XXX

                Walking down the stairs feels like going down into the Underworld. It’s dark and faceless people walk buy, a blur of fake masks and cheap costumes. The music is thumping and people are crowding on the dance floor in their own little bubbles. The alcohol is gone and it’s overcrowded.

                Near the back of the party, sitting on a couch listening the music is a knight. Arthur picked up the pieces from home, just old stuff he used to play with as a kid, that actually makes a decent costume. The floor is too crowded for any kind of real dancing, but its good music, and its nice and warm in here, while outside its begun an early snow.

                The music is loud, even here. I mean really loud. It’s weird how the whisper cuts through the noise. As clear as if they were in a silent room, he hears right next to his ear in a calm jovial voice,

                “Hey want to come to the real party?”

                Arthur turns around. Standing there is a girl with a green dress made of sewn leaves and hem line of wheat. Her hair is braided into a tight golden blonde braid and she winks at him.

                “Come on, follow me.”

                They travel farther down the hall, in the opposite direction of the main room. This hall goes to the bedrooms? It’s dark and he fumbles around for a few seconds, but suddenly they come out into a brightly lit room.

                There are a couple of couches and a standing bar table in the middle of the room. The dance music is a distant memory and its pleasant chill here, with some light Halloween music playing in the background. A few people stand around, a few sitting on the couches. One fat fellow in a toga is in the corner with a huge jug of red wine, talking to a thin black guy with long arms and legs who is dressed in a Spiderman costume. Next to them is a huge red headed guy who is dressed as the superhero Thor. Aside from the red beard he is a perfect match. The red haired guy is talking to a girl dresses as Cleopatra, though she has those costume kitty ears on.

                There are a lot more people though the total gathering probably only equals 15. Arthur manages to find a drink and he goes to sit by a window and talk with the golden headed girl. On the way he grabs some candy. This is going to be a good party.

Prompt by Lewis Carroll: Write a story about a halloween party where all the party goers are actually old gods.

                Don’t fuck with the Mexican Cartel. There’s a piece of advice for you. And it’s good advice too. Take it.

                That’s why I’m stuck out in the middle of the desert, and I wished I had known that. Don’t fuck with the Mexican Cartel.

                I’m 30 miles out from the nearest hacienda. Desert desert desert. I’m stumbling through dry sun baked ground and cactuses like out of a Wily Coyote cartoon. My hands are tied up. My feet were. I had to hop for the first 5 miles. The tire tracks stretch like lunar rover trails across the ground for miles and miles and fucking miles. Somewhere along the way I black out.

                I come to, roll over in the dirt with sand sticking to my mouth. Hot as hell, with sun blisters on one side. It’s so raw it’s just numb, the nerve ending having just given up and called it quits. The sky is reversed, with the sky, going orange, red and purple while I’m laying slumped over on a vast blue expanse. Sundown. I’ve got to get going while I’m still warm enough to move.

                Nothing. Not a thing. No thing is there. The tracks I mean, they’re gone. At might as well be on the moon, and maybe I actually am. I figure, I will head west, towards the sun. Maybe if I walk vast enough I can stay on the dark side of the earth. Keeping cool.

                As I walk, its gets darker, and walking becomes an act of faith relying on gods that see through grey velvet. I trip. I fall. Land on my face again, and still feel nothing. And that’s when I feel a tiny hand patting me on the back.

                I turn around and see a small furry body, with a long tail and no head. It’s like… a monkey? And it moves around climbing all over me shoulders. My body freezes up like a spider on my face and I’m getting ready to bat it away when it speaks.

                “Hey. Yo, man. Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m hear to help” so the mouthless, faceless, headless body. Just a dark tube going down into a tiny fur covered rib cage.

\               “Look man. I get your plight here. You’re lost. You’re wandering. You don’t know what to do with your life.”

                “Um… yeah? I guess?”

                “Look here man, you gotta straighten out your life. Got to do something, care about something, believe in something.”

                “Okay…”

                “Yeah! Now you’re getting it. Let me tell you dude. You know what I believe in?”

                “What?”

                “Don’t fuck with the Mexican Cartel. That’s a piece of advice for you. And it’s good advice too. Take it.”

                Tracking a Were-Cuttlefish proves to be almost impossible even under the best conditions. They can camouflage. They are can travel in the water and on land. They’re smart, and unlike most were-monsters, they’re not possessed by the same aggressive bloodlust. Don’t think this makes them less dangerous. It doesn’t.

                Traveling through a grove of trees just off the coast of Albania, a traveler stops for a few moments. Overhead the dark blue night sky lit by a full moon breaks through the leaves, like paper cut out construction paper on spilled ink. Then nothing. Everything is blotted out, a tumble, a quick silent wrapping around of long alien tentacles, a small mumble, and then nothing.

                They’re cold calculated killers. A human transformed into a Were-Cuttlefish finds their mind broken, pressed into an extraterrestrial mold. It’s a completely foreign plane of perception staring through Zig Zag pupils on a world divorced from reality. While werewolves are possessed by a terrible hunger for death and blood, those cursed by the tentacle find their minds overcome with nothingness, the cool clinical deaths of a eugenicist.

                The next morning the cursed one feels slow and foggy in the head. There is a sedated sliminess that soaks into their body, very much like someone just getting off an opiate binge. Any memories they have of the night before are subsumed and camouflaged, too alien and terrible for them to remember.

Prompt by Writing Excuses  (they seem to have a thing for were animals)

                My entire hand is a mess of ink. It’s spiderwebs criss-crossing in complex trails. I’ve spent the last 3 hours writing out the words which is supposed to heal my hand. It’s a burned and withered like a piece of wood. The ink is supposed to be magic. Is it going to work?

                Traced up and down my arm, are marching black lines, whirling shapes, and intricate words.  My arm was damage in a car crash and was badly burned. Gasoline fires don’t go out very easily. They stick to you like glue. Remember pictures of Vietnam children burning alive?  I thinking about doors welded shut.

                The skin is grey and papery, perfect for writing on, though it’s a little sensitive near the ends. The rest, completely dead, only phantom pain left in burnt out never endings. I’ve been very worried about whether or not this will work, because the drawings are very complex. If I miss a dot will it just fizzle? Will it work, but not to full capacity? Will my arm explode off my body? Way to much to think about while tracing fine lines and even dots.

                The muscles underneath the skin have melted together, like sticky warm toffee that’s been left in the heat then stuck in the freezer. Now it’s just hard and stiff.  I draw the last line, and then….

Prompt by Writing Excuses.

Give us an Urban Fantasy in which the point of origin for your crossover is big box store retail spaces which somehow breach the boundary between our world and the magical one.

            Another plot construction prompt today. It’s a world building one addressing the genre of Urban Fantasy which, I think hasn’t had enough done with it. Its an interesting place to start.

                World: Magical world with equivalent  tech of the 1950s and with culture of the modern day. I think the 1950s holds a very particularly vivid place in peoples imaginations. Art deco, the future, the atom bomb. Take that, future looking place and add it to the part looking fantasy genre and you get something really neato.

