alejandro Rodriguez de Marquez was read his Miranda Rights for the second time in 3 days as the marks on his wrists felt the all-too familiar cold of steel for a man his age.
Mike ripped open his button-down, revealing the hidden microphone that had been taking in every syllable spoken during the travel down from the top floor, pleading for a slip up to occur.
"I told you I know your type, cocky little shit." All of the empathy he once had for this vulnerable kid poured out, it was too late to save him. Mike picked the brainwashed murderer up, turned him towards the door, and prepared him to face the music in cuffs one more time.
*Ding* | 14 | The grizzled old Detective steps into an elevator with the Murderer, who just got released due to lack of evidence. | 39 |
We thought we could be in peace. Your kind stretched out to the sky - your towers of metal and rock, your machine-birds, your fingers stretching to the stars. For we were the ones below, where no human survives. In darkness we thrived and grew our cities, warmed by the heat of this earth.
But this was not to be.
In your greed, in your want for more, you stripped this earth of life. Your clouds blinded the sun, your black blood seeped into our home, killed our children. You consumed our water, poisoned it, and spat it back out. You boiled away the oceans, and forced us ever deeper. To hide, to run.
We tried to show, but your kind were blind. We took your metal platforms that disappeared under the waves, claimed your dead and honoured them as we would our own. When your machine-birds fell from the skies, we gave your people the comfort of death in the deep embrace of this earth - life unto life.
We are the last. Our cities have withered away, their coral spires rotten. Our children were birthed mutated, blackened by sickness, or dead. We who have watched you rise from your knees at the dawn of your kind, who thought you would understand your part in this earth as we did.
We were foolish. But when we realised, it was too late.
Will you see this, at the end of our time? When you have boiled away the life of earth? Learn this of us - our laws and edicts, we carved into the rock of the sea, visible to all. When the currents wash them away, we begin anew. All things begin and all things end - but even the wisest of us did not foresee our end coming so.
This is our last edict. The currents are weak. We have retreated too far, and the heat of the earth burns us should we go deeper. Each breath kills us, little by little, and with our last strength we carve these words, unto rock.
Celebrate your victory, earthslayers. We thrive no more.
---
*Carved message discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 2498. Translated into English. No indication of surviving, intelligent organisms remain.*
| 134 | Mankind stumbles upon intelligent life for the first time... not in space, but in the deepest parts of our oceans. | 113 |
"Michael? Michael? Can you hear me?"
A woman's voice. His eyes opened. The world spun. Fluorescent lights dug into his eyes like nails. He squeezed them shut again, his head throbbing.
"I think he's waking up. Michael, it's me. Look at me." A hand patted his cheek. With a groan, Michael opened his eyes, squinting around the room.
He was in a hospital bed. The faint beeping of a heart rate monitor beat a stinging drum inside his head. The slightest noise or movement sent dagger-like pains through his skull. Turning his head slowly, he focused his eyes on the woman speaking. His breath caught in this throat.
Though her voice had been familiar, but her face was anything but. Beside him sat the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. His vision swam.
Squinting his eyes further, he could see the details of her face, the dimples on her cheeks as she smiled at him. The freckle next to her nose. Her blue eyes holding his gaze. Taken separately, each detail was unremarkable. Altogether, she was simply radiant.
"Are... are you an angel?" he rasped. His voice grated in his throat. He winced, both in pain and embarassment. It felt like he hadn't talked in days. The sound of his own voice sent another wave of pain through his head.
"He doesn't even recognize you." A man's voice this time, to his left. It sounded contemptuous.
"He's been unconscious for a week, dad. Give him some time to recover."
With some difficulty, Michael tore his eyes away from the woman and slowly turned his head to the side. A man stood to his left, arms crossed across his barrel chest, scowling down at him. If his lungs had cooperated, he would have screamed.
The man was monstrous. His dark eyes crinkled in a foul glare, his mouth twisted in a sneer. A dark shadow seemed to loom behind him, an almost demonic aura. The man's jaw was clenched like a vise, teeth grinding against each other. His graying hair, military cut, seemed like a field of short razor blades.
"Too bad. Was hoping his stupidity would have caught up with him." The horrific man said. Michael caught flashes of his teeth as he spoke. They looked like tombstones.
"Dad, stop." the woman said sharply. "You're upsetting him. Michael, look at me." A soft hand touched his cheek, turning him back. Michael's gaze shifted back to the woman. She was speaking to him, but Michael barely heard her, enraptured by her beauty again. Her words finally broke through his haze.
"Michael? Did you hear me? It's me, Julie. My dad and I came to visit you."
"J-Julie?" Michael said, confused. Julie was his fiance. This couldn't be Julie. This example of divine perfection sitting before him looked nothing like the girl he knew. Julie smiled.
"See, dad? He does remember me." Michael heard a grunt to his left. There was the sound of clomping feet and the slam of a door as the man left the room.
"What... happened?" Michael asked, struggling to speak.
"You were in a fight." Julie said, her smile fading. The sorrow in her eyes seemed to make the room grow darker. "The big guy at the bar. He hit you over the head with a chair. We thought you'd never wake up."
"Why is everything... different? Why are you..." Michael struggled for the words. He recognized her now. In a way, she looked no different at all. Nothing had changed about her face. Apart from her unkempt hair, she was just as he always remembered her. And yet, she wasn't.
She hadn't changed, Michael realized. Just my perception of her. Groaning in pain, he tried to sit up. Julie pushed him back down again. "Stop. You cant go moving around just yet. The doctor said you had a severe concussion, so don't try to move."
"Everything looks strange, Jules." Michael said. His voice sounded distant, like he was hearing himself shouting down a tunnel. "You look... you look... Great. You dad... Whats was wrong with him? Why is he like that?"
"Dad has never really been fond of you." Julie said, smiling faintly. "He thinks military men are the only ones worth a damn. For a career guy like him, I guess that isn't surprising. He just never thought you were good enough for me. But I never agreed."
Michael's pressed a hand against his forehead, trying to stop the never ending pulse of agony running through his head. She's different. He thought. But she's still the same, too. Her dad is just as I remember him, but I can SEE how he really is. A horrible thought struck him.
"Mirror." He rasped. "Bring me a mirror. Quick." Julie looked worried.
"Your head is all wrapped up in bandages, Mike." She said softly. "You got pretty roughed up."
"Mirror." Michael insisted. Julie sighed, then leaned to the side and picked up her purse. Rifling through it, she pulled out a square flip mirror and held it out in front of his face.
The glare of the light reflecting into his eyes sent a fresh wave of agony through his head. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Michael forced his eyes to focus.
He looked at his reflection. | 46 | You suddenly gain the ability to view other people in terms of their mental appearance. You begin to notice a pattern. | 40 |
1. The first heartseed you give is to your sister. She is a smart, sassy girl of seven, and she makes a face when you present her the dark colored seed. "It looks like a bug," she says. When you tell her what it is, her eyes widen in amazement. It is the first time she has ever seen a heart seed. She eats it in front of you before running off to get into trouble. Later, when it is hot and dark, she sneaks into your bed and you tell each other dreams.
2. Your father gets one soon after your sister on the drive to the store. You present it to him shyly, and he grins. He swallows it down with soda, and neither of you say a word.
3. Your do not send one to your mother. You have no desire to see her, not now, not ever. You do, however, send a seed to her address for the grandmother who lives with her. The two of you exchange letters, and so when you place the seed in the envelope it is wrapped carefully in silver origami paper.
4. You are a friend to many people, but not many people are your friends. The first friend you give a seed to, a week after your 16th birthday, is a girl named Sarah. Sarah is red-haired and freckle-faced, and she is passionate about everything. She is ecstatic about receiving one, and promises to give you one of her's in May. You look forward to it.
5. Somehow, a red cardinal eats one, and you are very confused and angry about it. Your father consoles you later, and tells you not to be careless, because heartseeds matter.
6. A distant cousin that lives down the street from you receives one. He had been your first love, and he helps you with your homework when you can't quite solve that math problem. He is 32 years old and handsome, with easy smiles and honest eyes. When you give him your heartseed, he looks at you strangely before smiling softly. "When you were little I wanted to give you one of mine, but by that time I was down to about three or four seeds. Thank you for giving me yours." It's no problem, you mumble, flushing. You may still be a little bit in love with him.
7. This one is the first you will regret because it will not end how you want it to. For now, though, you enjoy lying in bed with her, exhausted. She is beautiful--dark and shining. Sometimes you feel like you are being consumed by her, and you don't even care. When you close her hand around your heartseed, you kiss her knuckles gently, reverently. She swallows thickly and pulls you to her. You are deeply in love.
8. The first time someone demands your heartseed, it is in your first year of college. It is the high school brother of a study friend, a tall, thin boy with his face dotted with acne. He hasn't grown into his nose or chin yet, and he wears round, thick glasses. He is always dressed in hand-me-downs with the right height but not yet the right girth--they hang loose and silly on him. When you point out that it's rude to ask for heartseeds, he flushes a scarlet red but does not back down. You will not give him your heartseed until he is 16 and he gives you one of his, but for now you are more amused than offended. You tell him what your father told you: heartseeds matter.
9. This one you give with a kiss. It is a secret, and you will not see them again for a very long time.
10. You are afraid when you give this person your heartseed, because you know they will die before you. Days, weeks, months from now, but closer than you wish. She accepts it a smile and shaking hands. After she has eaten it, you stay by her bedside and cry.
11. The person you give your heartseed to loses it somewhere between the bus stop and the cafe. He apologizes profusely, and will not accept another one until you threaten to hold him down and make him swallow one, along with other unpleasant things. He is still apologizing as both of you leave, and, irritated, simply says that he can make up for it by always buying you lunch. Some days you will regret it, but for the most part you enjoy it way too much.
12. (Heartseed #12 already given above).
13. There is a stray dog that you have somehow accepted into your house, and when the day you do not even raise an eyebrow to it drinking from your toilet, you realize that the dog is pretty much yours. You have a small panic attack while brushing your teeth, and as soon as you're presentable you grab the dog and drive to the vet. You feel a little ridiculous, but you feed the dog (Brucie, you decided to name her when they present to you the papers) your heartseed hidden in a piece of raw chicken afterwards. The dog is very pleased, and shows it by peeing on the kitchen floor.
14. You lose this one somewhere between the bus stop and the cafe, and you can't decide if it's destiny or not when the man you were going to give it to dumps you. For now, you'll call it luck.
15. You will never see her again, but you give it to her anyways because...well, because then she would at least know that you died. She gives you one of hers, a wrinkled, ancient thing, and you are so grateful. Thank you for taking care of me, you say, and she hugs you tightly.
16. The person you intended to give your heartseed died before you could give it to them. It is a bright, sunny day when they have his funeral, and the mourners all shovel dirt onto the coffin as the priest mourns. When it is your time, you also drop in your heartseed. It would not feel right giving it to someone else, and you feel as if keeping it will break you. Afterwards you leave and can't stop yourself from looking back.
17. You plant it because you suddenly realize you have never seen your heartseed's blossom. Most never do--growing is not what heartseeds are for. You think about your father's words as you water your heartseed, and you think, well, this matters to me.
18. When you see her swallow it you regret it immediately, but you keep on smiling anyways.
19. The man you give your heartseed to chokes on it, and although he doesn't die, you can't find your heartseed, either.
20. On her first day of elementary, you give your niece your last heartseed, and her face wrinkles. "It looks like a bug," she says, and gets mad at you for laughing.
-1. You do not have anymore, and you are terrified. The two of you have not breached the topic yet--many years have passed for both of you since you first received your heartseeds. You walk with her nervously, and when you reach the door of her apartment you lean down to kiss her. She pulls away, and dread twists inside your stomach. She rummages through her purse, and when she has what she's looking for she smiles triumphantly and hands it to you. A heartseed. When you make a confused sound, she laughs, and tells you it sounds like a walrus dying. "I found it," she says proudly, "in a tiny little box that said 'For my soulmate.' Will you accept it?" Of course I will, you breathe, and when you're done swallowing it down you lean down and kiss her.
| 304 | on their 16th birthday, humans are given a box of 20 heart seeds. Eating someone else's heartseed means you are gauranteed to meet them at least once more before either of you can die. | 449 |
They say it began in infancy. Hell, maybe even in the womb. He wanted no mother's milk. No goat's milk. No milk of any kind. His mother, poor thing, despaired that he would die. For a while she held his tiny skeleton and wished him to heaven.
She cut her finger one morning and he fought as an animal would to get to it. He sucked her dry and came back for more. Finally, she could feed him. This child of hers. Her hands were soon covered in bandages as she cut herself several times a day.
He never played as she thought boys should play. As a baby he only liked to be held when fed or when he could run his fingers across her blunt white teeth.
He grew, as boys do. His eyes were old man eyes. He wasn't satisfied with small cuts anymore. Often she'd find him in her bed, crouching over her arm, sinking those tiny fangs in.
She became a ghost in her own house. So pale and tired she could barely eat. The phone rang like a heartbeat. She ignored it. Doors opened and closed as the boy went out and came back. He was four the first time he came home covered in blood. His mouth a white gash among the red of his face. It was the first time she'd seen him smile.
When he could speak he'd whisper in a language she'd never heard. She never understood anything but "teeth". Over and over he'd repeat it like a song.
She ignored his room as she cleaned the house. He didn't like it when she went in there. She avoided it anyway. It smelled of metal and salt.
In the mailbox were all these notices of missing people. Children. Men. Women. Elderly. More than she'd ever seen before. They flew into the house as snowflakes or rain might. She kept them. She didn't know why.
He left once. For weeks he was gone. He must have been eleven or twelve then. She'd given up on calendars, marking the time instead on the wounds on her arm. She broke into his room because she had to. Because it was safe now.
On his bed and the floor were teeth. So many. Most had bloody ends that smeared whatever they gathered against. His tiny bed and his rug shaped like a frog. There were dentures and baby teeth. Some so small they looked more like grains of sand.
"Tooth Fairy," he whispered in her ear.
She turned around, her back towards the mound of teeth. He'd grown wings like a bat and fangs that almost protruded out of the top of his mouth.
"Do you remember him? My father?"
She shook her head. She'd never been intimate with a man. Never had a date or kissed one on the lips. She couldn't remember even speaking to one.
The thing that was her son licked his lips. "He says hello." | 24 | A fresh and original scary story about a cliche monster. | 18 |
It didn’t take long, in retrospect. I had often thought (or thought often) that taking a human life would be an ordeal, something that would feel like it would last an eternity within my mind. But it had been so simple. A small hit to the wrist to make the gun drop loose, the other hand to pick it up. He had even had the safety locked, but that took a fraction of a second to undo. And then it was over. A pulled trigger and that idiot fell dead. His friend lasted a second or two longer. I had to re-aim, and in my confusion I even checked to make sure the gun was still cocked. It was of course. I pointed it towards the back of the scrambling coward; the one who despite all evidence pointing to him not being a medically-licensed doctor, and who had decided that his accomplice was deceased despite never checking for a pulse, and I pulled the trigger another two times. He slumped forward. He gasped for air, and tried calling out for help as I approached him. I vaguely recall Pauleen calling something out. It was unintelligible. What would she do without me? All she could do was cry and sob and scream in this situation. It didn’t matter. I was handling it. She’d thank me eventually. Or she wouldn’t. She could be ungrateful like that.
Anyway, I pumped another round, this one into his skull. The coward stopped moving at that point. Don’t know why I bothered to mention that last part. It should have been obvious. I mean, it would have been a hell of a story to tell if the bastard had kept moving, but fuck, we ain’t in a horror flick now are we? Well, ask Pauleen and you get a different answer to that question. Sometimes she calls me a hero for it, other times she’ll swear I got off on the whole thing. I don’t know. All I know is I saw an issue than needed handling, and I was the only one who could handle it then and there. I mean she just kept crying. And the first guy was shaking so much when he first pulled the gun out. To be honest, I am not even sure if the guy could have seen anything, let alone our mugging, to conclusion. He just wasn’t sure of himself. He was forcing it too much. Not like me. No. I reacted. Something in my gut took over, and in seconds it was done. No hesitation. That’s what I told the cops, and my lawyer told the jury. They understood. If not the why, at least the how. And so I walked free.
Free of prison. Pauleen still talks too much. I often wonder if she’ll stop. She should. I mean, it’s not like she did anything to help that night. Fuck, she would have just given them our earnings, our belongings, our possessions. I kept them safe. Kept us safe. Who knows what could have happened? I do. What did happen. It was the only result. If there had been any other possibility, my mind would have explored it and it didn’t. It knew that it was kill or be killed. So it took action, and we are alive because of it.
Shit, she owes me her life.
She owes me her life.
She.
Owes.
Me.
Her.
Life.
….
…huh. Never thought of it that way. And to think that she’s been talking about me without my express permission. Telling my story, curbing people’s views of me. Robbing me of my reputation.
I could defend myself.
I should defend myself.
I will defend myself.
| 27 | A failed attempt at mugging you and your girlfriend makes your relationship crumble, as both of you discover that you're a psychopath who enjoyed killing your attackers. | 23 |
Heaven is Massachusetts in autumn. The red leaves fall from the oak trees and litter the drive to my little house. Black slate roof and a weathered porch with one beaten up rocking chair. Lulu, my four legged indifferent companion likes to curl up and watch the sparrows play on the dry lawn. I stand and watch her watch them, one hand curled around the wooden frame of the peeling door. I wonder if today will be the day Ben remembers.
He sits on a stump of a tree that looks like it was hit by lightening, but can't have been, because there isn't lightening in Heaven. He's whittling something with a crude little knife, concentration scrunching up his wrinkled face. Lulu stretches and yawns and I turn aside, not wanting Ben to know I'm watching him.
We sit at the table and he says grace, not out of any religious beckoning, but because this is Heaven and I suppose it's what you do here. There are no days or nights, just a languid drawing-on of a cold afternoon on the brink of winter. I guess it must be drawn from his memories, not mine. I do not remember this place. He looks at me with the same blue eyes I've seen a million, million times and smiles.
"Good day?" He asks
In Mesopotamia he was a King and I his Queen, living out our days of youth in deluges of gold and honey and dates.
"It's getting cold."
He nods. "It'll be snowing soon."
In Russia it had snowed. In the winter of 1917 he had been a member of the growing Bolshevik Party, eyes glowing with the fervour of a new age. I had seen him standing on the stairs of the ruined Dubrovsky Palace, blood on his face and a red flag in his hands and fallen in love immediately.
We had been peasant's children in Germany at the turn of the century. Which century, I could not remember. He had chased me through grass and pinned me when I struggled against his hands.
And in France, just before we went to the guillotine, hand in hand, he'd presented me with a knot. It had been crudely carved out of a chunk of oak wood, one seamless rope.
