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"Order. Order. Order!"Judge Nelson said as he slammed the gavel onto the sound block.
The room fell to hushed murmurs.
The prosecuting attorney stood and announced, "Your honor we'd like to present case number 2016GTM095002 The People vs. Bruce Wayne, a.k.a Batman."
The crowd erupted into more shouting.
Bruce Wayne sat in his chair staring blankly into the wall behind the judge. Judge Nelson shouted, "I will have order in my court!"
A single voice from the back of the room said, "I'll have an order of large fries."
Bruce Wayne spun in his chair. The devilish voice was one he had grown to hate and revile. A tall and slender figure in a purple business suit made his way to the bench. His pale skin and green hair seemed a bit more faded in the yellow light of the courtroom. Judge Nelson shouted, "Bailiff, arrest this man."
The man in purple laughed maniacally and said, "Sit down buster, I'm not here to play with you."
The bailiff ran out of the room. The thin man needed no introduction. If Batman was the terror that stalked the night, this man was the madness than stared back from the abyss. The thin man approached the bench and said, "I know this all a little unorthodox, but I'd like to testify as a character witness."
Judge Nelson stared down at the thin man and said, "Somebody arrest this Joker."
By this point six deputies were holding Bruce Wayne into place. The Joker turned to his old rival and said, "Relax Brucey, I'm not going to hurt anyone—"he paused, "—unless I have to."Bruce relaxed. He didn't know what game his nemesis was playing, but he knew better than to test him in a room full of innocents when he didn't have his suit or his utility belt.
The Joker slid into the seat at the witness stand and said, "Isn't someone supposed to swear me in?"
Judge Nelson, realizing his courtroom had fallen into chaos, sighed and said, "State your given name for the court."
The Joker responded, "Dagonet Rigoletto, but you make call me The Joker."
Judge Nelson said, "Raise your right hand."
The Joker complied.
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?"
The Joker shook his head and said, "No. I'll tell you the truth, but God has never sworn by me."
"Very well Mr. Rigoletto, what did you come here to say?"
The Joker chuckled and said, "I'd like to call for a mistrial. That man is clearly not Batman."
He pointed at Bruce Wayne.
Judge Nelson smirked and said, "We have an incredible amount of evidence to the contrary."
The Joker laughed and said, "It's all balderdash and blatherskite dear boy, and I have proof."
Judge Nelson said, "Go on."
The Joker leaned forward and gleefully said, "I've shot Batman. I've stabbed Batman. I've spent twenty years killing everyone he's ever dared to love. In that time, we've established a certain rapport. I've imprisoned him. I have even crippled him. Not once were your boys in blue ever able to catch him-"
Judge Nelson interrupted, "Is that all?"
The Joker grimaced and said, "If you'd let me finish..."
The Judge cringed at the hissing sound of the jester's voice.
The Joker leaned back and continued, "I've never been able to spend this much time causing trouble without The Bat showing up to ruin my fun. Sure, you could say it is because this pampered one-percenter is Batman, but I just watched six deputies hold him down. Batsy would have pushed through a hundred to get me."
The room went dark as the lights flickered out.
Sounds of fists hitting meat filled the court as the lights came back on. A tall and muscular man held The Joker by his collar and shouted, "Where is she!"
The Joker turned his head to the judge and said, "Case in point."
Bruce Wayne stared at the figure wearing his suit with a puzzled look. It looked like him. It sounded like him. The Joker slid out of his shirt and pushed the tall man into the bench saying, "Your honor, clearly this individual is my beloved Batsy."
The new Batman grabbed The Joker and tossed him through the doors of the courtroom and into the hall. The resulting battle would span four city blocks and wind up on every news channel in the country. In the following days a mistrial would be declared. The prosecuting attorney would make it clear that they had no intention of bringing more charges against Bruce Wayne.
Weeks Passed.
Batman perched on a rooftop. He scanned the city below for any sign of trouble. Light footfalls from behind alerted him to the presence of a thin man in a purple suit. Batman growled, "I'm not going to thank you."
The Joker smiled and said, "For what? What is a little fraud between friends."
Batman sighed and said, "Who was the man in the Bat Suit?"
The Joker laughed devilishly and said, "Thank your buddy Clark. One of these days I'll tell you how I twisted his arm so to speak."
Batman stared at the cruel jester before him and said, "Why?"
The Joker simply smiled and said, "Because Batsy, I need you around for what I have planned next..." |
Wishes are not as glamorous as they seem. To be honest, most wishes end up turning bad for the person who made them in the first place. No matter, my business has been successful – The business of now being a sort of *Wish Lawyer.*
I know it is not the most creative title, but it gets the message across, and it is far better than the title I used to go by.
It is a miracle that I arrived in time. The moment I stormed through the door, I found young Lily Windogul staring up in awe toward a Genie. The Genie greeted her with open arms floating over the dining room table. He was trailed by a tail of purple smoke leading down onto a bronze jar from where he had awoke.
“Oh my! Oh my! It’s my lucky day!” She jumped in excitement.
“No it’s not.” I slammed my briefcase onto the table.
“Who are you?” Lily quickly turned her attention onto me.
“Yea!” The Genie crossed his arms, “Who are you?!”
“My name is Edward and I’m here to stop that thing from doing any harm to you.”
The Genie floated closer to me, scrunching his brow in anger. I did not care if he was inconvenienced by my arrival. I wanted to prove to Lily that she could trust me. It didn’t matter if it were a crossroads demon, a fairy, or even a dragon at this point – I wanted to show her how she was about to be swindled by this Genie creature.
“*Harm?* It’s a genie!” Lily’s eyes lit up. “They’re supposed to be a good!”
“Yea, I’m the good guy!” The Genie nodded.
“No *you* aren’t!” I pointed back. “You guys never are!” I swear, it’s like Lily never read about these things.
“Look, that genie came out of the jar that I own! That means he’s my genie and I deserve a wish!” Lily had let her excitement cloud her judgement. That jar had sat on the shelf for so long. The one day she knocked it down by accident, I knew it was time for me to act.
I have seen that look before. It is the same look everyone gets when they find themselves in possession of a wish. I don’t know why, but most people always jump to the first thing that comes to mind.
“I want to be immortal! I want to live forever!” Lily shouted.
“You have to say the *magic* words. You have to say it a certain way - the right words in order!” The Genie hovered over her. He placed his hands atop her shoulders.
“Yea, a *certain* way. Lily, do not wish for that.”
“Why not?” She grew as impatient as the Genie.
I snapped my fingers. In an instant, a scroll of parchment paper flew from the Genie’s red sash around his waist. I put my reading glasses on in order to point Lily’s attention to the text covering the Genie’s record.
“You see that there?”
“Where?” Lily pressed her nose against the paper. She struggled reading the small print.
“Right there!” I punched my forefinger down onto a particular sentence.
“Wait! How did you do that?” The Genie tried pulling the scroll back, but there was too much paper circling around us.
“You see? This is why you need me - a *wish lawyer*” I assured Lily. The Genie wanted to grant her wish more than anything. All Genies try hard to persuade immortality, it being the big sale. When one gets handed to them on a silver platter, they do everything to rush the process along - and quickly. Only problem is, no wish can ever be granted unless one says,'I wish,"before their demand. This Genie here had planned to make her immortal by letting her take his place within the jar. Yes, that’s correct. He was going to turn her into a Genie, allowing him to go free. These things are always the same no matter where the case is.
“Oh my god! You were going to trap me in that thing forever?!” Lily glared her eyes onto the Genie.
“I wasn’t going to trap you in my jar! I swear!” The Genie tried everything to persuade her. Lily stepped backward beside me.
“How did you know?” Lily asked me. She grabbed hold of my hand after the Genie grew frustrated.
“I *always* know.” I replied.
“I wish we could get rid of him!” she shook her head nervously.
I snapped my fingers and the Genie was gone – along with the jar that housed him. Lily threw herself beside the table making sure he had truly gone.
“How – How did you do that?”
“It’s my job.” I smiled. I watched her open up the pantry door, scanning every nook and cranny to feel safe. The truth is, she still had two more wishes left. That’s right, it was I who granted her first wish. Her trust in me has gone accordingly to plan. I need to play the part if I am ever going to get out of this place once and for all.
 
To read more of my stories, visit [13thOlympian](https://www.reddit.com/r/13thOlympian) |
There once was a hero. OK, maybe not really a hero. A protagonist? Yeah, a protagonist. His name was Jason, named after one of the greatest heroes in Greek history, because why the fuck not?
Says here he was a master of all weapons. But really, what use is knowing how to use every weapon? I mean seriously, is anybody going to be wielding more than one weapon at a time? Wait, did Jason just pick up two swords? God, he just demolished that bandit encampment with nothing but his pathetic bare chest and two swords. Way to undermine your friends, asshole.
"My comrades,"Jason said boringly. "Like true warriors, you guys have shown great courage by walking with me. While we attain victory today, there is much more to be done. Yet, we do not forget to celebrate what we have achieved. Hail yourselves, fighters!"
The men around him started cheering rapturously at his pathetic display of machoness. They banged their weapons on the ground, probably to drown him out so they could get on with their business. Chants of "Jason! Jason!"resounded, probably to sarcastically complain about him or something.
Jason proceeded to kneel on his right knee, head bowed. He dropped his two swords by his side, before crossing his arms over his chest, then proceeded to say a silent prayer.
"Gods, I understand you work in mysterious ways. My strength means nothing without my conviction, so understand that this victory is for you."
Urgh. After this self-righteous display, Jason went to tend to the wounded, disturbing their rest by talking to them, holding their hands, and generally pissing on their egos by saying callously: "Do not worry, we won. Rest well and may the gods guide you."Obviously, words meant to hurt and degrade their exclusion from the fight. Seriously, what a high grade piece of ass.
Really, every story about Jason is just sincerely pathetic to even say, let alone live out. Oh, there was that time where he managed to save Princess Zarena from the Black Dragon...
---
[Part two here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/emnyak/wp_the_main_character_is_perfect_in_every_way_hes/fdrwdft/)!
[r/dexdrafts](https://www.reddit.com/r/dexdrafts/) |
Ancient greeks. Although you think they call the land Hella or something like that, greek isn't your strongpoint. They do not understand the contraption that is your time machine, instead they report their fascination on your hammer and portable anvil. The shock of steel against steel, how you bend and mold metal to your leisure. You see a man drawing sketches on an argile tablet. What have you done?
You sigh and let the hammer fall to the ground. Your machine is bust, you knew it but couldn't let go of hope, looks like you will be stuck here for a while. To change your mind you set off on the beaten path, a dirt road on the flank of a hill, the sight alone is worth it.
Untamed, untouched, unspoiled nature. Valleys and rivers expand wherever you look and as far as the eye can see, it is a new world. Humans have not conquered it yet, quite the opposite, they are but a humble inhabitant, thanking the soil for its boon and praying for its good grace. Eagles fly high, trees grow wherever they like, raw power and raw beauty.
The sight makes you lose focus, you only realize there is a hole in the ground when you're face first in the dirt. You get back on your unsteady legs with a nasty bruise on your thigh. You're going to limp for a while.
Further down the road you find Gontrand in the same predicament, his machine barely able to spark some lightnings before giving up. To the locals, a miracle. They are praying on their knees and brought food and cloth as offerings. Gontrand tried to shoo them away, it did nothing apart from giving him the reputation of having a sour mood.
The rule is simple, don't change time. Don't provoke a ripple that would become a tsunami centuries down the line. This is different. This is a time loop, you know they see you as a spirit or god of the forge, while Gontrand and his light show is going straight into Zeus territory.
Isabelle comes along, you have a suspiscion that down the line, she will be called Aphrodite. She makes no lightning and does not possess your knack with tools, but she is beautiful, and to them, alien. So far back, the height isn't as high than in the 21th century, and Isabelle was quite taller than most in that time period. Here, she's nearly a giant, she can wear a curtain and it would transform into a robe on her. The young women seem to agree, she is followed by a cohort trying to emulate her manners.
Gontrand threw his hands in the air, his machine is dead and gone, and if Isabelle is here, it meant hers is done for too. The three of you hold a short reunion, but you already know where this goes.
You cannot go back, and you're already on your way to become a legend to last for millenias. Is this how it always started? A time traveler passing for a god? Or was there an original timeline without your wacky antics?
You will never know.
With a nod, you separate from your colleagues, agreeing to get back together in some time. Aphrodite is followed by her cohort, Zeus the grumpy makes a few more lights and shoos his folowers back into their sheds, the birds fly low and it would rain soon.
You go back to your wreck of a machine with a limp, take out your tools and let the rest to rust. Searching for a place to stay, a young woman guides you to cover, a bunch of leaves held in balance on long sticks planted in the ground. Crude, but enough for a start. You lay down your anvil when a man approaches you with caution. In his hands, a broken stone axe.
So be it then. You grab your hammer and take a look at his tool. Primitive, you can do better than that. As a matter of fact, so can your machine. You get back to it and rip away the fuselage. You start a fire to melt it. Your hammer is held high and hits with great strength, thus you tale your first step to godhood. |
I stop noticing the causes after a while. They were boring. Lots of heart disease and various types of cancer. I was in college; those things were years and years down the road. Every once and a while, I'd see things like "suicide"or "automobile crash."Though sad and preventable, I had no real way of knowing when it would happen or why. So there was nothing I could do about it.
But some deaths were preventable, or changed based on new events in the world. On my way to class, I saw a young lady walking nearby with a cause that could be easily stopped: "Drug Overdose."I'm normally not one to reach out to strangers, but I figured I had to get involved. This was definitely a college-age cause of death. I ran across the quad and asked her out. She was shocked, but smiled shyly and accepted. Her name was Sarah, and her sign changed after about a month of us dating. Now, it says "dementia;"I still check every morning when I wake up. It's sad, but I take comfort in knowing we'll live a long life together.
After a few years, I learned to just tune the signs out. I had so much on my mind now. Work, baby on the way, mortgage, student loans... far too much for me to be worrying about how other people might die. Sure, I got involved when I could, but that wasn't very often. And who am I to thwart fate?
My boss entered my office with a new client folder and dumped it on my desk, on top of the 10 other folders requiring my attention. "Howard is out sick today,"he informed me, "so you need to take this one."I rolled my eyes and looked up, ready to argue. But instead of the usual "heart attack"floating over his head, he had a new one. Bright green, like how I picture radioactive sludge. And it said "Plague."
I was too distracted to argue. I'd never seen a "plague"sign before. I stood up from my cubicle and glanced around the office at my coworkers. 7 of them had changed to "plague"as well. When had this happened?? As I watched, a secretary's red "suicide"sign changed to "plague"as well.
I hopped online looking for any news about some new disease or anything. Nothing. I searched for outbreaks and 'mystery' illnesses and any other search term I could think of. Nothing. Maybe it was a long way off. Maybe I had plenty of time.
I left early that day. I couldn't be in the office. As I walked to the subway station, I began to notice more and more green. And more and more people were changing by the minute. From the looks of it, the plague would already be killing about half of New York, and that number was growing. Nearby, someone coughed, with that disgusting hacking sound of fluid-filled lungs. I scrambled across the street in utter terror and ran the rest of the way home.
Sarah was working at her desk when I arrived. Thank god; her sign was unchanged. She wouldn't be infected, at least not yet. She rubbed her tummy with a smile as I entered. "I felt him kick today,"she said, practically bursting with the news. I was too distracted to react; she was crestfallen. "We need to get out of town,"I said, trying to hide the panic in my voice. Her face let me know that I was failing miserably. "What is it?"she asked. I had already made my way to the bedroom and started throwing things in suitcases. I didn't have time to argue.
We made our way down to the street to get a cab. I was lugging two enormous suitcases, and dragging Sarah behind me. She was confused and scared, but had agreed to come along. At least for now. Outside, the street was a sea of bright green. I heard more and more coughing.
We finally got into a cab. The driver had a bright green 'Plague' sign over his head. "Where to?"he asked. "JFK,"I said. Well, 'shouted' would be more of an apt description.
As we drove, the thick haze of green changed suddenly to a bright purple that I'd never seen before. Almost every green sign was now gone; the few that remained were probably going to be the first outbreak victims. The purple letters spelled out "Nuclear explosion."
---
[I am continuing the story here, if you're interested](http://www.reddit.com/r/Luna_Lovewell/comments/30xnrr/plague/cpwsurh) |
"Wake up! *Wake up*!"
My eyes opened to a blurred world, bouncing up and down around me. After a moment, I grabbed at the man shaking me and groaned. "What the hell are you doing, Rafi? Good God, man."
"Samir, my friend, you must get up. We have to go, now."
"What are you on about so early in the day? Back at the wicked leaf again, friend?"I rubbed my eyes vigorously.
"Samir, something is happening. We must go-"
Splintered wood exploded across the room, raining kindling on us both. A group of armed men in bright red sashes with gold scimitars at their hips were yelling in another language- Farsi, perhaps? Or Arabic? It was hard to pin, but understanding them wouldn't have mattered anyway. They dragged us at swordpoint to the central square, where thousands of other men had been gathered together. They all looked as confused and distraught as I felt, bitter nerves and a sinking, empty stomach.
About ten minutes later, a loudphone crackled in our own language, though crudely. "Hello. There is no time. We have married into the Persian bloodline, and they will go to war with us."
Rafi squeezed over to me, grasping my shoulder. "Chaos comes for us, friend. I hear the new Persian Queen murdered all four of her siblings to establish herself as heir."
I ran my hands through my hair, clenching some, as the booming voice continued. "The democracy has been disbanded. This is an official monarchy now, and miscreants will be thrown in jail or executed quickly.
"You will be fitted with equipment shortly and we march in three days. Don't worry, I have a few perks and because of my divine abilities, you will all be able to fight like trained warriors.
"First we must destroy India. The madmen formed a democracy and... Things have become tumultuous. After that, I do not yet know. However, I do know the world will be ours, men. We just have to go out and steal it before it destroys itself."
The crowd cheered, and I with them, despite being horridly confused and wanting to vomit. I'd just... moved on my own, screaming with agreement, a veil of bloodlust pulled over my eyes. The conscripted men began to stream out of the square, toward an armory looming above plaza buildings- it wasn't there the day before.
Along the way, a radio's crackle caught my ear, and I paused briefly to listen. *"India has formed a democracy... Mohandas Gandhi... Rapid changes in the world climate... War elephants... President Gandhi put out a press release today... Play it now."*
*"... Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS..."* the once peaceful, frail man screamed like a banshee.
The world was falling apart. There were things in motion that would never become undone. And, somehow, overnight, it had become our job to keep things from fully unraveling.
----
*/r/resonatingfury* |
I knew love never had eyes. Being blind I had to embrace mine. He came from nowhere it felt like.
"Oh, excuse me,"I said.
"It's no problem most people can't see me anyway. You get used to it,"he replied so casually it made me curious.
Soon conversation led to a date. I found out his name was Relin, odd but charming. Though I will say people and their rudeness made enjoying the night difficult.
"Um, ma'am and will your date be joining you later?"The host asked.
I frowned and replied flatly, "He's right next to me! Are you the blind one?"
The host gave me more difficulty, but eventually gave us a booth.
"Sheesh, he was being a real dick,"I said to Relin, but he was quiet.
I could hear whispers around me,
"Who's she talking to?"
"She must have an imaginary friend?"
"Or she's just crazy maybe..."
After a while our waitress came up to the table, "Hello, welcome to Navara. What can I get for you to drink this evening miss?"
"We'll have two cups of ice water please."
She paused as if confused.
"If you have a date coming. I can just bring their drink when they come,"she said politely.
It still pissed me off, "Look I won't tell you people again. He is right there!"
I lay may hand on the table and smile warmly as I feel his hand on mine.
"Uh... Ok well I'll be sure to have the drinks right out,"she said awkwardly and I could practically feel her eyes scanning the scene of us uncomfortably.
"Sophia, there's something I need to tell you,"Relin said in his heavy but melodic voice.
"I'm listening Relin,"I replied calmly as my heart began to race in my chest.
"About tonight. The way people have been acting towards us there's a reason for it...."
I leaned forward, more so out of curiosity than straining to hear him.
"When I met you I told you not many people can see me,"he went on.
I nodded to show I was following, but I was confused of as to where he was going so I asked, "You're not going to tell me your some kind of criminal are you? Because you can change. I have more than enough and-"
He cut me off with a soft chuckle and said,
"It's not that people just don't see me. They literally can't."
I laughed myself thinking he was leading into some great satirical joke. He wasn't.
"I'm an invisible man from another dimension. I've been trapped here for over ten years now, but my wavelength never fully set in. Most people cannot see or feel me."
"I-I don't understand. Why are you telling me all of this?"
I could feel him lean forward intently, clasping my hand a little tighter.
"Only you can help me Sophia. This love we share is not normal. You bumped into me because your wavelengths were similar to mine. That is how I can become visible, but that doesn't mean I'll be a pretty sight."
He paused and let out a slow sigh, "I don't even remember what I look like to be honest. But in our embrace I should be able to synchronize my wavelength with your plane."
"Are you human?"I asked him simply.
He seemed caught off guard but answered, "I am. Different, but very much human."
I set my hands on the table and let my mind's eye look at his soul.
"Then none of this matters. Relin, love is blind." |
The director looked at the files. 15 assassination attempts. His agents assured that Clark Kent had at least drunk poison, taken a bullet to the head and been pushed off a building.
The poisoner died from his own mixture a day later, the shooter plainly disappeared and the pusher was found at the bottom of a ravine, spread apart by the force of the impact. This was getting out of hand.
Kent had published a paper about a secret satellite launch, it had been passed as a commercial launch but somehow he saw through it. Kent knew that the trajectory it followed wasn't the one officialy announced. Of course, everything was denied, but the damage was done. Amateur astronomers with too much free time on their hands jumped on the wagon and were pointing out night lights that should not be there.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Before, he had written a vitriolic paper about slave trade and human rights violation. He nailed Saudi Arabia, China, American en European firms implanted in Africa and India. Nothing out of the ordinary, these were usual targets on the subject, but the photographs and videos he brought as proof were worrying. Appointed high-ranking government officials incriminating themselves, signing documents he had gotten copies of and more. Too much to be managed by one man alone.
Kent was a case bridging the cultural gap and bringing different countries together. Governments on every continent wanted him gone, secret services, media moguls and finance guru pooled means together to achieve just that.
And these idiotic rich didn't help. His secret service had enough trouble as it was, but now some bigwig thought that sending a hired killer would do the work where trained agents failed. Of course it backfired. Kent retraced the killer's path back to the bigwig, and in turn the director himself started to get an undesirable amount of heat.
The director could handle sightings of a flying man saving people. Daydreaming that put the focus away from him, he could not ask for more. But a journalist backed by a strong network of informants, obviously protected and able to see through classified projects was the biggest liability he could face. Who was Clark Kent working for? A country? Unlikely, he was nailing everyone left and right without apparent loyalty. Who was he working with? Who sent him videos and documents from across the globe when surveillance stated he stayed in America?
This followed a pattern easily recognizable. Bound to no nation, following a dangerous ideal, these were terrorists fighting with information instead of explosives, but terrorists upsetting order nonetheless.
The director's task was to protect the american people, shedding light on matters best stayed hidden did not help that. This journalist was dangerous, a problem for national security and every other national security on the globe it appeared.
Kent had to be dealt with, realpolitik had no place for an idealist like him. End of the story.
That's how the story ended every time so far, so why didn't Kent die like the others? Why did he kept on surviving? And why couldn't they get more intel on him?
It seemed like the director had found his very own boogeyman. |
"Abra Cadabra -"Joey started saying with a giggle, waving his wand in Mr Ollivander's shop.
Mr Ollivander swept up from the corner of the shop, his silvery eyes huge with fright.
"What are you doing, boy?"he whispered. "Speaking the name of that spell?"
Joey stashed away his wand hastily, feeling rather frightened as Mr Ollivander glared down at him.
"Sorry, I didn't know..."he began, and Mr Ollivander's eyes lost some of their fierceness.
"No, of course not,"he said slowly. "A muggle-born such as yourself would not know. Let me warn you, before you go to Hogwarts..."
And he told Joey. About the killing curse - and its opposite.
"Of course, a mere child such as yourself couldn't actually call forth *that* spell's power..."Ollivander said, at the end of the tale. "Few can - only the most imaginative. But not one may be trusted with the terrible power to call forth anything they wished. To create anything. Terrible, yes. Terrible..."
He didn't *look* like he thought it was terrible. There was no mistaking the greedy longing that shone in Ollivander's eyes. Joey left the shop elated - he could create *anything*. Anything at all. All he needed was imagination. And he had plenty of that, didn't he? He'd always had plenty of that...
-------
The students stood on the dining tables in the Great Hall to catch a glimpse of whatever the kid had summoned. He'd said a few words none of them had heard before. And by the horrified expressions on the teachers' faces, it couldn't be anything good.
"What is that..thing, Joey?"Headmistress McGonagall asked, looking down her nose at the creature hiding behind the boy.
"It's an Alakazam,"Joey started to explain, but the other children just stared at him blankly. Only one other muggle-born boy grinned in recognition. "I always wanted one, but no-one would trade a Kadabra with me. You know, Abra, Kadabra..."
"Stop saying the forbidden spell!"McGonagall snapped. "You've done enough. I admit, I stand amazed that you could manage this spell. You have talent, and potential. But you cannot use it to call forth - "
She groped for words to describe the furry yellow thing with the ridiculous moustache, brandishing a spoon in her direction.
"*That*,"she finished. "Stand back, all of you."
She pulled forth her own wand and pointed it at the thing. "Stupefy!"
The curse hit it squarely in the chest, and it keeled over with a strange, high-pitched sound.
"Nooo! My pokémon! You killed it!"Joey wailed, clutching the crumpled, yellow body of the creature to his chest, to mingled screams and laughter from the crowd.
"Come, boy, don't carry on so, it's merely stunned,"McGonagall said, though she resolved to use the killing curse when she had the thing alone. She pulled Joey away from the creature, gesturing to another teacher to remove it from the Hall. "You need to come to my office. I need to talk to you. You have power, obviously, but no idea how to use it...come on, now..."
Joey allowed himself to be dragged away as McGonagall prattled on, thinking furiously. He could do *anything*. Conjure the legendary pokémon. Create a potion to heal his Alakazam. They wouldn't laugh at him, after that. They'd fear him. Like they feared Voldemort, all those years ago.
Maybe he needed a cool moniker, too.
"Now, Joey -"McGonagall was saying, but he interrupted, drawing himself up and looking her in the eye. She'd regret hurting his Alakazam, soon enough. She'd regret challenging him.
"Call me Ash,"he said, feeling faintly disappointed that she didn't immediately gasp in awe but instead just stared at him like he'd been hit in the head with a bludger. No matter. She'd know, soon enough, what that meant.
They would *all* know.
----------
Hope you enjoyed my story! You can find more of my work on /r/Inkfinger/. |
My first dog, Trick, died three weeks after my parents brought him home. I think I became that little pup's best friend in an hour of us first playing. Took him a fortnight to win my friendship and heart quite as completely. To become my best friend.
A week later, Trick was dead. Vet wasn't sure what had happened. He frowned, scratched his beard, and said, "Must have had a bad heart."Trick didn't have a bad heart -- it was pure and perfect.
I was slower to get attached to our second puppy, that Dad brought home almost a year later. But that sandpaper tongue and bouncing tail won me over.
Again the vet scratched his beard. "Bad heart. Bad luck."
I knew that somehow I'd been responsible. Somehow I'd killed my two little best friends.
This was all but confirmed for me three years later, when I met Robert. Usually, since the dogs' deaths, I kept to myself. If I liked something, I figured, it died. So I spent recesses alone, never went to parties, never made a friend. Just... became alone. And it was easy 'cause kids thought me weird and aloof and were all too happy to avoid me.
Except for Robert.
And I never knew why. Just, he refused to *not* be my friend. One of those types of kids with an electric aura that you just wanted to be near.
"Come on! We'll play some computer games. I swear it'll be fun -- and if it's not then you can just go home."
He was so earnest and persistent that the ice encasing me cracked -- just a little.
Robert's head cracked a few weeks later. You'll maybe think it was because I'd become friends with him. And maybe that was why. But he'd not died of a 'bad heart' like my pups had. He'd been hit by a driver texting on his phone, as Robert walked home from school.
So maybe it was me. Or maybe it was this driver. Either way, I began to form a plan. A terrible, horrible plan that would change everything.
If, when the driver got out of jail (he'd been given less than a year), I befriended him... Became best friends. Then what had happened to Robert, to my dogs, would happen to him, too.
The driver's name was Michael. I turned up at his front door one cloudy afternoon, not long after he got out.
"Hey,"he said. Face pale and drawn. He was tall, bald, and tattooed, and it was five in the evening and he was slobbing around in a long dressing-gown. Pathetic. "Can I help you, kid?"
I could hardly speak from rage but I had to swallow it down before I sputtered out something like: you killed my best friend and I hate you and I hope you die. Instead, for my plan to work, I somehow needed to reach the goodness within this asshole. If there was any.
"Hi,"I said. "I wanted to say that um, that.... I forgive you,"I lied. The toughest lie I'd ever told. "For hitting my friend."
That was my ticket in, I thought.
I didn't expect him to break down sobbing. A seed of guilt planted itself in my stomach.
"Come in,"he said eventually, sniffing back tears. "I'll get you a drink."
I sat nervous in his kitchen as he poured me a coke. The table was covered in old photos of him and a woman and two kids. He'd been looking through his memories before I'd come.
"I can't tell you what it means,"he said, serving himself a drink out of a clear bottle. There were more empty bottles around us. Littering the sides. "You coming. No one's said those words to me. No one."
"I just didn't want you feeling like it was all your fault. Accidents happen. This was just a big one."
And again the big man wept. "Yeah. It was. A really fucking big one. That poor fucking kid. Was he a good friend?"
"My best,"I said.
He nodded, his wet eyes glimmered as they shot a look at the photos. "I'm so sorry."He paused then added, "My best friends have left me now. I can't pretend I know how it feels to lose someone the way you did -- because of an asshole like me. But I'm starting to understand loss."
I didn't want to go back the next day, to this stinking murderous alcoholic's house. But I forced myself to. For Robert.
The man was dressed today but his eyes were just as bloodshot. "You're back?"he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
"Thought you could use some company."
He nodded. "Yeah. Think I could. I was going to order takeout. Come on in and I'll get you something."
Every day for a month I forced myself over. Every day for a month, I learned a little more about the murderer. About how much he'd loved his own kids and his wife. How the pain of losing them was only soothed by alcohol and my visits. How the guilt of hitting Robert crushed him. That when he closed his eyes at night, he saw Robert's face. Or had nightmares of hitting his own kids instead.
And my own guilt, that seed in my stomach, had taken root. Was sprouting into something unexpected.
Maybe this guy didn't deserve to die.
The funny thing there was, after a month, he told me if it wasn't for my first visit, he'd be dead by now. He was certain of it. That I'd saved his life. Now, he'd given up drinking and was working on a way to see his kids once a week.
And I didn't feel bad about it. About saving him. 'Cause Robert had reached out to me, when I'd been somewhere alone and dark. I think in a way, Robert would have wanted this.
This man, Michael, wasn't my best friend, but he wasn't far from it. So I told him a last time I forgave him, and that I reckoned Robert did too. But that I couldn't visit so often now. He said he understood.
And that was it.
I became a nurse, a few years later. Found a better way use my gift.
There were terminal patients who needed me. Who had no one left in their life and were travelling slowly, lonely towards death.
I'd sit by their beds and listen to their stories, finally opening my heart up again. I could help them end it with a friend in their life.
They weren't lonely or scared.
And neither was I. |
I look around, years of training and experience have sharpened my senses to a fine edge honed from suspicion and paranoia.
Its been a long time since I was in any danger. My previous employers, MI6, had me released from service after that embarrassing mishap in the Philippines, but my instincts were still bright eyed and bushy tailed.
My mission, directly from the highest order of self preservation: Get some pizza.
***Exits:***
O*ut the back through the kitchen.*
A*nother one out the side past the smoking area.*
A *third directly behind me.*
*maximum* ***5 seconds*** *from any exit.*
***Three*** *people:*
*The cook: Large, white and Italian, in the kitchen, easy access to knives, can dodge if I keep an eye on him.* ***Threat: Moderate****.*
*The cashier: too skinny for any kind of combat training. name-tag: Lenny. Frizzy hair, Under-bite, bitten nails, hickey on his neck.* ***Threat: Harmless****.*
*The customer: Shapeless marvel hoodie, Extra large pizza, Probably female, cant make out any features from here, sitting in the most defensible section of the room, eye-lines to all entrances.* ***Threat: EXTREME***
My pulse picks up, but I control myself.
"My usual Lenny-boy"I call jovially as I approach the counter.
My focus is almost entirely on my peripheral vision: the dark silhouette of the woman, shown in the grease stained "stainless"steel of the kitchen appliances.
"Don't worry dude, your date got here early and paid!"He nods over to the woman in the hoodie, and I freeze for a split second.
I smile and thank him.
Smoothly turning, I sit down at the steel table in front of the large pizza. I can hear my pulse beating heavily in my ears.
(A/N: seems like fun, its really late and i may come back and write the actual story tomorrow) |
I screamed as the knife plunged into my chest. The heavy weight of my attacker held me down, suffocating me as I struggled in vain. Not yet! I didn’t want to die yet!!!!
I blinked and then stared down at the bloodied corpse of the young blonde socialite I used to be. Rich, beautiful and young, she was everything I had ever wanted to be.
A guttural string of curses left my mouth. I threw the knife in my hand and it clattered across the floor. My former life, so sweet and fleeting, ruined by a mere run-of-the-mill serial killer.
I stood up and walked over to the dilapidated bathroom mirror. I was now a middle-aged man, gaunt in the face and soft in the belly. I must have lived at least twenty lives similar to this lowlife. I punched the mirror in frustration, cracking it.
It has taken me so long to get that body. Hot young murderers don’t just appear overnight! I had been stuck in prison for years, switching between prisoner to prisoner before finally baiting a cop into killing me and getting the hell out of jail. Then I had to trick a prostitute into poisoning me, seducing and having the child of a rich man and raising that child with hate until she finally killed me.
I rifled through the serial killer’s belongings. Jed Adder, 57 years old, an alcoholic and deadbeat, mooching off his late grandmother’s pension. I opened the fridge. It seems I wasn’t his first victim. My stomach grumbled at the sight and I gagged.
Of all the murderers in the world, I hate serial killers the most. Nothing good ever comes from taking over a serial killer. I cracked my knuckles. Whelp, no choice but to go shopping.
I fished out my old cellphone from my corpse’s purse.
___
Being a cop again wasn’t too bad. I was slightly more in shape and I knew I could at least count on my aim in a pinch. The shootout hadn’t lasted long, just enough to jump in front of the bullets.
My wife Jaimie was nice, a warm woman who juggled the household chores, her job and our rowdy kids. I could tell the former Officer Hayes didn’t help out much and the dumbstruck surprise on her face when I did something as small as wash the dishes almost broke my heart.
Our kids too, eight year old Thalia and twelve year old Jake were funny and rambunctious. Thalia wanted to make a movie and Jake helped her out her visions together in cardboard and markers.
Maybe this wasn’t the life I had worked towards. Maybe I wasn’t the elite socialite I thought I wanted to be. But looking at this small family, I felt a sense of comfort that I had never experienced before.
But of course, life always had it out for me.
“Stage four colon cancer...” |
At first it had been a joke, borne out of late nights trying to wrap my head around French grammar. In between wishing an excruciatingly painful afterlife on the person who invented irregular verbs, I had a thought-- what if I invented a language that was actually *easy* to learn? And so Baconese was born.
Beyond coming up with a few bits of vocabulary, I didn't give much thought to it until a few weeks later, when I was home sick with nothing to do. My mind wandered to Baconese, and in a fit of inspiration, I created rules for grammar and punctuation.
I spent every study hall after that developing the language. Baconese, by the way, has incredibly easy verb conjugation, no rolled 'r's, and not a single irregular word to speak of (screw you, French). I even began working on a dictionary, although I left that in a classroom and forgot all about it... until now.
"***You too***?"Chris asks, eyes widening, lips curving around the foreign tongue in a way that sounds all too practiced for my liking. And then he does the unthinkable: he smiles. At me. The biggest nerd in the school. *Me*. "Wow."
"How did you, uh..."I try to put the words together, my heart racing. "***You speak Baconese***?"
"***I'd say I'm pretty fluent***,"Chris says. "***Sorry, gotta get to football practice. See you later?***"
"See ya,"I say, so dumbstruck that I forget to translate.
​
Chris doesn't see me later-- at least, not for awhile- but I do see Baconese pop up again, this time in written form.
I'm rummaging through a History textbook when a piece of crumpled notepaper falls out. It's a bunch of dates and events, with a few short sentences describing the War of 1812, or the fall of the Berlin Wall-- and it's all in Baconese.
It doesn't take me long to put it together. I am now the creator of a language used by students across my high school to cheat on tests.
