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dreadmojo posted:Interprompt: where the wild things aren't (200 words) Alacrity for Anarchy Word Count: 198 Molotov cocktails were being passed around, eager hands grabbing and snatching away at them. Many were getting riled as the evening progressed with shouts becoming louder and more prolific; those that couldn’t stomach the intensifying mood were leaving in a haste. I chose to raise up my own cocktail with a cry of devilish revelry before slamming it down in front of my enraptured comrades. Savreet pulled at my arm as I hollered for another. “Don’t,” she mouthed, or tried to say, oppressed by the rising din. Ignoring her, and tearing off my already-askew tie, I scanned for the cocktail among the bald heads and jewelry of the crowd. This was my night. I have been suffering others for years - the pushy, the inconsiderate, the outright jerks - and desired more than anything the release from wearing those shoes for a turn. Gloria, counter to Savreet, was encouraging me; Karl became increasingly sheepish, though chose to remain with us. Another round of Molotov cocktails finally reached our table and I began drinking mine before the waiter was able to serve anyone else in our group. It was going to be a hell of a happy hour at the Sizzler.
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Oct 16, 2018 00:55
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| # ¿ Mar 16, 2025 13:34 |
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Testing the (holy) waters with this. In.
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Oct 16, 2018 16:47
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Carrier Crawlies 1,496 words "there is a leatherbound trunk beneath the stairs, and you know what it holds" I feel them writhing underneath the plastic. As my face drains of blood, my nearby sisters-in-law, Jacky and Elaine, begin discussing their portion of the inheritance a bit too loudly; they must think that I expected more and are taking this opportunity to gloat. After years of avoiding both of them I am still unsurprised at their ghoulishness, even inside their now-deceased mother’s house. I don’t want more inheritance; in fact, all I want is to leave this house without the vacuum-sealed clothes in my lap or the ancient, leather-bound trunk or the worms. I had only reluctantly come to the reading of my mother-in-law’s will, knowing I would have to suffer Emily’s sisters . I say nothing so as to not delay this tedious obligation. Besides, the clothes had been Emily’s from when she was a child, Maggie was about the right age to wear them, and the two sisters had no children. The trunk surprises me since it’s one of their family heirlooms; true, it had been Emily’s before she died, but I had left it behind with her mother when Maggie and I hurried to move out of this very house. No matter how much I had cleaned the trunk it would keep attracting those worms, which would also end up on Emily and her clothes. Finally able to leave, I drive home with the clothes-filled trunk in the back of my rusty, but reliable, minivan. I do my best to seal the trunk with a new Master Lock and cram it underneath our basement stairs. Maggie is a sweet, inquisitive, and highly observant seven-year-old, so despite my hiding the trunk under our stash of half-broken holiday decorations she asked about it the next day. “Isn’t that Mom’s? Why is it locked?” she asks. I say that I locked it up because it contains dangerous things. “Dangerous things like what?” I say it is full of dangerous and super gross worms, but not to worry as I put a bunch in her backpack for lunch today. “Ew, no you didn’t!” she said, scrunching her face. Laughing, I pretend her bag is extra squishy as I help her put it on, then send her off to the bus stop. A month later Maggie came out to eat breakfast wearing a wrinkled, faded New Kids on the Block t-shirt. It was one of Emily’s. My heart pounding, but trying to stay calm, I ask her where she got it. “Out of Mom’s box in the basement,” she says sheepishly. “But there weren’t any worms! I didn’t see anything through the crack, so I thought they all shriveled up and it was safe open. Plus the combination was right on the lock!” I left the code sticker on the back like a dumbass. I tell Maggie that she needs to change by saying that the shirt is too wrinkled to wear. She pouts a bit but changes before taking off for school. I scoop the shirt off her floor and inspect it, every piece of lint making my blood race. There are no worms, thank god. I throw it into the washer anyway alongside my own sweat-soaked shirt.In the basement, however, I do find a few of the slimy bastards hiding underneath the lid of the wide-open trunk. “What’s with the worms in here?” I ask Emily. We are in the middle of unpacking our moving boxes when I come upon the trunk. A dozen of worms wriggle about inside, little pill capsules of translucent green with black ruffled innards. Emily makes a face and says, “Gross. They must have gotten in there while it was at Mother’s as she’s been complaining of worms lately. Clean it outside so they don’t get all