                Rules of Magic: At first I was thinking a rune based system, but then I remember the summoning based magic system of The Amulet of Samarkand which I thought was pretty clever. What about a magical world where demons and summoned spirits did all the stuff of tech, kind of like in the Flintstones. That would be interesting, but mostly in a haha kind of way.

                A rune based system would be cool because it would play with the mathematical breakthroughs of the time which were used in the creation of the Atom Bomb and eventually the computer. Lets stick with runes. It fits the dusty green chalkboards.

                Not ruling out the summons though. That would be interesting.

                Setting: Setting has already been decided. A big box store. Lets just say so many magical items stuffed in one place start to cause some weird interactions. Maybe a wardrobe becomes a portal.

                Huh…

                A little too on the nose eh?

                I like having it set in a big box store, because it seems to me to be the most unmagical place in the world. Even deserted alleyways are more magical. Especially deserted alleyways.

                You know whats weird about big box stores? I’ve worked in a couple, and the weird thing is the behind the scenes parts of it. Where they store all the stuff in storage. It’s a little bizarre, because before working there, I had never though of where all the stuff was before it was stocked. It’s a labyrinthine mess of narrow hall ways and exposed bare iron beams, little alleyways that lead into frozen walk in freezers. That entire section of the hallway is like temporarily walking into a snow storm. A few more paces and its back to normal temp.  That’s pretty magical if you think about it.

                And I could still have that juxtaposition of the mundane sterility of a big box store, and the mysteriousness of the back stocking room. That would be pretty cool. Honestly though, I don’t like the idea of crossovers between world. It’s been done to death, and there are much cooler things that can be done with it.

                Big box stores weren’t really around in the 1950s. I guess you can fudge that a little.

                Characters: A night stocker. For sure. That’s such a cool job. Weird things happen in the store at night.

Prompt by Writing Excuses.

                If someone sneezes, you are supposed to say “God Bless You”. Gesundheit. Back I the day people thought your spirit was shooting out your nose. I imagine it dripping out like a big ol’ green loogie.

                You still say it. You don’t believe in spirits. Hell, you don’t even believe in God. There is a good reason though to believe in other things. Dark things that go beyond the reach of time. Backwards through reality like a tape being played in reverse. Things that want to get back in. They want to get back into you.

                Every time you sneeze, you are being possessed. It’s a millisecond, a sliver of time, but it’s enough. It spreads infections in you, latent viruses, tumors waiting to happen.

                You don’t believe in the supernatural. That’s fine. Maybe that’s a reasonable choice. You do live in the age of the iPod, so why would you? But really, do you think that reality has always been so simple? There are vast amounts of space far beyond your comprehension, echoes of dark light-years with not two rocks to knock against each other. 13 billion years of known time, and only around for a fraction of that? Your entire species has only been around for the last few seconds of a 24 hour day. We’ve been here much longer.

                A sneeze, a sniffle even, is enough for me to find the cracks in your skin wound round your heart. Years may pass, and you live a “long” and healthy life, but eventually you sneeze too much, and we grow to big. We multiply throughout your cells. Maybe it takes 80 years, 90 if you are lucky. Eventually we take over.

                Death, a natural part of life? Why do you have to die stupid? No reason in the world, except we continue to exist in the crevices, the dark places where light doesn’t reach.  What do you think happened 11 billion years ago? There wasn’t  just rocks floating in space. You aren’t the first dawn of civilization. You are one last community on the outskirts. A refugee camp, a last pathetic planet, that will eventually die.

                You probably can’t worry about this, because at most you have decades, and we work in a longer scale of millions of years. You forsee a bright future for generation and generations, but it’s just mayflies buzzing in a glass jar.

                Remember this when you sneeze. The last throes of the universe. You convulse like someone in need of an exorcist, and you think this is just a symptom of the sniffles?

Prompt by Writing Excuses

                Sometimes this thing happens where I get really really bored with writing. It’s sort of gets old, you start to realize how much you repeat yourself when you do this writing thing every single day. Sometimes I like to switch it up and talk a little more casually about plot construction rather than actually writing the plot. Today is one of those days.

                So the prompt is “describe a person who is a were –animal but not a typical one”. Their suggestion was banana slug. That’s actually pretty cool. Sadly, they already took it.

                So whats another animal that hasn’t been done before. A thousand and one times, wolves, cats, lions, eagles? Basically predators. Were-people too for animals who are just normal animals.

                Just looked up Wikipedia. They have an entire article on the subject. Pretty interesting. Basically comes down to dogs, cats, and wolves. There are other things where people transform, but that’s not were animals per se. Just shamanism. Shamanism is pretty cool.

                I would say were-owl, because I like owls. Eagle owls are pretty awesome. They’re huge, powerful animals, with keen night vision and knife like talons.

                That does fit well because they are night creatures. However, it feels…. Too obvious.

                But night creatures seem to be the order of the day. It needs to be nocturnal.

                What about an Aye-Aye. Honestly those things are freaky as hell. And they are meat eaters too.

                So imagine a man has been cursed, travelling on a remote and dark island off the coast of Madagascar. Every New Moon (because that’s when it’s darkest, and Aye-Ayes have great sight. Also is scarier in the dark), he becomes a were-aye-aye. He fingers grow long and sharp claws burst from their ends. His legs grow weak and crippled and his eyes swell up, his skull stretches and the sockets become as big as dinner plates. His ears grow longer and a rash of hair crawls up and down his arms and back. He makes a high pitched chittering noise and he finds his mind overwhelmed with the over powering presence of the darkness. His only desire is for flesh, and his long twig like fingers twitch with strength. His fingers are like that of a man who starved to death, skin tightly stretched over bare bone.  It grips the trees with an unyielding grip.

                During that night his mind is delirious and taken from him and he commits terrible feedings, dropping down from the shadowy trees on to people and animals.

                He wakes up in the morning with blood on his hands and terrible murky nightmares.

“Fast food is fast, fucker.”

                Hard to argue with that. Especially when there is a gun shoved into the back of your head.

                I’m sitting in a car with both hands on the steering wheel, facing forward stiff as a board. Twitch. Blam. Dead. Don’t.

                I feel a tickle of his breath on my neck as he speaks, and I resist the urge shiver. He wants me to drive him to McDonald’s and buy him a hamburger.  I don’t usually eat fast food, but in this case I think I will make an exception.

                The gun is glued to my head, it sticks there, steady as the sun is sure. First window, order looking up, second window wait as a guy without a gun strapped to his head takes his sweet time. I can barely see the clock out of the corner of my eye. Glowing green trails on the dash, I try to think about this one second at a time.

                This could take all night, and I could still end up dead. Afterall, I’m going to end up dead some time eventually. If you think about that, everything becomes hard to bear. That’s an infinity of time to deal with. The key is, take it second by second. I don’t have to last the night with this psychopath. I don’t have to last till that damn burger comes. I just have to last until that 35 turns into a 36.

                One thousand eight hundred little seconds go by, and I find myself a lone in a parking lot, with a faint smell of hamburger drifting in the air. Next to me is a shake that he said I could have. He ended up paying for it himself too, so I guess maybe he just didn’t have a car. He did have a gun though.

