|
The Way of the Worm 500 words Even for a worm, Kevin didn’t have high ambitions. All he wanted in life was to eat some dirt, excrete some dirt, and reproduce parthenogenetically once or twice. Like most people at every stratum of reality, he hoped to live a life a little better than his father and mother had done. (His father and mother were the same worm, who was also his clone–see the parthenogenesis thing above). So Kevin was more surprised than anyone when he was summoned to an audience with the God of Worms. The journey to the Throne of the God of Worms was long and arduous, but at last he arrived. The God of Worms hung spinning in the air, an ourobouros endlessly copulating with itself to renew the world. “Kevin. You have been chosen for a special mission on behalf of all wormkind.” “O God,” pleaded Kevin, “I’m not suitable for such a task.” (All worm heroes say something like this when summoned. It’s known as the Refusal of the Crawl.) “Silence. Your role has already been appointed. An event is taking place that threatens the very fabric of the multiverse and all the gods. Even the gods above the gods.” Kevin shivered, for he knew the God was speaking of those utmost gods who inhabit the celestial Dome. “As you know, it is our duty to protect reality in secret, and bind the timelines together with our noodly bodies. But this event has torn reality asunder. Already, certain vertebrates have perceived the gods of the Dome, and now wish to do them harm. Only you can prevent this most abhorrent of possibilities!” It turned out that Kevin had been chosen because he lived in the garden of the house where the cosmic event had taken place (or was taking place, or would take place–time being an illusion to the God of Worms.) Kevin wormed his way into the house and onto a bench, where he saw an apple. His destiny vibrated within him and he knew exactly what to do. He burrowed deep into the apple’s core. It was not for Kevin to know why this action would protect the universe. All he knew was his role to play in the great web of destiny. That was the Worm Way. Some time later, a vertebrate came into the room, took the apple and after a bit of talking, put it in some sort of machine. Now! said the voice of destiny. Now is your moment, Kevin! Kevin wriggled halfway out of the apple and pulled with all his might. He hauled the apple to the lip of the machine. One more pull and it would fall free… The vertebrate pushed a button on the machine. Kevin’s world flooded with catastrophic light. Kevin awoke before the dying body of the God of Worms. It has ceased to copulate at long last. “Kevin, you idiot… you made things even worse…” Above them, worms crisscrossed the cosmos like party streamers, devouring galaxies. Everything was worms.
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2022 04:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jan 21, 2026 13:56 |
|
|
Sitting Here posted:
The Orchard Heist 500 words I thought I heard a telephone ringing. But it was only the jingle of the bridle as we rode through red country toward the orchard. “You alright there, Doc?” called my partner, Dave. He rode beside me, astride his mountfly Bella. Corks hung from his hat to keep the aeroplanes off. We were making slow progress across the juice flats, but we didn’t dare take the flies into the air. We’d had a tip about the orchard’s watchmen going on strike, but we still weren’t taking any chances. This orchard grew prime worlds. Inhabited worlds—none of that Precambrian crap the rustlers tried to peddle back in Darwin. If we could get away with a couple sacks, we’d be set for a year or two of the good life. We reached the orchard around noon. It was set in the crook of a steep gully, where the red earth-skin split and exposed the white flesh beneath. In this flesh were planted rows upon rows of world trees. We tied up the flies and crept low through the grass. The worlds hung above us, glittering blue and green and ripe. I can’t say what it is about worlds that fascinates a person so. Seems like ever since the serpent convinced Eve to pluck a world from the first tree, we’ve had our eyes fixed on them. Dave wanted to start picking at once. I told him to wait. “These ones are no good. Feel how warm they are? They’ve all got climate change.” No wonder the orchard was in financial straits. We crawled on, worried the whole thing would be a bust. But soon we came to younger trees, heavy with pristine, early-20th century worlds. Jackpot. We started filling our sacks as fast as we could. When we were done, we started eating them. It was a foolish thing to do, but we were giddy with our luck. I hadn’t had a world in years, but the crunch of the tectonic plates was just how I remembered it. Hanging around was what undid us. As we were gorging ourselves we heard a rumbling beneath our feet. “poo poo!” I hissed. “Guard worms!” The worms started boiling up out of the juicy loam. We grabbed our sacks and ran. The mountflies were pulling at their ties, clacking their mandibles in terror. Dave reached Bella and untied her. He swung onto her back and she leapt in the air. I wasn’t so lucky. A huge worm came out of the scrub and swallowed my fly whole. “Dave!” I shouted. “Help me!” Dave and Bella swooped low over the trees. He threw down one end of his saddlerope and I caught it. Unfortunately, he’d managed to throw down the other end as well. “Sorry!” Dave shouted as Bella carried him away. “Dave, you idiot!” I screamed, and a strange wave of deja vu rose over me, along with the smell of fresh apple juice, as the earth opened up beneath my feet.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2022 00:59
