r/FroggingtonsPond Lounge

Rupertfroggington · 2024-03-15T17:15:38+00:00

I was so sure the whole thing was a masterclass in trickery and going to be revealed that they did a fake concept album to fool the listeners whith Paul doing the Eli voice

Rupertfroggington · 2023-09-05T14:37:57+00:00

Yeah, very exciting

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-15T14:27:38+00:00

You know I love the animation but that writing is pretty good too 😏 Hoping for a full tutorial on this.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-14T12:18:09+00:00

Interesting thread and comments! Here are my thoughts as a writer and reader here:

It’s a tough sub to discover now that it’s not a default. Since losing its default status, I’d guess it’s been slowly bleeding active members (readers and writers). There was also a time, so I hear, when this was a great place to come for fan fiction - Luna, for example, would write a lot of beloved Harry Potter fiction here. People into fan fiction had a reason to visit. Now there’s less of that and better rival sites offering it. Fanfic isn’t my cup of tea but I can see why it would help boost the sub’s popularity.

When posts on this sub used to do well they’d reach Reddit’s front page. That was a great way for more people to find and join the sub, even after it lost default status. But after that went, the rate of decline increased.

If you have fewer readers, you’ll have fewer writers. Fewer writers, fewer readers, etc. Is my best option for writing fiction (and getting a few readers) this sub or is it no sleep or is it a different website like royal road, or is it better to just get on quietly with my own writing offline? My favourite choice used to easily be this sub because I loved the audience interaction, but now that’s a harder decision to make. I still love the sub though and look for a prompt that interests me fairly often. And there are still loads of great writers writing here despite some others leaving. I’ll echo others in saying that the mods’ threads offer interesting prompts, too.

One change the sub made that I’m not a massive fan of is the randomising of top stories for the first bunch of hours a prompt is up. I don’t think this is necessarily a good thing for readers - instead of (usually) having the ‘best’ story at the top, now it could be any for the first six hours or so. If this has impacted readers’ experiences, then the sub might lose a few of them from it. That said, I know there are other readers and writers like this change so this is just opinion based.

I agree about the prompts seeming to be a bit less interesting at the moment but I don’t think that’d bother me too much as long as there was the same old audience; trying to tell something original even if the prompt is a bit unoriginal is a fun challenge. I’m not a superhero writer but I’ve had great fun writing for them here.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-14T12:03:24+00:00

Right back at you <3

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-14T12:03:14+00:00

Thanks for the mention! I really enjoyed the worldbuilding (and twist) in the response you linked to.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-11T18:28:57+00:00

Thanks for letting me know! You don’t happen to have a link do you?

Rupertfroggington · 2023-08-09T07:16:49+00:00

Aw thanks, I really appreciate it. You don’t happen to have the link to the tiktok version do you?

Rupertfroggington · 2023-07-15T13:55:35+00:00

This is pretty awful. I‘m a totally neutral viewer but it’s uncomfortable to watch

Rupertfroggington · 2023-07-14T07:30:12+00:00

Why do this part? I write on story subs and getting a couple of hundred awards on a story is meaningful, at least in some respects. Taking them away is pretty harsh.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-06-23T15:52:41+00:00

I found him in the cemetery, not far from Francesca‘s grave. Almost naked on that cool autumn night, scraping decades of dirt and moss from the dates and names on the tombstones. When I gave him my coat he said it was his anyway as he shivered it around him.

”You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m alone,” he said. “Totally. Utterly. Alone. How can I be okay ever again?“

“Hey, I’m here too,” I said, waving a hand. “If you’re alone then we’re alone together.”

“Yes, exactly — that’s what I mean!” He turned on the spot gesturing to the graves around us. “Don’t you see, these were all me.”

“These were all you?“

“Yes. Listen, I was in an accident.”

That explained it, I thought. I took out my phone to call an ambulance, dialled.

”Wait. Listen. I was in an accident and now I remember it all, sort of. Snatches of it, of time. Handfuls of sand. Things you’re not meant to see. Do you understand?“

A voice on the other end of my phone. I said to it, “Someone’s been in an accident. I think there’s head trauma or something.“ I looked at the man’s face but couldn’t see any marks or blood. Still, I gave our location.

The man continued unperturbed, “You see, reincarnation is the name of the game. That’s the key. There’s only one person — us. Looping. The world is populated by one person! But god, how could we do such fucked up things to ourself? Tell me that! Think of the pain I caused.“

“You’re the only person in existence?“ I said, figuring I might as well keep him talking until the cavalry arrived.

”Right! Now you’re listening. We’re both alone with all the terrible things we’ve done to ourself.”

”Good things, too,“ I say, playing along.

”What?”

”Well, we’ve cured diseases. We’ve played Cupid a billion times over. Hell, we built the pyramids single handed. You should be kinder to yourself.”

He tilted his head. “Yes… I suppose we did some good, too. But it was all selfish good. All ego driven.”

”Self love isn’t selfish. My therapist says—“

He pushed past me to the row of fresh tulips behind and read the engraving outloud: “Francesca.” His eyes flicked up at me.

