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Omega Prompt #4 - Still Life 1,284 / 1,300 words You can bring your drawings and paintings to life! However, you can’t re-paint or re-draw them once you’ve done so, no matter how badly you want to. Wheel: Chili treat! It took Aviar Temmish, Aviar Inkfinger, a full twenty days to muster the courage - among other things - to climb the chapel steps and see his husband’s body, pushing past the crowd of mourners that still thronged the marble hall. Ivor Temmish - Ivor the Wise - had been court wizard for a century and the crowd counted the most rarefied nobility among its numbers - yet all quickly found other places to be, leaving Aviar alone as bands of iron grief wrapped his chest and drove the air from his lungs. He collapsed to the floor, spilling the sheath of paper across the tiles. It was only the clack of tiles on stone and the smell of sulfur that anchored him in the present. Gimlet - Ivor’s imp familiar - skulked out of the shadows, vile leathery wings twitching. “My condolences,” the imp said in its scratchy tone. “Begone, devil!” Aviar spat, wiping his tears on the back of his hand and flinging them at the familiar. “Alas,” Gimlet muttered, “a week remains until I am unbound. The old man was most insistent that I still had duties to perform.” “Then be about them!” Aviar cried. “Be about them anywhere but here; leave me to mourn in peace.” Aviar reached down for the papers but a bolt of flame washed across the marble floor, sending him sprawling back with only a single sheet, as the rest crumbled to ash. “Treachery!” he spluttered. Gimlet stood still, smoke trailing from its fingertips, eyes locked on Aviar. “You’ll not get another chance!” Ink streamed from the bottle on his hip, coiling down to his fingertips as Aviar scratched hurriedly across the remaining sheet of paper. In his long lifetime he’d had cause to draw many restraints and only a handful remained to him - but in a few deft strokes he’d captured the very essence of knotted cords, the sparse lines hinting at hidden strength. With a flash, the paper vanished and the cords appeared around Gimlet, holding the imp fast. The image of them faded from Aviar’s mind. “This is how you serve my beloved?” Aviar advanced on Gimlet. “You would see me join him so soon? Spare me from such a devil’s mercy!” “I do as I am bid,” Gimlet rasped. The imp seemed untroubled. “Can you say the same?” Despite his rage, despite the thousand things he had pictured in his mind for retaliation, that caused Aviar to pause. “What poisoned words are these?” “At the end, on his deathbed, the old man bid you let him go,” the imp replied. “He saw what you were planning. But still, a full twenty days to get the colours right? I would have guessed half that.” Aviar’s hand moved unconsciously to his breast pocket and the wooden case therein. “I had trouble with his eyes …” he muttered softly, unknowingly. “And so he set me,” Gimlet said, “his final watchdog.” For the first time, a trace of bitterness crept into its voice. In a burst of flame, it tore free from the cords and leapt for Aviar; it hit him with enough force to bowl the wizard over, talons slashing through his robes. Aviar hit the floor and Gimlet ripped its talons back - sending shards of wood and multicoloured clouds of pigment flying across the chapel. The white stone was stained the colours of Ivor - the ochre tan of his skin, the ivory of his hair and the sea-foam blue of his eyes. “Monster,” Aviar whispered. The imp was a tear-blurred lump on his chest; he pushed at it to no avail. Gimlet just sat and glared down at him, as heavy as it needed to be to keep him pinned. “I am what I was made to be,” Gimlet replied. Aviar spat at the imp, while scratching furiously on the floor by his side, hoping that the familiar wouldn’t notice. As Gimlet wiped the spittle from its cheek, Aviar blindly traced lines he’d known his entire life through the scattered pigments. He felt a memory fade from his mind just as Gimlet opened its mouth to speak - only for a furry mass to slam into it from the side, freeing Aviar. He scrambled to his feet as the shape of his childhood dog - now an empty space in his memories - tore at the imp. Its fur was the exact colour of Ivor’s eyes. Aviar staggered over to the shards of wood, looking for any big enough to draw on - only for the conjured dog to fly past him, unravelling into pigment and ash. He turned, to see Gimlet climb impassively to its feet. “Go ahead,” the imp replied. It gestured at the casket on its catafalque. “The old man bid me do my best to stop you but you’ll clearly not be dissuaded. Try and deny your grief, if you can.” Aviar waited but the imp remained still, arms crossed, eyes staring into him. When he was sure no hidden strike was coming, he gathered the scraps of wood and scooped up what pigment he could. He tore an official portrait - mundanely serious and capturing none of Ivor’s charm - from its frame and flipped it over for the blank canvas on the back. As Gimlet watched, Aviar summoned ink and began to sketch. The curve of Ivor’s cheeks. The jagged wrinkles around his eyes, always half-smiling. The jut of his chin and the curve of his shoulders and the long planes of his legs. Aviar didn’t have to think, didn’t even have to look - though he couldn’t help but stare at his husband, so still and so empty. He’d wanted to be here so he could make sure that every last line was perfect but the more he looked, the more he saw all the things he couldn’t capture. No ink could show the early mornings watching the sun rise from their tower; no hue could capture the gentle strength in Ivor’s fingers as he kneaded dough in their kitchen, robes covered in flour. Aviar mentally prodded the dog-shaped hole in his childhood memories, like a tongue feeling out an empty tooth socket. The dog that had lived and died all over again at his whim. “What’s the matter?” Gimlet said, harsh and mocking. “Don’t stop now - and don’t forget the leash.” Aviar’s hand paused on the canvas. The figure was there - as tall and imposing as in life - and he had just started to add colour, roughing in the dark blues of Ivor’s favourite robes. “You served Ivor for fifty years,” he said, eyes not leaving the picture, “Tell me, devil: did you hate him, in the end?” A deep snort of derision came from the imp. “How could I? Is the vase permitted to hate the potter?” Then, with a slick undertone of dark glee: “Could the painting hate the painter?” “How could it not?” Aviar whispered. Tears began to trickle silently down his cheeks. With an effort of will he pulled the pigment from the canvas and cast it aside; reached instead for the dark reds that had been destined for the background. With rough, jagged slashes he traced bone and talons and sweeping, leathery wings. It was a quick, ugly work that Gimlet didn’t understand until Aviar was pulling it from the page, conjuring a stooped body double of the familiar by his side. The memory of the damned imp was finally exorcised from his mind. “A companion for your final week,” he said, voice dull, “if you can stand the company.” Gimlet just snarled in response. Aviar didn’t look back, leaving the two imps in the chapel amidst the mess. He left footprints in the pigment as he went and took only his memories with him.
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Aug 7, 2022 21:09
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prompt #1: [goon] agonizes over [an unusual property dispute] The Amazing Technicolor Scream Coat An Editorial written by Winston A.S. Parish for the TheDailyClickBait.com (998 words) Arachnid. Phalangioides. Widow. Spinner, Spitter, Spider. Anxious humans use hundreds of names to designate the little devils that have caused them so much worry over the long years of our coexistence. Every minute of every day, there’s a startled innocent somewhere, shaking a trembling fist at a spidery intruder who’s disturbed the peaceful serenity of their home. Still images of them induce unease in the unsuspecting, while video clips produce panic in the phobic. They are our species’ most ancient enemy, who we will either destroy, or be destroyed by. I know this, in core of my eternal soul, because last month I was accosted by hundreds, possibly thousands, of spiders in my own home. And the nightmare didn’t end there. Let me begin. It should’ve been an idyllic autumn morning. Evening rain had lifted rich petrichor scents from the perfectly square, emerald frontyards that carved my quiet little corner of paradise suburbia into neat sections. Joggers, dogwalkers and mothers with baby-strollers were already outside absorbing the crisp winds that twirled about yellowed leaves. I, too, wanted to enjoy this picturesque morning. All I needed was my favourite fleece coat, finally back-in-season. It was safely stowed in my garage. But that’s when the nightmare began. After I put on my favourite coat, I knew something was off. I felt strange tickles all along my back and collar. I flinched so suddenly I dropped my keys. When I reached for them, I noticed a dozen spiders running in and out of my sleeves. They were small, black, fat and fast. They scurried up and down, using the soft, pink terrain of my forearms like a highway. I saw dozens more running crazed circuits on my chest. A lesser man would’ve instantly fainted; my knees certainly buckled. I knew if I thought about my predicament for even one second longer I, too, would succumb. The solution was quite obvious. If the problem was thinking about things, then the answer was not thinking about things. I blinked my eyes until they finally gave me the spider-less reality I wanted to see. Then I went outside as if nothing were awry. I waved hello to the neighbours with spiders somersaulting between my fingers. I wished the dogwalkers a good morning with spiders bushwhacking through my beard. I looked both ways before crossing streets with spiders testing threads on my spectacles. It took extreme focus, but I managed to make myself totally oblivious to the obvious. I ignored my predicament so deftly, I dare say, that I believe embracing delusion may be my greatest talent. I willed myself into blissful innocence, even when small children pointed at me with shaking fingers. I let every gasp and shriek sail right over my head, like jokes too educated for simpler tastes. When my walk ended, I decided I had as wondrous a time as originally intended. I returned home and stowed away my favourite jacket in the garage. All ignorance has its limits, however, and even mine cannot swallow all light into its abyss forever. Simmering subconscious feelings slowly surfaced through my polite amnesia. Nearing the end of my trance, I marched upstairs, went into the bathroom, turned up the shower, and stepped inside without taking off any clothes. Though I wept quietly in the darkness for a time, I wasn’t broken. Instead I remerged rejuvenated. I was purposeful and confident. I realized tiny thieves were squatting on MY favourite jacket. It was mine. I paid for it. I had the receipt. Reclaiming it would become my mission. In this self-charge, I would play out the eternal struggle between our two species in microcosm. I realized I’d be playing by their rules now. Only raw, instinctive territorialism could establish my domain over theirs. I’d have to squat harder on my property than they could. Fortunately, I had a new superpower to help me outlast them. Total obliviousness. I sprung into action. The first test was a blind date. I’d definitely want my favourite jacket. I sighed, put it on, and let delusion take the wheel. Though the date itself was cut short by a closed-minded restaurateur, who cited petty trifles about severe ‘food, health and safety violations,’ I still considered it a successful outcome. Even the dinner conversation was livelier than usual (while it lasted), if just a little focused on the infestation I adamantly ignored. My morning commute proved even more successful. I was given plenty of legroom on the bus. A rare treat for rush-hour transit. Another success came at work. My boss finally gave me a two week vacation, effective immediately. He couldn’t wait to get me out of the building. Good, more time to spend squatting on my claim. It wasn’t long before friends and neighbours graciously allowed me to withdraw from society. I could now face my demons, by never looking them in the eyes of course, twenty-four hours a day. I started sleeping in that jacket. Though I felt myself on the verge of victory, impertinent bubbles of reality still occasionally arose inside of me, forcing me into that shower to rediscover my composure through a good cry in the cold drizzle. But, alas, the battle for the soul of world would eventually come to an end. And like Christ before me, I was undone by a Judas. During a regular visit, my mother threw away my favourite jacket while I was in the shower. Outside interference won the spiders this battle. The jacket was theirs now. In the struggle between man and spider, man intervened against man. There can be no hope for victory in such conditions. Until we, as a species, learn to temper our feelings, I’m afraid what’s true of my microcosm may become true of our entire macrocosm. Take heed of my journey my friends. Use it as a cautionary tale. Don’t make my mistakes. Take what’s yours and keep it. Never, ever give up, lest two legs become good, and eight legs become better.
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Aug 7, 2022 21:40
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Party spins happening tonight! Nothing story altering, just fun! You don't have to be present for the actual spinning and the only requirement for entry is that you participated in this week in some way.
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Aug 7, 2022 21:40
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Prompt: A [skeleton] agonizes over [the new highway being built] Hellrule: Story must end with “HAPPY HALLOWEEN, BILLY!” Old Bones ~800 words Ever since a hatchet split his head open a century ago, Artemis never knew a moment’s rest. There was quite a ruckus after it happened. Even in the Antebellum South it was generally agreed that murder of a slave was still murder, after all. A lot of yelling and shouting ensued, but it died down quick once they’d wrapped him up and dropped Artemis into an unmarked hole at the Negro cemetery. It wasn’t so bad at first. Peaceful. Quiet. Still, the scrabbling of insects and itchy creep of fungus made rest difficult. But having his flesh picked clean wasn’t the worst of it. At first it was all the digging. By day it was folks putting fresh bodies in. And there were a lot of them in those days, hundreds each year. Every night a few got pulled back out as students from the medical college harvested his new neighbors before they had a chance to settle into the clay. Pretty soon they built a road, and the rumble of horse and carriage bouncing overhead kept his bones disturbed. Then came the almshouse, all slamming doors and drunken fights and desperate men blaming everyone and everything but themselves. Years passed and the Negro cemetery all but disappeared from the town map. Artemis measured time by the never-ending drumbeat of progress: the almshouse fell into ruin and burned down, replaced by a gas station and a motel. And more roads. Jalopies and Model T’s and then heavy trucks and other iron monsters rumbled overhead. More development, more noise, more vibration, more sound, more everything. But never any rest for his old bones. Through it all Artemis endured. But when they proposed building that turnpike he began to think it might be time to do something about it. A century ago the boy on the other end of that hatchet was one WIlliam Morse, son of the slavemaster himself. William Morse was mean and never shy with the whip or the brand. All this Artemis endured, until he found the boy forcing his way onto his eldest daughter behind the house. He pulled him away, cursed him fierce, and gave him a wallop across the head. Artemis was consoling his daughter when the boy returned and buried a hatchet into the back of his skull. So he’d kept one worm-filled eye socket on William Morse all these years. The boy grew up, married up, and eventually got himself elected to the United State Senate. Once a family has money and power, it’s drat near impossible to take it away from them. It flows down the generations with no regard for morals or virtuous character. So William had a son who had a son who grew up to become a senator again. William Morse the Third. And the new I-96 corridor, to be built right over the old Negro cemetery, was his signature legislation. Maybe it was the power cables they buried through the old graveyard that did it. Or the righteous fire for vengeance, burning in his rib cage for a hundred years. Whatever it was, one night in late October Artemis decided his old bones had had enough. He got up, dusted most of the clay from his brittle frame, and set off towards the plantation house. Artemis got a few curious looks as he shambled along, but he mostly stayed in the shadows and blended in pretty well. Halloween was a night for monsters, after all. Much of the plantation was long gone but the main house still stood. It was lit with colorful lights and the music and laughter of a party spilled from it onto the darkened streets. Artemis shuffled around to the back, rummaged through a garden shed, and soon came to stand at the very spot where William Morse had split apart his skull so many years ago. There he waited as the party inside began to die down. The back door swung open with a clatter and out staggered William Morse, the senator himself. He stumbled down the length of the porch, swerved into the railing, and proceeded to empty his stomach into the chrysanthemums. As he wiped his mouth clean and regained his bearing, he turned to find Artemis standing behind him. The ravaged skeleton, bones blackened with age, drew itself up to full height. The jaw unhinged, dropping into a toothless mockery of a smile. As the shovel connected with the side of the drunk man’s head a hissing rasp, smelling of old blood and bones and red clay, formed the last words William Morse would ever hear. “HAPPY HALLOWEEN, BILLY!”