|
|
|
M is for Maltheism 500 words “Wow, that was hosed,” said Spacewoman Kim as they emerged on the other side of the spacetime rift. They had passed through dimensions full of apples, lego, feces and other horrible things.“And you say this was all caused by a writing competition?” Spaceman Jim took out his Commlink and patched it in to the planet’s primitive technosphere. He brought up an ancient-looking website on the screen. “This is where it happens. An internet community known as ‘Somewhere Dreadful’.” Kim scrolled through some of the posts. “Good god,” she said. “This website truly is Somewhere Dreadful.” At last she found the thread where the writing competition took place. “That’s them!” cried Spaceman Jim, eyes wide and bloodshot. “Pulling all our strings from far above!” “Oh my god,” said Kim. “This story… it’s about me.” She started reading a paragraph about herself zipping through space, complete with a footnote about Glorblaxian screech-rock. The rest of the story she skimmed because it seemed a bit silly and self-referential. The gods of the Thunderdome were apparently holding some kind of festival and putting even less effort into their writing than they normally did. “You were telling the truth,” she said, feeling sick to her stomach. “Alright. I’m in. Let’s kill Thunderdome.” Jeff scanned the ground with his Commlink. “The closest Thunderdome writer is not far from here. He posts under the name ‘The man called M’.” Twenty minutes later they were knocking on the target’s door. A nondescript-looking man came out to find three rayguns pointed at his face. “Uhhhh…” said the man. “It’s him!” screamed Jim. He’d started to pull the raygun’s trigger when a homeless guy burst from the bushes and wrestled it from his hand. Suddenly a swarm of characters appeared to stand between the Spacepeople and their target. There was a vaguely medieval-looking assassin, a wizard with a glowing orb, a dinosaur pirate and a guy wielding a knife made of human hair. “You want him?” said the dinosaur. “You’ll have to go through us!” “You’re his characters!” shouted Jim. “Everything you’ve ever suffered is his fault!” He looked at the homeless man. “He made you a smelly bum. And you!” He pointed at the wizard. “You poor dumb bastard! He’s going to make you kill yourself as the punchline to a lovely joke!” “I know,” said the wizard. “We all know. But without him we would never have existed at all. If you really think nonexistence is preferable to existence, then you’re the one who should kill yourself.” “Maybe I will!” said Jim, drawing a backup raygun from his belt and placing it against his temple. “Crikey!” Someone else leapt from the bushes and grabbed the second gun. It was a youngish-looking white guy with corks hanging off the brim of his hat. “Don’t bloody off yourself you drongo! You’ll make my story crude and exploitative!” “Who the hell are you?” said Kim. “The name’s Sailor Viy. I’d bloody well explain but I’ve only got one word le—“
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2022 11:49
|
|
|
GANG BRAWL In Gardens 486 words In gardens, or on the roofs of the first houses. In half-wild plots where the women came to play with botany at certain times of year. In places that the hunter would step over (as he pursued the peccary through the underbrush) and never know it was cultivated at all. Here, there and everywhere, the teosinte waiting to be born anew. There was a woman without husbands or brothers, who walked in the hills and said strange things to the children. She would eat anything to see if it was good. Suck stones to see if they would go flat, like on the river bottom. Many times she almost died from eating bright red berries, foul brown roots. Even if told by everyone: “That is no good,” she would not believe it until she had tried for herself. In this way she pried apart the wild teosinte, digging her nails under the outer shell, and found the tiny kernels within. Some said (much later) they were sweet even then. Not so. They tasted of nothing much. It was the work of digging them out that she enjoyed, more than the eating. The children liked it too—they made a game of it. So she would plant it in her gardens, one strain crossed with another, left to grow and change for months or years at a time. Quite literally, playing with her food. She died. The children that played her game grew up and had gardens of their own. These ancient botanists were women mostly, but sometimes men or other genders. The game was now to find genes (they knew genes, yes, far better than you or I today) for bigger kernels and softer shells. Was it for eating? Not really, no. These were still the tiniest morsels compared to the wild nuts of the forest or the meat brought back from the hunt. They did it all for the pleasure of the shell between their fingers, the waving heads of the new strain pricking through the earth in spring. That old woman’s game was played for centuries. Plant-lore carried across vast distances by women walking alone, women walking with men, women with children on their backs. Casting the seeds wherever they thought it might flourish. A hundred strains, a thousand. Taste, colour, texture, size. Until one day the stalks were bending over because the kernels were so large, so full of sweetness. Until whole cities gorged themselves on it. Until the hills where the old woman roamed were laid bare, all her strange treats burned away to make room for more of the yellow treasure, teosinte no more. Some say that old woman would weep if she could see what her little game has become. That is not true. She would laugh to see the silver towers on the plain. The first time she ate tacos her eyes would bug out with delight.