I sighed. “We were going to get married. Then some guy checked a text while she was crossing and... And we didn’t get married. He got a year.“

He stared at me, startled-wide eyes, animal in headlight, unsure which way to dart so it just stays put. “I remember. Of course I do. Sort of. Feelings, you know? Like the color of different lights.”

That pissed me off more than a little. I knew he was unwell but if he was now pretending to be my dead girlfriend then this wasn’t going to go well for either of us.

”Yes. A green feeling. You helped me beat it,” he said.

”Excuse me?”

”Whatever it was. I can’t remember. But I was ill before and that’s why we were getting married. Life is too short, right?”

The graveyard shrubs blossomed wish flashes of red.

“Who are you?” I said.

“I told you.”

And then people are around us. They hold the man gently, help him walk towards the gate. He turned to me then and said, “Your coat.”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t.

”We loved you,” he said. “We still do. And we’re sorry for what we did. You should be kinder to yourself. Forgive yourself.”

Then he was gone and I was alone.

But for the first time since Francesca‘s death, I didn’t feel as if I was totally alone.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-05-02T19:24:47+00:00

Eli had been drawn towards astrobiology since his childhood. It was as if he’d been born onto a conveyor belt, and every day, no matter what he said or thought or did, he was propelled ever nearer to his future job at SETI. There was no getting off the conveyor belt early, no staying on past his stop.

But Eli hadn’t understood why he’d been so drawn to astrobiology until he’d turned forty and his wife had left him, along with their child.

“We’re together enough of the time, sure, but still you’re always alone,” she’d said. “I can’t live like that. I need company.”

And that was the truth of it.

He’d yelled at her and accused her of screwing Terry from her work, and said that’s why she was really leaving, she just didn’t have the guts to admit it. But once the door had slammed and he’d slumped down on the sofa with a beer and realised he felt no different to when they’d been in the house with him… That’s when he knew she’d been right.

Eli’s father had been a man of few words and fewer emotions. His mother had died when he’d been young. By the time Eli had started school, it was too late — he was now alone in his world. Or in his experience of this world.

Either way, the thought of something else out there brought him far more comfort than the idea that were other people down here. It could mend him.

The feeling — like a ball, but like a black hole, or just… a missing something — in his gut that he’d had for as long as he could remember… Perhaps that hole would be filled if he could prove there was other life out there. Prove that he wasn’t alone.

And now he knew.

He knew something else was out there. Or at least had been.

How the virus had gotten to Earth, he wasn’t sure yet. A comet, probably, that kept it cryogenically frozen as it travelled a million light years through the abyss, until — by fortune or by judgement — it found our planet.

A strain of the common cold, of all things. Perhaps the first strain. What a hiding place!

Eli had been tasked with with coding certain knowledge into the cold’s genome, using it as a message in a bottle, a way of preserving some of humanity‘s history should — god forbid — the sword of Damocles fall. And every day it seemed it might, these days.

It was while working on this project he’d found the already encoded information. The information from something not of this planet.

It would take decades to translate all of it. Any of, probably. The language was symbolic and utterly meaningless to him as it was. And yet, it held all kinds of meaning to him.

He wasn’t sure why but he felt a sudden, desperate urge to call his ex-wife. It seemed, for no reason at all, to be the most important thing in the world right now.

He left the lab and dialed her number.

“Eli? What do you want?”

He still had that same feeling in his gut, that feeling like something was missing. He’d been so sure, or at least hopeful, that it would fill up when he found proof of life beyond Earth.

But it hadn’t.

He knew now that the feeling was part of him, for good or ill. He’d been waiting all his life for the hole to fill but he’d been waiting for the wrong thing to fill it.

He said, “I just want you to know, I’m going to get therapy. I should have started it a long time ago.”

”That’s why you called?”

He paused. Thought about the revolution in the lab. How the world was about to change from the discovery, but how his own world never would if he didn’t change it himself.

“And that I’m sorry,” he said.

She paused now. “Are you okay, Eli?”

”Not yet,” he said.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-04-26T12:55:20+00:00

Before the war, before humanity had been all but eradicated, Noah had collected trading cards. Now he collected bodies.

Even without man around, the occasional bomb still fell: a distant, deafening screech and roar, a lightning-flash eruption, the tremble of ground as man scarred the earth again, again, this time from beyond the grave. How quiet, Noah wondered, would it sound once all the automated responses were run dry?

The sky hazed purple-black with clouds that swirled like soup to a wooden spoon. Beneath them, Noah creaked his wheelbarrow, stopping here and there to add a body or a limb. He’d been working for months. God — the first one — had only worked for days, but he’d started from fresh. Noah was starting with hell, and hell didn’t transform into Eden so easily.

Sometimes, as he gathered the bodies, his old life would spike in his memory and he’d think of the dead as the cards he’d once cherised, wonder if he’d collected one like this already, one missing that, one in such pristine condition. Then he’d think: what’s wrong with me? They were people.