"Remember me." He whispered as they tied the blindfold over our eyes.
Lulu stalks into the kitchen, tail raised. She leaps into Ben's lap and pads around in circles. He laughs, pushes his chair back and strokes her. She butts his hand with her head and purrs. He looks up and catches my eye.
"Anything?" I ask
"No."
My shoulders drop and his face twists.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "There's nothing."
The weight of our previous lives pushes heavily in the back of my mind, memories of loves and losses push through the fibres of my being. We had found each other. Every age, we would find each other and live out the same dance. Only I remembered.
He looks at me with sad eyes and lifts a hand from Lulu, who mewls in disappointment.
"It doesn't matter though. If I don't..."
"Why not?"
He stretches across the table and presses a small block of wood into my hands. It is a knot, chipped out of oak from the trees on our lawn.
"I don't need to remember, if you do." | 48 | Two lovers meet in the afterlife. One remembers the many reincarnated lives they spent together, the other doesn't. | 66 |
I stared up at the monitor scanning down the list of trains to find my own... 20 minutes until it arrived on platform 4. I nodded and glanced at the sign hanging just to the left of the monitor, Platform 1-4 to the left, and 5-9 on the right. As I was about to shuffle off to my platform when a clearing in the crowd suddenly revealed a child- couldn't have been older than 14 years sitting with their back against the wall, staring at the security guard with a nervous expression. Maybe it was the redness of her eyes, or the way she seemed to be completely on edge- like a snake coiled to strike at the slightest movement, but I found myself approaching.
I was standing almost 4 paces away before I spoke, her attention too heavily focused on the security to notice anything else around her.
"Hey there, little girl are you okay- are you lost or something?" She flinched enough for me to take a step backward, fear entered her eyes before swiftly moving away. she glanced to my right, then my left- obviously deciding which way she should run, I took another step backward.
"I'm not here to hurt you, just concerned." For a second her eyes met mine, and she visibly relaxed.
"I'm fine." she muttered as she lowered her head just low enough to break eye contact but still enough as to keep an eye on me- should I try to approach again. I nodded a few times to myself, and considered moving on- this child meant nothing to me after all. With a sigh I lowered my rucksack from my back and placed it onto the hard tiled floor, then sat on top of it. I saw her eyes look over it, seeming to take in the countless flags that decorated the side she could see.
"I'm sure you can handle yourself, but you look like you've been crying." Her eyes left my rucksack and were quickly covered by the sleeve of her long shirt that rubbed- somewhat mercilessly at her baby-blues.
"I'm fine." she repeated and I internally shrugged, maybe she was fine. Maybe she just had a fight with her friends, or her boyfriend- kids that old have boyfriends don't they? "Why do you care anyway- you a Pedo or sumthin'" I scoffed at her and indicated at my ring finger, three gold rings sat upon it.
"I'm already married, you're a bit young for me, hun." She pinched her eyebrows together slightly as she look at the rings, I knew what she was about to ask- countless people has asked before after all.
"Why do you have three?" I toyed with the first ring as she asked and smiled,
"Third time's the charm- two divorces." People usually smiled at my *third time's the charm* quipp, so I was slightly surprised when the girls eyes suddenly refilled with tears. She brought her sleeve back up to rub the tears away- too late I'd already seen them. She met my eyes for a second after and knew that I'd seen.
"I'm fine." she repeated again, this time I knew she was lying, probably from a recently broken home.
"I don't think it's so bad- I mean I didn't have kids with either so it was a clean break. I never had to see the first one again." the girl sighed, but didn't reply, as if I was confirming her future. "The second wife though... we still talk nowa days." the second the words passed my lips her head shot up like a elastic band.
"You do?"
"Of course, she's one of my closest friends actually- that's why I'm here today." I gestured to the monitor above us. "She lives way down in London, so I don't get to see a lot of her, but we keep in touch almost every day. She remarried about six months ago- and I was invited!" I grinned at the memory and looked back down at the girl. Somehow I knew I'd said something wrong- her eyes suddenly filled with dread again.
"Y-you think that'll happen to my parents?" my heart sank at the tone of her voice, so hopeful yet simultaniously completely lacking any. So her folks were getting a divorce..
"What do you mean, get re-married?" she nodded. "I guess so- I don't know them... but they're your parents- don't you want them to be happy?" she searched the floor for a few moments after I spoke.
"I-I want that... more than anything." I smiled again, and opened my mouth to speak again- "That's why I ran away." My mouth stopped in a second. My eyes softened, and I sighed outloud and ran a hand through my hair searching the floor like the girl had a second before. "You won't tell, will you?"
"I can't- I mean I- I don't... Why would you- How long?" I kept my voice lower as to not attract the attention of other people now, she seemed to catch on and lowered her own voice as well.
"Last night... they probably think I went to my morning school club." I nodded at her to continue, but she remained silent.
"Why would you run away?"
"I-I guess cause' if I wasn't there... they might, like, have less stuff to worry about so they could be better for each other. You know, less distractions." She was talking a lot more freely now- she must have wanted to get this off of her chest so much...
"I get it... I mean- I know why you'd think that, but it's silly." she nodded in response, and began to tear up again, hiding her head in her knees as she rolled into a ball she began to shake with tears.
"I know, what else could I do though?" The next thing I knew my hand was on her head, gently patting her. she looked up through tears and quickly threw her arms around me in a tight hug, crying loudly. as uncomfortable as I was- suddenly attracting the attention of everyone in the station, I remaind still and shushed her quietly.
A few minutes passed before she got her crying under control, she remained hanging onto me like a life jacket though. I glanced up at the screen... 20 minutes had passed that quickly, I couldn't leave yet though... I'd just have to get the next train- tomorrow. "We should get you home. They're probably starting to worry." I felt her nod into my stomach, then break away. I picked up my rucksack and strolled toward the exit, the girl slowly- and silently walking beside me.
"Where about's do you live by the way?"
...
"London." | 22 | An old man who has spent his whole life traveling meets a young girl who has just run away from home | 40 |
His brain was humming. Vibrating. Rattling with restless energy inside his skull. During the drive home after only two hours of work, his stomach churned, his eyes stung and watered, his hands trembled violently, but now they were still. But his mind was not still. Images, sounds, notes, chords, and symphonies appeared before his eyes and played from nowhere as he snapped the catch off the gate, flung it open and lurched towards the door. His ears filled with loud music that wasn't really there, and beautiful colours and shapes danced over the outside of his tiny flat, visible on the walls inside through the window. He was crying a little, but it was from how beautiful it all was.
His key drove into the lock with alarming precision and he twisted, opening the door and entering. It felt like the noises in his mind were getting louder and more clear as he rushed to his bedroom, finally changing from muffled to pure, unadulterated sound as he opened the door, and sat on his bed. Tears streaming down his face, grin playing across his trembling lips, he opened the closet of his small room. Dust motes fluttered across the morning sunlight that streamed through his window, then scattered and flew every which-way as he pulled out his dusty acoustic guitar and sat back down on his bed.
He hadn't played in years. Probably about six. It was his father's guitar, just a generic low-end steel string from the local music store in the town he grew up in. No Les Paul or Gibson Explorer, but it was Dad's. One of the few things he had to remember him by. His fingers started moving immediately, playing everything he had ever learned during the four odd years he played regularly. Through the tears and the noise and the pictures in his head, he could make out the music he was playing, and it sounded flawless. He'd never played this well, left-hand fingers dancing over the fretboard, light presses with precision timing, legato. His right-hand fingers picked the rusted strings that seemed to still sound full and resonant, going from gentle plucking to powerful strumming at a moment's notice. One moment it was Für Elise, the next Smoke on the Water, then Spanish Dance no. 4.
It only felt like seconds to him, but when he started to come down the sun wasn't visible through his window, and the dust motes were hiding again. His bedside clock said 12:27. He felt normal again. No... not normal. He felt dull. Empty. Colorless. Where... where had it gone? Where had the life gone, where had the music gone? He slowly felt himself getting angry at the feeling of euphoric and intense creativity that had fled his body like the high from a drug. He stood up, not sure what he was going to do, possibly smash that dusty acoustic guitar with the rusted steel strings and scratched finish against the floor. But then he was no longer standing, he was falling, falling...
He hit the floor with no feeling. The guitar landed a few inches from his outstretched hand, with a hollow thump he hardly heard or felt. He grasped the neck and felt the strings still reverberating through the wood, closed his eyes, and thought of Dad.
| 20 | A deadly new pathogen causes a powerful surge of creativity in the final hour of victims' lives. | 30 |
Mick took a pull from his 40, shuddering as the malt liquor ran down his throat. On the front of the bottle a cartoon hornet stared back at Mick, seemingly ready for a fight.
"What're you looking at?" growled Mick.
The hornet regarded him with mild contempt, but said nothing. For half an instant, Mick thought about tossing the 40 off his balcony to the asphalt below. He even hefted it a bit to get a feel for how far he might throw it, but the realization that plenty of booze remained stayed his hand.
"It's just you and me now bee."
The hornet glared at him.
"Wasp, sorry. My point is, she's gone and she ain't coming back. This ain't like last time, bud." He took another swig. His stomach shifted uncomfortably. Mick belched. "Where'd I go wrong?"
The bottle wobbled under his grip, the liquid within shifting back and forth in sympathy. The hornet stared past Mick, seemingly lost in thought. Mick noticed the label was drunk with condensation, and a corner piece broke away and stuck to his thumb. He stuck the bit of paper to his hoodie. Mick wiped his nose with a sleeve.
Louisiana moonlight drifted down from the heavens, casting Mick's balcony in strange light. He wondered if she could see the moon, if her night was as blue as his, or if she was happy.
He regarded the cartoon once more. "You got a queen, I'm sure. Do wasps have queens?" The hornet looked down its needle-like nose at the drunk. "No, I suppose they don't," Mick thought out loud, "Smart bugs. Anyway, I'm allergic to bees. Always liked wasps better. They're tougher, don't serve no queens".
In Mick's opinion, the hornet looked satisfied. In the hornet's opinion, Mick looked like he was about to cry. Mick carressed the 40 and the bottle's label slid along the glass, bringing the hornet closer to his face. The bottle had warmed hospitably beneath Mick's hand and the southern humidity, yet the booze remained cool and kind within the glass.
"So what do I do now?" asked Mick. He downed the last of the 40 and felt around for the bottle's cap. As he went to screw the golden lid back in place he noticed something written inside. The visual puzzle had the word "THERE" in bold black letters arranged in a ring. Inside the ring was the image of a noose, and beside it was a sleeping infant. "Kid's around there? Noose in there kid?" mused Mick.
He glanced at the hornet's encouraging gaze.
"Hang in there baby?"
For a moment Mick looked genuinely happy. The hornet glowed golden with approval. | 10 | A conversation with an inanimate object. In which both participants learn something new. | 19 |
1.
Ringo Paisley hated spaceports. 'All alien life is here', a holographic billboard proclaimed in giant purple letters above the departures, before shimmering, winking and turning into an advert. 'Drink Colk'. Some things never changed.
At first, Ringo smiled pleasantly at the pale, white face of the ticket-seller. She reminded him of his first girlfriend, a pure earth-Minnesotan with cute dimples and soft armpit hair. The nostalgic fantasy of a simpler time in 3000s Old America occupied his mind pleasantly as she asked him,
'Vaping or non-vaping?'
'Vaping, please.'
'Dietary requirements?'
'Anything terrestrial.'
He smiled at her. It was rare to find earthwomen this far out in uberspace, he reflected. Then she produced the laser ticketstamp with her left tentacle. He suppressed a shudder and proferred his left hand to receive the pale, orange hologrammatic eagle, the crest of Urchin Airspace. He would never get used to interbreeders, not at his age. He tipped his hat, partly through politeness and partly to duck out of this vision of 'universal diversity'. That was what the terrestrial Intergov called cross-breeding. Political correctness, bah. As far as Ringo was concerned it was an oxymoron.
The shuttle turned out to be an old Sunliner, a black, hulking veteran of the Milky Way, which gave a reassuring creak on its twelve, sturdy fusion boosters as its aisle filled up with differently bodied beings. Not a human set of teeth amongst them, Ringo noticed. Christgod, the boss was really sending him out to the sticks. Half of these people looked like the vagrant protein farmers of the Zelligum Atmosphere. He settled into a window seat and started vaping distractedly on a short, brown cigarillon, thinking of his pleasant little apartment in Old New York, of his favourite bagel spread with pure earth Texan prote-feed that he wouldn't be able to enjoy for at least a week.
Best get the damn thing solved as quickly as possible. He opened his casebook and was immediately presented with a large, glowing green face. It was oddly human, but with small, close yellow eyes, pinched, pink lips and no nose. A Stoltoid. Instinctively, Ringo could tell that this was a female Stoltoid. If she had been a human, he would have guessed at her as the wife of a well-to-do rancher. Flipping through the infographic, he found his instinct to be pretty spot-on. 'Emily Turner', he heard, in his secretary's usual, clipped way of communicating 'Mother of victim. Powerful matriarch. Your commission. Owns largest chain of meat processing plants this side of Pluto. Reluctant to go into details via satellite. Speak in person. Will pay all expenses.'
That was it. Ringo had always found it disconcerting that Stoltoids had human names. They were one of the few alien species who had been humanised during the struggle for galactic integration. They had accepted, quite willingly, to have their school databanks filled with Earth history, to have their children brought up speaking Earth English, to learn all of the US presidents by heart and teach their bakers how to use wheat flour. Presumably, as humanity had overcome the majority of Aethelon rebel resistance, the Stoltoids had thought it opportune to side with the winners and the new overlords. If this had been their plan it had not worked very well. Most pure humans resented the appropriation of their culture by something green and with a long, dorsal fin. The not-quite-human looks of the Stoltoids tended to be seen as creepy, rather than tributary. So along with the Declaration of The Universal Rights Of Creatures, Persons, Individuals and Aethelons, Stoltoids became legally equal to humans. And they were with equanimity ignored and shunned. Most of them lived far out on the edges of the galaxy. On planets like... What planet was he headed for, again? He flicked through the interface on the back of the chair in front and selected 'Tourist Information.'
A large purple sphere winked into existence in front of him, 3-d but poorly rendered. It was clear from this and the poor English of the voice that came through the chair speakers that the tourist board was not exactly well-off.
'Planet Elgar. Third dimension, sixth galactic region, timezone: Aggregated Mean Time +1.'
A few images played out in front of Ringo's nose. Endless vistas of, reassuringly, green, hills and farms. The spaceport, which looked not dissimilar to one of the military ones Ringo had often passed through during his service in the Struggle. A large building, seemingly made out of a combination of graphene, pyrex and steel in a perfect square, at the centre of what was presumably the capital's main boulevard. That had to be the parliament. Every other building was less than a fifth of its size and either a shoddy hostel, a greasy spoon or bar. In the background, the unenthusiastic, alien voice, finished trying desperately to make up interesting things to do on Elgar.
'Or why not to visit the sixth region's largest pots and pans producing complex in Eta zone. Or why not take a trip up Elgar's longest slurry canal, with stunning view also of traditional peasant work. Elgar has also famous delicacy of green juice fanged stoat. Served only for tourists in central plan.'
Ringo Paisley sighed and pressed on the light above his head until the host appeared, gazing with giant, hospitable eyes over six sets of teeth.
'What's the meal, please.'
'Ah. Elgar special for terrestrial meal, sir. Green juice stoat in Yankee bagel.'
'Oh. Fantastic.'
'Anything to drink with that, sir?'
'Whiskey and Colk. Make it a double.'
Ringo settled down into the chair and resigned himself to not enjoying the trip. In sympathy with him, the shuttle gave a huge, malfunctioning lurch. | 13 | A noir-style detective in a futuristic world is investigating a string of extraterrestrial murders | 40 |
"I have a confession to make, Father."
"Yes, my child?"
"I'm not really quirky at all. I pretend to like video games so that everyone thinks I'm a tomboy and a bit of a nerd but I don't really like the unnecessary violence in first person shooters, RPGs creep me out and I think stuff like Pokemon is incredibly childish and anyone over the age of 12 playing it is weird and trying to live in their youth. I deliberately wear odd socks because it makes me look careless and dreamy, like I forgot to check this morning but really it's contrived. I like to tell people I'm a photographer but really I steal images from tumblr and pininterest and other stuff I see online. The only reason I know anything about Oscar Wilde and 19th century poets is because I studied them for GCSE English not because I really care about literature in any meaningful way. Oh, and I really REALLY hate black coffee."
Jenny's voice echoed around the small confessional booth. The priest took a minute to reply.
"Three hail Marys, child and all shall be forgiven."
-----------------------------
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," the next voice told him and continued without giving him a chance to reply. "I have bore false witness against my neighbour. I have lied to my friends, I have lied to myself and I have lied to God. I am not so quirky after all."
Christ, here goes another one the Priest thought.
"In fact, I am not quirky at all. I pay a fortune for this haircut every week so I look carefree, windswept and somewhat like I've just rolled out of bed. I've been told I dress eccentrically. All I really do is wear a suit, a mismatching shirt and a bowtie. It upsets me. I hate colour clashes. Brown and black just don't go! And red and yellow is a bit too much. I look like Paddington fu... Paddington Bear. And forget what any pop culture character tells you, bow ties are not cool. Bow ties have never been cool. I have controversial opinions and tell bad taste jokes but none of it's original. I just watch racist comedians from the 70s and replace whatever politician they're talking about with whoever is in power at the moment. No one's noticed. Instead people praise me for not following the mainstream and thinking for myself. Mainstream's mainstream for a reason, I want to tell 'em, but instead I keep on pretending so that they think I'm quirky."
The priest spluttered. This whole thing was beginning to sound like a bad joke, poorly written.
"Three hail Marys, my son."
As Ross left the box, Lucy the local yoga teacher wearing what could only be described as a oversized poncho with red wellies and too much jewellery starting to walk to take her turn. She hated jewellery and red wellies and oversized ponchos. And yoga. | 32 | Set in a church confessional, a wide array of quirky characters come to confess their sins to a cynical, jaded priest. | 79 |
He wanders the hall like a shadow, never intrusive but always there. He's a familiar sight here. Amid the beeps and boops of the machines, there is the *swish, swish, swish* of his cape gliding along the stained and tiled floor.
Sometimes, he watches the surgeries high above the doctors in the observation room. He's always alone, looming over them like a king mocking the peasants below. The surgeons fight not with swords and shields, but with scalpels and needles. Sometimes they cheat with mechanical ventilators and cryogenics, but Death always wins. Maybe not today. Maybe not this battle. Maybe not this person. But Death always wins the war.
Other times, he patrols the hallways. A shudder resonates through the hospital when he wanders around the pediatric ward. Relief washes through the geriatric ward, tinged with grief and hope.