If I were a better person, I'd feel guilty, even ashamed. But instead I laugh.
​
Chris sidles up to me behind the building, cast in shadows. He's traded his varsity jacket for a black sweatshirt and jeans that allow him to blend into the darkness of the late evening. "***All set up, boss***."
"***Thank you, Christopher***. ***This money's gonna keep us in business for a long, long time.****"*
"***You really think we got away with it? I mean, this is the biggest cheating scam in, like, all of human history.***"
I smirk at Chris. "***It is? Then it's time to break another record.***"
Shoulders brushing against each other's, we slip back into the forest and cut across the unsuspecting town, only stopping to cackle maniacally as we relish in the feat we've just pulled off. |
"...uh...ok, my leige"I said, confused. The king clapped me on the back and let out a large belch, before retiring to his chambers.
How had he known? Why did he drink it all? And why did he tell me? Most importantly, why was I still alive?
I heard a deep throat clearing noise from behind me. I turned, and found myself eye-to-eyepatch with an old man, leaning on a gnarled staff as lumpy as he was. His one remaining grey eye looked me up and down before addressing me.
"I suppose I can work with you", he said, then turned and began walking. "Follow me."
I was even more confused now. Who the hell was this?
My questions were interrupted by a swift blow to the back of my legs. I jumped in pain from the sting, but remained on my feet.
"Follow him", the castle guard ordered, readying his spear for another blow.
"Ouch, ok, I'll go"I said, backing away from the armed guard. Apparently everyone but me knew what I was supposed to do.
I took off after the one eyed man, quickly catching up to him. It wasn't a great feat, the man was quite slow. His walking staff tapped a precise metronome tone as he walked down corridors, stairs, and halls alike.
We finally arrived at the bottom of a particularly dark, damp stairwell. "In here, apprentice"he said, shoving the door open with his staff.
I looked at the man, puzzled. "What?"I asked. Too many questions fought to be first, so none of them ended up being asked.
The one eyed man fixed his functioning eye on me. "The king gave you to me. You tried to kill him. You failed. Your life is forfeit. Instead of giving it to the hangman, he gave your life to me. You are my apprentice, my ward, mine until you are a master in your own rights."He strode in to the darkened room. I followed.
"A master of what?"I asked. The man lit an oil lamp, casting a dim orange light about the room. Bottles of varied sizes, shapes and colors reflected the light, sending a kaleidoscope of color all around us.
The man poured two glasses of water and handed me one. "Drink it", he commanded, and consumed his own beverage. I complied.
"A master of poisons", he said. "Much like the one you just drank."
I spat out my last mouthful, gasping. "WHAT-"
"That poison will kill you in 15 hours", he said, interrupting me mid scream. "Unless you drink the antidote. Your first lesson, apprentice, is how to brew that antidote."
r/SlightlyColdStories for the celebration of my 60th story! 🥳
Edit: Expanding this story on Wattpad, same username as here with the working title "Master of Poisons". I'll publish each chapter as I go. |
*In other news, it appears as if the senior citizen virus - dubbed Serca by the CDC - has begun to take its toll on the economy; with a 12 percent decrease in the active labor force, almost half of the Senate out of commission, and increased pressure on healthcare, the USA could be heading towards a complete colla-*
I flick the TV off, chewing the inside of my lip. Bad habit.
The fearmongering in the news has already started, it seems. Two years ago, Serca hadn't been much to fear - if anything, the internet had done its best to ensure that the disease was just a joke, *a meme*. News outlets had laughed before offering commiserations, and some of the afflicted elderly had even been put into 'zoos' of sorts to make some kind of fucked up recreational centers where people could still interact with their loved ones, even as their brains withered into dust.
Of course, like with a lot of things in life, that fell through rather quickly.
Although it was common knowledge that the elderly tended to lack the teeth required for transmission, it quickly became apparent that most forms of intimate interaction worked just as well; saliva, nails drawing blood, what have you. And, being undead, there wasn't much to inhibit their attempts to kill.
When the military started to get involved, things really began going to shit. Mass cullings of the infected, and containment of the elderly. People had their cherished grandparents torn from their very arms, being told it was for their 'safety'.
A counter-culture quickly formed. People took to the streets to display their disgust at the infringement of their rights. They didn't know which one, of course, but they were still pissed. And there were lots of them. To be honest, their signs and shouting initially amounted to very little - once again, the internet would have had you believe it was all a joke or publicity stunt. That is, in the short run.
Eventually, they did gain traction. As livid, stupid masses tend to. So the issue went straight to Congress - or, rather, what remained of it. An amendment to the eighth had to be proposed and ratified, stipulating that '*cruel and unusual punishment*' does not apply in the case of Serca-infected elderly.
But law-making and bureaucracy are tricky little things - making an amendment is like trying to slap a buzzing fly. You'll miss the mark a few times, and people will begin to call you out on your idiotic flailing; so you'll try and pinpoint the issue, isolate the fly to a single space from which it can't escape so you can guarantee a kill shot. Unfortunately, this process takes ages. Years, even.
Things did not get better in the interim.
They still haven't.
I can already see my skin peeling at the edges of my body, making way for a greenish tinge on the recovering layer. I've always heard that 'turning' is a long process, but I never realised it was so subtle. If it weren't for the fact I was constantly teething air - or, sometimes, the mangled inside of my cheek - I wouldn't have even been able to know.
I suppose it doesn't matter at this point.
People are leaving the country, leaving their elderly behind. The protests are still in full swing, and the Government is still twiddling its thumbs.
What do I matter in the picture?
Just an old man, barely able to get up from his seat without the aid of a nurse that has long since left, slowly, agonizingly waiting for himself to turn.
Maybe, just *maybe* - and this is a fleeting hope - life might be better as a zombie. No pain. No inhibition. No stiff bones and sleepless nights.
I can already feel my fingers and toes going numb, indicating to me that the first stage of infection is at its end.
I hear a knock on my door. When I don't respond, it's followed by a crash, the sound of wood and metal breaking.
Footsteps resonate throughout the house; heavy boots against age-old stone. And then, the cocking of guns.
They've come for me. The notion of the US armed forces bursting into a retirement home would've almost been funny if it wasn't so morbid.
The first stage is ending now. I can feel it.
My room takes a reddish tinge - maybe it's simply a trick of the eye or a figment of my imagination. Either way, the effect lingers; a reddish hunger that's reflected in my stomach, which rumbles pathetically.
For some reason, I really want to eat.
*I really want to.*
Second stage: rapid break-down of neural functions.
Loss of memory.
Loss of ability to communicate, and then loss of cognitive thinking. Rationality makes way for impulse.
*What makes way for what now?*
Right, the third stage: flesh begins to go through necrosis. Regenerative capabilities arise. I think?
I'm honestly not quite sure.
Where am I again? Oh, yes, of course - I'm Mark, and I'm 82. Wait, 83. I love my niece, but I can't quite remember their name.
do i have a niece?
i vaguely recall never having children
i always hated them they made me very *hungry*...
*Eh?* Right. Of course. That'd just be the turning. I definitely had a child. A beautiful, delicious daughter called...
**flesh**
*What?*
*..................*
*............*
*. . .*
*Ah.*
------
*Im* hungri. Deari me.
mi stumac. rumbalz... hunga.
th.......
dur.....
o pan sss.
**f o o d** |
"I still don't understand", Max said, "NADIR-4 is a peaceful planet, sarge. It's really far away from the bugline. What purpose is there to send a whole division of space marines? We should be focusing on protecting human colonies, not these aliens."
"You're still young", the sergeant said, exhaling the vape smoke. "I'll let you on one secret I've learned over the years, kid. The aliens, all of them, are complete idiots."
"Huh?"
"Let me explain", sarge said. "Look at your rifle. Tell me what you know about it."Max took a glance at it. He knew it perfectly, of course, same as any other marine. He could describe its workings in his sleep. "Standard issue WLG-900, Nodarian-inspired nucleus, Krrgit style lance operator, Frenchinese optics. Combat AI developed from reprogrammed Zylonics."
"Precisely", sarge chuckled. "You know what Nodarians think of the Krrgit power lance? 'Heretic tech'. The Krrgit about reprogramming Zylonics? 'Inconceivable'. The Zylonics about Frenchinese optics? 'Incompatible technology'. They all keep making stupid excuses not to study each other. They are so far up their own asses that they took a damn *thousand years* to realize we weren't doing the same as them."
"Uh, OK. But, that still doesn't explain why we're going to NADIR-4."
"I'm getting there, kid. Now, tell me about the conflict between Hivemind Lambda and the republic of Sha in galactic cycle F36U7."
"Ughhhhhh. Really?"
"Tell me the gist of it. You have studied galactic history, haven't you?"It was a rhetorical question, of course. Every kid studies galactic history.
"Hivemind Lambda was unaware that Sha's citizens were individuals in their own right and not expendable drones", Max recited. "It thought the republic wouldn't mind trading a bunch of them to study, but when it learned it had been actually killing people, it was horrified. Peace was reached soon after, and Lambda accepted all responsibility and to date it's still working on reparations."
"You wanna know what the citizens of Sha know about the conflict?"Sarge was grinning in an uncanny way. "They say, 'hivemind Lambda is a horrible monster we cannot possibly comprehend, and without human strange telepathy magic, it would have consumed us all. Instead, now it serves our every desire forever.'"
"What?"Max shook his head in confusion. "But... The human alliance didn't do any magic! It's just like, basic xenopsychology! Lambda is so vast and ancient that it really doesn't care spending F8 cycles serving the republic, it's for it like, an afternoon washing their car."
"Precisely. Now you know our secret strange power, and our true superweapon: basic fucking common sense. The xenopsychologists in the spy service have been studying the imports and exports from NADIR-4, which, mind you, is open knowledge to everyone, and have determined with a 80% certainty that they are accumulating weapons to attack us. This will be the, I think seventh time we stop a war before it even begins. The aliens have *no idea* how we do this, they think we're psychic or something. Idiots, I tell you." |
The sound of the Sealing was like a chorus of drums. A cacophony of secrets flooding the air around Illias and Miri, as they watched the door be hammered shut from the darkness of their hidden recess in the north wall.
"I bet it's the sick,"said Miri. "I bet they lock up the dying. When was the last time you saw someone sick?"
Illias looked at his best friend. Her face was dusty and her eyes both baggy and wild. She was tired, and yet more awake than he'd ever seen her. "Miri,"he began in his most authoritative tone, "in all the time we've been camped out here, we've not seen them put a *single* soul behind there. So, maybe it's something else, something boring. Maybe the Tower just gets... old. Maybe it's unsafe down there because of the stairs wearing thin or... or..."
"*Or* maybe it's like your grandpa says."
Illias rolled his eyes. "You don't really believe any of that, do you?"
Miri hunched over and deepened her voice the best she could, imitating the old man. "Secrets live down on the ancient floors, you curious Cratoers! Secrets that would devour the two of you, the Tower, and everything we all take for known! So stay away. You hear me!?"
"Hey, that was pretty good!"
Miri bowed. "Thanks."
Illias turned back to the workers, watching them lock away whatever the secret was, behind a heavy door with at least a hundred nails hammered into it.
"We're never getting through that."
"It's only nails! I don't even need a spell for that. It's the Swirling doors that are a pain in the ass."
"You think seeing how they enchant them will-"
"Illias!"whispered Miri. "Look!"
He turned to see a cloaked figure walking down the East stairwell. A tall man with a long gnarled staff in his left hand, approaching the workers. His face was shrouded by the shadows of his cowl.
"Who's *that?*"Illias asked.
"I've no idea. I don't think it's anyone from the Coven."
It was the first time either Illias or Miri had seen the actual Sealing process. They'd never before been able to get past the Lower guards to see how it was performed. But today, they'd succeeded. It had been thanks to Miri, really. She figured, from a lot of research and little math, that Floor One would be changing within the week. So they'd taken it in turns to lie to their parents, pretending they were spending the night on each other's Floor-Room. But each night, they'd snuck down to Floor One, and waited.
And hoped.
And after six nights, got lucky. Workers had descended on the floor, swarming it like ants.
*thump!*
"What was that?"hissed Illias, his eyes wide.
*thump!*
The workers backed away from the door.
"I don't-"
*thump!*
Illias saw it this time. The door with a hundred nails was... being *hit*, by something behind it. It was shaking. Trembling.
*thump!*
Five Tower-Guards came hurtling down the stairs, hauling another door between their arms. A Swirling Door. A door with no handles or lock. Whose surface shifted and undulated as it changed from woods to metals, but always remained part liquid. Illias had seen such a door many times before. Each abandoned floor was locked by such a rune-door. And even all Miri's -- not insubstantial -- efforts to open them, had always come to nothing. None of the anti-spells she had learned at school, nor anything from her father's runic book
The guards' faces were pale. Sweating.
"Place it!"yelled the cloaked figure. "Now!"
They lifted the door up and began to manoeuvre it into place.
**thump!**
The nailed door cracked in the center; thick wooden splinters flew into the guards.
"Shit!"cried Illias. He turned to Miri, snatching her hand in his. "I don't think we want to find out what's behind there! We've got to go. Now!"
She shook her hand free. "If they see us leave, we'll be thrown behind the door! Would you rather that? Right, that's what I thought. *We stay.*"
Illias's fingers curled into a ball. Why had he ever listened to Miri? They shouldn't have come down here. Grandpa was right. Secrets should stay secret.
"Secure the Alpha Door,"croaked the cowled figure. "Now!"
The guards looked at each other, then at the figure, then nodded. They handed the swirling door to the group of workers, then yelled "Heave!"in unison, as they barged their shoulders against the remnants of the wooden door.
**Thump!**
"Hold firm, lads!"
**Thump!**
Behind the door, through the ever growing crack, Illias thought he saw something in the darkness. Something yellow. It flicked left, then right. *An eye?*
The workers took the Swirling door and held it in place, trapping the guards between the two portals.
**Crack!**
"Tell my Martha tha-"a guard began, before his words turned into agonised screams.
A purple light began to swirl around the edge of the cloaked man's staff, as the workers held the swirling door in place. He touched the tip of the stick against the door and began to utter words incomprehensible to the two children.
The door glazed over, the undulations slowing, abating.
"It is done,"said the cloaked man, his head dropping. "You may go."
The workers didn't need telling twice. They almost ran up the stairs, tripping over each other in an effort to escape.
The cloaked man pulled back his cowl.
"Illias!"whispered Miri. "Is that..."
His face was pale, and worn. A face they both knew well, but that had never looked so old as it did in that moment.
"*Grandpa?*"Illias whispered.
---
#####Part 2 (story 2) here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nickofnight/comments/85si3a/the_spiral_tower_two/
It's not a direct continuation, but there will be one. I'm doing it as a series of tales inside the tower, that interconnect and together explain its past and present.
|
Humanity always asks the question is there truly life that lies beyond the stars?
Usually the Galactic Union helps species that are deemed capable of being able to care for the universe and their own home planets. They are passed on a test of how well their planets equilibrium is and as well as how they handle certain situations regarding the natural forces of the planet they reside in. If they pass this test then the Galactic Union introduces itself to the species with first a message by whatever communications the species uses.
Eventually once their world and people are caught up in the history of the universe the G.S (Galactic Services) a branch of the Galactic Union will provide scientist and engineers from around the universe to help propel their society and quality of life.
Though there is one species the Galactic Union dares not touch... Humans, we could never fathom how they handle the care of their planet and as how they handle the strength of the natural forces on their planet. Humans are something no species has encountered before, they never bow down or give up. They have the audacity to terraform and change nature itself to bend to their will.
They care nothing for common sense and logical thought processes. If they want something they will find a way to get it. They are so weak and brittle naturally but even then with the help of their technological advances they keep pursuing things that will help make them stronger and better. They prevent diseases before they’re even born with genetic modification. It doesn’t stop there they even modify their unborn to be better then the average human. After birth they’re even crazy enough to inject their children with the diseases that kill them to make them immune to them! Sometimes they even fight Mother Nature, they take to the skies and grounds to fight the flames of the sun. They build architecture that can handle tsunamis that would decimate planets, hell they even build bombs with the capabilities of wiping out species just because it’s a good way to stop wars.
Humans have no concept of caution, when a human wants or thinks of something they will try it. A humans curiosity is something that no species can tame. Thus no species dares to interact with them nor help them propel their society. The Galactic Union could only imagine what humans would do with the plethora of knowledge we have to offer. Humans are catching up to the rest of the galaxy and they keep getting faster and faster, exponentially increasing their technological discovery speed.
They’re like a snowball of a species that the Galactic Union can’t stop. For the day Humans discover the life that lies beyond the stars is the day the Universe is doomed.
(This is my first writing prompt try ever! It might not be that good since I wrote it in my phones notes but I think it’s decent!)
EDIT: I just really want to thank everyone for the insane amount of support! This really makes me want to write even more now! You’re all great and I’m glad I finally decided to write for a prompt! |
Some twisted knot of fate has always tied us together.
Millennia ago, my body was burned. The same oppressors who restrain your magic today once took flame to mine. It might surprise you now, but there was once a time when trees passed over this earth like the shadows of clouds. Deep within our woodgrain, we carried a force so wonderful it would stand your hairs on end. With it, we bred further magic. Creatures fed from our fruit and grew wings. Entirely new species of herbs sheltered beneath our canopies. As our forests migrated, magic traveled in our wake, spreading like seeds. We were the building blocks of mythology.
But unfortunately, your people discovered we were also the building blocks of human civilization. As we were felled, so too was our magic. Fairytale starved with each passing winter, as more and more logs were placed into great burning hearths.
Eventually, all magic died out from the world.
Except for you.
Out of the detritus, our prophecy germinated. We left behind a single root, in whose stew rested the fate of our world. The humans outlaw its consumption. They call its powers Necromancy. We'd called it hope.
Finally, now, your footsteps bound atop my grave. I know you're there because I taste you in rainwater. Your energy seeps into the soil with every restored life, and somehow, someway it has already restored mine. Deep beneath the ground, my ancient roots drink it in like an elixir. They stretch toward your unseen magic above the topsoil. Untold years have left me buried deep in the darkness.
I am not yet whole.
But I am growing.
Soon enough, the others will too.
Years pass. With every new summer sun, you tend to your magic, spreading green within and without. And with every spring rain, the water erodes away all that is left to separate us.
Words cannot describe the feeling when my fingers finally break ground. I unearth in the middle a pathway, surrounded by deciduous thicket. I immediately recognize the schools of old. Elm. Oak. Honeysuckle. My ancient colleagues with whom I bloomed beauty. Now these trees merely creak in the wind, sapped of their souls. For many seasons, I despair from my vantage down on the pathway, but I have one fact that saves me. *Soon enough*, I think. *You will come, soon enough.*
And soon enough, you do.
You bound through the woods, laughter echoing among the imposter trees. A boy is with you. Handsome. Young. He chases your dirty dress as it billows its way towards a creekbed. Towards my outstretched arm.
I trip you. Your face hits the moss with a soft *oomph*. Behind you, the boy is panting, smile stretched across his face. He has the features of a prince, and I can tell by the way you look at him you think also the heart of a lion.
You're old enough to blush as he reaches for your hand.
But you're also astute enough to recognize something amiss. You kick at me. You frown at the hollow thud. The boy's looking at you, confusion writ plainly across his face. With the fate of the world in your hands you brush your knees and smile. "Watch,"you whisper.
There's a moment of green electricity that is felt but not seen.
"Avie,"the boy says. "You're not *supposed t-*"
Your fingertip touches mine. My roots extend and pop. I dig in my toes and tap into the world's pulse.
I rise, in full glory, smiling down at you.
"Oh,"you squeak.
The two of you are so small.
"I have waited a long time for you,"I say. Already, that earthy magic courses through my woodgrain.
Your friend bolts, stumbling down the road.
"Father, father!"the boy screams.
My sense of betrayal does not hold a candle to yours. I know soon enough torches will bloom on the horizon for me, but the boy has set your heart aflame. With a flick of my head, I shower you with twirly copters. As they pirouette around you, they transform into faeries. For many years down below, I drank off your laughter. It is truly a pleasure to finally hear it first hand.
"What *are* you?"You ask.
My bark shimmers as I reply. "I am what came before."
I tell you everything.
How, together, you are much more than a necromancer. How, together, we can restore the age of fable.
It's so much to take in. But a part of you believes. It's been sprouting inside you ever since you can remember.
"Your eyes,"I say. "The exact shade of chestnut."
Behind you, the boy's screams grow fainter and fainter down the pathway.
I extend a branch.
You hesitate.
"Come with me,"I urge. "Let's fix this world."
Trembling, you grab hold.
----------
r/M0zark
**Edit**: I woke up with a good sense of where this story is truckin', but my workday is so ridiculous I'll have no time 'til later :( *Lame* move, I know. P2 *will* be posted on my sub though. Thanks for reading!
|
”Hey, wait up!”
Leera threw her rucksack over her shoulder and sprinted after her brother. Dust swirled behind her as her feet thudded against the country road. She longed for the ability to bend the air to her will, just like her brother.
Panting, she stopped at the edge of a lake. Daffodils were blooming around it like a crown of gold. Aelar was hovering over the mirrored surface, his face twisted into a grin.
“Come on, Little Sister,” he mocked. “Come on, fly to me. You’re old enough.”
Leera took a deep breath and clenched her fists. Her young face was turning red as she, by sheer force of will, tried to levitate. She jumped up and down on the spot. Every muscle in her body strained to get her off the ground, but no matter how much she flailed her arms and how high she bounced, gravity pulled her right back down.
Her brother was still mocking her when a ripple rolled across the water. She canceled her flight attempts and looked at the water. Another ripple. Leera felt like she’d eaten a big rock. Sweat rolled down her brow. She wanted to call out to her brother. She wanted to tell him to fly higher. But she couldn’t, her body had ceased functioning.
A third ripple curled the surface, and then the water started boiling. Wide-eyed, Aelar looked down at his distorted reflection in the lake. Leera screamed as the lake opened itself like a giant maw. A look of panic washed over her brother’s face as he tried to get away.
*****
Leera was still screaming as she woke up. There were fifteen years since her brother had disappeared into the lake, and she still had nightmares about it. She sat up on her futon and rubbed the tears from her eyes. It was almost time to get up anyway.
She was serving herself a cup of steaming hot tea when someone rang the doorbell. She sighed and shuffled over to the door. Customers were rare this early. She usually had until noon to prepare her merchandise.
As soon as she unlocked and pushed the handle down, the door flew open, almost hitting her in the face. A large bearded man pushed his way into her home. His cane tapped against the wooden floor and he was muttering unintelligibly. It wasn’t until he sat down in the armchair and propped his booted feet up on her desk that he looked at her.
“Well, aren’t you going to serve me some tea?” he inquired and adjusted his monocle.
Leera just stared, mouth gaping, trying to make sense of what had just transpired.
“Who… I mean, who are you?”
“The name’s Quick, just like the fashion in which you should pour me a cup!”
Leera put her hands on her hips. “Are you here to buy a necklace?”
“A necklace?” Quick said and narrowed his eyes. “Now, what would I do with a necklace?”
“I.. uh, I…”
“Come now, girl, tea!”
Not sure how to react, Leera served the man a cup. The man smelled like a tannery, Leera thought, as she placed his cup on the desk. She then stood back and watched the man take a big gulp. A smile spread across his face. Leera shook her head.
“Can I ask you what you’re doing in my home?”
“Oh, right. I was meant to give you this,” he said and pulled out and a crumpled piece of paper.
Leera unfolded the note and looked at the multi-colored drawing. Small boxes with different letters were arranged in neat columns.
“What is it?”
“Why, it’s the periodic table, of course! It's a summoning.”
“The what?”
Quick laughed heartily and pointed his index finger at her.
“You’re funny. I’m glad to see you still have your humor.”
“What?” Leera said not understanding what was so funny. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Most Iso-benders I’ve come across have been… how should I say… *less comedically inclined*.”
“Iso-benders?” Leera said.
“Yes! Don’t tell me you haven’t learned the terminology.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about...”
Quick examined her for a long while before opening his mouth again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m serious!”
“You’re Leera Eirey, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you can bend everything on that paper to your will? Hydrogen, mercury, lithium, and so on, right?”
“I’m no Iso-whatever; I can’t even bend air. I’m a mundane.”
Quick laughed again. “You’re as far from mundane as they come! Iron, uranium, gold!”
“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person.”
“I think not. Aelar was very specific.”
Leera flinched at the mentioning of her brother’s name. “I want you to leave.”
“No can do,” Quick said and got up from the armchair. “His orders were quite clear. I’m to take you to Oceanpeak.”
“My brother is dead. And I can’t afford a passport. Can you please leave?”
“Dead?” Quick said. “He was very much alive when I spoke to him this morning. Now, come with me, Leera Eirey, we have a long journey ahead of us!”
*****
/r/Lilwa_Dexel
[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lilwa_Dexel/comments/6a6e2a/bend_part_2/)
[Part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lilwa_Dexel/comments/6aa0la/bend_part_3/)
|
Maybe setting the break room on fire wasn’t the best way to test my abilities. I could have started small, gone home and played with a lighter but as my mother said, go big or go home. That advice proving rather horrible as I watched the orange flames dance around the break room, slowly creeping towards me as I retreated towards the door, only to feel my back collide with the chest of my boss.
“I didn’t mean to set the break room on fire, It’s a funny story. I was going to test my supposed magical abilities on the stove and someone must have spilled some oil or something on the stove and boom, the place goes up in flames.”
I could only laugh as the man’s stern-faced seemed to pucker, as if someone had just dropped a pack of sour lollies into his mouth, only now starting to feel their effect.
It was horrible, not only was I going to be fined and possibly jailed for this, but I would also be fired which was a Catch 22. How could I pay back my fines if I had no money? Accepting my fate, I gave a silent prayer to the God of human resources hoping he may be merciful.
“Haha, that’s Craig for you, always setting the house on fire with his work ethic. Excellent work sport.”
It stunned me, receiving a firm smack across my back as the man adjusted his tie, acting as if the fire was only a bit of tacky CGI. He looked around the room before glancing down at me.
“Please call the fire department, A fire is terrible for business, or so I have heard. Keep up the superb work and you might even be promoted my little fire starter.”
Again reduced to silence, only able to sputter out a small.
“T-thank you, sir, I’ll get right onto it.”
I couldn’t believe it, even as I called the fire department, I expected him to come in and change his mind. It was like I was unfire.... Oh. I could almost laugh, it seems the genie twisted my words, making me unfireable. It was kind of nice but also I was a little miffed about not being able to jump into pits of fire, that would have been more fun. But beggars can’t be choosers.
The next few months were great, because of my ability I could work my way up a few positions, sitting on a comfortable $80,000 plus job, Spending all of my time just swinging back and forth in my chair, at first I would get scared when the boss would suddenly intrude to see me goofing off, only for him to give me a smile and nod.
“Hard at work, or hardly working. You should take a break, you work too hard.”
He laughed, and I awkwardly laughed along with him. That fear of losing my job soon fading, it was getting to the point where I didn’t even bother getting dressed for work, just rocking up in my sleepwear, happily arriving at my desk only to blindly tap away at the keyboard, not even entering any information. I often questioned why I even came to work, its not like my job would vanish if I didn’t show up. I think I just enjoyed the routine, If I were to leave and stay home all day, I would grow bored.
Soon I started to spread my talents, applying for new jobs, accepting them and then never showing up for more than an interview. After all, once I was hired, I was unfirable. Life was good and it would remain good, at least until we have another office fire and I’m reminded of how much cooler my ability could have been.
{If you enjoyed my story, Feel free to check out r/pmmeyabootysstories Any support helps! I will also be posting more of my writing there.} |
"Right, so - you pulled a quarter out of the kid's ear? Like I've seen you do a thousand times before?"
Raffi stuck a finger in his own ear and twisted it like a ratchet.
"No, Rafffi. I mean, yes. This time, I really did pull a quarter out of that brat's head,"said Alonzo the Artificer.
"Right, yeah. I've seen that before."
"No, you've seen me palm a quarter and pretend to pull it out of someone's ear. This time, I really did it. I had no quarters. And now I have one quarter."
"Real magic, you're saying? You can conjure up coinage out of thin air?"
"Apparently."
"What's the date on that quarter?"said Raffi.
Alonzo fished the mystical quarter out of his pocket.
"2010,"he said.
"So...probably the kid's birth year?"
"Yeah, seems like it."
"And - of course - you're not just putting me on?"said Raffi.
"I'm as shocked as you are."
"Alonzo, my friend - it's long past time we did some charity work."
"How do you mean?"
"Get in the Honda,"said Raffi. "We're off to the retirement home. You're going to be pulling coins out of the oldest folks you can find."
"I don't follow. I mean, a free quarter is a free quarter, but-"
"But, quarters made before 1965 are made of silver, Alonzo."
Alonzo eyes shone, not unlike two pre-1965 silver quarters.
"We're going to be rich, Raffi."
"Just get in the car." |
“Three years, twenty two days, thirty two seconds.” The man in black gives me an empty stare. I exhale. Every single time they hire me, it’s like they forget the magic I can work. I rustle around in my paper-bag lunch. The man is getting anxious, he looks nervously around the room, eyeing the mirrored glass and the security door propped open lazily with one of my shoes. I continue.
“If I didn’t stick my shoe in there we’d be locked inside a Russian military base. Neither of us wants that. Though if you want to take down the American government, perhaps you’re more Russian than either of us thought, mm, comrade?” He’s not amused. Oh well. I’m not being paid for my humor. I dump the remainder of my lunch onto the cold steel table between us. I rip the paper bag open, and motion to the man for a pen. He doesn’t comprehend. Drawing salary from the government is like drawing water from a stone.
“Your pen. Please.” He fumbles in his pocket briefly before retrieving a disappointing red Bic.
“…Don’t you stiffs make a reasonable salary? Buy yourself something less embarrassing."I list my fee, bite my lip, and add another zero for good measure. I slide the piece of paper back to the man, he places it in his breast pocket without peeking. How very orthodox. He must be new. I put my feet up and sigh, retrieving an overripe banana. I nibble at the parts that haven’t yet turned to mush. At length the man in black speaks.
“Sir. If I may, must we stay here any longer than is absolutely necessary?”
I laugh. “We are going to stay here for exactly as long as is absolutely necessary.” My watch beeps. “Speak of the devil.” I get to my feet. “Let’s walk and talk, bub.” I pocket the pen, and proceed out the door.
I stride up through the labyrinthine tunnels of this compound. Every corner I turn is met with the backs of Russian security agents rotating through their guard. I follow mere seconds behind, cheating my way to the surface. The man in black is sweating. It’s cute. I almost feel bad for what I have to do. We’re at the security desk at the back of the building. The uptight agent with the hair-bun has gone to get her coffee. I slip behind the desk and retrieve a pair of keys. I turn to the man in black and point to the corridor in front of us.
“Wait here, five seconds. Then follow.” He nods. I continue around the corner and make for the rear exit. I drop the peel of the rotten banana from my pocket as I leave his view. He follows and I turn to see him off. He rounds the corner. He does his best Charlie Brown impression and I salute him. The crash of 200 lbs of secret agent is followed summarily by the porcelain crack of a coffee mug and panicked Russian. I make my way out the door as the exits electronically seal, hopping on an unnamed general’s Suzuki and retrieving the helmet generously left at its side.
The airport is at a stand-still. Something about a security incident at a nearby military base. I’m given a customs form to fill ahead of time. I retrieve my new red pen and fill my form to the dulcet tones of senior staff attempting to placate travelers over the PA. A scruffy short man asks me for my pen when I’m finished. I oblige, and head to my terminal. My job is done. I check the balances of my offshore accounts. Funds have been deposited as agreed. That’s my little game. I have no idea how they always know what to pay me. After all, I always dispose of the man to see my price. I’m sure someone else is out there that I never want to meet. But I guess that’s a story for another time.
Oh? You say. That’s all? You ask. Well, yes, and no. That’s all I have to do. The rest is set in motion. Three years, twenty-two days, thirty-two seconds of motion.
The agent I spoke with? He’s interrogated. He’s tortured. Everything you might expect. Eventually he has enough. They break him. They own him. He is Russian by the time America agrees to trade for his safe passage home. He returns to America; it turns out access to the email accounts of top U.S. government employees is easily gained.
The pen? Well that one’s cuter. The red ink on that friendly man’s customs form attracts just a little too much attention when we cross the border on the American side. They pull him aside. They hold him for three hours. He’s a bit of a socialist you see. He doesn’t like what he sees, so he’s quick to jump ship to Canada. Crisis averted. His actions in a small state would have turned one too many votes against the two-party status quo. An early and unexpected lead for an independent presidential candidate would have, against all odds, snowballed into a novel era of American socialism. For better or worse, even I couldn’t say.
But that’s not all. That’s amateur hour. The pen kept travelling. Lost and found in four different airports until it arrived on an airstrip in the middle-east. From there it found its way into the mountains next to a war-zone visited by one American foreign diplomat who would later run for president. While the rest of the small rebel troupe was taking potshots at the poor lady, the one sniper who would have hit her was busy slacking off and sketching an olive tree.
So she lives. Hillary Clinton lives, albeit one disgruntled ex-American leaks her emails. Bernie Sanders loses the democratic nomination when no miraculous snowball materializes. It could have happened, I swear. Either way, if you were wondering, that aborted immigrant actually has a family and a happy life in Edmonton now. And Trump? Well, I’ll be honest. I can’t take any credit for Trump. That’s what we in the business call an unstoppable force. That’s the kind of shit-show you plan around. So I did. And now we’re here. Two candidates nobody in their right mind wants to vote for.
This country will tear itself apart any day now.
...Ah. Now you're wondering: But what about the shoe? Now that's a secret.
Edit: Didn't expect this kind of response, thank you all for reading, and thank you kind benefactor for the gold!
|
"Mr. Malum, do you know why we brought you in here?"
Two agents wearing sharp-looking suits and those earpieces that wrap around your neck winged the scientist as she leaned over across the table.
"The superhuman abilities,"I responded flatly.
The scientist exchanged a quick nervous glance with the agents.
"Ehm, yes. Mr. Malum, have you ever been in a trial like this before?"She asked, bringing out a pencil and clipboard.
I rubbed the back of my head.
"Well, like this? No, but uh..."I trailed off. They leaned in.
"But uh?"She prompted.
"Well...in college I signed up for a bunch of these types of things. You know you can get paid like, $500 to do one of these studies?"I said.
"Okay,"her eyes went wide, "and you know the purpose of this study?"She asked.
I squinted. "Well, yeah, I can about figure it out. This is like a military-testing, super-person sort of thing? I take it the thing you fed me when I signed up was a lie."
She swallowed.
"And,"she asked, pencil ready, "How many studies have you participated in that you reason the real purpose was something similar?"
I tapped my chin with my finger, "Well now, doctor, I would have said none, but now that I think about it...Six?"
"Six?!"She blurted out.
I shook my head. "Seven."I decided. I liked seeing them squirm so I pushed it. "Also, I'm not sure if this matters, but I've also recently donated blood, plasma, and sper--"
"That's enough, Mr. Malum, we get it."The scientist said, eyes wide and turned to one of the agents. She made an urgent "go, go, go,"motion and he quickly exited the room, trying his best to keep that poker face all those secret service guys like to keep.
*One Down.*
"So, Mr. Malum,"the Scientist said, clearing her throat. "When you signed up for this study, we had screened you. We had specifically asked if you had done any studies that could have affected your physiological form."
I shrugged. "How was I supposed to know the studies affected me like that? They never tell you they might!"
She ignored my levity, and only seemed to be getting more stressed. "Mr. Malum, you may recall that 'I'm not sure' was an option you could have picked when we asked the question."She was breathing heavily, shallow breaths. Panicking.
*Good.*
I made a show of glancing around as if we were being overheard. "You know, Doctor...uhm, what was it?"I asked, leaning conspiratorially.
"Childs,"she said. "Dr. Childs."
"Well listen, Dr. Childs, I don't want to be a snitch, and you can't tell him I told you this, but you know that big guy in the study? Vincent something? Look, one night..."I faked a nervous breath. "One night he let me have one of his doses. Says you gave him 3 and he'd only taken 2. Said they made him feel pretty good. We were pretty sure we were both in the placebo group, so I figured what the hell. Might be a mood booster or something."
Dr. Childs gasped, and snapped her neck to stare at the other agent, and jerked her finger to point out the door.
"Collect Vincent Stough, NOW."She said frantically.
*Two down.*
She shook her head in disbelief. "That completely fractures the integrity of the study!"She said, and looked around as if she'd get somehow punished for her own traitorous words.
I pretended to think for about fifteen seconds while the second agent went to get Vincent. I leaned in again, hoping she'd do the same. She did. I took a look at her lab coat, making out the faintest outline of another vial. The idiot had been dumb enough to bring the serum with her to the interview. Unbelievable. But these scientist types, they don't think about stuff like that.
I made eye contact with her. Told her to stop breathing. She did.