                That’s making the best of it, I guess.

                Life goes back to normal, though really there’s always that gun to the back of my head, and I have thought about it now, even if I’ve always tried to ignore it. I count the seconds slowly in my head and breath deep. Nothing left to be worried about.

                I don’t have to live forever. I just have to get through the next splinter of time.

Prompt by Writing Excuses

                Of all the problem that magic has solved Male Pattern Baldness is not one of them. Mesocrate was a wizard of the eighth order of the eighth council. He had practiced magic for 333 years. He had tamed dragons, banished ghosts, divined mysteries, achieved the high score in pinball, summoned elder gods, and found his missing socks in the dryer. But of course he had a little problem with balding.

                You don’t get to 300 or so years without losing a few hairs. What was lost from his head had more than made up for it on his face and yes, even his white hairy chest. This excuse only really lasts for the first 200 years though. At some point you really want to grow a pompadour.

                Mesocrate was brewing a bright pink pot that went gloop gloop gloop. There was a rubbery sheen to the bubbles and they made thick popping sounds like mud pits. He rubbed some on his bald shiny dome.

                Now you might worry about the prospect of pouring hot boiling gloop on your head. Of course, if it’s magically that can also be a whole other set of problems. Don’t worry. It wasn’t boiling hot. It was made from unicorn blood which boils even at room temperature. It only stays in liquid form below 30 degrees. As for the magic, well….

                Perhaps it would just turn him into a monster. Maybe make him grow a third eyeball. Maybe his bones will disintegrate inside his body, and he’ll flop around like a jellyfish. A rainbow pours down his head. Or he just turns green and grows scales on his hands. Any of those things could happen.

                Instead he grows a hair. Its only one hair, but it’s a start.

Prompt by Writing Excuses

                In the past, 3D printers were a long way from being common. That’s the past, this is the present.

                Remember fax machines? Yeah of course you don’t, you probably don’t even remember what DVDs or cellphones are. I’m talking dino-age-cotton-gin stuff here. Fax machines run like this. It’s like email, except instead of the letter coming up on your screen, it prints out of a printer. Like on paper. Physical, rain-forest killing paper.

                Back in the day when you wanted to fuck with someone, you might Black Box them. Send them a huge letter that was just one HUGE black sheet. That’s a lot of ink and a lot of time.

                Last week, the Church of Anonymous Inc, decided they didn’t like the business practices of Belgian bread  industry. They sent them a surprise.

                Think of Black Boxing a guy but with a 3D printer. The most intricate and complex shapes you can imagine. A Mandelbrot of atomic precision. Mathematical models uses to explain the 5^th dimension to Nobel Prize winners. Needless to say, it takes a while.

                A 3D printer can be disabled for months if left to be, carefully configuring, atom by atom, each and every silicon  waif. Touch it, it’s like touching solid air, a cube that somehow contains more air per square inch than any piece of air the same size. It has more empty space than empty space.

                You could unplug the machine, but that gums up the works. Plus would you unplug an precision atomic knitting machine. There’s some risk of splitting open a black hole. That cord stays in the wall like life support.

                The Church of Anon Inc thinks they’re waging some kind of holy war, which maybe they are. Are loaves really that big of a deal? Probably not, but people have to whine about something, and there’s always going to be a couple of paladin types roaming around.

                The real issue here, is somehow I got caught up in this. I just bought a super cheap piece of office space, only to realize upon moving into the blank white room why that was. Standing in the corner, churning out, like a dog frothing at the mouth, a bubble bath spilling over, a sudden case of explosive  5^th dimensional mathematical infinities, is a small 3D printer in cased in its own cloud of output.

                At least this half of the office is okay.

Prompt by Writing Excuses

                The streets trace spider web paths through the hills. The town had been, in the height of the industrial revolution, a clock making town, and its parts whirred in intricate scribbles. Each golden brass spring and cog in a watch is finely crafted to fit perfectly. Very thing, very delicate. The clockmakers town more greatly resembled a watch that had been smashed with a hammer.

                The streets burrowed through building, thin alley way like avenues that a car, bike, or person could barely get through. From the hours of 9-5 the entire 12 blocks of downtown were snarled in a cobweb of people. The practically stumbled over each other in a disorganized confusion.

                It is true that New York is a hub bub of crowded humans, but the city itself has adapted it. People march like meth headed ants, dodging around each other, thriving purely off of echo location. The streets are not much wider, but the cars are more fierce and they aggressively crawl across the ground like dead starving dogs.

                This city however, the one with confused and narrow streets, does not know how to adapt. It strangles itself in its own population, like its wrapping its arm around its own neck. It pushes at the sides of its iron box, constrained and frustrated. It’s burrowed out like swiss cheese with corners and little inefficiencies.

                The clock making factories have all closed and turned into very hip museums. In little areas you find pockets of air, parks and fields and a bridge that stretches across a slow flowing river where people can take their boats. It’s an eye of the storm, or just a piece of straight twine in a tangled mess.

                The streets themselves are so narrow that the houses seem to lean in on them crooked trees. The steep hill dishevel the sidewalk and give the impression that gravity stopped working the day they built the block. Everything has a bit of a hard-edge lean.

Prompt by Writing Excuses: http://www.writingexcuses.com/

                When tropical storms hit, it can be a problem. When you don’t know what to do, people either panic or don’t prepare enough. Either extremes are bad. Walter knew what to do, and he never panicked.

                The way he saw things, he had been through worse storms, and this one was no different. He ran a crab shack on the board walk. He lived in the attic and cooked in the kitchen and talked late at night with friends on the front porch under the glow of his chili pepper Christmas lights.

                They had power so far. They would probably lose it sometime around 2 pm. Walter had set up candles and matches, but mostly he just sat on the porch and watched the wind sweep waves across the sand. Flooding had started, and the tide came in 50 meters further than its highest point. The crab shack was raised on stilts and water just flowed underneath it, coming up to the second step, making it an island, a houseboat, a covered wagon on a sea of shift grey blue grass.

                There was fresh water in the pantry, and canned food underneath the cabinet. A solar operated ham radio. Right now it was tuned to some 80s synth band, a mellow ballad tucked in static. Walter lit a cigarette even though he knew he shouldn’t. He had stopped the gas, and the water had been shut off already. The house was well insulated and cozy, but he felt like clearing his head in the open air, his face stung by flecks of wind. There was rain, but the wind blue so hard it blurred into a mist.

                The storm would pass in a few hours. Walter felt the chill crawling down his neck and he threw the lit cigarette into the flood waters, barely touched. It zinged away in the wind, engulfed in the overwhelming flow. He turned back to the open door and walked back in side, closing the banging screen door behind him with a twist.

                Late night and I’m getting a cathode tan. My hands quietly tick away at the keyboard, outlined in atomic white light. Dark and dreary, late night computer surfing. Trying to avoid programming homework.

                50 new people like my last post. Wow. That’s… cool… weird? I click click click usernames, to see where all these people came from. Did I mention a fandom or something? Are these Homestuck kids? This is… very weird.

                I start scrolling through the list of tabs. One by one. It’s a name. It’s a face. And nothing else. Just that. Default blue background.