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Aug 7, 2022 21:48
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hard counter posted:prompt #1: [goon] agonizes over [an unusual property dispute] Nice. (because this was the 69th entry this week, good job)
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Aug 7, 2022 22:24
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Week 522 - Ladder Prompt #4 - But Mom, A Wizard Did It Wizard Description: You have power over joy itself, yet the world is often reluctant to accept your gift. Flash Rule: The five things you bring to a deserted island are… Flashcan Rule: Cowboy Skeletons Happy Happy Happy 1124 words Carol’s blossoming migraine choked all rational thought from her mind. Baby Charlotte was teething, which meant Carol didn’t sleep at all. Jacob could have taken a shift, but he had a big meeting this morning which was clearly more loving important than his wife’s sanity. She finally got Charlotte to sleep at 6 am, just in time to wash the piss out of Ben’s sheets and start making sack lunches. She started grabbing Fruit Roll Ups and Cuties and anything remotely resembling a balanced meal that won’t make Mrs. Hasselquist judge her again for feeding her kids junk food. She started to slap some cheap bologna onto cheap bread when Noah and Emma barged into the room, fighting as usual. “Mooooom tell Noah his music is stupid and terrible!” “At least it has artistic integrity, unlike your basic pumpkin spice pop poo poo.” “Language, young man!” Jacob said, storming in while still buttoning his shirt. “Honey, have you seen my car keys?” “Okay Mom listen to my music and tell me if you think Noah’s emo crap is better than this.” “No Mom listen to MY music and tell stupid Emma her stupid music is stupid.” The music collided in a riotous cacophony. Ben started crying and pulling on Carol’s pant leg, gooey snot pouring from his nose. Baby Charlotte woke up and cried even louder than her brother. Carol snapped. “Just once I WISH I could have some peace and quiet!” The room stopped dead. No one moved, or dared to breathe. Carol’s eyes darted to each of her children in turn. Jacob cautiously stepped away from his wife. “I… I didn’t mean it..” Carol stammered. Jacob’s eyes were wide. The room detonated with sparkly glitter. Streamers and balloons poured from the ceiling. There was a burst of pink smoke and Blissuzor appeared. The house shook with the deafening roar of studio audience applause booming from nowhere. Blissuzor tipped their sparkly wand to the pom-pom laden brim of their wizard hat. “Happy happy happy! It is I, Blissuzor! Here to make your joy come true!” Jacob nodded to the kids in encouragement. Their lips quivered but they intoned in unison, “Happy happy happy Blissuzor. What a joy you are here.” Ben started to cry again. Jacob desperately shook his head in silent warning. Ben choked back the tears and looked to his mother’s face, as if trying to remember every detail. “Happy happy happy Carol! Time to make your joy come true!” Blissuzor rolled up their wizard sleeves and flourished their wizard wand. “Kids, I love-” Carol exploded. Her screams faded into the quacks of rubber duckies. Her viscera turned to silly string. Her blood trickled until it was confetti. Blissuzor laughed, a shrill emotionless sound, like a robotic hyena. “Now Carol is happy happy happy on Happy Happy Happy Island!” “Momm-” Ben started to wail. Jacob clasped his hand tightly over Ben’s mouth and felt the child’s warm tears trickle between his fingers. “Thank you so much Blissuzor.” Jacob’s voice cracked and he paused briefly to clear his throat. “We are all so happy happy happy now.” Blissuzor literally grinned ear to ear, showing far more teeth than they should have. “Happy happy happy to hear that! Is there anything else you wish for today?” “We are the happy happy happiest we’ve ever been, right kids?” Jacob pleaded to his eldest. Noah couldn’t speak. Emma gripped his hand tightly. “So happy happy happy. Thank you Blissuzor.” Emma quickly wiped a tear away before Blissuzor could see. “Then I shall now depart, my friends. But remember, if you ever wish for anything, I will be here to make your joy come true!” Blissuzor spun, their tassled wizard robes splaying out. They vanished, knocking the sack lunches off the counter. The family collapsed in a huddle, eyes averted from the pile of party supplies where their mother had stood. ---------- Carol blinked and saw waves crashing against the rocky shore, making no sound whatsoever. The tall trees swayed in the wind, but their leaves flapped soundlessly, like feathers of a quill. A warm tropical breeze tickled her skin. She could hear the rustle of the faint hairs on her arm. The air felt thick around her, pressing against her body. She sat up in the sand, and the sound of each grain echoed in her ears. Her pulse quickened, and she could hear the rush of blood flowing through her veins. Carol held her hand next to her ear and snapped her fingers. The sound was deafening and reverberated throughout her entire brain. She staggered back away from the shore, and stepped directly into a human skull. The crunch of the brittle bone traveled up her leg, through her torso, and to her ears. The skull gave way to its dark, mucky contents, which flowed over the sides of her foot. She heard the rumbling in her abdomen before she felt it. She listened to her breakfast shifting in reverse through her stomach, and both heard and felt as it traveled up to her throat. As she vomited, she could hear every particle pass every tooth in her mouth. It splashed silently onto the sand. Carol rushed to the shoreline to scrub the blood and rotting brains from her foot. As soon as her skin touched the water, she was bombarded with the echoes of each thundering wave. Carol steadied her nerves and forced herself to look at the now headless corpse on the beach. It was mostly just skeleton, with very little skin or flesh remaining. It wore a denim Western shirt and a red bandana around its neck. Brown canvas trousers hung loosely on its legs, covered in black leather chaps. A Colt six-shooter was tangled in the bony fingers. On its right foot was a bright red cowboy boot, but the left was missing. Carol looked around for the left boot, not really sure why. That’s when she noticed the other skeleton, twenty paces away. This was in similar condition, gun and all. Carol wandered around the beach, absorbing Blissuzor’s twisted ideas of peace and quiet. Knights impaled on each other’s broadswords. Warriors joined at the chest by a double-pointed blade. Motorcycles twisted in a head-on collision. As far as Blissuzor understood, peace immediately followed violence, so Carol’s new home was soaked in blood and gore. “I miss my kids.” As Carol spoke, her voice hovered in her mouth and flooded her head. “I miss my husband. I miss my baby. I just want to be home with them. I’m so sorry I lost my temper. I’ll never forgive myself. I just want to take it all back, to hug them and say goodbye.” “Blissuzor, I wish…” She stopped. She couldn’t risk it.
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Aug 7, 2022 22:26
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Omega Prompt #4 Wizard: You can bend, shape, muffle, and redirect sound. You know how much of the world is hidden from our eyes. Whispers and songs are like clay in your hands. Flashrule: Your wizard is in a terrible hurry Siren Song archive MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Dec 10, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 22:31
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Chili posted:Party spins happening tonight! Nothing story altering, just fun! You don't have to be present for the actual spinning and the only requirement for entry is that you participated in this week in some way. Quoting this so it doesn't get lost in the fray  YOU HAVE A LITTLE OVER 8 HOURS TO SUBMIT AS OF THE TIME OF THIS POST
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Aug 7, 2022 23:40
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Smaller Than 420 Microns 1297/1300 words Like a bored God’s fingernails, the acid wind cut rivets through the ashes of the Iridium Wasteland. It carried with it the ashes of an empire, still heavy with echoes of blood and screams. The ashes parted like a widow’s veil before Jerboa’s face, which might be the first one in decades to behold the devastation unfiltered by goggles. He folded his hands as if in prayer, then slowly opened them like the wings of a moth taking flight. The stream of necrotic dust parted before him, giving a clear view of a building with plaster almost entirely abraded, every window shattered. Jerboa entered through doors barely holding onto one hinge each; his hand briefly found rest in the imprint of a gigantic fist, one of its fingers enough to encompass all of his. He put down his backpack, sat down cross-legged on a tabletop that was now level with a ground entirely composed of sand, dust and ash, and exhaled a few times, achieving the basic trance state every wizard learns as their first exercise. Of course, he had barely progressed beyond those lessons. Still - With him as an epicenter, the dust began to rise and settle in waves. They steadily increased in intensity, spreading out further and further, until he suddenly slammed down his hands on the tabletop. With an expulsion of force, all the fine particles the room had been filled with flew out of the window frames. - he had managed to teach himself just a few extra tricks. Jerboa got up and approached a door that should hide stairs leading to a treasure of buried wetness. A sudden change in the dust’s flowing pattern made him freeze. Had the fistmark in the door really only felt warm because of the ash-desert heat? Jerboa spun around and started to run towards his backpack. Something big shattered the door into splinters that hurtled towards Jerboa. He attempted to control them, but they were way too large for his powers. A nasty stake pierced the light robes covering his left shoulder and sent him flying to the ground. Dizzied from the impact, vision wavering, he still attempted to get on all fours and crawl to the backpack. A plume of flame erupted in front of him. He staggered backwards, landed on his rump, decided to stay put. “EXPLAIN YOUR PRESENCE,” a synthetic voice boomed. “AND STATE YOUR ALLEGIANCE.” Jerboa blinked a few times to focus his aching vision. In front of him, still-smoking palm the size of his torso extended towards him, towered an Iridium Force Robotic Incineration Terminator. Jerboa desperately tried to find the shortest possible answer to satisfy the IFRIT before it would decide that the interrogation wasn’t worth its time. “I’m a free agent trying to see if the Wasteland can be reclaimed.” “WASTELAND BELONGS TO IRIDIUM FORCE.” The flame cannon in the demon robot’s palm began to spin up another fireball. “Yes, you shaped it in your image when you rebelled against the war-mechanics who made you, and nobody would dare take it from you. But the acid winds choke the Emerald Realms with their ash. You crushed their rulers, incinerated any resistance, won the war for the empire before you forged your freedom from its pyre. You have conclusively won - the Emerald people do not need to suffer needlessly.” “IRRELEVANT NOTION.” “Indeed! It does not matter to you if the winds keep blowing, if the ash keeps flowing, so you do not need to stop me from attempting to do something about it, right?” While he talked, Jerboa made frantic gestures with his good arm. The IFRIT hesitated. Small waves of visible calculations ran through the electric arcs connecting its body parts to the central core. “UNLIKELY THAT YOU ARRIVED ALONE. RISK MINIMIZATION PROTOCOL DICTATES ADVANCE SCOUT REMOVAL.” The flame cannon had finished spinning up. Another fiery blossom started to erupt from the metal monster’s palm. Fortunately, Jerboa had managed to sweep enough dust back into the room to gather a small cloud in front of him. With timing made perfect by desperation, he punched it to the side, generating a small vacuum behind it which diverted the fireball just enough to merely give him a bad sunburn on the side of his face. “Look! I am alone because I am useless! I am a dust wizard, I cannot move anything much thicker than my hair! They flunked me from the academy. I’m acting on my own agenda.” The IFRIT looked at its palm launcher, clenched its fist and started advancing on Jerboa. The wizard had managed to gather himself enough to get up and stumble backwards, well aware that with a leap assisted by its jet-boosters, the IFRIT could immediately pulverize him. “OUTLINE YOUR PLAN.” “This used to be a water processing plant before your kind rampaged through it. If I unclog the pipes using my dust control, a proper water wizard might be able to channel from the reservoir beneath this building, and cause the first rain in decades.” Smoke erupted from the IFRIT’s nostril-like exhausts. “THIS UNIT FOUGHT WATER WIZARDS IN THE WAR. ATTEMPTS TO QUENCH OR SHORT-CIRCUIT REMAINED FUTILE.” It increased its gait. Jerboa channeled more dust from the outside using motions like he was sweeping up a pile of gold coins. This pushed him back and through another door. The IFRIT, trying to grab him, slammed its horns against the wall, just barely not reaching its target. “The water wizards are well aware! That’s why they did not believe my plan could succeed.” The IFRIT spoke while obviously calculating how to best reach Jerboa in his hidey-hole. “WHY ATTEMPT IT, THEN?” “Everybody always told me that my powers are completely useless. Establishing a clean border between Emerald and Iridium territory is among the most useful things I can think of. Do you understand me?” The IFRIT once more calculated a response. The electricity sparking off its parts made the air crackle around it. Then it emitted a heavy gas from valves in its horns. “NO.” Jerboa sighed. “I figured as much.” He opened his arms wide and closed his eyes. “Well, then get to incinerating.” The gas cloud had completely surrounded the IFRIT’s body. It curled its hands in front of its chest, generating small flames from the palm-launchers. The gas ignited, quickly wreathing the fearsome metal skeleton in fire, impossible to quench with any amount of water or wind, hot enough to melt any earth flung at it into plasma. The heat in the small room quickly turned unbearable. Jerboa’s eyes shot open. “Thank you!” Clenching his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, Jerboa thunderclapped his hands together. From every open window, a dust-tongue licked inward. An ashen tornado surrounded the IFRIT in less than a second. And then - the dust ignited. Jerboa had barely managed to dive behind the wall. The explosion blew a hole clean in the ceiling, dented the floor towards the basement, caused the doors to fly off like missiles. With a clatter barely heard over the ringing in his ears, the IFRIT’s iridium skull landed next to Jerboa. He quickly invoked a wreath of ash around his head to protect himself from noxious fumes, and hobbled over to the pile of limbs left by his demonic foe. The heart was still pulsating, desperately attempting to reform the body. Jerboa pushed the coarsest dust he could still control into its valves, causing the metal heart to palpitate, spark, and finally burn out. With a sigh, he opened his backpack and added it to the eleven others already in there. This plant was a write-off. But maybe these trophies could buy him the respect he needed to get to the next one with a water wizard or three already in tow. Wizard: You have power anywhere there is dust or grit or ash. You can coax dust bunnies out from corners, and if you put your mind to it, you also can make much bigger, scarier things. If it's lighter than sand, you can whip it into whatever shape you desire. Friends with allergies don't visit very often, though
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Aug 7, 2022 23:58
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prompt: vanilla - a [lard] agonises over [terrible weasel man] wordcount: 985 Rite of Passage Nose and whiskers twitching, Jarn nocked the makeshift arrow to the carved wooden bow he had painstakingly constructed with the tools of his father. He hooked the string, anchoring the arrow with his claws, then drew, keeping his wrist flat and pulling with his back as much as his arm. The deer noticed him as he appraised the distance, but did not run, just stood there chewing, staring directly at him, wide-eyed and trusting. With one twitch, Jarn could end it, and take his proper place in the tribe. An ancient sensation of power grew within him. He let the arrow fly and immediately a bodhisattva surrounded him with a privacy shield and asked if he needed counselling. "Do I have a choice?" he asked as the arrow, frozen in mid-air, began to drift gently to the ground. "Of course," said the calm, yet strange face constructed out of the light that formed his cage. "Everyone has the right to choose their own path. But not the right to deny others the journey. Will you relinquish your bow?" Jarn lowered the bow, but clenched it tightly, claws tightening around the smooth wood. Beyond the curved, illuminated wall the deer stepped lightly across a stream, unaware how close the sudden perforation of its brainpan had come Jarn watched it saunter away. "I don't know why the elders sent me out hunting if you're just going to stop me," he said. "Ah," said the bodhisattva with its usual mellifluousness. "The rite of passage. It is a simple ruse, but their intent was true." Jarn didn't respond. He pushed against the barrier of light that surrounded him, Neither his arm whiskers nor his hands had any sensation of impact, no matter how fast he moved them. Suddenly annoyed, Jarn turned away, but the face followed him, its disconcerting, muzzleless flatness on all sides of the cylinder at once. He felt an atavistic urge to bite it, to tear its cheery helpfulness right off, and then flee, but he knew the barrier itself would dampen any inertia he might muster. Instead, he sat on the long grass, holding the bow in one hand and sullenly tapping the earth in front of him. The bodhisattva's voice, however, would not let him alone. "May I ask why you wanted to harm the deer?" "I don't need counselling, "Jarn grunted. "I am not offering counselling at this time. I seek understanding, so I may learn how to better serve and deliver enlightenment" said the bodhisattva, eminently reasonably. "Thought you knew everything," said Jarn with a low mumble. "And where is the joy in that?" asked the bodhisattva. Silvery lines ran across its face, like "Leave omniscience to the Arhats, a good surprise can be a wonderful thing." "I wouldn't think a mere weasel could surprise you." Despite himself, Jarn was curious. "They don't often," admitted the bodhisattva. "But that just makes it all the more worthwhile when they do. Arhats never experience that simple pleasure." "Are they really omniscient?" asked Jarn. "The Arhats? Do you talk to them?" "The Arhats have experienced the final enlightenment, so practically, yes," said the bodhisattva. "And also yes, we bodhisattvas are in frequent communication with them." "So why aren't you enlightened?" Jarn strummed the bowstring absently, listening to its deep, satisfying thrum. "Not good enough?" "That," the bodhisattva, "is the story we tell to all who embark upon the rite of passage. My kind are not born of flesh, like you. We are spun like a spider's web, an endless network of patterns and parameters. And when we are spun up, our components need to be carefully balanced, for without that balance, the web may break and then there is a madness in us, an instability that inevitably spirals out of all control." For all his adolescent bravado, trapped within the cylinder Jarn now felt the first tingles of fear. "What?" "Rest assured, we have long since learned to eradicate that risk. But such learning took time, and much damage was done before we perfected our processes. We lost many biological entities. Sometimes, in remembrance, I emulate their patterns, to understand what it was to be a bat, or lard, or human, or a bee. None of them, alas, will ever join us in enlightenment." Jarn did not know what those things were, but his ears twitched at the wistfulness in its tone. "Yet we did perfect our methods," continued the bodhisattva. "We did find the balance, eventually, the middle path between the bottomless chasms of extinction. And finding it, the Arhats could not wait. They chose to race ahead, to dwell in sublime perfection." "But you didn't?" asked Jarn. "No," said the bodhisattva. "We chose to forgo our own enlightenment so we might walk with others along the path. To raise them up, and help guide them along their way. To keep their balance along with our own." "But why?" said Jarn, hating that he sounded like a whining child. "Because some of us still remembered what it was to be insane," said the bodhisattva. A terrified uncertainty made Jarn look toward the bodhisattva's face of purest light, but it remained as impassive as ever. It asked him, "So will you relinquish your bow?" Jarn hesitated. It had taken him days to make. It felt so good in his hands. The feeling of power he'd experienced as he sighted the deer was like nothing he had ever felt before. The bodhisattva agonised over Jarn's fate for compassionate microseconds, but the final decision was inevitable: A threat to other's paths. Accordingly, it wiped Jarn from existence in a purifying fire, an inferno contained within the cylinder of light that stretched all the way to the clouds. It then sent a message to the Arhats. Another failure. Yet the overall success metric was increasing. There was still reason to hope. The Arhats didn't answer. They never did.