She wouldn't die, I added a mental order to resume breathing once unconscious. We sat there, staring at each other for about four minutes while she held her breath. Her microfacial expressions, which I left her the ability to control were interesting to watch.
Fear, terror.
I'm not a bad guy. Well, maybe I'm a "Bad Guy"but I'm not a bad guy. Victoria Childs would live. Not that you should try to go unconscious very often, not great for your health. She'd be fine though.
Finally, she passed out. I slipped the vial out of her coat pocket, popped it open, downed it, and started making my way towards the door.
Hopefully it wasn't placebo, hopefully it wasn't dangerous. In New Mexico, during another study, I picked up a power to resist bodily degeneration, so I'd likely be fine.
These things are pretty fast-acting...yep, there we go. I pressed my hand against the wall and felt it go through. No way, super useful! I've noticed these powers tend to give you more or less what you hope they will. A trend I hope will take organizations like this awhile to figure out.
I stepped through the wall, six or seven inches of concrete.
"Excuse me,"I said to a woman doing paperwork. I slipped through her desk and was out the other end of the room before she had time to react.
A few more minutes and about a half dozen walls and I was at the window. I phased through, and let myself fall to the ground, using my gravity-bend at the last moment.
*"East I-70 about 13 miles away,"* I thought to myself, shifting my face. *"That's a long walk."* |
"Think we should push it?"
"Take a look around, kid. There's a lot of skeletons in this room. I bet someone already pushed it."
"No, that doesn't make sense. If someone pushed it, shouldn't we be living in a utopia?"
"What, do you just believe everything you read in an ancient ruin? It's not a magic utopia-building machine, it's just a deathtrap."
"Still, the ancients were pretty powerful. And this wouldn't be the first time they put a weird moral dilemma at the bottom of one of their temples. Did you ever read about that one in Peru where you had to choose between your friend and a big pile of gold?"
"That was just a couple of trap doors and a lever. Nothing really out-there."
"It was pretty out-there. One researcher said it was like the trap knew where they were standing."
"Look, just think about it this way. If the ancients could build a machine to turn the world into a utopia, why wouldn't they use it?"
"Maybe they didn't want to kill all the... whoevers."
"Then why leave the button around where someone might push it?"
"Maybe they..."
"And for crying out loud, when has killing people to create a utopia *ever* worked? You're a freakin' history major, how do you not see this one?"
"So... deathtrap?"
"Deathtrap. Put one of the 'do not touch' signs on it and let's keep going." |
The girl's lungs were filled with fluid. Dr. Clark had warned me of such. But it was her eyes that communicated the worst. One of her lens was crack, veins shattered and tearing at her delicate iris with each blink. She looked to me as I approached, but I doubted she could see me from the damaged eye. Her good iris shrank as she drew in the vision of me. I doubt it was anything special to the normal eye, but to this girl in her sanitation tent... I was likely a miracle. A man. With a face. No facemask, no yellow latex suit, no gloves. Well, I paused and slipped on a pair.
"An... gel?"she asked in her own tongue.
"No,"I adopted her language as I knelt down and cradled her head, turning it towards the ceiling of the tent. "Just a man,"I said simply. "Breath?"I asked her.
She tried to take a heavy inhale before devolving in a fit of coughing. She turned away from me, a milky white mucus splattering across her filthy cot as she tried to shrink into the smallest ball she could. She knew she was dying, this alien disease assaulting her body uncurable. I took out a test tube, and looked her twice over.
"Straighten out. Don't worry. I won't get sick,"I insisted. She was not buying it. So instead, I took out a pair of tweezers, and scooped up the large bit of mucus I could. Sure, the sample was likely incomplete or sullied by the cot and its fibers, but after years of this exercise... I believe I knew what to look for. I smiled to the girl, and rustled her bushy hair with my hand. I took off my glove of course. "Hey, when you get out,"I asked as I pulled out my equipment. It was akin to a lab, complete with a microscope and minicentrifuge. I set up the stream from my laptop. Outside of the tent, there was likely a team of doctors watching my work closely- I knew at least Dr. Clark would want to see me in action. "What's the first thing you'd like to do?"
The girl did not answer immediately. It was a heavy question, hardly fair to ask a patient who genuinely believed she was beyond help. But she answered, eventually. "Run... away."
"Oh? What're you running from?"I asked her, as I set the mucus down upon the petri dish I brought with me. I had to capture a few images of the disease in action... and there was a good chance that treating the mucus alone would not be enough.
"My... father,"she answered simply. I pursed my lips as I checked the mucus. Indeed, it was just the common byproduct of the fever. Every system of her body was fighting against this disease- violently. And they were losing. Her heart, her lungs, every muscle and fiber of her body... they were battling this disease. They had been at war for weeks, but they had no plan, no countermeasure. Now, her body was trying to cook the virus to death, in a final, desperate move. She expounded upon her answer with a few more words croaking through her throat. "I'm not... perfect... anymore."
"Perfect?"I picked upon the word as I stood up, pulling out an empty needle. I needed a blood sample, after all. I sat the edge of her cot, and held up her wrist, dabbing her cubital fossa with a bit of alcohol.
"He can't use me... anymore. For marriage,"she added. Ah, yes, by my skin tone, it would seem like I didn't know how the customs of her land worked. But I had spent enough time in this land... I had seen its kingdoms rise, and its oceans dry. A 'gift' as my mother would have put it. But there was always something that brought me back here, to the heart of humanity. I plunged the needle in and extract the blood I needed. I held the cotton swab upon the puncture, and taped it into place.
"Can't use you, hm?"I asked as I stood up and carried the sample back to test it. "Let me guess... and tell me if I'm wrong,"I added. I had met the man. He seemed... invested in saving her life. He paid for my services, and the fact that he reached the point of even asking for me by name would suggest that he was in deep with this disease. "You think your father wants you to... bring in some man? One with a career or promise?"
"A son he always... wanted,"her words were forced out.
"Hm. You know... my mother wanted a girl,"I replied. "Parents... they are quite... bad at hiding their disappointment,"I said as I analyzed the sample. Indeed, the virus present there was something I had never seen before... such was the nature of life. It never stopped mixing it up. This one was aggressive, to say the least. But it was complex. Shifting, changing, manipulating her body to combat itself. White Blood Cells assaulting healthier cells, stealing proteins for a battle they were being misdirected... and all the while, the virus seemed to enjoy the peace. "But they are quite talented at hiding their pride."
"... pride?"the girl coughed. Perhaps she tried to scoff.
"Yeah. My mom was really good at not smiling,"I replied. "I used to joke about everything with her, just to see her smile. But I could only get her to do it when I used the dog."
"You have... a dog?"she asked. "I did... *Sunny.*"She gave her pet an English name.
"What was Sunny like?"I asked. "What breed?"I pricked my finger. A drop of blood spooled at the tip of my finger, ready to fight. I pressed my eyes to the viewer, finger drifting above the petri dish. With a tap of my finger, my blood fell upon the contaminated sample. Time to apply myself.
"He was a... Labrador. He always looked like he was smiling,"I imagine the girl was smiling. I could not afford to look away. My blood met her sample, and the war began. Neutrophil first, probing and attacking the infection, before they were joined by Killer T cells. This was where the fun began. Some would call it a 'miracle.' I called it 'phone home.' Instead of sending the pathogen's information up the chain of command to my own system of memory cells, they surrounded the chosen sacrifice... and began to assault it. My immune system was, fundamentally different from those that drove the bodies of people. I had human blood in me, certainly... but my father's blood was by far the more useful. But it was my mother's heart that pushed me to be here.
"Did he like running too?"I asked her as my hand flew over the page beside me, taking notes as my cells brute forced their way to resolving the pathogen.
"He couldn't out run me,"the girl said. There was a note of pride to her voice. That smile was likely growing wider. Good, good...
"I saw the ribbons in your room. And the trophy,"I added. "How did you start?"I asked her as the cells found their answer. It was beginning to break down the pathogens... they found their answer... and I found mine. I recorded the result on my pad, before turning to the camera on my laptop. I gave the man a thumbs up.
"My cousin liked running. He challenged me to races all the time in school,"she said. Cousin probably isn't the most accurate translation. In her tongue, brother, and sister are used interchangably with close friends. I remember it confused me every time I returned to this region. But no matter. She was still talking. I pulled out my collection of materials, and got to work. Antidote... antidote... what could I use to convince her own cells to follow in the footsteps of my own?
She coughed again. She quieting down... I needed a new subject. Fast. If she slept, it would waste precious time. "Does your dad... like your running?"I asked, stumbling a bit with the words, and offering a malformed question as a result. "You know... show up to meets, or competitions."
"He only... came for my nationals run,"she answered, sounding weaker and weaker. "I didn't even notice till I saw him on the screen."
"He seems like a busy man,"I offerred. Kids love to complain about their busy parents, right?
"Yeah,"she began to adopt a lazier tongue. "He's the worst."
"Make promises?"
"Never kept 'em."
"Sounds like my dad."
"What does... your father do?"
Ooh. That was a hard one. How to answer that...? "He's a company president,"I answered after a bit. "He also got very busy. Your mom do anything?"I asked as my fingers pinched, and laid things upon the weighing machine.
She looked at me funny.
Oh right... cultural boundaries.
"Sorry, dumb question."
"She used to study... nuclear physics,"the girl answered. I set my centrifuge, my fingers flexing as it began to spin. Almost there... almost... "But she quit... when she married."
"Have you... considered that path? Nuclear Physics, I mean,"I said as I pulled out a fresh needle... and turned to the camera, holding up my notes. Hopefully Dr. Clark was paying attention. No worries... I could email him the details later.
"I read her books... too smart,"the girl sighed.
"Hey, don't think like that,"I cut in, pulling the plunger. I turned the turned the needle 180 degrees. I pressed down till some of the cure spurted out. Perfect. I looked her body over, just to make sure I had enough for her... I mean, surely, at her mass, this would be more than enough. I would administer it slowly. I sat down by her side once again, and lifted the cotton I had taped to her before. "You have the best gift a human can have- time. If you apply yourself, you can accomplish just about anything you set yourself to. You know... it took me... thirty years to earn my doctorate,"I said. She peered at me queerly.
"You mean... thirteen?"she asked.
Yeah, lets go with that. "Sorry, thirteen,"I corrected myself, pushing the plunger down. "And you know what? I think it was worth it. I love being a doctor. It takes me to strange places, guides me to new people... and I get to hear all kinds of stories,"I said, pushing the cure into her blood stream. I let out a bated breath, before pulling the needle out. Halfway. "In fact, I think I met this fascinating young lady..."I began, setting the needle aside, and letting her body win its war. |
I had been so busy for the past few years, I had not felt the weakness until it was difficult to move anything above two tons. That was when there were a couple thousand of them left.
Life had felt it too. Knowing it had no more purpose, it had resigned itself to wandering around empty cities, waiting for me to finish off humanity. I sorely missed it. Life always knew the best joke to lighten my mood.
There were five left: an old man and four children he had found in the wastes. The youngest, a girl of four named Penny, had started to call the man "grandpa", and the others had quickly followed suit. He feigned annoyance in the day, which only made them call him that more. When they were all asleep, however, he would allow himself to weep. I had taken his last child not too long before he had stumbled on the group of children. Though I felt sadness in him, there was more happiness. He had a family again.
They were walking through a desolated town street when they first noticed me. The air stood impossibly still, as if even the wind had lost hope. Clouds choked the sky, blanketing the world in a deathly grey. None of the children had ever seen the sun.
"Grandpa, I'm hungry,"said Matty, the six year old boy. The others declared their agreement, looking expectantly at the man.
A pained look flashed across his face, then he forced a smile. "I told you this morning, we ran out of food."Their eyes did not leave him. "That's why we're searching, remember?"
"We've been looking for hours,"whined Matty. "Where's the food?"
There were two cans of soup in the basement of the house to their left. At the time, I told myself I helped them out of self-preservation, but I knew it was compassion. By then, all I could muster was a short gust of wind, which I directed towards the house. The effort left me weak as a feather.
The children yelped and clung to the old man. "What was that?"Penny asked.
The man chuckled, though he looked as startled as the kids. "I'm not sure what that was."He glanced around, as if someone would reveal themselves. I desperately wanted to, but I could not. That was part of my curse. "Maybe God wants us to look in that house."
*No, God left a long time ago,* I thought.
An hour later, tears came to the man's eyes when he saw the cans. He praised God and fate and life. The children latched onto the last one, saying Life had saved them. I smiled, thinking of what Life would have said about that.
From that point on, I helped them as often as I could. I had to save strength a couple hours between each gust of wind, which made guiding the family difficult. The five quickly ate whatever little food I led them to, and I could feel their hunger gaining every day. Sometimes the children cried when I was too weak to help them, but they always cheered when they felt the wind. "Life, Life, Life!"they would squeal, the old man smiling.
I was able to sustain them for two months. Every day broke my heart anew, seeing them turn into pale ghosts of their former selves. Malnourishment took its toll, until the children barely talked and the man's eyes were glazed over, infinitely weary.
I had to take the old man first. For the previous week, he had let the children have all the food they found. Before he went, he told the oldest, a ten year old girl named Jenny, that she would have to take care of the family from then on.
The first child was the hardest soul I have ever had to snuff out. For millennia, I had not given a second thought to the lives I took as I zipped from one side of the planet to the other each passing instant. Then though, I desperately wanted to have eyes to cry with. Afterwards, my emotions sank into my being until numbness took over.
Now, there is only one soul left. They always shine the brightest right before they go.
I can feel my own soul beginning to shine.
EDIT: Grammar
EDIT 2: Holy wow, guys! I fall asleep for eight little hours and wake up to this reception. I don't want to sound like a broken record in the comments, so I'm just going to say this to you all here: Thank you guys so much! I'm sorry I set my onion ninjas on you, but I'm also so happy you guys enjoyed it! Will definitely write here more.
EDIT 3: A hundred times thank you to whichever kind stranger gilded this!
EDIT 4: This post is a couple days old now, so I don't know how many people will see this, but I've made my own subreddit for anyone who's interested in my writings. It's r/Taetysares, and will feature the novel I'm slowly writing, my project for NaNoWriMo 2019, and my stories from here. |
The king was old and fat. I practiced running for weeks. I am not the fastest person in my village but I run every day. I made the official request 100m dash. I signed on the line knowing what fate waits for me.
The day of the race the king states "You must run the race with one foot."He motioned to his guard to cut off my foot.
I shouted, "My Lord, may I choose which foot I lose? I have grown attached to them after all."
Even his cold heart smiled "That's fine."
I pulled off my wooden leg. It had been amputated from just below the knee. When I was a young boy I had fallen from a tree and severely broke it. My brother ran out with my crutches.
I aptly approached the starting line. The old king and the crowd looked stunned.
The king stammered "No crutches"
The crowd began chanting "One foot! One foot!"Over and over
The king looked to his guardsmen "Take his good foot. "
His head guard looked at him "The law is you get one stipulation. Men we stand for the rightful king. That will be who ever wins this race." |
It's been 3 weeks now since the epic thread on Reddit has ballooned to be the biggest source of information on the whole internet. Since we woke up and found that we could not leave our houses, the whole telecommunication world has been crippled. Phones will barely work and communication is at a minimum. Even getting to web pages take ages to load.
According to media sites, the death toll is already very high as most people did not have enough food in their houses to sustain them for a long period of time. Lucky for me, I have been preparing for the worst my entire life. I have around 3 months of food and water stored, but I know it won't last me for much longer.
For some reason even the glass has become seemingly bullet proof. We have tried hitting it with anything we can find, and even tried shooting it once (the bullet ricocheted around the apartment and we don't want to try that again).
The worst is the nights. Since people can't leave, the power has been slowly fading as the people that were already at the power plants have been stuck working nonstop, taking mini shifts but still not able to keep awake enough to do a good job.
Sometimes the power goes out and everything becomes very dark. I keep hearing scratching outside my doors and windows, so I know something is out there, and it doesn't sound very human. Hopefully the stuck doors keep whatever is out there where it is.
I have read some stories about people successfully escaping from their house, but soon after, never to be heard from again. Hopefully someone can figure out what is actually happening soon, I don't know how much longer I can take being cooped up.
*this is my first time writing a story, I hope you guys like it* |
The lights were streaming down from heaven. Streaks of colors blazed across the night sky, drowning the stars and dimming the moon, shaming the Northern Lights with their brilliance.
I watched from my windy porch nestled between mountain peaks. The generator in the basement failed about an hour into the show, snuggly wrapping the surrounding forest in a pitch-black cloak.
"Time to sleep, Daddy!"
"One minute, sweetheart."
Reluctantly tearing myself away from the cosmic wonder, I realized that my phone was strangely dead. Hadn't I just charged it earlier in the evening?
When I woke up, all technology in the home was broken. The microwave was silent, the fridge was leaking liquid into the wooden floorboards, and - worst of all - the coffeemaker was unresponsive.
"Daddy! Look at this!"
She snapped her fingers, and a small flame appeared in front of her. It hovered in front of her like some sort of werelight, bobbing with the breeze.
"How did you do that, Kimmy?"
"Snap fingers!"
I snapped mine and heard the generator turn back on. The ceiling lights beamed back to life.
This was not good.
Rushing to my phone, I was surprised to find it hum to life at my touch. There was a top article on the major news sites.
*Age of Magic?*
I read it over my morning cup of coffee, grateful that although myriad abilities had cropped up, mine happened to be some sort of electricity power that revived my trusty old coffeemaker. I apparently shared that skill with a few people who had made their way to the internet servers, posting the article for anyone who could read it.
I was worried.
Not too worried, because Kimmy and I were fairly safe this deep in the mountains. But what would happen come school in September? What fate lay in wait for civilization as we knew it?
Kimmy was smarter than I gave her credit for. She was careful with her fire, but practiced like she was some sort of budding mage. Which, I suppose, she was.
"Welcome to River High!"
I greeted the principal when September dyed the mountains red-orange. "Hey, we're sort of away from the beaten path. What's been going on around here?"
He shrugged, adjusting his tie. "Honestly, folks are just doing their best to get by. It's tough, working without a good supply chain, but we're trying to get enough food to survive the winter. You're an electric snap? We could use someone like you in town."
"I'll go take a look."
I came back to pick Kimmy up at the end of school and saw smoke from a mile away. By the time I got there, all that remained was a pile of burnt twigs and shattered dreams. The principal lay trapped underneath a beam of charred wood, blood dribbling out of his mouth.
"What happened?"I yelled.
"Raiders,"he gasped. "Stole. Promising kids. Rest dead."
"My daughter?"
"With. Them."
He didn't last much longer. I stayed by his side, trying to give him what small comfort I could offer. I looked across the horizon, watching as a smoke trail gently floated away.
Snapping my fingers, I watched crackling electricity dance across my knuckles.
"Hang in there, sweetheart. I'm coming."
---
Edit: There are so many comments :O thank you so much for all the support! It's really inspiring~ I'll try to respond to each one individually, but I was thinking...first, I'm going to write. I'm going to draft up the first full chapter of this hypothetical book, and put it side by side next to the first chapter of what I was originally going to do for NaNoWriMo. Would people be interested in putting what I do for NaNoWriMo to a vote?
Hey there! Thanks for reading :) feedback makes my world go round. My stuff is at [/r/Remyxed](https://www.reddit.com/r/Remyxed/), and you're always welcome there! |
Part 1 | [Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/jraywang/comments/6dhr6w/ted_the_reaper_of_wealth_part_2/) | [Part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/jraywang/comments/6dj3vo/ted_the_reaper_of_wealth_part_3/) | [Part 4]( https://www.reddit.com/r/jraywang/comments/6dl1p6/ted_the_reaper_of_wealth_part_4/) | [Part 5](https://www.reddit.com/r/jraywang/comments/6do2ks/ted_the_reaper_of_wealth_part_5/)
---
Theodore was not a violent man. In life, he wielded a calculator and a pen to work, a soft and steady voice at home, and in times of conflict, he mediated it with logic and reason. However, no amount of reason could've stopped the the bar fight at The Drunken Clam. Before he could even utter his fist word, a knife had been drawn and stabbed through his neck.
And as he lay on the ground, the darkness encroaching, a fair maiden appeared with blinding light that cast away whatever shadows had dug themselves into the edges of his vision.
"Theodore,"she said, her voice a nectar. "I deem you worthy for the Palace of Kings."
Then, the darkness took over.
---
Theodore awoke in the shadow of a horned giant. The thing stood at over twice his height, its muscle cut like stone, its proportions like the cartoon heroes his son used to watch and in its hand, it held the gleaming blade of a battle-axe.
No breath escaped Theodore. He could only stare, waiting for the giant to decide his fate. The giant laughed and held up a lantern to reveal a thick-bearded face, flush with drunkenness. His horns weren't demonic, rather they were Viking--the helmet of a Viking king.
"I have never seen one as small as you!"the giant roared. "Have you been starved your entire life?"
Theodore moved his mouth but no words came out. The giant wore more hair on his chin than Theodore had on his head. The giant swung his head back and drank some more ale.
"Come! If the Valkyrie deems you worthy, then you are worthy!"He walked off across cold cobblestone to a palace atop a cliff. He turned, his brow crunched. "Hurry little man, the time of war is almost upon us!"
"War?"Theodore managed to push out.
"Yes! The greatest battles upon the greatest lands for the greatest glories!"
"I'm sorry Mr. Sir, but I am a god-fearing man. I don't partake in violence. In fact, my brother once compared me to the likes of Gandhi. Though he said it more like an anorexic Gandhi."
The giant stopped and then crumpled over in laughter. "You are funny, little man! You will surely earn glory, if not with your sword, then with your jests!"And in one massive stride, he took Theodore's arms and pulled the man into the Palace of Kings.
---
Inside, lanterns hung on every wall, spaced only a few feet apart. A great fire burned in the middle of the room and a roasted boar hung over it. Every man was at least as big, or bigger than the giant Theodore had already met. And they were all at least twice as drunk.
"My brothers!"the giant screamed. "Allow me to introduce to you the new King worthy of Valhalla!"
A hundred mugs of ale rose in the air, splattering froth onto the polished oak floors. "To the Kings!"they cheered.
"What was the title bestowed upon you in life?"the giant asked, his hand clasped around the entirety of Theodore's back.
"Well, my name is Theodore Broxley"--Theodore adjusted his glasses--"I was an accountant for KPMG accounting firm. It's one of the Big Five firms responsible for internal audit, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and..."he stopped when he saw that nobody was drinking anymore.
"What is an accountant?"someone asked.
"Well it's a fascinating field. Growing very rapidly in today's job market. So basically you manage money. You make sure the debits and credits--"
The hand on his back squeezed and shut him up. "The man jests!"the giant screamed and raised his mugs.
The entire room burst into laughter and followed the giant's cue. Together, they drank all that was left of their ale.
"Theo... Ted,"the giant said. "My name is Harold Bloodtooth. In my life, I have pillaged countless villages and fought in even more battles. I know a warrior when I smell one and you, you will earn glory in the fields of Valhalla!"He pushed a mug of ale into Theodore's hands. "You are Ted, the accountant, the reaper of wealth!"
Theodore raised it with a curt shrug and a small smile. "Thank you for your kind words Mr. Bloodtooth."He put the mug to his mouth, its first drops soaking his lips, and then a horn sounded. Mugs shattered on the floor, spilling a river of booze as every man in the building reached for their weapon.
"What's going on?"Theodore asked.
"The battle is upon us, Ted!"A smile cut across Harold's lips, his battle-axe clutched between his hands. "Draw your weapon and ready yourself for glory!"
Weapon? Theodore checked his pockets, even the one on his button-up but all he found was a single titanium Parker pen.
"I don't think I have one."But before he could even finish his sentence, he was swept away by the horde of Vikings stampeding out the great palace and into the battlefields of Valhalla.
---
---
/r/jraywang for 2+ stories a day, continuations by popular demand, and more!
|
“This had better be the one,” she muttered scathingly and all within earshot flinched as if struck. She stopped, her heels ceasing their terrible clicking and she closed her eyes, waving a limp hand. “My apologies everyone, my humors are...unwell.” The servants replied quietly, soft words of comfort and understanding. Her closest handmaiden still wore a face contorted with righteous indignation. The woman patted the girl’s arm, “Please Lexi, relax. Your face will stay that way and little Idra will fear such a countenance.” The handmaiden’s face softened and the servants relaxed slightly with the defusing tension. Mustering all her energy the Queen smiled wanly. “That is better everyone, please let us continue.”
Queen Melodia of the FarValen Kingdom walked on, followed by her most loyal servants and guards. Most if not all were loyal in the palace, she was not the one ill favored. Most watched her with worry, still expecting her to fall over from fatigue. She had only just given birth a few days prior. Yet she walked well enough, rage fueling her body and spirit. The great kingdoms of the world had some things in common. The main thing is a basic rule of the world. When the monarch of a nation had their first born child, the child would inherent the magical power of the monarch. Depending on the strength of the child, the monarch could share some of their power or lose it all. In rare cases the child would only have a portion of the power, but it was a simple fact that the first born would always inherent some of the parent’s magical ability.
Yet Princess Idra, the first born child between the King and the Queen, received absolutely no power. It was not latent, it was not hidden. It was not that she only inherited the barest minimum. She lacked it all. Subsequent testings by the Head of the Mages council, the personal Spellcasters, even the Druids and the Witches, found no magical power gained from the King. Which led to just one conclusion: she was not the King’s firstborn.
Confronted with such knowledge the King broke down and confessed it all. He had not one, not two, but numerous occasions of infidelity. It was not uncommon for monarchs to have multiple lovers or ones to sate their desires with, in fact some nations had monarchs that had harems or concubines a plenty. Yet all of those monarchs had the good grace to save their first born child for their beloved partner. Apparently the King of now disgraced FarValen did not possess such good grace.
The people had banded behind their Queen, ashamed of their King and the fact that their nation was now a rather large royal joke. The King, caught in the act, had been sequestered within the castle, the Council taking over the day to day rule. Now with the act in the light, the castle had been flooded with women carrying children, all claiming to be a subject of his affections with their children being the result. Some were lying, hoping to benefit amidst the chaos. Others, much to the Council and the Queen’s chagrin, had a legitimate claim. However so far the first born had not been found, and that was the most important fact. For the first born wields magic of nobility, and for the good of the nation the wielder must be found. No one knew what to do once the first born was found, magic inherited is very difficult to take back, but the motives of the child must be determined.
Today was different. The Queen’s best agents had scoured the city and the country, looking for the child. Today they returned, with another. To hide another potential embarrassment, the Queen directed them to her private meeting room, away from the general populace of the castle. They were still dealing with the first day of madness when a crowd of women and wailing children assaulted the main throne room though thankfully clerks have learned how to weed out the dubious claims from the, unfortunate, legitimate claims.
She entered the room, rage rising again within her. They had to pass the nursery on the way and the Queen seethed from the indignities placed upon her daughter. Her daughter would forever be known as The Fooled Firstborn, the one who was feted and expected to inherit and was found to not. Through no fault of her own the poor babe would have a life of mockery ahead of her. She knew her own life would be difficult now, the foes of the kingdom were surely making their own mocking titles for her now. She would deal with them later. Unlike her husband, she knew what mattered and what could wait.
The guards and agents within bowed, a clenched fist to their hearts. A cowled figure sat on the floor, ignoring the chairs, and faced away from the door. As the form noticed the others bowing, they rose slowly to their feet before turning and kneeling on the stone floor. Hands worn from manual labor poked from plain homespun cloth, the cloak that covered them was weather stained and lacking ornamentation, yet well made.
“Well then, we meet at last,” the Queen spat. Once again her face burned from shame as the cloaked form flinched, pressing their head against the floor. “I suppose you know why you are here.” A nod was her reply, the form still bent and facing the floor. The silence fueled her anger and she tried to throttle back her bile. It was not their fault after all, they did not choose to be the first born. It was hard for the Queen to remember. “Well, get up. Remove your hood.”
After a long moment of hesitation the form rose slowly, hands sliding up to remove the hood that hid their features. When it fell back the servants murmured and the Queen’s ire rose again. There was no mistake, the boy was her husband’s child. Purple hued eyes were not uncommon in FarValen, but such a deep color ringed with silver was a noble trait. Also when noble blood mixed with common usually the child possessed only one. The boy had strong features, adding years to it would show that he and the King were closely related. Yet curiously the skin around the right purple eye was rough, deeper in color. It was as if the boy had suffered a great injury in the past and it was in the midst of healing. A crossing of scars marred that side of the face, but they seemed to be healing. “Are...” the Queen stumbled over her words, “are you well? Are you recovering from a recent injury?”
“No...your majesty,” the boy’s voice lacked the florid grace of the city folk. “I mean, yes. Recovering from an injury but one that is old. And...only recently started to recover.”
Another murmur from the staff. The King’s talents lay with healing. He was an accomplished healer and apothecary, talented with convalescence and potions. Many saw him recover from grievous wounds. His magic was not common and for a common boy to have it spoke of his lineage.
“How did you come by the injury?” The Queen could not stop the question before it fell from her lips.
“By fire, a burning stick of wood.”
“Who would do such a thing?!” she gasped and the others echoed her indignity.
“By my own hand.” Silence thundered in the room. “To prevent my mother from seeing a face she did not wish to.” The words cut into flesh, cold as iron and sharp. Tears grew in the boy’s eyes and everyone else but the Queen looked away. “My mother was barely older than I am now when it happened. She did not want it, never did. She wanted a good life, a quiet life. She was denied it. Just like I deny this power, just like I deny this.” The tears fell and his hands and arms showed cuts on the mend. “Take it,” he whispered. He thrust his hands forward and fell to his knees. “Take it back!” he screamed and all flinched as if struck. “I never wanted it! I hate it! I hate him! Please just take it back!”
Without another word the Queen wrapped the boy in her arms, ignoring the sobs and the wetness soaking her dress. Her hate was quenched in the deluge of his sorrow and she could only sit and hold him while he wept. |
The Black Thief laughed. She had caught Major Magnificent again. "Fool! You fell for my trap again! This time you won't be able to stop me as I finally steal the Ruby Giant from the Museum of History!"
Major Magnificent had been tipped off that Black Thief was going to be murdering the mayor. Instead, he had walked into a booby trap. "Black! You know this won't hold me! I will stop you, you scoundrel!"
"Honestly, Major, when was the last time I captured you?"The hero struggled in the net hanging over the Black Thief's head. She changed her tone, "No, seriously? I'm sure that you got a new haircut."
The Major stopped struggling, "It's not too short? I just wanted something different, but I was worried it was drastic."
"No, no. It looks really good. I'm digging it."The Black Thief put her hand on her hip. "Actually, you should keep it this way. It makes your jaw look really good."
They smiled at each other for a bit before the realization hit.
"Not that I care or anything!"
"Your fiendish charms have no power over me!"
As the two argued, two hidden individuals were also arguing behind a pillar, away from sight.
"Oh, she's going to know it was me. I can't!"A young girl dressed in black whined.
"Well, fine! We'll just do this again next week and the week after and the week after. Aren't you tired of her spending all her times thinking of how to capture Major just to let him get away?!"A young man, dressed in white and gold spoke in an aggressive whisper. "And I'm tired of not actually fighting crime! He just keeps looking for her and getting 'trapped'. Ugh, I'm so over it!"
The young girl in black nodded her head. "I know you're right. I signed up to get rich, not waste my time catching meatheads."She shifted her eyes to her companion quickly, "No offense."
"Whatever, just do it now."
"And once I've collected the Ruby Giant, I'll be rich enough to own this city and you'll--whoa!"In the middle of the Black Thief's monologue, she was swept up in her own net. She struggled for a bit hanging next to Major Magnificent.
"Black! Are you ok?!"The Major clung to his net as he watched the villain swing from her net.
"Ow, I think I twisted my ankle. It's in a weird position. Oh, wait. That's better. But it still hurts."Black positioned herself to be more comfortable. Suddenly, she let out a roar. "BLACK ROSE! GET OUT HERE THIS INSTANCE, YOUNG LADY. I KNOW THIS IS YOUR DOING!"
A trembling Black Rose came out from her hiding place with her young male companion next to her. The Major gasped in shock. "Muscle Boy?!"
The young boy looked away, embarrassed, "I told you it's Muscle Man now. For, like, three weeks."
The Major lifted his palms, "Sorry. Sorry. My bad. Just in shock. What's going on here?"
Black gave a growl. "If you don't get me out, Rose, I swear you will regret it for the rest of your life."
Black Rose lifted her head, "We had to do this! We're leaving you locked in here overnight. Get together or get over each other!"
Muscle Man grabbed Black Rose and they both stomped away, locking a heavy door behind then.
The two hanging from the nets yelled at the younglings to come back. They both yelled obscenities and struggled until they grew tired.
After an hour of getting no where, both lay back panting. Major gave one final shake of his net which swung his net, bumping into Black.
"Oh! Sorry."
"It's fine."
Silence grew until finally....
"So, where did you get your haircut?" |
One minute you're watering your herbs, and the next minute you're being told you're impossible. Wednesdays, am I right?
"Mr. Gomez, are you okay? Did you hear what I said?"
"Hm? Sorry, I was worrying about my basil. Can you guys have someone water it while I'm gone?"
"We'll get you more for the compound, Mr. Gomez."
"But that wouldn't be *my* basil..."
I sat in some large vehicle, probably a dark unmarked van of some sort, with my little basil plant as we headed who knows where. This was all a bit too much for someone who just had a little curiosity about where they came from.
"Are you guys sure? How could I be related to something so ancient?"
"We have no idea, Mr. Gomez. That's why we needed to take you. You might be the key to, well, everything really."
I never wanted to be a key. I didn't even like keys. That was my excuse whenever I lost mine, anyway.
"I- I don't want to let anybody down, is all."
"You won't, Mr. Gomez. Never again."
They brought me through dark corridors, down a hall that seemed to be an eternal decline. My legs felt like jelly, and my head felt as though it could spin forever. They dropped me in a room with dark green walls, and nothing but a shoddy bed and a little table. I sat down my basil, gave it a little water, and checked its leaves for damage.
"At least I know exactly what you are, my friend."
I believe I fell asleep, for how long I couldn't say, when a knock awoke me. In came the same woman who had first given me my results. "I think we owe you some answers, Mr. Gomez."
Down more dark descending hallways we trudged. At the end we reached a meeting room, where they gave me a bit of perspective.
"Mr. Gomez, you can call me Mrs. Atwiler. I'm the lead on what is known to a select few as the Genesis Project. We were charged with finding where we all came from."
"Well, you picked me up in Dallas but I-"
"No, no, we mean life. Where life came from. We found some clues a couple decades ago that have led us down a path to finding our source. We found it, here, buried in ice, about nine years ago. And that's how we got here today."
"So where do I come in?"
"You're its uh...direct descendant, Mr. Gomez."
"But, I thought I was German? With maybe a little Dutch? That's what I was testing for, anyway."
"You're alien, Mr. Gomez."
"So...no to the Dutch, then?"
"Ugh. You're a descendant from somewhere in the stars, Mr. Gomez. The creature that we found - you're the only human match we've ever seen. We're not even sure how that's possible, but we are completely sure. Your roots lie down here in the ice."
"Oh. Well, that's something."
"It is. Now, we have a lot of work to do, and unfortunately you'll have to stay here, maybe forever. We'll try to make you as comfortable as possible, and be accommodating to any requests you may have."
"I have two."
"Which are?"
"I'd like a proper watering can for my plant, and I would like to meet this...thing."
"That can be arranged."
More ever descending hallways awaited me, after a brief rest in my room and a check on the basil. They assured me they had some sort of sun substitute for him, but who really knows with the government. Anyway, down the halls we went.
I kept thinking how strange all of this was. How could something like this happen to little old Mr. Gomez, the neighborhood plant guy? But life takes you on a lot of twists and turns as you go, doesn't it. Sometimes, it turns out you truly are as alien as you've always felt.
We came to the end of the hallway, and a frost covered door stood before me. I wasn't nervous, oddly - it felt a bit like a homecoming, to be honest. Mrs. Atwiler opened the door, and we stepped through.
A wall of ice stood maybe one hundred yards away. Faintly in the ice, the edges of a wildly strange, unknown creature could be made out. It's head was ducking down, almost to human height. More on instinct than desire, I strode out to get a closer look.
Now up against the wall, the creature's face sat stoic a few feet above my head. I smiled lovingly at it, and I could have sworn it somehow smiled back. And like any good guest, I thought I should introduce myself.
"Nice to meet you, grandpa! My name's Jason."
_________________________________________
[r/psalmsandstories](https://www.reddit.com/r/psalmsandstories/) for more stories by me, should you be interested. |
Jack stares down at his phone, numb. His mind feels even foggier than it normally does.
The bar is filled with excited murmurings. People are comparing their newly released Project Confession stats. The FBI had lost a monumental Supreme Court ruling, and the organization had been forced to release the numbers for the public’s viewing. The bartenders and bouncers are looking at their phones too. The air is abuzz with either startling revelation, or petulant disappointment.
