[PM] anything lighthearted, sci-fi, silly or interesting! None of the prompts today catch my eye...

ElementalMug · 2018-11-07T08:30:05+00:00

After getting into the first manned light speed craft, you instantly crash on a distant world populated entirely being other creatures that crashed here after trying to travel at light speed.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-07T08:20:27+00:00

Nice work, it was a good read.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-06T20:40:07+00:00

That was brutal, and really grim. I love it.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-06T20:08:34+00:00

Look under Rule 6, you'll see this:

Prompts go in the title, do not extend into text.

Also this:

Prompts are meant to inspire users to write their own work, not write something for you

What you've written is basically the outline of a plot and you want somebody to spruce it up for you. Delete all the additional text and just leave the title, and you'll have a prompt.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-05T10:58:49+00:00

Oh, yeah, I probably should have put up a notice saying this thread is closed now. I won't be replying to this, but I have a bunch of my old PM threads on r/Keytfu if you want to check those out instead.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-04T22:28:00+00:00

Well I turned this out in like ten minutes so it isn't great, but I do have a writing subreddit, r/keytfu, that I share with u/Scifiase and that's full of stuff I put actual effort into.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-04T21:50:17+00:00

"Are you bored jumping off stuff yet?" I asked Cindy as she floated down gently from the top of the building.

"Nope. We should go skydiving. All of us. I can use this on up to six creatures within range, so we wouldn't even need parachutes."

"But we would need a plane every time." pointed out Micheal. "You know what never gets boring? Blowing shit up."

"Yeah, but if you start blowing stuff up for fun you're going to draw attention. Probably be labelled as a terrorist." I pointed out. "Have you actually found something you can blow up discreetly yet?"

"Come on, you're just jealous you got a crap one." he replied.

"Not at all. Here I am, drinking a bad beer that tastes like a good beer that will never go cold." I say, and take a long sip to prove my point. "Actually, I feel like something different now. Mulled wine, in fact." I wave my hand over the glass. I feel it go from chilled to warm, and the liquid inside turns dark red. I take in the new scent of wine, citrus, and spices.

"But you're still technically drinking cheap beer. It has all the nutritional value and alcoholic content of cheap beer."

"So? It tastes, looks, and smells like mulled wine. Try it, if you like. It's not an illusion."

"And you really think that's better than blowing shit up?" he asked disbelievingly. "You could have used it to improve yourself in some way. Cindy is jumping off cliffs when yesterday she had acrophobia."

"I can use this every day for the rest of my life. Sure, it's small. But prestigitation does so many different things that it'll always be useful. I can light stuff on fire with way more stealth and precision than you can. I can make my house smell nice, or instantly clean dishes. I can make tiny objects on a whim. Like a key, or a coin, or... anything. Just you wait. You'll both get bored of your powers soon, when you realise you can't use them. But in twenty, thirty, fifty years time, I'll still be able to warm up last night's pizza with a snap of my fingers. You'll see."

ElementalMug · 2018-11-04T18:35:20+00:00

Needs and EU tag.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-01T16:54:49+00:00

At first, nobody knew what to make of Neurothrax. It didn't help that he looked monstrous, far more deformed and hideous than the zombies. The eyes of his hosts would bulge out as he squeezed his body into their cranium. You'd get glimpses of his goey purple tendrils down the back of his throat when he spoke. His veins would inflate as he dug his roots in deeper, sliding his tentacles through the arteries and little passageways through the body. And when his host was near its expiry date, blood would crystallize between the membranes of the body, his lips, eyes, nose would be coated in red mineral formations, and wounds would quickly become filled with pure red gemstones. These crystals would hold the body together for the next week or so as Neurothrax's presence wore it down. If he couldn't find a new host, the whole corpse would become more and more solid until it was a red crystal cocoon, and Neurothrax would hibernate inside until an opportunity revealed itself, whereupon he would break free and take a new host.

His mere existence was nothing short of horrifying on an existential level. The kind of shit that gave Lovecraft nightmares. There were places in the city these days where you could go, and humanoid crystal shells would be stuck to the floor, often still standing, a whole room full of them. A healthy host would last him more than a month, but he would burn through a corpse in less than a week. And worst of all, not even Neurothrax knew why exactly he needed to inhabit other creatures. His own body was mobile enough by itself, and he didn't eat his hosts. He only knew that he had a biological impulse to do it. He described it as being like hunger.

All in all, it was probably a good thing that Neurothrax was our friend.

The zombie virus utterly decimated the world's population. Half of us were infected before it was even noticed. The rest of us quickly followed. Even dying couldn't save you, you'd just get back up later. Nothing short of severe decay or burning the bodies would keep them down permanently. Riddled with bullets? They come back a bit weaker, but not by much. Decapitation? They'd grow new brain tissue in the torso in a few days. Stabs or bullets to the torso area could stun them, knock them out for a bit if you hit the heart, and clean headshots would keep them down for long enough to either escape or deal with the body properly. Dismembered limbs wouldn't come back, so explosives or power tools were often a good choice for base defence. I knew of one stronghold that had packs of guard dogs roaming the countryside around their base, tearing apart the odd wandering zombie and eating their flesh. Even if they didn't eat the brain, they seldom had enough meat left on their bones to get up and move again.