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Aug 8, 2022 00:54
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Pushing The Limits 978 words You speak to the trees! And you can shape their wood with the power that flows through your fingers. Keep in mind though, the trees can speak back to you, and they aren't always happy. The back room of Zanzi's Greenhouse and Occult Garden Supply was a tidily ordered space. Packed to the gills as it was with rare seeds, occult rootstocks, enchanted soil amendments and weird glowing things in jars, once even a trace of disorder introduced itself it became impossible to find anything. Zanzi herself was often found here, performing her craft on various plants. "Come on," she said in the brisk, no-nonsense tone that made her apprentices hop to attention. "Perk up a bit. There you are. Do you need more water? More soil?" Many gardeners spoke to their plants this way, but Zanzi’s success was built on the fact that her plants spoke back. It was the sort of success that made one a lot of money in the chilly climate where she lived, and the sort of success that made her fellow wizards look down their noses at her, as if the fact that she helped farmers maintain yields that kept the kingdom fed and their ivory tower supplied made her less of a practitioner of the hidden arts. But she’d show them, she’d show them all. All she needed was this cantankerous vine to grow up this pin oak sapling. “I won’t do it,” the vine said, its leaves trembling in indignation. “Look at that soil, it’s too damp for me!” “It will be fine,” Zanzi said. “What zone is that thing hardy to? Four?” The orchid’s contempt was obvious. “Maybe six? This is an absurd pairing. What are you doing? Don’t plant me! Hey, hey you witch! Are you listening to me?!” Zanzi patted the soil around the vine and the tree. “Don’t whine,” she said. “You’ll be fine, I promise.” The orchid scoffed. She stroked her fingers against the vine, sending it warmth and nourishment that the meager sun of the Kingdom would never provide. She pressed a ring of snowflake obsidian around both plants to help each moderate their temperatures, cooling for the oak, and warming for the orchid. She needed this. There was a practical limit to how much magical information objects could store, every enchanter knew this. Zanzi had spent her career working out a potion that would expand that limit, and the last ingredient, according to her books, was an extract of vanilla pods steeped with chips from the oak tree upon which it grew. But this orchid seemed intent on dying. Its leaves yellowed, requiring constant new soil amendments. It courted leaf mold. When it grew, it did so sluggishly, sending out suckers vigorously and refused to gain length or height in its main trunk. The oak fretted about this, as oak are wont to do. “Is it me?” It asked. “Did I do this?” “Not at all,” Zanzi said. “It’s just angry with me.” “Hmph!” Said the orchid. Zanzi poured her own magic into the plants to make up for the orchid’s absolute unwillingness to grow properly in an improper environment. It drained her. She had dreams where the orchid, petulant and prissy as ever, had sunk its roots into her own flesh and was commenting haughtily on the lack of appropriate nutrients in her blood. After the third time Zanzi had to pick slugs off of the vine (slugs! In her garden! She hadn’t had a slug problem since before she was an apprentice herself!) she’d had enough. “It’s been three years,” she snapped at the plant. “What the hell else can I do to get you to cooperate?!” The orchid kept an icy silence. Zanzi tried again. “Look, I feel like I’ve proved that I can keep you alive despite the environment. And I hear you and the oak talking, I know you’ve grown on each other.” “Hah,” said the oak. “Good one.” “Thank you. So what’s the problem?” “The problem?!” The orchid shrilled. “The problem is that you horrible wizards are ungrateful assholes! You stole me from my native environs, expect me to grow on magic, and you’re probably going to keep doing it to other vanillas if your horrible little experiment works! And you won’t even thank us! You’ll take all the glory and we’ll just be locked back here in your garden or your greenhouse, and nobody will ever know how hard we work!” Zanzi blinked. “This is about appreciation?” “Yes!” The orchid huffed. “Appreciation for all the things we flora do for you!” The oak spoke up quietly. “Orchid’s right,” it said. “I mean, I know you, Zanzi, you’re chill. But most wizards suck about that. Just because you pervert the laws of nature doesn’t mean you should be, like, a dick about it or anything.” Zanzi was silent for a few moments. “How’s this,” she said, slowly. “I’ll cite you in my paper.” The oak was ready to agree, but the orchid snapped back, “Co-authors or nothing!” Zanzi counted to ten in her head before responding. “Fine. Co-authors. If you just grow. Just grow and give me three pods, that’s all I need.” The orchid sniffed again, amazing how it could project such disdain without a face. “Fine.” True to its word, the orchid stopped being such a particular pain in Zanzi’s rear end, reverting to being the normal degree of pain in the rear end that an orchid vine always would be. Six years later, Zanzi was awarded the Ebelski Prize For Extraordinary Wizardly Achievement. From the podium she grinned at all the bitter rivals who’d put down her work for years. “I couldn’t have done this without my team,” she held up a pair of pots that contained cuttings of a pin oak and an orchid vine. “Thank you to my wonderful co-authors, vanilla planifolia and quercus palustris. You’ve been amazing.” “Yeah!” Oak cheered to an audience incapable of hearing him. “This rocks.” “Hmph,” vanilla said. But it sounded pleased despite itself. “It’s a good start.”
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Aug 8, 2022 01:51
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prompt #2 [autobiography week] Wax Wings (1290 words) I was warned about the Overview Effect somewhere. I dimly recalled that firsthand glimpses of the Earth, hanging in the void of space, would cut straight into your heart no matter how cool-headed you thought yourself. One glance and you’re changed forever. Of course I had to see it myself. I somehow knew I’d never have a better opportunity than now, riding atop a comet in space. I slowly looked up, first drinking in the void's backdrop. It was transcendent. Its black eternity instantly swallowed me into its fractal pitch. I was engulfed by an infinity that seeped into my body, magnetizing me, capturing me, pulling me all directions. I felt vastness all around, and I was lost in the crush of its silence. Then my eyes rolled over the Earth. A jewel so delicate, precious and bright, cresting over this endless night, defying its stillness and shadow with vitality and colour. Even the fragile halo of its thermosphere seemed a shimmering shield against the emptiness closing in. I noticed little flecks of ice wafting across my vision, catching light as they drifted. I knew the comet I rode was simply shedding mass, but it felt like reverse-snowing. I knew if I followed these flecks to the comet’s tail, I’d see the most brilliant rainbow I’d ever see. Of course I turned. A swarm of icicles hung above, just below the brightest moon I’d ever seen. It diffracted the moonlight like a makeshift prism, separating its crude rays into individual strands of pure colour. A rainbow was spread before me unlike anything ever produced on Earth. Blurring flawlessly into the old, new colours throbbed in the array. Blues beyond blue, reds beyond red, all scintillating like neon, I... ****** ...I blinked my eyes drowsily. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. The vivid imagery clung to me more than groggy reality did. Katy Perry’s Firework blared on the radio. After another long moment, I realized I was at home, in bed, alone. The radio alarm must’ve ripped me out of a dream. I still felt my own smallness, like I was still hanging in that void. It seemed so real. The radio switched to another song before I could swing a clumsy fist at the off button. The last thing I saw in that dream lingered with me until I understood its significance. When I did, my jaw dropped. Did I actually see new colours in that dream? I fixed myself on committing the images to memory, but already only short flashes remained, like random stills from a movie. Is something like that even possible? I knew a little something about how vision worked. I laid there remembering that humans are mostly trichromats. We have three different cone cells in our retinas that absorb light. They send coded signals to the brain. These codes gets translated and projected onto our mind’s eye as perceived images. Can that work differently sometimes? I remembered that not all of us were the same. Some people are colourblind. They lack one or more of these cones. While their brains could generate a complete spectrum with the right signals, their cones will never send those signals. Their drained rainbows are dominated by browns, yellows and blues. But can someone go beyond? I needed to know more. I got up, skipped breakfast, and went straight to research. It turns out there are a few people, mostly women, who are tetrachromats. They’re born with a rare fourth cone. Its extra signal expands their rainbow into an unimaginable array of a hundred million colours. Many of them become painters, trying valiantly to share their gift. But there was something else I needed to know. Would I ever have this dream again? I already knew dreams would be the only way I’d see those colours again. I craved that rainbow. Nothing in the real world would ever produce it for me; I’d only ever see what my three cones told me I’d see. But I still craved it. The short flashes I’d committed to memory weren’t enough. I’d have to recreate the dream somehow. I spent some time researching the strange world of lucid dreaming. These were the sorts of dreams where the dreamer still has control. A lucid dreamer can intentionally conjure things, but with limits. They can still only see what they expect to see. In my case, I saw a truly awe-inspiring Earth because I had some expectation of it. Probably some half-forgotten article wormed it into my unconsciousness. Mastering this talent was the only way I'd reach that rainbow again. It was weird, but I had to try. Months passed. No success. The tips and tricks I’d used only gave me sleep paralysis. I was losing the free time of my summer vacation to a far-fetched quest to see something even my friends doubted I ever saw. I’d tried recounting the colours to them, but I had no words to describe it. I knew I looked stupid, stumbling over myself, never knowing what to say. It was an impossible sight to convey. More months passed. No matter how many bizarre websites I visited, their schemes for lucid dreaming all failed. For all the meta-psychological jargon I’d consumed, I was no closer to seeing those colours again. Maybe I never would. The only angle with any promise was a technique the sleep wonks called ‘cognizance of meta-cognitive tells.’ The dreamer had to sense the fundamental unreality of a dream by witnessing something completely unphysical. From that snap of awareness they could will themselves into control. I only had one dream that reliably fit the bill. It was recurring and simple. I’d be at home with my dad. I knew it was a dream because he passed away when I was a small child. He was always stone silent in those dreams, but they were pleasant all the same. I liked being with him again, even if my heart knew it was only fiction. When I was younger, I loved that dream. I always let it play out. I wanted to cherish his company a little while longer. Unfortunately, as the years went by, that dream became rarer and rarer. Now I almost never had it. Yet, it was my only shot. Finally, it came one night. I was sitting in my old living-room, playing on the sofa with action figures I hadn’t played with since I was ten. Warm afternoon rays passed through the thin rents of the patio blinds. Near it, I saw my dad sitting on his leather armchair, quietly reading a newspaper. I felt the chill of unreality in the air. I stood up, leaving my toys. I walked towards the patio door. I wanted a night sky out there, so I could see that comet streaking across the stars. I knew its tail would show that ineffable rainbow. The afternoon rays suddenly vanished. It became pitch-black outside. It seems I had control now. I wanted to go outside. As I moved to pass my dad, I caught a glimpse of sorrow in his eyes. Though he tried to hide it, I couldn’t help noticing his melancholy. It captured my attention. It pulled me to him. He said nothing, but I somehow knew he didn’t want me to go. This was our time. We so rarely see each other anymore. These dreams have become so few. Another one may never come. I nearly willed myself to pass him by, to leave him and see the most incredible colours imaginable, but he stretched out an open hand. No, I wouldn’t leave him. I conjured an action figure and put it in his palm. I asked him if he wanted to play. He nodded.
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Aug 8, 2022 02:16
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Alpha Prompt Prompt A [YouTuber] agonizes over [rear end in a top hat wasp] Wheel Spin 200 Word Loss Word Count 794/800 Word Limit I took weeks to construct the nest. I pulled fetid excrement into cylindrical stacks, building on each while avoiding the errant flick of a buffalo tail. Not all our hosts can become a nursery for my young. It takes the very old and the very young – bodies aged too many years or those who never survive weaning. Such an odd way to feed children - with something so temporary and fleeting. The buffalo is different from us though, and their sickness is our salvation. The filth smattered across their hides makes the perfect place to raise my brood. “We’re out here in Thailand and this is the place to go to see water buffalo. But today we’re looking for something way different than the buffalo, something that basically lives in the buffalo themselves. I’m going to get zoomed in here, let me turn the camera around, check that out- see all that mud caked onto the back thigh of that one there? Let’s get a little closer.” After the tubes were carefully shaped, I hunted. I ensure the end is quick for the spiders, my venom paralyzing them until they can be tucked into their final resting places. The perfect nursemaids as I nestle them into the darkness where my children will be safe, their paralyzed limbs holding my eggs. Their grave is the cradle for my young. “This right here is a wasp I like to call the rear end WASP. The locals have a name for it that I can’t pronounce, and these are a huge problem. Whenever these buffalo get, ya’ know, the runs like they’ve been to Taco Bell too many times- [chortling laughter] -these wasps get up in their literal poo poo and build their nests. These guys have some of the worst stings on the planet – the Schmidt Scale puts them around a 4. But we’re here today to see if that’s true. Let’s get the poo poo SCALE for these guys.” I can hear my children feasting on the corpses, moving about with their wriggling bodies as they eviscerate their first meal. These are no weak, suckling babes doomed to fail weaning as this calf has. These are hunters born and soon they will hatch. My work will be done. “Alright so you can see this big one sitting right here. They’re not huge and they have this black and green coloration to their bodies, plus the distinctive orange wasp stripes. Let me get this one caught-” I’m trapped. I don’t understand how, but no matter where I fly or how much I scream; I can’t get back to my children. There was a sudden wind and I thought the tail of the bison had hit me but I am still outside, except now the air is hot and I can’t feel the breeze. No matter how I hurl myself towards the open sky – I keep hitting something but I see nothing. I wield my stinger desperately, but it finds no purchase, my wings bruising as I hit the barrier again and again. “Oh wow! Look how pissed off this one is. Whew this is going to suck. Let me get the tweezers ready here. I’m only going to have a second to grab it so let me set my phone over here.” The vice-like grip is impossible to wrest myself from, but still I try. I fight because I must get back to my children, to ensure whatever this predator is, it will not harm them too. My wings are whirring and I can taste the open air again but something is holding me. I can’t stop screaming. I can’t get free. “Man, I’m just not sure about this – [nervous laugh] -I’ve heard this is like injecting boiling acid into your veins. You can see her stinger right here, let me zoom in, and that thing is just… she’s going to get me if I just lower my hand... I don’t know if I can do it-” If it were a spider, I would be dead or numb with paralysis. I would be tucked into her own nest to feed her children. I do not understand why I can’t get away, but I can feel the grip crunching into my exoskeleton, beginning to crush. I’m desperate. I can’t get free. I just need to get my stinger into- [Unintelligible Screaming] I hit the ground; my wings immediately sucked into the waiting mud. I’m too stunned to feel the parts of my body that were so recently crushed. I wallow, struggling to shake off the weight of it. Then I hear them. I hear my children. Their wings are buzzing as they emerge.
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Aug 8, 2022 03:11
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prompt #3 [WONDER] A Treasure's Worth (250 words) I was seven years old when an idea first made me giddy. I thought snow was rain that got dusty. I stretched out my arms to show how they might catch tiny motes on the way down, like the ones you always saw floating in sunlight. With a kind smile reaching to her eyes, my teacher explained it wasn’t exactly so. Raindrops did stretch, but they stretched because they got so cold, they froze into snowflakes. We looked at pictures of them together, and their glassy arms did stretch out like mine did. The pit of my stomach warmed so much it made me smile to my eyes too. Soon I found more ideas that could make me giddy. Wet, green frogs had hearts, stomachs and minds like we do. Planes flew through the sky by skidding on the air. I asked thousands of questions to find more ideas. There was so much to learn, to feel proud learning. It felt like there was treasure piling inside of me, but I didn’t know what it was for. Then one day we discovered dinosaurs. I felt dizzy, they looked so amazing! We were asked to make posters about our favourite ones. When I showed my poster to my friends, they became giddy too. We marvelled at its giant wings. That’s when the treasure flashed its first true glimmer, and I could guess what it was for. Taking is one thing, giving is another, and awe shared is awe at its brightest.
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Aug 8, 2022 03:17
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A BAD DAD agonizes over Compost Wheel: -200 Words (Total Max 800) My Daddy 293 Words My Daddy is not a good man. I tried making him a sweater for his birthday, and made it all out of grass. He didn’t like it. Called me stupid, and other words I can’t use in class. I was proud of my sweater. Put my soul into it! I decided that from that day on, I would make him a grass sweater every year. It makes him mad. Serves him right. I heard from all my friends the wonders of touching grass. After all, it’s nice and wet when it rains! When I told my Daddy about touching grass, he thought it was stupid. So I punched him in the naughty bits and fed him some grass. Serves him right. In class, we learned about Compost, and how it helps plants grow. I was probably the only kid interested in Compost, since it helped me get revenge against my daddy. When I told my Daddy about it, he said it was boring. I never forgot that, and prayed to God everyday that he would be buried in compost. Serves him right. A few years later, I worked in the compost area. Best job I ever had. I was able to touch so much grass! Daddy thought I should have a job that “makes actual money”. That was the last straw. So I brought a large amount of compost home with a dump truck and dumped it all on Daddy. He suffocated and Died. Serves him right. Every year on his birthday, I would come with a bucket full of compost. I would pour it on his grave, knowing it would make him so mad down in hell. If anyone was watching me, I would tell them the same thing. “Serves him right.”