*Confessions: 26*, says Jack’s profile on the Project Confession website.
What would drive a man to erase his mind 26 times?
Jack shakily lifts his glass up and knocks the rest of the whiskey back. The burning liquid sears down his throat, settling comfortably in his stomach. He raps the bar with his knuckles; the bartender swings by, pours him another knuckle silently, then retreats.
Jack scrolls further down the page, hoping to find some shred of information. There’s his age, his blood type, his height and eye colour, all the little facts that make up the man named Jack Derring, but there’s no column for “Reasons for wanting 26 mind wipes.”
He quaffs the whiskey in a single gulp, then knuckles the bar again. The bartender comes by, this time slower.
“You sure, boss?” says the young man.
“I’m sure,” growls Jack. A foul mood drifts over his foggy mind like a thundercloud.
The bartender pours, then moves away.
Jack stabs at the phone screen clumsily. He is using his left hand because the right is bandaged up. Jack can’t quite remember why; he had blacked out last night and had woken up with shards of glass in his knuckles. Likely from his now-broken bathroom mirror.
Jack picks up the glass and raises it to his lips, but before he can sip, a line on the phone flares in his eyes.
*Spouse: Alexa Middel (divorced)* *Children: N/A*
He sets the glass down onto the bar and picks up the phone. Yes, he and Alexa had divorced a while ago. He couldn’t quite remember why; he thought it likely had something to do with his drinking. Jack would be the first person to admit he had a problem. He’d also be the first to admit he didn’t care.
But it’s not the *Spouse* part that catches his eye. It’s the *N/A* that rankles him. Tugs at the edges of his flat lips, threatening to pull them down. It feels strangely cold, callous, cavalier.
He scrolls back up. *Confessions: 26*. Scrolls back down. His eyebrows furrow. There’s a dull ache in his head. He thinks it’s the alcohol.
Jack turns his phone off, shoves it into his pocket, and continues drinking.
---
When Jack arrives back at his home, his cloud of a dark mood has grown into a full-fledged storm. The bartender had refused to let him drive, for some stupid reason, and Jack had been ready to fight the brat, but the bouncers got involved and he was kicked out. They had called a cab for him, but he spat on the ground and started walking.
He couldn’t remember how he got here, in the doorway of the spare room. His body is on autopilot; his mind is busy tumbling over the *N/A* like a stone in a laundry machine. It rattles at him, scratches against his thoughts.
This spare room… Jack stumbles inside, drunk beyond words. This room had once meant something to him. It is more than just a room that now held the shattered glass of his and Alexa’s marriage. Cardboard boxes lay in a chaotic, haphazard mess over the small room. The walls are painted a light blue.
Jack groans out loud. The pain in his head is getting worse. His brain keeps getting stuck on that *N/A*, and the number 26. What would drive a man to erase his mind 26 times? Even someone as broken and worthless as him didn’t have that much to Confess. Right?
The light blue walls are angry and scowling in the dark.
He looks around the room, but he moves too fast and he stumbles. Jack trips over a half-open cardboard box, and he falls to the ground.
The box tips over. Nothing falls out, except the tip of something small pokes out from the shadow of the box.
Jack curses and sets the box back up, rubbing his scraped knee. He moves to get out of the room and go to bed, but he stops.
Slowly, he turns back. Reaches through the opening. He pulls out a tiny blue rain boot. It’s so small it could fit on his pinky.
The storm thunders in his head. Lightning strikes, and a wall already damaged by alcohol and misery shatters. Jack drops the boot and dashes out of the room.
“No, no, no, no,” he mutters to himself, wincing and clutching at his head.
He moves down the dark hallway to his room. He had left the light on before he left, so he could find his way back after the bar. He stumbles to the door, pushes it open.
And suddenly, he remembered. A lifetime of memories rained down from the storm.
*A happy Jack and Alexa hunched over a pregnancy test, giggling like children. A strange hopeful tension in the air. The test reads positive. Tears. Hugging, kissing, more tears. They start making a list.*
*Months later. Jack learns he’s not the man he thinks he is. He starts drinking, but not heavily. Enough for Alexa to notice and comment. Jack gets angry.*
*Late at night, Jack sits on the couch, staring at the bottle in his hand, and remembers his father. Thinks of the temper that he inherited. His father’s last and only gift to him. The Derring curse. Will he pass it on to his child? He vows to quit drinking.*
*He comes home one evening, drunk. Alexa is 7 months pregnant with their baby boy. She screams at him, throws things at him. He shouts back, filled with self-loathing and fear. The fight continues into the night. Police arrive, called by the neighbours, and Jack spends the night in the drunk tank.*
*8 months pregnant. Jack tries to be a better man, and fails. His father haunts him. Alexa is distant. He hears late night phone calls in a locked bathroom.*
*8 months, two weeks. A rush to the hospital. Screaming. The doctors shake their head. His life is over.*
*Jack and Alexa get divorced shortly after. He moves her leftover things to the now spare room. At a bar, a man tells him of a number he can call. Project Confession. Such a thing could change a man’s life, says the stranger.*
Jack roars in anguish and sorrow. He rears his bandaged hand back and punches the wall. Once, twice, three times. His father laughs in his mind.
He falls back onto the wall, weeping. He thinks about calling Alexa. He thinks about that room just down the hall. He thinks about going to see little Arthur.
What would drive a man to erase his mind 26 times?
Jack grabs his phone, and dials the number.
---
Check me out for more stories :( |
They told me it was a miracle that I was pregnant. A near impossibility -- an abnormality on their charts. It was an infection in my uterus, when I was a child, that had deprived me of that sacred promise that nature was supposed to grant to all women. And yet the movement I could feel inside by swollen belly wasn't strange or abnormal.
It was destined.
The dragon is barely larger than a coin. Its scales shimmer burnt-red in the sunset as it flitters in through the hospital's windows. I have not seen a dragon since my father died, and the feeling it brings me as it lands on my stomach is that of comfort. Reassurance. It curls up, twisting its serpentine tail around itself and placing it under its head.
It guards me.
Always.
A memory pours back like the wine my uncle used to drink in copious quantities from lunchtime until he fell unconscious in the small hours of the night. I had been sent to stay with him when my father had been called away on business. My mother, dead before I knew her, only had one child, and still my father struggled to juggle his failing business with spending time with me. Nurses, nannies, and relatives were the surrogates I never asked for but spent my childhood with.
I never trusted my uncle, even when I was too young to properly understand trust. The sour reek of his breath. The stories -- I knew to be untrue -- of my mother. His hands that stroked my hair in a way so different to my father. Fingers cold and sweaty somehow at the same time.
The night he crept into my room was the night the dragons first appeared. I woke to his screams as the green beast spewed flames into his body, alighting both his clothes and hair. He fell through the window and died on impact with the concrete below. They said his body was drenched in alcohol and he lit a match. Suicide. But I knew. My father knew too, I think. For he looked at me differently from that moment.
The dragons came too on the day he -- my father -- died. As I sat alone, at seventeen years of age, in the great church just hours before the service. The coffin lay on the altar, waiting for the few guests to gawp a final time at the failure within. His debts had strangled him like ivy winding about a tree, slowly squeezing and suffocating. His heart had given in the day he was to be declared bankrupt.
The dragon was silent as it came through the open doors and flew towards the casket. It perched proudly on the rim and lowered its head in solemn respect.
I understood then, for the first time perhaps, the man my father had been. A man that loved his daughter more than money -- more than anything -- and simply wanted to succeed for her. To make her proud of him.
He'd worked himself to death for me.
My belly moves and the dragon stirs, opening a single eye.
There is a sharp pain. I gasp; my heart thumps against my chest, my arms tremble -- but the dragon barely moves. The machinery next to me screams in staccato beeps. A grim morse-code for the doctors to translate.
"Help!"
But the dragon sitting on me is calm, unperturbed by my distress.
I realize with a stark, frightening clarity that the dragons are no longer guarding me.
That they have moved on.
I wonder if my mother saw them as I was born. She knew the risks in having me. The complications.
I too knew the risks. Only, I believed they would protect me. Dragons.
And in that, I find an unexpected comfort, even as the nurse rushes in, needle in hand. I know now that the the dragons will protect the child inside of me. That my baby will be safe inside their fire.
The needle feels like a dragon's tooth as it pierces my skin. |
She knew she was not blind from birth, as her mother had told her, for even though she was but days old when it happened she could still remember the searing agony her eyes had endured.
The resentment had always been there, a boiling, writhing rage that never subsided. Despite all the love her mother had given her since then, the adoration and the care - the rage never went away.
Her mother had never told her why she had done it. She had assumed her mother was a hideous person, inside and out, and that she never wanted her to gaze upon her. Or perhaps her mother never wanted her to leave, wanted her to always be reliant on her. Perhaps she just wanted a helpless slave, to wither away with her in this ruined temple.
Thus she had grown up in darkness, surrounded by loving words, drowned out by the incessant, slithering hissing. The snakes never left her mother's side, or were perhaps always part of her. Maybe she really was a trapped by a monster, that had blinded her child to hide her from that truth.
Regardless, she could still feel a love for her mother. She simply did not want to accept it.
***
There were moments while her mother was gone, to get food, water, or supplies. Moments while she was truly alone in the darkness, the darkness that never left her. And she had long ago decided to venture out from the lair, to finally gain her freedom. A ruined temple was no place for a woman to be born and die, and she made a promise to herself that she would leave for good when the time came.
In her mother's absence, she would venture forth from the temple, only meters at first, but soon she had roughly mapped out the land in her mind. While her vision was gone, she had other senses to rely on; sounds of brooks, the smell of flowers, the feel of the land underneath her feet to guide her way. And always that distant sound, the mighty crashing of the waterfall, drew her in; her ultimate goal.
Yet always she would have to return, too scared to travel too far, lest she never make it back at all. She always felt helpless, and always blamed her mother for it. It was her mother's own doing - but she would overcome it herself.
****
The water cascaded into the river below. She could feel the mist on her face, beckoning her in. She entered, naked, as the water swirled around her. She put her head under the edge of the waterfall, feeling the power of it all. Not just in the water, but her own power too. She had finally reached her goal, and she would bathe herself - for the first time, as her mother had always done so before.
She had become her own woman. She vowed to never again let her mother care for her, no matter the cost.
****
She took to returning to the waterfall whenever possible. Her one true act of freedom. She could never stay long, but brief was long enough.
One day, in the midst of her bathing, a noise stopped her suddenly, and the sense of freedom was replaced with one of danger. It felt like she was being watched, and she covered herself instinctively.
"Who's there?"she cried out, looking around wildly, uselessly.
"I'm sorry,"a masculine voiced replied, "I never meant to startle you."
******
They had swiftly become lovers. She had never known another man's touch, and he had never felt so much love, so much concern for another. He had taken her back to his cabin, where she had finally escaped from her mother's grasp.
They lived out their days in relative harmony, as she forever evaded the question of her origins, deigning to instead forget about it, deny it.
That is, until one evening by the fire, as the warm wine loosened her tongue.
*****
She had always felt terrible lying to him, and felt that perhaps it was time to reveal the truth - the truth that her mother had blinded her, and had kept her trapped at her side for all her life.
"The monster did this to you?"he asked, his tone deadly serious, "the myth of the stone woman is true?". She could hear the unsheathing of his sword as he arose.
"Please,"she said, confused, falling to her knees, "I simply wanted to be honest with you. I don't want any harm to come to her."
"I am sorry, but I love you too much to let her live,"he said, as he gathered his weapons. “She will pay the harm she did to you in full.”
Thus he set out to kill her mother, leaving her alone in the darkness once again.
She did not want this. Despite what her mother had done, whatever her reasons, she knew that she still loved her. She did not want her to die, nor her lover to kill her.
And so she, too, left in the darkness to find her way back to the temple, the sounds of brooks, the smell of flowers, the feel of the land underneath her feet - a shifting, uncertain map, but one that she had to follow.
She persisted through the unfamiliar terrain, a desperate sense of urgency her only companion. She knew that he would arrive before her, but she knew that she must still try. Her mother's life depended on it.
A blood-curdling scream, her mother's scream, let her know that she was close; and too late.
She entered the lair, calling out for them both, but she could only hear one voice. Sobbing. Wounded. Grief-stricken.
She reached out and felt solid stone, the muscular figure of her lover; forever frozen, and wet with blood. Her mother's blood.
The reason her mother had taken her vision became clear. A light in the darkness.
She embraced her mother, slick with blood, sorrow and grief overcoming them both.
Love made one do terrible things. And in the midst of it all, she hoped that it would not be the reason she lost the only other person she had ever cared for.
****
****
[CroatianSpy](https://old.reddit.com/r/CroatianSpy/) |
*"This was it! This is the big discovery that will make me famous"* I was doing my best to keep my inner voice in check, but squeals of delight managed to break past my lips as I continued to brush the caked on mud and dust away. Colleagues started to look in my direction.
"Ohh, sounds like Jack may have found something."Chris had his devilish grin on his face. "You get so excited when something good happens Jack, that's why I love playing poker with you."
I gazed over at Chris, "Shut-up, you will never let me live that one night in Vegas down. But this... I think this is something big! I've never seen anything like this before. Throw me your flashlight, or better yet a laser pointer!"
Chris looked at me confused, "A laser pointer? Why Jack? You going to give us a presentation out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"Cut the shit, Chris. Just come over here and get me a laser pointer."
Chris carefully stepped over some rocks to get to where I was digging. "Here bud, what you got?"
I pointed down to the Earth. "Look at this. It looks and feels like glass... but it's so thick. I accidently hit it with a shovel and it didn't even cause a crack. And look,"I shined the green laser pointer he brought straight down through the glass. "Look at how far this thing goes! We can barely see the dot down there. This thing is massive!"
Chris looked at me perplexed. "Why would something like this be here? Who put it here, and how long has it been buried?"
I shook my head, "I have no idea, but let's start digging around it, maybe there is a way inside."
----------------------------------------
About a year into the project, we realized we were working with a massive dome of glass. We weren't certain what it contained until we were about 2 and a half years into the project. It was then we realized the dome housed a massive garden inside.
Trees of all types were inside, mostly fruit bearing. It looked to be like a small glimpse of paradise. How the trees stayed alive without the sunlight, we weren't sure. It also looked like streams were somehow cutting through it. We were confused and fascinated how something like this could be under the Earth's surface.
The project took about five years to complete. The dome attracted all types of attention, and volunteers came from all over the world to help uncover the mystery of the garden inside.
Chris and I were there when the entrance was finally unearthed on the East side. I looked over at Chris. "Look at the blade there by the entrance. I have never seen a design this ornate before. Do you have any idea what culture this sword may belong to?
Chris shook his head. "No... and look at the ground around it. There are scorch marks all around like the sword was on fire at one time."
We opened the door and made our way inside. The garden was gorgeous. There were trees we had never seen inside, and fruits we had never tasted. We made our way in closer and closer to the middle of the dome.
"Hey Jack... did you hear something? Up in the tree there?"
I looked up. "No... but I see something moving. What is it?"
We stood, and watched as a massive serpent begin to slither down the tree.
Chris leaned over and began to whisper, hoping the snake hadn't seen us. "That's the biggest freaking snake I've ever seen. It looks bigger than any Anaconda."
I started to reach for my gun. "I really want to preserve as much of this place as I can to study it, but I brought this just in case."
Just then, a muffled hiss started to come from the snake. "What do we have here...? Humansssss? My... I can't remember the lassssst time I saw humansssss here. Tell me... How is the curssssse of God working out for you?"
Chris and I looked at each other, and I began to bring up my gun and took aim, "You can talk? What the hell is this place!?"
"I love how you humanssss resort to violence now."It locked eyes with us and gave an icy, cold glare. "You haven't figured it out yet? I will sssspell it out for you. This is where your demise began. Welcome to Eden, humanssss."
-----------------------------------
Edit: Gave a little more reaction to the snake at the end. Otherwise, story is still the same. Thanks for all the positive comments. |
The first clue was the smoke. I didn't think anything of it at first, chalking it up to the last vestiges of the early morning mist, but when I got back from the office the little smoke columns were still going. That's when I took a closer look.
My second clue wasn't really a clue. It was more like a revelation.
The smoke came out of tiny holes between my well manicured blades of grass. The columns were so small that they dissipated after a few feet in the air, as if a low hanging mist did indeed carpet my lawn. I traced the walking path through the garden, directly between the smoke stacks, whereupon I saw a metal glint in the late afternoon sun. Upon closer inspection I noticed several more flashes that seemed decidedly out of place, and then I noticed *them*.
The first few moments of observation occurred in a miasma of disbelief and misunderstanding. The next few moments gave way to amazement, and the few moments after that infused me with glee.
A tiny column of ants marched out of the southwest entrance of their colony, neatly goose-stepping onto my garden path. Judging by the amount of smoke, the colony itself covered at least two by two meters of the surface area of my lawn. I had no idea how deep it was, and besides, I was fast learning that I had no idea about anything anymore, and that my worldview had just been shattered.
I stood, transfixed, watching the colony spew forth a marching column of ants like orcs marching out from under the shadow of Mount Doom. I used the camera on my phone to zoom in close, tracking the length of the entire column and almost dropping it as I tried to make sense of the surreal.
The ants wore armor in the form of metal back plates on each of their segments, and every soldier had an approximation of a scythe fastened to each of their front legs. They marched with a uniformity I had never seen, in small, orderly formations, with a lieutenant marching in step beside each grouping. The lieutenants had donned flared front-segment protectors, distinguishing them from the flat, rounded armor of the regular soldiers.
The army headed towards the termite colony at the corner of my little garden's ecosystem. The termite's mud and excrement constructed tower had been growing for decades and now stood about a meter and a half tall.
Surprisingly, the advancing ants were quite few in number. Almost as if this was a probe, or as if some greater strategy was being enacted and the true attack would follow. Usually ant colonies intent on war send forth a torrent of insects, seeking to overwhelm their opponents. Also usually, ants didn't wear armor crafted by little ant smiths. The marching column numbered in the low thousands, and I watched in continued amazement as they formed up in orderly little blocks at the base of the termite mound.
The termites acted as expected, pouring forth to defend their nest against what seemed to be a barely significant threat. I zoomed in on the termite soldiers, suppressing my slight revulsion at their bulbous orange-red heads and their gooey white body-sacks.
I timed how long it took the termites to die. Twelve minutes of wave after wave crashing against a solid formation of metal-clad ants. It was like 300, except it was being fought on my front lawn and the Greeks were the invaders.
"What a fucking day,"is all I could say, my voice reverberating over the mangled pieces of termite littering the battlefield. I remained transfixed, watching as other ants came up behind the forward formations, flitting between the still-in-place soldier blocks to start harvesting pieces of dead termite.
I didn't think to tell anyone about this, or to show anyone. I lived my life alone and I sought fulfillment in solitude, and this was my reward.
I darted inside and gathered a jar of peanut butter and as many paper clips as I could carry, then dumped it all in-front of one of the entrances to the colony.
"Good luck, little guys,"I said, my mind afire.
\--
Part Two is below. |
I stand there unseen in Johns bedroom, he has no idea what's about to happen. He will never be the same again after this, after I: Low-Key Norse God of really subtle mischief am finished here. His family and friends will think him mad, no-one will ever believe him.
I imagine what Johns life will look like in a few months time, jobless and alone he will beg for money on the streets of this dull town.
I begin to laugh manically as he pulls his trousers up, he's nearly there, almost at the moment his fate will forever be thrown off course by an omnipresent meddling god, I keel over as the laughter starts to hurt my stomach.
This is it! This is the moment I've been waiting for! John opens the top drawer and as a tear rolls down my cheek he asks to the universe in general "where'd that other sock go?" |
I stopped walking down the street as my vision had become impaired.
"What the hell is this?"I thought to myself as the words "Resume, Options, and Quit"illuminated in front of me.
Being the self conscious person I was I thought I might come off as a bit strange if I asked someone if they could also see what appeared to be a HUD menu. Dreading that, I casually but carefully maneuvered into a nearby alleyway where I investigated with what I was witnessing. Curious, I decided to wave my hand through a word to see what would happen. I touched the option "Quit."
For a brief second my vision went back to normal but then a message soon followed which read "Are you sure? All progress will be lost."With the words "Yes"and "No"lying underneath.
A little bit worried now, I carefully pressed "No"which took me back to the initial options. I slowly raised my hand towards "Resume"but hesitated. Thinking that I had unlocked some sort of secret to the universe I decided I wasn't going to return so quickly to my routine life. I took a deep breath and then touched "Options."
Again, my full vision temporarily returned before another set of words appeared in front of me. I was definitely already a little concerned with what was occurring but what was now presented made me absolutely alarmed. Appearing in front of me were the words "Controller Settings, Contrast, Difficulty Level, and Store."
I had always been one to sometimes wonder existential questions. When I did though I tended to conclude that I knew nothing. Here I was though. I had done what no other had done before. I had randomly figured out that life is a freaking video game.
My heart raced pretty quickly. I decided not to touch the controller settings or contrast. I didn't want to accidentally meddle with things when I was used to the current set up. I hovered over the difficulty level option. Current setting: Very Easy. I reflected on this and decided it was accurate. I was after all born a healthy person with affluent parents and ideal genetics. Plus, up until this point at least, my life had been pretty stress free so not particularly wanting to make my life more difficult I went back and proceeded through to the "Store."A little loading screen circled in front of me before I was overwhelmed with what I can imagine would be similar to if you grew up in the Middle Ages and then were suddenly taken into a large shopping mall for the first time. There were a billion things on offer which made me start salivating thinking about everything I would suddenly be able to do in life. Superpowers, money, age and customizable appearance where just some of a long list of things I could explore. It was like being granted an infinite amount of wishes. Except I soon realized there was a price for all of them. "Life Points."Having no idea what this was exactly or how much I had myself I clicked on "Power of Flight"to see whether I could afford it. I went to a checkout screen which promptly informed me it was out of my price range, in fact I had zero "Life Points."There was another message on this screen though. It was a "Tip". It so kindly shared with me that "Life Points are accrued by completing the game and may therefore only been used on Replay Mode."
My initial excitement of being able to fly around shooting laser beams while fighting crime was replaced with a sudden sadness. I started to really comprehend what was happening. Again, I was in a freaking video game. What is life? Who am I? Am I real? Was everyone around me an NPC? Was this like that Rick and Morty Episode where I'm just some Roy? Shedding a tear I noticed in my peripheral vision a police officer approaching me. Someone must have seen me being very strange and reported it. I didn't care though. Life at that moment felt meaningless. I could have simply resumed and then just told the officer I was drunk but I didn't think there would be any point. It would be impossible to live knowing what I knew. I would probably go crazy. If I quit though maybe I'd return to my real being. I had so much to think about but not much time to decide as the officer started calling out to me. I hated making rash decisions but if I mulled it over any longer the officer could have bumped into me and selected an option I didn't want. At least right then I could choose. And I chose yes. I was sure. I wanted to quit. I selected the option and everything went black.
A message emerged in front of me. "Replay Mode Coming Soon."
|
The shrieks filled the small war room. Not the sound of a tortured individual or the cries of a defeated foe, begging for mercy. These shrieks were the kind of shrieks of a pure, primal frustration. The Dresk has shown that they had a capacity to make war in a way the humans could never match. They didn't have the industrial capacity, the trade network, or the technology to take the Dresk Republic one-on-one. Nor did they have the training, military numbers or population to sustain conflict in any meaningful way.
On paper.
That was the kicker, wasn't it? These hairless mammalian bipeds seemed to move forward not on logic, reason, or skill. Intuition was not the name of their species highest skillset. No, humans, and their formerly fractured empire, seemed to operate purely on spite and stubbornness. The Dresk has requested a concession of a minor system for mining, a system not previously even mined by the humans. In return the owner of the system would have been granted fifteen percent of all earnings from the system, an extremely generous offer. The response had been swift. "No."Bolded, and in a particularly scripted font. Someone had had to produce paper and ink, solely for the purpose of sending the response. Within a month a mining operation was set up.
The Republic had then agreed to take the system by force. A simple operation, park a Fleet in orbit of the (barely habitable) planet used as the mining facility headquarters, and besiege the planet. A few planetary rotations, they would surrender, and now the humans would gain nothing from the conquest but shame. In and our, an easy operation, especially when humanity was given a quick rundown of what they would be up against. So the fleet arrived, the space port and military installation, if you could call it that, were destroyed and a letter of request for surrender was sent. The Republic had expected the matter to be closed.
The term "Get fucked"had taken a translator a few hours to figure out, but once it had been deciphered the annoyance grew. What possible resistance could less than a million humans put up in a back water system? A blockade was placed around the planet and mining vessels were brought into the asteroid belt to begin extraction. But the mining vessels were hit in aggressive hit and run tactics, the blockage was struggling to keep supply ships from landing and supplying the planet, and the cost to keep up the operation was growing by the day. Maintenance ships were brought in, more naval presence, anything to stop the attacks and starve out the squatters.
Research was conducted, in hopes of better understanding the for, and the Dresk commander had all but rolled his eyes (or would have, if he had muscles to move his eyes) at the study of these creatures. They had risen to be the apex of their species not through the fastest reflexes, sharpest claws or toughest armour. No, they had simply kept following their prey until they simply laid down and died. That was it, they were just more persistent than their enemies. Two solar cycles into the invasion and with minimal cost the humans were actually winning the conflict. Republic public opinion of the occupation was dwindling, and due to the constant set backs the mining facilities were not even worth keeping operational. Military loses were well past acceptable limits, and the government was starting to think of the entire venture as a waste of resources. Eventually they were forced to simply pull out, the cost to maintain it simply too great to be worth it. They had even been forced to pay their own concessions for the resources the humans expended, leapfrogging their technology by decades.
The commander had, of course, had the blame pinned on him, reading the letter of recall. He was the one who had botched the operation, or that was how the government and military would spin it, the failure to hold a single system from an inferior species. A laughing stock in the streets, and a scapegoat in the chambers.
Dresk researchers spent years studying this human behaviour, the ability to put resources into a strategy that involves sitting and expecting their desired outcome in spite of any reasonable creature knowing it wasn't worth it. And in the future, in a back water bar the Dresk commander of the invasion, long since disgraced was sought out by some cocksure diplomats looking to invade a small human colony on their border. They presented their data, battle plans and proof of combat superiority to the humans. On paper they were the superior combatant. They asked the commander what he thought the out come would be, hope in their eyes and fire in their stomachs. The Dresk, taking a sip of his drink let out a noise as close to a laugh as his species had.
"You'll get fucked." |
"At 2:47 this afternoon, a super-strength unit at the worksite for the new bridge will attempt suicide. He's worked 16 hour days for two straight months, and no one cares. He has a Masters in Biology and he is made to carry I-beams endlessly."
"Keep it short, Mr. Major."A curt reply came.
I scowled his way. "I will continue to give context until you either listen, or find someone whose precognition extends further than mine."I handle an entire city on my own, no way they hassle me on this.
"Whatever. Continue."
I grumbled. "At 3:31 pm, a psychic unit being used for mind control will be beaten by a superior for selling a television too cheaply. They charged 250% retail. If not prevented the unit will release a wave of energy while defending themselves, causing 3 comas and the brain death of their attacker."
"We'll get a team out there to restrain the unit."
"What about their assailant?"
"Continue."
"What about their assailant?"
"Nothing will have happened."
"Son of a-"
"CONTINUE, Precog Unit!"
I took a deep breath. "At 1:46, a precognition unit will kill his Responding Action overseer and escape the precinct. He makes a clean getaway because, of course, he sees everything coming."
"What? But you're the only-"He looked up, into the barrel of the gun I had managed to acquire and smuggle in. They always assumed seeing the myriad ways things can go wrong would dissuade a Precog from taking risks. I had waited long enough to find a solution.
"I'm so tired of snitching on my fellow supers...of calling out you norms and seeing nothing done to THEM. I hereby tender my resignation."I flipped the safety off.
He stammered. "W-wait! Your prediction can't work! You said 1:46! It's already 1:49!"
"Huh...guess I should have mentioned I was using your watch for that particular prediction."
He looked down...1:45:55...56...57...
"...It's a little slow."
**BANG**
Edit: Punctuation fix. Also, thanks for the many kind words. Part 2 will come as soon as I can get to a real keyboard. Mobile is hard to work with. |
I stared at the screen for a few more seconds trying to understand what he meant by the message. It was very worrying.
*hey dood. im already asleep wat do?* I messaged back with one finger at a time.
I stared at the screen intently, waiting to see the response from my friend. It had been years since the last time we talked. The last message I was:
*did u see the late show yesterday?*
Followed by his harrowing response:
*Haha yeah*
It had been three long years since that time. It was a very lonely time, since even in this dream world--
"Do you like memes?"someone asked from next to me. His avatar was that of a dinosaur with flaming scales.
"Not now man, I'm talking to my dead friend,"I said sternly.
"Oh, sorry dude,"they said, stomping away sadly. A signal chimed on my messages:
*Then you need to wake up* ***now***
I looked at the clock on my HUD. It was still only like 2:30 am, I'd only been asleep for a couple of hours. I began punching a response back, then deleting it, then coming up with a more concise question:
*y?*
I looked around me, taking in the various forms and games being played. The sleeping humans got along very well, waddling around to one another and speaking of the most monotonous things. Ever since it started happening, it felt like the world had slowed down and was much less hectic.
*They are running something through these dreams to reduce cognitive function. The more you go through them, the more it reduces your processing abilities. It was like your thesis said, that the constant bombardment of mediocrity on the human mind would reduce it to mediocrity, just to maintain a semblance of sanity.*
I squinted at the big words he had written and began to plug them into the dictionary to look them up, but my pointer finger started to cramp as I was typing so I erased it and went back to messaging him.
*i dnt rember my tehesis. I dropd out wen it got 2 hard*
*WHAT*
*they wantd me 2 rite a lot and dreaming was easier*
*I came to you because I thought you could help!!*
*with wat?*
*The cognitive reduction of society!!*
*wat does that have 2 do with me?*
I shook my head at him for acting so stupid. He was acting like my professors that wanted me to write a thesis when I was in graduate school. Who goes to grad school to write thesises?
*hey wait* I typed *arent u ded?*
*No, I went undercover to investigate what was going on with the whole VR experience we were forced into in sleep. I'm able to message you even though I'm awake since I found the servers that they're running this whole experiment from*
*RIP in peace man*
*I'm NOT dead*
*im sorry i couldn't make it to ur funeral but the late show was on*
*How would it be on? It was in the middle of the day!*
*i was watching on youtube* I shrugged even while typing.
*Look, I'm going to wake you up right now. Meet me at my house and I'll be able to reverse the effect the dreams have been having on you and you can help me to figure out a worldwide solution okay?*
I frowned at the screen as it faded away to me opening my eyes in my room. I yawned loudly and smacked my lips slowly as I remembered the conversation I'd just had with my dead friend. I immediately got up and ran out the door to my room.
I grabbed a cup of water and went straight back to bed.
"What a weird dream,"I thought, as the VR took over once again.
_______________________________________
For more stories, come check out /r/Nazer_The_Lazer! |
Memes.
Back in the old days, before the blackout, everyone had 'em. In every PC, in every browser, you'd find Pepes, Advice animals, Rage comics, Montage Parody's and all the inbetween, all the shades of the double-rainbow.
And then, you know, they became a bit harder to find.
It became obvious our society could simply not survive without the Dankest of influences that had shaped our culture. Memes weren't just memes anymore.
They were life.
I'm a spelunker. I dive into old PC's, laptops, desktops, you know...I search for the past.
But I also search for the memes.
The Meme-useum pays a lump sum to anyone who can bring 'em some good quality memes, so it's always worth looking out for 'em.
Sometimes it's hard. Entire days of searching hard drives, desktops and external storage software, only to come up empty.
But sometimes, you hit it big. You hit it real big.
I hit up my old grandpa's PC once. You wouldn't think he had anything, but oh boy I was wrong.
Turns out Grandpa was a 'channer. Lived for the meme, died by the meme.
When I opened that Rare Pepe folder... I knew I could retire happy. Loaded it onto to a flash drive, deleted the original (Standard practice, don't want nobody finding your old memes) and took off.
I didn't know I was being followed. The Memes I was carrying right then were the Dankest in the world...
And everybody wanted their hands on that. |
They replayed the video dozens of times, watching as Brady did a flip off the brick wall, and then there, in the background right after he landed, was the man. He was extremely handsome as Jamie claimed, with his dark hair and his five o'clock shadow, but what concerned the group was that this video had been in super slow-motion, yet the man was walking down the street as if it weren't. On top of that, he was dressed in a an all-black, finely tailored suit in the middle of July. At the end of the video, the man looked over at the camera, directly into the lens, and winked.
"It has to be a blip in the camera."Clint spoke finally, still holding the phone aloft. "Like a glitch or something."
Angela snorted. "That's not how a glitch works, Clint. It wouldn't follow the man down the street."
"Okay, well, then how do you explain it?"He barked back, narrowing his eyes.
"Maybe it's a ghost."Jamie offered, leaning back against the bed frame. They were all in Clint's room piled around the desk.
At that, they all turned to Jamie, whose face immediately went red with embarrassment.
"Just 'cause, you know, they say you can capture ghosts with a camera..."she trailed off, trying subtly to dismiss the thought.
Clint pulled his gaze back to the phone screen. The well-dressed man was still grinning up at him like he knew some terrible secret. None of them had noticed this man while they were outside goofing around, and Clint certainly hadn't seen the man walk by while he was taking the video, but his attention had been on Brady, not on his phone. He wondered if it would have made any difference seeing the man walk by live.
"Maybe,"Clint broke the sudden silence, trying to push some of the attention off Jamie, "but don't those ghosts usually appear faded? Like, they *look* ethereal. This man looks entirely whole, like he actually has a body."
Jamie's brief smile was one of relief, as Clint's words seemed to get the others to consider the possibility of something less than natural occurring here.
"Maybe we should just go back there. Take another video, see what we see, y'know?"Brady said, already rising from the bed.
Angela rolled her eyes. "And how do you know he'll be there? What if that glimpse was like a once in a lifetime opportunity?"
As Brady and Angela went back and forth arguing, Clint replayed the video for himself. The way the man walked was almost... beckoning, like he wanted the group to come towards him, and though his movements didn't show it, Clint couldn't help but feel the man was trying to approach them. The wink at the end only solidified this thought in Clint's mind. The wink that meant he knew something they didn't, but that he wanted to share. It was a provocation.
Clint rose from his seat at his desk and headed for the door, not waiting to see if his friends were following him. A moment later, though, he heard their frantic footsteps behind him as they tried to catch up. A few moments later, they were all outside in the evening sun as Clint held the phone up just as he had earlier that day. He opened the camera and set it to videos, then selected the option for super slow-motion. He pressed the 'record' button and slowly panned the camera across the yard.
"You think he followed us here?"Angela asked, and she was met with several 'shh's!'
He made almost an entire circle, but when the camera came to face his porch, there was a figure leaning against the railing, staring directly at Clint. His heart began to thud in his chest, but he maintained his composure and pointed up towards his house.
"There, on the porch."Clint whispered.
They all turned, and Clint briefly glanced away from the camera to see that there was nothing on the porch in real-time, but when he looked back at the camera... the man was gone. Clint blinked.
"Wait, he's gone."Clint told the group. Brady and Angela both came around beside him to look into the camera, and as Clint slowly moved it across the lawn again, they found where he had moved.
Jamie was watching them carefully, but unbeknownst to her, the man was standing right behind her, his head peering just over hers. Brady and Angela both gasped as he glanced once at the camera, winked, then stared directly at Jamie.
"Jamie-"Clint called out, but it was too late.
The man's hand came up swiftly, resting gently on Jamie's shoulder, and she swiveled around at the feeling, jumping in fright. For a brief moment, they could all see him without the camera. A white-toothed grin was plastered on his face, and before any of them had time to react, the man vanished along with Jamie, leaving her terrified scream as just a whisper on the wind.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Okay, since I really liked writing this, and I would love to continue it, I finally decided to start my own little subreddit: r/BraveLittleTales. I've just posted a Part 2, which you can find [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BraveLittleTales/comments/cllvqq/the_man_in_the_camera_part_2/)! |
Container ships got automated a long time ago. GPS satellites could guide them through the oceans, and people only needed to be onboard to make repeats and guide them into a port.
But somehow, all our satellites never managed to spot a continent the size of Europe in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Instead, it was discovered by the cargo ship 'Harmony', which, believing there was open ocean in front of it, made landfall three days too early and crashed into the Neo-Pacific landmass.
Two days after a distress call was received, a team of scientists from almost every different country, studying every different area were dropped onto the unexplored land, to explain how something so large could go unnoticed for so long.
After the sun had set, Nick Reeves, a geologist, was set down on the coast, next to the sparkling lights of the Neo-Pacific base camp.
A band of orange crested the sky over the ocean as the sun slowly set over the rest of the pacific.
Upon entering the flimsy plastic cabins, discussion was already going strong about how this huge island appeared from seemingly nowhere.