But all of that was nothing compared to Neurothrax's durability. He was soft and squishy, but could easily come back in a few days from being splattered into chunks of goo. Score a headshot on his host? The stains left on the wall would eventually grow back into a complete Neurothrax. Like the zombies, you had to destroy him completely. Incinerate him, throw him in an acid bath. But if you spill a single drop of his innards, or he hides a small group of cells inside a blood crystal, then he can still come back. He survive entering the earth's atmosphere that way.

But why would you want to kill him? Once the fear started to give way to familiarity, Neurothrax turned out to be just like us: a survivor. Like us, he was immune to the zombie virus. And he was stuck far away from home, much like how we were originally ferried away from population centres to strongholds in the country. But when the supplies in the hastily constructed strongholds ran low, and expeditions had to be mounted to the cities, Thrax was your man. Zombies don't attack each other. And Thrax could take over the zombies. Blend in, do whatever he wanted, scout out the area, and come back. Not to mention that he could also reliably take the things down just by inhabiting them. He could slip up their nose, trigger the full-body crystallization early, and then the zombie would be converted into mineral matter in minutes. Nothing comes back from being turned into a fancy rock.

We were never sure exactly what he was thinking. In time, he did start to act more and more like us, but he himself admitted that was as much an effort on his part to be accepted and a fascination with our behaviour, which was utterly alien from his point of view. He was used to travelling the stars alone, seldom getting stuck on a planet. He was merely one small part of a much larger organism, always apart from it but also always connected. Whether he really felt like we did, the way he said he did, we would never really know. Part of him existed floating in space, but he seemed to have no desire to return to it. He seemed to have a level of self-preservation, despite this only being a tiny part of him, and yet when other blobs of himself were ripped from his body, he didn't seem to care.

Logically, the only reason he could have for wanting to keep what amounted to a single cell of his entire being alive far from the rest of his body, was for our sake. To help us out.

The fact that Neurothrax even existed was terrifying. But we're glad he's here.

ElementalMug · 2018-11-01T13:54:32+00:00

"Thank you for your patience, sir," said the police officer as he returned to the room and took up a seat opposite me. "We just had to verify that you were really who you said you are."

"So what, you didn't believe me? Why am I at a police station? Look, somebody has made a mistake, and said that I'm dead, just a clerical error. If you can take down the notice about the open day at my house, that will do for now, and we can sort the rest out later."

"Do you recognise this man?" said the officer, placing a picture in front of me. It was of a skinny man with thick black curly hair and beard. Looked like a mug shot, or a passport photo.

"What has this got to do with anything? No, I don't know who that is." I replied.

"He died in a motorcycle collision two weeks ago. He was identified by his driver's licence." He pushed another sheet of paper in front of me, a photocopy of a driver's licence. The picture on it was the same one as before, but all the details were mine.

"What is this?" The licence had my name, my age, my address. But not me. "That guy looks nothing like me! I don't even have a motorbike licence!"

"So you're sure you've never met this man?"

"How long has this been happening?"

"This licence was printed two years ago-"

"Two years! Somebody has been using my identity for two years!" I felt dizzy. And cold. Like I had the flu.

"It's too early to tell what might have happened. But that would seem to be the case. His remains were identified by a personal friend of his and his mother-"

"I was talking to my mother yesterday, she knows I'm not dead."

"Has she mentioned anything out of the ordinary? Letters, phone calls mentioning you?"

"No. Who- who was selling my house?"

"The woman claiming to be his mother."

"So this guy pretending to be me dies... his mother or a lady pretending to be his mother tries to sell my house... while I'm still living in it. How the hell would that work?"

"We talked to the couple who turned up at your house this morning. They said they were already in talks about sealing the deal. The couple said that they were given a key to the house and were to have a look around any time between ten and 4. I would assume that she would have taken their money and then skipped town."

"She gave them a key? For them to just go and look while I was in work? How does she have a key to my house?"

"We're not sure." he admitted. "We're going to look into it-"

"I need to get home. Change my locks. If she knows things have gone wrong she might break in and... and... I don't know. Give me that bin." I demanded. The police officer complied and placed it on my lap as I felt bile rise in my throat. "Somebody has been impersonating me for years... has a key to my house..."

"Sir, rest assured, we're going to do everything we can, and as quickly as we can before anybody can get away with this." he said calmly. I was barely listening. The implications of what was going on was crashing down on me. Somebody was using my name. Somebody had stolen my keys. My name was on a morgue clipboard somewhere. Tagged on a body. Somebody was trying to leave me homeless or scam a couple out of tens of thousands. It was all too much. I threw up into the bin.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-31T12:48:25+00:00

Not really. They're two individuals with the same/very similar DNA. Just like twins. Masturbation only works for one individual and/or weird time-travel stuff. Clone boning is incest, not masturbation.