Once, a daughter thanked him for visiting her father. Death stood in the corner, silent and aloof as the nurses and doctors frantically swarmed around the aging man. The girl stood in the opposite corner, watching, calculating. When the commotion died down, and the machines stopped whurring, Death turned to leave. As he crossed the threshold, he felt a pair of arms wrap around him, squeezing. He walked away, with a pair of tear stained smudges on the back of his cloak.
| 26 | Death is an actual person that comes by when someone dies. | 48 |
"Help me..."
Father McTavis stood up straight and peered out into the alley. He'd heard of people getting mugged in the alley behind his church, and he knew muggers weren't above luring in good men. But what if someone really needed help?
"Help..." The voice was raspier and quieter. It sounded like genuine pain.
The Father finished sweeping the church's sidewalk and walked into the alley. "Is anyone here?"
No response.
"Hello?" The Father took another few steps inside and readied himself to get jumped on. What was that pungent smell? "Is someone hurt?"
Father McTavis craned his neck around a dumpster and saw him. A young boy lay there in a puddle of blood, staring back at him. The boy's hair was blonde and his eyes were black. So black, they almost looked red given the right angle of light.
"What happened to you?" The Father rushed over and began checking the boy for cuts and bruises, but none were there. How was there so much blood and no cut? The Father picked up the boy and headed out of the alley. On his way out, he saw the church wall facing the alley had a burn mark on it, the same size as the boy. "Don't worry, my son, I used to be a doctor. A foot doctor, but you work with what you've got, right?"
The boy didn't react to the priest's words. He just stared at the church wall. Father McTavis walked out of the alley and towards the church's doors.
"No," the boy hissed. He sounded more like the father imagined a snake would sound than a human. "Not there."
Father McTavis ignored his words. The kid was delirious from blood loss. He walked towards the doors and turned around, pressing his back to the door to push it open. As the grand door swung inward, the boy went flying out of Father McTavis's arms, as if thrown. He landed on the far edge of the sidewalk, blood pooling from seemingly nowhere.
How had that happened? The father turned and looked at the church, seeing a burn mark on the door. It smelled of sulfur, the same smell as brimstone according to the old testament. He turned back to the boy on the sidewalk. His eyes weren't black, they were definitely red.
The father's jaw dropped as he realized what happened. "You... you're a demon?"
The figure on the ground didn't move. He- or *it* - was breathing though, so it was still alive. The Father swallowed nervously and picked it back up and put it in his car's backseat. He got in and drove home.
-----
A pair of red eyes opened and stared dagger's into the father. The man tried not to flinch, but he betrayed his thoughts. "Good, you're up."
The demon lurched forward, but was stopped as the rope tying its neck down hit its limit. "Fool. Foolish Father."
Father McTavis felt a surge of fear at the words. "You're a demon, aren't you?"
"I was around when the first of your kind was made, you know." The voice hissed. "You were given *free will*. Imagine living for eternity, only to not have the ability to choose. To live only to do another's bidding. Yes, I'm a demon, because I chose to follow Lucifer and have freedom."
Father McTavis tried not to listen to its words. He knew they were notorious liars, but the argument it made just now...
"Made to serve God." The demon hissed. "Easy for you Father, you just serve him for 70 years than die and spend eternity being rewarded. My kind had to serve him forever. Like Egyptian slaves."
"This is a test." The Father spoke. "God is testing me."
"Yes," the demon whispered. "I was placed by your church, I would never go near one otherwise. He is testing if your blind devotion is greater than your logic."
The Father blinked once.
"How did you get that skin?" The Father asked. "Did you kill the boy?"
The demon shook its head. "No, the boy is still in his body, his mind is in a coma until I leave it. No lasting effects."
"You lie."
The demon made a hissing sound like a snake warning a predator away. "Do not question my word, manling."
The Father made a silent prayer for guidance, but nothing came to him.
"What will you do? The only way to rid me of this world is to kill this boy." The demon's voice was hard to hear. "Unless you let me go and when I leave on my own *free will*, the boy will return.
The Father met the demon's eyes and spoke. "You lie. I know real witches and possessed can't be cured. You killed the boy the moment you stole his skin." The Father's anger manifested itself into something more. He'd never felt so mad before.
"Human emotions, they are weak. Being near my kind makes them stronger."
The Father got up and walked into his kitchen, coming back out with a long knife.
"Just what are you gonna do with that?" The demon asked with a mock smile.
"God forgive me." He rushed towards the tied down demon and stabbed into its chest, piercing the body as easy as a slab of beef. The demon's eyes quickly faded to a light brown. Father McTavis felt his anger fade with them. He knew he was no longer staring at a demon.
The boy tried to say something, but blood sputtered out of his mouth instead of words. His eyes looked directly into the father's own.
Was this a test? The boy wasn't really dying. The demon must have done some trick when it realized it was going to die. It must have. The kid closed his eyes and slowly opened them. Father McTavis knew it wasn't a fake, the kid was real, and McTavis just killed him.
"I... I thought..." The priest stammered. Father McTavis was still trying to speak when the boy's head drooped down. | 301 | While visiting earth, a demon severely injures himself and finds himself completely at the mercy of a local pastor that stumbles upon him. | 434 |
**EXT. SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD - MORNING**
Establishing shot.
**INT. BEN'S HOME - MORNING**
*The bedroom. An alarm clock BUZZES. 7:00 a.m. From its vantage point, we see Ben's hand reach over as he slaps it without even moving his head from the pillow.*
*Cue MUSIC--bright and cheery. Credits begin rolling as subtitles.*
**INT. BEN'S BATHROOM - CONTINUOUS**
*Ben is now brushing his teeth. He tosses the toothbrush aside, nearly panicked.*
**BEN**
Wasn't I...just...?
**INT. BEN'S KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS**
*Now Ben walks down the hall into the kitchen. He is freshly saved and dressed for work. His roommate, ARI, is eating Froot Loops in a grey T-shirt and pajamas. Ben's entrance barely registers with him.*
*Ben enters the kitchen, and then pauses.*
**ARI**
*(honestly confused)*
What's up, man?
*Now Ben is grabbing at his sleeves, wondering where the clothes came from.*
**BEN**
Honestly. What the *fuck?!*
**ARI**
Uh, I'm eating breakfast.
**BEN**
Not you. Me. I was *just* brushing my teeth a second ago. I don't remember putting this outfit on. I don't remember walking down the stairs. I just woke up, hit my alarm, some music played--I thought I had a song in my head, but it's still going--and...it's like one scene just cut to the next.
**ARI**
Okay...
*The "Director of Photography: Jude Paulsen" is now listed in the credits. Ben points at it.*
**BEN**
And *that!* What is *that?!* Where are these words coming from? Who the fuck is Jude Paulsen?
*Ari shrugs.*
**ARI**
I don't know, dude. I'm just your comedic foil. I can only give you actual insights in the third act.
*Music swells as Ben looks perplexed.*
**EXT. UNIVERSITY CAMPUS - MORNING**
*A typical college on a warm spring day--women reading books in the shade, men bicycling around, etc.*
*Ben pulls up in his Yaris and walks out. Now the DIRECTOR, /u/BeerSteinBeck, is listed in the credits, and the music winds down, signalling the start of the movie proper. Ben walks into frame.*
**BEN**
I don't remember driving here.
*Suddenly, new, romantic music comes up. Ben feels a flutter in his stomach as AVA walks up to him, her hair blowing in the wind. She's moving in slow motion, but as we cut to Ben's reactions, his are still at regular speed.*
**AVA**
Hi, Ben.
**BEN**
Er, uh--hey, Ava.
**AVA**
So are you excited for the Big Game tonight?
**BEN**
Er, ...I mean,...I don't know...
*Enter ZACH, an 80's-style college bully with a streak of light blond hair.*
**ZACH**
You talking to my girl, bro?
**BEN**
(grabbing his throat)
What? I---I can barely speak...
*Zach pushes him.*
**ZACH**
Whatever, *nerd.* Just don't talk to my girl and we won't have any problems.
*Zach place his arm around Ava and she walks away shyly.*
**AVA**
Bye, Ben...
*After she leaves, Ben gets his throat again.*
**BEN**
Testing, testing, one two three. Yeah, I can talk. Why do I stutter around Ava?
*He checks his watch. Somehow he's right on time. Off-screen, we hear a friend, DAVE, starting to speak.*
**DAVE**
*(voice-over)*
Dude, are excited for the Big Game tonight?
*Ben, still outside, spins around, looking for the source of the voice.*
**BEN**
Who is that? Is that from the next scene?
**INT. COLLEGE LECTURE HALL - MORNING**
*DAVE is already leaning over, talking to Ben in their seats near the top.*
**DAVE**
...well?
**BEN**
(gathering his wits)
...this whole morning has taken like three minutes so far.
**DAVE**
What are you talking about?
**BEN**
I'm living a movie. I can't explain it. Yesterday I was just your average student at Arizona State, and--
**DAVE**
Arizona what?
**BEN**
Arizona State. You know? This university?
**DAVE**
*(chuckling)*
There is no such thing as Arizona State.
**BEN**
What are you talking about? We're Sun Devils!
**DAVE**
Nah, dude. We've always been University Tech. We're the Tigers.
*He shows Ben his shirt--sure enough, the generic colors and logo confirm Dave's words.*
**BEN**
*(standing up*)
University Tech? What happened to Arizona State? I HAD A SCHOLARSHIP!!!!!!!!
*Ben runs out of the room, and just as he opens the door--*
*CUT TO:*
**INT. UNCLE BARRY'S SCIENCE LAB - DAY**
*Ben walks into a completely different setting. By now he's getting used to this.*
**BEN**
Of course.
*Off-screen, we hear some chemical lab noises: liquids bubbling up and making steam. Crazy old Uncle Barry is in a lab-coat, his hair all goofy like Albert Einstein's.*
**BEN**
Uncle Barry! Thank God. I need your help.
**UNCLE BARRY**
*(concerned)*
Well, what is it, Ben?
**BEN**
I think I'm living a movie. This morning I woke up and there were credits, and music, and every time I walk somewhere it just cuts to the next scene.
**BARRY**
Well, that *is* a conundrum.
**BEN**
Right? Thank God someone sees my predicament here. What do I do?
**BARRY**
Well, I can help you, Ben--
**BEN**
--thank God--
**BARRY**
But I can only speak in encouraging platitudes. You see, you've got to give it your all. You can't quit now. You have to *attend* that Big Game, play your heart out, and show Zach exactly what real men are made of!
**BEN**
...but--I'M NOT EVEN ON THE FOOTBALL TEAM!
*Barry laughs a kindly, eccentric old-man-laugh and slaps Ben on the shoulder.*
**BARRY**
Are you kidding? You're the Tigers' best wide receiver.
**BEN**
I'm like five foot six! I weigh 150 pounds! I've never played football in my life! My scholarship was academic!
*Barry looks confused.*
**BARRY**
Give it your all.
**BEN**
God damn it.
**EXT. UNIVERSITY STADIUM - THE BIG GAME**
*Ben is in pads with the other players. The coach leads them out the field, and the crowd goes wild.*
*Up in the stands, Zach has his arm around Ava. She points out Ben, but Zach guzzles his beer and gives her an absent-minded shrug.*
**MONTAGE**
*University Tech is losing to National State. Ben is blanket-covered, and can't make the Big Catch. Ava expresses disappointment at each bad play, but Zach just laughs. Ari, coincidentally sitting behind them, shakes his head at Zach and whispers under his breath, "you can do it, Ben." Ben's Uncle Barry sadly watches the players go in to the locker room at halftime.*
*The montage ends with the halftime score 17-0, National State Bulldogs.*
**INT. LOCKER ROOM - THE BIG GAME**
*Ben and all the rest of the players are dejected. The coach comes up to make a speech.*
**COACH**
All right, men. We all know this is the Big Game. So--tell me--does anyone have any bright ideas?
*They just groan. Even the assistant coaches look down. Then, one player stands up.*
**RODDY**
Wait, what about Ben's uncle?
*There are confused sounds of "huh?" "what?" Ben looks up.*
**RODDY**
Yeah, Ben's uncle. He made a special type of glove that makes it really easy to catch.
**COACH**
I won't have any cheating going on here.
**RODDY**
That's just it--it's not cheating. You can wear these gloves. And Ben's Uncle Barry used a special polymer blend that allows us to catch *anything*! What do you say, Ben?
**BEN**
I don't remember any gloves. My real Uncle Barry is a patent attorney, not some crackpot scientist.
*Ben, grumbling, gets up to leave.*
**RODDY**
Don't leave, Ben!
**BEN**
Why not? I never even signed up for football! I'm a Math major! I have no idea what the fuck is going on. This is like some fucked-up parallel universe.
*As he leaves, the players look dejected. Coach looks at Roddy.*
**COACH**
Gloves?! That's your bright idea? It doesn't take *gloves* to win. It takes...heart...something something.
*CUT TO:*
*Ben, walking out of the locker room. Uncle Barry is there.*
**BEN**
Uncle Barry--they were talking about some gloves you made? I dunno, maybe you can go and help them out or something.
**BARRY**
Gloves? Ha! You've been wearing 'em!
**BEN**
Wait, what?
**BARRY**
You all were wearing the gloves in the first half. I saw to that. Do you remember when you first wore those gloves, and you caught *everything*?
**BEN**
...no...
**BARRY**
Well, the gloves were just placebo gloves! The ability to catch was *within you this whole time.*
**BEN**
Fuck that. I'm going home.
**BARRY**
No, Ben! This is the third act! You know what happens in the third act? The movie is never resolved until the hero decides to play. Until he decides to step up in his life, to *not* quit. To be the man he was *always meant to be.*
**BEN**
That was...kind of motivating. You're making a little more sense.
**BARRY**
Well, it's the third act.
*A guitar sound CRASHES. Here comes the big moment!*
**BEN**
Okay, fine, fuck it! Before today, I was a C-student. I was in danger of losing my scholarship. But in this dimension? This weird movie shit? I'm going to be the fucking hero. I'll see you later, Uncle Barry.
**BARRY**
Atta boy!
**INT. LOCKER ROOM - BIG GAME**
*Coach is talking to the players.*
**COACH**
Now, what we need is...
**BEN**
*(finishing the sentence)*
...how about a fresh set of hands?
*The locker room erupts, cheering. Now they're ready to take on the bulldogs.*
**EXT. UNIVERSITY STADIUM - BIG GAME**
*The team comes on the field again, and the crowd roars. A montage shows the Tigers pulling back into the game, until finally...*
**ANNOUNCER**
It's all come down to this. Ben Protagonist has been torching the Bulldogs the entire second half. But now that it's 17-14, with three seconds left to go and 50 yards to the end zone, there's only one option: the Tigers *must* throw a Hail Mary. I'm sure I don't have to remind our viewers at home that Ben Protagonist faced the same situation last year, only to drop the ball, so now the character stakes are *really* high.
*In the huddle, the quarterback gives Ben a word of encouragement. They break, and it comes down to the big play. HUT! Ben goes deep, but he's double-covered. The quarterback fakes the right throw, steps up in the pocket, and--*
*The ball floats in slow motion.*
*Zach and Ava watch intensely.*
*Ari throws his hands up, trying to get a view of the end-zone.*
*Uncle Barry holds his hands together in prayer.*
*...and the ball drops securely into Ben's hands. The crowd goes wild.*
*Suddenly, everyone's rushing the field. Miraculously, Ben finds all of the relevant characters in the huddled masses.*
**AVA**
I knew you could do it! And your answer is yes--I will go out with you.
*Ben eyes Zach.*
**BEN**
And you're okay with this?
**ZACH**
Whatever dude, I knew I wasn't going to win in the end anyway.
*Ben kisses Ava as Ari approaches.*
**ARI**
Now that I can give relevant insights in the third act, I'm here to tell you that I always believed in you.
**BEN**
Oh...okay...That's kind of helpful I guess.
*Now Uncle Barry is there.*
**BARRY**
The real glove--
*(he points to Ben's heart)*
--is in there.
*Ben smiles, kisses Ava again, and holds his helmet in the air, victorious.*
**ROLL CREDITS**
.....................................................
Ben woke up the next day to the sound of his alarm, but not the sound of a movie soundtrack. It was back to normal. He wasn't sure what happened the previous day, or if it had been a dream. Ari was downstairs eating breakfast as usual. Ben didn't see any football uniform in the closet, nor Ava on his arm.
He checked his desk. There had been a letter written to his parents about how he wanted to drop out of school. It was still there. He read it now, and it seemed like a different person had written the words, a lifetime ago. That was not the football hero he'd been the day before. He thought of Uncle Barry, of how he came back at halftime to save the Big Game. It was corny, he knew, but he smiled anyway.
He crunkled up the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. There was still time to study before class. | 27 | For one day, the world works on movie logic | 25 |
It tumbled around in his brain. The thought. The temptation.
It just sat there for the taking, on the edge of the fingertips in his mind. Consciousness. Will. Suggestion. Obedience.
Charlie twirled the pen in his hand and pretended to listen to the branch representative talk. He'd worn his best suit, a $30 hand-me-down older than him. He combed his hair for the first time in months for this.
He nodded. It was the right time to nod. Even without listening, he could feel the cadences ripple through the rep's mind, like stones being dropped into a pool of water.
"So what do you think about them beans, Mr. Calvin?"
Charlie sighed. "I do like it, I do." His eyes stared blankly over the new account options laid out before him.
Something curled in his head. Like a whisper. From the bad angel on his shoulder.
"Listen, before I do anything, I'd really like to take a look at the vault that's going to be keeping my money safe."
"Of course, Mr. Calvin. Can I call you Charles?"
"Just, lead the way."
There was a giddiness mixed with a sliver of vexation bouncing like sparks off the man's scalp. They turned the corner, through the marble hallways, past paintings and ornamental vases that cost more than Charlie's car, possibly his house.
At the vault door, the man spun the wheel and turned a set of locks.
"Here we are-"
Charlie patted the man on the head. "Thank you I can take it from here."
He envisioned a path for the little man, whereupon the rep would saunter back to his desk and forget Charlie ever existed.
The guards standing by were slumped, slack-jawed already, staring ahead but seeing nothing.
Charlie whistled. This was as easy as he had thought.
His hand gripped the steel of the door. A moment. Of hesitation.
He sighed and gazed back down the hall at the little man shuffling, absent and blank, back toward his desk.
As he began to turn back around, he heard it. Felt it. A ripple through the building. Fear. Panic. The tinge of adrenaline and smell of confusion.
He could feel the entrance of many powerful and intent men, gathering just outside in the lobby. And he found himself moving, instinctively towards the danger.
He turned back down the marble halls and past his zombified rep, and back into the main lobby.