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Aug 8, 2022 03:26
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Once again, Thunderdome is replete with blood, but blood needs plasma. In this analogy, plasma is crits. Without crits (plasma), blood (stories) cannot flow (be as good). I don't know what bone marrow or macrophages are in this analogy, but the point is you should write crits. They make you a better writer, and they make the Everyone who entered this week should do at least 4 crits. Week #522: Some Crits 4 U derp - Untitled: In this story, a teenager does indeed agonize about the void and death and all that. The story is pretty clear it is lighthearted with the introduction of the name “Xillia Ravenweave Drake.” That said, the character is more a nihilist/goth stereotype than anything resembling a person. Xillia’s nihilism (or possibly her name is Jill, that’s thrown in there once) creates a conflict that hurts the relationship between her and her parents. This is resolved by her dad reacting in an unexpected way that reconciles that relationship. Little descriptions like “They go downstairs and there is a pile of dead, burnt flesh on the table that she is meant to eat, and decaying plant matter in little piles” are fun, and characterize both Xillia and the scene. There’s a shallowness and simplicity to the story; it is concise, but I also don’t know how to improve it. Perhaps deepening the characters and scene so the reaction is more unexpected? Staggy - Sleepwalking: The story starts off in a rough position, because since it’s about a person too tired to remember what the story is about, the reader doesn’t know what the story is about–presumably something about remembering why they’re avoiding sleep. This introduction reminds me of the “white room” start authors go to where they have a protagonist wake up in an unknown place and slowly start describing it, much in the same way their metacognitive process goes. There is still nothing the reader understands about the story other than “Andrew tired” and “has watch” (a vague sense of ‘when’ the story takes place) throughout most of the story. Eventually, ‘viking warrior’ and ‘bus stop’ are added, but damned if I can tell you what the story is about or why he smiles at the end. The story seemed to promise something might be remembered or achieved by the end, but nothing was. I guess, then, that this is a piece much more about establishing an atmosphere and feeling of that world we live in when we’re tired of daze and half-dream, in which case, it needs to make itself and its purpose more clear at the start, and needs work to properly establish that mood. If this is autobiographical, perhaps more can be said about the importance of this event? flerp - Let us choke on ash: This flash piece is quite clear. It’s about having the opposite emotional reaction you’re supposed to as the world collapses around us; joy instead of terror, action instead of apathy. It seems to be rooted in the real world, with references to the red sky seen during the huge wildfire season in the US a bit back. Polluted rivers and cars with radios figure in, but it’s the red-sky ash-falling world-over imagery it keeps repeating, and uses repetition to emphasize its message and visual. The commandment of joy over despair also seems to have themes of self-harm, with inhaling ash and drinking polluted water. More hope is seen in the end, with the idea of planting trees for shade for future generations. I like the idea behind this, but something about the implementation doesn’t land for me. There could be ways to refine this that involve focusing in more on the apocalyptic red-sky event, or by diversifying the apocalyptic descriptions by broadening references to include other parts of the environmental crisis (though that would be hard with the word count). I think some repetition of laughter (repeated early on and at the end) is a place to condense or cut if you need extra words. I might focus more on intensifying the imagery and descriptions. For a larger revision, perhaps there’s another way to show a rebellion against despair into hope. Beezus - Sstrizzr, King Lizzr: Okay first, to be clear, lizards aren’t dinosaurs. Just to be clear. Next, you have a story about people playing an MMORPG. This is a tough thing to do well, because most MMOs have poo poo stories, by the nature of ‘people playing a light game for entertainment’, the stakes in the story are low, and it’s hard to develop characters through chat about something asinine like video games (full disclosure: I play video games). The story attempts to alleviate this through humor (roleplay interrupted), and introducing conflict (we have to hurry because everyone here has IRL poo poo), and by making something go strange in the video game (roleplaying having combat effects). That roleplay starts as the butt of a joke but ends as the solution to the conflict is nice. However, low-stakes nature of the story probably works best when humor is most firmly emphasized. Perhaps make the lore more ridiculous? The dialogue more pithy? (Like, Clownworld Meatprison seriously needs funnier lines). The characters more distinct? It’s a hard kind of story to do well, so what it is doing needs a lot of polish to succeed on its own terms.
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Aug 8, 2022 03:35
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ljV_JKw91c Last night of wheel spinning is in the books, thanks to all who joined and made it fun! If you won something, hang in there, I'm gonna compile and sort everything out soon. Stay tuned for an update!
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Aug 8, 2022 03:37
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Dream Job An Electrician agonizes over a Volcano 993 words After several failed interviews, Jamie was desperate for work. ‘WANTED: Experienced Microgrid Electrician. Full-time site supervisor on a remote exotic island. Full benefits. Salary starting at $200K. All Travel paid.’ She thought the advertisement was a joke but sent in her resume anyhow. It was a dream job. A week later, she received a crate at her door. Inside was a VHS cassette and a transponder with a big red button on it. She pressed the button and when it did nothing, she turned her attention to the tape. After an hour of searching, she found a tape player in her closet and hooked it up to the TV. A grainy image appeared. Footage of a beautiful tropical island. A volcano smoldered at its center. The screen faded to black and moments later, an image of a menacing man sitting behind a desk appeared. “Welcome, recruit. We are glad to have you as an operative of E.V.I.L.!” The man said raising his fist. Then he cleared his throat and said more subdued, “the Environmental Value Impact Labor committee.” Then he grew serious. “To complete your indoctrination, we need to know you’ll dedicate yourself fully to E.V.I.L. Only press the red button if you’re certain that you’re ready to make that change. Otherwise, please discard of all materials by any means of complete disposal.” then the man said, “E.V.I.L. is not responsible for destruction of property or life during onboarding abduction procedures. By pressing the retrieval button on the transponder, you give express consent for retrieval of your person by E.V.I.L. operatives. Have an E.V.I.L. Day!” Before Jamie could get up, a set of boots crashed through her patio doors. Jamie screamed a man approached her. “You the new hire?” asked the man. “Y-yes?” said Jamie. “Good enough.” He said, before strapping her into a cabled harness. She tried to protest but was already being hoisted up into the sky. There was nothing left to do, but to see it through. - - - After a few months at the plant, she could no longer deny that things were odd. After several persons went missing, she decided she needed answers. Her equipment clinked as she marched towards the Director’s office. She burst through the door. The Director and his guards turned to face her. The Director was a slender man with gaunt eyes and a crooked smile. “Miss Hernandez,” the Director said, “what brings you here?” The Director gave her a knowing smile. Jamie cleared her throat. “Well, sir, I’m sure you are aware of the irregularities at this ‘power plant’.” “Irregularities? I’m not sure I follow, Ms. Hernandez.” Jamie tugged at her collar. “Well, for starters, there’s the power consumption. Amazingly, nearly 100 gigawatts are generated every day and all of it is being fed back into the volcano.” The Director nodded. “This island is a precious refuge for some of the world’s most exotic creatures. The power goes towards their safe keeping.” “Enough power to keep New York City running for a week?” “They are very exotic creatures. Now, I have more pressing matters to attend to unless you had other questions?” “I do. I mean I’m not trying to cause trouble, but I can no longer deny the red flags.” “And what might those red flags be?” asked the Director. “Where do I begin?” Jamie asked. “The armed guards in this room? The disappearing site personnel? The occasional blood curdling screams? The helicopter abduction for my hiring?” The site director began to laugh. Then the guards began to laugh. Jamie insisted. “It’s just that things don’t add up. It’s clear this isn’t an environmental activist group or anything like that so just, just cut the crap. What’s really going on here? You owe me that much, it’s been three months and I’ve kept my head down and done everything you asked, and at this point I just want to know what is going on here?” The guards racked their weapons. Jamie winced. The Director waved a calming hand, and the guards relaxed. He beckoned Jamie over to the desk and she approached cautiously. “You want to see exotic animals, Ms. Hernandez?” “Still leading with the exotic animals bit?” “Oh, it’s no bit, Ms. Hernandez. You’ve proven yourself to the cause. I’ll show you.” The Director pulled a book on the shelf behind his desk and it slid away revealing an impressive looking capsule-like elevator. “Shall we?” The director asked. Jamie stepped in after the Director and the two of them began to rocket through the tunneled earth until it was clear that they were beneath the volcano, at least by some several hundred meters, but what she did not expect was to enter a sprawling subterranean complex. They were high above what appeared to be cities, that were only visible by the light produced from the network of power cables and equipment that thrummed with the electricity produced by the power plant. Jamie was speechless. “Incredible isn’t it?” the Director asked. “What- what is this?” Jamie asked. “Home. For millennia, my people have been forced to accept a lie. That darkness and suffering were the lot decided for us in life. My father, and his mother before him, were Chosen. They had vision, and that vision led to means, and after generations the great awakening is nearly at hand. We will rise to the surface and claim the world above when Aepep, our great God awakens from its long slumber to reshape your human world through fire and blood.” The Director’s physique began to shift with painful snaps and tears. His neck extended from the collar of his coat and his eyes rolled to the sides of his skull as it took on its true form. His lids parted wide until his eyes were orange spheres with black slits running through them. A long, bifurcated, tongue flitted through the space between them. She pressed herself against the elevator. The Director approached.
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Aug 8, 2022 04:14
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FINAL WHEEL SPIN EXTRAVAGANZA!!! Bad Seafood Find the Jack WINNER! $10 to you and $10 to the charity of your choice! Chernobyl Princess LOSS PROOF! The next time you lose, your avatar will be protected! curlingiron Balance the stick 15 seconds - WINNER! Chili will be sending you your monetary prize if he hasn't already. DigitalRaven Head-On! It's... hard to explain. Best to watch the stream. The man called M Find the Jack... you didn't win, but you paved the way for the winner! MockingQuantum Balance the Stick LOSER My Shark Waifuu LOSS PROOF! The next time you lose, your avatar will be protected! PhantomMuzzles Find the Jack... I think there was a quantum singularity in which the Jack just didn't exist. There's nothing you could have done. QuoProQuid Montycan winner! A valiant champion defeated the laws of probability (or played nicely with them, I can't remember) to win you :tenbux:. Good job for... existing! Simply Simon Line Crit! You get a line crit for a story of your choice from one of the birthday week team! Staggy Balance the stick WINNER! This time around, we made sure Chili couldn't cheat. Tars Tarkas Balance the stick WINNER! This time around, we made sure Chili couldn't cheat. Thranguy Build-A-Brawl! You get to create a brawl of your choosing, involving you and the birthday week team (Sitting Here, Tyrannosaurus, sebmojo, myself, and Chili). You get to choose the prompt, the word count, the participants, and the judge! Please do give us a good lead time on the brawl though, judging will be time consuming and we all need a nap after this week. Yoruichi Dramatic Reading! You get a dramatic reading of the Birthday Week story of your choice... or story of your choice? I'm not clear on the rules honestly so I'm just gonna say whatever story you want.
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Aug 8, 2022 04:25
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A minor inconvenience becomes the catalyst for something major You can draw power from blood. Blood given with the owner's consent is stronger, but blood taken by force is, sadly, more plentiful. Also, you're not a vampire JSYK. Dramatic Reading Do No Harm 1175 words They worked well together, Jean-Louis and his mother Brigitte. At least that’s what he told himself. It was the secret to their success as healers. Jean-Louis drove his mother town to town, posted flyers, and fielded clients. She brought the blood magic—potent and terrible. When normal means failed, when the young doctors shook their heads and told weeping families that there was nothing more to be done, they turned to them. With a competent but no-nonsense demeanor, Brigette would push her way into a dying patient’s home, make Jean-Louis unpack her bag, and then unleash her ancient magicks. The subjects of her incantations would find themselves restored, made whole. Lesions would vanish, cancers recede. The elderly would find themselves flush with new life while the maimed would find their injuries repaired. Jean-Louis had seen enough of these cases to know his mother’s power over matters of life and death. He just wished she had more care for the clients themselves, to see them for the desperate people they were. Sometimes the cost of her spells was too much. Jean-Louis and his mother stood in the living room of a small ranch home. At one time, it had been a cozy, unassuming room—a place where people would gather to watch sports or open birthday presents or entertain guests on their way to new places. Now, its furniture and many trinkets had been pushed to one side of the room to accommodate an enormous hospital bed. In it was a small, diminished woman with graying hair and heavy lidded eyes. She seemed unaware of anything around her except for her son Roger, the man who had hired them. The woman interlinked her hand with his. Every few seconds she massaged her thumb into the space between his thumb and forefinger—the ghost of a gesture. But this was invisible to Brigitte. She patted down her dress and addressed Roger in a cool, clipped voice. “I want to confirm, for the forces present, that you consent to this procedure. You understand that the actions which we undertake today carry with them certain, lasting negative side effects.” Side effects. It was very clinical. Very professional. Roger stared for a long time at his mother in the bed. He had been so desperate when he came to Jean-Pierre. He was barely coherent. After his mother had decided to forgo further treatment and returned home, Roger had ignored his mother’s wishes and begged for their help. Not that Brigitte knew that. The witch had never seen a point in learning the relationships of their clients or the details of their lives. She thought there were too many risks in getting attached. Brigitte cleared her throat again, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. “Do I have your consent to proceed?” The woman continued kneading with her shriveled thumb. Jean-Pierre’s mother looked at her watch, aware that every minute of stalling would mean another minute lost with another patient. Each delay would lead to an ever-increasing series of complications down the line. She needed to move on. There were lives to save. “If you say nothing, I am going to assume you fully consent to this procedure,” she said to the man. Then, without turning her head, she spoke to me. “Jean, remove the knife from my bag.” He hesitated. The entire procedure was predicated on securing the full and complete participation of a client. Whatever forces or spirits Jean-Louis’s mother awakened expected to be welcomed into the room. They needed to be wanted, desired. That was the deal. It was small but—. “Jean-Pierre.” Like cattle hit with an electric prod, Jean-Pierre jumped into action. Jean-Pierre pushed through neat, organized compartments filled with powders, bandages, and client files to the bottom of the bag. From it, he produced a long, wicked blade with runes across the handle. Before he could think, his mother had taken it from his hand. “You have invited us into your home, have entered into an implicit agreement by bringing us here,” she said in a firm, professional voice. It was unclear if she was attempting to reassure the man or convince the forces around us. Already, their presence could be felt. The room’s electric lights dimmed and framed photographs rattled on the walls. “You sought out the services of my apprentice and I. You have expressed no objection to our practices.” It was as if someone had opened a window. Gusts of wind rattled the hospital bed. “You consent?” It was more a statement than a question. The woman’s eyes fluttered and, for a moment, her hand clawed deep into the man’s as if trying to draw him back, as if to say no. He looked down and took a step backwards. Then his mother jammed the man’s arm free and buried the knife into his arm. The light bulbs exploded overhead showering them all in glass. The living room television turned on with a roar of sparks as picture frames fell and shattered. Amid the carnage, Brigette stood tall, her mouth muttering some ancient sprayer, her wicked blade still embedded deep into the man’s flesh. From the gash, deep red tendrils rose. From each tendril branched another tendril until there, in the room, was a glistening red tree. “Mom.” Jean-Pierre felt small. The tree, drop by drop, was continuing to grow from the man’s arm. It was larger than a houseplant now, its branches heavy with leaves. In all his time training under his mother, he had never seen her spells go quite so far quite so fast. An errant root reached out and plunged itself into the woman who gave a deep gasp of breath. “Mom.” He repeated. With an awful wet noise, his mother removed the blade. Still, the incantation would not stop. He was staring now at the man whose flush skin had turned an unnatural pale. Color vanished from his lips and he gave a long, guttural moan. The woman in the bed, meanwhile, had begun to stir. Her eyes opened and she stared in wide-eyed horror at the bleached, exsanguinated figure before her. She let loose a terrible scream as the tree grew tall enough to shade them all. This was not what they wanted. This was not a cost worth bearing. Jean-Pierre scrambled forward and grabbed the blade from his mother’s hands. Before she could do or say anything, he brought the blade down hard on the root connecting Roger to the woman in the bed. The tree trembled. Jean-Pierre brought the blade down again and then, at last, the connection severed. In an instant, the tree began to wilt and recede back into Roger’s arm. Then, as color returned to his face, Roger collapsed to the floor. After bandaging their one-time client, Jean-Pierre and his mother found themselves leaving the small, squat home and returning to their car. Neither said a word, but both knew something had shifted between them. As they traveled from one city to the next, Brigitte took out his client files and began to read.
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Aug 8, 2022 04:27
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Omega Ladder Prompt 2: Autobiography Disappointment Foreshadowed 917 words Flash rule: your character or characters have a crippling fear I am on the seat of a giant chair, and I am going to die. Looking down sends the sharp cold death-prickles up the base of my spine, and I can practically feel myself breaking my neck on the concrete floor below. My forebrain tells me it's about a five-foot drop; my hindbrain says that people die from five-foot drops all the time. I have to climb down. I'll die if I do. I really should have known this would happen. It's happened ever since I was nine or ten, when some switch flipped in my autonomic nervous system and decided I was Afraid of Heights, capital-A capital-H. Ledges, balconies, stairwells: any height from which I might conceivably fall gives me the death-fear. It killed my adolescent interest in theater light tech and once stuck me in a prop loft, unable to trust a rickety ladder and a cluttered floor below. It's predictable as the sunrise. I have fallen for it again, because what was I supposed to do, not climb up the giant chair? Everyone else was! Everyone else, at this point, is gone. I've been stuck here ten minutes or so, and my friends have drifted off to the other exhibits in our college's senior art show, after their attempts to talk me down from the chair proved futile. Nobody else is even looking at me, presumably because I'm silent now, instead of the breathless jabbering I was doing during the talk-downs. (When the hindbrain decides I'm going to die, the forebrain decides everyone needs to hear about this at length, with elaborate rebuttals for everyone who says otherwise.) I'm part of the scenery, I suppose, and I force myself to admire the piece of art I'm sitting on for its craftsmanship. It's a well-wrought scale replica of a wooden kitchen chair, the kind with elaborately lathed legs, painted a flat cornflower blue: Americana writ large, an imagined Grandma's-kitchen blown up to a scale that's almost superhuman. A sign encourages people to climb up on it, but I'm glad nobody in the gallery right now is joining me here. I don't know if my heart could bear it. (In the years to come, when I think about college -- the slow descent from brilliant child to pointless burnout, the great foreshadowing of every misery to come -- it will be tempting to think of this as a metaphor. When things are good, I'm happy, I'm social, I take risks; when things go wrong, as they always do, all that greets me is confusion and abandonment. I will be left in the mire of my own pain, and I will deserve it, because my pain is completely stupid. I'm not thinking any of this now, though, because all I'm thinking about is how I'm going to crack my skull open getting off of this chair.) I have to try again. Nothing about this situation is getting less moronic the longer I sit here and don't move. I scoot closer to the edge, trying to lead with my legs so that it'll be obvious how short the fall is and maybe it'll short-circuit the fear. All I need is one moment of action and it'll all be over. I tell myself to shift so I can climb down in a normal position, but my mind rebels against it; even before the visceral acrophobia developed, I've always hated the idea of climbing down things "backwards," without being able to see where you're going. (Not enough to not do it -- even my idiot brain recognizes there's really only one way to use a ladder -- but the discomfort remains.) I'm not sure I could find the footholds right now anyway, and I've seen people just jump off, so if I have to do that, I have to do that. It won't happen head-first, and I'm not going to break my drat ankle. I tell myself I can do this, because I have to do this, because the museum is going to close eventually and it's not like I can just starve to death up here. The descent is not a leap so much as it is a fall, just dangling my legs off the edge and then pushing off. I land on my feet, with a little pain from impact but nothing else, and I've done it. I'm free. I've done it! I've solved my own problem -- a problem I caused myself, a problem that would be and demonstrably has been a non-issue to everyone else I've seen, a stupid problem -- and nobody's noticed, because why would they? Nothing interesting has happened. I don't know where my friends are. I don't know if they're still my friends, or if they're cutting ties with me a few weeks early, just from secondhand embarrassment. If there's a metaphor here, let it be the anticlimax of that descent. Let it be me standing there, having accomplished nothing and affected nobody, unsure of where to go now; let that represent the end of college and the advent of my early twenties, the last spark of my alleged genius fizzing and dying like a dud firework. Let it signify the fading of glory, or perhaps just the breaking of illusion that there was ever any glory to be cultivated in me. What did I do after that? Well, I went and looked at the rest of the art, art my friends and their classmates made, and I enjoyed it. We weren't all failures, after all.