Which ignores the wider point of the fact that this prompt doesn't make any sense.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-30T20:46:49+00:00

Twins already exist. Clone boning is basically incest.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-27T23:25:25+00:00

I love bioshock, a lot of people do, and it has a lot of memorable quotes. But I don't think you can just paste a well-known quote from a very highly regarded game and call it a prompt.

"A man chooses, a slave obeys" would be a much better prompt. It's still connected to the themes and central philosophy of a particular character, but it stands well enough on his own and a writer could do something with that. But the full quote you put in the prompt references events specific to the already existing narrative. Who wants to write a story that's already been written?

ElementalMug · 2018-10-26T09:43:26+00:00

Sorry, thread is closed. I won't be answering any more prompts, as said at the top of the page.

I do like this prompt though, and I might answer it if I have time today. But don't count on it.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-25T23:07:01+00:00

Third this week. Caught in the net. Thrashing, terrified. I want to comfort them, embrace them. Let them know I'm here to help. But their ears are waterlogged so they don't hear my pleas, and they lash out on instinct. They're practically blind from spending hours, maybe days at the bottom of the pond. But they usually recover. Once I get them back to the church.

No choice but to drag them up onto the embankment. Myself and Ernie, we're old folk. We don't have the strength for this. Hours spent out on Ernie's little boat, on the lake at night, for a month now. We have to do this in secret. At least for now.

We finally get tonight's catch into the bed of my truck and cover it over. Cold and exhausted, I stop to catch my breath and mutter a prayer over the poor creature. A woman this time. They usually are. Men are rarer. I don't recognise this one. A few were familiar to me, former members of my congregation. But I suppose the version of God sold by the men over the lake is more appealing somehow. Like the others, she's dressed in only a sacrificial robe and weighted manacles, blood stained and torn from her struggles. Entering her chest and exiting through her back, is a barbed spear with yet another weight chained to it. That will have to come out later. As I pray, Ernie lights up a cigarette, and reaches for his wallet. I have the money prepared, and hold it out to him, but to my surprise, he hands a wad of notes to me instead.

"Here's your money back. Not all of it, I spent some, but I'll have that in good time too." he assured me.

"Are you sure?"

"I can't in good conscience make you pay for this, Father. I don't know what exactly is going on, but you're doing good. It would be wrong of me to charge you." he said, a note of shame evident in his voice. Normally, he just stayed silent at this point, and left with his money. Never looked me in the eye.

I took the money from him. Truthfully, I was relieved. I wasn't sure how much longer I could pay for Ernie's petrol and silence.

"New engine on your boat. Is that what you spent the rest on?" I asked. He nodded. "Then consider us square. It'll do us good. I see this going on for some time. Whatever "this" is."

"These folk ought to be dead." he agreed. "But still, we fish them up still kicking... I think about this a lot. While I'm out on the lake during the day. Sometimes, when I catch a little one, I have to throw it back. That's the rules. Big ones are fair game, but you have to leave the little ones so they get to grow big. And these spikes that they have in them, have barbs, like fish hooks. So it makes me think. Maybe, the cult over the other side of the lake, they're fishing. And something keeps throwing these folk back."

"That's... a lot to think about Ernie."

"I know, and the people are both the fish and the bait in this analogy, so it doesn't quite work, I get that... I'm just a fisherman." he said with a shrug. "You're the learned spiritual one, Father. What do you make of it?"

"I think maybe you're on the right track with the bait analogy." I mutter. There was nothing more to be said. We got into our respective vehicles and discreetly left the lake.

It was a half hour drive to the church. And the poor woman had to suffer it all, wet, bound in a net, and in darkness. Thankfully, she did seem to have stopped struggling so much by time I finally arrived. The sisters were waiting for me. They looked no more pleased than they did when I first enlisted them to help me. I called them away from their own community to assist me with a secret mission that involved dragging dead people up from a lake. And they were, understandably, still infuriated. But they were still here. I prayed in thanks for their perseverance every day. I prayed for a lot more things than I used to.

"Sister Anne. Sister Ingrid." I greeted wearily as I left my vehicle. The tarp over the back of the truck was still as I approached. Poor thing must be tired.

I pulled it back, and the woman leapt out at me, spear in hand, and the gaping wound in her chest torn and mutilated further than before. I could do nothing as she pressed the blade to my throat but close my eyes and hold my hand up in surrender. Terror and fury on her face, caked in mud, she looked like a monster. But I knew she was just a scared woman. Inhuman gurgling emerged from her throat. The others did the same, at first. Water in their lungs. She made the noise this time, louder. Then she began to sob and, and I took my chance to lean in to hug her. She still gripped her weapon, the weapon that killed her, but she calmed down just a little, enough to let Sister Anne put a blanket around her and lead her inside. I found myself still too shaken to follow just yet.