over the house!” I dump the clothes from the trunk into the washer then spray the trunk down, making sure they all go down the drain in the cement floor. I close, latch, and lock the trunk before hammering off the dial face of the lock. Later, a little before the holidays, Maggie walks into the house after school looking exhausted. Helping her out of her shoes, I see a dark-smudged worm making its way down her hair. I peel it off without Maggie noticing and rinse it down the kitchen sink. She protests when I begin checking her over for more, so I tell her I am looking for lice like that time during her first year at school. Just the one worm. Still, I shake a bit as I heat up canned tomato soup for dinner, of which Maggie eats a few spoonfuls before needing to go to bed. I tuck her in with a few extra blankets since the house is chilly tonight. Downstairs the trunk remains locked, but I need to give the lid a push to seal up a small opening likely caused by the cold. Maggie continues to have reduced energy and appetite through the holidays; the school psychologist tells me not to be overly concerned. “Does she often ask about her mother? Have you discussed with her about why you have no family?” She says Maggie probably feels disconnected from classmates, especially at this time of the year. Hygiene isn’t brought up, so I must be doing well removing the worms from her before she leaves in the morning. Early that following year Maggie has her first seizure. The doctors say that the blood tests show negative for clotting issues, so she isn’t at risk for strokes. I know why they address this, though Emily had passed away too quickly after her stroke for the hospital to determine its cause. I decline their offer for a longer inpatient observation of Maggie as I worry about the cost: paying off Emily’s medical bills alone had used most of our savings from the life insurance award. I didn’t fill the anticonvulsant prescription as the medicine had never helped Emily, so there was no sense in wasting the money on it. Months pass and Maggie is increasingly lethargic; after her second seizure I pull her out of school entirely. Days like today she keeps a decent amount of food down, though her stomach still rumbles so menacingly that I can hear it through the several blankets covering her. I gently pluck the worms off of Maggie’s head so as to not pull her thinning hair out with them. I then adjust her small frame on the bed to scoop the squirming layer of worms trying to hide beneath her. My vision is always blurry, but rubbing my eyes only succeeds in making them more painfully swollen. The sudden shift from cold to hot, humid weather has made the trunk warp drastically, mangling its metal latch and resulting in a crack in the lid that refuses to close. Now the area underneath the stairs requires meticulous cleaning as it is perpetually infested with blackhearted worms. Taking care of Maggie and the house requires every minute of my day just as it had with Emily. My mother-in-law had claimed I didn’t do enough for Emily, that my laziness and apathy were to blame for her death. Daily condemnation was the price I paid for moving Maggie and myself into her house after Emily passed away, and why we moved into this low-end house as soon as we could. After my mother-in-law’s fatal heart attack and will reading, I do not see Jacky or Elaine again until Maggie’s funeral service. It has an open casket as I was bullied out of cremation by the two sisters. Despite my fears I do not see a single worm on Maggie. She looks exactly as if I had just tucked her into bed, at least on those nights before we inherited the leather-bound trunk. Later, Jacky and Elaine lament loudly that the family house they inherited from their mother, where they both now live, has nothing to remember Maggie or Emily by. They tell me that I had taken everything of Emily’s along with the trunk, which they also claim, as a family heirloom and all things considered, I didn’t have the right to it anymore. So I gave them the damned trunk. I had put some of Maggie’s and Emily’s belongings inside the gaping trunk since the wellspring of worms had dried up. The sisters scoff as they scrounge through it, complaining about the musty smell; eventually, Jacky and Elaine leave the house with the trunk in tow. I think nothing more of the two until hearing about the house fire a few years later. Arson is the cause and correlated to Jacky’s diagnosis of hallucinogenic dementia only weeks before. Neither sister survives the fire and nothing in the house is salvageable. The news conjures up an image of the old trunk, every inch covered in a sickening, undulating mass of worms, now nothing more than a pile of ash underneath the ruins of the family home. It fills me with sadness and relief.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:25
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Just read through all of the stories for this week and enjoyed them greatly! Or, in the spirit of Thunderdome: they were all total rubbish, only deserving to be printed on paper so they can be torn to pieces before being tossed into a trash fire.