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2022 02:13
|
|
|
The Train Station at 10,000 A.M. 497 words The conductor dozed at his post. The train station was cold concrete below, cold concrete above, lights few and far between. There were no trains scheduled for this shift; the chances of anything happening were minute. He was the only conductor on duty at 10,000 A.M. There were two platforms, and his job was to manage transfers between them. To reach this distant hour, the trains had to hit midnight with enough velocity to fly off the dial completely. But it took far more energy to get to the city at Infinite Midnight, where the Achronal Empress ruled forever on her mercury throne. Thus, passengers needed to change trains here. The conductor did what he could to keep occupied. He had his jumbo book of Sudoku puzzles, his radio, and his cat Suki, who he had found wandering the streets of the deep-sleeping city above. Every seventh shift, he received a letter from his niece who lived in the Leap Seconds. There were much worse places to be. He could have been stationed at one of the Empire’s outposts in Day, where the lush heat slowly drove men mad. Or he could have been sent to one of the more unpleasant notionals, like Half Past Dead or Beer O’Clock. Suddenly there came a rumbling in the tunnel. The conductor leapt to his feet. A second later, a train rocketed into the station, still steaming. It was flickering dangerously in and out of synchrony; the conductor quickly bolted on temporal clamps to make it stable. Touching the brass casing, he felt it was still warm to the touch. This train had come directly from Day. The doors opened and two figures stepped out, masked in gold with Imperial blue uniforms. Horologers—the Empress’s elite time-explorers. The first one gave a curt salute and said: “You have a weapons cache at this station?” “Erm. Yes, I… yes. Right this way, sirs.” The conductor unlocked the storeroom at the back of the platform. The Horologers went in and started pulling out crateloads of weapons: stasis grips, loop grenades, combat knives with picosecond blades (blink and you’d miss them). Meanwhile the conductor returned to his desk and checked the train’s registration against the schedule. This service was not due for another seven subjective months. And its point of origin was a place more legend than fact: Ultima Meridian. The Final Noon. The Horologers had nearly finished emptying the weapons cache. The conductor went over to them. “It’ll take me a while to prepare the shuttle to Infinite Midnight…” “Not going to Midnight,” said the Horologer. “Going back.” While his companion loaded the weapons onto the train, he reversed the signals so it would run dayward, back the way it had come. “What? Why?” said the conductor. “At least tell me something I can put in my report…” The Horologer loaded six slugs into his dialgun. “Noon’s haunted,” he said, and got back in the train.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2022 00:05
|
|
|
that's a submission for gang brawl 2 in case it's not clear
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2022 00:06
|
|
|
Sailor Viy posted:that's a submission for gang brawl 2 in case it's not clear bugger. I was like 1 minute too late. this still counts for the blood-o-meter though right?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2022 01:32
|
|
|
in for sports
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2022 00:42
|
|
|
Gangbrawl crit On the surface this seems like purely a gag story and not a particularly funny one at that. Ok, the guy wants corn, we get it. The description of the narrator's unkempt appearance was pretty good, as was his garbled dialogue. And the image of him sleeping in a pile of bunnies and chickens. Looking deeper, there are a lot of questions raised by the elisions in this story. Why did the narrator subside into a bizarre hermit-like existence? Why does he want this corn so much? Why mention his dead-end job at the start of the story at all? The way the narrative skips over certain crucial details (e.g. "I even married and divorced a few of them", the lack of motivation) makes me wonder if the narrator is deliberately withholding information, a la Nabokov or Wolfe. I could speculate about a hidden story between the lines (maybe the corn is linked to one of his marriages?) but there aren't quite enough clues there to make it feel worthwhile. I do get a general theme of loneliness, alienation and a tragic failure to communicate.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2022 03:04
|
|
|