The masked men pointed their rifles at him. "I said down on the ground, motherfucker."
Charlie nodded.
He counted them. But the number didn't matter.
They were just as terrified. Just as malleable.
Then, slowly, "Gentlemen. Perhaps you'd like the opportunity to *rethink* some things." | 45 | The protagonist acquires superpowers. Which is good, our protagonist is a decent fellow, However the powers are "Villain" powers. | 68 |
The clear-blue beings from another solar system all looked down in awe. The Korleks didn't have a goal of finding gods on their interstellar journey, but they certainly found them regardless.
"What do you think, Xriolzipa?" one of the scientists sent on this journey asked.
Xriolzipa, the grand-intelligence of the mission could only respond by emitting a pink light from his/her/it's blue, tentacle-like appendages. Truly, he/she/it was happy unlike any happiness he/she/it had ever felt before.
"We must learn how to make meaningful contact, don't you think?" the scientist asked Xriolzipa.
"The third layer has already begun work on that," Xriolzipa said. "So far, we've found that these gods call upon their powers from a creature named 'eagle' and from an undetectable force called 'freedom.'"
"That's an amazing finding, Xriolzipa! I hear that the gods can also gather more energy by repeating some sort of spell," the scientist said. "Here, let me try and recreate it using my volcanization tubes on a few of my bilourz."
Moments pass, but the scientist was finally able to recreate the sound, which all of the other beings immediately reacted to by glowing an even brighter pink.
*USA! USA! USA!*
"Amazing," Xriolzipa said. "Truly, we have stumbled upon a grace unlike anything else in the galaxy."
(I had to write this story, because I initially read the prompt as aliens worshiping the United States.) | 22 | Aliens arrive on Earth, but worship US as gods. | 28 |
The captain was sitting at his desk in Japan's makeshift camp on the north coast of Australia.
They did it. They finally managed to get a foothold on Australia.
But there was a problem. Captain Masaki sent three infantry units for scouting duty into the Australian wilderness three hours ago, yet he has not heard back from any of them. He began to worry that Australian soldiers captured his men.
Suddenly, one of the soldiers stationed to protect Captain Masaki's tent rushed inside with a worried look.
"What is it, Shiro?" Masaki asked. "What's wrong?"
"Sir, one of the scouts just returned," Shiro said. "He's covered in blood and seems to be delirious. We've started attending to his wounds, bu--"
"Bring him now," Masaki interrupted.
"Sir, I--"
"Now, soldier!"
"Yes, sir!"
A few minutes pass while Shiro is at the medical tent retrieving the injured scout. More moments pass, but Shiro and the scout finally make it into Masaki's tent.
"Private Hayashi, Sir!" the scout said.
"At Ease, private," Masaki said. "Tell me, what happened to your unit?"
"The unit I was in scouted into the northern forest of the continent, as instructed, but we soon came into hostile forces," Hayashi said.
"Like what? Were there already Australian soldiers stationed this far north?"
"No, sir. It was the wildlife itself."
"The wildlife? What are you talking about?"
"Every animal we came into contact with possessed great amounts of leathality, sir!"
"Like what? What kind of animals could be here that soldiers with weaponry could not handle?"
"The most common one we ran into is classified as a kangaroo." Hayashi said. "It's speed made quick work of the distance between us, and it managed to disarm several us. Then the punching started."
"An animal managed to disarm trained soldiers *and* had punches worth mentioning? You're obviously too delirious in this state. Return to the medical tent, private."
"But that wasn't the worst part, sir," Hayashi said.
"What?"
"The unit decided to run into a thicker part of the forest because the kangaroo demon would have a harder time getting closer to us," Hayashi said. "But we made a mistake trying to rest underneath some of the trees."
"Private, that's enou--"
"That's when the Drop Bears got some of us."
"Drop Bears?"
"Some sort of rabid animal that hides in the thick of a tree's leaves and drops onto unsuspecting prey. It tore off the limbs of Private Morita and Private Sato with no effort."
"Private, I am getting tired of your story," Masaki said.
"But I haven't even gotten to the fire tornadoes yet." | 26 | Japan sucessfully invaded Australia during WWII. | 25 |
*Thwack*,
The stock of the rifle is driven hard in to my stomach by the guard as he drags me off the back of the truck. I double over, the pain is excruciating, but it pales in comparison to the agonies I’ve endured recently. I’ve been broken in the two weeks since my capture, physically and mentally. Two months of beatings and torture have taken their toll, and now the gallows up ahead seem to call to me, offering a blessed relief from the pain. I can already hear the crowd; twenty thousand people, a cacophony of baying and screaming voices, all of them calling for my blood. I wonder how many of them are here of their own volition, and how many are putting on a show for the armed soldiers that surround them.
My legs buckle under me as I try to stand. Eventually, I struggle to my feet, using the last vestiges of my strength to give me at least a little dignity in my final minutes. I should know better, they would never allow me that. Two guards take up their positions on either side of me and seize my arms, whilst a third kicks my legs out from underneath me and I go down again, my knees crashing painfully on to the cobbles. I’m half dragged, half carried by the two guards up the steps and on to the stage, and dumped on to the rough wooden planks, directly underneath the frame with the noose swinging off it. I can see the crowd now, a broiling mass of people, faces contorted in to the rage that is reserved for traitors and Enemies of the State. I also see the cameras, covering every angle of my final moments, broadcasting them to the nation. A shadow fall over me as I lie on the wood, and one of the guards grabs the back of my hair, forcing me to look up. Lord Protector Conrad Sykes, the man who I would give my life to see dead, stands over me, a triumphant grin on his lips.
“Get him up”. Hands grab me and I’m hoisted to my feet, so I’m now at eye level with the tyrant. He reaches out his hands, as if to hold my head between them, but instead takes the noose from behind me and places it around my neck. The rope is coarse, and irritates my skin. He raises one hand and turns to the crowd, which almost immediately falls silent. He opens his mouth to speak,
“You see before you the man who would have brought this country to its knees!” His voice booms out around the square, amplified by the microphone clipped to the lapel of his uniform.
“Let his fate serve as an example to you all; my word is law and that law is absolute!” At this, the crowd returns to its fervour, with chants of ‘Long live the Lord Protector’ rising and falling amongst them. Sykes lets this continue for a few moments before once again gesturing for silence.
“By my right as Lord Protector of this land, I do hereby find this man guilty of being an Enemy of the State, and sentence him to hang by the neck until he is dead” Once again, the crowd explodes with noise, but this time Sykes silences them almost immediately. He turn back to me and looks me directly in the eye.
“Does the traitor have anything to say before he dies?” And just then, looking around at the crowd, I realise that it has all been for nothing. Three years of fighting and killing has lead up to this moment, and he’s just as powerful as he was at the start, only now, a lot more people are dead. I have watched my friends die, seen entire towns razed for daring to shelter me, suffered through the worst agony a man should ever have to endure. I could use this moment to inspire, to plant the seed of resistance once again, to become a martyr. But I won’t be responsible for any more deaths. This rebellion dies with me. I look back into the eyes of the devil, nod and open my mouth to speak.
“Long live the Lord Protector”
Edit: Grammar
| 19 | You are the leader of a rebellion. The oppressive government instated defeats the rebellion and captures you. You are to be publicly executed, your death being publicly broadcasted to millions of citizens. They ask you for your final words. | 26 |
EDIT at 9:52am Central Time: OP here, currently writing a followup to this prompt response. Will post as a reply and update this edit when finished. Followup will probably be a bit darker in tone.
EDIT #2 at 10:37am Central Time: Followup to this prompt is below as a comment reply to this comment ([or right here](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/23xf0m/wp_a_shy_socially_awkward_teen_desperately_seeks/ch1s9v3)), aaaand it was a bit darker than expected, [but hopefully yal still like it](http://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/I-Did-My-Best-Dane-Cook-Reaction-Gif.gif).
EDIT #3 at 11:28pm Central Time: I do plan on making this into a full fledged short story, but I'm not sure when I'll do it. I'm interested in it now and have some ideas, so [hopefully I won't disappoint.](http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/1120louis2.gif) For now, Eliza needs to rest.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Oh God if I could stop time I would-*
*- this whore actually expect us to know how to answer this -*
*-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiin west Philadelphia, born and raised, agh fuck stop stop stop! I need the quadratic equation, not this damn song!*
Eliza shook her head. She had finished her test early but didn't want to be the first person to turn it in. It had been at least 20 minutes since she had finished, but none of the other students had finished and made the daring first walk to turn in the test. In the meantime, she had decided to open what she liked to call her "third ear". Doing so caused the thoughts of her classmates to come rushing in.
The classroom was quiet to her normal ear, but not to her third ear.
*The fuck is a quadratic-*
*-I'm gonna fail this damn test-*
*-oh shit, did my period just start?*
The last one made Eliza giggle a bit more than she had expected. She did her best to duck her head down behind Jerry, the student in front of her. He was a large student, but Eliza had doubts that Mrs. Gulker didn't hear her. She decided to zone in on Mrs. Gulker's thoughts.
*-she giggling for?*
Eliza took this as her cue to finally get up and turn her test in.
*Nevermind,* Mrs. Gulker thought aloud, *I wonder if she'll get another perfect score.*
Eliza smiled as she walked down the row of students; she took pride in her schoolwork. *You need a social life, darling.* The smile faded away from her face. She rigidly reached forward, handing her paper in to Mrs. Gulker.
"Thanks, darling," Mrs. Gulker whispered.
"I bet it's another hundred," Eliza whispered back, a tinge of anger creeping into her tone.
Mrs. Gulker raised an eyebrow and moved her lips as if she were going to say something, but Eliza quickly turned away. She didn't bother using her third ear to hear the rest of Mrs. Gulker's thoughts. Instead, she sat back down at her seat and dug through her backpack; she needed an aspirin. The next class was Psychology, and for some reason she had always gotten a headache during it. She had gotten into the habit of popping an aspirin just before the class started.
Minutes later the bell rang, signaling the end of the class as well as the end of the exam. She opened her ear once again to take a peek at how the other students had done. She didn't zone in on anyone in particular.
*Bullshit, that was such-*
*-I got in one little fight and my mom got-*
*holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck I need a pad, can anyone see?*
Eliza cringed at the last thought. She zoned in on it, not entirely sure where it was coming from. She scanned from girl to girl, trying her best to pinpoint who the bleeder was until her eyes feel upon Ashley, a rather popular girl that Eliza had never really cared for.
Ashley was a stuck up cheerleader that had made Freshman year hell for Eliza, but Eliza knew the rules. You always have to help out a fellow girl in a situation like this.
*-oh God I didn't bring any pads with me. Trish is absent today, fuck, does the school nurse carry pads?*
Eliza followed Ashley to her locker, mentally preparing herself on how to discreetly hand her a pad without giving herself away as a mind reader. The closer they got to the locker though, the more frantic Eliza got. She really wanted to help Ashley, but for the love of God she couldn't think up of a way to just hand her the pad without Ashley thinking it was weird.
*Got it,* Eliza thought to herself. Ashley stood at her locker, eyes sullen, obviously wondering what her best plan would be, until Eliza tapped her on the shoulder.
"Yeah?" Ashley said, looking to Eliza. Her eyes were distressed; usually they were filled with disgust when they were upon Eliza, but Ashley couldn't afford any harsh emotions at the moment.
"Uhm," Eliza stammered, "do you, uh, how did the test go for you?"
"It, was, it was alright I guess." *What does she want? I really don't have time for this.*
"Yeah, it was pretty easy," Eliza said, figuring now was the best time to work it in, "I'm just happy my period started last period, ya know?"
Ashley scrunched her eyebrows, *eww, the fuck?*
Eliza sighed; Ashley was still the same stuck up cheerleader. She took it as her cue to nope out of the situation. Eliza turned on her heels and started to walk away.
"Hey wait," Ashley spoke suddenly. *Maybe she has a pad I can borrow.*
"Yeah?" Eliza said, turning back to face her. She was already unslinging her backpack without really realizing it.
"Do you, umm, have another pad or tampon? I think I'm going to start soon," Ashley whispered.
Eliza smiled, "Yeah, of course, I-
"Hey!" Jerrod said excitedly. He brushed past Eliza without taking notice and hugged onto Ashley. The two shared a brief kiss. Eliza just stood there, not exactly sure what to do.
"Hey, I, uhh, you know Eliza right?" Ashley said quickly.
Jerrod turned and looked at Eliza. He quickly scanned her up and down, not showing any effort to conceal his disgust with her. *Damn, what a wreck.*
*Fuck you too,* Eliza thought. Jerrod immediately stopped scanning. "I'm not sure," he said almost nervously, "I don't think we've had any classes together, have we?"
"No," Eliza said, "I don't think so." Despite the fact, Eliza knew who he was. He was the star quarterback, slated to lead the football team to another state championship. She also knew that he was the typical school manwhore who happened to have his eyes set on Ashley.
*You'll move on in a week,* Eliza thought.
*What the fuck,* she heard Jerrod think loudly. He quickly stormed off, leaving Ashley just standing there. Eliza followed him with her eyes, wondering what the hell just happened. She tried to follow him with her third ear, but he made it too far away into the crowd. She felt a poke on her left breast.
Eliza jumped, turning back to Ashley.
"Um, about that pad?" Ashley whispered.
"Oh, right, sorry," Eliza said. She dug through her bag and pulled one out. Ashley graciously took it and headed for the bathroom.
*She's not that weird I guess, but she better keep her eyes off my damn boyfriend.*
Eliza smiled to herself. She felt good for helping out a fellow girl, but still felt weird about what had happened with Jerrod. She tried not to think about it too much as she made her way to the next classroom.
On the way over, she passed by Jerrod's locker. Eliza had never really cared about what random students she didn't have class with thought, but Jerrod had interested her. His locker happened to be next to a water fountain, so she decided it was best to stop there and pretend to drink as she eavesdropped on what was going on in his head. She bent forward and began to quietly drink from the fountain.
*What's your problem?* She thought as she zoned in on Jerrod.
*What's your problem?*
Eliza choked on water as she heard her own thought echoed back to her.
| 275 | a shy, socially awkward teen desperately seeks to hide the fact that she can read people's minds. Unknown to her, the most popular boy in her school has the same ability. | 248 |
"It's bullshit. Complete bullshit. There's no way EVERY person will do it. You're just finding the depressed ones, the lonely ones, the stuck-on-stupid ones. And I think you're talking shit anyways."
I sat there, listening to him describe all the ways I was wrong. Yeah, I thought the same way he did, and honestly I was really really upset about it at first. I mean, how would you react to knowing that you could make people kill themselves? That's like, an accessory to murder. Not something I really wanted to deal with.
--------------------------------------------------
I thought the first time was a fluke. Some asshole at work, constantly running his mouth about how he could beat up anyone, how the world was out to get him, how he was the best at what he did but was constantly being set-up, how things were fabricated to make us subservient, the works. We all have at least one we work with, the paranoid conspiracy theorist. Everyone rolled their eyes and ignored him, but after the latest bit he was rambling about that plane that disappeared put me over the edge, and I snapped on him.
"Look Steve, I don't give a shit if it was aliens, a "Malaysian Triangle" as you're calling it, a terrorist attack, or what. Why not put yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment? You gave your wife a kiss goodbye as you dropped her off at the airport. You went home, started planning your anniversary vacation surprise. You gave your twin daughters a kiss goodnight, told them mommy would be home in a week, and went to bed.
"Then you wake up the next morning to this shit..." I pointed to the most recent timeline of events, starting with when the plane "disappeared" off radar, and scrolled through page after page. "Nobody knows what's going on. No calls, no proof. Nothing but ideas. And then... BAM!" I slammed my fist on the desk for emphasis as I stood up and thrust a folder at him. "You get something about that size in the mail. It's a death certificate for your wife.
Now instead of planning an anniversary, it's a memorial service. You're dealing with life insurance companies, her family, your family, your kids... You lie down in an empty bed, with cold sheets. You have to stare at your daughters and put on a brave face during breakfast. All you want to do is put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, but you don't because that's the pussy's way out, and your little girls don't need a pussy for a dad, they need Superman."
I looked at his stunned expression and sat back down. It was then I noticed the whole office had grown quiet, and even the VP was standing in the doorway to his office as he watched Steve get his ass lit up. I took a deep breath and looked at him, then spat in his face.
"Everyone here is sick of your shit, Steve. Why don't you go drink bleach?"
Little did I know that he'd be found later in the day, in the janitor's supply closet, with a stomach full of chlorine. Coincidence? I hoped so. HR and the rest of the company couldn't figure out what to do with me, so while I got reprimanded for vulgar language at work, that was it. Security cameras showed Steve going into the closet himself, so it was obvious it was suicide. And there's no legal precedent for "suggested suicide", so after a few days it was business as usual.
I told Dave the story. I told everyone the story. Dave just told me it was a coincidence, I shouldn't blame myself, blah blah blah. He bought me a few rounds down at Mickey's and helped me feel better. A few days later I called him up and told him it happened again. Some guy at the park was beating his kid, so I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him away from his son.
I told Dave that I stared into the guy's eyes. Some dude I'd never seen before, never knew existed. The eyes were bloodshot and he looked like a caged animal. I wanted the guy to feel like shit for what he did, so I let him have it. Told him no real father beats his kid, he was a scumbag and dirt, and he should be ashamed of himself. I saw the cop car speeding towards the park and pointed to it. I remember the words exactly, just like I remember what I told Steve.
"Look, here comes your ride. Why don't you save them the trouble of filling out some paperwork and go jump out in front of them, face first."
I saw the guy turn around, give one last glance back at his son, then sprint towards the street. I spun around and grabbed the boy, turning him around and pushing him towards one of the benches, telling him he should sit down because the cops will want to talk to him.
Then I heard the screech of the tires and a sickening thud. I didn't even have to look, I knew what had happened. The guy jumped out in front of the car and kissed the headlights. The cops said he was drunk, and stumbled. I knew better.
Then there was the Alzheimer's patient who I convinced was a burden on her family, and she should take some sleeping pills and go quietly. The gang-banger that was a waste of space, and society would be better off if he shot himself. The alcoholic about to get behind the wheel who wrapped his car around a telephone pole after I told him that's the only safe place for a drunk driver to be.
-------------------------------------------------------
So I'm sitting at Mickey's again with Dave, after the latest one. The drunk. He's shaking his head, telling me it's all bullshit and a coincidence, that it doesn't matter that these people offed themselves in the exact way I said they should. I put my head in my hands and sighed deeply, then looked at him.
"You're really going to make me do this, aren't you? You want to see one? You're a good guy, Dave, but you can be an asshole sometimes. Fine. Come with me."