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Oct 22, 2018 18:22
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dreadmojo posted:Interprompt: they grow up so young (300 words) Stew Fly, Don't Bother Me 197 words A big fly lands on my neck and bites me. I yelp and try to swear only to get a mouthful of the nickel-sized insects, which buzz violently as they stick to my tongue and cheeks. I immediately dry heave, covering my mouth as best as possible as spit gushes from my salivary glands out into long, viscous strands dangling towards the floor as I gag. The barrage of flies intensifies as I push through the kitchen, becoming a wall of droning noise and needle-like pricks of pain on every bare inch of my skin. Eventually my clothes stop affording me protection, and I can feel my shirt billow as they swarm into it, harassing the tender bits of flesh underneath. I swear that yesterday they were just little baby maggots, happily thrashing about in leftover beef stroganoff! Or was it last week when I found that stew pot crammed into the back of the pantry? Wait, these pests might be from the homemade tapioca I made for the Halloween party, over there next to the holiday turkey carcass. I really should take care of that before this gets any worse. Nah, I’ll clean it up later.
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Oct 22, 2018 22:11
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Sorry to mislead, but I suppose there's always room under the bio-dome for another future pup!
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Oct 22, 2018 23:49
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Hoping for an insidious prompt!SurreptitiousMuffin posted:(Critiques)  It's on point, too - thank you for writing it up!
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Oct 24, 2018 16:16
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Sacramemento Mori 1,666 words atomic bomb Brendon thought he was a safe distance from the bomb when it dropped; this was because he was the one that dropped it. The flash of light came as expected, yet there was no explosive roar. There was, however, the screaming. Paloma was on the interstate on her way to the office in Sacramento, winding her way through the congestion on her motorcycle. The massive protests in the city were doing no favors to the already-terrible road conditions. None of her attention was given to the plane in the distance, nor to the speck that fell from it, as at that moment a Beamer sharply cut across three lanes of traffic and blindsided her. Paloma flew only a short distance, stopped by the cement wall of the median as she met it head first. The atomic bomb obliterated all life from Sacramento. The weapon rejected explosives in favor of releasing of pure, high-energy waves. Buildings remained as every living thing ruptured like overfilled water balloons. It was quick; neither person or animal had time to scream. Those came afterwards as the spirits were ripped from their bodies, becoming ragged strips of ethereal cloth that whipped violently through the air. They overtook Brandon’s plane and tore the flesh from his bones. The plane went down. Paloma’s helmet did nothing to help her, and she was dead on impact. She was dead before the bomb detonated, dead before Sacramento was gutted of life, dead before the city’s violent spirits washed over the commuter traffic to end their lives, too. The weight of her body fell free only be replaced by the intense pressure of the spirit horde bullying her back down, squeezing her own spirit back into familiar muscles and nerves and veins. The pain Brandon felt was fleeting, as was his blackout, yet it only took that moment to send the plane diving earthward. His pilot’s reflex kicked in and he steered the plane instinctively towards the nearest flat strip of land: the interstate. Brandon’s white-knuckled grip on the yoke urged the plane’s nose up just enough to send it surfing across the metal waves of cars. Eventually the plane stopped, the highway behind it now a crinkled sheet of aluminum. Brandon pulled himself from the window of the mangled cockpit. It was easy partly because he felt uninjured and partly because his body felt curiously light. Paloma’s body felt familiar and alien; she thought of wearing old clothes that no longer fit right. In the distance she noticed that the banshee storm looped back around towards the sky above Sacramento. Nearby, she noticed a skeleton crawling towards her from the carnage of a military-style airplane. It was missing its pelvis downward, yet it looked to Paloma, for a lack of a better word, “fresh.” The skeleton was shiny with a layer of clear, wet tissue still tattooed by the imprints of now-gone blood vessels. The skeleton looked up to her with empty, glistening eye sockets. Its mouth dropped open, unnaturally wide without restrictive ligaments. “Can you give me a lift?” it asked. Paloma paused, then hoisted the skeleton up by its ribc age. “A walk would be great exercise,” said Brandon, arms dangling, “but a car would be much preferred. That is, if you’re heading my way back to Sac.” It was odd; despite having just flown away from the city Brandon now felt a curious vibration coaxing him back to it. Paloma did not feel that same vibration, yet the uncomfortable suit of her body made her anxious to do anything to take her mind off it. She also had a silly but persistent internal nagging that she was going to be late for work. Paloma decided that going to the office would be at least a goal to focus on until something better came up. She found her motorcycle close by. It was damaged by the accident yet started up right away. She