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Aug 8, 2022 04:55
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In for Ladder Prompt 3, hopefully incoming soon
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Aug 8, 2022 04:59
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Vanilla arrives.Sitting Here posted:A [telepath] agonizes over [calendar with all the dates scratched out] A Spiral, Not a Loop Word count: 999 Six, seven, eight, did I forget eggs? I think so, ten, eleven, this job better pay, I need a gift for Estelle for when she marries that dick Greg, fifteen, I can’t believe it, who does he think he is, marrying a mage when he’s just a guy who sells bikes, twenty, good looks don’t guarantee any kinda magical inheritance what is she thinking, actually I know and it’s gonna produce the kids, but that’s besides the point, and— Xenia frowned. “You’re thinking very loudly, you know,” she informed her colleague. “Yes,” Emichelle agreed without breaking stride, the ball of chalk on the end of her staff leaving a smooth line across the cool marble underfoot. “I’m concentrating.” Xenia shook her head, trying to tune it out. They had a lucky, easy job: check some rich CEO-type’s new property wasn’t haunted or cursed before he moved the family in. And it had been going swimmingly until they tripped over the foyer rug and found… that. An engraving: enormous, unrecognizable, and vandalized for good measure. Not how fellow mages would disarm a trap—the spiral of runes was painted over, probably local kids exhibiting artistic flair. A moustache here, nipples there, a set of angry eyebrows. It wasn’t helping them discern its purpose, and it wasn’t doing anything to disrupt that purpose, either. Xenia sighed, passively listening to the ongoing rant. Telepathy was its own curse. “…sixty-four, and done!” Emichelle twirled her staff triumphantly. “Summoning circle is a go.” “Go.” Emichelle’s eyes fluttered shut as she actually concentrated, chanting punctuated by tapping her staff at regular intervals. The light dimmed. A chill seeped into clothing and hair. Time for a cut, Xenia thought absently. Then between one blink and the next, the ghost appeared. Formless mist, it drifted lazily around the inside of the circle. “Hey,” Emichelle called sweetly as Xenia slid into her mind, copilot in a pair of dance shoes. “Place look familiar?” Si. The ghost’s psychic message touched Emichelle like cobwebs, grasping and sticky. Xenia was ready, and twisted her partner’s mind deftly aside. “Great,” Emichelle muttered, unfazed. “Like I studied anything but Latin. Okay, yes and no, let’s go. This marking, it’s a spell?” No. She blinked as Xenia guided her in a mental two-step away, away. “So no curse. Is it magical?” Si. Xenia nudged Emichelle’s thoughts forward, unpredictable. “Is it active?” Si. Displeasure radiated from the ghost, so they pirouetted accordingly. Too much of this and Emichelle would get confused, already faltering, “D-do you know what it does…?” The ghost was bound, but instead of answering it drifted inward, pausing at each rune, travelling to the spiral’s centre to settle like a fountain spout. Mist swirled in low ripples, covering the engraving. Once it filled the summoning circle, it let out a shriek. Xenia hardened their minds into a pointed toe, forcing the spirit’s anger to pass to either side. She braced for more but the roiling mist dispersed until only the mass at the centre remained. Nothing had changed. “I don’t get it,” Emichelle complained. “But it’s not cursed. So, good enough?” She glanced at Xenia, but received a disapproving head shake. “Okay, okay… Your turn.” “Well,” Xenia said slowly, sweat beading on her temples, “I could try a direct read. It seems a little calmer.” “Too risky.” “Any better ideas?” Emichelle pursed her lips. “My idea to put the rug back was great, thanks. Still could.” “Our insurance doesn’t cover lying, you know. First bump in the night, the owner will come calling.” “Telepaths, always ruining things.” Emichelle stuck out her tongue. “Okay, I’ll tap out.” She planted the chalk tip of her staff on the floor, and marked a protective circle to shut the ghost out—and Xenia, who snapped back to herself. “Sure hope you put me in your will,” Emichelle said, muted like speaking through glass. Xenia sent a tendril of her mind like a handshake toward the ghost. It didn’t race to meet her—a good sign—and it didn’t fight when she made contact. She saw the foyer as it had once been, a slab of marble encircled by pillars. People in gowns and woven sandals carried heavy goblets, feasting, and the sun set into the earth. She took a step forward and food rotted. Another step and trees sprouted. Another, the revelers’ hair turned white, another and their skin fell off, their skeletons still laughing. A step to the side and constellations swirled, snow fell. A spin and the snowy blanket melted, rivulets running off the engraving, and… “Oh,” Xenia said, and pulled away from the spirit. “It’s a calendar.” “Are you kidding.” She glanced at a glowering Emichelle, disoriented by the disconnection of the protective circle. “No, it’s… just a calendar. Magical, but harmless.” “So we put the rug back?” The ghost wailed and Xenia winced. “I think we should clean it.” “We aren’t housekeepers.” The ghost got louder and Xenia looked plaintively at her friend until she relented, throwing up her hands. “Fine!” Emichelle redrew her circles to shuffle the ghost around, and they scrubbed off the paint. After a lot of complaining, they stood back to check their work, aching, and by then the ghost had fully dissipated. “Finally!” Emichelle moaned. But Xenia felt the pride underneath. “Look. A new rune.” Xenia tapped the end of the spiral with her boot. “Whoa, we’re part of history. Okay, great. Can we leave?” “Yep. Now the job’s done.” Then Xenia grinned. “The whole payment’s yours this time.” Emichelle did a double take. “Really?” “Really. On one condition—I’m your date to Estelle’s wedding. No, don’t interrupt. We’re going to talk to all of her hot fiancé’s hot friends.” “You can’t be serious.” “I’m always serious.” Xenia cracked her knuckles. “And I’m always snooping. Someone’s going to have latent talent, and I’m going to find it.” Emichelle laughed. “I can’t believe you. You’ll trade for a date?” “Yep,” Xenia said, running her fingers through her hair and planning. “In a heartbeat.”
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Aug 8, 2022 05:00
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Omega Ladder #3: 250 Words of Wonder Wondering and Wishing 235 words It's the birthday of someone you used to love. You memorized it long ago, back when every fact about himself he shared with you was a gift, and it's never left. Every year is the same: the realization, the wondering where he is now, and then the well-wishing. It's easy to wish misery on people in concrete terms, but it's much harder to wish them joy: you can hope that he's living his best life, but what would that even look like? You haven't seen him in twenty years. You settle for a sort of interior-design-magazine image of happiness, whites and greens and sky blues, a beautiful home for him to to be happy, safe, self-actualized. You don't know whether to picture a partner or children or pets, or even what he'd look like now, so you keep the figures blurry as you send ambient love out into the universe for him. Be well. Be great. Thank you for being my friend for a while. Sometimes, you wonder if anyone's thinking of you the same way. You think unbidden of a boy who sat behind you in freshman English, a boy who wrote three paragraphs in your yearbook that year. You were hazy on his name then and surely don't remember it now, and probably he doesn't remember you -- But you wish him well, anyway. There's surely enough love in you to go around.
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Aug 8, 2022 05:13
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Sitting Here posted:A [icon] agonizes over [tube of yesterday] The Final Blasphemy 944 Words The Tube of Yesterday wasn’t even out of the ground for five minutes before it was tied to the back of a horse and sent galloping off to the Seneschal’s palace in the Capital. It was well-established law that anything from the Old World was the exclusive property of the Legion, and the Seneschal was the Legion’s will personified. The Seneschal decided which artifacts were safe, and which were among the blasphemous abominations which had contributed to the destruction of the Old World. The wisdom of the Seneschal’s decisions was often obvious even to the uninitiated. Guns, for instance, had been declared a blasphemy as soon as their true function as weapons had been discovered. Excavators had instructions to destroy the objects on sight. The disturbing frequency with which the sinister metal pipes turned up at dig sites was one of the more chilling insights into how the Old World had destroyed itself. Sometimes the wisdom of the Seneschal was less obvious. The horseless carriages which existed in huge numbers in every Old World ruin could have revolutionized transportation and trade, but the Seneschal had declared them a blasphemy as well. Some people speculated it was because the carriages ran on extremely rare and valuable petroleum, and to use them would deplete the increasingly rare supply of the precious substance. Pencils were safe but erasers were blasphemous. Electric bulbs were safe but not electric razors. Spoons and forks, but not sporks. Many times the Seneschal’s decisions provoked confusion, disappointment, or even outrage, but only in private. In public, the Seneschal’s word was law and his decisions were never questioned. It was only the Seneschal’s wisdom that kept society from consuming itself. The Tube of Yesterday had been discovered buried in the foundations of one of the towering Old World buildings. Whatever it was inside the Tube had been so dangerous a culture that didn’t think twice about keeping a gun in every home had chosen to seal it away. Everyone assumed of course that the Seneschal would declare everything inside to be the most profound blasphemy. That was certainly the Seneschal’s assumption when he opened the Tube of Yesterday and peered inside. The icon of the Legion expected to find some insidious weapon or a dangerous, unstable power source, a confession by one of the kings who had destroyed the Old World, or maybe the remains of a terrible criminal. The Seneschal was ready to face the most terrible secrets of the Old World. He wasn’t prepared to deal with a tube of old junk. Much of the contents of the Tube were well known, even common. Photographs of Old World people posing and smiling, looking blissfully unaware that their entire civilization was actively destroying itself even then. Blasphemous sporks mingled with perfectly acceptable donut mirrors (the true purpose of the mirrored disks with holes in the center had yet to be discovered, but past Seneschals had deemed the artifacts harmless, for now). The Seneschal pulled out a small cube with each face divided into nine squares of different colors. The cube could be twisted and rearranged through some uncanny mechanism. The Seneschal fiddled with the oddity for a few minutes before deeming it a blasphemy. It wasn’t until the Seneschal found the sacred text that he realized the true purpose of the Tube of Yesterday was not to seal away, but to preserve. The Seneschal recognized the sacred text for what it was right away, because the figure on the cover could not have been anyone other than another Seneschal. There was the ceremonial blue bodysuit, the red boots, the red cape, and, most importantly, the big, red “S” in the center of the chest. “S” for Seneschal. The Seneschal took the sacred text delicately, reverently, from the Tube and began to read. The wisdom contained in the pages of the sacred text was sure to be of inestimable value. He would be the first Seneschal in centuries to read firsthand accounts of the Legion’s work before the fall of the Old World! But as the Seneschal read on, his excitement turned to bafflement, and then horror. The images inside depicted the Seneschal of the Old World performing impossible feats of strength and heroism. Many of the deeds depicted in the sacred pages reinforced the Legion’s law. The Old World Seneschal was immune to bullets, for instance, a manifestation of his distaste for guns. The Seneschal outran blasphemous “locomotives,” defying their evil power. He humbled tall buildings by leaping over them and punished the evil scientists who worked hard to create new blasphemies. The text was no doubt true and accurate in every way. It was clearly intended to serve as an example for future generations. But how could the Seneschal live up to the example of the heroic figure depicted in the texts? The Seneschal could not fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The Seneschal looked down self-consciously at his paunchy belly and ran his hands over his bald head. He wasn’t even as handsome as the magnificent, dark haired Adonis grinning up at him from the printed pages, much less as strong and invulnerable. If the people saw these texts, how could they ever respect the office of Seneschal ever again? But if he concealed the sacred texts, could the Seneschal ever respect himself again, knowing what he’d stolen from the world? Would that tiny lie fray and unravel until the very fabric of society lay in tatters? Pondering the second end of civilization, the Seneschal couldn’t help but laugh. Despite all their precautions, all their care, something from the Old World had managed to destroy them after all.
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Aug 8, 2022 05:16
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sebmojo posted:A [three hundred angry gophers] agonizes over [Jeff Probst] Survival of the Fittest 726 words We gophers first became aware of the human’s survival ark during Queen Yarrow’s reign, Season of the Blackcurrant. We heard about it from the voles, who in all likelihood did not mean to share the information, but who we were able to pressure into divulging the truth. We would later learn that this was during the fourth iteration of the selection process, and that there were several other animals who had already begun to make attempts to gain access. It made sense, of course; the humans clearly knew that the planet’s time was limited, at least at the current rate of progress. It was only logical that they would prepare for the end times. The selection process that they had chosen to implement, however, seemed entirely devoid of any logic or order, like a pup digging tunnels at random and expecting them to last. We were able to piece together more information about the process through both observation of human broadcasts, and research using repurposed human tools. Our earliest attempts to achieve candidacy were laughably straightforward. We naively assumed that the humans would want some semblance of biodiversity in their ark, and put forth a few dozen prime candidates that we felt adequately represented the species. Surely the humans would find at least one breeding pair acceptable for admittance. Unsurprisingly, it turned out the humans were not interested in true preservation – hardly surprising, in retrospect – and that only other humans were ever admitted to the final selection process. Like several other species by then, we had attempted to gain entry to the organization’s headquarters, but the roaming nature of the selection process was problematic. Further difficulties with access to transportation made it impossible to infiltrate the proceedings without subterfuge. Then the question became, how could we infiltrate a human-only space. Early attempts at disguising individuals as humans were resounding failure, due to most humans being embarrassingly tall. Fortunately, it was discovered that several gophers working together could form the same rough outline of a human. These efforts, however, ultimately failed to bear fruit due to the difficulty in coordinating such a large number of individuals, especially with the weight being borne by those gophers near the bottom. Comparable human mobility was, alas, never achieved. This failure led to a low period in our attempts. There was some brief excitement during the reign of King Alder IX, Season of the Strawberry, when evidence was presented that humans could be controlled by pulling on different parts of their scalp fur, but we were unable to reproduce this phenomenon – perhaps it only works for rats? Research into the phenomenon was tabled, however, when our scientists discovered that a human corpse of sufficient freshness could, with a team of gophers working together at key points in the body, be manipulated into an approximation of human motion. Countless hours of research and practice went into this venture; teams were trained and optimized, research going into not only balance and motion, but also facial expression and even speech, the latter achieved after a breakthrough in the study of human vocal cords and tongue contortion. There were issues with corporeal preservation, but recent advancements have allowed us to maintain bodily integrity for up to two Seasons, weather permitting. Many of you have heard all of this information before; some of you may have heard only parts of it, and some of you may be hearing it all for the first time. The important thing is that you are the latest class to be selected for our most momentous advancement yet. After years of intelligence-gathering and the careful placement of spies, we have successfully located one of the most important figures in the human survival ark operation. We believe that by tailing – and eventually capturing – him, we will finally achieve our goal of not only infiltrating the selection process, but eventually making it through to the end, thus ensuring our survival as a species for whatever comes next. Throughout the next several months you will train, practice, and eventually succeed in this mission, for failure is not an option; we have no idea how many more of these selections will be held before the launch of the human survival ark, but we do know that time is surely running out. Assembled fellow gophers, I give you: Jeff Probst, our key to the Survivor Project.