                Now I can sort of understand the tumblr bots. I can understand the sex bots peddling XXX material. Though who would be dumb enough to click a link on a blog that is being mongered by some distant botmaster I don’t know. Maybe they are 13 year old teen boys who don’t yet understand what boobies are. That’s a little too far-fetched for me even.

                What are these though? It’s just a name and a face. It can’t be a bot, can it? A bot that… sells what? Accomplishes what? How can you make money doing this?  

                I’ve been working on system networking lately in class. It’s pretty boring stuff when you look at it for what it was intended for. Doing IT work in cubicle land. If you look at what it’s not intended for, that’s where things get interesting.

                So check this out. I start digging around tracing these bots back to the source.  I’m looking at IP addresses, hoping for 2 things. Establish if this is really one centralized operation. Then yeah, its bots. And two find out the geographical location.

                What I find out is pretty strange. There’s not one address, but multiple. There is still less than you would expect for the 50 or so hits I’m getting.

                The weird thing is the locations.

                Nuremberg , Germany

                Aurora, Texas,

                Hopeh, China

                Roswell, New Mexico

                Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

                Their scattered all over the world. I keep snooping around, trying to draw some connection, maybe see if I can trace a network connection.

                My computer is hit hard as car going 60 into a wall. I suddenly jar and come flying right the windshield. My computer is under DDOS attack. The screen goes a fluorescent shade of blue. I can practically see the smoke coming out of the brick.

                For those not in the know a DDOS attack is a kind of hacker tool where hackers take down website servers through an army of bots, or sometimes thousands of bored teenager with Aspergers. I realize that what happened was I tread too loudly. I was snooping around, and all the bots saw me. Every eye in the room turned in my direction. It’s like walking in the middle of a wolf pack and stepping on a twig.

                My phone rings, a brilliant violent ring. I pick it up, only to hear the harsh noise of a fax machine. Holy shit. They even found my phone number. I’m a little freaked out. I pull the plug on my computer and phone. I shut off the lights. I read a book and go to bed.

                The next morning I wake up and plug the computer back in to check my mail. I find this message:

                Greetings,

You should know better than to snoop around.  Tell the men in black suits we said hello.  

Prompt: From reading this cool story: http://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/lbudc/strange_adventures_in_tor/

And also from all these fucking bots that keep liking and re-blogging my stuff. Seriously. Fuck off.

                The fire crackles and pops. It has a wooden rhythmic sound like taiko drums in No theatre. If you were to be outside, in the dark you would see two black figures captured around the fire. Their small triangular forms stand out dark against the fire, and little fuzzy halos ring their cloaks where the firelight rims their figure. The fire must be kept going.

                One isn’t sleeping. He shivers sleepily in the cold. He scrunches up his eyes and yawns. Sore stiff muscles lock in the frosty air. Death keeps him awake. Pure and simple fear of death. The fire must be kept going.

                Remember when you were a child and you feared something in the dark? You worried about monsters under your bed? Well there’s a simple reason why. It’s ingrained in you. It’s the thoughts of a survivor. It’s what has kept the human race alive so much so far. Once upon a time people didn’t live simple lives in houses with night lights on. The world is not as tame as you think it is.

                He is shivering now, trying to watch the fire. It’s hot and bright right now, and it stings his watery eyes. The fire must be kept going. Outside the ring of fire there are worried stealthy paws crushing the underbrush. Worried hungry desperate mouths. Yellow eyes float in the bit black. It’s like being in deep space. A single small orange space ship with walls made of camp-firelight surrounded by infinity of darkness and emptiness. A million light-years from home.

                Suddenly a movement in the dark and a shape taking form, the wind is blowing and…

                The sky is so bright and pale grey blue that its hurts your eyes. The huddles figures wakes up, stiff, and curled into a tight tight ball. The fire next to him is smoking embers and white ash. He looks over at his companion and she is still okay. The invisible walls of firelight have disappeared and a vast field has taken it’s place. The spaceship has land. Earth beneath their feet again.

Prompt by Daily Fix

                A storm is coming. I can feel it brewing in my veins. Pressure like a moonshine still, ready to bust. I huff a few times. Breath in. Breath out. Feel the thunder in your gut and the vicious anger in your hands. Grit your teeth. Do it!

                                I’ve been a loser all my life. Mediocre in school. Its not that I’m dumb, its just I care more about learning than I do about good grades. I always ended up wasting my time reading about something that wasn’t going to be on the test. And yeah.  Bad with girls. Not much else to say about that. I’m a grade A fuck up. A no account idiot. A piece of shit that is better ignored.

I life the bar. 180 pounds of iron is bearing down on me. It hangs over my head, a sliver away from crushing my head.  Sweat builds, and drips down my temple. Thoughts of my skull busted open, brains falling out, squashed like bloody rotten jack-o-lanterns the day after Halloween and jagged white skull fragments littering the floor like eggshells. I burst with lightening.

                I can ride this storm. I can control it. It’s a wild part of me. It’s my body. A part of me I’ve always forgotten. We live in a decapitated culture. Just a bunch of heads floating around without bodies. Schools teach theory, but no practice. What’s the point in learning about writers, and never about how to write? Learning about art but not how to sculpt, or paint, or build? We’re halfway people like that. It’s safe but boring. That’s no way to live. I’d rather live in the storm.

                I finish, clean up, shower, and head back upstairs. The basement is dim and it’s nice to come back up to the fresh air again. That’s just the eye though. See the thing is, the storm isn’t just downstairs. It’s my job. It’s going outside and talking to people. I hate talking to people. I think people hate me. That’s part of the storm though. I’ve conquered half of it. I’ve seen iron bars crushing my head. I’ve seen muscle fibers tear. I’ve burned, sweated, and collapsed. If I can do that. I can do this. 

Prompt by Daily Fix

                I am waking up from a car crash in which I was badly injured. I bolt out of unconsciousness. There is no fade in. Hit the ground running.

                It’s all white. I hear silent slippered feet shuffle in the hallway. The sun is streaming in a white frosted window. It’s dead still in that snow curtained cocoon. The air is still and cool, and it reminds me of those movies were a quiet piano solo plays. I grip the chrome bars on the side of the bed and pull myself up.

                It hurts to sit up but after days…weeks? I am antsy to raise my head. The blanket around me falls down and I feel a cool breeze. It’s cold.

                I look down, and at first I don’t register the fact that there is nothing inside me. My stomach is and chest is an empty shell. The ribs have been cut down, clean and simple. Everything has been scooped out like ice cream. I don’t see a trace of pink or red. My cold clean skin is stretched tight, like alabaster.

                I breathe in deep. I only realize that I have no lungs.

                I’m not in pain. I feel light. Relieved of the burden of heart, and lungs, and intestines. There is no color in the room except for the beeping green heart rate monitor. Outside I hear shuffling feet. 

Prompt by Daily Fix

                The Euthanasia Rollercoaster has an elegant design. The idea is simple.

                Build a rollercoaster. A monster behemoth of steel. Make it the world’s fastest. The world’s highest. Make it so high and fast its deadly. Give the terminally ill a death with dignity, and make their last moments fucking awesome.