could probably find something safer to ride but it’s not like she could die again. Or if she did, would it matter? Thinking hurt, though not the normal kind of hurt, like a phantom pain, so she stopped. “You seem a little shy, so I’ll introduce myself. I’m Brandon. Was Brandon? Now half of one? Well, I suppose I’m closer to a tenth of a Brandon since I’ve lost so much weight. Just skin and bones, hold the skin!” He sighed. “I heard the skin is unhealthy for you anyway. Need to watch my figure since I’m not going to get my morning mall walking in anymore.” The two went towards Sacramento through the highway wreckage. Brandon’s grip kept him on the bike. Mostly. One nasty bump sent him off like a boney pinball into the labyrinth of cars. He was no worse for wear aside from the scuffs, which took off some of his new-skeleton sheen. “Road rash means I’m a hardcore biker now, right?” Brandon said, and Paloma already knew it was a lead-in. “Watch out, this guy here is bad to the bone!” She wondered if he had been always like this, or if this was the consequence of losing your physical brain. In the city, the bodies were everywhere. “Puddles” as Brandon referred to them. What could have been either person or animal were rubbery streaks littering the landscape, boiled colorless and beyond identification. Despite heading right towards ground zero, neither Brandon or Paloma seemed to be affected by the death that tore through the city. It was strange for radiation, thought Paloma, but so was everything else, so whatever. The bomb had not blown up only a block from Paloma’s office. Specifically, it had landed, opened up to release a deadly blast, then sprouted the ghastly tower up out of the bombshell. The towers was an amalgamation of gristle and silicon that spiked thirty stories into the air. Darkness swirled and pulsed at its apex, the screams of its composite spirits heard faintly from below. “I was military before all this,” said Brandon after they arrived. “Never was much for climbing the ranks. I guess if this is Purgatory then it’s poetic that now I gotta climb this Purgatower.” He vaulted from the motorcycle and sank his sharp bone fingers into the soft wall of the tower. “See you in a little bit. Along with most of the city as, phew, what a view I’ll have from up there. But I’ll come back down as I don’t want to be accused of keeping my head in the clouds. Or ribs. Or arms. Speaking of body parts, how tall do you think that is? I can’t measure in feet anymore and never bothered to learn the metric system!” As Brandon climbed, Paloma explored. She walked into her office with the feeling that at any moment she would be back at work like any other weekday. Very little had changed aside from the building being more quiet than it normally was. And, of course, the people puddles. They were relatively few in number as those that hadn’t joined the government protests simply weren’t at work yet when the bomb dropped early that morning, just like her. Paloma thought she’d be sad seeing the remains of her coworkers, but she was only indifferent. Maybe because every puddle looked the same, maybe because the mass death along with her own pseudo-death simply overwhelmed any feelings she should have right now. Even Brandon’s humor made her neither laugh or groan. She felt nothing except physically uncomfortable. Brandon had reached the top in little time as the tower seemed to energize him as he climbed, a power seeping into his bones. The tattered spirits swarming the apex would have made his ears bleed if he still had them. Now, he heard nothing more than the buzzing of a cloud of flies. Flies with melody, timing, rhythm. Then the tower spoke to him, over the buzzing. A whisper at first, eventually it built into a thunderclap that shook the small bones in his skull. Brandon flung himself free of the tower and soared toward the city below. Paloma was coming out of the office building when she saw Brandon, mid-plumet. He did not strike the cement below, pulling up like a bird having snatched its prey and stopping suddenly, hovering, in front of her. Brandon’s skull was split, a fissure separating the two halves, yet had no other overt changes that could explain why half of a skeleton could suddenly levitate. “Skydiving twice in one day! Well, okay, I guess I never left the plane on the first one,” he admitted. “Regardless, I feel like I’ve become quite the adrenaline junkie lately!” Brandon looked Paloma up and down. “Oh, also, I’m a harbinger of the Great Change. No, I can’t break a hundred.” More looking. “My stoic companion, I do have to thank you for the lift. Now let me return the favor by providing you the same up to the top of this garish tower. Experimental artistry is neat, but, personally, I would have gone for something more simple and modern. Now let’s get you out of that thing, it looks like it itches.” Sharp claws of bone, Brandon’s fingers eviscerated Paloma; her spirit funneled out as her body’s innards spilled to the ground. Paloma had no control over herself, and swirled up towards the tower’s peak, pulled by the vortex of the whirlpool of spirits. Paloma realized now that the banshee swarm was not screaming but in fact singing. It was not a beautiful song, yet it was not harsh to hear. Paloma finally felt a sense of purpose, something she could fulfill. Her voice sung out, adding to the strength of the song’s core. Brandon flew up to the choir’s center and began conducting. The song raged and stifled and wavered and soothed. More songs could be heard, thousands of miles away in every direction, each keeping in time with one another. A mounting crescendo was reached. The Earth cracked.