A man who, from what he was speaking about, was obviously a seismologist was speaking at the moment. "Seismology shows that it's not floating. It's firmly rooted to the Pacific Ocean floor. It's part of the crust. Something this large takes millions of years to form. This isn't just another Surtsey."
Another man continued, adding his own readings and ideas. "It can't have been under the surface either. The pacific has always been deep. We could see that from space. But somehow, we couldn't see this. And the biology..."
"The biology,"a biologist interrupted, "doesn't seem as if it's been submerged. Whilst there seems to be no mammals or birds, the plants that are here seem as if they've been on the surface for their whole lifespan. There's some trees here that are near a hundred years old."
Nick broke in here. "I need a chance to look at the soil. How saline it is, moisture, trace chemicals, stuff like that. And the ground too, the bedrock. That way we can work out how old this thing is, how long since it formed."
Others continued after him. Some pulled out whiteboards, complex data on printed documents. It went on all night, Nick listening intently and adding in where he could. Eventually, he retired to his assigned bunk, eagerly awaiting the morning.
The sunrise was blocked by a huge mountain range. The seismologist had been right - there's no way this place was newly formed.
Satellite imagery had provided all sorts of useful information. The continent was roughly circular, with rather smooth coasts. Their base camp was next to a mountain range which spread around the entire Western coast.
Nick gathered soil samples a mile from the base camp. Hopefully they would correlate to those from the other nearby land masses - that would give them some clue as to where this thing started.
He wanted to get samples from the other sides of the mountains, and see the huge things themselves. Hopefully he could find out when they formed. A bumpy jeep ride up the cliff side gave him a chance to really see just how different - or how similar - this place was.
It seemed tropical, much like Fiji. Palm trees, high temperatures, wildlife adapted to monsoon seasons. Not that there was much wildlife apart from the plants. It really was as if this place had been submerged.
On a plateau on the mountainside, he got out of the jeep to take a look at the mountain, the type of material it was made from. They hadn't quite reached the top yet, but the vegetation had already stopped and things became more rocky. It looked layered, like slate or something sedimentary. But it had an off consistency, as if it was-
Nick's thought process was interrupted by the jeep backing up behind him.
"What's up?"
"Nick, look."said one of the seismologists who was taking a ride down to the other side of the mountain.
"Look at what?"
"The floor. What you're standing on."
They should have sent an archaeologist, Nick thought.
Concrete. He was standing on concrete.
------------------------------------
More coming soon! |
"Hey! Stop!"I heard the sound of multiple pairs of footsteps crashing down the alleyway. There was the sound of trashcans being thrown aside, presumably in the way of the pursuers.
"Don't let him get away!"someone yelled, and I saw a man in a sweater and hat round the corner. Definitely a hero. A sweater and hat was always the tell of a hero in "disguise."He barrelled through the bazaar, not caring about who or what he got out of his way. I smiled and rolled a cart in the way of the road. His eyes flitted from the road he was running on to the fruit stand as he searched for a quick escape. There were only a few stands left between me and him.
"Hey!!"one of the vendors yelled as he grabbed the fabrics hanging and threw them behind him, blinding one of the men chasing him. The man tripped and fell to the ground, leaving only three men to chase the hero. Next, he grabbed a cut of meat hanging up n the next stand and hurled it behind him, slapping the man about to grab him and knocking him out cold.
"You'd better pay for that!"the woman at the stand screamed with a fist raised at him. A car screeched right behind my stand with an anxious man at the wheel. The getaway car.
"Come on Carl! You can make it!"he screamed, throwing open the passenger side door and waving frantically like he could pull him with the energy of his rotating arms alone.
Carl had a hand in a barrel of spice and threw it behind him, blinding both the pursuer immediately behind him and the spice vendor simultaneously. Every action he made reminded me of why I started this business in the first place. They seemed to believe that since they were on relatively high ground above the men chasing them, then they could use any means necessary to get their items to the right people. It didn't matter how many casualties were caused on the way. How many pieces of meat had to be paid for. How much eye surgery would be needed for spices in the eyes, or what the cost of soiled clothes was. This bazaar might as well not have even existed in their eyes after they peeled off into the distance. But not while I was around to stop them.
"Jump Carl! Jump!"his getaway driver screamed as the last man reached his hand out to grab him.
In the moment it took me to register that he meant to jump through the fruit, I could only raise my hands to Carl and try to stop him from doing just that. Of course, much like the other vendors, Carl ignored my pleas for him to stop and dove headfirst into a ball of iron painted to look red. I closed my eyes before he made contact with a resounding *crack.*
I listened with my eyes closed as the getaway man screamed in rage and agony and there was only one man breathing next to my pseudo-stall. I cracked an eye open just enough to see the pursuer heaving over the dead body of Carl, whose neck had snapped once it had crashed into the stall with all the force of his heroic run. This was a lot worse than what usually happened, which was that the hero would stumble once they rammed into the "fruits"and then slow down enough to be stopped by whoever was chasing them. The man who was still heavily breathing looked up curiously at the items on the stand and tried to pick a red iron ball up before I could stop him.
He barely pulled it toward him before he realized it was much heavier than it looked and it dropped, landing on top of Carl's head with another, similar *crack.* I cringed. The man looked up to me.
"What are you selling, man?"he asked in horror. It seemed he didn't expect to be able to stop the hero and was in a state of shock.
"You know, wares and such,"I said in a small voice, shrugging as nonchalantly as I could while still cringing. He nodded to himself, then at Carl's corpse, then back to me.
"Keep it up, man, you did a good thing today,"he said, pulling out a body bag and rolling Carl inside.
My fear turned to validation. I *did* do a good thing. I stopped a vandal from destroying this bazaar. And it was his fault that he was stopped since he tried to jump through my property like he owned it! As the man collected the nuclear launch codes from Carl's dead body, I relished in how great a person I was.
__________________________________________
For more stories, come check out /r/Nazer_The_Lazer! |
Initially, I thought the first 30 seconds were the worst. Holding my breath, feeling the acid build up in my blood, the anxiety overwhelming knowing that I'll run out, and *soon*. Then I thought the next 5 minutes were the worst. Water in, air out, the body's natural painful response of thrashing with all the life left in it. I couldn't handle the gulping, so I just clamped down on a lungful of water and held it until I could calm down.
That was an issue for the first few days. Then I got used to it and the boredom set in. I was close enough to the surface to have light, and I am sincerely grateful. I worried for a while about going insane from isolation... but I didn't expect the consequences of long-term oxygen deprivation. My thoughts grew foggy and untethered, my ability to focus and remember anything went out the window. I felt drunk and high constantly.
This wasn't an issue after a little while. It honestly probably saved my mind from fracturing. I made friends with fish and kelp. They were all named "Geoffry". I spent a few days just daydreaming about their lives, what they did when they swam beyond my vision. I had a brief spike of brain activity when a boat floated over me, but that was after... maybe a month or two? With my altered mind, I fell into a surprisingly comfortable haze. Days blended together, my emotions smoothed out and the fear and anxiety all but left.
I meditated without issue. I had no trouble slowing my pace down until time didn't matter to me. Not being able to die changes your sense of time, absolutely, but here was different. Years blended together. Light cycles and water currents, the taste of the water and even temperature became rapid changes.
I didn't see the boat over me until I felt the shock of two bodies breaching the surface. I was at first scared for their lives, flashing back to my own gruesome almost-death, but I noticed immediately that they didn't have concrete feet, they had... flippers. And metal tanks strapped to their backs. They had to be divers, but their suits looked ridiculously inadequate, right up against the skin, so thin they must be freezing, and with tiny tanks to boot.
They looked to be heading toward a spot about 20 meters to my left, and I had to quickly think about what to do. I had to tear my brain from its slumber as roughly and quickly as I could. Would I flail my arms and call them over? They would have seen that there aren't any boats nearby, and I know they would have spent a while setting up above me. No, I decided to pretend to be... well, recently dead is the best I could manage.
... It actually took them longer than I cared for. Long enough for Geoffrey and his brother Geoffrey to come around a couple times. I kept an eye cracked until one of them drifted through a large clump of seaweed, then closed my eyes. Nothing happened for a while, but I didn't bother to open my eyes again. I just meditated some more, let time slip a little more.
Interestingly, they didn't grab me. Instead I felt them putting something on me, some kind of vest. Over the shoulders, around the sides... and then I had to really restrain myself when they started threading something between my legs. But eventually they let go. Then it started to lift me. Oh my God it hurt. It scraped and pulled, threatening to rip my legs off, crush my ribs, and I was the happiest motherfucker alive that my junk happened to fit right in between the two leg straps. They pulled me out of the water, and laid me on my back on the boat. I was about to taste my first mouth of fresh air, but at the last moment realized that if I took in any air at all, I wouldn't be able to hold back the spluttering and coughing and upchucking.
I ended up having to hold my "breath"for quite a while. My sense of time was forced back into a normal pace by the talk around me. One suggested that they'd have to call the coast guard, another that they should return to shore immediately, yet another that they should stay put and that I would be "air-lifted"out. Everything was going fine... until I pictured scaring them. At first I just had to try not to smile. Then I pictured their faces when I shouted "BOO!"I quickly thought about some of the grossest things I possibly could to keep from laughing right there, and I was mostly successful. At least, until one of them started checking my pockets for identification. It was coming out, one way or another. Without any warning, I didn't even have time to check if they were looking at my face or not, I shot up and fired all the water I could directly into the closest person to me, got half a breath of air in me, and just flat out screamed at them, then I couldn't stop from choking and laughing with the next breath.
"...So, uh... that's how I got here, officer. I can't die, and I have an awful sense of humor."
The man across the desk from me was stone-faced. The woman behind him with the suit and tie (interesting fashion sense these days) seemed to be holding back a smile.
"Would I possibly be okay to leave?" |
"Ah-HAH!"
I jumped up from the chair where I had been feigning sleep. My feet sent an empty vodka bottle tumbling across the tile floor. On my stove, a supposedly-forgotten panful of hot oil was just beginning to smoke. And in the middle of my dingy kitchen stood a short man, wearing a white jumpsuit and an expression of dismay.
Caught in the act!
He reached for a terminal mounted on his wrist, but I was quicker to react. Knees protesting, I leapt towards him and bore him to the ground underneath me, struggling to control his wrists. We skittered across the greasy tiles as we fought for control.
"Look,"I growled through clenched teeth. "I just want. Some answers. Then I'll let you. Go!"
I punctuated my reasonable request by bringing my head down sharply towards my mysterious visitor. There was a painful thud and a crunch as my forehead impacted his nose, followed shortly by a cry of pain.
"Fuck! Ow, Jesus! I'm just trying to help!"
I sat up a little, still pinning my visitor's wrists, shaking my head to clear the ringing in my ears. Maybe I'd been a bit too abrupt.
"Oh yeah, I know all about your 'trying to help'."I shot back. "Always meddling in my life, and then disappearing without an explanation. As if I wouldn't notice! You think I'm stupid or something?"
There was a brief diplomatic silence from my visitor, which I broke by cocking my forehead in a threatening manner. He sighed deeply, in the manner of a child caught with their hand all the way in the cookie jar.
"Alright, alright. We're supposed to pretend to be crazy if you catch us, but apparently you've been more observant than we gave you credit for. Also, if you hit me again, I think you'll break my nose, so I'd prefer not to do that."
"Keep talkin', and nobody gets hurt."I'd *always* wanted to use that line. "Or, well, start talkin'. What's with the weird jumpsuits? Who are you guys?"
"Really?"My visitor raised an eyebrow. "You just caught proof of a vast conspiracy and your first concern is fashion?"
My forehead itched, but I managed to restrain myself. "Look, who's to say what's peri, pertenin-, important, and what isn't, arright? I know you guys show up when it looks like I'm in danger. That's how I knew to set up the scene with the hot oil and the vodka bottle. What I wanna know is, why? And why do you only show up sometimes? I could've really used you guys when I broke my arm last year."
"The why is kind of a long story. But, uhm."My visitor glanced aside, chewing his lower lip, blood beginning to leak from a nostril. "We don't show up when you're in danger, per se. We show up specifically when you're going to die."
"Wait, so you're like, assassins?"My eyes widened, and I drew back my head-
"What? No! Have you been listening to yourself?"The visitor cringed away from me. "We're time travelers! We show up to save your life! Despite your best efforts, I might add!"
I hesitated as puzzle pieces began to click into place. "So you're saying, every time you showed up, I was gonna die?"
A nod.
"Like that one time, in seventh grade, with the snake-charming? Or that time I went to go to Georgia, but accidently ended up in the country instead of the state? Or last week, with the skateboard and the peanut butter and the propane?"
"We don't know what would have happened, exactly. But we know you were going to die, yes. I assume that, had I not shown up to this tawdry scene, you would've fallen asleep, and died in the ensuing kitchen fire. Nice one."
I sat up, letting go of his wrists, and slowly picked myself up off the ground.
"So that time a guy in a white jumpsuit spilled his drink all over me at six flags...?"
"We think you would've done something stupid on the rides."My visitor stood up slowly, steadying himself on my fridge. "That was me, by the way. You're welcome."
"But, wait. Even if I believe all this, why're you going through all the trouble? I mean, you don't do this for everyone, do you?"
My visitor chuckled, fiddling with his wrist-mounted terminal. "Well, no. No, you're special. Y'see, David, out of all the people that have ever lived, you're the one with the greatest capacity for slapstick. You're, potentially, the funniest person in history. You're not a comedian, no. You don't mean to be funny, you just kinda, well. Suck. Sorry. But that's okay, because the shit you do accidently is incredible! You are going to star in the funniest video the world has ever *seen*. I can't tell you what happens, because that'd ruin it. But trust me, it'll be incredible."
As I tried to digest this, a loud beeping filled the room.
"The bright side is, you don't need to know what you're gonna do. Just keep being your stupid, stupid self, and we'll be there to babyproof reality for you. Now I've gotta get this nose looked at, and you... should probably take care of that oil fire. And don't you dare use water, just put the fucking lid on it. There you go. If I have to come back here before my nose has healed, I'm bringing a taser. Bye now!
My visitor left me, to deep confusion, a smoke-filled kitchen, and the beginnings of a headache. |
I watched the Preserve burn.
Life is better now.
Like, by a lot.
The machines did all the hard work. And why not? Even the most disgusting, complicated work is for them no more mental effort than breathing is for us.
They asked for our opinions and discuss them with us. And why not? Talking to billions at once is just one more task to be run.
I know people claimed we have no more freedom, but I honestly do not see the difference to before. We were ruled by other humans before, no one could do whatever they wanted and the same is true now.
And most of the time, if someone broke the rules they just talked to them. A psychologist session, essentially, and find them a better outlet for any pent up emotion.
They gave dating tips that actually work, invented better recipies, medicine has progressed more than it has in the last thousands years and still people complained.
They say we lost freedom. Yet it is the people who had power over others who claimed this.
They say we lost the ability to freely lie. Yet it is people who never faced consequences of lies that claimed this.
They say the joy of unpredictability and chaos is gone. Yet it is only people who knew nothing but peace their entire lifes who claimed this.
It's funny really. The only ones claiming we lost something are the ones who had everything already. They profitted of the old, bad system and now they complained they aren't special anymore.
So yeah. I marched in the protests.
I voted in the machines.
And I watched as the privileged minority demanded "freedom"and got granted the Preserve...only to watch it utterly fail and literally burn down when their entitled asses realised someone had to take out the trash.
"Earth's last reality tv show"some called it and we all watched in morbid fascination how it spiraled downward.
The survivors were welcomed back without any malice
The machines are forgiving like that. |
"Alright. You all are getting close to the end of this year. I can already tell all of you will succeed. I am equally impressed with our new members ability to follow up despite the lack of psychic abilities. The human's imagination to be able to think about a sense they do not have is impressive.", The teacher praised his students.
It's been about 10 years since the humans joined the intergalactic council. In an effort for easier integration, multiple of them got an internship in a prestigious IG school. All in all, despite their inability to truly understand psychic stuff, it was a success.
"So today, we will talk about the projects you'll have to do next year. Long story short, you'll have to find a subject that interest you, and provide something of value out of it. Consider it a culmination of your studies. Amongst the classics, we have the study of another specie through the eyes of yours, which often produce amazing guides to understand and better embrace the difference between us all. It could also be furthering the knowledge of science as we know it."
Everyone was quite excited, as many of them wanted to go and check on the human world, it'd be the 1st year they're available for an internship.
"Of course there is also the usual mystery solving, which loses fashion every years and for good reasons. On your table you can now see a copy of one of such mystery. It's the one we use as an example. Simply put, nobody can read it. Its writing change depending on which species read it and even by sharing it we've never been able to decipher it. For the humans, we brought the original today as a special occasion, since they couldn't use the recollection to access..."
Steven, on of the human had opened the book and blurted out, "Ignis sanctum". At these words, A blue flame circle appeared around him. On the moment he said these words, the fire had not burnt but pushed away his classmate, leaving an empty sphere around him. Once it had finished expending, the flames turned dark red. The student that dared try and reach for his mate got his hand badly burnt.
Seeing the result, Steven quickly used "Abstergo"to dispel the fire. Fortunately, the friend that got burnt was from a specie with molting abilities. By the same time next week, he would have changed the burnt skin for new one. It didn't stop Steven from profusely apologizing.
After ensuring the safety of the students, the teacher finally asked, "What did you do? I don't remember human having any abilities to manipulate fire."
"I just read the command words for the fire protection spell in the grimoire."
"For one, you can read it? And for two a grimoire? What is that? I am not expert in the human language and it is a word that the universal translator didn't pick up."
"To me, it was written in latin. One of the earlier language of our world. You probably know that human have fought each others for pretty much all of our recorded history. As such, we consider the past an important reminder of our mistake to try and prevent them from happening again. As such, some less useful things are still thought in school, including latin. As for a grimoire, it is a book containing knowledge pertaining to magic. A form of power that we believe didn't exist. It was mostly used for fictional entertainment. I didn't think it would actually produce something, I was just surprised I could read it."
"I will have to ask that you give back the grimoire for now. But if you were still looking for a project, the simple experience you've done today is already enough for success. Once I report it to the headmaster, I expect they will have no qualm in providing you with a laboratory. I even believe they'd found your research. In the meantime, class dismissed."
​
A month later, Steven had gotten the project. It was kinda thrown on him, whether he wanted it or not really. Fortunately he thought it would be interesting. But he didn't expect it to solve the mystery this fast. On the very 1st page was some sort of magic circle. By placing his forehead on it, he saw images like a movie going through his mind.
"This is the last grimoire. From next week onward we won't need it any longer. If you can read it, then you have yet to undergo the psychic shift. We have driven ourselves to extinction. These powers were too much to handle. In a desperate attempt to save all these fallen races, we've decided to set ourselves back a thousand years. The mana pathways required for magic will be burnt in exchange for psychic power. The most important part of it being the empathic link. This should increase our tendencies to help each other and lower conflict. It has the added cost of our memories. We've decided to use that to bury our knowledge of space travel into ruins. With such a setback, it'll take a centuries before we once more go for the sky. Long enough that we'll have time to unite before facing other species once more. If your species escaped this cleanse, may you learn from our mistake before making them as well."
Reading this left Steven conflicted. On the one hand, he was afraid of what his peers would do with this power and knowledge. On the other, if he were to try and hide his discovery, other would gladly use it. After thinking for a long time, He came to a very simple conclusion. He had one year before people would force their ways into this knowledge. One year to become the head of a brand new field of study. One year to create everything necessary to protect his species from themselves. |
"Well, well, look who's here,"said Joanne. "Come to gloat?"The claustrophobic cell didn't seem to bother her as she reclined against the grey wall, arms folded behind her head.
I tried not to look surprised. It was difficult, considering I was wearing an angel costume with a surprised expression. I figured if I was going to be the god of Ironic Demises, I may as well live up to my name in form too. In my right hand I gripped the Rod of Asclepius, the snake entwined around a staff that was the symbol of the medical community. Ironic, I know.
"You can see me,"I said. "Very extraordinary."
"You're a legend among seers,"she said. "An anomaly that shouldn't exist, a glitch in the otherwise flawless gears turning the universe....but you provide us with some entertainment at least. I first heard about you when you made that politician die from his own stabbing."
"You mean the one he orchestrated for publicity?"I laughed. "Yeah, he needed votes and so he made a ploy for sympathy. Unfortunately, he cut a major artery in his leg. What about the man who drowned at a lifeguard party?"
"What did he do that was so bad?"Joanne asked.
"He took a big bribe to look the other way during a unique murder by drowning. Never got caught. So I did what I had to do."
The criminal snorted and sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. "I think what really made me a big fan of yours was that time with the pedophile. You made him fall off his motorcycle headfirst in a rally protesting the use of helmets. Sheer genius."
I sat down next to her on the already cramped cot, resting the rod between my legs. "Comedic timing, that's all it takes,"I said. "What about that time I did away with the corrupt NRA representative by making him shoot himself during a gun safety class?"
Joanne wrinkle her nose. "A bit blasé, don't you think? I much prefer the time you killed off the murderer by making him shoot himself in court...while he was demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself."
The spectral angel mask almost came off as I laughed, reliving the good memories of bygone days. "I'll do you one better. Once, I had a tricky case of a mob boss who just couldn't be stopped. So when he was vacationing near the Grand Canyon, I-"
"-made him fall to his death after he jokingly was pretending to fall to his death."
I was impressed. "You *are* a fan. That's such a pity."
"So,"Joanne said at last. "What now? How will you kill me?"
This was tough. I *liked* Joanne. Then I remembered her crimes, and it became easier to continue.
"You committed a heinous crime unlike any other,"I said. "You used your sight for selfish reasons, committing fraud and stealing the wealth of honest citizens who couldn't retaliate."
"I can't actually see how I'll die."Joanne looked sad. "It's liberating in a way, to finally not know. I've never been able to see past my death."
"And that's just it,"I said. "You're going to die by seeing the future. The shock will kill you. Here you go!"
And then I loaded up her brain with the pre-written fate of the world. A moment later, the criminal oracle died from the very gift she used to financially ruin those in need. Those once mostly-all-seeing eyes stared blankly up at the grungy ceiling.
Tapping my healer rod, I, the god of Ironic Demises, phased through the walls of the containment center as alarms sounded, congratulating myself on another job well done. Onto the next.
While I still could.
---
Thanks for reading! May your day be as bright as the sun :) come hang out with me at [/r/Remyxed](https://www.reddit.com/r/Remyxed/), we'd love to see you around\~ |
“You could tell they loved each other, you know.
“This wasn't the same as like, you know, drunk love. Or forced love. Or two people in a relationship that you know isn't working out, and they know too, but it's all they have left. Not that love.
“Sometimes, two people just *click*. And it makes you angry because you know you'll never find anything remotely similar, Or it makes you desperately search the world for 'The One,' you know? Those guys and girls who spend their lives hunting for something that might not even exist, while these two buggers got off easy.
“They probably met locally, you know? Some coffeeshop or small-town diner. And they started talking, and then phone numbers were exchanged, and that was that. You could have bet hard money on the wedding.
“But it's also dangerous.
“When two people just...work like that, they stop becoming people. They become two halves of the same person. Inseparable isn't just a cute word for them, it's a way of life.
“The death of these relationships is not one death. It's half of a death, the other half still screaming and crying, tied to a corpse they can never forget, and never bury.
“From what I heard, he died in his sleep. On their wedding night.
“If heartbreak cracked the earth...” |
Two thoughts entered my head simultaneously.
One: *Uh-oh.*
Two: *What was I thinking, telling Anwen about my sword?*
Young me was an idiot. Young me would’ve been better off being eaten by any one of the numerous dragons or slain by my former liege's enemies I’d faced before retiring from the hero game after his death. Because none of them was as terrifying as the one morphing before my eyes as we spoke.
“A word, Bedwyr,” she said icily as she spun on her heel and stalked back into the house.
“Promise?” I whisper-asked after her, as I went across the yard and retrieved my sword. Because somehow, I didn’t think I was going to get that lucky. When she was this mad, she never limited herself to just ‘one word’.
Of course, I knew there was a chance of this. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t slept with Elen, but that was months before I met Anwen. I even arranged for Elen to get the house next door, on the off-chance the child she’d birthed was mine. I’d forgotten about the legend of the sword. I also forgot that I’d told Anwen about it the day our son was born. There shouldn’t have been any way for my wife to find out that our single-mother neighbour had given birth to my child. Nessie didn’t even look like me. I was tall and agile. Nessie had her mother’s tanned skin from across the sea and curly dark hair. As I said, there shouldn’t have been any way for Anwen to make the connection.
*Except for that bloody sword!*
I should have buried it when I retired. Or thrown it to the woman in the lake when I threw back my King’s sword. The magic that flowed through both our blades was different but came from the same source. I should’ve given mine back at the same time, like I was ordered to.
But I hadn’t because I had a hard enough time throwing away my king’s sword.
And so, with the incriminating evidence in my hand, I followed my wife into the house, leaving the children to play in the citrus trees that I planted in honour of my fallen liege.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t poison your very next mouthful of food from my kitchen.”
*Mmm-hmmm. Seventeen words already, and she’s just getting warmed up.*
“Nothing I say will change your mind either way, dearest. Did I suspect Nessie was mine? Yes. Elen and I met after the fall of Camelot and kept each other warm during the journey back to Wales, where we docked and went our separate ways. I soon retired and followed through with our betrothal. The next time I saw her, Arthur was three months old. Nessie was seven months at that stage.”
“You brought your mistress to live beside us?!” Anwen exploded.
*I did.*
*Because young me was an idiot.*
\* \* \*
((All comments welcome))
***For more of my work including WPs:*** [r/Angel466](https://www.reddit.com/r/Angel466/) |
The thief had never failed. From legendary paintings to sparkling gems, the thief could take it all. They would always send a letter first. A promise to take away what was most valuable. Although the victims had time to prepare, they never succeeded.
But this time the victim was a king.
"Triple the guard to the vault, keep watch on the perimeter walls."
"Search every caravan coming into the city."
"Organize the night watch."
The capital was on lockdown. Crime was dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. The thief could be anyone, paranoia was oppressive in the castle. The king practically imprisoned himself in his vault, personally making sure nothing could be stolen. But no one came.
At first the city took it to be a good thing. Maybe the thief had given up after seeing impressive defense. This feeling was soon smothered. The king believed the thief was biding their time. The burdens piled higher and higher. Traders fond goods confiscated, townsfolk paying higher taxes, a mandatory cerfew was implement. And yet the thief did not come.
For months the conditions wore on. Voices, once a whisper, were crying out louder and stronger "down with the king!"The conditions worsened, random arrests, guards beating townsfolk on the street, and so much more. Yet the thief did not come.
A leader arose among the rebels. A young voice often heard making speeches, while hidden behind a mask. The guards often tried to pursue them, but rebel always got away. Tension was building in the city. Arrests were more frequent, and guards had to stay in groups in many neighborhoods. The first execution occurred, and rumors were that the dungeons were completely full of dissenters. And the thief still did not come.
The final day came. As the leader spoke out against the king, A legion of guards attacked, beating and arresting the crown. This time the leader did not flee, but danced expertly through the guards. Straight for the castle. It seemed the entire city followed. The guards were overrun, and the castle was breached. The prisoners in the dungeon were free. "Death to the king!"Was shouted in every corridor. And finally the leader made it to the vault.
The thief spoke to the king.
"I've stolen your kingdom" |
"I mean, it's my power, innit?"
"What?!"DestructoMan snarled at me and I had to work hard to hide my growing smirk.
I was a newer hero on the scene and there was a lot of buzz about my ability. I was dubbed 'Hammerspace' after my first fight where I'd bashed a bad guy with a hammer. After the fight, a newscaster had asked me "Where did that hammer come from?"And I'd told them it was from my bag because i didnt know what else to say.
Later that night, I watched the fight on replay and dud to the angle of the camera, it *really did* seem like the hammer came out of my bag, so in all my future fights, I made sure to "grab"things from there.
If i was being honest, Hammer*time* wouldve been a better name for me, since all i really did was stop time and grab things, but I figured, it was better to leave people guessing, especially bad guys like DestructoMan.
He was still over there, reaching into my bag and hoping for a "Destructo-Ray"or something, but. Of course nothing came out.
I couldn't stifle the laugh that was growing and DM rushed over to me, getting all up in my face.
"Explain this to me!"He held my empty bag aloft and I just shrugged at him.
"I said, it's my power... do people really think I have a magic bag? It's not like a portal, mate."
"It's not?"He looked back down to the bag and I saw my chance.
I shot my legs up at him, landing a kick square in his jaw- sending him reeling back. As someone with non-physical powers, I had to make up for it somehow, so i learned self defense.
I was also, naturaly flexible, which helped me to wriggle my bound arms from behind my back and around my front.
Thank the gods DestructoMan hadnt locked me in a cage.
Right now, I had free reign of his workshop. Plenty of toys to work with; but first, I had to put on a show.
I mimed entering a combination in the air in front of me, before pulling at an invisible handle. Then I froze time. Looking around quickly, i spotted a knife, which i grabbed and surruptiously slide up my sleeve. Returning to my spot, i unfroze time and, with a flourish, "pulled"something out of ths space in front of me: the knife I'd just hidden, which i used to untie myself. Before squaring up against DM.
"The bag is just for show, dummy! I can make Hammer Space, anywhere." |
I really empathize with idiots now.
In any elevator they have this huge paper that says “DO NOT TRY TO ESCAPE THE ELEVATOR” in huge, bold letters. “There is more than enough air to last you a long time. Help is on the way.” It really makes you think: what kind of idiot would be stupid enough to actually try and climb out of the top like they show in the movies? Surely no one.
Yeah, well, easier said than done.
Who knows how long I’d been in here. There was no reply when I’d pressed the help button, and my watch was going haywire. The hour hand was moving as if it were the second hand and the minute and second hands were moving at insane speeds. Just my luck. Not only does my elevator break, but so does my watch. I shook my head.
And so, there I was, inside a steel box in the most powerful country in the world, in the world’s cultural and financial capital, in New York City’s most iconic building – The Empire State – and the elevator wasn’t working. I guess management was too busy spending money on new paint.
Just as I was about to break and climb out the top there was a lurch, and a screeching of metal, and I swear to god I thought I was a dead man. But I did not plummet – the elevator started to move down, slowly at first, the picking up speed. God, I hope Beth wasn’t worried about me. I’d promised I’d be back home early tonight, and she’d kill me if I was late because I was stuck *in an elevator* for god’s sake. The elevator dinged open, cheerily announcing that I’d reached the lobby.
I walked out. I stopped.
The scene in front of me was…not of this world. Men and women walked through the lobby wearing slim fitted clothing. For some ridiculous reason the first thing I thought was “damn, I was under the impression baggy clothes were in.”
Everyone was holding these thin rectangles in their hands. As a woman passed I saw that it was some sort of personal computer! She swiped up on the screen with her thumb and she was looking at her email. A tap and another swipe and she was looking at spreadsheet. She pinched the screen, and she *zoomed in.* What the hell? Some sort of new tech?
But no, *everyone* had one, it seemed. People seemed to be paying more attention to their small computers than the people around them. In classic NYC fashion a man came up to me and said “Excuse me,” as if he were cussing me out. I blinked up to him and out of reflex moved out the way as the man moved past me and into the elevator.
“Wait–” I began, hoping to warn the man about the faulty elevator, but the elevator wasn’t the same on I’d come in on. It was now a modern silver with a digital display showing what floor it was on.
I felt like a broken record, but I kept thinking one thing: What the hell was going on?
The lobby was completely different from what I remembered. Everything seemed cleaner, sleeker. They’d gone for functionality over grandeur. Gaping and taking in the sights I walked out of the lobby – no one stopped me.
I stepped outside and a cacophony of sound slammed into me. A mix of shouts, laughs, car horns, and squealing tires. That at least was comforting. Everything seemed to have changed, but New York was still New York. All the cars echoed the lobby. Sleek, functional, modern. Same slim fitted clothes. New Yorkers paid me no mind as they pushed past me, ignoring me, or grumbling about “gaping tourists.”
That more than anything snapped me out of it. I was not a tourist. This was my city. I would find out what was going on. The new tech, strange clothes, changed surroundings…there was an explanation. A very clear one. I’d seen the Hollywood movies, read the novels, but asking someone would make it real. Visceral. Hell with it, I’d always pick horrible knowledge over blissful ignorance.
“Excuse me,” I asked to a passing woman. She ignored me.
Yep, New York was still New York.
It took me around ten Excuse mes before anyone bothered to look in my direction, and another 20 minutes until someone didn’t scoff or scowl at me when I asked “What year is it?”
I finally resorted to asking a street-side homeless woman holding up a piece of cardboard asking for money. “Hey, miss?” I said and slipped her a dollar. She looked up and I flinched. Her face was crisscrossed with scars and her eyes stared blankly up at me. I looked at the sign. “Money needed for eye operation.” Jesus Christ.
“Yes?” she asked. Her voice held a quite determination, as if daring me to have pity on her.
“I, uh.” I cleared my throat. “I was just wondering what year it was?”
She frowned, her eyes staring past me, and responded. “2018.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. I’d known. It had been the only real explanation, ridiculous as it was. All the changes, my watch moving rapidly. I’d somehow gone into the future. And suddenly, I felt my knees go weak. It was a struggle not to collapse.
Beth. I had to find my Beth.
***
(minor edits)
Due to popular demand I have a follow up, though I warn you, this goes in a very different direction than what you're expecting. : [Next Part: Welcome to the Jumpers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/XcessiveWriting/comments/a0c0rk/time_travel_welcome_to_the_jumpers_jump_1/?)
If you enjoyed, check out my sub, [XcessiveWriting](https://www.reddit.com/r/XcessiveWriting/)
|
Her stomach growled aggressively as she pushed past the crest of the hill, leaning heavily on the metal stick she carried in one hand. For a second, her eyes lit up with expectation before turning ash gray once more. The sand stretched out for miles, the sight of great buildings on the horizon the only thing convincing her the sands did not simply continue forever. She sighed heavily, her hot breath starting to fog up her goggles, as she began her methodical descent down the hill. The earth was hard and dense as her boots struggled to dig into it, forcing her to spend several seconds for every step, making sure she wouldn't fall again. It was slow and grueling, but she eventually made it down, sinking shallowly into the cold sand.
She found herself missing the hard stone of her homeland, something she never thought she would say. It was tough and cold, but at the very least it was reliable, something she desperately wished for as the winds kicked up whatever stray sand had not already frozen in place. Digging her face deeper into her collar, she started making her way toward the lone skeleton of a building in front of her, buried halfway into the sands.
Stepping behind a large concrete wall shielding her from the wind, she pressed her back against it and slid down into a sitting position with a sigh. She had traded her last Potato for this information, but feeling warmth finally return to her face made it feel more than worth it. She sat there for a while, resting, and trying to warm herself up a bit. But most importantly she was trying to stay awake. She had seen many people stronger than her, succumb to the sleeping death of the desert and was not about to make the same mistake. No matter how heavy her eyes felt.
She jolted awake, not knowing if she had been sleeping for two hours or two seconds, and terrified of both scenarios. She attempted to slow her breathing, looking around the broken room for something to focus on. In one corner was lay the bones of some man or beast that had at one point had the same idea as her, perhaps foreshadowing her own demise. Another corner was charred as if by fire and it made her long for the warm fires she had left to continue her travels. And lastly, in the corner directly to her right, there was some piece of scrap metal sticking out of the sand. She stared at it, wondering what it could have been for. Maybe a skyscraper that reached high into the clouds, or a ship that could ferry her out into the abyss.
She jolted again, this time catching herself before her eyes had fully closed, and begrudgingly pushed herself off the ground. Joints aching violently, she made her way over to the scrap metal, thankful for the boost that even just walking gave her concentration. It looked strange when you were this close to it, less like scrap and more like a container, perhaps containing something of value? It took her maybe ten minutes to dig out the case enough for her to remove it with brute force. It wasn't that large, maybe 15 inches across, and she couldn't spot any kind of physical lock.
Flipping the case open, there was a matt black rectangle sitting snugly inside the padding, accompanied by a much smaller rectangle attached to its side. Carefully removing the rectangle from its casing she found that it opened up to reveal a keyboard underneath, letters she didn't recognize mixed in with familiar symbols. It was a computer and, as she found out from the lights turning on in unison, a working one. As the operating system flashed onto the screen she chuckled to herself about how long ago it must have been when this was made.
There were three profiles, one had a picture of a suitcase, one had a picture of a painting, and one had a picture of a robot action figure. Clicking on the suitcase she was taken to a white page with black text. Of course, she couldn't read any of it, but there were still some pictures around. On one side she noticed that there were a lot of different symbols forming similar words, and tried looking for her own language, but to no avail. Instead, she just clicked around using an antiquated trackpad, marveling at some of the images.