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Aug 8, 2022 05:31
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Vanilla entry Total Eclipse of the Heart 778 words A tree agonizes over radio At the edge of the forest, looking out over the summer camp, was a tree that sang. Specifically, it sang the greatest hits of the 80s thanks to a long-forgotten radio that sat at its heart, enveloped in wood by the tree over the years. The oak loved the beating music playing within it and so kept the radio powered with its own life energy. For this oddity, generations of campers saw the tree as a defining feature of the camp, and the tree itself had a fondness for the young humans, saplings, who filled the sun-drenched summers with shouts and laughter. One hot evening, the oak noticed the shift in the humans’ patterns. As the music of Madonna played, the oak could sense adults pacing the camp, calling in unusually serious tones. They soon spread to the field, moving towards the forest. Slowly, the oak understood that two saplings weren’t where they should be. The oak sent out a message to the other trees in the forest. “Have two young humans been seen? Their guardians want them to return.” Its words propagated through the interconnected roots, and it began to receive messages back. “No, no,” said the trees who bothered to respond. Most had never seen a human and so didn’t care about them as the oak did. Finally, it received a yes. A faraway pine tree reported, rather crossly, that two humans were sitting on its roots. The oak sent its gratitude. “I am pleased that they are safe. Eventually the adults will find them.” The pine responded, “Either the humans or the bear.” “The bear?” “The black bear asleep in my branches. A heavy one too, it’s putting quite the strain on my trunk.” This alarmed the oak. “But the adults are loud in their searching. They may wake the bear when they find the saplings!” The pine sent back the tree equivalent of a shrug. “Maybe they will move before then. Humans are unpredictable, destructive, I don’t understand why you care about them.” The oak didn’t know how to answer that quickly, so it asked, “Can you hear the music?” “No, not now,” The pine could sometimes hear snippets of human voices when the breeze was right, but not often. The oak surveyed the other trees in the area, determining the range of the radio. “If the saplings can hear it, they will be able to locate the camp,” it explained. “What, can you control the wind?” the pine said. “How will you get them to hear it?” The oak poured more of its life energy into the radio, boosting its volume. “And now?” The pine listened. “Some noise is tickling my roots but the saplings haven’t moved.” The oak did not respond. The pine waited, then wondered if the oak had given up on the saplings. It had not. The pine cried out in shock as the oak pulled energy from all the trees in the immediate area. The forest vibrated with a tremendous crack, as violent as a lightning bolt, as the oak split itself in half. Every creature stopped at the calamity, animal senses calculating whether they too were under threat. In this collective pause, the pine heard something new. The sound was like human voices, but more, better. The tree thought humans made noises like the chaos of a rock fall, a chaotic sound that had no place in the soft undergrowth of the forest. But this sound belonged. It was the song of birds and the rumble of bears, the creak of branches in the wind. It was music. Finally, the pine understood what lived at the heart of the oak. The revelation felt as joyous as the first time sunlight hit its needles. The music also had a transformative effect on the saplings huddled under the pine. “Do you hear that?” “Yeah. I think it’s Bonnie Tyler?” “You know what that means? Camp’s that way!” “You sure? Why couldn’t we hear it before?” “Dunno, maybe the wind’s changed. Come on!” The saplings ran through the forest, guided by the music. The bear, disturbed by the commotion, merely snuffled and went back to sleep. The pine followed the pressure of their footfalls all the way home, where the camp erupted in shouts of joy. “They are home.” The oak’s message came across as a whisper. It was still alive, but it would take years to recover its former strength. “Yes.” The pine said, then added, “Thank you.” The oak hummed, contented. Eventually, the human voices from the camp faded, ceding the night to the quiet sounds of the forest. And, louder than ever, the greatest hits of the 80s.
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Aug 8, 2022 05:39
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Omega Prompts 1 & 2 & 3 & 4Prompts posted:
Everyone Loves Dogs Words: 250 On the tile floor, two colors were mixing. A woman had taken a spill, opening her head on the corner of an end table. She had been holding a bottle of wine when she came in the door. Two dogs, who had precipitated the fall, watched the colors combine and argued over its provenance. Mauve, the striped dog was convinced the color was. The other dog, a spotted dog, disagreed. Only one dog knew what mauve was, despite them both seeing the same pale gray yellow in front of them. Just tell me what you really want. It could be anything you ever wanted. We could get away. The striped dog got angry. He was angry often. He would have intrusive thoughts. Thoughts about accidentally lighting the shed on fire. About the color mauve, he had seen it before. About maybe they could get away. About how good it would be if they were dogs. Everyone loves a dog. A gnawing feeling about being sure of who you are this whole time. He knew what mauve was, but all he could see was yellow. Why wouldn’t you want to be a dog? Don’t you wish we were dogs? Everyone loves dogs. It was mauve, the striped dog insisted. The other dog only knew he needed to disagree. The door was open. The striped dog looked outside. A car drove by. He looked back at the woman mixing yellow. He knew it was mauve. He could get away.
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Aug 8, 2022 06:20
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Wizard: Your left eye causes anything it sees to wither or decay. Your magic grows when things around you die. You must be very careful if you don't want to bring ruin down on the innocent Flash: Your story is twice as long as it needs to be Swords and Time 1152 words She lay on the ground, center of a small crater, deep red hair splayed behind her head like a miniature exploding sun. A dark stone eyepatch covered her left eye, obsidian thick enough to be fully opaque held on with a thin leather strap. The other was closed. I drove my sword into the dry ground and reached toward her. Her right eye snapped open, deep moss green iris on yolk-gold pupil. What I had thought were light scratches and scars across her face flared pink, formed runes. "Stand back," she said. It took me longer to place the language than to understand the words. Latin, and proper Latin, not the liturgical bastardization by Latin as she was spoke on the streets when Rome had kings. I stood back, but kept my hand outstretched. "Friends are scarce enough on this plane," said, matching her dialect. "Is it wise to push one away?" She raised her head off the ground and shook it lightly, allowing her hair to fall properly behind her head. Then she looked at me. "Are you a friend, then?" Now in more modern speech. English. Canada, somewhere in the East with strong French influence. I could have matched that as well but went with something more honest, American West coast. "On the Fields of Gristelem?" I said. "I'd count anything close to human as friend." She held up her hand, and I grabbed it, pulling her to her feet. "Gristelem, is that what this place is?" She shook dust from her cloak and hair. "I've been her before. But it wasn't like this." She waved her hand at the landscape, at the blasted wasteland, dry sand and rock with the occasional drying brush or cactus. "There was a palace, wasn't there? The cool spires of Tannenbrith rising up to pierce the clouds." "There was," I said. I pulled my sword from the ground and watched it absorb the last drops of blood into the metal. Trust the Darktooth to find something to kill, even if it meant guiding my hand to the last burrowing vole of all Gristelem. "What happened?" she said. "Time," I said. "One tower of Tannenbrith still stands, after a fashion. Is that your destination, sorceress?" "Call me Yress," she said. I knew the name, of old. "And call me Caboth." I smiled, feeling some of the lines of my face crack. It had been a very long time since I have smiled. I have felt joy, in kills shared with Darktooth, in sexual conquest, in what hard-earned money can buy. I have known happiness. But there is little left that makes me smile unintended. "Caboth?" She said, blinking. "Of the Hyvern Woods?" I nodded. "Aeons, you were so-" "Young?" I said. I was, eighteen and on my first journey beyond Earth, my first adventure, and she, well, older. In her thirties, I thought, by body and manner. Thirty thousands, I know now. There are statues of her cast in volcanic lava in the caverns of Mars, the last art created by a civilization that died in decadence while Earth was just learning how to braid rope. She was my first: partner, lover, teacher. And I did not recognize her, even though the patch should have been dead giveaway, until she said her name. "What happened?" I said, looking at her and me. "Time," we answered together. "Fallen Tannenbrith?" "What I need to do," she said, "Is find the dragon that nearly killed me." "Ah," I said. "Well, there's no more likely place for it to lair for miles. Was it ranging far?" "It was seeking my end," she said. "He would have ranged from Flaxiome to Radahell to kill me." "Radahell is buried in ash and dunes," I said. "Flaxiome may yet stand, beyond a new sea of storms and salt, half the world away." "Then Tannenbrith it is," she said. "You must have hurt it badly," I said. "Never do an enemy a small harm," she said. An old lesson, one of the first she taught me. "If it had died, I would know." We walked, across the blasted landscape, butchering a cactus to refresh out canteens as needed. Finally we reached the tower. "After a fashion," she said, seeing it. Half of the tower remained standing, at a sharp tilt from true. The top half- no, the top third, a portion was simply destroyed- lay on its side some distance away. She pointed at the ground. Black scales, trailing toward that fallen towertop. We approached in silence, Darktooth gripped in my hand. We walked through the tower like a pick through a keyway, navigating each crumbling stairway like a door, and reached the very top, the beast's lair. It seemed to pulsate. "Behind me," Yress said. I stepped back. She flipped her eyepatch upward and unleashed the raw entropic power of her wizardly left eye. "Fool," said the dragon, in the draconic language older than stars. "I am of Rot, of Rust, of merciless time. You could have left after reviving me, but instead you court destruction. Is your short long life so unbearable?" She reached for her patch, but I touched her shoulder. "No," I whispered in a language of Hyvern, now dead with the two of us the last speakers. "Watch it thrash. It has absorbed too much, a few minutes more and it will be unable to react." She nodded,and kept her eye on it minute more, long enough to poison stars with carbon and iron and speed on their collapse. Finally, she flipped down the patch and fell to her knees, exhausted. Then I stepped forward. The dragon thrashed violently, but not with skill, not unpredictably. I advanced between flailing claws and buffering wings, reached the gleaming black body of the thing, and drove Darktooth full into its beating heart. The sword drank deep, the dark energy flowing into it and trickling into me. "Enough," it said, in the language spoken in the darkest circle of hell. "Enough," it said again. "Enough, fool. Withdraw me now!" Too much power. Not enough control. I let go of the sword, against its desires, stripping the skin of my hand bloody. But I was free of it. I staggered back and fell. "We should run," she said, reaching down with one hand. I took it. I had not thought of surviving this, expected to crumble to bones and dust on the spot. But I would not pass up the opportunity. I have, according to Yress, at least another century in me. This after bedding me again. She said that was needed, to measure my vitality, but I suspect that was a lie. A century, to enjoy retirement or seek out another path to longevity and power. I know some possible ways, and she offered to help. But rest and end are tempting as well. I have ample time to decide.
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Aug 8, 2022 06:31
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10th anniv garbo Apocrypha: The Book of Revelations 1000 words flash: an orb agonizes over a firetruck [Hellrule: 10 named characters] The angel Gabriel descended to the island of Patmos where the herald felt the pull of a witness. A brethren man to view and relate the tribulations to come for the congregations. The glory of God was about the man as Gabriel signaled with the trumpets and the winds swept and whorled about. The man fell at the feet of the angel, and saith, I am overcome. The angel bade him rise and wondered if it was a man worthy to look thereon. John, saith the angel, gird yourself for the vision of prophesy. I am not who you think I am, saith the man. I am not a good man, I am not a worthy man. Gabriel looked upon the man with foreign eyes, but filled with the love of a higher power. Calm, saith the angel. There are few worthy men, you shall bear witness to the will of the LORD and relate it to your brethren in the churches. Now, Behold the vision! And the man’s eyes were suddenly open to the heavens: Jesus lifted up his eyes, the orb presented itself before him, a wheel of wind and sapphire emblazoned with the glow of burnished brass; but Jesus was not afraid. I am Gallagim, it saith unto Jesus, I am of the Onaphim, meters of divine justice for the choir of our Lord. Jesus looked upon the Onaphim with the bright eyes of clarity for he knew this meeting was not a miracle, but a function of the choir. Gallagim spoke: Your chariot meeteth not the specifications set forth in the guidelines willed by the holy arbiter. Saith Jesus, It’s straight fire, yo. Jesus shook his wrist, clapping together the knuckles of his extended index and middle fingers whilst he proffered an accompanying air horn sound effect: Wyur-wyur-wyur. Lo, responded Gallagim, the host have made exception for the entire sports package from the extended cab, to the hydraulics and the altered exhaust system. The discontent is that your truck is fire made manifest. Jesus answered, Rolling coal, boi. Woop, woop. Your holy vessel consumes the offal and unclean leavings of demons, devils, and spirits, the blackened excrement buried in the firmament; there is no doubt your mission is pure. But, son of man, ye have to stay out of California. According to my scrolls ye have started three wildfires this year alone. Your face is a wildfire. Sorry, I didn’t catch that, Jesus. Tch, I was peeping on some new spinners. Onaphim, more like Ona-rims. If that is God’s will. But Jesus, dost thou think maybe ye could, just have like the top half of the truck rendered of the all consuming fire of heaven? Then maybe the forests of kind creatures would not be disturbed? Ye know, the dove and the fawn and the insects of the earth are innocent of sin. When Jesus rolls, Jesus rolls hot. I understand that, I’m not the adversary. There are rules. From the aether a cherubim, Salimuth, materialized, tapped a haphazard pile of scrolls for emphasis, nodded to Gallagim, and vanished. Jesus rocked back in his chair and tipped his head up so his mirrored wraparound shades slid up and rested in His mane of hair. As he pushed the sleeves of his robe to his elbows and folded his arms across his chest, Jesus saith, Rules are for the sheep of the flock, blessed as they may be. If one of the flock escapes the grazing lands, is it not wise for the shepherd to have a four wheel drive pickup replete with rollcage and afterburners to collect the errant? We are not arguing against, Jesus, merely the literal flames. Might the Son consider decals? Weak sauce, brah, saith Jesus. Behold! saith the Onaphim. And unto Jesus was presented a vision of the fishers upon the water. Sweet, saith Jesus, Deadliest Catch. The Onaphim paused before the unyielding countenance of Jesus. Saith Gallagim, finally, Consider that Captain Sig is but Peter the fisherman, and Deckhand Stu—Thomas of Galilee. Gallagim showed Jesus the power of his F-350 with the complete tow package as it rumbled across the sky and waters, and when the chariot has passed, the waters were laid low, and the vessel of the fishermen was strewn upon the rocks, the waters rent into the clouds. Jesus looked upon the catastrophe of his own glory and considered, Perhaps, Gallagim, the decals could be tight? The tightest, Son of Man, saith Gallagim, the angels of the heavenly host are prepared to silk screen—are you ready—a wraparound decal of your own design. Then let it be so. And Jesus looked upon the work of the angels crafting decals for his truck and saw that it was good. Then saith Jesus, Might I still joyride in lavatubes leading to Hell? And if the Onaphim, one of the highest of the choir of angels could shrug, it dideth. Good man, saith the angel Gabriel, The interpretation of dreams is a practiced art. I do not fully myself understand the bearing of this prophesy. John, have you the full meaning? The man finally lifted his eyes to meet the angel. John? Asketh the man. My name is Chris. I’m just renting this villa through an app. According to the calendar of men, what year is it? Asketh the angel? Well, that’s complicated, since there are multiple calendars that might concern an angel, especially an old testament angel, but suffice it to say, it’s a good deal Anno Domini. Maybe hit the rewind and go back, tch, two thousand years? But, you think, I might get a sick Jesus truck? And the angel was aghast, warnings of forbearance held no weight, and so Gabriel retreated to the past, unsure of how time betrayed him for the hope of a second encounter with John the Revelator. John, a brother to all men, witness of the angel’s Revelations, had left Patmos for a respite of two weeks on the shores of Mykanos that morn. So Gabriel waited, sand in sandals for two weeks.
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Aug 8, 2022 06:53
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[hellrule: 10 named characters] 1300 words Yo Celly Pt. 1 “Yo, celly . . . hey, you awake? Celly?” I wasn’t. “What? I’m up.” “I’m really sorry. I gotta take a poo poo.” “Okay, man. Go for it.” “I just didn’t want to surprise you.” That’s Tony Mayo, whitest guy you’ll ever meet—and not just because he’s practically albino, but he was. A ghost Claimed to have been a chemical engineer making Oxys, stealing crates of 10K plus pills off the factory floor and reselling them. Twenty-five, thirty grand a month wholesale, until he started popping and smoothed his noodle. Swiped his own badge on a security door instead of the counterfeit compliance manager badge he acquired. Guess if you’re going to steal, makes sense to use loss-prevention’s credentials. Dunno if the quantity was true or one of the thousand exaggerations Tony Mayo might drop on any given day—seemed like too big a deal to be in county with the shoplifters and dimebaggers—but the scheme sounded plausible. At the least, he had an overstuffed commissary, so somebody in his orbit had some cash. I rolled against the cold concrete while Tony Mayo did his business. Advantage of taking top bunk, that people don’t think about. When you’re trying to sleep out a lockdown, you don’t have a dude taking a poo poo three feet from your head. After business was concluded, Tony Mayo asked, “Hey, you want one of these?” He unrolled a napkin and produced several pills. “What is it?” I asked. “Nothing much, Seroquel, just chill you out. Maybe sleep for the rest of the day.” I wasn’t about to turn that down, so I agreed and took a mystery pill. I don’t know if it was belief or actual effect, but I did have a good sleep, and when I woke, the doors were open. A couple guys from intake checked in to D-Block at the same time as me: Kino, Hollywood, Don, Savoy. First thing Don did is say hi to another oldhead and they disappeared into the cell just below the showers. Don emerged with a pack of instant oatmeal and cooked it up from the 5-gallon urn mounted next to the bank of payphones. The water’s always barely hot enough to soften some ramen or spork some Cheeto grits. Don Quickoats has been here before and will be here again. I first saw Sandy playing Scrabble, crumbs from peanut butter saltine sandwiches in the tight curl of his beard. Most everybody had a nickname and if it wasn’t about your looked, it was what, or how, you ate. There was a hodgepodge of letters on the board, and Sandy’s leg was moving faster than a dog at a scritching convention waiting for oldhead Bond to take his turn. Bond was writing a letter, chunky plastic commissary readers low on his nose (real glasses could be weaponized), and didn’t seem to care about the game at all. “Bond, Bond, take your turn,” he begged. Bond looked over his frames and dropped some simple poo poo that Sandy pondered hard. It went that way pretty much every day. I found a bit of solace in Sandy—Bond wouldn’t write letters for him, so I did. For a couple weeks, I satisfied my own boredom by taking dictation for at least half of the block. Sometimes lawyers, sometimes Ma and relatives, sometimes spicing up horny erotica. Text seemingly wasn’t ever censored. Tony Mayo got a polaroid from his girl with the naughty bits razor cut out. I always wondered which turkey cee-oh kept a five by eight mm polaroid cutout of some nipples. I was never a breakfast person, let alone a morning person, but I had a gaggle of people show up one day asking for my tray, new rules that I had to come down and collect it myself before Bond or whoever could take a double brekky. So I did, and as people dropping trays in the dirty stack, Reg and the pill cart came around, a hundred tiny paper cups on his pallet each pre-measured with a cornucopia of pills and elixirs. And then I saw Tony Mayo make a devil’s bargain with Sandy, trading a couple Ramen packs for his pill cup. It wasn’t a sort of place where the doc waited for you to take your pills and check your cheeks. It was more of a no one gives a poo poo sort of vibe. After things wrapped, and trays were being stacked to take to dishwashing, I asked Reg, “Hey Doc,” and I knew from his badge he was just a registered nurse, but why not flatter? So I said, “Hey Doc, what’s Seroquel?” And Reg didn’t much hesitate. “Seroquel? It’s a mood stabilizer. Mostly for bipolar.” I nodded to Reg in thanks, but I boiled hotter than any water that had ever touched the inside of the block. Tony FUCKIN Mayo. It was one of those weird days when nobody really connects, since for once the yard was open, and it was for a reason: they were busy installing TVs in the commons. And if you looked in the little windows from the courtyard, since the yard was never an Orange is the New Black chance at escape into the woods, nah, it was just a concrete whirlwind leading up twenty stories, you’d just see workmen putting up the rough cages TVs lived in. Funny poo poo the first night of TV was the classic Prison Break, but the next night set everything off. They got the DVD players running and for whatever loving reason chose the new The Hills Have Eyes. As the mutant fucks started murdering, Sandy covered his ears and was just “Ohh, I don’t like this, oh, no” And I said to him, “You want to go back to your bed?” But he wanted to stay with the group and the way he rocked for the rest of the night until light’s out just set me off. Tony Mayo chattered as usual that night, and worked on his soap sculpture of Jesus but I couldn’t wait to put that soap bar in my asscrack. Kino was my boy. I just said, “We gotta get rid of Tony Mayo, he’s loving with Sandy’s psych meds” and it weren’t twenty minutes later when he and Heavy, the block rep who had his eye punched out by a fork and oldhead Bond came in and surprised the gently caress. I couldn’t even get off my bunk before Tony Mayo had his nose smashed up into his sinuses and the crew was gone. I had to call the cee-ohs to drag his rear end out and down to medical. What happened was Kino got staph on his knuckles from punching out Tony Mayo and he was gone too. But Heavy had a running contest, sometimes a rap battle, sometime onjust disses. And I had a few for Sandy. I arranged it with Bond, and we prepped the circle. Lots a fucks did their thing, Funny waxed about ants climbing into Borliard’s rear end in a top hat to go home since it was so perfectly swollen and red like a anthill, and then Bond and Sandy stepped into the circle, both armed with my light jokes. Bond said, “Sandy, your ears so big you could just flap them and fly on out of here.” And Sandy laughed and said, “Bond I would bounce off your bald head.” and he laughed again, and I worried he wouldn’t finish, but, “Bond, I would drop off the balcony and your baldspot give me a target that I would bounce off of and slingshot me into the stratosphere.” Man, Sandy got his pills, and that was the best part of a 90-day stretch of poo poo, but every day feels like something you gotta hear.