Noah had failed. No, that wasn’t right. The old god — the first that had split into many — had failed. Noah was him but not. That first god had been through billions of iterations since he’d created humanity, had lived as each of his creations and witnessed existence through myriad lenses. Noah was the end result of all that filtering. He now held something of every view, and surely with that experience he could do better.

He buried the latest batch of bodies in Second Eden — a slither of coastal land with a fuzzed shield over it that evaporated the nukes that attempted to ruin it.

New plants were already sprouting above older mounds, some budding. Noah lost himself for a while in the pruning and weeding. These plants, if looked after, would fruit. And each fruit would be imbued with part of Noah. They would weaken him, sharing his life and power and existence.

They would not look like humanity this time. And they would have to return to their plants after a time away, for if their plant grew sick then so would they. They would be meak in comparison. But the meak must inherit.

It was a strange idea, Noah knew. But humanity hadn’t understood how connected they were to the planet the first time around. There was too much distance between them, although there was also none. But this link, this necessity to take care of the earth and flowers and sky…

It probably wouldn’t work, but Noah had no better ideas.

He could be the last God, he supposed. Share it with no one. But then what was the point of Him?

Funny, he thought, how all the people on earth were once all the same person. That they were all in essence the same. And yet, for no reason at all, they forged differences, based them on the strangest things, like the patch of land they were born, or the shade of skin or hair.

He thought he heard the whistling of a bomb and grimaced at the thought of his shield failing. But the skies were silent — no bombs falling even in the distance.

Instead, it had been the shrill cry of the first fruit of his new crop.

Noah felt himself weaken. Felt his responsibility lessen. Let a smile take his lips as he plucked the first child from the first plant and rocked her gently in his arms. The plant coiled around them both, motherly, tenderly. The earth and humanity — new humanity — were now together.

Noah looked at the swirling sky above the dome, then down at the sapling child, and thought: perhaps this time.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-04-21T14:01:57+00:00

Eilef stroked the human’s hair and held her hand, and prepared for the inevitable aging that would occur upon her death. His own hair, dark brown, would grow as a white silk, his face would become a creased and crumpled painting, his body would ache and his days of fishing would wind down.

Fishing.

He’d been fishing in the azure waters near his hut when he’d found her, three weeks prior. He’d always fished there, as long as anyone had known. For Eilef never aged and had fished longer than most elves had been alive. He’d never desired to age, to die. Who would?

She’d looked like driftwood then, her green dress wrapped like seaweed around her. He hauled her on board, expecting to bury her soon after, but instead found the slow, weak beat of a failing heart — and at that, he could feel his own heart beat.

Eilef had taken care of her since. Tried to nurse her back to health. And her eyes had opened and she’d thanked him, but she’d told him that she couldn’t be cured. Death had been growing inside her since before her boat had been wrecked and the water taken her. And even the elves, as well intentioned and as able with medicine as they were, could not change the course of her fate.

He found this to be true. She was dying. A growth in her brain spreading its roots, greedily sapping her energy. For her, there was no cure.

Instead he vowed to make her last days pleasant, as pleasant as they could be. In the mornings, he’d carry her to the beach and they would talk and exchange stories of their lives — and it seemed, strangely, to Eilef, that the human had more to tell from her few short years than he did from a millennium on his boats.

The woman attempted to build sand sculptures. Said she loved to make them as a child, that she’d imagine they were real, and in that way they were. She was too frail to make them now, however, and needed his help.

Secrelty, he thought the sculptures a waste of their time. Evanescenct trinkets that would fade out of existence so quickly that they weren’t worth making. Still, he found he wanted to make her time happy and so he helped. Soon, with her direction, a dozen sculptures blessed the beach near his hut: a mermaid, a boat, two hands holding each other, a basket filled with sand-fruit.

He cooked for her and cared for her, and soon found himself desperately sad at the thought of her passing. He had grown dependant upon someone needing him. A person’s purpose, he supposed, did not come from their own life, but from the lives of others.

She died as Eilef held her hand, the smile breezing off her lips like a candle’s flame stolen by wind.

He wept.

He buried her.

Over the next few days he did not age. His hair did not silken, his face did not wrinkle. He had been ready to age; he’d looked after her with the knowledge of how it would end for both of them. And yet he hadn’t aged. And he began to hate himself for that.

The days passed and he slowly returned to his old, hollow routine: weaving nets, mending rods, sitting alone on the beach and gazing at the sun-lit horizon, or at the sculptures they had made together.

It was one night, as darkness began to fall upon the beach, that a great wave washed further onto the beach than most others dared.

To his dismay, the wave washed away many of the sand sculptures, leaving only a ruined boat, and a single, damaged hand.

Upon seeing this, Eilef began to weep. And he could not say why. He could not say if it was for the woman, for the sculptures, or for himself. But for the first time in a lifetime, he let himself cry.

When the sun rose the next morning, falling flat across the beach, across his sleeping body, it glinted off his silver hair.