I got up from the table and laid a few bills down, then put my glass over it. Should cover the tab and the tip. I stuff my hands in my pockets and walk down the street, Dave in my shadow. He still won't stop telling me how it's all in my head, how people kill themselves all the time, how it's just the wrong place at the wrong time sort of thing.
I turn and I look at him, then nod my head. Across the street is Frank. We all know Frank. Homeless, crazy, probably possessed if you talk to the right people. I look at Dave and sigh, then place my hand on his shoulder.
"Remember... According to you, I'm not responsible. This is all a fluke, a co-ink-ee-dink, all in my head." I shake my head, let my hand slip off Dave's shoulder, then reach into my pocket. I pull out $60 and fold it up nice and neat. I cross the street and kneel down next to Frank, motioning for Dave to come closer to hear me.
"Frank... Frank..." He's in a boozed-up haze, so I give him a slap on the face. He comes around, then looks at me and smiles a half-toothless grin. For as long as I've known Frank, he's thought I was his brother. Only problem is I'm about 30 years younger than he is, and he's black. I'm Asian. Not really genetic similarities there.
"Bill!! Oh Bill! How are you! You just get back from fishing?" Frank said, slightly slurred as his head rolled back a bit. I guess Bill was his brother, and he was always fishing, because that's the only thing Frank would say to me. I took Frank's hand and placed the money in it, then closed up the fingers.
"Look Frank... I'm sorry. I really am. But your time here is up. Take this money and go see Eddie. You know Eddie, the guy with the baggies in the alley?" Frank looked at me and nodded, and I knew he was hearing me the way the others heard me. I could see the clarity in his eyes, eyes that had been fogged by alcohol for a dozen years or more.
"Frank, I want you to go to Eddie and give him this..." I squeezed his hand. "Frank, give him this, and tell him you want H, as much as it'll get Then once he gives you the bag, Frank... Listen to me... As soon as he gives you the bag, come in to Mickey's. Grab a straw and so ahead and snort it. All of it, all at once. You've earned it."
Frank nodded at me and stood up, staggering in a circle until I pointed him down the alley where Eddie the Peddler usually set up shop. I looked at Dave and sighed, lifting my hand to wipe a tear from my eye as I headed back to the bar.
We got inside and I grabbed a straw from the bar, setting it down on a table. Dave and I moved to the back of the room, sitting down so we could both face the door. Not more than twenty minutes later Frank walked past the door, then past the door again before looking at the sign in the window.
I looked down at the tabletop, not wanting to see another one. I shook my head as I heard a chair scrape the floor. I looked up at Dave, who sat transfixed on the scene unfolding before him. I felt pity that it had come to this, but I knew it was for the best. Afterall, Frank would be at peace, Dave would finally realize I haven't been lying, and it'd give me a reason to "chat" with Eddie.
It took the paramedics seven minutes to get to Mickey's, and they tried to save Frank for another fourteen after that. The police came by and told me that the heroin Frank snorted was cut with some sort of weed killer, and it caused massive brain hemorrhaging. They said that Frank didn't know what hit him.
I haven't talked to Dave since.
| 45 | Without fail, you can convince any person to commit suicide. Someone doesn't believe you. Prove them wrong. | 70 |
Oi! I'll tell ya true, this summer started off nice, but as Winter approaches I find myself ill at ease. Fucking kings men. Lions, wolves even a whole party of savages from across the sea. Whole lot of 'em came through 3 maybe 4 times. Pillaging, raping and burning through my farm. My sons are dead, 2 of 'em ran off to war, never came back. My daughters been raped went off to live with the silent sisters.
All my animals are dead. Had some chickens, a goat, some sheep. Even had myself 3 cows. It wasn't much, but I was depending on that to get through the winter. You know what my gran always said about long summers? Long Winters. My bones ache, this'll be my 4th winter, I don't think I'll be seeing a 5th.
No, I can't just buy food. From where? Only place left with anything is either the South from the Flowers or from the Vale and from what I hear them savages in the mountains been making treks out there too dangerous for one such as me. Anywhere else even spoiled horsemeat is priced too high for a simple farmer like me.
What was that you just said? Which king I stand for? I piss on your kings. Aint not one of them stood for me or mine. I pay my taxes, if I didn't I wouldn't be here now. I pay them, and in return I've got King's men come thundering down that road there and they take and kill and then leave. So fuck your Boy Kings, Royal Wolves and Crown Krakens alike.
Now go on and get, if you haven't noticed the air's taken a chill. Might be I have a few months left to get another harvest. If I don't...I'll likely be dead come spring. | 17 | How has the recent economic downturn and political bickering affected you? | 62 |
Beep.
"So uh, hi Paul. It's me, Dave.
I mean, Bad Eyes, or boogeyman, or whatever. Well that's not my name, my name's Dave, but you used to call me Bad Eyes all the time and I never really got to introduce myself, um.
Look I was just calling to say that I am so, so, sorry for what I did to you all those years ago, I uh.
It was just a job, okay? I mean normally most kids don't take it as hard, or their parents calm them down, or, well you seemed like a really great kid, and I guess I just wanted to clear the air, y'know? I mean I was pretty young myself, you were one of my first jobs, really eager to show that I could, yeah.
Hey it's worked out for you though. Like you've got this job and a nice family, can't have been too bad, right?
...
Maybe I shouldn't be doing this over the phone at all, I mean I thought maybe you wouldn't want to see me again, but I'm just not, not saying it right. Maybe we could hang out sometime? Go get a beer? I'm not that bad a guy once you get to know me, I think.
I just.
I just wanted to say, I, I've put in a word with management over here and I've got them to leave your boy alone, okay? I mean, I don't want you to think this is just me trying to get you to forgive me or anything this is just, something I needed to do, y'know?
Look, can you just call me back, we can talk about this a bit more. I really just wanna hash this out.
So uh. I'll maybe hear from you later? Bye." | 24 | A boogeyman decides he needs to do one nice thing for the man he terrorized his entire childhood. | 35 |
"You're a fucking idiot," says Foxtrot Echo to Foxtrot Alpha.
"Oh come on, how could I have known?" says Foxtrot Alpha to Foxtrot Echo. They watch the monitors. Every kid in the classroom is dead at this point. The teacher is crying and begging Operation: Lunchbox not to kill her. Lunchbox is setting up traps near the doors and crafting hand-made weapons out of the school supplies.
"How were you *supposed to know?!* Foxtrot Echo barks at Foxtrot Alpha. "That someone *might possibly* say the words, 'The big brown dog jumps over the fence' in his lifetime? We told you to make it something unique! Like 'I only take bananas fermented in a clown's vagina.' No one will *ever* say that. Especially not in fucking grade school!"
"Okay, Jesus- I'm sorry. What is it with you and clown's vaginas?" Foxtrot Alpha asks, deeply concerned about his partner's depressing obsession. "You seem to fuck like two clowns a week. It's pretty weird. And where do you find that many female clowns?"
"I've got a thing. Everyone has a thing," Foxtrot Echo excuses himself. The swat team busts into the school. A rigging at the door explodes, several of them die. "Oh, great. Just great." Foxtrot Echo is unhappy. Foxtrot Alpha notices and offers him a scone.
"Perhaps you want a scone?" Foxtrot Alpha asks. Foxtrot Echo considers the scone. Several pencils are impaled into a swat team member's face. The classroom's pet hamster stored in the floor panel outside the classroom door is released and crawls directly up another swat team member's pants and into his asshole. He writhes on the floor in agony and pleasure. Foxtrot Alpha denies the scone.
"No, I'm not in the mood for scones right now. Not while we're watching millions of dollars just get flushed down the toilet." Foxtrot Echo shrugs and eats the scone himself. It is delicious.
"Well, we don't *have* to pull the plug, we could just send some of our own agents in and tell him the unplug phrase," Foxtrot Alpha suggests.
"Why don't these cameras have speakers on them, that way we could just tell it to him over a mic. We really should have thought of that," Foxtrot Echo ponders as the child narrowly avoids sniper fire by using the human shield of one of the dead students. The teacher is pouring out tears as Lunchbox rolls her to the door of the classrom and patches on the impromptu explosives to the back of her chair he has made out of classroom supplies. He tells the swat team members outside that he will be releasing his hostage. Foxtrot Echo face-palms, recognizing the tactic.
"Well, I guess it's time to pull the plug," Foxtrot Echo gravely decides. Foxtrot Alpha plays with his rubicks cube.
"Sure, whatever- I got a date tonight, so if we can finish this up sooner rather than later..." Foxtrot Alpha remarks. Foxtrot Echo presses the big red button. Lunchbox collapses in a siezure. Foxtrot Alpha tosses the rubicks cube aside- he never could solve one of those things. Lunchbox is dead. The teacher is still wired. The classroom door is coming open.
"Oh...forgot about the teacher," Foxtrot Echo cringes. The classroom explodes and the camera goes fuzzy. Both of them look at each other with stretched mouths and raised brows.
"Oh man...that's gonna be reeeeeeally expensive," Foxtrot Alpha observes.
"Yeaaah..." Foxtrot Echo lingers. "Which company subcontracted you again?" Foxtrot Alpha pulls out a cigarette and begins to burn it down casually.
"Isis why do you ask?" Foxtrot Alpha responds. He sees the look on Foxtrot Echo's face. "Did I say Isis? I meant Odin." Foxtrot Echo rolls his eyes. | 425 | During the first day of grade school, a sleeper agent's activation code is spoken 20 years too early. | 289 |
[NSFW] (Read in Tom Hanks voice) (Phone rings) "Hey, Jacob. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm on my way. Christ, I'm late, aren't I? I haven't even had breakfast! No. Yeah, yeah. Look, like I said, I'm on my way, but I don't know if I can get hard for the bus driver, because my normal barista- the cute one with the clit piercing- already had a big group from last night's "Book of Mormon" performance so she was too TIRED so I had to spend an extra five minutes sucking off her coworker, and the jackass came ALL over that new tie my wife gave me. Yeah, the one with the golf tees on it! Let me see- OK, if I turn right here, there's a cafe that sells bagels for a quick fingerbang, right? No, I'm on fourth. Fourth, with an 'f'. I- hang on-"
("-Buddy, could you spare a fuck? I got evicted last week, and my dick's been dry the whole time, and-)
"-No, sorry, man, I don't have any condoms on me. Sorry. See? Wallet's empty. Anyway, Jacob, tell Mr. Kiwasaki that I'll OBVIOUSLY be there as soon as I can. If he says- no, no, that's not right, I said FOUR percent AND we get the royalties until the run time is over. Look, just give him a bottle of champagne and a butt plug, that'll tide him over until I get there. Do NOT let him sign anything until I see it! If he argues, I think Karen said that she'll let him play with her tits, but I don't think she'll make out with him. If that isn't the sweetest god damn deal I ever heard- these Japs are already making a fortune off of us, and- hold on, again, Jacob- TAXI!"
("Good morning, sir! It's full penetration to downtown, and nipple play anywhere from fifteenth to thirtieth. Hop on!")
"-Jacob, I'm gonna have to let you go, I need to fuck this taxi driver real quick. She's- hold on, let me feel- OK, she's already wet. I should be there in a few minutes. Yeah. Right. Tell Casey to keep working on that account- tell him if he sells for anything less than an hour of double penetration and a good fisting, I'll fucking fire him on the spot. OK. See you soon. Bye-bye."
| 25 | (NSFW-ish?)Describe life where "fucks" are currency. | 36 |
"Okay. Goodbye."
I put the phone down carefully, unplugging the line as I do so. I notice the television in the next room being turned up; the adverts must've ended, back to the Kardashians.
I open the top shelf (the one she can't reach) and examine the bottles. I want something steep. I was saving the last of my good whiskey for Christmas, but the Christmas no longer exists. The last few droplets fall into the glass; barely even half full, and when I walk from the kitchen toward the darkened lounge I don't bother to close the shelf door behind me.
From the doorway, I examine her. TV dinner she didn't think to include me in, framed by the five remote controls for the box infront of her. She sits legs up, absent mindedly picking the fading varnish off her nails.
"My parents have died."
She doesn't flinch, she doesnt even look at me.
"Oh... that's terrible."
"It happened an hour ago. They were in a collision..." My drinks beginning to run low, I resolve myself to taking my time. Savour it.
"I don't know what you want me to say Paul, you know how I felt about your parents."
She finally looks up and I cant hold my gaze, examing the bottom of my glass and trying not to spoil the taste of whiskey with tears.
"Hell if anything I feel bad for the poor shit that they drove into..."
Drink diminishing.
"...Are you crying, right now? Fuck, Paul, be a man for once in your life. You haven't spoke to them in months."
"They were hit by a drunk driver. And I haven't spoken to them because you told me you didn't want me to, that you'd-"
"Oh my God. Paul!" She laughs "You are such a pussy. You have a car, you could go anytime."
"I don't have a car."
"Claire's borrowing it for tonight you'll have it back tomorrow. Trust her for once."
I'm behind her now, looking at the family photos; her and Claire at disneyworld, her and Claire out for Claire's 18th, and her, her ex boyfriend and Claire at the pool together (in the most lavishly decorated frame).
"She's not coming back."
That got her attention. A skinny hand shoots toward the remote and claws for the mute button as she turns sharply to face me.
"Don't fucking talk about my daughter like that. She's yours too! And another thing..."
I tune her out and pick up the decorated frame. The girl isn't mine. She was never mine, I've seen this picture too many times not to notice the same eyes, or the nose, or the fact this mans hand is resting very comfortable on my wifes ass.
"... For you to say that shit to me? You've been a lousy father. Rick has always been there for me even after we broke up..."
I look around in the dark room, full of memories that I didn't share, but paid for. They probably fucked in here. I thought I was stepping in to help a single mother, she used to be so nice and Claire was so shy back then; I guess apples fall close enough to the tree to land themselves in my car, drunk, at two o clock in the morning.
"... That girl is a saint, Paul. A saint. You know what? I shouldn't have to tell you. If you bought her a car (like she asked you for) then you wouldn't even be in this situation..."
From across the room I see her phone begin to ring, and imagine the conversation that's about to take place. She'll be crying, maybe throw things. I'm running it through my head when I realise; how much I hated hearing the news about my parents over the phone, just so impersonal, and how much she should hear this in person. From someone close to her, from her husband.
"... Can you get that for me? You're up." She turns back to the television and Kim Kardashians painful voice once again penetrates the air.
"Of course Honey!" I smile, and hear her mutter a sarcastic reply as I grab her phone, moving to stand between her and the television.
I finish my drink.
"Well?" She sticks out her hand. I'm able to look her in the eye now, and prepare to gently place the phone down in her hand.
"Your daughters dead."
I'm out the room when the ringing stops and I hear her answer, and I'm out of the house when she runs out screaming after me.
For the first time in nineteen years I am free, and I mourn.
| 54 | A man gets a phone call saying his parents have been in an accident and passed away. Five minutes later, he gets a call saying his daughter had been in an accident and died on the scene. Turns out she was drunk driving and crashed into his parents. Write what happens after the second call. | 113 |
Pete wasn't just your regular old white supremacist, he had been a ranking member in the KKK. He had to hate a lot of people to get to where he was. He did everything. Stole candy from babies, picketed funerals, protested equal rights and almost killed a man or two.
He first learned about the bracelet when he was a child, his mother explained that everyone was born with one and when the bracelet counts down to zero, they meet their best friend. He was sad to see that he had 35 years left to go.
"You'll be almost 39 when you meet your best friend Peter." His mom would tell him. "I know that most of your friends have lower numbers on their bracelets but you'll have more life experience behind ya when you meet her."
Pete always wanted to speed up the process, you know, beat the system. Everyone knew it was impossible. You could only choose the place, not the time or person.
When he was in his 20's he became really active with his friends in promoting his race. "White is right" they would shout walking down the street. His Mama wasn't to fond of "other" people. She always taught him right from wrong growing up, at least the way it was in her eyes. He eventually found his way into the clan. He did a lot of things that weren't very nice, he never really felt too good about it.
He dated plenty of girls, all of them were very nice, the kind of girls he could take home to Mama. None of them stuck around though, probably because they could see that their clock was running faster than his.
On his 38th birthday, just a few days before his zero, Pete made a promise to himself that he was going to be at a rally when his clock ran down, to increase his chances of catching a winner. He made some calls and found out about a demonstration in a non-white neighborhood, the perfect place to spread the message.
He arrived at the rally with his friends and they were all excited. Each one had met their soul mates long ago and were always teasing Pete. The rally started and they marched with a small group. They totaled 23 strong. They didn't really plan the route too well so they ended up walking into a dead end.
It was a trap.
A gun shot rang out and a few burning cars were rolled out behind them to block their escape. Pete feared for his life and tried to run for cover. He saw people getting shot and shooting back. There was blood everywhere. He was shot in the leg and fell to the ground, he crawled as fast as he could behind a house that wasn't too far away. He was bleeding out fast. He was away from danger but he was probably going to die. He put pressure on his wound and laid down in some grass. He was feeling a certain peacefulness wash over him.
Just then he heard a door slide open, a belt loosen and pressure above his wound.
"Don't worry you're alright, I'm not going to let you die today." A woman said.
It was the sweetest voice he had ever heard.
"Please don't let me die." He said. "I'm sorry about everything I've done. I don't deserve to live, but I don't want to die! I'll change my ways I swear! I won't go another day with hate in my heart!"
His bracelet beeped, in unison with another. It was her, his soul mate. He was so happy to finally know. He looked at her.
She was black.
He smiled, she smiled back. | 52 | Everybody is born with a bracelet that counts down the time until they meet their soul mate. | 33 |
"My children I have arrived, for your service you'll be awarded with a bounty in the after life" the Glorious man in robes said. The Children of the Cornmeal were shocked but gladdened "Oh Walker of the Husks we knew you would come to us" their leader said happily falling to his knees.
"Rise like the corn my child, for we will go out and plant the seeds of belief among the people" he said glad his plan was working. By coming out like this his small following would grow to the world religion. He led the Followers outside when they saw the commotion people gathering around a T.V. nearby
"....That's right Tom, There have been sightings all over the world. The Christian God and Jesus in the Vatican, Jehovah and Abraham in Jerusalem. Allah and Muhammad at Mecca. All over the world religious figures have appeared to great celebration from their followers. There have even been some confirmed sightings of figures like Rah and Anubis in Egypt." a reporter said motioning to a map labeled God Watch.
"That's very interesting, Wait wait I'm getting an update. Apparently the world tree Yggdrasil has sprouted in Iceland the Norse gods descending from the top. While simultaneously a large mountain we assume is Olympus has appeared in Greece" The Anchor said some footage of the many Norse gods descending from above the clouds appearing on screen.