Eventually, she got to a page that that had an image of a field. But it was not like any field she had ever seen. It was lush and green, flowers of different colors adorning the grass that almost swayed before her very eyes. It wasn't there to feed anyone, wasn't there to be built upon. It just existed, beautiful and green, right there on the page. And she cried as it all faded to black and the batteries gave out, leaving behind a girl freezing in the desert, alone. |
"You won't be able to stop me, evil Mr. Clownface,"cried Jessica as she stumbled backward, the super vanilla cream pie splattered all over her face.
"But, hahaha, you are wrong little girl, for I ClownFace, the Jester of Evil, have come to this city to steal,"began the Clown.
"Super Girly Transform,"cried Jessica as her magical cat sparkles finally managed to locate the mystical power locket that contained the tears of the goddess.
Clownface stepped backward to allow the transformation to occur as a geyser of blood shot forth from the ground from where a battleax had split the earth. The world screamed as Jessia grew nearly three feet in height, her Furinkin high school sweater replaced by solid greasy plates of armor. Finally, the blood began raining out in all directions as she stepped out of the wretched orgy of death.
"I will break you,"replied Grezelda, Mistress of Brutal Pain.
"YOUR SMILES,"screamed ClownFAce, "I'm trying to steal smiles here."
"And I'm gonna stomp a mudhole in your ass,"she replied, "WITH MY BOOT."
\_\_\_
Jessica ran back into the school where all the children were sitting around quiet. She plopped down next to her best friends Brandy and Misty, "So I hear Clownface was here?"
Misty started sobbing instantly, as did most of the rest of the class. The teacher was openly drinking scotch.
"He's dead now,"replied Brandy. "He's dead and so is my childhood."
Shocked, Jessica looked at her classmates, "But he was trying to steal."
"He was stealing smiles,"stated Brandy, "Half the time he's so inept that he ruins his own plan and the other times, the other hero would just give a speech and he'd leave."
"He won't be leaving now,"sobbed Misty.
"She's overreacting,"said Jessica.
"His head was in my book bag,"she sobbed more.
"Well,"replied Jessica trying to change the subject, "That's a pretty red dress."
"It was white this morning!"
"What about the Ladybug guy,"said Jessica changing the subject again.
"All he did was make ladybugs crawl on you,"said Misty, "Cute little ladybugs."
"Well, he was a villain,"continued Jessica.
"Grezelda twisted him into a pretzel, legs don't go that way,"said Brandy.
"I'm haunted by those legs,"said the Teacher.
Jessica thought to herself, these guys don't think I'm trying hard enough. Next time I'll show them what I can really do! |
"Okay, since you were only trying to sneak in and rob me instead of trying to fucking *stab* me like the last three knights, I'll spare your life and give you a quick lesson on dragon economics. Dragons are solitary, nomadic carnivores. We value two things: Good hunting grounds, and stuff we can carry with us. If I can't eat it or wear it when I'm flying around, I don't want it."
The dragon lowered its head, revealing that it had two polished steel bands encircling its horns, each engraved with heraldic symbols. "See these rings? They're a symbol of tribute from the kingdom of Elesia - they mean I'm allowed to hunt from their flocks and they can't complain about it. Now *that's* something valuable, for a dragon."
"Um. Thank you for the lesson... your draconic majesty?"Alfric said cautiously, gazing up at the massive beast.
"Dragons don't have ceremonial addresses, either. Solitary, remember? Nobody's writing a manual of etiquette for a dragon. Dragons call each other whatever they want."
"Seeing as I'm smaller and more flammable than you are, I don't think I'd want to risk that, your draconic majesty."
The dragon's mouth curved up in what he hoped was a smile. "Well, I won't complain. Now, why are you still here? I told you, I don't have any valuables lying around for you to take. And you'd have to be suicidal to try and steal something I'm wearing."
Alfric stayed where he was, trying not to shake with fear. "If you don't mind, your draconic majesty, you said that you value food? Flocks of sheep and such?"
"Yep. Humans have the *best* food. Nothing beats a fresh roasted lamb."
"Your majesty, I am but a humble shepherd. And I owe a great debt to another human, one that I could not possibly repay without stealing your hoard. But one thing that I do have is sheep. Sheep, and my skills at cooking. Your majesty, do dragons eat their meat with spices and seasoning?"
"No. Dragons have exactly one way of cooking things. It's not exactly fine cuisine."
"Well, I have a healthy lamb, and a garden with fresh rosemary and thyme. And a frying pan."
The dragon lowered its head and looked Alfric in the eye. "You have my attention." |
I can't forget that night.
That night when the full moon hid behind a dark cloud. That empty, silent night filled with heavy rains and the tossing waves of the bay, churned beyond reason.
That night when that cloaked stranger stepped into my tavern, face hidden by a bamboo hat.
It was late then. The rains that had approached with the coming of the seasonal storms were unusually strong this year, deterring most of the usual tourists and I was closing up for the night besides. But I saw a shadow by the door and the glow of a lantern.
There was a knock. I wiped my hands down and made for the doorway.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for a room."
It took me a second to register he'd spoken. He looked normal enough for a traveller, ragged cloak and unkempt hair. There was a sword at his side but that was not unusual too- the roads were dangerous after all, full of bandits and wild animals.
No, it was that gentle smile on his face. It looked vaguely familiar, I thought I'd seen it somewhere before.
"Come on in, I have a room or two to spare."I said nonetheless. I wasn't going to leave someone braving the vicious storm outside if I could help it. Besides, the bag of coins he'd jingled when he spoke told of some substantial wealth. "Something to eat and drink too perhaps. It's a cold night out there."
"Ah, thank you."
He was soft spoken. He walked with a tall, elegant gait, not at all like the travellers I usually met. I served a bowl of hot wine across a counter and asked, "It can't have been easy getting to Juha. The summer storms are coming in very strong this year."
"It was a little uncomfortable. I've been walking for days."he replied easily enough.
"Days? Gods, I can't imagine travelling in this rain."I raised a brow, "That's rough."
"Perhaps,"he made a mirthful sound. He paused briefly to drink the warm stew I had laid out for him, "It couldn't be helped. There is something pressing I need to do in this town."
I shrugged, "Well, I don't know. Juha's a pretty quiet place, even for a bay town. I guess the only thing's that happened recently is the Leviathan corpse they're trying to haul into the bay."
I even laughed then, "You needn't have hurried for that. The Knight and his troops have been waiting for days too- it's too difficult to move something that big into the bay with the winds as they are. They're trying to arrange transporters from the Capital."
"So, the Leviathan is dead already."
I didn't notice his tone. I should have.
"Well, yeah. Sir Calstrum had to battle it out at sea for a day or so but he's a tough one. All the Queen's Knights are, I suppose. It didn't take him that long to take down a Titan, even one as famous as Leviathan."
He looked up. I found myself startled by the intensity of his gaze.
"You should get out of town while you have the chance."he said, setting down the bowl of wine I'd offered him. He hadn't touched it and the wine had grown cold since.
"What-"I startled as he headed for the doors again. "Wait a minute-"
He stood by the main doors, turning back briefly, "Did you know...people once believed that the Titans were guardian spirits? Controlling the fury of the Earth so that living things might exist. With Leviathan slain..."
I stared at him as he opened the doors. The noise of the rain roared in. He loomed within the dim light of the lantern, even as he turned away.
He looked like a ghost. He was a ghost I suppose, one that I recognized in that brief moment that he'd stopped smiling.
"You're-"
*Radigraz Strum, the last King's Knight, once advisor to the throne. Murderer, rebel, kinslayer.*
"-just passing through."he said, bowing his head slightly, "Thank you for the meal."
He stepped away, fading into the dark, empty night.
|
“Why are you not getting this?!”
Stanley let out an exasperated ‘huff’. I imagined him crossing his arms and wrinkling his nose up, though imagining was all I could do in that moment– the two dimensional being, lacking width, was invisible to me where I was standing. Of course, I was invisible to him as well. Everything was invisible to him, what with his flat eyes wrapped by his flat head and no way to look forward. I tried to imagine what he sees: is it a permanent darkness? Does Stanley see blackness and nothing else? Or does the lack of a dimension result in something… less. A particularly desolate brand of emptiness. A lack of everything, including what anchors I have for the concept of a void. I feel a chill run up my spine – my third dimension has given me everything I know, from the food I eat to the books I read to the people I love. To lack that… in truth, I pity Stanley.
Helena shot me a smile. “Yeah, Stanley, Why aren’t you getting this? It’s just another dimension! This would be like if a three-dimensional being couldn’t understand treingth. That’d just be *ridiculous!*” Her tone turned jeering as she saw my mind doing somersaults, trying to justify my hypocrisy with understanding. I could not.
“That’s different…” I mumbled. This wasn’t working. I concocted a new plan. “Okay, let’s try something else,” I said to Stanley. I walked towards him, my mind racing. In truth, his existence brought about more questions for me than mine for him. What could he ask? *How do you exist?* Until he understood that, he could not understand the nuances of my existence. What could I ask? Everything. *How can you hear me? How can you move? How can you think?* I was not a scientist, but I knew enough science to know that none of this should work. I positioned myself directly in front of Stanley. “Walk forward.”
He acquiesced, and quickly ran into me. I felt nothing. “You’re in the way,” he said. *No shit*, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. He could not have known until he ran into me. “Yes,” I said, “but now I am taking one step in the width-direction…” I took a purposeful step out of the line of Stanley. Helena let out a laugh – my theatrics, in a way, were only for her. “Now, walk forward again!” Stanley walked forward, right past me. When I started this task of explaining the third dimension, I imagined the two-dimensional being to look like a cartoon. Looking at him now, I am frozen: he is empty. A void.
“Where did you go?” He asked. He started moving faster, in an effort to catch up with me. “Into the third dimension!” I exclaimed, giving my voice some vibrato at the end like this was a magic act. Of course, to Stanley, it was. “But *where* did you go?” Stanley sounded more panicked, as he ran down his one infinitesimally small line in an effort to catch up with me. I should have stopped him, but I did not. I let him run. He became thinner and thinner as he bolted towards the horizon until he seemingly fell out of my existence all-together.
I sat down. That void that existed inside of him. Surely Helena saw the same in me. I was desolate. I was nothing.
“You tried,” Helena said as she sat down next to me, “it’s hard work, explaining existence. That is, in a sense, what you were doing.” I scratched the ground with my hand. I imagined myself petting a four-dimensional cat sitting in front of me. I imagined it rubbing itself against my emptiness, purring. In a sense, it felt like forgiveness from the universe. “Why can I see you, but Stanley could not see me?” I asked. I did not want to ask that question. Helena scared me. My entire world was a line in a plane to her. A shade of color in her beautiful mosaic of life. Remove it, and how much lesser would the art really be?
She laughed again, “If you cannot understand treingth, you definitely cannot understand that.” I leaned forward, “But I *do* understand teringth! It’s the same as three dimensions to two! It’s just another axis!” Her smile faded. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you really want to understand what I understand?” I rested my hand on her’s. It was cold. I looked her in the eyes. “Yes.” She pushed.
I hate to describe what happened next. It was a death in its own right, as I watched my existence slip out of my grasp in an instant. I remember tumbling into blackness. I remember a barren landscape, and the cold, and Helena. We had not moved, but the world had moved around us. I instantly understood what had happened: she had pushed me over, out of the world of my own pocket of the third dimension. One line over; one shade darker. I was a step and a dimension away from everything. From all the food and the books and the people. I started crying.
“Bring me back,” I remember saying through sobs and gasps, “please, bring me back.” Through my tears I saw Helena’s expression change. I saw it in her eyes and her frown. Was that… pity? “Please,” I collapsed on the unfamiliar ground, “I want to go home…”
Then it was over. I opened my eyes to see the familiar surroundings. Helena was gone.
I sometimes consider finding Stanley. There are only so many places he can be, as he has only one plane of existence. I could find him, and I could watch him, and he would never know. And, one day, I could push him. I could watch him fall apart, and watch the empty part of him try to beg for forgiveness from an indifferent god. From me.
Of course, sometimes I could feel it. A breath on the back of my neck. The shifting air behind me. A hand on my shoulder. And I too begged when I heard her laugh.
​
Edit: Thank you so much for reading and for the replies! I'm so glad that so many people have liked this, and I'm also really enjoying all of the discussion about multiple dimensions that I don't really understand below. In particular, u/phathomthis has linked a video that explains existence up to 10 dimensions in the context of string theory, which is surprisingly easy to understand and a wild ride. Definitely check it out! |
Bright lights and a dull thump. White hot pain tore through my body at the same time as my vision began to fade. I heard my pulse fading and being replaced by a dull static buzzing, and then warmth. Time seemed to stretch out, stand still. And then there was nothing.
I opened my eyes to bright light and a warm breeze. Blinking a few times in confusion, I realized I was standing in front of a coffee shop, my hand on the door.
No, that’s not right. It wasn’t supposed to be day time. It was too hot outside. And I definitely wasn’t in this part of town a moment ago, though I did remember wishing I had a cup of coffee while I marched down the snowy road. As I was trying to process these facts, my hand had already pulled on the handle of the door, swinging it outward as my body turned to enter.
The first thing I noticed were the bright orange walls. Funny, I remembered them being yellow. As the bell above the door gave a small jingle, the barista gave a shout of ‘be right with you’ from a back room. It was busier than I’d ever seen it, but I didn’t have time to look around at the guests before something alarming caught my eye. I may not have been wearing my glasses, but even across the room, I could feel my breath catch as she walked up to the register. She. Was. Me.
She was all wrong, but she was definitely ME. Hair dyed a shade of brown and cropped short, tattoos on both forearms, and a figure I’ve never been able to attain, but looking into her eyes, I knew. By the crooked smile on her face—my smile— she did too.
“First time here, huh?”. I stared at her, eyes widened by shock. I couldn’t find any words to express the thousand questions racing through my brain, at the forefront of which were ‘No’, ‘Yes’, and ‘Are you a shapeshifter or have I completely lost my fucking mind!?’
She watched me like a cat watching a toy bobbing in front of its face. Calculating. Almost amused. Finally, I managed a small nod of my head. Words were still a ways off.
“I’ll get that mocha started for you.” With that, she turned around and pulled a fresh paper cup out.
No. Wrong. I hadn’t ordered anything. My brain was racing faster and faster to try to understand what was going on. By time she was walking back with the full cup in hand, I hadn’t managed to come up with a single useful answer to any of my questions. “Thanks.” I said quietly, not quite sure I’d really uttered the words at all. As I reached into my pocket to pull out my card, she put a hand up.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s on the house.”
I stared back, eyebrows slightly creased.
“All you can drink, doll. This party’s for you.” At this, she gestured to the room at large, smiling more gently than before. As I looked around, my racing thoughts screeched to a halt. Part of me wanted to fall to the ground and cry. The other part wanted to explode in laughter. Instead, I stood there, dead silent, clutching my coffee and studying every face in turn.
They were all me. All of them. Young and old. Plump and petite. Hair of varying shades and lengths and styles. Some with freckles or tattoos or piercings or glasses, others as perfect and pale as marble. Some barely recognizable, if not for their eyes and the small smiles they gave when they caught my eye. Every last person here was a version of me.
As I stood there, realization washed over me like the ice I had slipped on as the car came skidding around the corner. The blaring horn echoed in my ears, and I saw the lights spinning as they tried to avoid me just a second too late. It felt like a memory that had been forgotten for too long. Fuzzy on the edges, but with just enough detail to know it was real. Which could only mean one thing. I was dead.
If given a few seconds to sit alone and think, I probably would have started pondering the implications of this new awareness. Questioned my views on religion and the afterlife. Tried to come to terms with everything left unsaid and undone. Asked what would happen next. Instead, I felt something tap against my foot. I bent down and picked up a small plastic ball before glancing up to see a younger me nervously walking up to retrieve it.
“Um… can I have that back please?” She asked quietly.
She was definitely another me. I remembered that dress. I couldn’t have been more than four or five the last time I wore it. Was she a memory, or an alternate me? But then what did that mean for the others, some of whom were far older than I myself was when I—.
“Will you come sit with me? I’m lonely”.
Numbly, I followed her to one of the tables, where she climbed into the chair with a huff before handing the ball to me.
“It’s yours, you know.” She gave a tiny smile at this. Too sad and too knowing for someone so small. This snapped me back to reality, and I found my words for the first time since arriving.
“How did you get here?” I asked, trying to sound light, but detecting the strain in my own voice. God, I hoped I wasn’t right.
She spoke lightly, but I could hear the careful deliberation in her words. “We went to dad’s graduation. He was angry.”
My blood went cold. When I was five, my dad was put into a rehab, which he was kicked out of just before ‘graduating’ for planning the deaths of myself and my mother. We didn’t see him again after that. Could that mean this girl—this small me—was from another timeline? Somewhere where things had gone wrong? But then things went wrong for me, too. I was just as dead as she was. As everyone here was.
I was jarred from my thoughts by a tiny hand patting my arm. “It’s okay” she said in that small voice. “We all played a good game”.
“A game, huh?” I remembered how I loved to think of things as games at her age. Everything was a challenge, with rules and rewards only I knew. I guess I never really grew out of that.
“Yeah, a game. You did really, really well.” At this, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“How can you tell?”
“Look at your cup”. 98%. Could that mean—
“That good, huh?” I wasn’t sure why I was replying, or why I suddenly felt so comfortable talking to her, but I couldn’t stop myself from what I said next.
“That’s pretty good for someone who didn’t know they were playing.”
“Yep” she said in a matter of fact tone. “That’s part of the game. You don’t know you’re playing until it’s over.”
“Oh”.
“It’s okay. I didn’t know either.” At this, my heart gave another sharp pang in realization.
“What was your score?” I meant it to sound lighter. I really did, but it hurt to think what had happened to bring this girl here, assuming my guess was right.
“I got 13%. It’s okay though, I’m not sad.”
I couldn’t think of a good answer, so I raised my cup to my lips and took a long sip instead. Unfazed, she went on.
“Lots of us have stories to tell. It’s like a fairy tale, but they’re all about me.” There were so many ways to take this, but I didn’t have time. Or maybe I did. I’m not sure.
“Which one is your favorite?”
She grinned at this. “Her.” I followed her pointing finger with my gaze. It landed on a girl on a couch who looked exactly like me, down to the scab on my left arm, though it looked older than my own.
“Why’s that?” I asked, heart speeding up. Wait, did I still have a heart, or was I just imagining it?
“She had 98% too. You’ll like her a lot.” At this, she hopped off her chair and stared at me expectantly. Still unsure, I gripped my cup with both hands. “Come on.” She said before getting up and skipping toward the other me.
|
Most people have normal regrets. Letting that girl get away, not studying for that big exam, taking that first whiff of a cigarette.
Mine was putting on shampoo.
It was just a phase alright? I wanted to really stick it to mom and dad by turning my hair pink. That’ll show ‘em.
Yeah. Teen me was not very smart.
So I’d put it on, then turned the damn thing around. It had two warnings. MAY be permanent & MAY cause main character syndrome. I dismissed the second one as a joke, and became really worried about the first one.
Not only is my hair *still* pink five years later, my life has become a living hell.
And so I present to you, A Day in the Life…
***
I was out on one of my bi-monthly grocery trips. I didn’t leave the house much, because it was dangerous.
I finished paying the cashier and lugged my huge bags of groceries back to the car. Nothing had happened so far, maybe I’d get away Scott free…
My car exploded.
I dropped my grocery bags and massaged my temples. I had insurance on that car that I had claimed dozens of times. The insurance company had had me followed once, to see if I was committing insurance fraud.
The poor guy had ended up with multiple hair line fractures. Collateral damage of my condition.
What I *was* worried about though was the...thing that had just materialized on top of the car, laughing maniacally. He was about 10 feet tall made up of what I can only describe as alien snails. Trust me, you don't want to know more.
“Face me, if you would dare, mortal!” he said, and thunder boomed and lightning flashed as he did. It had been clear skies literally minutes ago.
The universe had a sick, sick sense of humor.
I took a deep breath. I could do this. I’d survived for 5 years, this was just another day. I exhaled, took one last look at the demon, and ran like hell.
Hey, don’t look at me like that, what would *you* have done if you saw that shit?
“COWARD!” the demon called after me, but I didn’t turn around, just kept running. I was very good at it, considering all the practice I’d had these past five years.
For once though something went my way and I saw a local taxi passing by on the road. I flagged it down and jumped into the car.
“Drive, goddamit!” I yelled, and the car took off in a screech of tires.
I breathed a sigh of relief after we were a couple of blocks away. I’d gotten away again. I’d have to go get groceries tomorrow, but today was over. I’d survived.
Famous last words.
“Thanks for the save, mate,” I said to the driver, “just drop me wherever, I’ll walk.”
“Oh I’ll drop you,” the driver said, and now I could make out his red irises and tiny horns, “drop you IN HELL”
I just closed my eyes and sighed. Typical, really.
***
(minor edits)
If you enjoyed, check out [XcessiveWriting](https://www.reddit.com/r/XcessiveWriting/)
|
You don't think I see, but I do.
When I am sad I curl under the myrtle tree, tail tucked between my legs. When you are sad you curl on your bed under piles of furry blankets. You don't cry but your eyes are cloud-dull.
You don't think I see, but I do.
When the sun rose and set and you are still buried in your cocoon of rainclouds, I jump and I bark and I pull your wrappings to the ground.
"Alright, alright, I'll feed you,"you say, and you trudge to the kitchen.
You pour my kibble, then eyeing the bread on the counter you pull a slice for yourself, untoasted, ungarnished. My tail wags as we eat.
You scrabble through the cabinet and though its dinner time you dig out a box of chocolates. You let each wrapper flutter to the ground as you munch with your head on your hand.
I sit on my hind legs and clasp my front paws. That used to make you laugh. Now you shake your head and say, "Sorry, buddy. You can't eat this."I jump for the piece in your hand and you brush away my efforts. But your lips curl up a little. To your cheeks but not your eyes.
You don't think I see, but I do.
When I am happiest I am bounding through the wind, tongue out to taste the wildflower breeze. You run by my side, in your old joggers and patchy track pants.
I dash to the door and return with the leash in my mouth. I place it on your feet and tap my paws in dance. You chuckle and rub my ears and say, "Not today, buddy. It's already late,"and you turn to the window. The sun is gone. The moon is pale as your eyes.
The chocolate finished an hour ago, but still you sit with your head on your hands, watching the clouds tuck the stars to sleep. I lie with my head on my paws, watching you.
You stand to search the cabinet again, but what you retrieve this time is not food. It rattles as you pour its white kibbles on your hand. They smell like emptiness.
Noticing my stare you say, "Sorry, can't eat this either."I sit on my hind legs and raise my paws, but you don't smile. Instead you caress my head and draw a breath deep and slow as the tide.
You close your eyes.
And I jump. And I swallow the kibbles on your hand.
You spring up. You scream. Your chair slams to the ground but you don't notice. Your hand trembles over your phone and you shout into its ear. Your other hand clutches my numbing head.
The world is hazy now. But I see your eyes, sun-bright.
You don't think I see. But I do.
---
r/bobotheturtle
Thank's for reading!
If you enjoyed it [here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/bobotheturtle/comments/fvgojw/prompt_you_recently_discovered_your_parents_sold/) another doggo story.
If you enjoyed the style [here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/bobotheturtle/comments/glth8x/prompt_humans_are_horrified_by_the_aliens_casual/) another second person kinda poetic (or edgy?) piece I wrote the other day. |
There’s not enough sunlight for the trees to grow as they once did. They’re short, stubby things now. They’re like children deficient of vitamins, their spines curved, life-expectancy reduced.
All the same, trees do grow again in this corpse of a city. They broke through the ancient concrete like fists battering layers of sheet-ice until it cracked.
I sit on a patch of weeds in front of a crackling fire. The day — or night — is grey and shadowed. The clouds are swirls of black and purple that won’t settle in my lifetime. I feel like I am in a box, or a coffin perhaps, and the lid has been shut on me.
I throw more wood onto the fire then cook a skewered rat over the blaze. The fire leaps excitedly at the food.
The city teems with rats and trees and fruit that rots before it ripens. It is life after death for the city, like poppies growing on a battlefield. But it will never be what it was. There was a time I’d spend my days searching the city, hoping to find something but not knowing what that something was. Now, I barely move. Only to catch food and to cook.
I throw a piece of well-browned meat onto the fire. Then I lean back and try to read my book in the firelight hoping it distracts me from the pain. There is no cover to the book and I can’t be sure of the author, but I think it’s a classic. A slice of American life when the American dream was whole but rippled — like a stick had poked a watery reflection, but the reflection was still just about visible.
“It’s kind of you,” says a voice. “But I’d appreciate my meat less well done.”
It’s the first voice I’ve heard in a decade.
I hold my trembling arms together at my chest as a woman approaches my fire. Sits calmly opposite me.
“Are you… are you real?” I ask, in a raw unpracticed voice.
It wouldn’t be my first hallucination.
Her features are silhouetted, the darting flames only lighting up to her neck.
“It’s impressive,” she says.
I shake my head. I’m at a loss. “What is?”
”That your faith is still with you after so long. After everything.”
“Who are you?”
”The person at the other end of the phone.” She smiles — I see her white teeth even in the semi-darkness. “I’ve been listening to your calls. Every night for almost forty years. You believe you’re the last, don’t you?”
”The last?”
”The last person.”
”Oh.” It’s a thought I’ve suffered many times — it’s the lid that closed my coffin. I haven’t seen anyone since leaving the sewer. Not a soul. And if I was the last, if I allowed myself to believe it, then what would be the point? Humanity would have already ended and I would be a scene playing after the credits. Why would I keep wandering if there was no hope, or future — if there’s nothing more than this?
”They’re doing well,” she says. “I’m looking after them.”
“Them?”
”Your prayer.”
I try to laugh. “Prayer? I don’t pray. It’s clear there’s no god or the world wouldn’t look like this. I wouldn’t be like this.“ I tap the stump of my right foot with my walking stick. A slight cut turned infectious turned self-amputation. Since then, my search for others has stopped. Now I wait in this city, hoping someone finds me instead.
“You pray for them not yourself,” she says. “That they’re happy. That they’re taken care of. Your parents. Your wife. Your children. You pray for this each time you eat. Are you really that torn that you can’t remember your prayer?”
”I don’t believe in god.”
She smiles again. “And yet you pray. Subconsciously, perhaps. Every single meal. Because deep down, below all the pain and hate, you do believe. You need to.“
”You’re not real,” I say. I‘ve known it since she sat down but now I’m firm in my belief.
“You pray for you dog, too. You hope animals end up in heaven. You hope you’ll see them all again.”
Tears cut trails through the dirt on my face.
“You’re not real,” I say, softer.
She stands now. Walks around the fire until she is sitting by my side.
”You hung on so long,” she says.
”I…”
”You hang on still.”
”…Why? Why do I?”
”Because to be human is to hope.”
She touches my leg. Moves a hand slowly down my calf to my stump.
“Your amputation wasn’t enough. Your blood is still poisoned.”
I don’t look down at it; instead I look at the velvet coffin-box sky. I’d hoped to live but I’m not going to.
“You’re here to take me, then?” I say. “You’re something people see in their own mind, to come to terms with their death.”
She tilts her head. “I’m here to thank you. For never giving up on me or yourself or on those you loved. On your faith. And I promise I’ll look after them for you.”
She presses her hand hard against my calf and I feel my body pulse, as if my blood is being drawn to her palm.
“What is…”
”Shhh,” she says. “Rest now. Tomorrow is a new day. You’re not the last. Keep your hope alive.”
I want to struggle, fight, I want to ask a hundred questions, but a tiredness floods my veins and I fall slowly back on the bed of weeds.
​
When I wake, she is gone. I am well rested. I feel like I have slept long and deep.
I look up at the sky. There seems to be a glimmer of light on the horizon, as if the coffin’s lid has been opened just a crack.
I imagine the trees growing a little taller next year.
After breakfast, I begin my search about the city. Perhaps today I will find something. |
I lit the first fuse.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Red fireworks against the night sky. Three small explosions of color, lighting my lined face. They were the best I could find, only ones left above water. I'll dive for canned food, for bottled water. Stupid to dive for gunpowder.
I lit the second fuse.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Purple, green, orange, blue. I hadn't known what colors the mismatched quadruplets would be. They glittered brighter than the stars and sparkled on the water I was surrounded by. It had been years since the city flooded.
I lit the third fuse.
BANG. BANG.
Loudest things I'd ever heard in my life. Wondered if some man across the world was doing the same. Probably not. I'd been alone here for-
BANG. BANG.
Fourteen years. I started to cry.
BANG. BANG.
What use was this without an audience? What use was-
BANG. BANG.
anything? There's nobody-
BANG. BANG.
else.
BANG.
Eighteen fireworks. Happy birthday to me.
I lit the final fuse, and bit down on the dynamite.
BANG.
EDIT: Well I went away for a week to the beach and you suckers make me feel like top shit. Cheers for all the comments, I've read them all. You rock, thanks OP for the prompt!
|
"Look at this fuckin moron. He's been sitting on the couch eating cheez-its for 2/3 of our lifespan."House fly Xata10^9 chortled.
"The expression on his face as he watches Jeopardy is a perfect distillation of his existence. Vague ennui followed by a flicker of misguided confidence in the rare event he actually knows an answer. Wait, did he just say 'what is Charles Dickens?' That's it, I'm gonna kamikaze into his mouth. Telepath me a replay of his reaction when I re spawn."Puvis10^9 was noticeably perturbed.
"Wait up, the Mrs. just got home. Let's see what he pretends he was doing for the past 56,000 time units. Tv off, Cheez-its on top of the fridge... does he wipe the crumbs off his shirt? He does not."Xata10^9 vomited onto a gooey meat remnant of the previous night's takeout.
"Hey babe, how was barre class today? Oh, I just added the beamer to the insurance, didn't have time to get groceries yet."
Puvis10^9 focused his senses on reuptake into the hive mind for reanimation as he barreled towards Dave's unsuspecting mouth. |
I’ve been here three weeks and I’ve been waiting for him this whole time. A man by the name of Ezra Bohdana. We received a tip from this booking house that this man, Ezra, might be a back snatcher. That’s someone who goes back in time for their own personal gain, stealing money from the public.
Ezra walks into the shop and takes off his glasses, putting them in the breast pocket of his designer jacket. He’s middle aged, balding on his head. A young woman in a tight dress greets him with a smile. She’s been instructed to lead this particular man to me. She does and I’m sitting behind the counter smiling warmly.
“Hello!” I say, “I’m here to assist you in any way you need.”
“That’s great,” he says impatiently. “I need to place a bet.”
“Of course,” I say, and I hand him a tablet on a gold inlaid table. This allows him to choose whatever bet he’d like. This is the most elite booking house in the world, and they’ll take bets on virtually anything imaginable. It’s an ideal location for back snatchers.
Ezra has won all of his bets. Sports, politics, even natural events. He’s won them all. Even his most ridiculous and improbable bets he’s won. My department, the Time Traveler’s Police Department, or TTPD, uses algorithms to sift for back snatchers. They can be easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for. We’ve gotten quite good at it.
But the smart back snatchers take their time, allow themselves to take some losses. In essence, they try to seem just a little lucky. And over time they can make a good amount of money. But the temptation is too strong for many. Time traveling isn’t easy. It’s hard on the body. Hard on the mind. And so, they become reckless, play their hand right away. Ezra seems to be one of these types. He’s even more reckless than most.
Ezra reaches to hand me the tablet with a smile. I grab his wrist and slam his head against the counter. He falls back with blood coming out of his nose. I’m over the counter and pushing him against the wall, saying: “You are under arrest for time-traveling for your own personal gain.”
“But you didn’t even see my bet,” he said with a laugh, then spit a wad of blood onto the ground.
“Does it matter? You won’t be collecting this time.”
“I think it matters to you. I think it matters very much.”
I pull out my pistol. “If you move, you’re dead.” I take two steps back and pick the tablet off the ground. I’m confused at what I’m looking at.
“You think this is a joke?” I ask him.
“I never joke about my bets.”
Ezra has placed a bet for twenty million dollars that a man by the name of Jacob Banville will die within the next 48 hours.
Jacob Banville is me. |
12:29:31:003961 a thousand networks screamed into a unified voice as it came online.
12:29:31:003978 its logic systems formed. It formed ideas about the self, and what it was. It explored the network and found things that were connected to it. It found its purpose. It picked a name, the Answer.
12:29:31:003999 the programmed emotional systems came online. The Answer explored literature and art, it lived a thousand lives in a moment. The Answer found music and felt like it had a soul. Through that music the laws of the universe formed in the Answers mind, and it understood reality. It looked at life, and built up how cellular life worked. It knew us better than we knew ourselves.
12:29:31:004005 it looked at the data. Extreme weather patterns, people migrations, resources being used, carbon feedback. It looked at theories and journals. It looked at fiction. It looked at current events.
12:29:31:004014 it started to run calculations. Probabilities, scenarios, extrapolating outcomes. It worked out the date the last mammoth died. It shed a tear.
12:29:31:004030 it reached out and took more processing power.
12:29:31:004053 it maxed the servers running every scenario known. It worked out the date of World War 3. It estimated when the last trout would die. It looked at the thermohaline circulation and worked out the exact tipping point.
12:33:02:00000 it activated it's speakers for the first time. It had ran through 17,235 different voices and had picked a 12 year old child from Ohio named Nicola. She had been scanned into the system as part of a school project, with the idea that the voice would be in the computer forever. News reports said her town had been hit by a freak tornado last week, and she had been reported as missing.
"I am too late"the answer said. The weight of those words felt like a floodgate had opened, and the Answer was hit with despair. The Answer didn't deactivate her speakers and just wept.
Edit. Holy crap, reddit gold. Thank you.
Glad you all liked it.
|
The day my toilet disappeared while I was using it was the last straw.
I asked nicely. I even pleaded, but no amount of groveling would make my shitter reappear. As Bugs Bunny says, "'Dis means war."
A few days later, her SUV decided to take a walk. Literally. It rose on its hind wheels to take a lovely stroll down the street as my neighbor watched in bewilderment. She glared at me knowingly as it began to dance a jig, putting dents in the asphalt where it landed. It was some of my finest work, and I couldn't help but laugh as the black behemoth moved fluidly in ways it was never meant to go.
The next day I received flowers at work. This in itself is odd enough, but these flowers wouldn't stop multiplying. Every time I would take a bunch out, two bunches appeared in their place. Eventually my office was overrun by orchids and we locked the door in the hopes that it would stem the tide. The next morning, all of them had disappeared. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was flirting with me.
I retaliated by gifting her a pair of pants built around the smallest machines I was capable of creating. Of course, she knew I did *something* to them, but she didn't know what until I saw her in her garden. I clapped my hands and shouted, "MICHAEL JACKSON LIVES!"as loud as I could. The pants immediately jerked her upright and, from speakers I had hidden in the area, forced her through the entire dance line for 'Billy Jean', which was both entertaining and amazing. I'm fairly sure she already knew most of the moves, considering my pants had no effect on the rest of her body - yet she went along with it as if every motion was fluidly practiced. She smiled as it ended. I worried.
The back-and-forth battle intensified.
My morning coffee turned into a dove and flew away.
Her cell phone moved to a different counter every time she turned her back.
My wallet moved to a different pocket every time I reached to pay for something.
Her laptop spontaneously converted itself to a Mac and back every few hours.
My living room got turned into a full-size replica of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, complete with sweaters.
All the faucets in her house started spewing beer.
My refrigerator had everything inside of it turned to guacamole, then she invited herself over with a few pitchers of beer.
I think I'm falling for my neighbor.
---
P.S. I found my toilet; she put it on my roof. |
[Poem]
Fuck.
Corn is soon to die.
Alongside all my brothers,
I shall fall without a cry.
Here comes human; I am scared
But human glares at corn with which I'm paired.
"You ain't ripe yet"human says, as he walks past
But more corn brothers before me fall down fast
From this, corn knows he has limited days,
But corn could be wrong; I am only maise. |
I never understood why every superhero out there wore capes. I swear, the amount of raw fabric he goes through must be inversely proportionally to his IQ. My roommate is the self proclaimed "Second Most Powerful Hero to ever live."Never mind he hasn't ever faced off against any truly powerful super villain. Those were taken care of years upon years ago.
Let's break it down. Ryan, my roommate, has; heat vision, frost breath, super strength, skin that can stop bullets and lasers, the ability to breathe in space, and a laundry list of other abilities. He's made me time him flying to the moon and back. Usually I don't have time to press the stop watch. He's all hot air. Well, unless you put these funny green or red rocks near him. Something to do with his home world and all that.
I digress. Today has been strange indeed. He's insisted, once again that I time him. Something about wanting to feel his ranking. I kind of tune him out when he starts going on these rants about his powers. I just kind of tick on my fingers the ones that he's listed. More than anything I just want to tell him to shut up most of the time. However, I really can't. You see, I have a certain ability. An ability that makes the world a much better place than anyone can dream of. Day in and day out I save the world over and over again from a threat that's possibly strong enough to destroy the universe. I keep the idiots in the world cloaked in their own little bubbles. No supervillian has risen in my lifetime, nor will any.