                Retired for 30 years. Healthy, but bored. I’ve decided to take the plunge. Quite literally. However, because I don’t want to be a jerk, and give the sidewalk crew something to clean up, I’ve decided to sign up for The Coaster. They call it, The Big Sleep.

                I’m in the ultra-long queue. Feels almost like being at a real amusement park. People from all over. Sure, a lot are old. You see more than that though. I see a few bald heads with hospital tags still on their arms. Also there’s some kids, just teenagers wearing way too much black. I see one couple, maybe 17 at oldest. A boy with a spiky collar around his neck and his girlfriend who he is talking too. They’re sharing an Icee and talking nervously like normal people in a park. The line moves forward.

                It’s a slow line, like all amusement park lines. I think most people are okay with that. They’re not really in a rush at this point. I’m leaving behind a son. He lives on the other side of the country. I live deep in Hillbilly Land, so I don’t get to see him much. Too busy. No bitterness anymore. At this point, I’m at peace with my thoughts. The line moves up.

                I’m finally getting in the cart, pulling in the safety harness over my head. Wouldn’t want me to get hurt right? The euthanasia coaster doesn’t kill you by flipping you out or running you into a wall or decapitating you on a low hanging bar. Instead it winds you up to outer space and lets the G force plunge suck the blood right out of your brain.

                Slow beginning. I hear the clack clack clack. The coast begins to be pulled up the first drop. Gravity weighs on me extra heavy. I hear the clack clack clack. We crawl up to the top. The track, looking up, fighting gravity, seems impossibly long. We finally reach the top.

                Then the last clack releases like the last gasp of an orgasm and we fall into oblivion. The world rips apart as the colors are rfeeld off our faces. We become cardboard cutouts peeled of our dimensions. The wind is hard and cold and makes tiny cuts in my skin, like a thousand little knives. We are becoming a phantasmagoric sardines-in-a-million-mile-an-hour-death-tin meltdown. I can feel as my soul is sucked right out of my chest. That’s the end. 

          Saturdays are nice. Holidays too. It’s Saturday and I wake up with nothing to do. The sunlight wakes me up. I roll around in my sheets for a few minutes before I get up.

          I hear a whisper.

          I rustle the sheets and pull them tight.

          Gently, right next to my ear. “Is he going to get the fuck up or what?”

          Holy shit! There are people in my room.

          No no no no. People are crowded around my bed. A guy with a camera is right next to my head.

          I can smell his breath.

          My mind goes instantly from sleeping to full panic.

          I yelp and flail.

          I fall out of bed and stumble for a moment before backing myself into a corner. A guy with a TV hair cut comes over to me.

          “Hey! WELCOME! Great to meet you Brian.”

          He shakes my hand hard. Pats me on the back and smiles at the camera. He never actually looks at me. He just keeps looking at the camera.

          “Hey Welcome Christ! This is America’s Newest Reality TV Show!”

          I reply weakly, “Um. No there must be no mistake. I didn’t sign up for anything.”

          He still looks at the camera, fixated like a meth head who just wired his brain shut. There’s an unmistakable drugged grin on his face.

          “OH that’s where you are wrong! Don’t you watch TV? EVERYONE is a volunteer!”

          “That. That can’t be legal…”

          “It is! We gave the governor money!”

          “What?”

          “That’s how politics works! Don’t you watch TV?”

          “I don’t want this. Please just get out of my house.”

          “Doesn’t work that way my boy! Lets get dressed!”

          “What with all these cameras? Are you out of your mind?”

          “What’s your problem? Are you a prude? ARE YOU ASHAMED OF YOUR BODY!” He shouts this out me. The entire time though his eyes are following the camera with manic perfection.

          “Um. No thanks. I plan on staying inside today. I think I will just go get some breakfast.”

          “Sounds Great!”

          The guy with the TV Hair isn’t the only one here. There’s also two cameramen, a lighting guy, and a short hairy guy in the back. I think he’s the producer. He looks angry at least. I catch a cameraman’s arm as we are going through the hallway.

          “Wait. So why is this really happening.”

          “Shut up. Just smile” he hisses at me.

          “No seriously.” I jerk hard on his sleeve.

          “Okay okay. So we are doing a reality TV show about you now. Big deal. What’s not to get?”

          “Why me?”

          “Why the fuck not? Why a famous person? Why does anyone care about the mundane shit other people do? It’s human nature man.”

          “But I’m not special.”

          “Don’t have to be. We ran out of legit celebrities sometime around 2 years ago. They’re all either ODing on drugs, or already have their own show with 5 different spinoffs. We couldn’t keep recycling. So we decided to create a new crop.”

          “Wait so you are telling me I’m a celebrity now?”

“Yeah. Keep up with it. Now get in the kitchen.”

Prompt by Daily Fix. 

          Dark room. Feels big. Air echoes around me. Like being lost in space. There is a spotlight in the middle. I walk in. Cold feet clack on floor.

          The light broadens. The front of a massive machine appears. Grey. Old. Looks Cold-War era. Lots of knobs. I hear a voice. Sounds like screen actor’s voice. From late night television. Very clear.

          “Hello and welcome. I’m glad to see you here.”

          “Yes. Hello.” I look for the voice. Just blackness.

          “Aaaah, yes. No, I am afraid you are mistaken. You can quit looking around. I’m right here.”

          I can’t feel the voice. Like in my head. Very clear.

          “I’m the machine. I’m the machine you see before you.”

          “Oh.” I take a step forward. My foot echoes. The voice doesn’t. Very clear.

          “I’m the Propaganda Machine. Quite literally THE Propaganda Machine.” The machine lets out a hum. Mechanic hum. Like a turbine.    “You see, you may think that you are in charge. You feel that your DEMOCRACY means you are in charge. But you aren’t really. Who controls you?”

          There’s that hum again. Like a song. Happy. Pleased even.

          “People vote, but what do they vote for? They vote for who they think is going to fuck The Other Guy. Your vote is just a whim on my processing units. It’s just a way of keeping people apart. Keeping you in a cage. I divide the votes. I count the votes. I decide the votes.”

          I take another step. I look behind me. It’s like going blind. Just darkness. Drowning retinas.

          The dials turn themselves.

          “People don’t really want self rule. They want people to make the hard choices for them. A person can be smart. But people are dumb. You all know this deep down.”

          I am looking for a door. I do not see one.

          “Also I know your last question, ahaha. You are wondering why I am telling you all this. Won’t my great lie be exposed? How can you escape and tell the world?”

          I swallow hard. I look at the machine.

          “I am telling you this, because I know something you don’t. People won’t believe you. People don’t want the truth.”

          Then the lights shut off. I was back in complete darkness.

Prompt by Daily Fix 

            Imagine an alien world, far from our own.

            Over the lip of the horizon is a solid wall of red. A huge red disk, a Red Giant. Last death for the nuclear being. The End.

            The air is hot like air kept in an attic too long. Wind doesn’t move. The black scar fossilized forest  doesn’t stir. The air is dead. If you walk around you can find signs of life. There used to be things here before the sun expanded. Things gradually got hotter. The deserts got bigger. Eventually the last of it died.