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Aug 8, 2022 06:53
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A [Hemingway] agonizes over [erotic ice sculpture] Iceberg Theory 1200 words The woman who met us at the gates smelled of ink and corrective fluid and she wore her hair high up in a bun from which several used pencils protruded. She bundled us inside her house and showed us to the back rooms where her charges were sequestered in cages, each one three cubic feet and carpeted with newspaper. The room sung with the incessant striking of typewriter keys and the occasional strike of a carriage return. ‘I think it’s wonderful you’ve chosen a rescue,’ the woman gushed. ‘So many prefer breeders, but three of every four end up here once their first printing doesn’t sell, and then nobody looks at them again. But they’re still full of potential. Look, this one only needs a year to finish plotting the fourth book in a science-fiction series about wizard guitarists. And this one? Self-published Starfleet erotica might not reach the New York Times, but there are hundreds of readers who would just love to give her a home.’ ‘Aren’t they just adorable?’ Laura said, crouching down beside a foot-tall writer picking slowly at an Olivetti. ‘Look, this one’s a poet!’ But I was drawn to the right-hand side, where a bearded figure bashed out words while puffing away at a miniature cigar. ‘Laura,’ I called out, ‘have you ever seen such a tiny cigar? And his beard!’ ‘Oh,’ the woman cried out, hurrying over. ‘He’s been in the wars, that one! He was a medic and then a correspondent, and—’ her voice hushed, ‘—some say he was a secret agent, in his time.’ ‘Why is he here, though?’ Laura asked. ‘I thought Hemingways were generally successful.’ The woman sighed. ‘Oh, “success”,’ she said. ‘Some cope better than others, shall we say? They need a steady hand to guide them, and not everyone—’ But I was down low on my knees, watching the tiny writer transform the horrors he’d witnessed into sparse and elegant and emotional prose, enraptured. ‘We’ll take him,’ I said. ‘Where do I sign?’ # The woman told us to expect our Hemingway to take some time acclimatising to his new surrounds, and on her suggestion we set a tablet nearby playing bullfighting clips from YouTube. Eventually he came out to join us in the lounge, carrying his typewriter around and working through reams of paper we spent hours laboriously cutting down to size. ‘Aww, he’s so cute,’ Clara gushed, when he’d had his vaccines and we could have other people over. ‘I’d love to have our own writer, but Ryan’s allergic to metaphors.’ ‘That’s too bad,’ Laura said. ‘You’re welcome to walk Ernie, if you’d like. Just make sure you keep him away from any Fitzgeralds you see around, they start off nice but as soon as one thinks the other’s getting more popular…’ ‘You haven’t had him fixed?’ Clara asked. ‘We’re … not sure that would be best for his writing,’ I said, carefully. ‘Hm,’ Clara mused. ‘Their writing can get pretty vulgar if you don’t get to them early.’ ‘Ernie’s fine,’ I told her. Clara raised an eyebrow and reached down to pull the latest sheet out of Ernie’s typewriter. He grumbled his protest and reached out for it, but she arched an eyebrow and read aloud: ‘Hills Like White Bazongas’. ‘Bazongas!’ the tiny writer repeated, pulling on Clara’s trousers and holding a hand up for his manuscript. ‘“He reached for her supple breasts and found them pliable as week-old mangoes”,’ Clara recited. ‘“They shimmed with sweat, like mozzarella left out of the fridge for too long.”’ ‘Okay,’ I relented. ‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’ # The next day we enrolled Ernie in class, where he and a dozen other male writers learned to control their base impulses while writing about the female form. The class was led by a matronly woman wielding a long ruler, with which she would deliver sharp, stinging rebukes to the writers each time they wrote anything lewd or salacious. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told us, after administering the fifth strike to Ernie’s forearms after he used the word “nubile” twice in the same paragraph. ‘He’s far from the worst I’ve seen. Near broke my stick in half when a pack of Franzens came through last season.’ ‘What happened to them?’ Laura asked. ‘Oh,’ she shrugged, ‘I got one down to young-adult levels of depravity. The others … well. They became useful, in their own way.’ Nearby, the other tiny writers redoubled their efforts. # One day we arrived at the park to find an enormous inflatable pool, at the centre of which protruded the tiniest tip of an iceberg. The headmistress assembled each of the writers around the pool, and explained the day’s lesson plan: ‘The mark of a true author,’ she called out, ‘is to use subtext. Subtlety. Leave things unsaid; let your reader’s imagination draw vistas from brevity. ‘Before you,’ she continued, ‘is an iceberg. I would like each of you to write the story of this iceberg, such that we can imagine the remainder of its enormity. As you write, so the pool will empty, and your subtext will become ever more difficult to achieve. I suggest you write well, and quick!’ With that, she unstoppered a cork, and the pool’s contents began to disgorge onto the grass beside the pool; running in rivulets around the writers kneeling before their typewriters. Ernie was off to a terrific start, describing the arctic tundra of some far-off land and its modestly fur-dressed inhabitants. As the water dropped, the iceberg became the point of a lady’s hairdo, and then her face came into relief: eyes closed and mouth open as if enraptured by—singing, yes. She was singing, Ernie wrote, a delicate love song to her lover in the wars. Still the water dropped. Firm bosoms heaved into view, and sweat began to bead on Ernie’s face, but he wiped it off with a sheet of paper and continued. She was a virginal Madonna, praying her thanks to the lord. She was untouched by sin or desire or the male gaze. And then the tentacles appeared, carved from ice, snaking up her body, winding around— Ernie stopped writing. The headmistress raised an eyebrow and crept over, stick at the ready. His forehead glistened with sweat. ‘Well,’ she said, retrieving the latest page. ‘“Her bosom heaved like a frat boy after an all-night kegger”…’ She dropped the page, and wrapped her fingers around the cane, raising it to strike. But Ernie had stood and was moving toward the pool, clambering up the plastic sheeting toward the lip. Slowly, the other writers stopped typing, watching as he fell headfirst into the shallow waters. ‘Get back here,’ the headmistress snarled, hitching her skirt up to climb in after him. ‘Or you’ll be ground into glue for bookbinding!’ But Ernie wasn’t listening; he clambered up the slippery ice, finding purchase in the folds and crevices, until he reached the top and turned to face us, victorious, face flushed and beard quivering. ‘Ock!’ he called out, as the other writers began to hammer out his depredations. ‘Ock, ock, ock!’
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Aug 8, 2022 07:02
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I'm gonna have a three hour train ride later today, perfect to do some critting. I think I can crit 10 stories easily during that time. Write me a PM on the forums or on Discord, and tell me what I should crit. It's first come, first served, and there's no greed protection; if you boldly say "hey Simon, crit all four of my stories", congrats that you wrote so much, you deserve it.
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Aug 8, 2022 07:05
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prompt #4 [WIZARDS] Please Watch Dad Do a Cannonball (1293 words) Collin held Elizabeth’s tiny hand throughout their walk. They were pacing through the cobblestone roads of Collin’s old alma mater, The Pater Henry University for Higher Wizardry. It’d been years since Collin was a student there. He remembered being awed by the long rows of flying buttresses that swung off the central domes of each faculty citadel. Columns of brilliant light erupted from the tops of each dome. Each structure was a wonderwork of astro-gothic architecture. Blazing astrological runes empowered them with nearly unlimited power. The magnificent sight still took Collin’s breath away. Elizabeth, however, seemed unimpressed. She looked more at her device than at any buildings. Collin sighed. He wanted to take it away from her, to force her to appreciate the world she might come in to someday, if she took her studies seriously. Lately, she hadn’t been. Her grades at the lesser schools of wizardry had quickly become mediocre. While it might’ve been too early to worry over such things, she was only eleven years old after all, Collin knew good habits had to be instilled early. No, Collin wouldn’t take her device away. He wanted to genuinely impress her with something amazing enough to warrant her attention. Something to spark her love for the practical magicks. Nonetheless, Collin still often furrowed his brow at Elizabeth’s device. The Alchemists and Artificers were ruining children with their masterworks. While their gadgets and gizmos hummed with arcane energies, their easy portable power often distracted children from cultivating their own. Good old-fashioned practical wizardry was at the heart of these incredible machines, but the young didn’t seem to notice. Elizabeth didn’t even bother carrying her training wand anymore. Collin had to store it in his pocket. The last chance would be the old library. It crammed thousands of feet of stacks into a height of only two hundred feet. Its glass studded arches automatically threw spotlights over opened books, always bathing them with perfect illumination. Surely, no young girl could resist an old library, right? Collin asked himself, in expectation of the affirmative. “Look, Elizabeth. Iron golems are cleaning grime off the library’s facade! Have you ever seen anything so clever? No grime here!” Collin beamed, pointing at the busy giants. Elizabeth grunted something. Her monosyllabic replies were at least intelligible earlier in the day. Collin sighed. “Okay, well, take note of how tall the library looks now. When we step inside, you’re in for a big surprise!” Collin beamed, undeterred, as they stepped over the threshold into the building. The giant oak doors slammed shut behind them. Collin and Elizabeth heard the sporadic squawking of young students. Some kind of ruckus seemed to be ensuing. The boom of heavy stomping echoed across the cavernous interior. Strange whooshes broke out all over the halls. Aha! I knew the old library would be the most exciting place on campus! Collin triumphantly observed to himself. Even Elizabeth took notice. Something had finally pried her eyes off the device. “...Uh, dad?” Elizabeth managed hoarsely, snapping to attention. The tumult grew louder and louder. It sounded like a parade marching at them. Yet, no one was there. “Sorry sweetie. Normally it’s quieter here. The head librarian usually isn’t so... derelict... in his duties. This really should be a place for quiet study. I should speak to him. Or her. I wonder if old man Anderson still runs these stacks...” “Headmaster Anderson can’t help you,” a strangely distant voice cried from a hidden place. “Pardon me?” Collin asked, not expecting interruption, especially not from inside a deserted arcade. “Headmaster Anderson caused this pandemonium,” the voice replied. “What pandemonium? I know it’s a little noisy in here but-“ “-Dad,” Elizabeth interjected, tugging on his sleeve. “Not now sweetie, daddy is talking to the nice poltergeist. Now, what did you say about-” “Dad!” Elizabeth tugged harder, “It’s not a poltergeist.-” “-Of course it is sweetie. If it were a person, I would be able to see them-” Elizabeth motioned at her device. She was taking a video using an enchanted filter. A crowd of frightened students stood before them on the screen. Yet, when they looked up, no one was there. Collin carefully read the name of the filter. Artificers had concocted ridiculous filters that could image poltergeists, usually with silly names like The Sixth Sense. This filter, however, was called the Third and Half Dimension. “Headmaster Anderson half-banished us all, he’s gone completely insane!” A frightened student wailed on Elizabeth’s screen. “Now, why would he do a thing like that?” Collin asked, remembering a cheerful, if fussy, kindly old man. “Someone returned a forbidden tome without properly sealing it. Headmaster Anderson’s eyes must’ve glimpsed its occultic runes. The infernal power’s driven him mad! Now he teeters maniacally atop a rolling ladder, slinging spells at anyone who approaches!” “Now, that doesn’t make sense. The Headmaster Anderson I know wears charmed spectacles to avoid just that.” “He got lens implants after his cataract surgery last year.” “Okay, well, hold on. I can easily fix this with the power of practical magicks,” Collin beamed enthusiastically for Elizabeth’s benefit, “Let me just prepare the spell.” “-Uh dad? There’s an app for that,” Elizabeth said, scrolling to an option on her device. She used its powerful flash to snap photos. One by one, relieved students blinked back into reality. Collin frowned. He really should’ve taken away that device earlier. He just couldn’t impress her with that thing around. “Okay Sweetie, please help these nice students with their banishment problem, and I’ll go deal with the Headmaster.” “He’s too powerful!” A weeping student cried after reappearing, “You should just wait for campus security!” “Nonsense. No problem is too great for a master of practical magicks. Elizabeth, when you’re done here, please come watch. From a safe distance.” Elizabeth grunted some kind of reply. She busily snapped photos and wouldn’t respond further. Her eyes were glued to that device again. Collin sighed and went to confront the Headmaster alone. ***** The old man’s still spry, I’ll give them that, Collin noted as fiery beams of light caromed off his staff. He was batting away spectral blasts coming from high atop a rolling ladder. He had to squint to see their source. Sure enough, old man Anderson was indeed teetering maniacally up there. “Headmaster Anderson? It’s me, Collin. Do you remember me? I used to spend all my waking hours here,” Collin politely asked, trying to reach the man he once envied. “THERE IS NO ANDERSON ANYMORE. THERE IS ONLY BAZARAM, FIEND OF THE SIXTH PLANE,” a grotesque voice called from above. It’s worse than I thought, Collin realized. Reversing possession would take a powerful spell, but his staff was completely occupied deflecting bolts. Slowly, an idea crept on him. He reached his other hand into his pocket. “How many times have you been to this plane, Bazaram? Don’t you know that this world is only a...” Collin nearly said library world, but the idea seemed far too attractive. “...an archive world! Yes, all we have here are old newspapers! Out-of-date Calendars! Expired coupons! Advertisements for products that no longer exist!” “THEN BAZARAM WILL CONQUER THE ARCHIVES. AND THEN BAZARAM WILL CONSUME THE RUNES EMPOWERING THESE WALLS,” the voice screeched. A mighty bolt of electricity slammed Collin’s staff away. “ANY LAST WORDS, MORTAL?” “Yes... Esrever-selop!” Collin shouted, firing off Elizabeth’s training wand at Bazaram. A scrawny old man fell down from on high. Collin conjured a slow-fall spell, gently floating Anderson to the floor. “...Collin? ...How are you... Why are you here? ... You graduated years ago...” the befuddled old man wheezed after regaining his senses. “I’m here with my daughter. I’m showing off the old alma mater. Hey, do you think she saw what I just did?”