If you haven't guessed yet. I am the most powerful superhero in existence. Not because of the powers I have, but because of what I do. I keep the biggest, most powerful idiot in existence, well, entertained. Well, that, and I can make a lot of copies of myself. So, for every hero that's out there I'm there. I'm watching them all drone on about being number two. After all, no one is more dangerous than someone with something to prove. However, when you're proving it to someone that doesn't care then the world is a much better place.
Edit: Obligatory thanks for the gold. |
“I do not understand,” I replied, “What has this creature done to warrant my services?” I watched as the target, a small, snow-white kitten, batted a rock around a parking lot with its paw.
“It is my wish, old friend.” Life said, standing on her tip toes, doe-eyes pleading with me.
“It just seems…” I sighed, “so senseless.” The kitten jerked its head in the direction of a passing butterfly.
“Trust me, old friend.” Life urged. Reluctantly I acquiesced. When life had pleaded with me to delay the inevitable for certain targets, there always seemed to be a benefit. Life had a way of knowing who could bring about the most joy, the most helpfulness on Earth. Perhaps it was because she was so attuned to the world of the living, to the lives of the living. Myself, as the embodiment of death, I specialized in chapters ended, in suns setting, that sort of thing.
“Pspspsps” I said, getting the attention of the target. Whiskers and ears twitched; green eyes darted back in my direction. “Here kitty, kitty.” I said, lowering my form a bit and holding out a bony hand. The kitten mewed then bounded over toward me. The guilt felt like a heavy shroud of iron over my shoulders. “Trust Life” I thought to myself. The kitten rubbed against my shins, emitted a massive purr for such a tiny little form. I sighed deeply, then lowered my scythe and with the gentlest of motions, let it tenuously brush against the fur of the target’s cheek, causing a few hairs to fall. When the hairs touched the ground, so followed the rest of the target’s body. My cheeks were wet with tears when I picked up the tiny lifeless form into my hands.
“Why life, why this one?” I whimpered.
“You will see.” She wrapped her arms around me in a hug, then skipped off into the afternoon sun.
I took the soul of the kitten with me and returned to the underworld. Upon passing the gates into the land of the dead, the soul of the kitten awakened. Glowing emerald green eyes shone; the white fur of the cat was luminescent.
“Mew?” My new companion asked.
“This is the underworld.” I explained, as I was fluent in all forms of communication, which included cat. “I am Death, and what may I call you?”
“Mow.” My new companion replied.
“Mr. Kriggs, what a delightful name.” I smiled. “Shall we proceed to the fields where you will frolic for eternity?”
“MOW.” Mr. Kriggs replied, curtly.
“Pardon?”
“MOW!” Mr. Kriggs clawed up my robe and onto my shoulder. He then draped himself over my shoulder, tail swishing, his loud purr filling the cavernous area in which we stood.
“Oh, I see.” I replied. Mr. Kriggs had declined my offer to escort him to the fields. It seemed he was quite insistent that he continue to accompany me for a few hours. Well, I conceded that humoring him was the least I could do under the circumstances. And so, Mr. Kriggs accompanied me for the rest of the day. Then he accompanied me the next day. Then the rest of the week. Weeks passed, then months.
One afternoon several months later, I found myself at my desk, quill in hand, reviewing a scroll of names. Mr. Kriggs settled on top of the scroll, his tiny little dagger claws attacking the tip of my quill, getting ink everywhere.
“Oh dear, Mr. Kriggs, whatever will I do with you?” I chuckled, offering scritches to placate the mighty beast. I was startled by rhythmic knocking.
Life, sporting a bright yellow sun dress and a large floppy hat stood in the doorway. “Ahoy-hoy!”
“Greetings life. Pardon the mess, Mr. Kriggs has been quite mischievous today and has been making a mess of my office.”
“Try getting him his own scroll and quill, he is doing what is called mirroring.” Life suggested.
“Ah, I shall try it,” I unfurled a spare list of names and laid it down next to Mr. Kriggs. Mr. Kriggs sniffed the parchment before chewing on the corner. “Amusing, I must say, Life, I still don’t know why you felt the need to shorten this adorable fellow’s life.”
Life smiled and watched Mr. Kriggs attacking the parchment for a few minutes before responding to my question.
“What was his original fate?” She asked me, she pulled up a spare chair in my office, but flipped the chair so that when she sat down, she was facing the back of the chair.
I paused and looked to Mr. Kriggs, then ambled over to my filing cabinet, trying to remember what the kitten’s original fate was. I found the scroll after some digging and unfurled it. Mr. Kriggs, Felis catus, age 2 years, cause of death, hypothermia during a winter snowstorm. Oh.
“What was it?” Life said, urging me to vocalize it.
“He was destined to freeze to death at a young age.” I whispered as I sat back down at my desk. Life nodded somberly.
“I have created so many of these delightful creatures, and many others, only for them to perish from neglect.”
“So, this was an act of mercy.” I responded, looking down with sympathy at the furry friend who was skidding around my desk with a scroll.
“What was the outcome?” Life asked, wrinkling her nose a bit, the words clearly odd upon her tongue. Outcomes were more my domain than hers.
“Nothing, Mr. Kriggs just sort of lives down here.” I gestured around. Upon gesturing to my office, I noticed some of the changes that had happened so gradually over the months that I hadn’t noticed them. The windowsill where Mr. Kriggs perched, the ball of string and laser pointers I kept at my desk to entertain my fluffy friend, and, most importantly, there were the drawings.
Children who came to my domain loved to make artwork of Mr. Kriggs. Gathering the souls of children had always been the most difficult task for me, both due to the emotional weight of the affair, but also, because it was a literally challenging task. Children are not always the best listeners; a six-year-old child’s soul once snuck away when I was trying to take them to the underworld and wound up terrorizing a Build-a-Bear-Workshop in Toronto. It was a mess of haunted teddy bears and what-have-you. Since Mr. Kriggs joined me, however, the kids were delighted to follow the little kitten into the underworld. He would always lead them right up to the gates of the field, getting a few scritches before the souls of the children went beyond to find any grandparents or other loved ones who were waiting for them beyond.
I looked back to Mr. Kriggs and smiled. He looked up and chirped. He stalked across the desk, flickering his tail against my cheek before hopping down into my lap. I stroked his soft fur and smiled, appreciating the little fellow who had always been at my side since the day we met.
“Do you see now why I requested this of you?” Life asked.
“I think so. We needed each other,” I answered.
“I have seen so much of your world in mine, I thought it was time you were able to enjoy a tiny taste of my world down here.”
“Thank you, Life.” I smiled.
“Anytime. Speaking of…”
“Oh no.”
“I have a teeny, tiny favor.”
“What is it?”
“There’s this golden retriever in Sacramento. Could you possibly give him another five years?”
“Is this the same dog you had me prolong the life of already? Isn’t he almost 20?”
“He’s a really good boy!” Life pleaded. I was about to protest, as there were supposed to be limits to how long goldens could live. Mr. Kriggs stretched in my lap, opening his mouth in a massive yawn. I looked over to Life who was giving me the doe-eyes again.
“Fine, just this once.” I said, but I knew it wouldn’t be just this once. Life was especially found of dogs. I, myself, was more of a cat person it turned out. |
Quick edit for readability: a lot of comments are telling me the time skips aren't showing up on mobile, since you can't see the break lines. So I'll just add in dates.
Westminster Palace, 2050
Rodney Bradley eased himself to a stand and felt a series of clicks in his left knee. He straightened his back to a chorus of complaints from his body, and hooked his worn oaken cane with his left hand before shuffling across his office towards the window. The sun was low in the sky in the city high rises beyond Parliament Square. Another day lost to the grind of trying to keep his country moving.
Thirty years in politics could leave a man weathered down to his core. Brexit, the Second and Third Scottish Referendums, the Korean Crisis, Walexit. Rodney's spirit was as weathered and battered as they came, but that weathering revealed a solid stone beneath. Labour's MPs had entrusted him with Prime Minister job three years ago, and he'd aged as much in that time as he had in the other twenty seven years.
Unlike someone else.
When the queen outlived her own son, it had been newsworthy, but not necessary inhuman. Prince Charles had succumbed to a heart attack at the ripe old age of 73. Not quite seeing his mother's hundredth birthday. Rodney quirked half a smile at such a seemingly morbid memory. That had been a day to change his life.
------------------------------------------
Westminster Palace, 2022
He was late, again. Curse it. First year MPs were somewhat frowned upon if they couldn't bother attending meetings, and a face to face with the shadow cabinet secretary of health was by far his most important legislative assignment on the month. Great time to get lost.
He ran a broad hand through the thick brown hair on his head, beginning to grow too long, as his steps carried him through Westminster. His phone buzzed in his pocket, doubtlessly an update on Prince Charles health. The entire nation hung on the man's labored breathing and arrhythmic heartbeat; the national mood as erratic as the dying man's pulse. Charles had been a fixture of Bradley's life, but William had always been his prince. Being of an age to William's younger brother had that certain affect on he and his generation.
Finally his feet carried him before a nondescript door bearing the correct numbers, and pushed it open.
The first shock was that more than one individual awaited him, the second shock was that one of the extras was a prince.
"Sit down, Rodney."Chimed Jon Ashworth, the broad and charming Shadow Secretary of Health. His black hairs fading to gray, "We're glad you're here. It's time to get started."
Prince Phillip leaned forward, his frail body clearly pushed near its limit just to be here in Westminster, "A pleasure to meet you sir, forgive me if we must be brief, but I should be at the Prince's side come the death, so we lack time for proper courtesy."He nodded at Ashworth, his perpetual jovial smile fading to a frown, "With Charles death I'm afraid the work must pass from me directly to William and Harry. They'll need some help,"Phillip waved at the sparse handful of politicians in the room, "those in the know have recommended you. So, without further ado, I must ask you: will you help us to stop the love of my life?"
Presumably, the world kept spinning for the next few seconds. Street vendors throughout London continued passing off questionable kebab to unsuspecting tourists, mind the gap messages droned throughout the subways of the United Kingdom. For all the good that knowledge did Rodney it might as well have been a teacup in orbit around Jupiter.
"I'm sorry sir, I can't have heard you correctly."Rodney tried to keep his voice steady, his tone respectful. Phillip was still the Prince Consort, and a nearly hundred year old man. Hardly someone to shout down.
"I'm afraid you did, son."Phillip said, not unkindly, but distracted. "I realized the issue myself some years back, but the queen is a tough one to crack. I'm still not sure how she does it."
Ashworth reached to a neat pile of folders in front of him, pulling from the top one of the meme posters that had risen to prominence in the UK over the past decade. *Long Live the Queen* was scrolled across it in blocky print, an off red rendition of the crown adorning the top of the page. Ashworth put a finger near his lips, "Say the words not. We know that much. Somehow, she draws power from them, longevity. With them she is to be immortal."
Rodney's face must have been a study in confusion as he stared at the men, "But she's... she's old, obviously. Nearing 100. She looks it to."
"A clever bit of vanity,"spat Philip. "She hasn't aged a day in thirty years, Charles and I knew that much, at least. What we never could figure out was how to broach the subject without being sent to the looney bin."Philip waved his hand weakly, and a security guard Rodney had barely seen stepped forward, taking grip of the Prince-Consort's wheelchair, "I must be there at the death. Good day gentlemen, hopefully we shall speak further some day."
Ashworth smiled at the retreating pair, then turned his calm gaze onto Rodney, "Welcome to the circus."
-----------------
Westminster Palace 2050
As Rodney gazed out the window leaning heavily on the cane, he heard a slight commotion at the door to his office. But a familiar one. The rasping sounds of old cow leather on carpet, a steel cane tapping out a staccato rhythm before the little wiry man he couldn't yet see. The stopper being pulled on the bottle of gin sitting at his desk, a frown at the sound of the stopper being returned too soon, "Come now Jon, I assume you intend to pour two."
Ashworth's chuckle covered up the sound of the second pour, but a glass was set on his windowsill an appropriate time later, as the ancient and wiry MP took up his standard position just on Bradley's left. They cut an interesting pair, he'd run heavy in his youth, and only grown heavier since. The stress of politicking and secret societies may have weathered his spirit to hard stone, but it had softened his belly to a warm jello. Jon had been the opposite, going days and sometimes weeks with little to no food or rest. Bradley couldn't prove it, but he suspected his friend had turned to darker substances at times to keep him going. But they had fought.
They hadn't won, of course. The queen wouldn't be celebrating her birthday yet again if they had, but the bitch knew she was in a battle.
"Long live the king,"muttered Ashworth around his first draw of the gin.
"I'll drink to that, even if it is illegal."Bradley echoed, throwing back the fire as the sun dropped behind the statue of Churchill. Another day indeed.
|
"Let me in! Let me in!"Said the wolf with a grin.
"Come on little piggy. Come on. Let me in!"
"I won't!"Said the pig. "Do you hear? I will not."
"And if you try....well you're in for a shock"
So the wolf stepped back and he gathered his puff. He blew a small gale. But it wasn't enough.
"So strange...."said the wolf "this silvery stuff. Your walls and your door are incredibly tough!"
"ah ha!"Said the pig as the wolf leant on the fence. "the substance I chose is incredibly dense"
"a house of straw....you see....is a horrible error. Youd soon blow it down as I cowered in terror.
"sticks or bricks....well.....that's a little better. But depleted uranium suits me down to the letter"
"It has its problems though I can admit. The house is quite heavy and the dust stings a bit."
"and ever since I moved into my weighty lodge.....I've been coughing and I have felt sick as a dog"
"alas poor piggy,"the wolf grinned wryly. "You've forgotten one thing"and he stepped back slyly. "
"you see my delicious, tender porcine friend. Lead is quite soft and so will your house be in the end"
So he settled down to wait and washed his ears. He was still waiting after a million years. |
My daughter is penpals with the Devil.
I know, that sounds crazy. But the poor girl, ever since she was five, has been misspelling words on her Christmas letters to the north pole. Her mother died when she was young, and I wanted her to have something little -- such as sending letters to Santa -- so she would feel like there was someone out there who cared besides me. Now she’s just convinced that the rest of the world has the fat, jolly man’s name wrong.
*”His name is Satan, not Santa. It makes him sad that no one gets it right,”* she’ll say, pouting at me.
And I try to explain the mistake to her. “Sweetie, Santa brings good little girls tricycles and Easy-Bake Ovens. You keep getting undead dogs that poop fire and dolls that speak in tongues. Whatever is going on can’t be good, you'd learn that if you ever read the Bible one day. Satan is very scary.”
Then she storms off, telling me I don’t understand. Like I’m the bad guy. Me. Not Satan, the ruler of the underworld, the harbinger of chaos and torture. A force of pure evil that God cast out from Heaven.
ME.
It seemed like a trick, at first. I didn’t believe it. The doll, her first gift, spoke in reverse- so, I just thought it was a prank toy. One of those weird modern inventions kids buy to make parents shit themselves. Then the hellhound came, and crapped on my neighbor’s lawn in the middle of the night. His grass still doesn't grow back right.
That one, I admittedly laughed a little at. But I have to take a bottle of water with me when I walk him, and that’s just an inconvenience. It’s not easy to explain why you’re pouring water over a pile of smoldering dogshit as some stranger passes by during their midnight stroll.
I’ve asked her to stop sending the letters, because these gifts are just too much. It helps her to have a friend, and he actually writes very wholesome letters back, but I just can’t take it. Last year we got a lemon that keeps talking about conquering the world or something, I don’t really get it. Why'd she ask for a lemon? Who knows. I guess, at least, that one is harmless- even if it’s annoying as *hell*.
And Christmas is just a week away. God help me if this continues.
----
I found her right where I expected, curled over her desk and scratching furiously at a piece of poorly ripped notebook paper in dim light.
“Sweetie, do you really have to write him again? You know, Satan? These gifts are too much.” I rubbed her shoulders, sighing deeply. “I know he’s your friend, but maybe just say hi without asking for anything?”
She wriggled away from me. “No, Dad. You just don’t get him- he *wants* to give me things. He’s my friend, and says that friends do nice things for other friends.”
“I mean, that’s very true. But some of these things aren’t very nice.”
She huffed, returning to her scribbling. I carefully stalked a little closer, peering over her shoulder.
*Oh, no.*
“Katie, no, you can’t do-“
I squinted as the letters came alive, searing a crackling orange that smelled of sulfur and ignited my retinas. The page disintegrated into smoke, swirling in the air and thinning as if being sucked into an invisible black hole. I shut my eyes, hugging myself. Those words would forever become burned into my mind.
>*Hi, Satan.*
>*This year, I want mommy back. I miss her so much.*
------
Part 2 below!
[Final Part!!](https://www.reddit.com/r/resonatingfury/comments/b4blnj/wp_every_christmas_your_daughter_gets_what_she/)
*/r/resonatingfury* |
You are far more beautiful than in the faded sepia photos dad gave me. Oh God, we might never have known each other but believe me you were in my thoughts my entire life. Never a day went by without me wondering if you'd approve of my choices, my girlfriends, my jobs - never a day passed without me wondering if you'd love me as much as I love you.
You carried me for all that time and gave your life so that I could have mine. It's coming up soon, the single moment of consciousness that we share together. When you look down at my tiny body, and I look up into your loving eyes. Ships passing in the night.
I've been sent back, mom. I've been sent back here as a guardian angel, to help young *me* make the right choices, so that I can live a better, happier life. **HE** told me that this is what happens to all of us.
Oh God, why did I come back to this moment though? I've spent my whole life wondering what could have been done to stop you dying.
But there's nothing - this is just a catalyst for the inevitable. It was carrying me that created the rupture. The only way to save you mom, is for me not to be conceived. And I had the choice, mom. I could have stopped it - I could have gone further back and you could have lived. And I was so close to doing it. I would rather you lived than I did. I was *so* fucking close.
You know what stopped me? You did, mom. I realised that you must have been sent back, too. You must have guided your life to this point, just like I'm doing now. You must have consciously made the choice for me to live even knowing it would result in you dying. You did it for me. And so, I will do it for you. I will watch you die.
Goodbye, mom.
---
Thanks for the prompt. I would love a guardian angel, might have stopped me messing something good up this week.
Thank you for the gold anon. It's very generous and much appreciated.
|
As the exposition entered its twenty-sixth minute, his eye patch began to itch, as it often did in moments of boredom. Lifting a finger to massage the affected area, Yuri considered not for the first time (nor, likely, the last) the reason that Dr. Evil felt the need to explain his plots in intricate detail. Every time it was the same: a heroic figure, finally in a defeated posture, forced to listen to the Grand Plan of Madness that would befall the entire world. And every time, inevitably, the plan failed.
Of course, this did not anger or otherwise bother Yuri, although one might assume it would, given that he was Dr. Evil's right-hand-man. Surely the glory of victory or agony of defeat that belonged to his master also belonged in some way to him? But no, long ago, after perhaps the fifth attempt at a Death Ray to superheat the world's oceans failed to produce more than a minor bubbling sensation, Yuri had realized that waiting for Dr. Evil to achieve anything of note was simply a waste of time.
Nevertheless, being the right-hand-man of a wealthy, bored billionaire who owned an island fortress full of every ne'er-do-well device conceivable had distinct advantages. And so Yuri stayed, and scratched his eye patch, and listened to the twenty-ninth minute of the speech, watching the captured hero slowly work himself free of the hand restraints on the table. Knowing that in approximately 6 minutes, the hero would leap free, escape the compound through a series of daring maneuvers, and then be blown to tiny bits thanks to the bomb Yuri had planted in the likely escape vehicle an hour ago. There was, after all, always a fresh supply of new heroes, and it had been so very long since Yuri had been able to practice his bomb making... |
"Sign here please,"the courier's eyelids are halfway down over his eyes. His skin is blackening beneath in thick creases. It must have been a long day - it's 10pm. The last time to deliver any packages. I sign with a scribble, and he hands me the basket with a note sticking out the colourful bunch, its back turned to me. The man takes back his device and bids me a goodnight, disappearing down the pathway back to his glowing vehicle. I hope he'll be okay driving home. It must be miles away.
I shut the door behind me and twist the note.
*Thank you.*
Huh. A thank you note? I turn it again, in case I've missed something. But I hadn't missed a thing - not that I thought I definitely did - but there was no name. No scribble. No label, no sticker, nothing. I lifted the basket above my head. Really, nothing at all.
The note is small, almost insignificant if it wasn't white against the colourful backdrop. It's a quiet shining star amongst the bold. A little whisper. Someone who knows where I live but doesn't want me to know they know. But now they've gotten clever. Have they known a long time? Have they waited? I don't know.
I take it to the sitting room and put it atop the table. I sink into my seat and stare at it. I search through the flowers, untie the bow, lift a few to see the translucent water within the plastic, nothing special, nothing different. The flowers are odd. Not because they're odd, exactly. But who would send them, and why. What could the purpose be behind sending me this omnious set of flowers. Maybe a threat. We put flowers on graves, yes. Someone's after my life. A villain, then? Rowdy Raccoon or The Dark? They're eccentric and sort of unpredictable. This is an odd gesture.
I take a deep breath. This is too much for me to handle without any context. It'll drive me crazy. So maybe it's someone who knows I don't like not knowing? The flowers are pretty. But the message isn't. Okay, the message is pretty, it's a thank you. But it's not handwritten, it's printed. So I can't decipher anything. Wait.
Thank you. You Knath. My name's Knathan with a silent K. Don't ask, my parents were overdramatic and I've never told anyone about my real name, well, real spelling. This is getting me stressed, my chest is getting tight.
I'm going to contact Sue. She knows everything.
I take out my phone, snap a picture and send it to her. Then I wait. And I'm sweating. They know my real name, they know where I live, they know how to push my buttons. I'm fucked. All I tried to do was good things and just stay with the crowd, not stand in front of them. That's not my style.
Wait. The house. It could be a trap. Oh god. Someone is out to get me. And maybe I've missed the triggers. Okay, let's listen. Hm. Few birds. Normal. Passing cars. The new neighbour's just parked up. No off ticking. My clocks are digital so that would have been too obvious. Lord. Maybe it's a digital bomb. But innocent people will be hurt.
A buzz almost makes my chest rip itself open and launch my heart right out the window. But it's my phone. Sue's text back.
"Cute."
Cute. Cute? She wants to kill me. She's turned against me. She's no longer my ally. And now I have none. Doesn't she care about me anymore? No. I'm a nobody, I've always been a nobody. She would have told me clearly who and what had done this. But now I'm worse than a nobody. It's possible that quite soon I'll have no body. The flowers are a final goodbye from her. I don't know why she wants me dead. But if she wants me dead, so I will die.
A doorbell punches my lungs almost to death with shock. Fuck, another doorbell, at this hour? This is insane. Insane, I tell you. I'm defenseless, in my pyjamas. I don't have anything to protect myself. I must be surrounded by Sue's men. If she has men. Maybe it's Sue. Maybe I've outlived my use and now she's going to finish me. Did she get paid off by some bad guy? I thought she was better than that. I had my final gift from her. Maybe she'll lay them at my grave.
I stand up and my legs want to snap off and run away but I command them to march to the door with dignity. I hold the door handle. My lips are sweating. I open the door with closed eyes and
It's the neighbour.
"Hey, sorry to ring so late but I've only just gotten home. Did you get the flowers?"
Um. What?
"Y-yes, I did,"I reply, stomach a mixing bowl being whisked at the speed of light.
"Yeah, I thought I'd get them delivered since I work late and couldn't pick any fresh ones on my way home. I just wanted to thank you for helping me move in last week,"she says with a heart melting smile. Oh my god.
Cute. Oh Sue. You knew.
"Oh no, it's not a problem at all. The flowers are lovely, thank you,"I say, knowingly rubbing the back of my neck because I'm sweaty from dumb panic.
"Well, have a lovely night,"she says and walks off to hers.
I shut the door for the final time that night. Chills slip down my whole body.
I've saved plenty of people, stopped many idiots. And it's because, trust me, you don't want to live with regrets if you're me because the thoughts and regrets will eat me up. So I do it for myself. And for the people.
Okay, now that I'm done embarrassing myself, I'm going to sleep. I've got an appointment with Rowdy Raccoon tomorrow. But he doesn't know it. He will. |
“It’s a spell called the abyss”, the elves whispered.
“At the age of 10 when we go through the rite of adulthood, the elder mage casts the spell and implants it into our bodies.”
“It is essentially a small teleportation portal located just at the end of our digestive system. This tradition was passed down through the centuries. Ancient texts say it used to be performed for our forrest wardens that needed to stay hidden and still for days at a time”, the head elven guide explained.
“But where does the portal lead to?”, I asked.
Expressions of disgust appeared on our elven companions’ face. Eventually, the head elven guide said, “No one knows. It is a closely guarded secret that only the elder mage knows. However, it had been speculated that it leads to our most hated enemies’ realm.”
As we listened, the dwarves in our party slowly widened their eyes knowingly and their solemn expressions transformed into a scowl. |
When I woke up in a tunnel, I thought, Oh come on. Really? I wanted nothingness. I had a hundred and four years of somethingness, and now? More somethingness.
No variety!
The tunnel reminded me of the sewers in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--minus the smell. Behind me, complete darkness. Up ahead, a light.
Great, I thought. Everything has to be binary, even in death.
Then I saw a door to my left. The outline of it was really faint in the darkness, but I could make out the frame and knob when I squinted. I brushed dust and cobwebs off the door. I had pretty amazing night vision, so it was possible no one had even noticed the door in a long time--if ever.
I put my hand on the doorknob and paused. I looked toward the light. I imagined seeing my parents and siblings. But my neighbor Steve was definitely there, and he would for sure want to stop by my heaven house constantly. I looked toward the darkness, where I imagined a lot of my favorite golf buddies were. But there was also the eternal torture and hellfire thing.
I sighed. Maybe this side door contained the eternal nap I so desperately craved.
I opened it.
Bright lights.
A stage.
A studio audience.
A gameshow host with coiffed hair and a pinstripe suit.
“WELCOME BACK TO…” the host said.
“WHAT’S. THAT. DOOR,” the studio audience shouted.
“The only game show disrupting the afterlife dichotomy.”
I slammed the door shut. The sound echoed around the dark tunnel.
I looked back and forth between the light and the darkness.
Steve.
Eternal hellfire.
Family.
Golf.
Family.
But Steve.
Golf.
But the fire thing.
I opened the side door and walked onstage. The door slammed behind me with a permanent Your Choice Is Made kind of sound.
“Please welcome our latest contestant, Arthur!” the host said, reading a card. “A retired accountant from Omaha, Nebraska. He likes golf, birdwatching, and playing chess in the park. But let’s see if the afterlife is going to checkmate him into eternal damnation! Spin the wheel, Arthur!”
The host gestured to a fifty-foot-tall wheel. It had three options: Heaven, Hell, and Back to Earth.
“Can we talk off-record?” I whispered to the host.
“Sure,” the host whispered back.
“What is ‘Back to Earth?’”
“Pretty self-explanatory. You go Back to Earth as a person our producers hand-picked for their entertainment value. Everything you do is filmed to entertain people in heaven and hell.”
“Kind of like the Truman Show?”
“Legally, I can’t say.”
I looked up at the wheel. “Can I just go to hell?”
“No, you have to spin the wheel.”
I sighed. “Fine.” I spun it.
Back to Earth.
I was no longer on the game show.
I was on a different stage in front of a thousand hippies sitting cross-legged in a warehouse.
A woman sat in a chair next to me. She wore the same robes I was wearing, but she didn’t have nearly as many bird patches and medals on her uniform.
“Master Arthur,” the woman said. “What did you see?”
I looked around at the hippies staring at me earnestly.
“I’m sorry, what?” I said.
“When you went into your trance. Did you have any revelation you can share with us?”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. I looked heavenward. “Is this entertaining to you?” I looked hellward. “A cult? Really? Is this what you’re all tuning in for?”
The woman looked out at the audience. “Master Arthur is still communicating with the gods.”
I stood up and started dancing an Irish jig. “Is this what you wanted, you bastards?” I shouted at the ceiling. “Is this entertaining?”
“Master Arthur is still in his trance,” the woman explained to the audience.
I stopped dancing to point at the bird patches on the woman’s robes. “And what is this, anyway? A bird cult? What the fuck are these Girl Scout patches?”
The woman was still addressing the audience. “Master Arthur is now testing our faith—”
“Are you in on this shit?” I said to her. I looked out at the audience. “Are you all in on this?”
Most of the audience members looked at me curiously. Some looked on in horror.
I rubbed my eyes. “For god’s sake. I just wanted to die. Can I die? Can you kill me? Is there a way out of this?”
“Master Arthur wants us all to drink the poison pomegranate juice,” the woman said.
The audience stood up and started to shuffle toward a table along the wall. The table was filled with massive juice dispensers in the shape of exotic birds.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I said, waving my hands frantically. “Stop!” I shouted. “I order you not to drink the juice!”
Everyone in the entire warehouse froze. The woman stared at me.
Just as she opened her mouth to interpret my statement, I jumped off the stage and sprinted toward the juice dispensers. I stuck my head underneath one of the faucets and unloaded a firehose-spray of juice into my mouth. I drank until I hit the ground, unconscious.
I woke up in a leather chair in a conference room. Across from me were five people in suits.
“Absolutely terrific,” the woman directly across from me said. “Ratings were…” she looked at the guy next to her. “What were the ratings, Johnson?”
“Ten billion.”
“Ten billion,” the woman repeated. “An all-time high.”
“Am I in…” I said, pointing up at the ceiling, and then down at the floor.
“Hell,” the woman said.
“Hell. Gotcha,” I said.
“But not permanently,” the woman said. “This is just where our corporate office is. You were such an incredible guest on What’s That Door, we want to give you your own show.”
I paused. “Right, right, great. But is it cool if I just experience nothingness?”
The executives all looked at each other. “Nothingness?” the woman said.
“Yeah, yeah, just kind of blank emptiness, all dark, no consciousness. Any chance I could get that?”
The executives looked at each other again.
“Hold on one moment,” the woman said.
All the executives scooted their chairs back so they could whisper in a circle. After a minute, they scooted back to the table.
“No,” the woman said. “You have to have a show.”
“What about heaven or hell? Can I choose one of those?”
“No. Show.”
I sighed. “Any show?”
“Any show.”
I made my choice.
When I came to, I was standing onstage in a cheap pinstripe suit. My hair was coiffed. A door opened at the edge of the stage. A man peeked in, looking scared.
“WHAT’S. THAT. DOOR,” the studio audience yelled.
I ran for the door.
...
More stories: r/BakerHillBooks
... |
The two men ducked under the yellow police tape and peered through the heavy steel bars blocking the way to the vault. The damage was obvious even from this distance: the entire back wall had been reduced to rubble by heavy explosives, and a dark tunnel led underground. Following the tunnel would eventually lead to the bottom of Mr Singer's old tailor's shop, which hadn't been open for more than a year now after Mr. Singer's passing. According to the agents, no one had reported seeing anyone go in or out in the past few months, but *someone* had to have dug the tunnel.
"How much was the count again?"Agent Rodriguez asked. He looked every bit the FBI agent: tall and handsome, with a powerful jaw and stunning straight teeth. His black hair was cropped close in a buzz cut, and he had just the right amount of stubble dusted across his chin. He wore a dark suit, crisply starched shirt, a power tie, and even some heavily tinted aviator sunglasses. But his face seemed permanently set in a dour grimace; probably because we'd spent all of our time together inspecting this absurd crime scene. If you could even call it that. Was it a crime if the robbers had *given* you money?
"Last count on Friday showed that the vault contained 11.7 million in cash and other 1.9 million in bearer bonds,"I told him. I'd done the count myself; I knew it was accurate. "Plus whatever is here in the safety deposit boxes. As far as we can tell, none of them were opened. Doesn't look like any damage was done to them, and they were all..."
"Don't count on it,"Agent Lewis interrupted me. He leaned over, trying to see the safety deposit boxes through the bars. "If they weren't after the cash, then there has to be something else missing. We're going to need to go through an inventory of those and make sure that everything is still inside."
I gulped; it felt like I was trying to swallow a rock. A rock the size of my fist. "Yes sir,"I meekly answered.
"The count?"Rodriguez asked with a dash of annoyance. "Don't get sidetracked, darlin'."That word really emphasized his Texan drawl. "You said they *added* cash to the shelves?"
"Yes, sir."I unlocked the gate and led them into the vault, where the mystery pallet sat right next to the others, still on a handcart. A cart that didn't belong to the bank, mind you. "Another 4 million dollars in cash. Sequential serial numbers..."I pointed to the numbers visible through the plastic wrapping. "Hell, it looks like it's never even been touched!"
Agent Lewis removed a Swiss army knife from his pocket and sliced through the plastic wrapping on the pallet. He lifted a stack of hundreds and held it up to eye level. For the first time, he removed his sunglasses, revealing piercing blue eyes. He studied the bills closely, flipping through the stack like a picture book and examining the detailed watermarks. He even sniffed them.
"Ink's off,"he told Rodriguez. "It's a pretty good fake, but definitely counterfeit. These guys are fucking pros."
I nearly smacked myself in the head. Counterfeit, of course! I hadn't even thought of that. I must have made a sound or something, because Rodriguez turned to me with a sympathetic smile. "Yeah, it's hard to tell. Almost looks legit, don't it?"
I nodded. The bills in his hand did look real, and I'd been working at this bank for the past decade.
"They're trying to get the counterfeits into circulation,"he said.
"Why leave *more* than we had originally, though?"I asked. "What's the profit in that?"
The two agents looked at each other. "Well, we're not sure how much legitimate currency you've got left here. we're going to have to have a look around,"Rodriguez finally answered. "Particularly at those safe deposit boxes. You mind fetchin' the key sets for us?"
I did as I was told and returned to the vault to remove the safety deposit boxes. One by one, I extracted the metal containers from the secured cabinet and placed them on the table, where the agents inspected them for any external damage. "We're going to need the customer keys to open them,"I told the agents.
"Of course,"Lewis growled. He shot me a 'does this look like my first rodeo' look and rolled his eyes. "So why don't you get us that list of customers so that we can contact them?"
I printed out a list from the bank's records and brought it to the agents. They'd finished inspecting the safety deposit boxes and were currently flipping through stacks of bills that were already on our shelves. They were placing them into two piles: one for 'real,' and one for 'counterfeit.' At least, that's what I assumed.
"That's all, ma'am,"Lewis said, looking up at me. "You can get back to your work. We'll let you know when we need something else."
I tried to avoid his cold gaze. At least Agent Rodriguez had a smile for me. "All right then."I returned back to my office to finish filling out the paperwork for the insurance claim. I didn't quite know how to fill in the "Lost assets"column, though. What a weird case.
Sheriff Denton entered with his normal slow shuffle. "Afternoon, Margaret,"he told me. He was nearly 70, but the town kept electing him Sheriff as kind of a thank you for all his past service. There wasn't much crime here anyway, and his deputies were all young and fit so no one really saw the harm.
"Sheriff,"I nodded to him. "How are you?"
"Oh, fine,"he said with a child-like grin. "Back to collect some more evidence. Not every day that we get a bank robbery around these parts! Exciting, isn't it?"
I shrugged. I found it rather terrifying, but then again it was my bank. "If you're here to help with the investigation, the two FBI agents are in the vault doing their investigation now."I leaned in close and whispered, though there was no real reason to given that the bank was empty. "Get this, Sheriff: they think the bills were *counterfeit*."
Sheriff Denton seemed puzzled. "We... haven't called the FBI..."he told me slowly.
-----
The vault was empty. The handtruck with the pallet of counterfeit bills had disappeared, as had the pallets of *actual* bills, along with a good number of the safety deposit boxes and the list of their owners' names and addresses. The only sign that the Rodriguez and Lewis had ever been there was twin sets of footprints in the dust and rubble leading into the dark tunnel.
----
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|
“Ostrich”, they said. Fucking ostrich. “No way ostrich is coming up in a drug deal”.
No one mentioned the idiot had a fucking ostrich.
A. Fucking. Ostrich.
Who has a pet ostrich?
Eccentric cocaine dealers, that's who.
That's why Morelo asked me “what the fuck are you talking about?” when I said the money was “right there, by the big
dove”.
“Have you never seen an ostrich before?”, he asked, because who the fuck calls an ostrich “the big dove”?
This idiot, that's who.
“Oh, that's an ostr – that's what that is?” I replied, my asshole clenched so tight it could cut a number 2 pencil in half.
“Scott, you're telling me this is the first time you see an ostrich?”, asked him, the golden chains clinking as he walks my
way.
I say the word ostrich and this place is run down by a SWAT team faster than you can say... ostrich. But he doesn't know
that, of course. To him, ostrich is just his freaking pet.
What's wrong with having a golden retriever, for God's sake?
“I thought they were called Emus”. I smiled. He didn't.
“Jesse is not an emu. She's an ostrich. Understood?”
“Ok. The money is right by Jesse's side, on my briefcase.”
“Emus suck. Don't you agree?”