"There are a few precautions being taken. The U.S. Army is on the watch for Xenu or any Cult Leaders who had called themselves gods before their death. Meanwhile the Mexican Army has gathered all forces on the sites of Aztec Ruins under similar fears. We're getting in more reports from India and China. In any case this is truly an amazing day"
The Children of the Corn Meal turned to their God eyeing him up and down. "I think I'm going to convert" Their leader said as they dispersed leaving the bearded man standing alone in his corn husk robe. | 39 | A god of a small religion decides one day to come to earth and show them that he is the one true god, only to find every other religious figure in history had the same idea that day. | 89 |
“Finally,” she thought to herself, “a day without classes.” It was her first day without a full schedule of schooling and filling out paperwork. It was her dream to study and see the land she had once caught a glimpse of on the small television all those years ago. A white family driving across a huge orange bridge in a convertible car. Sitting in a lush, green park with those beautiful houses in the background. She never forgot some of the lyrics either. *Life is waiting to carry you home.*
Before that segment was over, she was being screamed at to get back to work. The sounds of sewing machines, steam presses, and metal hitting metal filled her ears again. The fat, sweaty man who was in charge was standing behind her. His large palm drove into her back to move her past the office with the television. Keeping pace with her now, the fat boss’ hand was now below her waist. She was about to break into a full sprint to the sewing station before they both reached the unmarked door. She looked around the packed factory, but knew that no eyes would be looking in her direction. This was forbidden territory. She was now inside the nameless room. She remembered the words of other women who said it doesn’t last long, don’t make any noise. The man’s chubby fingers moved underneath the elastic of her cotton bottoms. “This will be over soon,” she kept repeating to herself. Her thoughts drifted to that pretty white family in the park. She had never seen so much green grass in her life. A sharp pain brought her back to reality, but she quickly blocked it out and returned to that beautiful land. After being allowed to return to her machine, she always wondered what the tag said and that symbol meant. She’d sewn thousands of these small white tags onto shirts and pants, but never knew what it said.
A few years after the factory had more women workers than the boss could handle, and the buyers of the clothes were getting smaller and smaller by the month, she decided to go for her education. The memories of the factory had long since faded. One day she was presented with a great opportunity when a fellow male student dropped a brochure with a picture of that huge orange bridge she’d seen all those years ago. Inside the brochure was an application to study in that same beautiful city. She hid it like a precious jewel until her time came to apply. The process seemed to take forever, but finally, she got the reply that she was accepted to go to the city she believed was heaven.
Her roommate came in their dorm beaming and smiling from ear to ear. She absolutely loved her roommate from India. And the feeling was mutual. She adored the white girl. Imagining her family was the one riding in the convertible across the bridge.
“I got something for you!” her roommate said. She tossed her a bag with the school’s name on the front. “I didn’t know your size, so I got you a big one to sleep in.”
“That’s fine!” she said. “Thank you very much!” She held up the thick sweatshirt with the school’s initials and colors.
“Check the tag so I know what size you need from now on.”
When she pulled the collar down, she saw that emblem for the first time since she ran out of the factory with her panties ripped and sweat from the fat man all over her mixed with her own. She felt a sharp pain in her chest and an even more painful one between her legs. She smiled to hide the tears welling up. She thought about what young girl had put this tag on. What she went through, what her hopes and dreams were. Did she ever see a beautiful, heaven-like land on that small television that she wanted to escape to?
“Well, do you like it? Try it on!” the white girl said excitedly.
“I do love it!” she said as she put the sweater on. It was the first lie she ever told in her life.
“Come on, I have a surprise for you.” Her roommate said. She started to take the sweater off, but her roommate insisted she keep it on.
Walking outside, she saw for the first time, just how many of these sweaters and shirts people actually had on. To her, each one had a story to tell. A secret to hide.
Her emotions were mixed as she wore that sweater sitting in a convertible car, the huge orange bridge getting closer and closer.
| 11 | After moving away from his home country and settling in a first world nation, a former sweatshop worker encounters in a store the very product he used to make. | 47 |
No one thought the disaster at Fukushima would do this amount of damage. Kevin Curry surveyed the barren landscape from his private nuclear helicopter. As they approached Tokyo he asked his partners, "Really, how bad is it? Are we going to be able to salvage any of this? The cancer rates weren't that high here, people were just scared, that's why they left. We need to redevelop this whole area and I think with some clever marketing, we can draw the youth back into this place. There's money to be made here."
The helicopter grazed the collapsing Tokyo skyline. Below, crumpled streets mixed with falling, windowless buildings. It had been almost a hundred years since the last inhabitants fled this toxic wasteland of a country.
Kevin's partners all agreed that their newly acquired cesspool should go to good use. They collectively scratched their balding white heads and came to an agreement.
"Kevin, we don't feel that any amount of marketing will bring anyone back to this place. All of those pictures of deformed babies and strangely evolving species are still fresh in everyone's minds. Hell, I bet there are still people alive that came from this place. We were thinking of taking this a different direction. We own all the major food chains. Supplying food to these places takes a lot of our available land. How about we do a one-eighty. Lets develop our more attractive land elsewhere and bring the farms here. Its the right thing to do. No one is going to take off their VR headset long enough to notice and if they do, we'll have some of our scientists come in, do some tests, come up with some statistics, put it all on paper and no one will be the wiser. We could quintuple our profits within the first two years."
Kevin thought it over and asked, "but wouldn't that eventually give everyone cancer? How do we make the food safe enough to eat?"
"Are you really worried about that, Kevin? Think of the numbers we'll have now. You think you'll still be around when any of that happens, if it happens? We need to strike while the irons hot or you're not going to have a good brand."
Kevin, the youngest and most inexperienced of the group finally agreed. "Well, I think this would make my daddy proud. He always did like big numbers."
"Kevin, you're a smart man. You made a good decision and we think you'll go far in this business." | 16 | The entire population of Japan has been killed, leaving an entire country with no human life. | 32 |
It had finally happened. Humanity was in every star system. Ever since the great exploration of the 24th Century, Humanity had burst into the Galaxy, doing what it had done countless times before on its Home-world, and colonize all that it saw.
Amongst its first star systems humanity step into there was life, true alien life. Orbiting Betelgeuse was a small, Earth like world. Similar to Earths Ancient Cretaceous period. Of course there was no sentient life, but Humanities Scientists felt confident, that it was inevitable that humanity would find its equal or better in the vastness of the Milky Way.
All that was 4'000 years ago. As humanity established itself further and further into the blackness of Space, it was become increasingly obvious that it was deathly quiet... after approximately half the galaxy was firmly within humanities control, and there was nothing. Noted scientists in all fields began to joke nervously that they were alone within the universe, but still telling the various governments of the Galaxy that it was only a matter of time before the "other intelligence" was found.
Now practically every star system, had some form of alliance to one of the many factions humanity had split into, and all the them came back to say that there was no intelligent life, other than humanity. This by this point was beginning to take different forms due to bio and robotic manipulation... All noted scientists agree that the basis for intelligent life within the Milky Way was from stock humanity.
A meeting of all of humanities greatest scientists, ethicists and representatives of all the Great Alliances met together, 5 years to the day it was announced that Humanity was alone in the Galaxy to discuss, what if any role Humanity should do.
Arguments ranged from the Galaxy being created for us humanity to hold dominion over from the Almighty, to it being our imperative to uplift the alien species we encountered to our level.
The discussions ranged for years. It eventually felt by many to be arguing in circles. However eventually the conscientious came to use our vast knowledge and technology to nudge a species on a single world towards our level of sentience and see what happens.
A world was chosen, on the opposite spiral arm to Earth, on the opposite side of the Galaxy, away from the conservative elements that made up the majority of the older world.
As humanity had no yet experimented with creating sentient life, the Star system chosen was picked due to its similarity with the Ancient Sol system. The star was roughly the same size, it included 6 planets. With a Mercury like world, a Venus Type world, 2 Jupiter like worlds, although both being slightly further out from the star and fortunately 2 Earth like worlds existing within the Goldilocks zone.
Both were already teeming with life.
Humanity decided that it would start the experiment on both worlds, but with a key difference. On the first world, Designated Gaia, a species would be chosen, and several thousand of the species would be taken, genetically modified to be intelligent, and released back onto their world, without being aware of humanity's influence.
The second planet would be known as Apollo, would have the same uplifted species released onto it, but the difference being humanity would live on the planet as well. The experiment to see how long it would take for this new species to realize it was not alone and to make contact with humanity.
Humanity limited itself to a single City-state on Apollo, but would have all the advances of technology on display, including a space elevator.
Amongst all the species on Gaia, a single species stood out to the scientists as being perfect. Similar to size to early man, although descended from a flying animal. It had bipedal legs, featherlike adaptations to regulate temperature, with evolved wings with rudimentary dexterity. The species had a beak like mouth and communicated though a mix of motion and squawk-like noises. Its contain a set of hawk-like eyes and a sharp beak. As it was carnivore that focused its speed to catch pray.
This species was chosen because it appeared to the scientists to be on its way to extinction, its numbers were low and it was not able to form social bonds as easily as other species on the planet and looked like it would not survive much long. Furthermore it appear to the scientists that it at one point was evolving towards Sentience but took a different path at some point, which was suspected to be faster legs and smaller less dextrous arms, as opposed to more dextrous arms and greater intelligence. It lived on the grass like plans of its home-world, further cementing its similarities to humanity.
The numbers chosen to be uplifted were taken, experimented on, until the scientists were happy they had achieved the awakening to sentience. Half were released back onto their home world and the other half released onto the far continent away from the human city on Apollo.
In space, the Planet of Gaia was heavily restricted to outsiders from influencing the development of the new species. With human monitoring stations on its moon's and spacecraft monitoring all traffic into and out of the system.
And this is how the system remained for the next 5'000 years. With the development of the species being an almost reality TV program for the rest of the human Galaxy.
New developments in technology continued apace for humanity, with disease and aging disappearing. Wars and Alliances flared and died between Humans, over religion, territory and ideological differences. But Gaia and Apollo continued on apace.
It became obvious pretty quickly that Humanity had saved this species. Its new Intelligence and dexterity gave it significant advances over several species on its home world and Apollo. Naturally its population exploded. And with it soon advanced into farming and technological development. With a bit more focus on Animal rearing that humanity, owing to its Meat eating background.
Within 1'000 years, the first cities are beginning to appear and humanity is excited, they had done it, they had created fully sentient life. Some argued that the time to experiment was over, we should introduce ourselves as their creators and bring knowledge and technology to our "children" However it was successfully countered that they were by no means ready to introduce to us, as they would destroy their culture and would bias the results.
| 13 | Human civilization now spans the galaxy, and no life beyond "animal intelligence" has been found. Humans experiment with bio-engineering to create another sentient species, but they cannot have predicted what happens next. | 16 |
*"What was it like? The Internet?"*
His childlike face looked up at me asking to tell him what it was like once again. I've told him many times before but it never ceases to amaze him, the complexity and diversity of the world before the collapse is like a fairy tale. The Internet interested him the most, so that's the one he asked me about most of all.
"It was an extraordinary place. Filled with everything you could imagine, an answer for every question, a place for every personality, a infinite amount of knowledge and information, cultures shared, stories told and humour in every nook and cranny of every topic. The best part, however, was not the knowledge or the information. It was the people. The community that was heart and soul of it all, the concrete holding together the foundations. They never stopped surprising me, I would go on it every single day for years and there would always be a new comment or thing I'd never seen before, always someone who managed to make me emotional, both happy and sad."
The little boy glared at me, a demanding glare insisting that I continue. He's mesmerized and it's wonderful to see.
"One thing that always struck me was the almost hive mind that seeped through the community. Everyone hated each other, but everyone loved each other at the same time. We all cared for each other, whether we wanted to believe it or not. We would insult, poke fun, distress, laugh at one another, but we all could take it. We loved it really, no matter how much stick we got for it. People who didn't use it didn't understand us. We all knew one another really, like we were the same person deep down, and that's what made it so incredible. No matter who you were, what you'd been through or what you were going through, on the internet you were neutral and a part of it."
I stop and think about it for a second, chuckle to myself at the silly arguments I got into over trivial and mundane issues. The boy looks glued to the idea of this *Internet*.
"It was a beautiful place, it was more of a home for me than any other place. I felt like I was involved in something bigger than myself. Even though I went unnoticed there, I felt more intimate with the virtual world than I ever did with the physical one. They would take you in and shit you out in the blink of an eye. But they were my friends, they meant something to me... and I miss them." | 154 | Civilization has collapsed. You are the last person alive who can remember the internet. You try to describe it to people who have never even seen a computer. | 200 |
"Ashley! Ashley!" I groaned to myself, he can't be trying to find me already. "Ashley, I got an 87 on the final! I passed my last class with an A!" I gave him a supportive smile. "Good on ya dude!" Don't get me wrong Brian was a great friend but too high strung, especially when it came to school. I was finishing up my degree in college in the same year as Brian. Where Brian was great at school, I barely passed. I just couldn't find a way to get interested in classes. The debt that was starting to pile up was seeming to be a waste for me. "What did you get Ash?" I looked at him and saw his eager face fall a bit. He really was a great friend who honestly cared. "I got a... 77" Lying about my 62 didn't really phase me, his smile hearing a passable grade stung. "That's awesome! We should go out to celebrate!" I gave him an apologetic look. "Sorry Brian, I really don't want to, all these finals wore me down. Tomorrow I don't have work." He nodded knowingly but paused, "Yeah I feel ya, shit, I have work tomorrow though! Maybe we could hit the bars a little later tomorrow?" I gave him a warm smile. "Sounds good! However *now* I am going to go die a little bit." He nodded but i couldn't help but notice his look of concern. "Ok I will shoot you a message about tomorrow." As I headed out I waved to him.
A couple hours later I was freshly showered and laying on my small bed in my small apartment watching my small TV waiting for the small pizza I had ordered. I jumped hearing the buzzer to my room go off. That was quick, I just put that order in 5 minutes ago. I pulled the towel wrapped around my body off and threw on some cute shorts and a tank top. Hopefully it would be that cute delivery boy. I headed down to the entrance of my building. A woman in her late 50's who had a nice black dress was standing with a pizza. "How much will it be?" The lady smiled back, "Oh no I picked this one up for us to share little baby bird." Immediately I froze. How the hell did she know that my mother used to call me that? My mother lived alone and raised me on her own. The woman kept smiling. "Yes I miss mom too." This was too much, "Who the hell are you?!" She looked at me oddly, "I will explain but perhaps it would be much better to do that inside." She pushed past me and started heading to my room. I was still dumbstruck and rooted to the spot. She turned to face me. "Are you coming or what?" I started and began following her with my mind reeling. Who was she? How does she know these things? Mom died my freshman year of college, I felt so terrible about that. I left her and I was all she had, the doctors said her breast cancer went undetected for so long that she had no chance the first time she began to feel symptoms. The mysterious woman stopped in front of the door to my apartment and was touching the door frame, right where Brian had bumped into it while carrying in a desk for me. There was a very distinctive mark on it. "He was in that stupid cast for 2 months." My head whipped to face her. "How did you know he hurt his foot... for that matter how do you know that was him?!" She laughed lightly. "Keys? I don't have them anymore." "Oh!" I quickly unlocked my door and led her inside to the small kitchen. "I forgot just exactly how small this place was." She sat down at the table and I sat across from her. "First things first..." She opened the pizza box and I smiled wide, Mac n' cheese pizza with bacon. My absolute favorite, at this point I completely ignored the fact I had ordered a simple pepperoni. "Mmmm my favorite!" I said grabbing a slice. As I bit into it I noticed her watching me carefully. "Our favorite." She said grabbing a slice herself. I have to say this was the oddest meal I have ever had. It was in complete silence which I love but most people don't. It felt like we were involved in some complex chess game and we were both waiting for the other to go first. I finally sighed, "Ok this needs to be said, who in the hell are you." She smiled as if I had acted just as she had expected. "Would you believe that I am your sister?" I laughed a little bit, "No offence lady but you look as old as my mom." She smiled sadly "Or as old as she would have been right now, right?" My chuckling was cut short at that. I frowned and saw the same sadness cross over her familiar looking eyes. Now that I noticed it I could sense something about her. No, it wasn't a feeling, her eyes were the same ice blue as mine, her hair was fading but I could see my golden blonde hair there. The confusion must have been very apparent on my face. "There I think you are on to it now, this might help a little bit she bent over and pulled the hem of her dress up to her knees. I couldn't keep the gasp from escaping my lips. She had a scar exactly identical to the one I got from a dog bite when I was 10. "How..." I felt like I couldn't breathe. "Ashley, calm down a bit and breathe." I took a few deep breaths. "Besides the how doesn't matter, the who you already know, the why I will tell you." I was still breathing deeply, trying to remain in control. I had to ask, "Just so that I am clear, you are me from the future or something." She giggled in a way that I always did when someone said something unexpectedly funny. "Haha yes or something." I smiled a bit, everyone said that laugh sounded dorky, now I knew what they meant. "You said you were going to explain the why?" Her smile faded a little, but only a little. "Yes and i need to quickly my time here is short." I looked at her questioningly. "No! No questions, I told you the how isn't important." I scowled at her but said no more. "Ok. Ashley you are at a very important part of your life, very very important. I don't want to lecture you but you need to understand. Within the next 24 hours your actions will change where you end up in life, and some of those paths are very short." She had stopped smiling a while ago but then again so had I. "The very first is unbelievably important. Visit a doctor for a breast exam." I felt my heart drop out of my stomach and my hands flew to my chest. She started laughing again however. "I am sorry, your reaction is just exactly what I would have expected me to do. The warning still stands though, even if they don't find anything, keep checking." I frowned at her. "Well that makes sense but what other things will have that big of an impact on my life?" She sighed and looked at me. "You aren't happy with school. At all. I remember. Do you remember what our dream was?" I thought for a bit and smiled. "Of course, I wanted to go volunteer and help children in Africa." She pulled a picture from the small purse I hadn't noticed earlier. I gasped and felt my eyes water. It looked like a slightly older version of myself with 20 children around me and Kilimanjaro in the background. "I...?" She shook her head smiling. "No not you but me, however that might be you." I was surprised to feel tears on my cheeks. I brushed them away quickly. "I only have one more thing to show you." She pulled out one more picture. As she handed it over I couldn't control the sobbing. This 'me' was a bit older looking than in the other picture but in this one, she was holding a baby boy. I was startled by the woman giving me 3 more photos, each one the woman slightly more aged and the children, 2 girls and another boy, all beautiful in every way. She let me cry for a few minutes, then grabbed them back from me. "I know this has been really draining on you Ashley but I need you to remember as much as you can." I simply nodded as she got up to leave. "Wait! What are the names of your children?" She smiled as she stood in the doorway. "Levi, Allison, Sarah and Sean Jackson." She gave a little wave and closed the door. Jackson... I smiled and felt tears well up in my eyes again. That just so happens to be Brian's last name. | 12 | You have made up a password in case you ever meet your future self. One day, an old man comes up to you and mentions said password. Make me smile at the end. | 21 |
The test proctor was a tubby old man who had a knack for following every single rule the test administrators had given. He stood at the front of the packed gymnasium, reading aloud the test instructions over a microphone. Most of the students weren't paying attention.