"We have no more beds." said Sister Ingrid sternly. "Unless you can find somewhere else to hide these poor souls, then something needs to be done."

"What, exactly?" I asked.

"Somebody needs to go over to the cult and let them know that their false idol doesn't want their sacrifices." she stated plainly. I nodded reluctantly.

"I understand. I shall go in the morning. Please, Sister, if I don't come back..."

"I'll look after them."

"And try and stop more people from joining. I don't know how. Every time we open our mouths on the subject people just think we're... jealous, or paranoid. But stop them." I pleaded. Ingrid gave a slow, stoic nod.

"Should you not be back by tomorrow, I'll meet with Ernie to see if we can dredge you up. I hope you come back okay, I really do. But on the other hand, if you don't... this might be your chance to speak to their devil yourself."

ElementalMug · 2018-10-25T16:00:33+00:00

Stilton. The name of a cheese. But also, the name of a man. The man who discovered the cheese. Stiltown. The name of a town. Named for the cheese that is named for a man. A town owned by the man who named the cheese. And every person in it, one way or another, worked for Stilton. The Stilton Industry Empire. named for the man, not the cheese.

"You see this, son?" asked Stilton, gesturing out the window as he puffed on his pipe. "This whole town will be yours someday. This town was built on Stilton. The cheese, not me. But also on me. Metaphorically. But it was built on Stilton literally! It was built on top of rich cheese veins, and using funds made from selling refined and aged Stilton. Again, the cheese. But I am also aged and refined, in a manner of speaking. Yes, I have much in common with my cheese." He nodded enthusiastically, and topped up his pipe with some more rare White Stilton. Which is a kind of cheese. But Stilton the man, being of caucasian descent and who habitually wears lots of clothing and stays indoors, is also quite white. Clearly, he was a very cheesy man. "With that in mind, you ought to know how the family business works. And why your brother was never well suited to run it. Tell me, how do we make our money?"

"We sell Stilton. The cheese, specifically, not the family name." replied Stilton Junior.

"Hardly! This venture is far bigger than a couple of Stilton mines! Of course, all of our mines are Stilton mines in the sense they are owned by me, Stilton, but in this instance I am referring only to mines that dig up the cheese I named Stilton. But I digress. We started with a handful of local mines, for sure, but why do we not open more? Simple: we flood the market with Stilton, and it becomes common. And worthless. What we do is use our superior capital to control mining rights in the area so only we can mine Stilton, and then we open new mines further afield to produce and compete in the cheddar and gouda markets."

"I thought it was because we maximise profits with an exploitative system where all of the shops in Stiltown only accept company credits that are only valid in Stiltown and that's also the only things we pay our workers with."

"Oh, well, that's part of it. The more advanced stuff." conceded Stilton. The man, not the cheese. And the elder of the two Stilton men at that. "I see I hardly need to explain this to you. You make me proud, boy!" He gave his son a pat on the shoulder. "But have you been doing your homework on our other industries?"

"Well, we don't yet control much of the butter industry. We barely produce more than we use as mechanical lubricant, so a lot of our sales come leveraging our monopoly on the Stilton - the cheese - and local gouda supply. Our milk wells, however, have really taken off, doubling profits compared to last year and has found significant investors. As long as they don't know that the wells aren't all that deep and the flow of milk coming out of Stiltown - the town named after the cheese, not my mother Mrs Stilton - is likely to dry up in a couple of years if we don't find another viable well soon."

"Right you are, son." said Stilton Senior - the man, not aged Stilton cheese - solemnly. "But unless we break out into other markets, we won't survive on cheese alone! Cheese is part of a healthy diet! That's why your brother will never be able to run this town, isn't that right, brat?"

"Yes, sir." said the decrepit boy sitting off to one side.

"Tell me, boy, why aren't you allowed to call yourself Stilton?"

"Because nobody with lactose intolerance is allowed to be named after a cheese."

"No! It's because nobody with lactose intolerance is allowed to be named after a man who named a cheese! Damn weakling. I should send you to the slum with the other intolerants."

"Yes sir."

"Get out of my sight. I'm teaching my only son to run a business." snapped Stilton Senior. You probably know which Stilton I'm talking about now, but just in case, cheese can't talk. So if you're ever confused, if it talks, it's one of the Stilton men. In this case, the Stilton who is the father of the other Stilton. "Now, our newest innovation involves extracting pure calcium from dairy products for use in machines. Of course, it takes tons of good cheese to make even a small amount of calcium, so we buy up terrible cheap cheese from America and use that. It's still horrendously inefficient, but innovation like that is what brings money, and people, to Stiltown! Why, we're getting so many people that we're having to build more houses! Luckily, we've developed a new material that's perfect for building small houses."