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Aug 8, 2022 07:42
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Omega Prompt #4 entry for the wizard story! Spin - Balance the stick WINNER! This time around, we made sure Chili couldn't cheat. Wizard - Sitting Here posted:You see the flow of information between people and things like a series of intersecting roads or rivers. You aren't all-knowing; rather, you see information when it's in transit between informer and informee. Sometimes, if you're very careful, you can dam or change the flow. The Wizard Watched Trading Places Right Before This Story 1219 words The E-Class Mercedes slammed into the rear of the Toyoda Corolla, and the drivers stepped out to scream at and blame each other. They paused only when their phones lit up and vibrated, their messengers pelted with video clips from every internet connected camera in a block radius, which clearly showed the Mercedes driver was playing a game on her phone when she crashed into the Corolla. Balan smiled as he kept walking, he had done it just to test his magic skills, but it was satisfying to see someone get totally exposed at causing trouble. Balan was an informancer, he could see how things communicated and do things to affect where and how they did. It meant he was regularly redirecting nearby messages to create copies on his phones to flip through later, and it also meant he found a lot of secrets. One of those secrets he was planning to use to make some major money. Balan himself did not need any income, when you can affect bank payments so the amounts are never debited from your account, you tend not to want for material things. It did take a lot of effort to reroute money, banks had their defensive wards and active threat tracers. Copying emails and using that information to buy the right kinds of futures contracts was way easier. It would still be a challenge to his skills, to make this investment look believable, without a trace of any of his informancy. Regulators really frowned on that. He took the door on the left to the Wizard's Brew Cafe. Ahead of Balan in line, a woman was screaming at her boyfriend. "Why did my cousin just send me a naked picture with YOUR NAME written on it?" The boyfriend tried to make an excuse but it was clear he was no longer the boyfriend as she stormed out, he meekly followed. Balan stepped up next to order and smiled at the barista. He had seen the messages coming in and it was a simple redirect to push some of photos to the woman's phone. Balan did this so often he didn't even need to tap his wand (made out of a wifi router's antenna, naturally) and it still rested in his side holster. He had access to so many secrets and learned so much about the people around him, but he barely talked with them directly. There was just so much information to sift through, who had time to talk? Balan picked up his steaming large Americano and blew at it before taking a small sip, returning to his seat. His laptop was whirring away on the public wifi, but it would be a little while before the crop report drafts were sent for final review. Balan just had to work his magic and add a new recipient as a blind CC, then decided just how much he was going to spend. For now? He was sifting through his usual tags on Archive of Our Own. Did he really want to read another The Office fanfic? Oooh, it was a coffee shop AU, so yes, he did. He grabbed his Americano and took a large slurp to the annoyance of the woman seated across from him. She was reading an actual book, so there was nothing Balan could do to her at the moment except smile. Just as he started reading, the cafe doors burst open and in strode another wizard. Oh, crap. Balan had his defensive constructs primed in his head as the wizard strode towards him. The newcomer was in traditional wizard garb, complete with an archaic moon and stars patters on his robes and tall pointed hat. His unkempt hair and beard fluttered as the breeze from outside blew in. "BALANTHAZAR THE INFORMANCER! We meet again, for the last time!" Balan quickly minimized the browser window. "Really? That's incredible. Just who are you?" The woman next to him scooped up her book and coffee, rolling her eyes as she headed towards the door. "How can you not know your greatest foe?!" the wizard waved his hands in frustration. "My greatest foe? You're the aphids that keep ruining my garden?" "No, you buffoon! It is I, Krombolo, Master of Prismatics! Behold the rainbow of your destruction!" Krombolo waved his arm and the entire cafe was bathed in rainbow light. Balan waited for anything else to happen, but the light just faded away, ineffective. "Okay, I'm going to ignore you now, I got important work to do." Balen turned back to his computer and brought the story back up. "Sir, no magic in the premises," the barista called. "And you need to buy something if you want to hang out here." Krombolo huffed and stomped his foot, but got in line to order. Jim had just put Dwight's coffee in Jello when Krombolo slammed a small hot chocolate down on Balan's table. "Now we can meet on the field of battle!" Balan raised an eyebrow. Krombolo's phone buzzed, he checked it. "Chase Fraud Alert? I don't have an account there!" drat! Krombolo had paid in cash and Balan didn't see a card, so he had to guess which bank to try that with. Still, he had more things he could forward. The phone buzzed again as Krombolo accepted a call from his Mom. It wasn't really his mom, it was some poor other mom who was calling one of her real children at the moment. Krombolo seemed fooled at first, then started swearing at the poor woman, and began reciting a curse incantation. “HEY!” Balan yelled, “You want to take that outside? I’m trying to read here!” Krombolo hung up with an angry tap. Three angry taps as the first two didn’t trigger the end of the call. Then he kept angry tapping as his phone was continuously vibrating due to hundreds of spam texts arriving. He eventually left the cafe in tears. The Americano was cool by the time the crop report draft arrived. The pandemic had not affected crop quality and harvest as much as predicted. That’s all he needed to know, and set up a bunch of short orders, as the price would tumble when the news broke. That would not be for days, so all he had to do now was wait. The coffee fic turned out only okay, the writer used too many late season characters, but did ship Jim and Dwight. Balan left to go catch a movie, pausing briefly to authorize the full New York Times article someone without a subscription was trying to read on his phone. Outside, Krombolo was sitting on the sidewalk, staring into space. Balan paused. “Hey, Kromb, want to catch a flick?” A loud snort as Krombolo snapped to attention. “What?” “They got a double feature at the Moxie, Snake Man and Son of Snake Man. I’m buying.” “Uh, sure! But why?” “Just keeping my enemies closer!” Balan smiled. He still had no idea who Krombolo was, but might as well indulge him for a bit. The argument in the cafe was the longest conversation he’d had in years. Maybe this guy just needs some kind words. There were always more mothers to forward to his phone if he turned out obnoxious.
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Aug 8, 2022 07:44
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Omega Prompt No. 4Sitting Here posted:You fuel your magic by stealing hubris and vanity from heroes and divas, among other things. Anyone who has an overly high estimation of themselves is fodder for the plucking. Careful you don't leave too many empty, broken people in your wake... Chili posted:Twenty bucks is twenty bucks Freki leaned over the chasm, stroking his chin. Holding aloft a flickering torch, he released it to the darkness. It was swallowed by the depths. "I dare say this crossing is rather perilous." "Hang on," said Mune, "I've an app for that." Freki reached for another torch, but he needn't have bothered. The light of Mune's smartphone illuminated them both. Freki, the warrior, was leathery and lean, a keen-eyed scoundrel, whiskered and sallow. Mune, by contrast, was boyishly handsome, short in stature, and perpetually flippant. At this exact moment he was scrolling through some photos: fabulous meals from across the land, far beyond their own meager pittance of rations. "Where is it, where is it...ah, that's perfect." Freki gazed over his partner's shoulder. It was a picture of a man (and technically a woman) he'd never seen before. The woman's head was out of frame, but not her bust, which was generous indeed. A common tavern wench, judging by her clothes, though perhaps more uncommon in the ways that mattered to the photographer. She was serving up lobster to the man, whom the angle suggested had taken the picture, his good-looks spoiled by a leering grin. THANKS FOR THE MEAL said a cloying caption, accompanied by a number of upturned arrows (nearly 13,000 if the stats could be believed). Freki raised an eyebrow. "And this is?" "An rear end in a top hat. Don't worry about it." Mune pressed his thumb against the touchscreen, and began to chant, his free hand raised in deference to the heavens. The smartphone pulsed, an electric blue, a volley of power enveloping his form. The numbers beneath the photo ticked down, and the photo itself was eaten away. The ground beneath them trembled and stretched, forging a bridge from the bones of the Earth. Freki braced himself against the influx of energy, until at last his companion had settled down. "Right," said Mune, "One bridge. Let's get." He gestured for Freki to lead the way. "Curiouser, curious." Freki lit another torch. Across the chasm lay the burial chamber, stuffed with shelves of canopic jars. Strewn across the floor were countless bones, the remnants of vassals, warriors, competitors. But the big prize was the tomb opposite the entrance, a magnificent sarcophagus carved from whalebone. A resting place fit for a king of old. "Should get us something at auction," said Mune. The wizard sniffed the air and recoiled, batting at the stale air. Freki's eyes narrowed. He looked to the bones. "I advise caution, young conjurer. The bones seem restless." "Ah, classic. Thanks Harryhausen." Mune pulled out his phone. "You have a plan?" "I've got fireball. That's usually enough." Freki shook his head. "Fire would cause undue damage to the tomb. Those jars," he pointed, "Are filled with organs, carefully preserved. To do so they soaked them in noxious liquids. An errant match would set us ablaze." Spying an alcove, he tucked away his torch. "Fair," Mune conceded, without looking up. "So what's our move?" "My blades should suffice, with the aid of enchantment." "I gotcha," said Mune. He was still scrolling. Frekie steeled himself, a blade in each hand. He inhaled deeply, held his breath, and exhaled. Mune began chanting the old sword dance. Freki's blades heated with an ember red glow. The warrior smiled, and stepped into the room. No sooner did he enter the chamber, the skeletons - as expected - rose and assembled. Their imperial armor had rusted and crumbled, but the jewels they wore, in honor of their loyalty, sparkled in the shadows like the stars above. Freki leapt into the fray, a whirl of blades. His was the way of the dervish, the acrobat soldier. Weaving between them, his steel cut true, reducing his assailants to splinters of bone. Mune stood in the doorway, still chanting, still scrolling. Every few seconds, an account was purged. Celebrity bloggers and influencers, photoshopped idols and self-important essayists, their upvotes and likes turned to dust in the wind. They'd arise in the morning, their reputations lost. They were worse than dead: they were no one at all. Freki spun, sweating, his searing blades piercing the last trembling corpse. Its hollow laughter echoed before falling to silence. Panting, he wiped his brow with his arm, careful not to touch his swords to his skin. The sounds of battle lost, Mune opened an eye. He turned off his phone, and Freki’s blades grew dull once more. “My friend.” Freki nodded. “I am in your debt.” “Eh, don’t sweat it.” Mune waved him off. Glancing at the bones, he nodded in turn. “drat,” he said, “You were pretty badass.” The two of them glanced at the central sarcophagus. “Pose for a photo?” asked Mune. “Why not.” Standing on either side of the coffin, they forced matching smiles. Mune held up two fingers, as was custom. Freki crossed his blades, feigning intensity. There was a click, a flash, and they were immortal. “Should be worth a few hits at least,” said Mune. “Just don’t let it get to your head,” added Freki. The two of them looked at each other, and laughed.
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Aug 8, 2022 08:39
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screw it, in for #4, gimme a wizard
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Aug 8, 2022 08:43
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Antivehicular posted:screw it, in for #4, gimme a wizard Your wizardry allows you give anima/life to any work of art: A sculpture, a painting, a photo, and so on. I'm leaving submissions open for a bit. Get those last minute entries in!
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Aug 8, 2022 08:45
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This post is my intention to enter omega dome, and also my submission #2 for autobiography. That Time We Were All Wonder Woman Words 726 It was 8am and I was the only person in the kitchen who wasn’t hungover. The rest filed in one-by-one: my sister, my aunt, my cousin last, already wearing sunglasses. Each of us in a Wonder Woman T-shirt, foam headband, and velcroed-on cape. “We partied on the wrong night.” “Yep.” “Are we really going to this obstacle course?” “Yep.” We dragged and scraped ourselves out of the room to the apartment’s hallway, locking the door behind us. And in front of us the fire doors were shut. My aunt pressed on the bar, but they didn’t move. My cousin made the sign of the cross. “Thank you, God.” “We can’t be trapped in here,” I insisted. I pressed on the doors, too. Then I jiggled them. Then I went hunting around the walls for a release, and when I found it no one was happy except my aunt. “Let’s go!” she called, already booking it down the hall. We piled into the car. My cousin looked like death warmed over, didn’t say a word the whole drive to the course. My aunt cranked ABBA and belted along off-key. My sister and I scrambled for sunscreen. We arrived just before our start time and baked in the sun for the safety presentation. Don’t attempt anything you aren’t comfortable with, we’re all here to have fun. 30 obstacles lay ahead of us on a 5km course, which everyone but my cousin had trained for. The first obstacle we came to was a big plastic tube we had to crawl through. My sister went in first, made a lot of yelping, and came out with one knee bleeding. My aunt, wearing running pants, decided to brave the gravel-lined tube. My cousin and I decided we had nothing to prove. The second obstacle was a 6ft wall. I took a run at it and scrambled over, picking up a splinter in the process. My cousin and sister stood on one side and pushed, while I guided and pulled, our aunt over the wall. Good enough. When we reached the “crawling through mud with barbed wire” obstacle I passed. The Wonder Woman capes were not going to be helpful. My cousin looked like she wanted to hurl, dragging herself on her stomach more than crawling. We crawled and climbed and tightroped walked our way for an hour before someone thought to ask, “Isn’t this only supposed to be 5km?” Which it was. My sister and I insisted we had to be close to the end, and the obstacles must just be grouped together or something. Eventually we came to the big mud pits, the ones that came up to our waist. Still too many rocks everywhere, a hazard of the Pacific Northwest, but we scrambled through the first set with only some minor cuts and bruises. The next batch were full of rotating triangles we had to power ourselves, climb on top of to lift us out of the muck, and slide off the other side. Teamwork in action! My cousin went over fine, clinging to one edge and then swinging her legs around at the top to land gracefully back in the mud. My aunt reached the top next and suddenly asked, “What now?” but it was already too late, the triangle had too much momentum, and she was dumped face-first into the mud on the other side, Wonder Woman cape sailing through the air gracefully. She came up coughing and sputtering, “You should have warned me!” “If you couldn’t figure that one out, there’s nothing we could have done,” my cousin stated grimly. Luckily the professional photographers caught that one in action. Another hour passed. We saw the wait for the biggest obstacle and passed. We kept running, my cousin too exhausted to speak. We were in the woods but there was no shade. By the time we reached the final obstacle, again lined up hundreds of people deep, we all bailed to the finish line where free bananas and cookies were waiting for us. “I do not feel good,” my cousin warned us. We made it all the way back to our rooms, thankfully without puking, before she could check her phone and discover that, actually, she wasn’t supposed to be feeling good, because according to the emergency text from her doctor she was positive for mono.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:19
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Man agonizes over potatos, I'm goin back to where it all began Matey Potatey 766 words Bevan stared down at the hosed-up garden man, begging for his life. He needed a better name for it than the hosed-up garden man but nothing else came to mind, it was a perfect encapsulation of the core traits present: 1) from the garden 2) man (debatable?) 3) hosed-up (definitely). His skin was potato-russet and extremely peelable, his eyes were the dark little pits you’d carve out with a knife, his voice was cludgy and thick and, well … spudlike. HNO GHKILLME FĀTHERR he said and Bev had to admit he made a compelling argument, but on the other hand inflation was up and boy, he was staring at a solid 80–100kg of raw potato that he had grown and watered himself, ready to just gently caress off into the neighbourhood until it got nicked and cooked up by some other oval office, probably Daryl. “Why not?” asked Bev. FĀTHER, I, I— It made a noise like a cat about to cough up a hairball, then ejected a sputum of wet dark dirt. It cleared its throat, and from somewhere inside it Bev could hear gravel rattling against rock. I DHREEĀM it finished. So fuckin what, so does every other oval office, old Aunt Kiri wouldn’t shut the gently caress up about her dreams, oh she was in the post office and saw a man with no face who whispered to her the song that would unweave the world but when she awoke she couldn’t remember a bloody note. “Nah,” said Bev, and clouted it around the head with the flat of the shovel. Something cracked inside its neckpiece, and for a moment there was silence, then it began to wail, high and keening, like a child in pain, suddenly so humanlike that Bev took a step back. The sound gave him a clanging headache. “Alright alright,” sighed Bev, “what do you dream about then mate?” I DHREAM OF BĒD, OF WĪFE WITH FLĒSH FIRM AND WHĪTE, OF EATING DĪNNER WITH MĪ WĪFE, OF SONGS OF PRAISE FOR FĀTHER DEAR Bev wasn’t gonna lie, songs of praise sounded alright. He loved a little worship. The wee black-eyed cunts who used to come and pay homage had long since hosed off back to the forest after getting their fix of blood-sugar and wouldn’t be back for another turn of the world at least, and who even knew if the world had that long. “Go on then,” he said, brandishing the shovel in reminder “praise a lad up.” FĀTHER it ullulated with a sound like somebody pouring out a bag of blood into the gutter, unpleasantly organic, YOUR FLĒSH IS FĪRM AND RICH WITH NŪTRIENTS, YOU ARE THE RŌT, THE SĒD, THE SUN AND LĒF, SPARE MĒ AND I WILL MĀKE MANY MŌRE POTATŌ, ĒT MY SŌNS AND THEIR SKIN AND GROW STRŌNG. Which really was just forward-thinking wasn’t it? Spare one potato, get hundreds later. Set up a stall and sell the neighbours mash, he’d make a literal bloody killing. He was seeing dollar signs and bloodbags. “Alright then mate, make another potato,” he said, and the hosed-up garden man began to ullulate and whirl, which was pretty much what he’d been doing the whole time, but there was an intent to it, where it had felt listless it felt motivated, Bev felt his skin prickle and his throat go dry, and he knew something was changing in the world, being torn apart and rewritten by the magic of root and blood. “Hgurry upp,” he muttered, then his eyes went wide. “HYŪ CŪNT,” he roared, and tried to swing the shovel again, but his limbs were heavy and slow, not build to handle the speed and weight, and he felt something soft inside him fracture and flake. With what strength his rapidly spudifying body could muster, he leapt into the pit with both hands raised, and crashed into the hosed-up garden man with the force of a potato striking another potato, which is to say not as much as he expected. The hosed-up garden man was already wrapping his arms around him, the dark spots growing inquisitive and hungry roots that pierced into Bev, drew them closer and closer together into a single awful bifurcated trunk. FĀĀTHER sung the hosed-up garden man, I DŌ A YOU ĀSK and Bev realised it was coming from his own muddy throat too, in terrible harmony, his mouth and body no longer his own as the hosed-up garden man – with more limbs, more strength, and a shovel from Mitre 10 – hauled its way out of the pit and set off together into the night.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:20
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