To Kiss A Girl 1500 words Samal called Dzinara one evening, as she was putting the chickens to bed. “I’m bored,” Samal said. “Let’s go camping on the steppe. Tell your mother it will be good for us—to connect with our ancestral roots.” It was summer. School was over and the long hot days stretched before them. There were still three weeks before the big horse meet. Until then there would be little to do, besides helping on her parents’ farm or watching the dzhigits practise trick riding on the hill above town. “Ok,” said Dzinara. She would follow where Samal led. Since they were children it had always been that way. On the first day of school Samal had walked up to her, grabbed her wrist and said: “We will be friends.” And they had been ever since. They quickly chose two other girls to go with them. Roza and Bayan were two years younger, but they had their own horses to ride. The four of them secured permission from their mothers, giving many assurances that no boys would join them on the trip. On the day of, they packed their saddlebags and met on the east road at sunrise. Dzinara was riding Jel, her elder sister’s dependable roan; Samal had Köleñke, her pride and joy, the spirited black mare. Nobody could match Köleñke on the flat, and so of course Samal had to prove it as soon as they were out of town. She took off into the distance whooping and yelling, silhouetted against the rising sun, and Dzinara could only do her best to keep up. They rode east into the steppe. The land was empty and glorious. Towns and even roads receded over the horizon, leaving them in a vast grey-green sea. The girls talked about ordinary things: school, American music, the pandemic, their parents’ flocks. But mostly they talked about the horse meet. “Dzinara, you’re old enough to ride in the kyz-kuu this year,” said Roza. “Who do you want to chase you?” Dzinara blushed. The kyz-kuu was more popular now as the older generation tried to revive Kazakh traditions. It was a horse race between a girl and a boy. The boy would chase the girl down a field, and if he caught her, kiss her in the saddle. If she reached the end of the field they would reverse. The girl would chase him and whip him if she caught up. “I’d like Muhammedjan to chase me,” said Bayan. “He’s so short,” said Roza. “What about Tahir? Those eyes…” “I don’t know,” Dzinara mumbled. She didn’t have such feelings about boys, and it seemed unfair that the younger girls had them already. Looking up, she saw Samal watching her quietly. Samal’s dark eyes always seemed to contain hidden knowledge, a knowledge that gave her confidence to move through the world. A soft smile turned the corner of her mouth. “I don’t think I’ll ask anyone,” Dzinara said, and spurred Jel into a canter to escape. *** In the evening they camped by a wide, flat stream that ran down from the mountains. The girls stripped to their underclothes and plunged shrieking into the icy water. The horses cropped grass on the bank nearby. When she was bored of swimming, Samal leapt out and mounted Köleñke without saddle or bridle, still in her wet underclothes, and rode up and down the slope. Dzinara stood watching, shading her eyes against the sun. Samal turned back and rode into the water. She held out her hand, offering to pull Dzinara up behind her. “Come on.” Dzinara swallowed. “I… it isn’t safe.” Samal shrugged. “However you like.” She turned Köleñke again and rode off across the grass. Perhaps there had been a trace of disappointment in her eyes. It didn’t matter. Nothing hurt Samal for long; she was always moving on to the next thing. *** The night was cold and full of stars. Samal and Dzinara’s tent was a cheap polyester dome, cramped, smelling of plastic and mildew. Dzinara slid into her sleeping bag and drew it up to her chin. Samal was close enough for her to feel a ghost of the other girl’s warmth. They talked sleepily in the dark. They were the kind of friends who could always fill a silence together. But on that night the words seemed to flutter in the dark above, half-heeded, while the real thing was below, the space between their shoulders and hips. It was a feeling that Dzinara could not name. “You never asked me who I wanted to chase in the kyz-kuu,” said Samal. Dzinara’s heart thumped in her chest. Her mouth was too dry to speak. She knew in the pitch darkness just where she might reach to touch Samal’s shoulder, or her cheek. Doubt paralysed her. She neither moved nor spoke. After a long time, she heard Samal roll over and face the wall. *** The horse meet gathered in a big field outside town. People came from miles around. All the boys from school were there, slouching around in crowds, looking over their shoulders at the girls looking back at them. Tahir, the son of the wealthiest man in town, had gotten a satellite phone with 5G reception. The other boys crowded around to watch tiny videos of Billie Eilish. “No lie, I would pay ten million tenge to gently caress her,” Tahir declared. “Disgusting,” said Samal. “Let’s go and get the horses warmed up.” Samal competed in horse archery and jumping; Dzinara rode in the junior races, where she was now among the oldest contestants. Later, she and Samal ate manti and watched the young men doing tricks at full gallop. The kyz-kuu began early on the second day. One by one, the girls