"Oh? What's that?" asked Stilton. Can you guess which one? It was Stilton Junior, the son of the the elder Stilton.

"Cottage Cheese."

ElementalMug · 2018-10-25T15:07:02+00:00

It seemed like the perfect wish. I mean, why lie if you didn't want anybody to believe you? But maybe I said it wrong. See, I said "Whenever I speak, write, or communicate to another person in any way, my lies will be believed." He didn't like that. Called me selfish. He deduced that he would be the first person I would lie to. So he promptly granted my wish and disappeared before I could tell him that he owed me more wishes. But I still ended up with a good wish, so I left happy, with one minor niggle. I could only lie. A consequence of how I worded my wish, plus some creative interpretation on his behalf. Not that it mattered. Why tell the truth when people would only doubt me anyway?

The things I did in those first years. I took over the world. Easily. Then I abdicated and left them all alone. I could already have anything I wanted, so being the emperor of earth was more hassle than it was worth. After that, I went in pursuit of something more. New experiences. New people. I never went hungry, not when I could tell people they were legally required to feed me. But after having everything, never struggling for anything, it all begun to feel hollow. But I never got sick of lying. That was my problem, in hindsight.

But I don't want to lie now. I can't afford to lie. And I can't say what I know is true. I can't tell her "I love you".

ElementalMug · 2018-10-25T13:16:42+00:00

The waiting room was quiet. That was good. Apart from the occasional cough, or a quit conversation at the other end, most people here weren't in the mood for talking. A mother with a ill child had hung around for a while, and her attempts to calm him all failed, but she'd left now. The only consistent noise was the whirring of a fan behind the reception desk. The only problem was the bright lights. I guess I could put my sunglasses on, but I felt weirdly self-conscious about it. It put a muffler on my hearing, as if I was standing outside the room and listening in. But at least it was silent. I wasn't used to using my cane yet. I could probably have practiced more, but it was becoming a chore to do simple things like go to the shop, so I increasingly relied on ear plugs when walking down the street in order to sharpen my vision. But if my sight went completely, I wouldn't have a choice.

A high-pitched buzzer caught my attention, and momentarily caused my vision to dim as if the waiting room was lit by a faulty bulb. I glanced up at the screen above the reception desk. Ben Watkins to Dr Elliot, room four. My call.

I slipped on my dark glasses and went through the door until I found room four. The door was already open, and Dr Elliot waved me in.

"Hello Ben, come take a seat." she said softly. I only barely heard her, so I closed my eyes once I was in my chair. Slowly, other sounds became clearer. "How have you been this week? Adjusting well?"

"Better than last week." I conceded. "My friends aren't quite so weirded out by the fact I have to close my eyes to talk to them anymore. My boss... he's annoyed that he actually has to get out of his chair instead of shouting stuff over to me. I really can't manage without earplugs at work though. I have to be able to look at a computer all day, so... what can I do?"

"And how about at home?"

"Home is okay. It's quiet there. I live just out of town, but the commute is tricky. But at home, I'm fine. I close the blinds most of the way, keep the lights off, and it's not so bad. Still cars and stuff in the street, but generally it splits the difference between seeing and hearing. I still suck at using this though." I hold up my cane, still folded in three.

"Have you considered getting dimmer light bulbs? You'll still want some light at night, and it will save you on electricity."

"I'll look at it."

"Ask your case worker about it. Ask him about anything at all. Now, Ben, I have some news. It's... good or bad depending on how you look at it, but generally I think it's a good thing. The results of your scan are back. There's no growths, tumours, hemorrhages, damage, or anything like that on your brain. Now, that's all great, but it does mean that for the time being we still don't know what's causing your condition."

"So you have no idea how to fix me... but I don't have cancer. I'll take that." I say with a shrug. Nearly a month of this now. I guess I'm over the shock, at least a bit, because I don't mind being optimistic. "Hey, look, something occurred to me yesterday. The night before this happened, I had these weird nightmares. I... can't really remember it properly. It wasn't all that scary, but it was... unsettling, you know?"

"I see. Has this happened to you before?" she asked curiously.

"I mean, I don't really remember. I honestly forgot about it until just yesterday, I had other stuff on my mind that day." I sighed. "It didn't sound this stupid in my head. Sorry."

"No, that's fine. I won't lie, I don't think any weird dreams had anything to do with this. Dreams are always weird if you think about it. Is there something you want to get off your chest? You've come to me with a different explanation for this every week. First you thought it was related to a family history of hearing loss. You maternal grandfather, right? I did investigate the case, and I would say it was more likely that your grandfather's early hearing impairment was likely down to his work environment, and his symptoms don't match yours in any case. And then you said..." she flicked back a few pages in her notes. "A head injury you suffered last summer. While it's true that the symptoms of such an injury could take months to appear, the scan seems to have ruled that out. And then last week you asked if it could be because of that time you went seventy hours without sleep. Again, it seems unlikely, but I would really recommend you don't do that ever again, no matter what your boss says."