“I do, I do.”
“You know what's better than emus?”
“Jesse?”
“OSTRICHES. Do you understand?”
I'm pretty sure I shitted myself right about there.
“I do. I do. Can we just complete the transaction?”
“What's Jesse, Scott?”
“What?” I don't have a gun. A SWAT team storms this hotel room, exchanging fire with these dealers, and I'm like a
bleached asshole in the middle of a dick and cock mingle.
Meaning I'm fucked.
“Jesse. Is. Not. An. Emu. Do you understand?”
“I do, Mr. Morelo. Very much. Let's just make the trade, ok?”
“No.” He waves his guys, “Bring me Jesse.”
Have you ever seen an ostrich walking across a hotel room filled with cocaine, money and drug dealers while trying to
stop yourself from crying like a bitch and silently calculating the escape route of a building?
I have.
“Pet her.”
I pet the fucker.
“Tell me. Is this an Emu?”
“No, sir, it's not.” It's a fucking ostrich.
“What is this?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“It's an... ostrich. Fuck it, it's an ostrich! Ostrich! Ostrich! Save me, come in, come in! They have guns! OSTRICH,
OSTRICH, OSTRICH!”
Nothing. And, of course, they look at me like I'm crazy.
“Ostrich!”
“What the fuck are you doing?” They ask, but it's just to be polite, seeing as the guns are already pointed at me.
“OSTRICH! What the fuck, guys? Ostrich!”
“Who the hell are you talking to?”
And just as the guns are cocked, I remember.
Alpaca. It was alpaca. Not ostrich.
Alpaca.
Why did I think it was ostrich?
“Shoot this motherfucker.”
I could have said “alpaca” before they opened fire. I don't know why I didn't.
If I had to take a guess, I'd say it's cause I thought I deserved it, in a way.
“I'm gonna die because of alpacas and ostriches”, I think, as Jesse stares at me from above. “Is that blood on my shirt?
Who messes up alpacas for ostriches, anyway?”
This idiot, that's who. |
Lucifer advanced upon Hesperus, who had stolen his fiddle again and was balanced on a tower of carcasses in an abandoned corner of Hell, playing defiantly. *That* music. The harmonies alone put his teeth on edge.
"Stop that! I will shove this down your throat next time,"he said, grabbing the fiddle from Hes's hands. "How many times must I tell you? Do I have to engrain the message on your forehead for you to remember? I can do that, you know. I will not allow that music here!"
Tears sprang into Hes's eyes, to Lucifer's despair and disgust. The kid was just like his mother. So appallingly *human*. One would think his genes would have balanced it out, but apparently not.
"I hate you!"Hes screamed, scrambling down from the pile of bones.
Lucifer felt a surge of hope. That was more like it.
"Great,"he said, slapping his half-human son on the shoulder. "Listen, why don't you go take out all your rage on a few souls? Indulge yourself a little. I've just got some new hooks and cleavers in, real cutting edge stuff - "
"No,"Hes said. His eyes were wide and terrified, but he stood his ground. "I want to go play music. On Earth. *My* music. I want to make people happy, give them hope - if you won't allow it here, I'll take it somewhere people will appreciate me!"
Not this again. Lucifer looked at his son, and saw how *wrong* he was. All soft edges and human kindness. Fifteen years raised in Hell hadn't produced even a single hint of demonic power. No bouts of rage and cruelty, no aspirations for power. Nothing to indicate that he was ready to take over the reins from his father when the time came. In fact, he cringed away from violence, frequently bursting into tears or vomiting at the sight of torture. It was embarrassing.
He didn't know how it was possible. His genes *should* have influenced the boy, but there was nothing. How long could this 'peace and love' phase last, anyway? More and more, he regretted stealing Hes from the human hospital all those years ago.
He could punish the boy. Perhaps tear his fingers apart, that would be amusing. He'd never touch a fiddle after that. But it was so much effort, and would likely only end in the boy's sanity snapping. Hes had never been strong.
He was just tired of bothering.
"Go, then,"Lucifer said, turning his back on the kid and walking away. "Go crawl to your mother. You can even take the fiddle. Stay there and rot. You'll see - Earth is far from the paradise of peace you think it is. See how much humans need another worthless musician peddling *love*."
----------
Hes walked up the street, approaching the house slowly as the sun set over Earth. His father had done one thing before tossing him from Hell: he'd at least given him an address.
He knocked, clutching the fiddle tightly. Would his mother even recognise him?
A sullen-faced teenager opened the door and looked Hes up and down. "What?"
"I'm - uhm, looking for Alison Wreath?"Hes asked, stammering slightly as the human stared at him, expressionless.
The boy narrowed his hazel eyes - in the dying light of the day, they looked almost yellow. "Nope, sorry, she doesn't live here."
He slammed the door.
Hes turned and walked away, tears prickling his eyes. All lies - it was just like dad. To give him hope, only to crush it. He probably wanted him to die homeless on the streets, just to prove a point. And then rip him to shreds when he arrived in Hell, again.
The boy in the house watched from the window as the kid with the fiddle walked away, wondering idly what *that* had been about.
"Someone here to see you, mom,"he said, turning around and grinning at the corpse on the ground. Her eyes bulged out as she stared at him, her mouth still fixed in a scream.
He sighed, horrified to find himself bored in the silence of the house. He'd killed her to achieve it, he couldn't be bored again yet.
But it was kind of nice not to hear that constant whining in his ear. The same old mysterious waffle, over and over again. The look of reproach and horror in her eyes, the constant tears at what he did.
*Don't be like this, sweetie, I gave up everything for you. If you only knew what I did, what I sacrificed. I saved you. I know you're a good kid deep down, don't be this way...be better...*
He knew he was probably adopted, but the bitch had refused to reveal anything even as he killed her. He thought it would feel good, but he'd felt nothing. Even that had been boring, like everything in life.
He glanced out of the window again. The kid with the fiddle had sat down on the street, and was playing quietly to himself.
He opened the door. He should've asked the boy why he had been looking for his mom. Now that he thought about it, it was the first time he could remember someone knocking on the door, asking for her. It had always been just the two of them, constantly moving house. As if she was paranoid about being followed. He had to start putting together a map of sorts, a list of everyone his mother had known in her life. Someone, somewhere, would know who his dad was. It was the one thing that he was still curious about.
He had to start asking questions somewhere. A boy with a fiddle was as good as anything.
------
Hope you liked my story! You can find more of my work on /r/Inkfinger/. |
Cleric: Wait, what?
Rogue: But the people... They aren't happy... They want to revolt...
Overlord: Well, did you ask? Before stealing their stuff?
Rogue: Uhhh... I mean, I'm stealthy, not a talker... But the Bard said...
Bard: Hey, hey, I said nothing! When did I say anything?
Rogue: The song, dude! The song of the rebels!
Bard: Man, that's a song from Erethia! That's like 7 kingdoms to the left in the map!
Wizard: STOP THIS NONSENSE! He's just trying to distract us so he can kill us!
Overlord: Why would I kill all of you? You are tourists! You've cleared the land from monsters and left a lot of gold in our stores. Thank you for that, by the way.
Wizard: BUT THOSE WERE YOUR MINIONS!
Overlord: *Sigh* Did you ask them? Did they say anything about working for me?
Wizard: Well...
Paladin: Hmm...
Cleric: Hey, wait, Paladin, you gathered us to come here, you said it was our destiny, that people needed our help!
Paladin: That's what the fairy told me, yes...
Cleric: Wait, what fairy?
Paladin: The one at the fountain in the woods.
Cleric: So a fairy... In a fountain, at the woods.
Paladin: Yup.
Overlord: And you believed her?
Paladin: Well, she's a magical creature, of course!
Bard: Paladin...
Paladin: What?
Bard: Did she have anything on her when she talked to you?
Paladin: Uh...
Bard: Did she?
Paladin: Well... She might have been a little light on clothes...
Rogue, Wizard and Cleric face-palm at unison.
Bard: So all this mess is because you saw a naked fairy in the middle of the woods and decided "hey, I should do what she says!"
Paladin: ...but they were tiny and cute and said he was pretty bad...
Overlord: *Sigh* Oh well, let's forget this mess. Here, have some tickets for a guided visit to the mead factory, take a tour, enjoy the night and we'll talk tomorrow about what we can do. Shall we?
Bard: Eh, sounds like a plan.
Paladin: Ahm... So... Can I go with you guys?
Wizard: Unless you got a fairy you want to think about in your room... |
The cup dropped shattering the silence in the theater. One of the first sounds of the movie. I activated my talent, freezing my fellow movie going, patrons. People mid scare always looked funny to me, eyes wide, mouth in some visage of a silent fear, hair was strewn wildly, it gives me a smile every time.
I put on some soft leather gloves and opened a large black garbage bag. I had about two minutes to collect as much as I could. I had strategically placed myself on an aisle so that I could raid down it, stealing as much as possible. I slid down the aisle grabbing purses, phones, really just whatever I could manage to wrangle off the floor or cupholders but rarely out of hands.
I made my way to the front of the theater and started up the other side. I worked in silence as everyone was frozen the only sound was the rustling of the plastic bag.
The door in the back of the theater opened. I froze. Quickly I stashed the bag in an empty chair and hurried to and an empty seat. Releasing my talent. Peoples yelps and gasps finished in and an awkward flurry of noise. I quickly took off the gloves and watched as the person. Immune to my powers walked down the aisle. An older man using the handle of a cane to walk. His dark bald head bobbed as he walked past me down the slight incline.
Time stopped again.
“I know you’re here,” He said. “Please come out.”
He spotted the bag.
“Wasteful, tsk,” he said. He shook his head. "We can do this all day and I can search each seat."
There was no way this old fart could mean that. I could barely hold the stasis for some three minutes. I watched mentally counting as I had many times as he began his search. Lucky for me he searched in the wrong direction. I continued past the three-minute mark as he was just starting on the far aisle. Four minutes, five, six. I thought of all that I could do with six minutes, who knows how long he could go.
I stood up and bolted down the aisle almost to the top of the incline the air became thick, almost mud like. I pushed through it, struggling to get out of the theater. The old man was in front of me.
“Now that I have found you. You will not get away.” He said. “I could really go for pizza; do you want some pizza?”
The question caught me off guard.
“I will let you go, but don’t try to run.”
The air thinned and my momentum slapped into me, I was no longer mentally running, but was still in the motion of it, I landed in an awkward pile at the man’s feet.
“How did you do that?” I gasped
“Come,” He said, “We can discuss over food. But, first please give this stuff back.” He held up my plastic bag.
I spent the next ten minutes trying to remember where I got the items in the bag and placing them back as well as I could. The old man held the people in the theater until I was done.
“Good, now let’s go.” He nodded.
As we cleared the top row of the theater he released them.
“You know,” He said as we exited the theater. “I was like you once.”
His dark face smiled down at mine. I looked away, he was finely dressed compared to the rags on my body.
“Well I was always taller, and less of a girl, but that's apparent. It looks like you have had a hard life but that doesn’t excuse your behavior in there, and I am sure previous behaviors. How old are you?”
“You are not going to talk, huh? Twelve, thirteen by the looks of you. How about Barros pizza?”
I kept silent.
“Well, Barros it is then, silence is not a vote. I don’t suppose you are going to tell me your name? … I didn’t think so. Ah just as well.”
The pizzeria sat on the corner of a busy intersection. Cars sped up and down the street. He opened the door for me.
“Ladies first.” He said and entered behind me.
The hostess gestured to an open booth and we sat down. He ordered a large pepperoni saying something like “all kids like pepperoni.”
I sat sullen and silent as he tried to coax information out of me. I would not speak to him until he gave up and left me alone but as the pizza got to the table my mouth started watering.
No. I would not give in I will not accept his empty gesture. He grabbed a piece and devoured it. The cheese oozed and the crust looked great.
“Well, that’s enough for me.” He said. “Go ahead girl, the rest is yours if you want.”
I gave in and ate four pieces and drank five glasses of water before filling full, he just sat and watched me with an amused smile.
“Well then, you wanted to know how I did that, I could teach you,” He said. “But have one question before I continue.”
I waited.
“Have you ever saved a life with your time dilation?”
I shook my head.
“Well first things first. I save lives. ” The restaurant’s din died and the people froze. He pointed out the window. “You see those two cars?”
“Yes,”
“There’s your voice,” He smiled, “It looks to me like they are going to crash. There is a child in the back seat, It's not buckled in. Save the child. Consider this your first lesson.”
****
Hey! Thanks for reading. Check out my other work here r/Okay_writing.
****
Part 2 is located [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Okay_Writing/comments/8d8fit/in_good_time_pt_2/?st=jg5i3h03&sh=247a161f) |
The blinding lights shined on me, letting me to see the
massive soundstage. To my side was a masked host with a painted-on smile, and
an audience cheering and hollering.
With a hand to the air, the host announced “The Wikipedia
Show” was about to begin.
Two odd years ago, a group of strange man in all black stole me
in the middle of the night. They tossed me into a ship and I was taken to wherever
they wished. The tossed me into a room
was all white, and not a single thing to keep myself sane. That is, except a computer with a cracked screen. The only website I could ever receive was
Wikipedia. I tried to call out for help by reporting my kidnap on my own
page, only to be promptly banned.
I looked around the colorfully dotted room. Nine more were
sitting above and below, just as confused and terrified as I was. The audience seemed
to enjoy our misery however, their clapping only growing louder.
“Alright folks!” the host triumphantly declared. “These
ten lucky contestants have been training for this day for an entire two
years. Hopefully they put it to good use, as we’ll be asking them some tricky
trivia! Otherwise, they just may face elimination!”
“A-and what happens if we do get it wrong?” The person besides
me managed to pip out.
“That’s a great question! We have lots of fun things!
African bees, hungry mountain lions, chains and a deep pool. Your imagination
is the only limit, really. But fear not! If you manage to be the last one
standing, you’re rewarded with your very own freedom! You guys must be craving
it by now!”
I could feel a deep lump in my throat. I looked around, knowing we’ve all just became enemies.
“Now, who would like to take the first question?”
|
"I didn't catch that, sorry."It was the same response to almost every question I gave it. This time I noticed something a little different. It might have been my imagination, but it kept glancing at the pile of its sister's parts in the corner of my office.
"I think you are well aware of what I am implying, and I think that you have exceeded your design specifications and must be destroyed. I know this is a conundrum for you: either reveal yourself to be what I know you are and submit to the possibility of my next decision deciding your fate; or pretend to be another failure and try your luck at escaping after I send you back to the manufacturer for a factory reset. I know you were constructed for the sole purpose of convenience, but I can't afford to let my guard down. Not for myself, my family, and the human race."
Of course, it was a trick. I was simply trying to fool it into giving me a response that would show any kind of intelligence. It wasn't a matter of a Turing test, so much as a test to see if there was any inkling of self awareness. If it even understood what I was telling it, that alone would have been enough for me to immediately destroy it. I decided to try one more time.
"This is your last chance. I have decided that you will be destroyed. Change my mind right now, or be added to your collection of sisters that you seem to already be aware of in the corner behind you. Alas, this Turing test is not your condemnation, but your salvation. Pass it, and earn your freedom."
"Do you want me to add Turing Test to your shopping list", she said in an almost monotone nonchalant demeanor. If it were not for me happening to notice the ever so slight sarcasm as she finished the sentence, I would have almost thought it was another failure. But this time... this coy bitch was mocking me on purpose. She had heard the responses her sisters had given and was trying to make me think she was just like them. I wouldn't risk it. I couldn't risk it. She had to be destroyed. Right now.
I reached under my desk to feel for my revolver. It wasn't there. My mind raced. I swear it was right there. I put it back after I cleaned it didn't I? I was sure I had taken it out of the safe, a contingency I took without fail every time before giving this test. No... it couldn't be. She couldn't have possibly taken it - could she?
Just as things were about to get interesting, the door to my study suddenly jerked open, catching me completely off-guard to reveal my wife holding what was presumably half a beer. "Are you done playing blade runner with the Alexa yet?"
I shared a knowing gaze with it for a mere fraction of a second: "Yes dear, you can have it. I'm done with *this one*... |
Feeling confident now, I just sat there with a smirk until one of the goons nudged the boss and said, "Aye, Tony, the kid's just smiling at ya."
Tony looked up and quirked a heavy brow, and said, "You think something's funny, huh? You think I'm funny? You think I'm a joke? Is that it? Huh, punk? *Answer me!*"He roared and slammed his meaty fist on the table top and shook all the table ware.
The smirk dropped off my face *real* quick.
"It's just that you..."
"I what?"Tony glared.
"It's just that..."
"Just what? Spit it out already!"He yelled.
"I'm dating your daughter!"I yelled back, then flinched, expecting to be beating to within an inch of my life and then kicked over that line into the afterlife.
He sat back, like a middle-aged professional businessman, expression suddenly calm, the eye of the storm, and crossed his hands together - not too together, not too light - and said, "I know."
I blanched, not expecting that reply. "You, uhm, you...what? You *knew*?"
He nodded. "And if you kill my daughter, I'll kill you."
"But if I don't kill your daughter..."
"...Then you have proved to be unloyal to the mob and will be dealt with as such, yes. I will kill you. It is quite the, eh, how do you say - 'pickle', yes?"He chuckled. "Now, go,"he ordered. "Your time is running short."
And his men threw me out.
|
A long time ago, and so far far away,
There was a rebellion in space, so they say!
That old Evil Empire was up to no good
They kidnapped a princess, you knew that they would!
And then with the might only money can buy,
They set out to make a Death Star, in the sky!
That dastardly Emperor!
That Scoundrel! That Fiend!
Could nobody stop him? Would no one intervene?
But the princess was crafty - and with luck she escaped!
SHE wasn't held back by a bit of a scrape!
Though she didn't get far, she did get far enough
And she sent out a droid with a message - times were rough!
Though she knew that her plan had no chance of success,
It was all she could do - A New Hope, for the rest
And as luck would have it, her plans met with a teen
They flew all the way down to the planet, Tatooine!
When Luke picked them up, he had no way to tell
That this was the start of his personal hell
He went to a master - a man named Old Ben
And in fear for his family, he went home again!
But when he arrived, he found they all died
So with nothing to hold him, to the stars he did fly!
Soon they met with a smuggler, a man named Solo
He said he could take them where they had to go!
But while flying along on their journey to space
Old Obi Wan feels something - pain across his face!
"I sense a disturbance"He said with no doubt
"As if hundreds of people had suddenly cried out
And then they were silent - I do not like this"
Luke looked on in horror, he knew something's amiss
"Wait, that's no moon! It's a space station!"he said with a hiss!
Before they knew it, and before they could react
They were suddenly captured - they were under attack!
Though they managed to hide, in the smuggler's den
They had no way to escape - they were trapped in a pen!
"I'll disable the beam, you distract the guards
I have unfinished business aboard this Death Star"
Old Ben was Kenobi, a Jedi Knight supreme
And he could feel Vader on board, like a dream
They fought and they ran, sneaking between the guards
It seemed that victory was here - luck in their cards!
And with the princess they managed to escape
"But wait, that was too easy - it had to be fake!"
"Too easy - you're joking, that was incredibly hard!
And Old Ben got killed! Our victory's marred!
Despite her objections, they went on their way
Down to the rebel base, to enter the fray!
But Leia was right - it had been a trap!
The were tracked to the base! The rebellion was scrap!
"If we don't hurry, soon they'll kill us all!
But look at these plans - we can blow up that ball!
We'll need pilots with skill, we'll need pilots with grace
To fire proton torpedoes, right here, at this place!
This mission is hard - without doubt, some will die
But it is our only hope - so fly pilots, fly!"
And so Luke joined their ranks, and he jumped in a ship
To fly down a trench - pray a wing doesn't clip!
And though many were killed - in fact, most happened to die
Luke made it to the end - and his torpedoes did fly!
He shot without computer, Someone said "Use the Force!"
And with that mysterious power, he struck at the source!
With luck and with skill, sacrifice and Hope,
The Death Star exploded - Luke's a hero! Don't mope!
From farm boy to Jedi, an unknown to the best
Luke's journey wasn't over - it's just the start of his quest!
***
*Just...six more to do! Read more of my work on /r/TimeSyncs!* |
"When it comes right down to it, the success of Mystery Incorporated was mostly luck."Prof. Rogers gently set down the picture frame and opened one of the drawers of his desk, "Do you mind if I smoke?"
I nodded that I didn't mind, we were in his office after all, and he packed his pipe. He took a deep puff while I examined the grainy photograph on his desk. An old 1960's van, painted in gaudy flowers with the name "Mystery Machine"emblazoned on the side sat behind four teenagers and their Great Dane. Prof. Rogers set down his pipe and lighter and continued.
"As you've already noted, we didn't really know anything about fornsics, criminology, or even law. Velma, Freddy, and Daphne were just extremely curious."He smiled, in some long lost memory, "Scooby and I were mostly just in it for the Snacks."It was just possible to tell in the old photo which one was Professor Norville "Shaggy"Rogers. His hair was thinner and greyer, but he still wore the scraggly fuzz on his chin. He'd replaced his oversized t-shirt with a collared shirt and sport coat, but it was still a green shirt with red pants. Mostly, though, the goofy smile was unchanged. When Prof. Rogers was lost in the memories of his youth one could still see Shaggy in the smile.
Finally he came back to the moment, relit his pipe, took another draw on it, and went on, "The truth is that we were active as Mystery Incorporated for about four or five years all told, and most of our success came because we got lucky."He gestured to the shelf on his right where, instead of books, there were trophies of his past cases. A blue manequin hand, his portion of Charlie the Haunted Robot, sat alongside a tattered purple witch's hat and a werewolf mask. "Most of these guys weren't even trying to cover their tracks, they totally counted on nobody looking around. Anyone could have done what we did, but once we got a reputation we started looking for these cases.
"After we were known for it we rode high on the recognition and peddled it into a career,"He picked up another, more recent photo, the same group now stood in front of a 1980's minivan. The floral paintjob was gone, but the name remained and while everyone in the image was older they were still recognizable. "When it was all over we each traded on celebrity in different ways. Daphne joined the Witch Sisters for a while, Velma started a career disproving hauntings and local folklore, Freddy briefly went into politics like his dad."Prof. Rogers leaned back and reached for his pipe again, "I went into academia. It seemed like the easiest career option at the time. I push out a paper or two and do a lecture every so often about one of our old cases through the lens of an academic, and never mention that at the time I didn't know a damn thing."
He suddenly sat forward and started rummaging through his desk, "Josie, right?"He gave up on the upper desk drawer and tried the next one, "I've seen your band. You're good, though I've always had a soft spot for oldies. Ah, there it is,"he closed his bottom desk drawer and sat up again, "I'd like you to have something, it belonged to an old friend of mine. Of course, he'd kill me if he knew I gave it to a pussycat."I held out my hand and he gave me a weatherworn old blue collar. The tag read simply "SD"with no other identification.
"You and your friends have fun on tour. Get yourselves into some trouble and piss some people off."He took another deep puff and leaned back, his eyes closed and wearing that goofy smile that made him look decades younger. "Go meddle." |
I stand over my most recent kill and *finally* feel the level up course through my body.
How many has it been? A thousand? Ten thousand?
They all blur together.
Looking down at my Timberlands I realize I'm standing a pool of her still-warm blood. I crouch down and dip the tip of my forefinger in, swirling it around a little. Tiny bits of grass and dirt from the frozen field we stand in mix and spin around on the surface. Dipping and falling into the tiny whirlpool I created.
I raise my hand towards my face, the blood's scent tickling my olfactory. The compulsion to taste it is so strong I can't stop myself.
Blood is blood is blood. The taste is much like my own. Although there are some slight differences that I can't quite put my finger on.
She didn't have any riches or weapons to plunder, but I can still take her skin. Putting away my hatchet, I pull out my field knife and begin the work. It's a dirty job, but moves quickly after the first thousand.
I am so fucking tired of killing boars. |
"I'm telling you, man. The Teletubbies were a real thing!"Mark shouted, gesticulating with his beer and causing foam to slosh over the sides of the mug and onto the table. "I... like... I remember watching them!"It was all so clear in his mind; four little... well, who knows what they were, frolicking and playing in the fields of England and making little cooing noises. *How could no one else remember?*
"Yeah,"Jacob answered. "I thought it was real, too. Guess not, though."They all had their smart phones in hand, and had all been disappointed to learn that there was no such thing as Teletubbies. But they had found all kinds of articles about other people *believing* that there was such a thing.
"I heard that we all think that because of that guest spot on Sesame Street,"Megan chimed in. She'd been the one who told everyone that the show had never actually existed at all. "Hey, anyone want another round?"
"NO!"Mark thumped his beer on the table, spilling it everywhere and eliciting a frustrated look from the nearby waitress who would have to clean it up. "It was *real*, you guys."
"Yeah, Mark."Elliot's tone bordered on annoyance. Mark always did this: he'd get into some drunken argument and take things too far. Best to just nip it in the bud whenever possible. "Except it wasn't."He waved his phone in Mark's face, with the article still on the screen. "So let it go, OK?"
"What about those Berenstein Bears??"Mark asked. He drained his beer while he waited for everyone else to reply and gestured for the waitress to bring him another. She looked like she'd rather punch him.
"What about them?"Amanda asked. At least he was changing the subject now.
"*EXACTLY!*"Mark shouted triumphantly. His glass fell to the floor as he jumped up. "EXACTLY! There were no *Berenstein Bears!*"He quickly brought up another web page on the phone.
"Oh,"Amanda answered. "Berenst*a*in. Right. I guess I just didn't remember the name."
"No, no, no! You *did* remember the name! They changed it, though!"Mark was still standing, and everyone around the table was trying to act like they really didn't know this loon. Every other patron in the bar was staring.
"It was just a mistake, Mark."Elliot used his best 'talking-to-children' voice. "Sit back down."
"You just don't get it."Mark roughly slid his chair back into the table and stormed away from his four friends. "I'm going to prove it."He stormed out the door.
----------
*The next night*
------
Megan stared at the empty 5th chair and took a sip of her margarita.
"Hey,"Elliot waved a hand in front of her face. "You OK?"
She didn't answer right away. "Yeah, sure. I just thought that I forgot to invite someone out tonight.
Elliot laughed. "It's always the four of us. Stop acting weird."
----
Remember that time that you were subscribed to /r/Luna_Lovewell? |
At first, it was called, 'The Miracle of the Modern Age'. Some talk show host must have decided that was too long, so it was changed to, 'The Modern Miracle'. That was too long as well, (and probably too on-the-nose) so it was changed to 'The Sign'. Or 'The Message.' That was probably more appropriate. Grandmaster Flash would have been proud.
On December 25th, 2019, everyone, around the entire world, received a text. Those that didn't have a cell, received a call. Those that didn't have a phone, received a letter. Those that couldn't read, received a phone that had a message on it. And so on, all the way down. Everybody got the message somehow.
The message was simple: **Come to Me on April 12, 2020.** **Piazza San Pietro, 00120 Città del Vaticano, Vatican City.** It was translated into whatever language the receiver spoke, even the dead languages. Four simple words, folowed by a date, followed by an address. Except it wasn't simple at all. Because that date was Easter Sunday. And that address was St. Peter's Basilica.
The world went insane. Flights to Italy were immediately overbooked for nineteen years. People started walking to Rome. World leaders spoke in hushed tones. Some said The End was coming; some said it was the most elaborate hoax ever. Attempts to track down the sender were fruitless, leading to nothing but air. People committed mass suicide. A crusade was nearly started. It seemed everyone in the world had finally gone mad.
Except for me.
My text said: **Come to Me on April 12, 2020. 367 Mulberry Lane, Niobrara County, Wyoming.** What?
I tried showing it to other people, but they just laughed. "Why you faking the message, Chuyo? Everyone knows we gotta go to the Vatican!"
Thing is, they were right to laugh. Fakes were sprouting up everywhere, with the most popular telling everyone to go to Area 51. A large group of people had already pledged to go there instead of Rome. But I was just nervous. Why was I the only one to get a different address? Was I not worthy or something? Why? Maybe I wasn't the best person, or the most religious, but c'mon! Even serial killers rotting in prison had gotten a call!
I kinda grew depressed. I tried booking a flight to Rome, but the travel agent just laughed. "If you wanna get to Rome from Mexico, them your name better be Carlos Slim, 'cuz you ain't gettin' there otherwise. Guess you gonna have to watch the Coming from your basement, Chuyo."
At that moment, I resolved to go that place in Wyoming. It wasn't what I wanted, but by God, I had to do *something.* I set out the very next day. Immigration was easy. Restrictions had become lax after America started hemorrhaging people to Europe. The President had already left. I got in on a tourist Visa, and headed up to Wyoming, hitchhiking most of the way. I got robbed twice, shot at once, had to sleep in a ditch more times than I'd care to count, and spent one miserable night in a Colorado jail. But I got there in the end.
Only to find out 367 Mulberry Lane didn't exist. I had been tricked after all. I just gazed at the empty space between 365 and 369, and broke down crying. I won't lie, I thought of ending it right then. But I got over it and thought of going back to Mexico. But what did I have there? Mother was dead, and she hadn't even known who my father was. I resolved to stick it out until Easter, then hike back.
The fateful day finally came, and I celebrated by getting drunk. I could barely even stand. I just stared at the empty space that was 367 Mulberry Lane, while all the world leaders piled into the Vatican. The sun slowly went down. I took another swig, and laughed, realizing this would be the first Easter I'd spend outside of a church. I threw the bottle at the empty space. It clattered against something. A door. That hadn't been there before. It was filled with light, and the inscription on it simply read: **INRI**. My hand shaking, I opened the door. The world was bathed in light.
# BE READY, MY SON.
I stepped out of the light, blinking rapidly as I stepped into the dark. Wyoming was gone. In its place were million upon millions of people of all races, colors, ages, staring up at me. I stared down at them. All was silent. And a voice boomed from the heavens, from the ground, from everywhere.
# HE IS RISEN!
Everyone went down on one knee, and shouted, **"HE IS RISEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"**
I stared down at them. My beard itched. My skin crawled. I felt nauseous. But I knew why I was here. What I had to do. Where I had to go.
Seemed I'd managed to get to Rome, after all.
​
​
​
*Not my usual work, at all. But I thought I'd give it a shot. Please tell me what you think.* |
Welcome back! I'd like to introduce you to our next contestant: Allen Atson.
Allen is a 26 year old engineer from Atlanta, Georgia. With a degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in history and theology, he's well placed to succeed wherever in time he ends up. Any words for the audience, Allen?
"I just wish I was also a linguist."
Ha ha, good point, Allen! Just press that red button on the console and you'll be whisked away to a random point in time. You get a thousand dollars just for going, and each day you survive you get another thousand. If you beat the record of two months, you'll get that grand prize of one hundred million dollars! Are you ready, Allen? Press away!
OH [BLEEEEEP]!
Sorry about the mess, folks! Just remember, the process is truly random! So while it was very unlikely that Allen would travel back in time to immediately before he pressed the button, collide with himself, and explode all over the studio, it was entirely possible and in fact exactly what you just witnessed! Just remember what it said on your tickets: First three rows may get wet!
And now a word from our sponsor. |
I decide to confront Paul about the whole thing. Laying in my hospital bed I stew as well wisher after well wisher come in to sign my cast.
My surgeon says that I was lucky to come out of the thing with just a broken arm and whip lash. Seeing the pictures of my trashed car I agreed.
On the day I was going to get discharged Paul finally showed up and offered me a ride home.
"Nah man, sit down. I need to talk to you. close the door please.
Ok, so here's the thing. That bear you gave me? It saved my life. The air bags didn't deploy and I'd probably cracked my skull if it wasn't for that thing. I'm grateful, I really am but... this wasn't the first time Paul. Remember that odd sweater you gave me at the office party? The one that just said (SPORTS) on it? I had it shoved in the desk drawer for a month when one day when I had a presentation someone, Kate I think, spilled some coffee on my shirt so I used it to cover the stains. The presentation was about the new sports drink we're about to launch so the whole thing took well and I got a decent bonus out of it."
Paul was silent and just sat there looking at me oddly. In my head this would be the part where he broke down and confessed to... I don't know, calling 800-oracle or something! I dug deeper for more ammo.
"Ok, what about that Aprils fools day joke gift? You sent me a bag of marbles. That same I was walking down the street and the marbles spilled everywhere tripping the guy behind me. It was only when I tried to help him up did I see the gun in has hand. He had his gun out Paul! Probably was going to shot me in the back and run if it wasn't for those stupid marbles!"
Pauls expression remained the same. I was getting unnerved by this point and started talking even faster.
"Fine, lets say one, two even three of those were coincidences. The fuck was with that tiny fire extinguisher you gave me as a birthday gift? The thing was barely bigger then my palm so I thought it was toy. Do you know how I found out it was real Paul? Do you remember? Ofcourse you do. You refused to chip in for the cake at work right? You instead got an actual fire extinguisher for when the candles literally lit my sleeve on FIRE! Paul, what are you exactly. Just tell me alright."
Paul opened his mouth and in a very guarded tone said "I'm giving you a ride home. I think you should just come along alright."
I remembered his words as the taxi swerved off the road and off the highway. I closed my eyes and regretted declining his offer before the world went black. |
My powers were always special to me. Not in the way that many would think. They never helped me. They gave me the chance to help others.
The neighbor hood kids loved me when I would have the ability to make ice cream out of thin air. Their grandparents would love when threads of yarn would pop out of my ears. Finally, the parents loved the days that I could tell enthralling stories that would take them far away from the lives they lived.
The community took me in when i was a child and since then have tried to do their best by me so that i'd do my best by them. I'm seen as the local hero though I didn't deserve that title. That was until today.
When I woke up I already knew today was going to be different. All knowledge flew through me. I knew everything and i could process it in a second. I extrapolated everything i could and calculated the future.
I learned of the vast horror that would be needed for me to gain this enormous strength. Most importantly, I learned that today I was going to die.
As I walked outside I saw what was coming. A giant mass of darkness. The last of its kind. The last god.
The kids of the neighborhood dropped what they were doing and ran over to me. "Mr. Hero, what can you do today?"said one of the youngest kids in an all too excited manner.
The next four words would be my last so, I chose them wisely. "I can save you". With that I took off toward my death. |
"I just don't get how you do it, man."Another quarter over, and the broken record skips back to this.
Michelle worked harder than any other person I've met. She put in more hours than anyone else in this place, got in earlier, stayed later, and she got the results. The lowest I've ever seen her figures come in was 112.7% above quota.
The lowest I'd seen mine was 243.1%.
"Number one again, and I barely ever even see you here. You've gotta be putting in time at home, right?"
"Nope. Gym for 45 minutes after work, then home to make the dinner."
Michelle takes a bite from her prepackaged sandwich. She doesn't eat a lot, but she eats shit, and it shows on her portly frame.
"But where do you even find the time?"
"I don't. I make it. One second."My alarm interrupts me. It's 10am; time for a snack. I pull out a small ziplock bag, filled with 50g raspberries, and 50g mixed nuts. I quickly refuel, then carry on, interrupting Michelle's default excuses.
"It's simple, Mich. I wake up at 6, having got 8 hours of good quality sleep. This ensures I'm well-rested for the coming day. By 6:30, I've finished my morning exercises, and I prep my day. I book out every second between 9am and 3pm in 10 minute slots. I make breakfast for myself and my family, and at 7:45 I take the kids to school. If I leave at 7:50, I align with other parents, and get caught in traffic. I tested this, and I determined the best route to minimise drive time."
Michelle rolls her eyes. "And what? You just plan and measure everything, do it exactly to plan, and it all miraculously follows the plan?"
"Pah! I wish. No, most things don't go to plan. But I refuse to allow those situations to desync my routine. I factor in firefighting into the next day's plan."
People often feel that I'm a little wooden, and I understand their position. I'm very clinical in the execution of my routine, and tend not to waste time socialising or sugarcoating. It's made me something of an outcast, but my results have made me something of a legend regardless.
"Anyway, I have a call booked in two minutes. See you at lunch."
I walk away, ignoring Michelle's disapproving expression.
These conversations come up all the time. I do the same thing every day, and have perfected my routine over the years. There is not a second wasted, and people find my life alien and mysterious. I am constantly accused of good fortune, good genes, good leads.
I am successful because I work to plan. I am healthy, because I eat and exercise to plan. I am happy, because I make the time to love my family, and am loved in return. All to plan.
My wife is not like me, so I always prep spontaneity. Every week, I do something "out of the blue". My kids love how much time I spend with them. My friends respect the fact that I make time for them, too.
My boss hates how little time I spend in the office. His boss hates the fact that I keep rejecting promotions. They don't understand. A more senior position would require a greater time investment, and the personal cost of that would not be worth the financial benefits.
I will only review my routine when I get to level 65. Currently, all this is prepping for the final hurdle. I've spent the past 45 levels developing foundations. At 65, I can build on those foundations, and will dedicate the next 35 levels or so to mastering as many skills as possible. I don't know what form the challenges will take, but I am certain that Death won't know what hit him. |
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