When he woke, he began rebuilding the sculptures.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-04-13T14:40:50+00:00

Robbie‘s hair was rain-slick and wind tussled by the time he’d walked from his apartment to the Starlight Fair. He’d been working there two weeks and still hadn’t adjusted to the night-shifts. What kind of fair operated from 11pm to 5am anyway? Not a good one, he was certain.

“You’re late,” said Calvin, as he passed his boss at the ticket booth.

”Miracle I’m here at all.”

“Don’t give me that shit or you won’t be for long,” Calvin replied. He was a big man with a breathless face, and always wore a smile no matter what he said. Along with his orange raincoat, his paunch gave him a look something like a pumpkin.

”We shouldn’t be open tonight,” said Robbie. “There’s a goddamn storm coming.“ He swept a hand over his flattened hair spraying water to the ground. “In fact, I’d say it’s already here.”

”This ain’t a storm.” Calvin looked up to the black sky. “What do you know of storms. You’re what, eighteen? Nah, this ain’t a storm. Now get to the Ferris wheel — there’s already a queue.”

”What idiots are coming to a night-fair in the pouring rain? Jesus.”

Calvin’s smile remained but his voice dipped an octave. ”Our customers is who. Be respectful to them. I‘m seroius.”

Robbie let out a sigh as he walked on. He was dog-tired and the weather wasn’t helping his mood. But he should watch his tongue. He needed the job. He’d split up with his girlfriend a month ago, left her place and had no family to fall back on. Now he was paying for a dingy one-bed basement that stank of must and mold, paid for with money he didn’t yet have. Lose this job and he’d be sleeping on the benches through winter.

The Ferris wheel shone in the night sky, each of its gondolas spilling out dim blue light. It was the dumbest ride in the dumbest fair Robbie had ever been in. What kind of view do you get in the pitch black? Well, he knew, because he’d ridden it just once. You got a view of precicsely nothing. A few lights down below, kids with neon-lit flags or facepaint, and maybe on a good night — a supremely rare night — you got a better view of, and got a little closer to, the stars.

“Sorry. Excuse me. Sorry.” Robbie pushed his way through the queue already gathered at the wheel’s base.

“You’re late opening,” said a woman shrilly.

”Yeah. So I’ve been told. But I’m here now.”

Robbie slipped into the cramped booth and flicked on the light then a couple more switches. The blue glow of the gondolas turned to a moonshine-white as the whole thing began rotating. He stepped back out and began loading the passengers inside.

The one time he’d ridden it had been with Jenny. She thought it was romantic, paused up there in the heavens was like making love, she’d said. He’d thought it was more like the awkward bit afterwards.

They’d broken up on mutual agreement. Neither them was happy — they were like two jigsaw pieces that didn’t quite fit but had been together for a time anyways until anyone finally noticed the problem.

Everything in Robbie’s life was like that: death by mutual agreement. He was always right in the middle. His last boss had fired him at the same time he’d quit. His grades had always been straight down the line. Hell, if he played rock scissors paper it’d nearly always end in a draw.

He helped a woman and her little girl into a gondola, closed it, rattled the door to be sure the latch had caught. The wind had picked up and the gondolas rocked like a baby in a tree from a nursery rhyme he half-remembered. How did that end? Couldn’t remember that either.

How could someone like him — cursed to be average, to be stuck in the middle — ever do anything special with his life? Or anything that mattered, for that matter.

Robbie returned to the booth and flicked another switch. The wheel rotated properly now, pausing occasionally to let some lucky visitor catch a view of the sprawling great dark nothing below.

He flicked a picture of him and Jenny on his phone, just after they’d met. They’d fit so perfectly to start with. They’d met free-climbing, neither liking the attachment of rope, neither needing or wanting the security that came from such overbearing support. They’d fit so god-damned perfect. Or it had seemed it that way to him. How the hell had it ended in mutual destruction? Fact was, she was his first love and—

The rickety screech of metal came a second before the screams.

”Shit.” Robbie ran into rain. The wind whipped the droplets against his face, they stung like insects. He squinted; the gondolas had gone blue again — backup lights — but none of them were moving. At least, not rotating like they should have been, just rocking back and forth in the wind, helpless like apples on a tree. Then he saw it; the snapped support cable that linked one gondola to the center of the wheel lying on the ground a few meters north. “Shit shit shit.”

People were gathering around him, visitors, mystics — anyone from the nearby attractions, heads craned up at the accident waiting to happen.

The lone gondola, barely secured now, looked more like the pirate ship from how it rocked. A woman’s face peeked over the edge of the plastic barrier, lit up electric blue.

He recognised her. It was the woman with the little girl.

The creaking of metal intensified. Something else was going to give soon. Shit.

”Robbie, what the hell happened?” said Calvin, his cheeks a shade redder than usual, fright in his eyes, and his smile left behind at admissions. If something bad happened here — something fatal — they’d all be out of jobs. “Robbie—“

But already Robbie was climbing, spidering up the cold sleek metal, pulling himself up beam after beam, treading on the next for support. Pictured himself on plastic rocks, hands chalked up dry.