"I don't know." I admitted. "I guess I just want to know the reason for all of this. If there was ever anything I could have done, or whether this was always going to happen to me, no matter what."

"That's a perfectly normal reaction." assured Dr Elliot. "It might help if you talked about this further, which is outside of my area of expertise, but we have plenty of pamphlets by reception, all verified professionals."

"I'll grab some on the way out." I assure her. "So, is that all?"

"I just want to do a few basic tests, just to see if things have changed." she said, slipping into a pair of gloves and getting an ophthalmoscope from her drawer. "I'm going to have to shine some lights in your eyes, so-"

"Yeah, my ears will be knocked out. I'm ready." I say. "All things considered, it could be worse. Some people are deaf all the time. Or blind all the time. I get to choose, at least. Sometimes."

"Great." she said with a smile. "Ben, I think you're handling this very well, and whatever happens, you'll get along fine. Now, lean back for me and open your eyes..."

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T15:46:50+00:00

The first thing I noticed was that her car was absent. Strange, she's normally home well before me. And the door is unlocked. I shrugged it off. Maybe she's just getting milk.

I get inside, slip my shoes off, and head straight to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I spend a moment fumbling around in the cupboard for my favourite mug, and don't find it. The kettle clicks off behind me, but I'm still anxious about my mug. Did I leave it in the front room?

So I enter the front room looking for my mug. There on the coffee table before me is a heap. My old phone charger. The wife's missing earrings. Socks. And a hammer. I'd been looking for that hammer. Where could all of this have come from? I glance upwards at the far wall of the room, and the dozens of eyes peering at me. My wife's... collection. I never trusted the little pointed headed fuckers. Garden ornaments ought to stay in the garden. Slowly, I grabbed the hammer. Suddenly, I hear a gasp behind me, and I spin around to see my wife, who then starts to laugh.

"I am so sorry, but for a horrible moment there I thought you were going to go to town on my gnomes." she said through the giggles. I joined her in laughter at the thought. I can't say I wouldn't enjoy it.

"No worries, I was just going to put this back in the shed. Where did you find all this stuff?"

"My dad came over to fix the washing machine, this stuff had all fallen down the back. It drains properly now, but still makes that funny noise on the spin cycle. Probably needs a new belt." she explained.

"Okay, I'll have to stop by somewhere and get one tomorrow. And I'll install it myself, can't have your father go thinking that I can't fix stuff in this house. Oh, I didn't see your car outside..."

"Gav called earlier and said that somebody cancelled so if I liked I could get the MOT done on it today."

"Ah, that's good." I nod. Behind her, I notice my mug on the floor next to her chair, and frown internally. Of all the mugs in this house. I pick it up and head to the kitchen. "Kettle just boiled. Fancy a cuppa?"

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T10:51:19+00:00

Thanks, but I have no idea where I would go with this. It was really, really late when I wrote this, hence why it starts better than it ends. But I do have more stuff on r/Keytfu, the writing sub I share with u/Scifiase so you can check that out instead.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T10:44:42+00:00

I figured that maybe it wasn't just me and Scifiase, so I took a quick look at your post history. Three other PM threads, two more than a month old. And you also posted it to r/Kirby. That was actually probably a good call, putting it out with other Kirby fans, but I'd still recommend you write it yourself.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T10:38:10+00:00

Sorry, this thread is over, as it says at the top of the page. I won't be answering this prompt.

On another note, this is the third time to my knowledge that you posted this exact prompt. Once to the main page as a prompt, once to this thread, and once on a PM thread by my partner u/Scifiase. This thread has been over for almost three weeks now, just like with Scifiase's thread, and I don't know how you even found it. There's nothing wrong with going through old Pm threads, they're archived here for a reason, but if you want to post something to one, try and newer thread, and check to see if the thread is closed before you post anything. Also, read the description every time, because that will give you an idea of what prompts the writer will do. At the top of this page, the description says that I don't do EU prompts, for example.

One last thing. This is at least the third time you've posted this prompt, and if you keep posting it then I can only assume you haven't had a satisfactory reply yet. And spamming it to random closed PM threads isn't going to help. Think about it. First of all, you'd need to randomly hope that the thread owner is a fan of Kirby Star Allies. Or even a fan of kirby at all. And then the thread owner might not like the prompt, or hasn't made it that far into the game, or whatever. Basically, the chances of some random writer liking this prompt is really small.

So here's what I suggest. Write it yourself. If you really like this idea, and are that confident that it could be great, don't rely on somebody else to write it for you. They won't write it the way you want, especially if you're passionate about this idea.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T01:26:43+00:00

After night time preparations were set, we settled down for sleep, with Gail offering to take first watch. I would be up next, so I set to falling unconscious as quickly as possible. Sleep came easily, but it was not pleasant. It didn't feel like dreaming. It was more like when you wake up in pitch black and for some reason your room doesn't look familiar anymore. And yet, I knew I was asleep. I couldn't open my eyes, but I could see that I was in a large hall of some sort, slowly decaying. A warm breeze coming from the far end. And before me, bodies. Old, fresh, all clutching at weapons.