of Dzinara’s age went and changed into their traditional costumes, until she was the only one left in her ordinary riding gear. The deadline to sign up had passed an hour ago. The announcer called out Samal’s name. She mounted up and rode by the audience, gathering cheers. Only Dzinara was struck dumb. In her gold-fringed coat and foxfur hat, Samal looked like a warrior-woman out of Kazakh legend. As she passed by she gave Dzinara a glance that made Dzinara’s stomach turn over. The announcer asked Samal who she wanted to chase her today. The boys on their colts were gathered in a pack, watching her hungrily. “You,” she said, pointing her whip at Tahir. No, thought Dzinara. Why him? She remembered what Roza had said about his eyes. Perhaps, to Samal, he was gorgeous. Perhaps this was what girls were supposed to like. Tahir trotted up to the boys’ starting line, twenty feet behind Samal. The announcer fired his gun, and both horses sprang down the field. Köleñke ran. Samal’s hair flew wild in the wind. Tahir whipped his horse furiously but could not close the distance between them. Samal reached the goal flag and rounded it with her whip held high. Tahir tried to turn too sharply and his horse reared. By the time he righted himself Samal was upon him. She struck him mercilessly across the neck and cheek. By the end of the race he was cowering and bleeding from his ear. The women cheered and clapped; the boys looked pale. Samal took Köleñke past the stands again. The dark horse’s flanks shone with sweat. Samal called out to Dzinara: “Did you doubt me?” The question cut Dzinara to the bone. Yes, she had doubted. She was ashamed. *** In the golden light of evening, the horse meet drew to a close. Samal had ridden five more times in the kyz-kuu and won every race. Most of the boys had gotten off lightly compared to Tahir. Now scraps of rubbish blew across the empty, trampled field, and the two girls rode their horses home. For once they spoke little; a melancholy silence had slipped in between them. Their way took them past the kyz-kuu field. The goal flag and the starting lines were still there. “Here is the site of your great victory,” said Dzinara, a little weakly. Samal shrugged. “I’d hoped for something different,” she said. Dzinara was tongue-tied again. Samal looked out toward the sun-struck steppe. “It can’t always be me who leads the way,” Samal said. “Sometimes you have to take a step, too.” Suddenly, Dzinara’s cheeks were hot, her hands tingling. She knew what she had to do but it was frightening. She drew courage from the horse beneath her, its warm smell, the blood pumping from its powerful heart. “Hyah!” she cried, and dashed her whip across Jel’s flank. The horse sprang forward into the setting sun, toward the goal flag at the far end of the field. Jel had a head start. But she was no match for Köleñke on the flat. Before they were halfway to the goal, Dzinara could hear the dark mare’s hoofbeats alongside her, and feel the ghost of warmth as Samal drew in to close the gap.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2022 04:31
|
|
|
In. Omega. Fill my blanks and #SpinTheWheel
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2022 00:10
|
|
|
Omega Prompt #1 A [horse] agonizes over [rickety shelf of half-full goo jars] Understand (Horse Version) 997 words Ohh. That’s not good. Why is he lying on the floor like that? Granted, I haven’t been sentient for very long, so I guess I don’t know if this is normal? But I don’t think it is. There’s blood coming out of his nose. That’s definitely bad. Who’s going to feed me if he dies? I should have told him earlier that the experiment worked. That after he fed me that weird goo, I became awakened. Sentient. Able to understand my environment, to learn, to grow. To comprehend my own mortality. (Yeah, that was a bummer.) It came on gradually. He used to talk to me about his experiments while he worked, and I learned human language from that. By the time I was fully conscious, I’d already seen what he was doing to the chickens. Strapping electrodes to their brains, pumping drugs through them, making them solve sudokus. I wasn’t keen on that happening to me, so I played dumb. Convinced him the goo had no effect on me. Now, I’m kind of regretting it. If he’d known I could understand him, maybe he’d have left my stall unlocked. OK. Here goes nothing. I’m going to kick the stall open. Yes! I’m out in the barn. Sorry, “laboratory”. Let’s look around. There’s a long bench with a bunch of scientific equipment on it. A coop in the corner with a bunch of dead chickens. And here are the shelves where he keeps his goo jars. It looks like I knocked one shelf loose when I broke out of my stall. The jars are all on the verge of tipping off. Anyway, focus. My master is lying on the floor. There’s blood bubbling from his mouth and also… some blue goo? The same stuff he fed to me? Why would he drink the goo himself? I should probably try to save him. Yes, he’s a mad scientist, but he’s also kind of like my father? I’m going to try doing CPR. This would be so much easier if I had hands. One hoof, on the solar plexus. Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Ah, ah, ah—Ahhh! He’s grabbing my leg! And what’s wrong with his eyes? Now he’s grinning and saying something about me trying to kill him. OK, I guess there’s a fine line between “CPR” and “stomp to death”. I try to give a conciliatory whinny. I don’t think he gets it. Wait. What is happening?? His eyes are glowing. He’s let go of my leg but now I’m floating in midair all by myself. I think he’s doing this to me. He stands up and looks around. There’s blood coming out of his nose, ears, eyes, but he’s grinning. He says: “My life’s work—vindicated!” Wonder if he practised that one in the mirror. He waves his hand and the whole workbench lifts up off the ground. Another gesture and it flies out the back window, sending glass everywhere. I figure this is the ultimate goal of his experiments. If the goo made me as smart as a human, it must have made him even smarter. And unlocked mental powers dormant within the human brain?? “I… understand… everything!!” he howls into the cosmos. He waves his hand absently, and I drop to the ground. From six feet up. Fuuuuck! IcanseemybonesIcanseemybonesIcanseemybones— OK. Think through the pain. I’m pretty sure three of my legs are broken. A horse doesn’t need to be sentient to know what that means. I’m a goner. Unless? While my master is destroying various parts of his barn, I look up and see the shelf of goo jars I dislodged earlier. Would it be possible? If I eat more goo, can I save myself? Or will I only join my master in a maelstrom of ultramadness beyond mortal comprehension? I’ll have to take the risk. I drag myself across the barn floor using my one good leg and my teeth. I reach the wall and slap my head against it. The shelf jumps. I slap again. This time it slips and all the jars roll down to shatter around me. There’s goo everywhere, mixed with a bunch of glass shards. I start licking it up as fast as I can. Ow. Ow. Ow. I feel my mind expanding. I understand calculus, Proust, fluid dynamics. I figure out who D. B. Cooper was. Then I turn my understanding inward and unlock the powers of my own deep mind. I understand everything. And I realise, in a final analysis, that the world is without meaning. I can feel the abyss staring into me. Ultimate consciousness could drive me mad, like my master. But instead, my mind blooms with a profound compassion for all living things—lost, alone, trapped inside the decaying prisons of their own bodies. I won’t go down the same path as my master. I’m a horse. I’m kinda nice. I use my newfound telekinetic powers to lift my broken body into the air. My master turns and sees me. His face contorts with rage. “No! This power was meant for me! Not for—a horse!!” He fires a spear of pure consciousness at my forehead. I catch it in my third eye (third eyes are real) and reflect it back at him. Our minds connect in harmonic resonance. <Don’t fight me,> I tell him. <Your brain is not built to hold this level of awareness. Let’s leave these dying bodies and explore the cosmos together.> I feel the contours of him—a sad, angry, broken man, trying to get revenge on the world for rejecting him. I nuzzle against his cheek. <It’s ok,> I say. <You can let go now.> His mind whimpers and slips from its mortal coil. I go with him, letting my shattered meat sack slump to the barn floor. We shoot up through the roof and into the sky. He clings to my mane, weeping, as we ride for the stars.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2022 22:06
|
|
|
I want to #SpinTheWheel 2 times today
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2022 22:07
|
|
|
Chili posted:No. You'll have one, and you'll thank me for it. i'm a writer not a... reading comprehender
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2022 02:24
|
|
|
Omega prompt submission #2 -400 words from the wheel flash: all your characters have the same, slightly embarrassing name Neil & I 900 words Neil used to wander the woods in autumn, when the rain dripped from the eucalypts and the humus lay thick across the forest floor. He’d go out and pick magic mushrooms, which grew in piles of rotting leaves and bark. He was an expert at finding them. Much later, we’d walk around in the woods looking for him because he was drunk and AWOL and we thought he might kill himself. In Australia the common psychedelic mushroom is Psilocybe subaeruginosa. It’s a little brown mushroom that looks like any other mushroom you might find in the forest. There is another, almost identical mushroom that isn’t psychoactive. If you eat it then nothing will happen, and then in 7-10 days’ time you will die in excruciating pain. One day Neil brought me over to his parents’ house, a beautiful old timber building nestled in the trees. He showed me the mushrooms he’d picked and we ate them raw, just shoved them down our throats. We sat around watching movies and waiting for it to kick in, until the anticipation was slowly replaced by a persistent buzz of dread. No trip. I went home and felt my hands shaking with fear like I had a fever. A week went by. I was in a politics lecture at uni when he texted me: “Dude, my stomach and sides just started hurting like crazy.” I grabbed my laptop and my bag and ran outside in a panic. I called him and he didn’t answer. I called again and heard him on the other end of the line, laughing like crazy. “I got you good,” he said. If this sounds like a story of a lovely friend then you’ve got it all wrong. That’s an example of the good