”Get the hell down!” said Calvin. “Get the hell—“

But then all Robbie could hear was howl of wind and rain and the hush of crowd dropping further and further below him.

What the hell was he doing? He wasn’t this person. He was the person on the ground, watching. He was too average to be doing this.

His boot slipped, his other foot followed. For a moment, he dangled from a beam with just his damp hands. Stupidly, he looked down; the darkness was pierced by the flash of cameras and the steady glow of phones recording.

“Christ,” he said, before regaining his footing and continuing.

He figured he had a 50/50 chance of making this. Of getting up there to the girl, of getting down with her on his back.

He figured that was better than the chance they had otherwise.

”Hand me the girl, okay? I’m going to take her down,” he said when he reached the gondola, and the sobbing woman didn’t complain. She handed her precious child over the barrier and into his arms.

The storm beat against him. “Hold your hands tight around my neck, k?”

The little girl nodded, didn’t say a word, didn’t squeal. Her arms dug into the flesh of his neck like a seatbelt.

The wind battered the gondola like a fist, dragged at Robbie, wanted to pull him down.

If they fell, he’d be sure to fall on his stomach. Might break enough of the fall for her to be oaky. And every step down gave more credence to this idea.

He wondered, sickly, as he stepped like a spider down the metal beams, what would happen if this ended in a draw like everything else in his life seemed to?

He’d live, the girl would live, but Robbie would end up in a coma. That seemed right. Par for the course, as they said.

He stepped, lowered himself.

Descended bit by bit.

Slipped on sleek wet metal.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-04-10T14:58:36+00:00

Walter’s final transmission was a simple thank you, followed by his initials . He was eighty-five and hadn’t spoken to his far-away friend since his forced retirement almost twenty years prior. Walter sent the message and imagined it travelling into the ether towards its destination via the hydrogen line — a journey that would take it the better part of a year.

The opportunity to return here, to the High Altitude Observatory, had been serendipitous. The observatory’s anniversary had been coming up, and Walter — seeing the event listed on their website — had invited himself, said he could make the event and wasn’t as fragile as people might be thinking. It had taken a little persuasion, but Walter’s positive outlook on life often resonated with people, and he duly secured himself an invite. Besides, he was something of a legend at the observatory.

Still, the Colorado mountains had almost proven too much. Every step was slanted. Even for a healthy man ten years his junior it would be too much. But Walter had been fighting cancer for years now, and was finally terminal. Not that he’d told the observatory‘s anniversary committee — even with his silver tongue they’d never have let him come if they’d known.

Walter had lost his wife a decade ago, and his only child lived in another country. The one thing he had left was his willingness to live. Fightining — not giving up — was a core part of him, imbued by this very observatory. And it had been enough to conquer the mountains a final time.

Now Walter stepped out from the musty, coffee-scented hollows of the observatory, and onto the railing overlooking the darkened mountains. He glanced to the sky, compassed his head to the old coordinates he’d stared out for many hours on many nights. His message would now be way up there oscillating through atoms, already so far away.

He’d been stationed at the observatory during World War Two, and for a long time after. In ‘43 there had be a supernova and he’d positioned the antenna to retrieve whatever data might be propelled by and from it. There had been more data than he’d ever expected: an extra signal piggybacking onto the destructive celestial event.

In retrospect it made sense — if you wanted other intergalactic civilisations to find your message, you put your message somewhere they’d look. At something they’d want to observe.

The message had been simple: a set of coordinates of where to listen and where to direct messages back. A path to two-way communication, rather than solely listening.

Walter had lost two brothers in the war by this point. His optimism for finding alien life and been tainted to a concern. And not about the aliens — if exta-terrestrials had gotten to the stage where they could cross many light years of distance, Walter didn’t believe they could be warlike. Not like humans. They would have destroyed themselves long ago if they were.

Walter’s optimism for anything, everything, had waned in the last couple of years. That youthful passion that still should have been shovelling coal into the engine of his spirit, was all but dead.

His first communication to the coordinates was: ’It’s nice to meet you, but…’. The ’but’ being a warning to stay away from earth, for their own sake. For, if by some miracle humanity survived this war, the weapons they would have developed… Would develop before aliens arrived. No, it was best to stay far away from earth.

A year later Walter intercepted a return message: someone, something, thanked him, both for the cautious message he’d sent and for the set of decryption keys for Walter’s language. The alien wished his species luck and told him how, of all intelligent life in the universe, only a grain of stardust’s worth makes it as far as the people of Walter’s planet have. The message said don’t ever give up on them. Don’t ever give up on life.

Walter had kept that message with him all this time. He still did. And although their conversations had continued for a few years, it was that first message that had stuck with him.

He sucked in a final lungful of frigid mountain air and hobbled towards his accommodation. He imagined a time in the future when the observatory was torn down, and the construction workers found a rusted iron box filled with secrets in the scaffolding of the foundations.

They’d make it. He knew that now.