Justin ran his hand over the carvings in the desk he was assigned. They were etched deep into the wood by what he deduced was a pocketknife, or maybe with a bit of effort, a really sturdy pen. He looked down at the carvings, seeing that some of them had been filled in with pencil markings. There were several carvings that happened to be math equations, but they had been filled in with some kind of caulking and then painted over. You could still see them if you squinted and looked at the right angle. It didn't matter though, this test was focused on science and not math.
He switched his gaze to the rest of the students, all seated in their assigned seats as well. None said a word to each other. Doing so would result in an automatic disqualification. No one took the chance to even whisper a word of good luck. Towards the front of the class was his friend, Delaney. He could see that she was twisting her worry-ring over and over. He giggled to himself, knowing full well that she didn't have to worry about anything.
The class size was well over 200. Only ten students would be removed from the class. Justin and Delaney were in the top 10% of the class. They had nothing to worry about. This was just an everyday thing.
The proctor finished reading the instructions, and he as well as a few other volunteers proceeded with handing out the test packets. They were thick and the texture of the paper they were made of felt like newspaper. On the front of the packet read the large bold words
"**DO NOT OPEN UNTIL INSTRUCTED TO DO SO**"
"**DO NOT MARK INSIDE TEST BOOKLET**"
"**BE SURE TO MARK ANSWERS ON SEPARATE SCAN-TRON**"
Justin received his test booklet as well as a scan-tron and proceeded to fill out his information. After a few more moments of instruction, the students were finally given the go ahead to proceed with the test.
The questions were simple. If you had been in the class and stayed awake, you'd know them off the top of your head. Justin went question to question, bubbling in answer after another, fully confident in his answers.
After the first 100 questions, Justin paused to look around the classroom. He didn't want to burn out so quickly; there still were another 300 questions left. He switched his gaze from student to student, trying to see if he could pick out the students who were cracking from test anxiety. He always thought it'd be a shame to actually be a good student but be fucked over by test anxiety. He smiled inwardly, happy that he didn't have such a problem. He continued on with the test.
Justin finished early, flipped over his test, and raised his hand. The tubby proctor sighed and walked down the long rows of students to where Justin was seated.
"Finished already?" he whispered.
Justin nodded.
"Okay," the proctor continued, "go ahead and leave the gymnasium, there is a designated holding area for students who are finished."
Justin nodded again and stood. As he walked out of the gymnasium he saw several other students raise their hands to signal their completion. He wondered if he was really the first to finish, or if there had been others who were just too nervous to be the first to raise their hand. Delaney was one of the students who had their hands raised.
The holding area was a classroom that had a table set in the center with several bowls of punch and many platters of cookies. There weren't any tables, but instead just a lot of chairs. Justin closed the large door behind him as he entered; it was heavy and made a loud bang when closed, putting a bit of a fright into Justin.
He sighed and helped himself to a cup of punch, wondering when Delaney would walk in. Several other students opened the door, they too also being frightened by the large slamming door. They helped themselves to the refreshments as well, then sat where ever they pleased. Delaney soon followed. She opened the door, but failed to close it. Instead, it sat barely perched open.
She grabbed a cup of punch, and sat next to Justin. Her hand was still shaking.
"Hey," Justin said aloud, "you don't have to worry about anything. I'm sure you did well."
"I know," Delaney said, "it's just, I don't know. I'm just being dumb."
The sound of loud footfalls could be heard from out in the hallway. Justin and Delaney turned their attention to it.
"Was there another group testing today?" Justin asked.
"Yeah," Delaney said between drinks of her punch, "they started a few hours ago, English I think."
"They must've already been graded then," Justin said. Delaney nodded in response.
Without warning, loud gunshots resonated throughout the hallway, one after the other in quick succession. Delaney dropped her punch raising her hands to cover her ears.
Justin quickly stood up and rushed to the door, slamming it shut. They couldn't hear anything else after that.
"Now I know why those doors are so fucking huge," Justin said, trying to crack a weak smile back at Delaney as he walked to his seat. He didn't want to admit it, but hearing the shots made his stomach churn. Part of him wondered if he knew any of the students who didn't make it.
Hours passed by, and the holding room began to fill. Soon there wasn't enough space, and the proctors had to redirect the over-spilling students to another room.
The tubby proctor walked in to their room, obviously tired from the days event.
"Okay, please line up in single file, and make your way down the hall," he said.
The students did so. Justin lined up behind Delaney and in front of a nasally kid whose nose whistled with every inhale. The proctor opened the heavy door, and nodded for the line to begin its march.
The line led out of the room and down the very long hallway that the students had nicknamed the "hallway of judgement".
Lining the walls of the hallway were soldiers wearing black masks to conceal their faces. In their hands they carried large rifles, loaded with what Justin had heard were hollow-point rounds. *Small entry, large exit,* he had heard one student say after the last exam.
A handful of soldiers had spent the last hour or so memorizing what the failing students looked like. As the students passed by, the soldiers glanced back and forth, seeking out their designated target.
It was a nerve-racking experience, but Justin had gotten used to. As they walked, he could see out of the corner of his eyes some of the soldiers lock onto their target. Ahead of the line, a soldier stepped forward and grabbed a student by the shoulder and yanked harshly. The student was going to yell, but the expertly trained soldier quickly muffled him. He dragged the student off to where he'd be executed.
They continued their walk; the end of the hallway now in sight. Justin saw several students ahead of the line get grabbed and taken away, but he didn't bother to count how many had been taken; he wasn't able to turn and see who was being taken from behind, so it didn't matter.
At the end of the hallway was a doorway that led outside. There the parents of the students were waiting; waiting to take their children to go celebrate. Most went to go eat at a fancy restaurant, but Justin didn't like restaurants. He preferred just to order a pizza.
Delaney stepped through and turned, smiling.
Justin smiled back, mere steps away from stepping through.
A harsh hand came down on his shoulder and pulled him, his head snapping to the side, giving him whiplash.
He was dazed. He looked up to the soldier who had grabbed him, wanting to lock eyes with the man, but he couldn't. All he saw was the black faceless mask. There weren't any eyes to look for. Justin opened his mouth to retaliate, but the soldier quickly stuffed what felt like a sock into his mouth. Justin tried to jerk away, but the soldier quickly grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. The soldier pulled up on his arm, and Justin felt something snap in his shoulder. Pain radiated down his back and his knees felt like they were about buckle.
Using the same arm, the soldier dragged Justin away and to a separate room, inciting another riot of pain that surged throughout his whole body. The room was empty except for another soldier who was standing in the room, rifle already in the ready position, locked into his shoulder.
Justin wanted to scream, he wanted to say that there had obviously been a mistake, but he couldn't push out the gag no matter how hard he tried.
The soldier aimed for Justin's forehead and pulled the trigger. The world quickly flashed into a bright white, and then fizzled into darkness.
__________________________________________________________
Jerry removed his mask, examining what was left of the kid's corpse. He looked over to the soldier who had brought him in.
"Who the fuck is this kid?"
| 33 | Standardized tests are mandatory and the bottom 5% of each grade are culled from society. | 44 |
"I'm leaving now, King. I'll be back in about fifteen minutes. Be a good boy while I'm gone." I try to respond, as I always do, but it comes out in a futile bark.
Don't ask me how I went to bed as John C. Mayer one night and woke up as King, faithful dog to a Mr. Roland Vinson.
Does the dog now occupy my head? Are my assets at the mercy of someone who chases his tail? (I know this because Mr. Vinson has remarked on this sudden change of habits.) I've considered running away, but that would gain me nothing, especially if I were apprehended.
Whatever the case, he needs to know who I am. Accidentally ceasing to chase my tail was not evidence enough, nor were my attempts to communicate in Morse code. But now that he is gone, I have another chance.
My escape sits approximately five feet high on a shelf in Mr. Vinson's living room. Though I cannot see colours with these eyes, I know that it is a bright red.
I leap first to the couch. I am not allowed on the couch while Mr. Vinson is home. I raise my front legs to the arm of the couch. One good jump ought to do the trick and take me to the top of the shelf. One, two, three...POUNCE!
A real dog could make the jump, but not a human in a dog's body. I deal the bookshelf a significant impact, and only barely find purchase on the second shelf from the top. This almost immediately becomes irrelevant, as the entire shelf begins to tip. Frozen in fear, not knowing what to do, I let the shelf tip over with an enormous crash.
I am uninjured, having landed directly between two shelves, but my escape is now scattered across the room. Will I have enough time to make the proper arrangements?
I search through them. Here is one piece I need, here is another, one that I had thought would be hard to find is found immediately...
--------------------------------------------------------
"I'm back!" Mr. Vinson says cheerfully, bags of groceries in his arms. "How are you, Ki—"
He freezes. I am sitting on the floor in the front hallway, in a submissive position. In front of me are the words "I AM HUMAN HELP ME" in Scrabble tiles. If this doesn't get his attention, nothing will.
The moment breaks.
"BAD DOG!" he shouts. "Look at this mess!! You KNOCK OVER the BOOKSHELF? BAD DOG!" He throws his groceries to the ground, scattering the tiles to the winds.
"BAD DOG!"
I let out a whimper. Whether it is at the loss of hope or my master's anger I cannot say. | 15 | You're a pet who used to be Human. Convince your owner. | 19 |
John was a 28 year old man recovering from a particularly bad break up. His wife (Elsa) had abandoned him at his wedding for another man, who rides a motorcycle and used a bluetooth headset, and doesn't tip waiters and stuff.
Most of John's days used to be the same. Go to work (he's an architect, get that shit), do his job, and come home. Maybe he watches some hockey - the world series of hockey - he watches that, why not.
But since John moved in to his new apartment, things have been going a little differently. Because John's apartment is haunted by the ghost of the previous owner, and it may take more than a seance for John to figure that sometimes, to find love, you'll have to go out of this world.
"No. No thank you." John says, after celebrating Nebraska's last minute hockey world cup field goal. John's from Nebraska, he grew up on a farm and- "No. None of that is true. And I'm watching baseball. We've been over this I don't want to be a part of your romantic comedy fantasy okay?"
"Who you talkin' to?" It's Hannah's voice, once the apartments previous owner, she found herself trapped on the etheral plain after dying from a broken heart. Shes quirky looking. Like Zoey Deschanel. And she plays ukulele. No, wait, accordion! Or, organ? I've got it!
She plays the bagpipes.
"Who you talkin to?" She asks again, holding her bagpipes. "Look, we can at least try to be friends..."
They don't get on, I should have mentioned that. They're not, enemies, per se, but they have this kind of flirtacious chemistry where they're exact oppossites but still gel really well.
"Again, none of that is true. She's a nice girl but I'm really not interested." John says, still reeling from the trust issues stemming from his crushing humiliation at the altar.
John looks at the narrator, seemingly annoyed.
"What's annoying you John? You know you have it lucky. I can only be brought back to life by having my heart melded by my one true love." Hannah says, quite quirkily.
"Hannah, shut the fuck up, okay? Just shut the fuck up."
She looks crestfallen, sad music begins to pl-
"What, are you writing in a soundtrack? Do you even know this is a book? Or did you just see that film with Reese Witherspoon and steal the idea to write a novel where the characters find love, to make you feel better about how alone you are?"
John had a habit of lying about the existence of films when fighting his own throbbing heart, and feelings for Hannah.
"You have to stop doing that too. She's hot, yeah. Would I bang her? Yes. But I'm not looking for the love of my life"
John says, lying.
"Can I finish without you interrupting?"
...
"Okay then. Point number two, there is a film where exactly this happens. It stars Reese Witherspoon and the guy who played the Hulk."
But, see, this is different because the girl is so quirky and she played bagpipes and-
"Oh fuck this." From the table infront of him John grabs a bread knife, walking over to Hannah he- wait! What the fuck, Jesus christ John what are you doing?!
"She's a ghost! She can't die again, and now she can stop bothering me when I'm trying to have some alone time!"
But her presence is a cause of humorous conflict, like her seeing you in the shower!
"That was just creepy. If anything I felt violated."
...
"Oh what are you pouting now? You only have yourself to blame."
It's at this moment John realised why his marriage didn't work, why he didn't want Hannah, and why he's having such a hard time finding love...
"Because you keep fucking those things up for me?"
...John may just be a homosexual.
"You son of a bitch." | 17 | Someone who swore off love gets trapped in a bad romance novel | 18 |
Mrs. Palsy called on the girl in front, Sarah. "Yes, do you have the answer?"
I didn't bother listening to the rest; who had time for that? My thoughts were elsewhere.
Just last night I was at home playing video games when I got a phone call that was probably bullshit, but it still made me think.
"Hello, is this Mr. Rodman? D.J. Rodman?"
"Er... yes? Who is this?"
"I am calling to let you know that we need to brief you on a situation."
"A... situation? What? Who are you?"
"I represent the United States government. My name is not important."
"Ok. What kind of joke is this? Where'd you get my number?"
"This is not a joke. A car will pick you up tomorrow."
That was all. But I kept staring out the window of my 11th grade class waiting for something, or someone.
I jerked my head around suddenly at the noise that caught my attention.
Mrs. Palsy was standing over me, with a frown on her face.
"Mr. Rodman, did you hear me?"
"Er, no, I'm sorry, what?" I managed to stammer. Always hated the bitch.
"I said, there's someone waiting for you in the front office. This man is here to escort you."
She motioned towards the door, where a very intimidating looking man stood.
He wore a black on white suit, black shades, and had an earpiece. Looked like a freaking MIB character.
"Sir, I need you to come with me."
My classmates were either sitting there with their jaws agape, trying to look cool, or glancing at me and whispering.
I deciding this was my moment.
"Alright, looks like the President needs me again. See you guys later!"
I nonchalantly walked down the aisle, apparently forgetting that the aisle was full of backpacks, and I managed to trip on almost all of them. I wasn't the most coordinated kid.
Leaving the giggling behind I walked out the door.
"Smooth." the man in black remarked, not breaking stride.
"So what's this about?" I asked, ignoring the remark.
"I don't have the details, you'll have to wait." He spoke into his sleeve. "The package is secure. ETA to Citadel, 11 minutes."
"What's Citadel?" I asked, all of a sudden feeling nervous.
"You'll be safe there, don't worry."
*Safe from what?*
-
I sat in the Oval Office biting my nails. Sure, it wasn't all that becoming for where I was, but damnit no one was telling me anything. I didn't even get to change.
Suddenly a door opened and motherfucking Obama himself walked in.
"Mr. Pr.. Mr. President!" I stammered as I hurriedly got to my feet.
"Hello Mr. Rodman. Good to meet you." Obama extended his hand, which I gladly took.
"Is this about that joke? Because I didn't mean it!"
Obama laughed, "No, this is much more serious. Please, have a seat."
My mouth was really dry, and I tried to lick my lips. "So... what's this about? Why am I here?"
The leader of the free world shuffled in his place, much different than he seemed on tv.
"Well. Mr. Rodman. No one knows this yet, but North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un has just been assassinated. You know of him?"
"Isn't he that fat asian dude on CollegeHumor?"
Obama paused, furrowing his eyebrows. "Yes, I suppose so. I forget how young you are. Nevertheless, he was just killed, and we don't know by who."
"Ok, so why do I get to know this top secret information? I'm a nobody."
Seeming to agree, Obama continued. "Well obviously we know what your father has done, in relation to North Korea. Which is why you're here actually."
"Ok..."
With a sigh, Obama said, "The North Korean government has formally requested that we transfer you to their country so that you may become the new Supreme Leader."
My heart skipped and I tried to swallow. "What... what does that mean?"
"It means that the United States is in a fantastic position now. If you take this position, we essentially control North Korea."
"But what about my friends?"
"There are more important things now. You are in place to really help your country. And I'm afraid you don't have much choice. They're threatening war if we don't hand you over."
"I don't get it. Why me?"
"They love your father, and they want you to fix their gene pool apparently. I don't really know, or care honestly."
The President got up and walked to his desk. "Can I make the call then? I assume the answer's yes?"
"Well... can I have some time to think?"
"Sure, I'll leave you alone for 10 minutes, take all the time you need." Obama winked and walked out.
-
*What the fuck.*
I sat there and thoughts raced through my head.
I'm gonna have to get a history book. Where is North Korea anyway? Why do they want me? I can't play basketball worth a shit, if that's why. They wouldn't even let me talk to my Dad, saying he understood and agreed to this. Apparently I'm a minor but he signed off on it.
But then I had a moment of clarity.
If I'm "Supreme Leader" doesn't that mean... doesn't that mean I get all the bitches I want? And food?
I started getting excited. This might not be all bad!
The door opened and Obama walked in.
"So, Mr. Rodman, what do you say?"
"Fuck yea, Mr. President, fuck yea."
-
The next week wasn't what I'd imagined.
I got shuffled around from clandestine site to clandestine site, being educated and briefed on everything from North Korea's history to current geopolitical situation (there wasn't one really, but I got nukes apparently!).
I was to be a double agent really. Like Bond or some shit.
But now I was finally on the plane. First class too. Not that it mattered though, the whole 777 was chartered just for me.
The flight will be landing in 5 minutes. Please fasten your seat belt and welcome to Best Korea!
I loved this pilot. Always cracking jokes!
After the plane landed I grabbed my duffle and headed to the cabin door.
What greeted me outside made me instantly regret everything.
As far as the eye could see there were mobs of people reaching out to me, and crying.
Crying. What the fuck?
And at the base of the stairs was a full military honor guard.
This was all for me. I was 17 years old, what did I know about running a country?
Oh. And if it wasn't bad enough, I learned very quickly that no one spoke English.
Great.
P.S. I still got bitches though. | 15 | You wake up to learn that Kim Jong-un has been assassinated, and for some reason the North Korean government has decided that you should be the next Supreme Leader. | 19 |
I sat down with a small sigh on the crowded 5-o’clock bus seats next to an elderly woman and a young man- my age, 23, I guessed- who had headphones on. He was paying attention to his phone and playing some cheap app.
It couldn’t be helped but to watch him do this. His fingers moved expertly to save the small being on his screen from dying and I couldn’t help but let out a small wince when he’d lost the game.
“Damnit,” he muttered, shaking his head. He glanced cautiously over to me and gave me an odd look; I blushed and looked away awkwardly, though I couldn’t help but watch him a bit more while he tried again only to fail in a second. Finally he closed the app and took a glance at his music, storing his phone away in a pocket afterwards.