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Oct 29, 2018 05:04
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Oh man. I don't know what chord I hit with Sebmojo but I am preparing my body for that crit. :o
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Oct 30, 2018 16:35
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Thank you for the crits! Fair and not nearly as cutting as I was expecting (and deserved). Also, my weekend plans now include a wheel of Gouda and an Evil Dead marathon. (I promise not to write anything during the subsequent cheese coma.)
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Oct 30, 2018 22:40
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In! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rZE_J1beA I feel like doing this and starting my first NaNoWriMo might be rough, but I need to do more writing to get better at it. Time to push out those words!
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Oct 30, 2018 23:15
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Yarning for the Lost 1220 words Stars are burning in the west. It was a perfect sphere, a black-filled ring of chocolate on cream white. It was fuzzy. “Thank you, thank you!” Arthur was a hardened middle-aged man, with skin of leather and face scarred by life, yet he simpered as he left, keeping his one good eye to the floor and holding the wool eye with great care. The young girl that gifted the eyeball sighed as she slid out of her oversized armchair. Still work left to do. Abigail kept to the thin rugs in the bare hallway, avoiding the cold wood underneath. The room she entered was saturated with the smell of fabric. Yellow light came from twin brass floor lamps astride the doorway, antique sentries to a workshop of yarn. Abigail made her way over to the human leg laying on the carpet, its foot half-finished. She found her knitting needles, unraveled a ball of yarn, and within an hour the leg was click-clacked into completion. It was dark when Abigail left her house; the moon waned old, outperformed on the night’s stage by a brilliant cast of stars. She headed down the unlit brick road to Old Gal Goodman’s house. The greying lady was on her front porch, her truncated thigh propped up on a stool in anticipation of Abigail’s arrival. The wool leg’s curvature fit Old Gal Goodman’s perfectly; immediately, the seam between the two legs disappeared. The threads of the wool leg smoothed out. Calluses formed on the soles of the feet. Nails, needing clipped, were the finale. Eyes wide and anxious, Old Gal Goodman carefully stood up, putting weight on the reformed leg, then took a step. Old Gal Goodman’s twilight years would be much easier on her now. Cold and quiet welcomed Abigail home. She had no more work to do but an urge pulled her into the knitting room and over to the ancient oak dresser dominating an entire wall. With care, Abigail opened up its heavy drawers. Arms, ears, toes - the drawers brimmed with half-finished parts. Abigail hesitated to open the topmost drawer, sealed by a lock with a keyhole like a shooting firework. The key itself rested conspicuously on top of the dresser. Contrasting the age of the dresser, the key looked as if it were new: the surface unblemished, the blade tipped by an asterisk of shining gold. It was late, yet Abigail was seized by a sudden bout of determination. She snatched the key. Tonight was the night. The drawer slid open. Lamplight fell on reddish curls, blue eyes, and pale red lips. With reverence, Abigail carefully lifted the head out of the drawer and looked it over. It was like her very memories had come to life. Abigail gathered what she needed from the drawers. Hours passed and her fingers became numb; she imagined it was because she was willing life from them into the thread. Limbs joined waist and torso, then, finally, the head. The life-sized wool mannequin was propped up in a chair. Abigail stepped back, watching, waiting. She had made only prosthetics before, never an entire person. So, even though she was hoping for it, Abigail was still surprised when it began to move. The limbs flexed and head tilted, but no flesh was formed; the fuzzy, yarn-lined surface created by Abigail’s needles remained unchanged. The construct’s head tracked Abigail’s face, lidless eyes studying her as if she was puzzlingly familiar. Abigail teared up. “Mom?” The wool imitation of her mother leaned forward as if to