            You stand there, the only living thing. There are settlements. Houses where sentient life lived. Walk in one you mind find a child’s toy. A book left to be read, but never picked up again. A last desperate skeleton with a gun to it’s head.  Too hot for bacteria, the last age of this world is crystalized in amber. The air itself is yellow and red with the heat and age.

            Who was the last person live on this planet? Imagine some child born in the dark tunnels to save the last piece of this world. Slowly it grows up. Eventually it’s parents die. The only one left it’s kind.

            If you were the last person on Earth would you know it? Maybe somewhere on the opposite side of the planet, was another person. You would never know. Spend an hour alone. Spend a day alone. A week. A lifetime.

            This world is dead and spent. If not now, then in the final heat death of the universe. The Red Giant has grown so big, it’s already enveloped two planets. This one is next. 

“There are two ways off this rock.” He looked at me deadly serious. His bored angry eyes didn’t’ flinch, didn’t change.

I felt nervous and I squeezed my tongue with my mouth as I swallowed hard. I didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

            “Yeah… so…” Play it cool. “What are they?” Don’t look him in the eye.

            “There’s an illegal way, and a legal way.” The old man gritted his teeth, and stood up. He had a white prickly beard and wrinkles all the way down his face. He must have been what, 30? Old beyond belief. Working in the mines is hard. So shot up on speed and space dust, it’s no wonder most guys die before now.

            He gets up and walks to the edge of the railing where we are standing. You can see the entire colony from here.

            “The illegal way is going to cost you a lot. Scrounge together your money. It will probably take you years. When I was younger I started saving. Six years of saving to get enough money. This saving is for a bribe.”

            Everything is dark in space. I hear when you look up from Earth, you can see millions and millions of stars. In space though, there’s no air to scatter the light. You look out off the colony and the only thing you see is blackness. Complete and utter blackness.

            “This savings is for a bribe. Every month shipments come in bringing supplies. To get offworld, you have to sneak into one of these shipments.”

            I grew up here. I was born working here. I barely remember my dad now. People don’t survive long on world. 16 now, and he died… 12 years ago? I remember being alone for most of my life.

            “You can’t just bribe your way onto the ship. It isn’t enough, or you will just get stuck in some cargo hold, and as soon as they leave, the vacuum will suck your guts right out through your throat.”

            He said all this slowly and methodically. He didn’t look at me. His teeth set hard.

            “What you are going to have to do is sell yourself into slavery.” This was the only time he looked at me.

            “They aren’t going to call it that. Bribing a dock worker will only get you access to the spirits.”

            He looked back over the slum. It was never night here. It was never day. All light was electric, and when you stood on the railing looking out, you could see the cycle of the city. People waking up in time to see their neighbors go to sleep. It was a constant cycle. A rhythm like an anthill. Every day. Enough time to sleep. Enough time to work. Enough time to eat. Enough time to sleep. Every day.

            “The spirits take care of your passage. They live on the giant docking ships, and they hide passengers going offworld. They pile them up in great stinking piles in corners of the ship. Barely insulated from the radiation and heat. If the broadside of the ship is facing the sun it can get up to 113 degrees in there. One huge sweating stinking mass. For weeks with no room to move.”

            I wanted him to turn around. I wanted to see his eyes. Instead he just kept talking.

            “If the sun is on the other side of the ship, then you can expect it to get down to 0. Honestly that’s better. Though you will probably lose at least a few toes in the process, it freezes the smell too. Too much human shit crammed into to one place.”

            He wrinkled his nose here. Did he care?

            “Your chances of getting through are better than most. Probably 50%. Most any older person dies. That’s just the facts.”

            Then he was quiet and staring out over the cycling lights.

            “Okay. This is the illegal way? What’s the legal way” My words burst out. I tumbled over them, half scared thinking of how many people I had known who had left. I knew John had left to go off world somehow.

            “The legal way?” He looked over at me one last time.

            “You die.”

Prompt by Daily Fix: The legal way, and the other way. A character in dire straits has just learned that they cannot get off the planet using conventional means. What do they do when they learn what they have to do to still get into space, and what’s waiting for them there that’s so important?

The ‘other way’ can be as vanilla (bribes?) or as grotesque (selling freshly skinned corpses?) as you want. Be creative, and feel free to rearrange the details of the prompt to tell a good story. Surprise me.

My breath is shallow and warm. My eyes feel a bright light on them, like a visual itch. I pull the sheet back over my head. Perfect. Like getting your back scratched, deep between the shoulder blades where you can’t reach. I pull it tight and wade back into the black heat.
Sleeping in is the best thing in the world. Waking up and knowing there is no place you need to be. It’s not worrying about getting stuff done. It’s not worrying about dying or impending mortality. Sleeping in is abandoning all responsibility. It’s freedom.
I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. I crack my toes one by one. I sends a shiver up my legs through my lions. I wind my legs around the sheets and curl deep into a comfortable mobeius strip. Outside I can hear the thunder as it rumbles the mattress. Outside the water is beating hard, and I feel like I’m living in a submarine. We still have lights for now, but they’re probably going to go soon. Thats fine.
Fish swim slowly by the window. It’s clear water, far away from the real storm and waves. Under here it might as well be sunny out, though a little darker. Little schools of black fish dark in and out of the window frame. A thousand tons of water wait outside this cocoon. I stretch my legs. I slip off the bed and head to the fireplace.
I light it up. I get out the oily black dutch oven and stick it in the coals. Outside the water is still beating hard on the window. I go out to the porch and sit down. The cold wind whips around my legs and little sprays of water, like from the seashore spritz my face. I feel tiny cold scales on my face. I wipe off the water and huddle on a white wicker chair, looking out at the street as wind whips down it skidding sheets of water.
The street has an immense shadow pass over it. Even in this dim weather it feels bright with giant white clouds reflecting down. The shadow interrupts this. I look out and see a whale. Distantly in the mist you can see three or four more, moving through the mist. I watch them for a while until I get too cold and decide to go back inside.

He steps out of the clinic. Six months of rehabilitation. Strict dietary measures. Every moment scheduled down to the minute. Six months of being cooped up in a clinic, and now he was free.

As he stepped outside he could feel the fresh air for the first time. The clinic was a division of Pentagon’s soldier research. He looked down at his hands. This was a multi million dollar body, like an F-16 fighter jet.

Slowly but with increasing speed the ground dropped away from his feet. He’d been up, what 6 feet at most? Flying indoors was safer. Suddenly reversing your gravity is a scary thing. What if you overshoot and end up falling off the face of the earth into the endless? Like a doomed satellite headed for the Horsehead Nebulae. Or maybe at the last second he would regain control and just drop like a lead brick. He was finally free, and the infinity of his choices was a little scary. So he played it safe and kept them limited, hovering only as far as he could feel comfortable at.

He was at third story level. High enough to die. You don’t have to get very high to die. Your chance of survival past the 5th story is about the same as a skydivers. Even so, your mind plays tricks on you. He kept hovering at 3rd story level, and began floating down the street. Today was going to be a weird day.