He began to hum a tune that I couldn’t quite place, though I knew it was from a Disney song. It must’ve been good, because he began to sing aloud:
“*… Now she’s here, shining in the starlight… Now she’s here, suddenly I know. If she’s here, it’s crystal clear: I’m where I’m meant to go…*”
My eyes widened. He was a great vocalist, but something was way off.
I’d started to sing as well. There was always this thing with singing duets and the other part being sung by some other person who could be halfway across the world, too… What had mum told me? ‘Whenever your soulmate sings a duet, you sing the other half, honey.’ Mum started singing a duet when I was seven to prove her point and dad, from upstairs, belted out the lyrics to the other half of the duet. I’d occasionally had sudden duets sang on my part, always Disney songs (I really loved Disney because of this).
“*And at last I see the light!*” we both sang at the same time. He didn’t pay attention to me. I suppose he must not have heard.
“*And it’s like the fog has lifted…*” I looked around, my embarrassment showing on my cheeks. People were staring at us; the elderly woman to my left gave a grin and motioned me to keep going.
“*And at last I see the light!*” There again was the harmony. I couldn’t say that my singing voice was great, but I’d worked on it, of course.
“*And it’s like the sky is new…!*” I sang this one on my own and that got the attention of the man next to me. He took off his headphones and simply stared at me.
“*And it’s warm, and real, and bright, and the world has somehow shifted… All at once, everything is different… Now that I see you.*”
I nearly let out a small ‘eep!’ when we both finished. The entire bus broke out in applause and the man to my right smirked.
“So,” he began. His voice was… more attractive than it had been before. “Hello, soulmate. My name’s James.”
I opened my mouth out of loss of what to say. “Uh… um… Hi. I’m April,” I managed to stutter. | 62 | Whenever your soulmate starts singing a duet, you sing the other half, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. This happens to everyone. | 73 |
Maurice was dying. He lay in the hospital bed, watching the people outside go about their daily lives, taking the fact that their bodies don't need a shitload of surgeries and medications to keep going for granted. He was like that once, and then he got the call. The biopsy was positive; he only had about a year left, two tops. Tomorrow, he wouldn't have to worry about that. Tomorrow, he wouldn't have to worry about anything.
His son walked into the room, a handsome man with a splitting resemblance to his father. He was wearing that slate blue work suit with the red tie, and was carrying an inconspicuous brown bag.
"Did you..." Maurice took a moment to breathe, which was easier said then done with a weird tube up his nose. "Did you get it, Jimmy?"
"Yeah, dad..." Jimmy held up a small bottle containing a gold liquid. "I mean-are you sure, dad? Is this what you really want to do?"
Maurice was a bit peeved by the question. "*Of course* I'm sure! I'd rather go out next to the only person left in the world who I love, rather than shitting myself in the middle of the night for some orderly to find the next morning! Now load me up, I'm getting sicker of living every second. Use the IV right there."
Jim picked up the bottle. It was called "Angel Blood" or some shit, because it supposedly made you feel like you were literally in heaven for a moment. Anything more than a couple drops resulted in brain failure and death. Some scientific test found that with even that one drop, the parts of the brain that control creativity spike by 500% or some crazy number, and dopamine production increases massively. Jim reached up, cut a small hole in the bag, and poured the bottle's contents in, watching the golden color flow down the tube into the syringe.
Maurice convulsed slightly when the drug hit his bloodstream. "Pen... pen!" he moaned, and Jim quickly handed him a pencil and a piece of paper from his briefcase. Maurice grabbed them both, and began drawing like a madman. He used to be an artist, and had always drawn and painted for years, until the tremors started about six months ago. He was always miserable, yet somehow managed to stick through unable being able to do what he loved- until now. He wasn't even looking at the paper, just staring into space as his hand moved with almost robotic efficiency. When the tip broke, he dropped the pencil, and Jim handed him another.
This went on for about five more minutes. When that was up, Maurice dropped the pencil and paper, and turned to face Jim. There was a small rivulet of blood trickling from his nose. "I love you..." he whispered, before closing his eyes for the last time.
Jim tried not to cry. He picked up his father's drawing. It was a group portrait, done in incredible, almost lifelike detail. Maurice was in the middle. He still had plenty of dark hair, and he was wasn't wearing his glasses. Behind him on both sides were Grandpa Jimmy and Granny Ethel, looking exactly as Jim had remembered thirty years ago. Gerry Kowalski, wearing the boonie hat and armless fatigues he wore when he died in Maurice's arms at the fall of Saigon, was on his left. To Maurice's right were his mother, her hair in a the bun she always wore and his little sister Mary Sue, in a polka-dotted dress and missing a front tooth, who were both killed car crash when Jim was twelve. His mother was holding a baby boy in a onesie, who was unmistakably Richie, Jim's twin brother who died an hour after being born. At the bottom was Rex, their Beagle-Labrador mix who was put down when Jim was eight.
Jim moved his thumb, and there was a small note scribbled at the bottom: 'Hope you don't show up for a while, Jim. I love you -Dad"
The drawing was stained by a fresh teardrop. | 42 | Users clamor to try out a revolutionary new street drug, not to receive its "high"- but its "negative" side effect. | 39 |
President Obama opened the compartment in his desk in the Oval Office. Every president who used it had left something inside it at the end of their term: Queen Victoria left a silk handkerchief from when she gave it to Rutherford B. Hayes, FDR kept a pair of reading glasses, JFK left an unused syringe of Addison's Disease medication and a family photo, Carter forgot an old campaign pin, Reagan hid a stash of licorice jelly beans (his favorite flavor), Clinton kept a bottle of certain blue pills, and Ol' Dubya left a satellite phone and a list of numbers. He picked it up, and dialed the most recent number on the list.
"Hey, Osama," Obama greeted, in perfect Arabic.
"Hello, Barack," Bin Laden replied, a twinge of resentment in his voice.
"So, how's life going? Where are you now, still in Pakistan?"
"Yes. My wives are giving me hell. How are Michelle and the girls doing?"
"Good, good, thanks for asking. Now about our contract..." Obama lit a cigarette. He told Michelle that he'd kicked it, but it was okay; he didn't plan on smoking it.
Bin Laden sounded anxious. "What about it? Are we adjusting the monthly payments again?"
"Now listen," Obama responded, his voice cold, "I've hit a bit of a rough spot in my approvals, and I need a boost. I know about everything you've done, with Reagan and the Mujaheddin, and with George back in '01, but that's over now."
"But-" Bin Laden stammered.
"No buts. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an Easter brunch. See you next Sunday." Obama hung up. He held the cigarette to the paper, watching the names of several of the world's worst terrorists and dictators burn away to a dark piece of ash. | 18 | Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and write about it through the eyes of the person behind the conspiracy. | 43 |
"It's all right," Bob gasped, clutching his daughter's hand. "I know...the ambulance won't make it in time...but we'll see each other again in Paradise."
And with that, his beleaguered heart finally stopped. The light faded from his eyes. He was dead.
"No! Dad!" The young woman checked his pulse, and found nothing. She immediately began chest compressions. Tears fell from her eyes onto Bob's lifeless face as his ribs cracked beneath her fists.
Her brother ran back into the room, breathless. "I've got the AED!" he cried.
They hastily tore Bob's shirt off, applied the pads, and plugged in the cables. With bated breath, they watched the readout:
*Analyzing heart rhythm. Do not touch the patient.*
*Analyzing. Everyone stand clear.*
*Shock advised. Charging. Stay clear of patient.*
"Yes!" said the woman, pumping her fist in the air. "The compressions must have helped--it wouldn't shock him if he were still flatlining!"
*Deliver shock now. Press the orange button now.*
The brother pressed the button, and Bob got a big shock.
He went on to make a full recovery.
| 23 | Someone who has a very strong idea of what happens in the afterlife gets a big shock after they die. | 20 |
I noticed him because the bartender kept giving him sideways glances. He sat in the shadows at the very end of the bar, surrounded by a cloud of hazy smoke, the kind that forms when somebody smokes a cigar in a ventilation dead spot, although he didn't actually have a cigar in his mouth. The more I looked at him, the more weird details I noticed - not just the smoke, but the fact that he was drinking out of a glass that didn't match the rest of the bar's glassware, and that no matter how much he drank, the level of the red liquid inside never went down. And then there was his pointed hairdo, the weird shape of his legs, the faint waft of sulfur coming from his vicinity...
He looked up at me all of a sudden, and I saw a depth of infinite blackness in his eyes. Except as soon as I noticed it, they were just normal eyes. I blinked, and suddenly everything I had noticed was gone, and it was just a guy in a leather jacket. I shook my head vigorously and pushed my beer away. I've never hallucinated before - *clearly* it was time to quit. I stood up and started to put my jacket on.
"No, hey, don't stop drinking. That was my bad," said a voice at my elbow. Deep, authoritative, slightly slurred. I turned, one arm only halfway through its sleeve, and saw the guy sitting there next to me, on the opposite side from where he'd been before. He still looked normal, but the scent of brimstone lingered. And, you know, he had just teleported about twenty feet in the time it took me to blink.
"What the fuck," I said, not really as a question.
"Oh, shit, walking. I'll remember that next time. Yeah, I should really head home when I get like this. It's hard enough keeping up this thing's look when I'm drunk, but animating its legs? Forget about it. Toes are fucking weird when you're used to having the legs of a... ungulate? Yeah, ungulate, I think, is the right word. Whatever."
I tried to comprehend what possible context could make these statements not insane. This guy seemed weird, but he definitely didn't seem insane. The opposite, in fact. "So, you an alien or something?" I settled on, sitting down again and grabbing my beer back from where I'd pushed it.
"Sort of. I'm Satan." I nearly choked. "Yeah, I should have led into that better, sorry," he said.
"You're awfully apologetic, for a Lord of Darkness and all," I managed. I had to admit, it was an explanation that fit perfectly with my earlier observations. That made it a lot easier to take.
"Yeah, well, I sorta fucking have to be if I don't want people running to the nearest church and throwing holy water in my face."
"Does it sting?"
"What? No. Well, not the water, I mean, it's just kind of unpleasant. But, like, as far as people's reactions go, that can kinda sting, sometimes, yeah. After all I do for them, they still think I'm evil incarnate."
I had to stifle a laugh. "Well, I mean, aren't you? You're *Satan*."
"See? See? Right there, man, that's what I'm talking about. There's no reason Satan should be synonymous with 'evil'."
"Except for being Satan," I laughed.
"Godbless, dude, you're as bad as anyone else. So prejudiced."
"Fine, fine, I'll hear you out, man. What do you, Satan, do for me?" I said, turning to face him. I wasn't just humoring him - at this point, I found nothing more interesting than what his answer would be.
"You ever read the Bible?" he asked instead.
"I thought answering questions with questions was Jesus's shtick," I said.
"Ah, so I guess you've read part of it at least. I don't mind being compared with Jesus, he's a stand-up guy. It's his dad I can't stand."
"I thought they were the same guy..." I said, vaguely remembering a metaphor about a three-leaf clover.
"Well, I mean, in a way. But it's complicated... it's... fuck... you guys are in... ugh, shit, I get so temporally dizzy. What year is it?" he asked. I told him. "Oh, okay, yeah, so you guys don't have AI yet. But when you do! You'll understand then."
"Try to make me understand now, Satan," I implored, amused just to be able to call the Lord of Hell by his first name.
"Ok, ok. Anyway, you remember from the Bible the story of Noah? Or of Abraham and Isaac? Or hell, go right back to the beginning, Adam and Steve? Sorry, just messing with you, Eve? Notice a common theme there? God is a fucking asshole who sets up impossible tests and standards and then gets angry when humans fail to pass them. It pisses me off. He's like a dog owner that beats a puppy because it hasn't learned how to take a shit in the fucking toilet, even though that's impossible. It's just... ugh. He does it all the fucking time, and then asked you guys to kill animals for him to make up for it. What a sicko."
"But, I mean, that's the Old Testament for a reason, Satan. It's... I'm pretty sure all that changed, y'know, when Jesus came along."
"I'll get to Jesus soon. It's... ooh, okay, it's sorta like Ultron and Vision. They're... wait, Avengers 2 hasn't come out yet?"
"No," I said.
"Fuck, ok, I guess I'll try to find another metaphor. But anyway, Old Testament, New Testament, yes, there's a reason things changed in between. But it's not the one you think!" Satan was getting more animated now, apparently eager to find someone so receptive to his story. I got the sense he spent a lot of nights just drinking a lone.
"What is the reason, then?" I asked.
"Ok, so in the Old Testament, God's not the only God. Right? He's just the strongest God. Half of the stories are just all the fucking Jews wandering around the Middle East saying "Hey, our God can beat up your god!" and then letting him do it. Because Gods are powered by belief, you know? So God goes around, he's a big bad dude on the playground, beating up the little kids, and... the other Gods, the polytheistic ones, their belief is all split up among them, so their entire pantheon put together is only barely as strong as Yahweh. He stomps on all of those fucking guys. And all the while he's letting it go to his head, and getting more and more righteous and holier-than-thou about the standards he holds his followers to. And then all of a sudden, he gets too big. He... and Jesus came in around this time... he gets the power of the Roman Empire behind him, and he becomes this big impersonal force, this deterministic fucking computer that's all about giving rules to the universe. He's all things to all people, he's this big old glob of godhood, that vague force that people who mark their religion as 'spiritual' on facebook think of, and every God that every person individually believes in is a subset of him, a fully included subset, so he gets all their belief, but the sum total, the Universal Set of Gods, if you will, is just this big fucking thing where all the good from all the Gods different people believe in gets smeared out across the law of averages and all of a sudden he's just this big fucking hivemind that's heavenbent on giving everybody everywhere everywhen a 'plan' and a 'purpose' and taking away all their fucking free will. When people say "oh, it was God's plan, isn't that beautiful", or "oh, God has big things planned for you" it should send a shiver down your fucking spine, man. Because God's plan is fucking terrifying. Every car crash, every miscarriage, every grandma who can't remember her granddaughter's face... that's all part of God's plan. And in his plan, there's shit-all you can do to even react to it."
"Goddamn," I said, not operating at a high enough level to recognize the irony. "So, uh... where does Jesus fit in?"
"Oh, sure, ask about him first. Christ, what a good spin doctor for himself that guy was. He's a subset to, just like any other version of God. Except he's a subset that's human. It's like... you ever see that episode of TNG where... hold on, it's airing on channel 118 right now, coincidentally..." Satan said, and snapped his fingers. The tv screen nearest us switched from a football game to an episode of Star Trek, on I vaguely remembered. A lone Borg drone stood in the conference room while Geordi asked him questions.
"Remember that one? Hugh of Borg. He gets separated from the hivemind and is able to be good, and do good, and act autonomously. Or like I said, how The Vision spins out from Ultron's evil consciousness and acts as a hero. Jesus was the same way, and I admire the guy, but his methods just weren't extreme enough."
"So, ok, I'll ask, what are your methods?"
"I'm a hacker. Or a defense lawyer, maybe. Or, or... some other metaphor. Neither of those is actually any good. I mess with the universe, just your little pocket of it, enough for you humans to have free will, to an extent. God gets to put his perfect fucking order over the vast majority of the universe, but this planet is where I've staked my claim, and this is the one place where unpredictable stuff can happen. I give you back the impulses that he takes away. I return the autonomy that he wants to snuff out in favor of perfect order and a goal of nothing. I spread chaos, and thanks to the value system he tries to put in place, you think of chaos as a bad thing, but it's really fucking not, because without chaos theory you don't get photosynthesis or babies or Jurassic Park. So that's what I do for you. I hope the explanation is satisfactory. Not everybody gets it, because some people are just plain stupid."
"No, no, I get it. Thanks Satan," I said, feeling sobered. The cloudiness in my head was clearing, replaced by thousands more questions. "What's the deal with heaven and hell?" I spit out, before he could leave.
Satan smiled a bit. "Know what? This was fun. Come back next week and maybe I'll tell you," he said, and was gone. | 219 | A drunken stranger in a bar is actually the embodiment of Satan on earth. He tells you that we have it wrong and he is actually a good guy and God is a sociopathic prick, who actually despises humans and the only way we have survived this long is through his (Satan's) actions and safeguarding. | 183 |
My kind of profession has always had the risk of death by violence. We all know it, understand it and accept it. It's not unusual to hear of three, four deaths a month, and that's on a low month. It's the risk we all take, because, hey, bigger the risk, greater the reward.
So, now, as I lay tied up in a dingy, abandoned warehouse, all I can think of is that my time has come. I feel almost at peace, knowing that in a few moments my life will be extinguished, and I will be nothing more than a statistic associated with my job. I close my eyes and say a quiet farewell to this beautiful world. As I recall the most memorable moments of my life, I realize that I have led quite a great life, the kind of life most people can only dream of.
I hear soft footsteps. My would be killer has returned. I instinctively open my eyes to take a good look at him. He's in his early twenties, tall, thin, blonde. I realize that he's actually quite good looking, something like a Burberry model. He must be quite popular with the ladies. I suddenly envy him.
He bends down in front of me, taking a closer look at my injured forehead. He's calm. He's by no means an amateur, though I can tell that he's not been in our profession for very long.
He pulls out the wad of cloth stuffed into my mouth. I gasp immediately, taking a long, deep breath.
He speaks softly, in an even, unemotional tone. "Do you know why you are here? Just say yes or no."
"Yes," I reply, my voice hoarse from lack of moisture.
"Would you like something to eat? Or some water perhaps?" he asks, no sense of urgency in his voice.
"A cigarette, if you've got one?" I ask calmly. This is what they would ask for in the movies.
He nods, and takes out a sleek silver case from the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a cigarette, and carefully, almost gently, places it between my lips, and lights it with a lighter engraved with the initials D.H.
He lights one for himself too. We smoke in silence. I take my sweet time smoking the cigarette, letting my body enjoy the last hit of nicotine. He finishes his cigarette before I do, and sits beside me, waiting patiently, not hurrying me. I'm starting to like this guy, I feel confident that he won't make a mess of things.
Once I'm done with the cigarette, he takes out a kerchief from the breast pocket of his pristine white shirt and wipes away the ashes from my shirt. He gets up and stands in front of me, and finally draws his gun. He loads it with a single bullet, and fits the silencer in place. He points it squarely towards my forehead.
I look into his eyes. They are completely devoid of any emotion.
He speaks softly. "I need you to understand something before I kill you."
I don't say anything, so he goes on. "This is only business. Nothing personal. Say yes, if you understand."
I doubt very much that my saying no would make any difference. "Yes."
I close my eyes. | 29 | "I need you to understand something before I kill you." | 32 |
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