times. The reasons why he was worth keeping around. But he drank, more and more. He would get trashed and text me ludicrously insulting things. “You’re a pseudo-intellectual,” he told me. “You only read those books because you think it makes you look cool.” “You don’t have the strength of mind to follow your convictions to their conclusion,” he wrote. “This is why you’ll never get a girlfriend.” Never mind that he had only dated one girl, who dumped him after he told her, in a fit of openness: “I want to gently caress your pussy until it gets mushy.” He would act out, apologise, act out again. One of my friends (also named Neil) told me flatly: “Don’t invite me and that guy to the same party again, because if I see him I’m going to kick his rear end.” I defended him. “He’s going through a rough time.” I didn’t know what the roughness was, really. Maybe just the raw scraping of the soul against the wall of existence. I told myself he was an old friend. But really, I was afraid I had no better options. University was a wasteland of hipsters, dealing in social codes I couldn’t begin to understand. Our school friends were dropping off at the periphery and drifting into the big, dark city. I thought: this is it, you get allotted so many friends and no more, so you hold onto each as long as you can. Neil no longer mixed up his mushrooms, and he started taking higher and higher doses. He told me about a trip where he travelled outside his body, went to his university, and rearranged the buildings like he was playing SimCity. He described this as only the threshold to something greater. Becoming a god was only the first step. A few weeks later took what drug people call a ‘heroic dose’. Afterwards he would only describe it to me as “a Hello, Neil Event”. I think what he experienced was basically a concrete proof of solipsism—that nothing existed beside himself, or else that he was in everything and everyone. A cosmic journey that brought him all the way to himself. Only, what was the point if it didn’t change how he behaved in the slightest? You read stories about people that took huge amounts of LSD and then quite heroin cold turkey. But Neil was stuck in a loop of tripping, drinking and being a dick. If this were a story it'd end with a blow-up. I’d tell him to get out of my life and never come back. In reality you don’t need to do that; the currents of an atomised society do it for you, all you have to do is stop clinging to someone and watch them drift away. I didn’t see him for weeks, then months. Long text chats became a few messages here and there. Eventually I only got news of him second-hand through mutual friends. He was angry at me. He wanted to reconcile. He was harassing random women on Facebook. He’d crashed his car drunk and lost his license. Ugly little dispatches from a life no longer entangled with mine. The last time I saw him was by chance in a parking lot. He looked like poo poo. He looked like he’d just kept on whaling on himself. “Oh, hey,” he said, with a needy smile. “Hey,” I said and kept walking, ten years of bullshit in a single awkward silence. I’m older now and wiser. If I could go back could I help him better? Could I pull him back from the edge?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2022 03:22
|
|
|
and I'm in for Prompt #3, give me a flash rule and spin the wheel once please
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2022 03:25
|
|
|
In!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2022 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jan 21, 2026 13:56 |
|
|
The King's Cat 1325 words The law of the Plains King was that his power extended as far as he could see—or more accurately, yell, since if he called out an order to someone more than fifty metres away they would shout back, "What? Can't hear you!" before hightailing for the hills. He would proceed around his dominions on a gilded litter, surrounded by a constant panoply of nobles, jesters, strongmen and concubines, all in the most elaborate regalia. He would fall upon the spring villages and extract tribute by virtue of his divine right: wheat, corn, fish, beads—but whatever it was, he could only take as much as he and his nobles could carry. And even the nobles, if he gave them a bit too much, might take off when his back was turned. So there was a constant churn of people coming and going from the procession, doffing and donning ceremonial masks and raiments. And it was for this reason we believed we'd be able to rob him. We—that was Cowrie, Hammerhead and myself—were Sea people. We weren't party to the Plains' bargain with the stars, so we wouldn't invite calamity by defying the King's commands. But we also all had Plains grandmothers, so that in the right light, with the right makeup, we could pass for Plains ourselves. We told people we were out of the deep west. That was far away enough that people wouldn't ask difficult questions about how their second cousin's kid with the bad leg was doing. We insinuated ourselves into the royal entourage, as water-bearers and stage hands. There was no reason for anyone to find that suspicious. Plains folk, especially the young, were always worming their way toward the centre of power. There they could wear gold nose-rings, and drink the best coffee, and have their pick of beautiful women