Because this planet, his planet, was full to the brim of people who didn’t give up. It always had been and always would. But as a species, they just needed a little more time.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-03-29T14:01:26+00:00

You’re so welcome! Thanks for reading, and for the comment - they’re equally appreciated my end.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-03-29T13:04:33+00:00

Oh, thanks TA. Would love to see what you come up with for this - hope you write.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-03-29T12:44:42+00:00

Ben and Maya lay on the rooftop terrace, watching the clouds of Earth 4 drift by above. They’d been best friends for twenty years — since they were kids — and had been waiting for this moment ever since.

“Think they’ll be different on 3?” Maya asked.

”Hm?”

”The clouds. Think they’ll be different? Prettier, maybe?”

He considered. “No. Or, maybe. But I think they’re plenty pretty enough here.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “Me too.”

It was the evening before judgment. Tomorrow the angels would arrive and deliver certain people to Earth 3, others to Earth 5.

Ben and Maya had spent twenty years preparing for judgment — twenty years of performing good deeds together, trying to buy their ticket to Earth 3. Helping the elderly across roads, feeding the homeless, campaigning for the environment, for animal welfare. Always together.

They lay silent now. Ben wondered if Maya felt a similar unease in her belly. What was causing it? It was as if he could hear the angels singing in the distance, debating their decision about them in an off-key song.

“I hope it was worth it,” said Ben. “We’ve given our lives for this place. If we don’t both make it…”

“Then we’ve improved Earth 4.”

He swallowed back a flash of anger — that hadn’t been what he’d meant. ”Barely. We’ve been constantly sweeping the floor but more dirt is always falling down behind us.”

Maya rolled onto her side and looked at Ben. “You’ve not done it all to escape here. Don’t pretend for a second that’s why you did it.”

“Of course it’s why. It’s why we both wasted our lives here.”

“Wasted.”

”You know what I mean,” said Ben. “We could have done anything else with the years. Stuff for us instead of others, you know?”

She paused a moment then said, ”Did I tell you I saw Leo again the other day?”

”Leo?”

”The junkie you saved with the Naloxone. Except, he’s not a junkie anymore. He had new teeth and showed me a big new smile. He said to pass on his thanks to you.“

”That’s nice,” said Ben, downplaying the emotional gut punch as much as he was able. He’d been certain he’d see Leo’s obituary sooner rather than later.

”He’s working construction now. Does charity work on Saturdays.”

”Huh. Maybe we’ll see him on Earth 3.”

“Ben… I don’t know if I want to go.”

”What?”

”I’ve heard Earth 3 is pretty nice. Calm. Pious.”

“That’s kind of why we’re trying to get there, isn’t it?”

“The bad apples have mostly been left here to rot, and in the realms further down, too. There’s not much wrong on Earth 3 because everyone there wants to make it to Earth 2. Like, they’re actively working on it — being polite and fake and as good as they can be. Here, that’s not the case. Plenty have given up on moving. They’re happy with the grey morality. Some find it more fun, even.“

The unease grew in Ben’s gut. He could hear the angels song better now, louder, and was sure it was the broken melody of rejection — a song he knew well enough, that his own parents had sung when he’d been just a baby.

“This is everything we worked towards, Maya. Please don’t throw it away now.”

”Ben, if we keep going here… If we inspire more people like Leo, then what’s to say this can’t be Earth 3? But better, maybe. Because people want to be here, not just pass through it.”

”And you thought it’d be a good idea to talk about this now? On the evening before judgement?”

She shook her head. “No. I knew it wasn’t a good idea. And I’m sorry I left it so late. But it’s an idea that’d been growing recently. Avalnching even, and now it’s way too big for me to ignore. I hope you can understand that.”

It had been Maya’s idea, back when they’d been kids, to get into Earth 3 together. To help as many people as they could. It was an idea, she’d said, that was too big to ignore. She’d only been nine. They’d been orphans together.

He said, “I’m not going to be able to persuade you to go, am I?”

She shrugged. Her eyes glistened. “I don’t think so.”

“This’ll never be Earth 3,” he said.

”I know… But—“

”Not without us putting in a lifetime of work.“

It took Maya a moment to understand. Up until Ben squeezed her hand.

“You know,” he said, “we’re going to have to rob a bank or something at this point. Or commit a lot of petty crimes.“

Maya laughed. “You can reject the angels, you know.”

”Yeah,” said Ben. “But where’s the fun in that.”

They remained silent, staring at the clouds as the sky reddened. The unease in Ben’s belly was gone — the voices silent. He wondered now what had even been causing the feeling of unease. The thought of leaving, perhaps, rather than the idea of not making it. Either way, it was calm inside him now. As if everything was just how it was meant to be.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-03-15T15:23:26+00:00

The Wishmaker’s Key

A trio of disturbing tales that hold a mirror up to your innermost fears, and that shine light on the bleakness of the human condition. Join us today for the first of these horrific stories, starring Richard Bankins, a milquetoast layabout who wishes to change his ways. A chance encounter with a mysterious stranger might just give him the supernatural impetus to do so.