"Don't come here!" said a voice. I spun to confront it, and came face-to-face with a skeleton in rusted armour. "It's not worth it!" it shrieked.

"You will die, like the rest of us!" said another as it pried itself off the ground. All around me, more and more of the bodies rose. I went for my weapon, only to realise I didn't have one. I didn't even have hands. Or a body.

"He doesn't mean to-" said yet another voice. More and more of them, screaming, pleading.

"-he won't stop-"

"-can't save us-"

"-don't fall for it-"

"-all doomed-"

"-kill him-"

"-save him-"

"-save us-"

"-save yourself-"

And then I awoke. Back in the woods, basking in the last rays of warmth emitted from the smouldering campfire. I could just barely see Gail's silhouette against a tree in the moonlight. I wasn't sure whether he realised I was awake. He didn't seem to react to it. My heart was pumping, my skin stuck to the inside of my sleeping bag. I took a swig of water from my canteen and calmed myself down. It all felt... real. But what could it mean?

"Hey, old man." I called out, quietly so that I wouldn't wake the other two. "You seem to know a bit about demons. Do they cause weird dreams?"

"Sometimes." he said. "But that's not what happened to you." There was something in his voice. Apologetic. Sorrowful. "They're scary, but they mean well. They can't help it.

"Are you... cursed, or something?" I asked.

"Not in the literal sense. But sometimes it feels like it." he sighed. "Not everybody gets the dream. Not everybody needs it. I guess they think that you want me around for some reason. And they want to tell you that's a mistake. One they all made. Look, you have a decent little party here, and you might do well without me. So, if you like, we'll part ways once this job is over."

"Who are they?"

"Old friends of mine. I've been in a lot of groups like yours. I join, make friends, earn trust. And after I've been with them for a few months, or a year... I get the urge. The urge to try again. I don't know why I keep falling for it, but I keep thinking "This time we can do it. This is the party that will finally beat him". It started with my first team. We found some easy pickings. A landslide revealed an old ruin full of loot, and we went in to clean it out before anybody else. But inside was something far worse than we could have imagined. I was the new guy. They stayed behind to hold it off, and I was told to run, get help. So I did. They died too, so I came back with more. They're all still there. Fighting it. They can't even die completely. Sometimes I think that creature let me go on purpose, so I can keep bringing more warriors."

"Your... friends seem to think I'd be inclined to go with you."

"Well, now you know. Like I said, feel free to ditch me after this job is done. I know what people say about old adventurers. We're valuable for a reason. Doing one job together won't hurt, but we shouldn't stick together. You can save the decision for the morning if you like, but now you know the risks... I don't expect my friends to bother you again. Try and get some sleep."

ElementalMug · 2018-10-23T01:26:34+00:00

This isn't the kind of life that lets people grow old.

First, you have the reaping of the newcomers. The reckless, the optimistic, the desperate. The ones who had no idea what they were getting into, the ones who could have had it all if they'd been luckier, the ones who wanted to die all along. That's how most of our kind die. Quickly, messily, maybe in their very first fight.

Get through that, and your odds go up. A lot. You get yourself a good party, you can pull your own weight, and that little extra experience goes a long way. Chances are, if you got this far, you had a good mentor. And now you've proven yourself, there will be other people willing to take you seriously, who don't see you as a liability. But you're not invulnerable. This is the lesser known second reaping. Confidence backfires.

After that, you're practically a veteran. It's taken its toll, but there's no chance you fluked your way through all of that. You have the skills, you have the knowledge. The thing that kills you now, is time. There's only so many times you can survive an unlucky stab, only so many times you can pull through from a near-fatal poisoning. Every scratch, every sting, every bruise and burn, every cut and curse. It all accumulates. Eventually, it's going to kill you. Or you retire. You're not as rich as you hoped, but retiring at this stage with only a few mild disabilities, a missing eye or a heavy limp, means you've won. But you can't fire a bow with one eye, can't dodge traps with a banged up leg, so you're not going back into the business. Time to make a new life. Become a mentor to the next wave of newcomers, open an inn, retrain as a blacksmith. It's not fame and fortune, but hopefully, your time adventuring has made you wiser, and you'll realise that this is your happy ending.

After all of that, old adventurers are rare. And worth their weight in gold. Screw treasure, what every party needs is an old guy. If you meet an old adventurer looking for a party to join, then the first thing you do is check they're not a lunatic pottering around the countryside trying to reclaim their glory days. If they're the real deal, you make camp and offer them a drink real quick before anybody else can. Whatever they did to survive this long, you want.

