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In, give me a monster please!
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Nov 25, 2020 23:33
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| # ¿ Sep 17, 2024 15:49 |
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Prompt: Cryptid:Elwetritsch//"Senator snarled like a brigadier general" (3-4) Hunting (for the way out of this place) 1050 words Jen yawned and rubbed at her eyes. It’d been around half an hour since the other interns had set off to find the snipe, and left her with a bag and clear instructions to wait for them. But it was a nice day, and she was tired after staying up half the night, doing prep work for a briefing the following morning. After a moment’s consideration, she stretched out on the warm rock and closed her eyes. Whenever the others came back, she was sure they’d wake her up with all of their screaming and yelling. When she woke back up, her rock was cool and stars glimmered far above. She blinked, rolled over, then shot up, wide-eyed. They didn’t find me? But then, she hadn’t moved from where they had left her. There were seven other people - they couldn’t have all forgotten about me. As she looked around the meadow in vain, searching and failing to see anything besides the dim outlines of the other rocks, the thought that she’d been duped slowly crept into her mind. gently caress. She pulled her phone out of her pack, and checked the time. It was 9:42 PM, but it’d had taken them half an hour to walk to the field from the reserve’s parking lot, and they’d gone off trail at some point… and she could barely remember the path they’d taken, stumbling after the group, half-asleep. Come to think of it, they only told me what we were doing after we’d gone out of cell range. 9:42, now 9:43 PM. Half an hour to the parking lot, and the others had pointed out that a bus ran out here from the city every hour, up to 8 PM. There was no way she was making it back in time for Senator Kiera’s briefing. She sat up, hugging her legs to her chest, and sighed. All of the previous briefings she’d done, the senator had known the bills inside and out, much to her chagrin. She caught details that Jen had missed, highlighted bits that Jen had mistaken as unimportant, and generally seemed unimpressed. She checked her phone again. Still zero coverage, but the battery was still more than half full, since she hadn’t used it on the hike at all. Relieved, she flicked on its flashlight and stood up, looking around. Now, where should I check? The trail skirted the edge of the forest, she was sure. But the field was wide and large, and largely surrounded by said forest. It would take a while to check the adjacent edges - but then, I suppose I have all night to do this. Or at least as long as it takes for my phone’s battery to run out. Suddenly, the grass rustled to her left. Jen’s body tensed, and she slowly moved her phone to shine in that direction. Is that a bird? But birds generally didn’t have antlers growing out of their head. Or scales instead of feathers. Or… are those… breasts? She stared, dumbfounded. Am I dreaming? But she could think sharp and clear, without the meandering paths that her dream-thoughts usually took. The bird-thing (she was definitely sure it was a bird, despite the scales. It was bird-shaped, not lizard-shaped.) met her eyes. It chirped once, twice, tilting its head. Jen shifted her weight, snapping a branch, and off it bolted, into the dark. She stared after it, then shrugged. It went towards the forest - it was as good as any direction to start searching for the trail. She stepped after it, following its path. *** “Where were you.” The senator bit down on every word, clipped and sharp. Jen didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stood, ramrod straight, staring at the opposite wall. She didn’t manage to get back until the city until late morning, and if she had missed the briefing already, she figured she might as well get herself presentable. The last time she’d come in, with messy hair and rumpled clothes - well. Senator Kiera hadn’t said anything, but her raised eyebrow and pursed lips said plenty by themselves. But maybe she should have rushed, anyways. “Well?” The woman on the other side of the desk narrowed her eyes, obviously displeased with the lack of a response. Jen forced her mouth open before it could get any worse. “I got lost in the woods, ” she said, and flinched a quarter-second later. As far as excuses went, it was pretty awful. “Lost in the woods.” Her tone was unforgiving and icy. This is it, Jen thought. So much for my illustrious career. “...Yes. I went out last afternoon with some other interns, and - ” fell asleep in the middle of a field “- got separated. When I managed to get back to the visitor center, the last bus had already departed. I spent the night at the visitor’s center.” Senator Kiera stared at her, eyes still narrowed, brow creased, and then sighed. The lines of her face softened. “Snipe hunt?” Jen, eyes wide, snapped her gaze to meet the other’s. The senator snorted, finding her reaction answer enough, and sat down heavily into her desk chair. “The older interns do this every year. Generally,“ she said, voice tight, “they have the sense to leave my staff out of it. I suppose I’ll have to remind them why.” She pulled a file over, and said, “You’re free to go. I expect you to make up the briefing tomorrow morning, same time.” Jen hesitantly asked, “You’re not firing me?” Senator Kiera looked up from her desk. “It was very inconvenient for you to disappear like that, to say the least. I had to call in a favor to delay the vote on Bill 546.” “What?” Jen’s mind raced. I was supposed to brief her on that this morning. But she always knows everything about my briefings, anyways... For the first time since she started her internship, Senator Kiera’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “You do good work.” Then her face smoothed back out and she returned her attention to the papers spread across her desk. For a half-second, Jen froze. Then she bowed slightly, exclaimed “Thank you very much!” and rushed out the door, determined to nail the presentation. (She didn’t. But she found she didn’t mind as much, this time.)