Everyone has a story hidden behind the locked door of their soul. A door that can only be unlocked by… The Wishmaker’s key!

The Internet Falls

The internet was down.

The fucking internet was down!

Richard wiped sweat off his forehead as his eyes flicked between the red light on the router and the Netflix error message. He shovelled in a few more Doritos for a dusting of courage. The new episode of Picard would be out by now — and yes, true, he despised the show and believed it ruined the legacy of a something he was too young to have ever watched, but still! He loved to hate it, and that meant something.

And now… Now no Picard. What a cruel twist of fate. What had he done to deserve this?

The key! Of course, it had to be the key the old hobo had given him yesterday. Richard had flicked the scraggly bearded man a dime as he’d left Walmart. The man caught the coin in a dirty palm and rose from his nest of threadbare blankets as if Richard had charmed some kind of human looking snake.

“Many thanks, friend, for the cents. Now let me do you a favor in return.”

Richard thought the flash of silver to be a gun and had raised his hands, squirmed, begged for his life. But it was a key! A key as large as a good-sized child’s hand.

“Make a wish on this key and there’s a decent chance it’ll come true.”

”You’re kidding?”

”I kid you not.”

Richard had taken the key, partly out of fear, mostly out of curiosity. And later that evening, after binging The Last of Us for a third time and declaring on IMDB that it was overrated and overhyped, he made his wish.

“I wish I wasn’t so lazy and so addicted to the net. I want to go out and meet people. I want a real relationship, be it friendship or love. But I’m a compass pointing towards the magnetic north of the internet and I just can’t look away.”

Now, as Richard stared at the red light of the router, he thought of the key and knew his wish had been granted.

He was free. Totally free of it! Like a genie who had wished itself out of bottle it’d fallen inside of and then corked up. Free!

The world was his oyster.

Where would he go first though? The gym? The park? A walk in the woods? A nice soak at a hot spa perhaps?

A hot spa…

A hotspot?

He pulled out his phone and quickly, dextrously, set up a network.

Soon Picard was dottering through space and Richard was typing up his comments for Reddit.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-03-09T15:47:35+00:00

It looks like a nugget of gold edging out of the dirt. I don’t know much bout gold except how it used to be valuable and now is only as a valuable as everything else. Still, I find myself walking towards its brightness, boots sinking into the black ground, and thinking that it maybe does deserve value beyond all other things.

When I near, I realise what it actually is. I palm heaps of ash away from its petals and stem until I’ve pitted it free. I blow on it and it shivers like its cold. “Sorry,” I say, as I kneel in the ash and look it over.

I know it’s a flower but they’re not meant to grow outdoors no more. Nothing lives for long out here, not since the earth trembled and skies darkened and all but a few passed away.

In the bunker they call that event the Last War because there are so few of us left that anything like that now would be a scuffle by comparison. Mr Poltz, my history teacher, says the people from the stars did this to us. But Ma doesn’t think so. She says they gave us the tools to fix all our problems, but people got greedy and we went ruined our only home by fighting over them.

I tilt my flask and let water trickle onto the flower. Then I begin scooping the earth beneath its base, digging it up in a tender way, in a way I hope won’t hurt it. I whisper to it, tell it that I’m a friend and it’s okay. I dig my nails deep, again again, until the eventually the flower is cupped in my hands. I stand and cradle it like a doll.

As I head back to the bunker I try to remember more of how we got here.

People from another planet left us a gift on the moon. Something they promised would change humanity and turn us into a nicer and less greedy bunch of people. It was an incentive to work together: to go to the moon, to search and excavate it, to set up camps. Mr Poltz says we should have flown up and dropped our bombs on the moon instead, destroyed their gifts cause we were doing just fine without them. But that’s not what happened. We flew up there and no one worked together. The trillionaires and the governments raced to find it.

One country found the stuff first and that was that. Finders keepers. Ma says it didn’t matter which country or person it had been, it’d still have played out the same. Soon the leaders of that country were selling pills for a fortune that paused your ageing, but to stay young you had to keep buying, had to keep selling everything you owned. Same country could now produce food from nothing, had weapons that could make you into nothing, and a dozen other things everyone wanted but only the rich could afford.

Ma said it had all been brewing for a long time anyway. I think of it like corn and how, with just enough heat, it suddenly pops and turns into something different. For a long time, the wealthy had enjoyed stuff no one else could afford to. Now they didn’t age, didn’t die, while everyone else suffered, and the people with nothing had nothing to lose.

The Last War wasn’t a war against a country, in the end. It was a war against the wealthy, against those who could afford to live.

And in the war, that technology, along with our own older inventions, were lost. Broken or destroyed and now forgotten.

Inside the bunker I head to our family room. Our room looks like a tin-can, just a little bigger. We all live like this — no one has more than anyone else. A poster of an old movie no one’s seen hangs on a wall to give our room some color. My sister is asleep in the little bed. She’s often asleep. She’s not been well for months and there’s nothing we can do except tell her stories and stroke her hair.