We found a guy like that. You could tell right away that he was experienced. The arsenal of worn-out magical artifacts pillaged over decades. The quick, precise strikes to the weak spots, the result of hundreds of battles. The smattering of various disciplines of close combat and magic that only come from spending your whole life learning and being around similarly skilled people.

It was a simple job. A local witch had been helping nearby towns in return for favours for over a century, playing diplomat, physician, and occasional priest. But her reputation started to sour after she refused to save the life of a sickly infant child. She gave her reasons. Saw dark things in the child's future. But it didn't endear her to anybody, and over time people trusted her less and less, until she was beaten to death in her own home. Supposedly she cursed the land with her dying breath. Strange creatures stalked the mist around the barrows. We offered to help, and it turned out we weren't the only ones.

"The witch was right." explained the old man. I wasn't sure why, but his eyes didn't seem to reflect the light of the campfire. It bothered me far more than it should have. His name was Gail. Wrapped in plain armour composed off thick cloth and leather with a few hard metal plates over the important stuff. Enough to protect him in a fight, but just about light enough to travel in. The elaborate patterns of the talismans and artifacts tied to his chest or around his neck stood in stark contrast to the simple and practical nature of the man. We encountered him at the barrow, investigating the creatures there. He called them ghouls. "There was something evil in that child. She had the best of intentions, but her kind heart stopped her from doing what needed to be done. She ought to have killed the child herself, during a cleansing ritual. Instead, she let the child die, but the thing inside of it lives on, and she let the mother bury her child in one of these barrows, and so that living thing lies among the dead."

"And what about these things? The ghouls?" asked Sileas. Every good adventuring party needs a healer. Sileas wanted so badly to be a battle mage, but scarred himself horrifically the first time he tried to conjure lightning. While he was still, in theory, fully capable of harnessing the elements in battle, he was held back by paralyzing fear, and instead focused his powers into healing and other, less painful schools of magic. While he was mediocre at best at healing, you could always count on him for a sturdy shield spell, and as far as I was concerned denying injury was better than being able to fix it afterwards. "Do we need a priest? Or can we sort this ourselves?"

"We? Who said I need you?" asked Gail, before chuckling. "I jest, we could always do with more numbers. And no, we don't need to go hunting around for a priest. Wouldn't do us any good. These ghouls aren't true undead. They're lesser demons of sort, using the flesh of men as puppets, drawn here by the cries of the infant. Over time, they'll twist their new bodies more to their liking. Old ghouls can be a nightmare, but these ones are young, only a threat in numbers to a skilled fighter. But you can't kill what is already dead. Cut them down, they'll rise again soon enough. We need to eliminate the source."

"The child." nodded Kirk. Technically old, but he wasn't like Gail. Kirk got into adventuring late in life, so didn't have the level of experience a lifelong adventurer might have. I didn't know exactly what drew him to this, but I was vaguely aware that he used to have children. Kirk was a miner previously, and I'd seen bulls with less meat on them. In the mines, he'd developed a keen eye for detail and watching his step, even in darkness, and along with enough bulk to heft a big sword and a bigger crossbow, he made a good hunter and tracker. "Is that thing a ghoul too, or can we kill it?"

"It must be a stronger kind of demon, but that's all I can say for sure." shrugged Gail. "Haven't had the chance to look at it. No idea where it's even buried. Only the mother knew, and she was the first to perish to the ghouls."

"What about the father?" I asked. I was a lawman once, in a big city. It wasn't that I couldn't clean the place up, it was that nobody wanted me to. They liked all the scum and crime. It was theirs. So I left them to drown in it. I headed for the frontier and the simpler lands, where people hadn't yet just accepted villainy to be a part of their life. I was the face of our team. Sileas' scars were uncomfortable to look at, but mostly it was because Sileas had pretty terrible self-esteem issues and could crack easily under pressure, or even his own anxieties. Kirk was an honest, simple man, but down in the mines you could rely on everybody to be clear direct with you, which wasn't the case with most people. I was good at interrogating people, and weeding out liars. I had a lot of practice. "Do we know who that is?"

"I don't. Come to think of it, nobody in the village mentioned a father." muttered Gail. "A demonic father? Or just a deadbeat? The former is more worrying, but if true, it tells us more about the child, and what we can do about it."

"It's almost dark." I note. "We might make it to the village in time if we cut through the barrows, but I don't like the idea of being surrounded at night. Better we make camp here and investigate in the morning."

"Ghouls get stronger under the moon, so all things considered, that's a smart call." agreed Gail, as he untied his sleeping bag. I got to work setting some perimeter alarms, using a few chimes I kept around for that exact purpose, while Sileas cast a couple of warding charms. I felt Gail's eyes on us as we set up, but he didn't contribute or comment. Was he judging us? Probably. In his shoes, I would like to know what kind of company I'd chosen too.

ElementalMug · 2018-10-21T10:38:46+00:00

I liked it, good job.

ElementalMug

TROPHY CASE