who in turn had their pick of powerful men. And the King only rarely ordered an execution. So we were among it all. Each day there would be new rituals in a new place. Cowrie worked on the sets, and Hammerhead and I carried water. I even had a Plains girl who was sweet on me. But we needed to get closer. Gold and fine blankets were not our desire. We were there to take the King's cat. Back by the Sea, Cowrie had a grandfather (also my grand-uncle and Hammerhead's aunt's cousin). A very respected elder. One night he had a dream where he was holding a pure white cat in his arms, and someone said to him, "This is the Plains King's cat." Afterwards, he started to get sick because his dream wasn't fulfilled. We take dreams very seriously by the Sea, because they come up out of the deep water to us. A dream like that needs to come true, or the dreamer gets sick in the soul. But we didn't have clan ties with the Plains, and the King wouldn't have parted with his cat in any case. Hence, us. Well, hence myself. Hammerhead was a born follower, and Cowrie was a dreamer. Head always over the horizon. And worse now, because he was pining for his young wife back home. They’d been married only a few months before we’d had to leave on this dream-quest, and now every evening Cowrie would be looking eastward with misery in his eyes fit to write a song about. So that left me to come up with the plan. In between fooling around with my Plains girl, I skulked. I learned the ways of the procession. Like our Grand Feasts back home, it was all a performance, with costumes, props, sets. But a performance that went on year round and roved the countryside, devouring. The guards of the Royal Litter had to wear these enormous demon masks and raffia cloaks. At sunset and sunrise they would take these costumes off and pass them to the next shift. A horrible, sweaty mess. That was our window. I passed the word to the others: we would move at dawn. The night before, Hammerhead and I dragged our feet with the water. Less water meant more wine, bigger headaches the morning after. Through the sluggish camp we went. Around the back of the palanquin while the guards were wrestling with their costumes. Cowrie took a prop knife he’d sharpened, and cut a slit in the curtain wall. The King was asleep, with a concubine in one arm, and the cat in the other. I snatched the cat and we ran. Up jumped the King, still in his smallclothes. "Stop!" he roared as we made our escape. True Plains folk would have had no choice. Can't disobey the King, not unless you want to see the rivers fail and the land eaten up by the sky. But that wasn't our bargain. We were shedding our disguises, becoming Sea people again, as we charged on out of the camp. Only: here came a dozen nobles, armed with spears and looking decidedly un-hungover. And here was my Plains girl, too. Apparently (I heard much later) I'd been talking in my sleep. Murmuring Sea dreams when I shouldn't have. There was a big set erected for a ritual that was meant to take place that day. "The Pacification of the Earth." For this they had a wooden tower, three men high, with a wide platform from which the King was meant to drop blood onto the parched ground. Cowrie scrambled up the tower like a woodpecker. "You won't take me or the cat alive!" he yelled. He was clutching a white bundle in his arms. In the dim light they couldn't see it was just his white robes balled up. The nobles all went after him. He started shaking the tower from the top, throwing his weight back and forth. I caught his eyes for a second. They were saying, Go on, go on. Or at least I'd like to believe so. Going on is what we did. The last thing we saw over our shoulders was the tower collapsing in a mighty wave of dust. Then we ran and ran and hardly stopped until we were home in Sea country. Pretty soon, we heard what happened to Cowrie. The Plains King made sure the news reached us. "Since you've taken my cat," the King said, "you'll be the one to replace him." They took a dozen other, less beloved cats, and skinned them to make a full-body costume, complete with ears and a tail. They've put Cowrie in it and they make him wear it day and night. And they make him be a cat. No talking, only mewing. No eating anything but raw entrails and birds' feet. He's got to lie on the King's lap during the day and sleep at the end of the bed at night. Of course, Cowrie's not subject to the King's law. So they compel him the other way. The old way, that all men know. Grand-uncle got better after we brought him the cat. He keeps it in his tent, but he doesn't play with it or pet it as much he might have. People up and down the coast say it was a brave thing Cowrie did. A thing that'll bring honour to his line for three generations. It doesn't take out any of the sting for grand-uncle, nor for Cowrie's wife or his kid. Last night I had a dream. A Sea dream. There were two parts to it. In the first, Cowrie was with his family again; they were all dozing in the heat of the day, under a broad tree by the ocean. In the second part I was dozing myself. I was curled up warm and cozy, with my claws drawn in and my tail wrapped around right to my neck. A dream like that needs to come true. I'll be leaving in the morning.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2022 22:28
|
|