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Nov 30, 2020 07:49
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In, give me a song please!
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Dec 2, 2020 01:31
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Prompt: "I Don't Believe In The Sun" Polar Night 940 words Xuan grumbled and flopped onto his keyboard. "gently caress this stupid game." His headphones chimed, and out of the corner of his eye, the chat scrolled up. You keep playing it with me. "Yeah, yeah, you rear end in a top hat. I beat you last week with a six-stone handicap, how was nine stones not enough?!" I told you. That was a fluke. Ugh. He could envision Itsuki's face, impassive with only the slight hint of a smile. He froze, suddenly burning face still pressed against the keys. "Whatever. You'll be back next week, and then," he paused for dramatic effect, "I'll have my revenge!" Instead of the expected ding of a new message, there was silence. Xuan frowned. Then he heard Itsuki unmute himself. He spoke, quiet and low. "I'm not coming back next week." Xuan snapped straight up, pulling up a new tab and frantically typing. He asked, worry clear in his tone, "What? Why? Oh, poo poo, did something happen to the planes?" "Nothing happened to the planes." "Did you get in trouble with the government? Oh, god, what the hell did you do?" He deleted what he'd already typed and started a new query. A soft sigh from the other end. "No, I didn't get in trouble with the government. I'm staying for the winter." He stopped typing. The voice continued, with a hint of a smile. "My advisor was going to stay, but she had a family emergency. They offered me her spot." Xuan knew that he should be happy for him. He knew that the South Pole was an one-of-a-kind location for astronomy research, that it was extraordinary that Itsuki was able to stay for the polar summer, that some of the best research happened during the winter. He knew this because Itsuki had all but gushed it at him, in his own, reserved way. "...Xuan? Are you there?" "I am," Xuan responded, distantly. "I'm happy for you. I..." "Xuan?" "I'm fine." Was his voice wavering? They were just roommates - he shouldn't be - feeling this way "I'm just tired. Sorry." "Take care of yourself. Night." He forced the words out of his throat, and cut the call. Almost immediately, Itsuki is typing... popped up at the bottom of the screen. He closed the client immediately. Then he shut off his computer. He flopped onto his bed. "gently caress," he said, staring up at the ceiling, still lit by the afternoon sun. *** Itsuki stared at his laptop's screen - Xuan's status indicator previously green, had flickered to a dull grey less than five seconds after he had abruptly hung up. "Odd," he murmured to himself. Then he swapped back to the report that he'd been working on. Before his advisor had left, she'd given him very clear instructions on the work that she needed him to do, and he was already behind on recording some of the experimental data they needed. He could ask Xuan about it next week. *** The days passed. From a window, Itsuki watched the last plane he would see for months disappear over the horizon. And the sun slowly, inexorably, followed in its wake. Itsuki shouldn't have felt this lonely - the support staff was kind, the senior scientists friendly, and they had all laughed together as they watched some truly ridiculous horror movies. And he had a lot of work he needed to do - his advisor kept a very tight leash on him, with bi-weekly meetings to keep her up to date on his progress. But Xuan hadn't been online since that call. He was sure that he was just invisible - god knows that he was addicted to that app - but he hadn't messaged him at all. Hadn't asked about his day, hadn't complained about his programming projects, hadn't shared any explicit images - and neither had Itsuki. At first it was just letting Xuan take the lead, as he always did. And then it became avoidance - had he upset him? He hadn't said anything wrong, he was sure. But Xuan had never given him the cold shoulder like this, before. It was odd. Xuan had gotten on his nerves for the longest time, from the first day they met. He'd bounded up to him, exclaiming in his face and shaking his hand, unaware or uncaring of how Itsuki had frozen up and leaned ever-so-slightly away. He blew off his schoolwork then complained to him about it afterwards, borrowed things without asking, and on one memorable occasion, had filled up the sink in their apartment's only bathroom with cookie-ramen vomit. But when Itsuki had brought a board and two sets of colored stones back one day, Xuan had smiled and asked what it was. And then allowed himself to get absolutely trounced for months on end, even with a dozen stones of handicap. He'd dragged him to a gathering of his friends - but refused to let Itsuki linger on edges as he always did. Once, he'd drove him home early from a festival where Itsuki had drank far too much, keeping him company as he puked his guts out into the toilet. It was easy to take Xuan for granted, caught up in everyday university life. Harder to discount the warmth he felt during his calls back to his friend. Impossible to ignore his absence, thousands of miles away, when they hadn't spoken for weeks. Staring out at the dark, night sky, he slowly typed, I miss you. The sun had gone, wouldn't return for almost half an year. And he wouldn't see Xuan for even longer. But they'd see each other again. He was sure of it.
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Dec 7, 2020 10:00
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I was thinking about taking a break but I can't resist. In, assign me something please!
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Dec 9, 2020 22:02
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