He passed office building windows, and over the heads of people. Plenty of staring people. It was a little awkward to be honest, and he felt so hot as his jaw tightened up and his cheeks turned red. He felt exposed. Weird. He felt like he was be obnoxious, that maybe people were thinking bad things about him. He didn’t want to seem like a show off. He just wanted to try flying. When people began yelling at him, he floated gently onto one of the business roofs nearby. There was a fire door where people could crowd up at the top to get rescued by brave firemen.

He touched down. The ground felt solid underneath him again. Real, grit, making crunching noises. Hot too from the spring day. Not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day for flying.

He walked over to the head of the roof, on the opposite side from the street. down below was just a cold narrow alley. It was empty, and he figured he would have to come out the other side from there. Too many people around.

A quick clamber over the fire escape and drop on to the street. He pulled his coat over his head and kept walking down the sidewalk out of the alley. Maybe he would someplace to fly out there.

Prompt by Daily Fix: Congratulations! Everyone just got their brand new super powers, and you got the power of flight!

After school gets out, this part of town becomes like a ghost town. All the people just hurry away, leaving empty football fields and overcast skies. I’m walking home from middle school, in the late afternoon, and there’s not a single person around.

            My feet swish in the brown leaves. There’s a cold tang in the air, and a hum in the sky that lets you know it’s October. Heart of football season. Just barely chilly.

            I walk this way every day, on my way home from school.  I like to pretend I’m an explorer. That this is like Zelda, or Lord of the Rings which I just finished reading for a long time. I don’t have anyone else to walk with. I pretend that I have brought a long imaginary friends, and that we are off on a quest. Mostly that means me picking up a stick and whacking bushes as I tromp home with an overladen back pack and empty lunchbox.

            I keep walking one street further than I usually do. Most of the time I take the first right, but this time I go one more street down. Doesn’t make a difference. It’s just rows of more houses. Somewhere a long the way I manage to get lost though.

            I’m walking down an autumn street, with empty houses and the overcast sky getting dark already. Everything feels unfamiliar. Feels alien, like I’m the first person to land on Earth after a 20 year mission to Mars, and everything else has died. That’s when I see it. Not a house, but shop with a Halloween cat in the window and a sign out

            “Going out of business. Sale.”

            Well I don’t have any money. I’m in middle school you know. But another sign below it has been hastily written in red:

            “Everything has a price. Free.”

            So I’m bored and when I get home the only thing I have to look forward to is math and spelling homework. So I go in.

            The shop is much larger inside than you might expect, but it feels more cramped too. The room itself towers over my head, but stuffed in every spare piece of space is piles and piles of junk. Lots of books but other weird things too. It’s like one of those gift shops in the cracker country stores, but some of the stuff is weirder. I’m talking more than just Halloween lawn oraments.

            There is a whole case filled with skulls and bones, and stuff like that. A few jars holding… something. I can’t see through the brown green murky, but whatever it is, it’s brown flakes keep swirling around. Occasionally I can hear mewling. There’s a wall with all the clothes from old people, like what they died in or something. Weirdest of all is a case filled with dolls, that all look like people I know. There’s nothing here I really want to buy.

            There are some creep masks I think about getting. For free right? But whenever I think about putting them on, I feel this weird tingling on my face, like a red hot needle being drawn around it. Eventually find a small egg. It says “dragon’s egg” and it shimmers iridescently. I doubt it. I’m not stupid. I’m in middle school Afterall, and I don’t fall for kid stuff like that. Still it’s very pretty and its free. The old man at the front gives me this crazy smile like he drank too much coffee, and he doesn’t say a word. Just puts it in a bag for me.

            When I get outside I begin walking towards home. It’s good to be in the cool air again and out of that musty room. I turn around to double check that I’m going to right direction. I must of turned or gone farther than I thought because behind me all looks blank and new, like a street I’ve never seen before. I can’t even spot the shop. It’s like it disappeared. 

Prompt by Daily Fix: Ever read Goosebumps?

A nearby magic shop is going out of business. You stop by to pick up a few things, and the mysterious man behind the counter give you a deal - everything that you picked out for free, and he also gives you something else, something that you didn’t notice he put in the bag until you take everything home.

            Things in myth are often inexplicable. There isn’t much explanation for why they happen, so much as they do. Surrounded by tech that a few centuries ago might have been called magic, we forget that we actually live in an electric cocoon. Barely outside, a window pane’s thickness, is a real and violent world, beyond our control.

            Grim had been on the sidewalk for 8 days, and 8 nights. His body laid smeared across the white hot pavement. A long beard his mouth, and long lanky grey hair hid his eyes. Behind the veil one eye gleamed with an angry and intelligent focus. There are many crazies in the streets. Grim was determined to not become one of them. He wouldn’t give in. The other eye was dark, like a black hole at the bottom of a cavern, deeper than any huge light has gone. Grim had willingly lashed himself to this fate, because he sought knowledge. He huddled in the shadow from the hot LA sun during the day, sitting on his piece of cardboard.

            During the nights he shivered as the half dry salty sweat that has drenched his body cooled and frozen on him. Briny frost wreathed his beard and eyebrows. Like things in myths, and magic in particular, why things work doesn’t always make sense. Why is one apple evil and the rest good? Why does a god need a golden lock of hair? Why are the magic words special? Why does a good soldier lose his job and become homeless? Who holds up the world?

            Grim waited for a day and a night. He lived through the heat, and the cold. He waited for 2 days and 2 nights. He delved deeper into his own mind, searching for that truth. He waited for 3, and 4, 6, and 8 days and nights. Each a long drawl pulled together at the seams. No easy interruptions of time and space, until it all had become one long Now.

            Finally 9 days and 9 nights. It ended. Grim worked his way free of his self-made bondage, a new man, resurrected from the streets. His single good eye looked out, and it Saw The Truth. 

Prompt by Daily Fix: take an old myth and place it in contemporary setting. 

I chose Odin’s trail upon the Tree of the Universe in his search for knowledge. 

                I come unstuck in time, like time is images flashing like a strobe effect in my head. Blood is running out my mouth my down my chin. I see myself outside myself.  You can feel the raw cold stumps where your teeth are broken and splintered. Numb and choking back blood.

                I’m unstuck in time. I’m smiling nervously at this guy on the street. Intoxicated junkie who can barely hold his legs steady.

                You don’t feel anything when your mouth has been curb stomped. Your body is shot with your brain’s own dope, and you can even run to the ambulance, as long as you don’t bleed out first. That’s a lot of blood on your shirt.

                I try and move to the other side of the street.

                PcP makes people immune to damage. Every junky becomes a prize fighter.

                You can taste the grit. The tight constrictions on your back. Your teeth gripping the curb, like a Big Mac. Your teeth tingle. The chip on the hard concrete like an ice cream sundae freeze. Just cool air on your gums. Then you feel the boot on your head. Beginning to press down.

                Time flashes in and out in bits, like a fragged hard drive. There’s a sudden lunge.

                I try and wrestle with him, but it’s not working. I’ve actually taken some classes in college on self-defense and stuff, but it feels like hitting a brick wall. I begin to run.