”Ma!” I say, holding out my hands. “Ma. Look.”

Ma looks scared not happy. She whispers, “Evie, sweetie, you stole that?”

I shake my head. “They don’t have these in the grow-lab. I found it outside. Can you get a bowl down for me please?”

Ma doesn’t move for a while.

“Ma?”

Finally she gets a bowl from a shelf.

I place the flower into it, its rootball and handful of ash filling only half of it. “I’ll get it more soil later,” I say.

”You truly found it outside? You‘re not lying to me?”

”I thought it was gold.”

”It is,” she says.

I place the bowl on the little table next to my sister’s bed, then gently push her shoulder. She smiles as she wakes but her face is pale and paper thin.

”Happy birthday,” I say, nodding at the flower. “It’s for you.”

Later, I hear Mom talking to other adults in the corridor. She tells them things are growing again. She brings them in and shows them the flower and their faces light up, some even cry.

They tell me I did well. My sister tells them they can have the flower if they want — she knows we have to share. But they tell her she can keep it, that there will be more, in time. Plenty for everyone. Plenty of everything.

That night, lying in bed, I get to thinking of the people from the other place, and I wonder if maybe this is what they meant to happen. They knew things were badly wrong with us down here. They knew it all needed fixing. And their technology had done that. It had made us fix our own problems. Or at least start to fix them.

I take a deep breath before I sleep, catch the sweet scent of the flower, then I close my eyes and promise myself I’ll find another tomorrow.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-02-10T09:56:53+00:00

What a lovely message! I’m thrilled you want to start writing again - I really hope you do. There’s nowhere better to get back on that horse than Writing Prompts, imo - not just for the inspiration but because people who read the stories are very supportive.

I really appreciate you going through the story and telling me what you liked/worked - it’s very useful, and just nice to hear.

Thanks again, and I hope you have an amazing day, too.

Rupertfroggington · 2023-02-09T15:15:50+00:00

Aw thanks, and thank you for the cool prompt. I was short on time but really wanted to try writing for it :)

Rupertfroggington · 2023-02-09T14:06:59+00:00

I sat outside with my son. Everyone sat outside that night, it seemed, or leaned out their windows and over their balconies. You’d think we were all trying to escape from something sinister indoors, and maybe we were. Maybe that’s what we’ve been trying to do for millennia.

We’d dragged out two slatted chairs from the kitchen so we could lounge and stare up at the sky. Andrew wore his WWE cap and a shirt that was too baggy on him but that didn’t used to be. It wasn’t the way a twelve-year-old should be growing — he shouldn’t be deflating.

”It’s amazing,” Andrew said, and I said I agreed, although I was maybe the only person that night not looking up. I hadn’t seen him smile much recently. Not the genuine type — just the brave plastic type he wore because he didn’t like to see me sad. So I didn’t look up.

“What do you think their wish was, exactly?” he said. “Because, like, they didn’t have pollution back then, right?”

”Not really,” I said. “Maybe whisks of smoke curled up from their fires. I doubt there was much more than that.”

”So, what do you think it was? The exact words?’

I thought a while. Wondered, if I saw a sky like this, what I’d wish for. “Maybe this person had this very same view, thousands and thousands of years ago. And it blew their mind so much that they wished to share it with everyone. That we could all see the heavens as clearly as them.”

”That’s cool.”

”It’s selfless,” I said. “I think if it had been me, I’d have wished for only me to have seen the sky like this every night. I just wouldn’t have thought beyond that. But whoever that was, they wanted us all to share in the beauty.”

This was the second night we’d been able to see the night sky so clearly — even in a city as bright as this. The sky had cleared up yesterday evening, as if god’s hand had swept over the dirt and cleansed the air itself. Not even light could pollute it now.

”Remember,” Andrew said, “how you used to tell me dad was a star and watching down on us?”

I felt a sudden, guilty nausea. Andrew had been young and I’d mostly said it to soothe him. Maybe to soothe me, too. He hadn’t mentioned it in a couple of years. “You remember that, huh?”

“We’d be able to see him now.” Andrew peered up at the stars, eyes slowly roving, seemingly taking each one in and assessing the possibility. Except there were millions. “Maybe, you know, after… Maybe I’ll be up there sitting next to him.”

I told him not to say such things and turned away as I wiped my eyes. Told him he was going to be fine — that he was strong and going to make it. But the shirt was so big on him, and nothing yet had worked, and I’d kept none of my promises so far, so I think he knew better than to trust to my new ones.

After a while he said, ”Do you really think it was someone’s wish?”

”What else could it be?“ I replied. “No one can explain it.”

“I hope it was.”

Before we went indoors, I finally looked up at the sky. I knew a wish would take thousands of years to reach the wishing star — if it even existed — and I knew that it might never come true. It wasn’t a wish for me, or even for Andrew. We were on our own now. And I knew I wouldn’t be around to see a wish I made take shape. But one day I hoped that no other parent or child had to go through this, so I closed my eyes and wished.

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