stand, just like Old Gal Goodman. Where the elderly woman’s solid foot found purchase, however, the soft yarn of the construct did not, and it crumpled into a heap on carpet. Suddenly, it jerked its head up from the ground, curls of string hair whipping back, then shot forward, undulating like a lizard, knocking Abigail over as it crawled up the front of her. Abigail was paralyzed by fright from the sudden attack. The textured eyes in the recreation of her mother’s face bored into Abigail’s, replacing her wistful dreams with a waking nightmare. As abruptly as it had assaulted her, the yarn construct lept off Abigail and darted out the knitting room’s door. Abigail caught her breath and, pushing down her fear, took off after it. A trail of cleared dust stretched down the hallway led her into the foyer. The fresh morning’s light caught swirling of airborne particles in the yawning portal of the open front door. She was scared and upset, but the long night without rest took its due. Abigail found her way into the embrace of her stuffed lounger and fell asleep. Knocking at the door woke her. Arthur was standing in the late afternoon sunlight; he was missing his new eye. Old Gal Goodman was also missing her leg, he told Abigail, as were Gregory’s fingers and Cheryl’s teeth. Rumors were spreading that the specter of Abigail’s dead mother had come to take her daughter’s creations back to the other world with her. Abigail told Arthur that she knew what to do. She didn’t, but it convinced the sullen man to return home. Yarn clippers would be a start, she thought, passing the scrambled throw rugs and dust clumps in the hallway. Right there, back inside the knitting room, was her mother’s replica. The living mannequin was pulling everything out of the dresser. All around it were balls of yarn, limbs, teeth, kidneys, bones: a portfolio of Abigail’s creations. The wool construct stopped its efforts when it noticed Abigail - then it lunged at her. Abigail tried to run away but it was too quick, grabbing her legs. However, instead of attacking her further it seemed distracted, looking back at the piles of knittings strewn about the room. It then looked up at Abigail, putting its hand on her chest. Over her heart. Abigail understood. Knitting needles and deep red yarn blurred together as Abigail worked. The heart was elaborate, with chambers and valves and vessels. Her would-be mother took the heart from Abigail’s hands with great care, admiring the object for a moment before squirming out the door. A flash of anger and betrayal washed over Abigail, and she was after it without a lost moment. It had gone out the front door again, but this time Abigail found it right outside. The creature was prostrate in the grass, watching the drowning orange glow of the sun against a magenta backdrop. It then turned to face Abigail, quietly holding the newly-crafted heart. The wool replica of her mother then held out the crimson organ high in front of Abigail’s face. The heart eclipsed the setting sun, a dark silhouette with a vibrant halo of dying light. Abigail thought she saw the heart begin to pulse, but at that moment it caught on fire. The sun disappeared as the flame of the wool heart spread to the hand that held it, across the arms and torso, up to the face that reflected every feature from her faint memories. As curls of hair burned like candle wicks, that face gently smiled at Abigail. Soft winds carried fragments of fiery yarn into the new night’s sky, stars of orange and red on the growing dark of the western horizon. Abigail watched their distant twinkling for a long, long time, yet the embers never went out.
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Nov 5, 2018 04:02
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| # ¿ Mar 16, 2025 13:34 |
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derp posted:interprompt: tasting notes for a whisky distilled from wizard blood. 150 words BeerEvocate.com Review 54 words "Wild Thaumaturgy" has aromatic notes of Rageland saffron and adamantiron. The translocation of ethereal nitrogen when in contact with the tongue is a pleasant surprise. However, this muddles the flavors and attracts pockets of manasquitoes, both of which detract greatly from the experience. While distilled from A+ blood, this whiskey is B- at best."
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Nov 5, 2018 23:47
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