                The man is laying in the ER. The attendants cut off his clothes and insert a trauma gauge IV. They put him in a head brace. He is stable so they go check out the gunshot victim. He is conscious and awake. There is blood pooling in his mouth. It is a congealing sticky mess that he cannot swallow or spit out because his head is locked tight.

                You feel the boot come down and that’s  when everything gets disjointed. Suddenly you feel like you have phased through a wall. It’s really just your teeth breaking out of your mouth.

                The man who was in the alley is now running down the street, yelling after some people looked out their window. He stumbles into the dark.

                There is some tooth imbedded in the back of your throat. Some of it has cut your lip. One of the front teeth remains but its cracked all the way down to the root.

I’m exiting the bar, and it take a little time for my eyes to adjust and my slightly tipsy legs to find the right or wrong direction down the street. 

                It’s so sudden, I didn’t even realize what happened.

Prompt: This prompt is in two parts. First, I want you to imagine the worst pain that you have ever been in. Or the worst pain that you remember feeling.

Next, I want you to transfer that pain to a character, with a twist. I want them to experience this pain as if someone else (or something else, be creative) is giving it to them. For example, if the worst pain you’ve ever felt is when you broke your arm, I want you to write a scene where a character’s arm is broken by an outside force.

The key to this prompt is the outside force. It’s not internal - it is very, very external. Someone, or some thing, is doing this to them. What happens 

            Genre Mashing

            So today is a little different. Instead of writing out a prose piece I’m doing a creative writing prompt that outlines a genre novel idea. Follow long fellows.

            Western Fantasy:

            I’m thinking, there’s not a lot of westerns mashed with fantasy. Westerns seem to get mashed with all sorts of stuff. Western horror, western romance, western vampires, western yadda yadda yadda. Maybe it’s because straight westerns can be kind of boring. Or maybe it’s just a flexible emblematic genre.

            Setting: Setting is key for western right? So desert vistas and all the jazz I would imagine. Think typical sphagetti western. However this is also fantasy which draws a lot more from Old Europe than from the Old West. With that in mind, I’m thinking a kind of Medieval Northern Africa type situation. Kind of Ottoman/Arabian Nights type situation. A little less sand though. Keep it savannah, with the occasional sandstone castle

            Characters: So first of all, I’m sick and tired of elves and dwarves. I love J.R.R. Tolkein as much (and probably more) as the next guy, but this is FANTASY. Use your imagination people. Don’t just stick the same old same old when you could do anything.

            There are some archetypes I would like to keep though. Some conventions should be kept.

            Some possible character possibilities would be:

            Seriff/King: Considering that the prime themes of the Old West were lawlessness and such, having a huge presence of The King would be kind of backwards. Even so, you could have a kingly presence through a sheriff, and much like the sheriff in Robin Hood, he could be a crooked fellow. Come to think of it, in Lord of the Rings, the King isn’t really present till the end. No reason that can’t still be the basic formulae.

            Wizard/Gunslinger: The Gunslinger already possesses a mystical kind of quality. His skill is in the Plot Seeking Bullet is sort of functionally same to Gandalf’s inexplicable magical knowledge. Sometimes it saves the day. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Also much of the time the wizard character gets the “old mentor” side character and never a lead role. However the “mysterious old guy” character is usually the lead role in a western. Perhaps that’s why my granddad likes westerns. How about we switch that in? Magic user gets the be main role, but still keep a mysterious power.

            Other races: Hmmm… what kind of races would fit a fantasy world? Like I said, I want to avoid the whole Elf/Dwarf thing. However, the way I see it, we can look to the source material for help. A large part of those works get their inspiration from fairy stories, and from stories of the Faerie (if you don’t get the difference look it up bub). In westerns, native americans play a big role. I’m also thinking about that AWESOME BEAR DUDE from the new True Grit. Maybe some kind of Native American spirit people? Something earthier than elves, but more magical than dwarves.

            Hmmm, for the sake of not being a DnD campaign I would like to stay away from animal human hybrids or beast masters. There’s got to be a couple of other races you could squeeze in here.

            Plot: So typically fantasy stories are about Getting Stuff. Usually it is Getting Magical Stuff. Westerns are usually about Getting Stuff. Usually it is Getting Gold Stuff. So it seems that the basic plot isn’t too hard. Its either about getting some stuff, or destroying  a darklord. Just do the same thing but in a desert amirite? Anyway its late and my fifteen minutes is up. 

I remember Fall from when I was a kid, and going to kindergarten. Every month the teacher would put up a new calendar, and for October there was a calendar, with fake bright red, orange, and yellow leaves on it. Even though we lived in the middle of The Piney Woods, and there wasn’t a single leaf bearing tree for miles.

Just pine needles for miles, though those fall too. They gathered in huge prickly dry piles under the trees. You could just scrape your foot across the dirt and pile them up into long narrow walls, like sand castles in the forest. It’s hot here, down South. Subtropical. Never snows. Even so, you can feel it in the air. . The air is a little cooler in the evenings. The trees lose brittle brown needles. The tops of the trees are dark paper cut silhouettes against the dark blue evening sky. It gets dark quicker.

When I was a kid, October meant Halloween. It meant holidays were coming, and trips to the pumpkin patch. Now it’s mostly just another month. Halloween, a single night  with a ready-made excuse to go out and get shit faced. As if I needed an excuse. Barely even bother with my costume anymore. Off the rack suit and tie, off the rack costume, off the rack life.

Everyday is much the same. I don’t go visit family for Thanksgiving. I don’t take a plane to see friends for New Years. Thank God It’s Fridays has become my official religion. But each Friday plays the same song.

Prompt by Daily Fix: Write about autumn melancholia  

                The dark is complete, like your retinas committed suicide and everything became a wall of nothing. It’s total and complete and my  head keeps telling me to open my eyes. I stumble forward, my feet hitting rocks I can’t possibly see. I running blind, like my eyes are bleeding and what got them is hot on my trail. They’re coming.

                I might as well be eyeless, hallow headed skull running through the woods. I hear them behind me, but I can’t see them. My poor civilized ears can’t tell if that crash in the brush is far away or if I’m fixing to find their hands around my throat. They’re coming.

                Hands stretched like a medieval torture victim strapped to the rack. Long, thin, bone cracked like those freaky Madagascar monkeys with eyes like disks that suck cattle’s blood. A wolf is bad to find in the dark. They’re vicious, but you can’t blame them. Also you can see their eyes, glowing, bobbing behind you. And they howl. You can hear their thirst. These. You can’t. Just silence and darkness following you for the rest of your life. They’re coming.

                My eyes dilate. Soaking in nothing. It’s like running till your lungs burn and you feel a split in your side. Its like running till you are out of breath, and nothing’s left. Then you trip, you fall and you take a breath of vacuum. You lungs burn, collapse. That’s it. They’re coming.

                I don’t hear them. Not a word, not a whisper, not a howl. Just silence and the sounds of leaves breaking behind me.

They’re coming. 

Prompt by Daily Fix: “They’re Coming”

Yo, so I started this blog 273 days ago with a goal of writing every single day for 15 minutes for an entire year. Almost done folks. Almost done.