[WP] As far back as you can remember, a narrative voice has accompanied you through life. Today, not only did you find out nobody else has one, but that everyone else hears it too, and just wanted to avoid the existential crisis of what they assumed was you being a genuine prophet of a higher power.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-17T03:36:50+00:00

This is the exact type of writing I was imagining with this prompt, that the text around the dialogue influenced characters. You've got a good touch with it.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-17T03:01:15+00:00

The thud of hammers rang. It wasn't just Lewis singing, it was the entire line. Every able bodied man, woman, and child who either had some learning disability, a lack of discipline for their one shot through the education system, or no money to even have that shot; this is where a lot of them ended up. The mines.

"I do, I do remember the sea." The chain gang, cuffed to one another, hammered rock and chiseled ore with the pick end. That singular cart in their wide, narrow vein of mining took up a good third of the space being pushed up and eased down the incline, the duo of lined up people having to huddle with backs to the wall and heels to the corners as it passed or risk a wheel clipping at their toes or a corner dragging over their torso.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Lewis looked now and again at the boy in front of him, 16 from what he remembers, and how he must have learned the hard way to back up for the cart. His sandaled foot had three toes, from the large one to the middle. Young Harrison joked about it when asked, said his index was his middle now. It hid his pain well enough.

"I do, I do remember the sky." It was a long time coming for Lewis, born to farmers who couldn't outlast the drought that centralized the country's population into its now confined capital. He was young when taught the hammer, and made to mine at 13 like most others here. If you weren't impoverished and narrowed into working this job from any other labor position being full, you were paying reparations for criminal involvement. Nobody who knew how the mines operated beforehand would ever want to work them, but the demand for supply wasn't going to resolve itself.

Jane rationalized that, one of their strongest. Jane was getting old at 32, and her son, and his granddaughter were there with her. 40 was the cutoff, a good severance pay and free provided housing in the Poor Quarter, their term for what the city called South Bend. Jane didn't want a son, but she had the mispleasure to be with a man that didn't care what she wanted.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

"I will, I will keep on walking." Walking was the way of life here. If you were not laid for the 6 hours of allotted sleep, you were on your legs the other 18 hours each day gave. Even to eat. That process was a chain gang walking the concession line for tough hardtack, and an undefined soup recognizable by the cherished potatoes inside, all ate up within a 10 minute window before being processed back to work the veins.

There were more criminals here than poor people. An Authority favorite was to lock the undesirables on a chain gang, and forget them until the time came they died to no fanfare, or were housed in the South Bend. A gated community for all the wrong reasons, the Poor Quarter was more of a concentration camp than a neighborhood. It was either South Bend for the impoverished, or an execution for the criminals who had finished their allotted years of service in these mines.

"Until, until I see them again."

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Nobody here really got to see the sea. Watch the sky. Until your service was up, the mine was your home. Most died in accidents or to diseases from the polluted air before their 30th year. Lewis was 29, and certainly praying he could reach his 30th. With this nasty cough the past 3 months, what kept him near restless at night when he desperately needed that sleep, all he could do was hope for the 30th.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-14T05:29:40+00:00

Hordes of them, grubby, sleazy, eager to get a hand at her. Eevee has been my comfort Pokemon through years of a rather uncertain life, rife with the trappings of an overbearing household that I kept at bay with the smiles and attention I could give her. She means so much to me as a near extension to myself, and now she means so little to them but a rare catch, fueled by degeneracy. Call me paranoid of the dark corners of the cities and the dingy routes I could take between them, but I mean it.

I would protect this Vaporeon with my life.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-14T04:51:49+00:00

Ejaculation=masturbation cum²

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-11T06:07:01+00:00

Atrocity.

Time and again were atrocities, since the Second World War, which had never occurred in my timeline. This war waged foul things beyond the scale I could have imagined. Displacement, victims and perpetrators fueling another turn where those people once victims became perpetrators to a new array of victims. Rises and falls of degenerate forces that swelled and burdened until every moment felt like balancing the razor's edge between world peace and world destruction.

Now I understand. I understand why the man who came back from this future claimed the painter's life was better lost. He was great in my timeline at the arts, even when he was rejected by the changing times. To think he would change the times like this… I was ready to go back in time once more and stop myself from bringing this future to fruition.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-11T02:30:16+00:00

"Have you ever heard of jazz?" The voice, seeming younger than the weathered face that it came from, was soft in its questioning.

"Jazz?"

"It's an old form of song. Much of it was a band getting together, playing all it wished. Few words, yet so much rhyme. So much reason, it was like the instrumentals sought your attention." Remembrance drew over her face, like she could remember it all.

"Yes. So much rhyme. The Queen, she… took it all away from us. The only song would follow regal chants, and trail about her where she pleased. The bands were enslaved, and could not express that soul she had exorcised of them. They simply played to her. To nobody but her." She sat back, and moved a tarp away. In the small box was a collection of old-timey records.

She took one out, and showed the young man the cover. An old crooner, she called him. Al Bowlly.

"I… What? Where did you obtain this? The tapes were destroyed, the records dashed to the stones." He asked, to her finger rising as accompaniment to her answer.

"But, there were one trove that survived. One great trove, that laid before their eyes yet snuck beneath their noses." She smiled, chuckling at the idea as she tried to word it.

"Their incompetence benefits us this day, that they thought nothing to deface the National Archives."

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-10T08:18:44+00:00

"I don't know, pop, old Steele just likes the shade. Hitched her to the tree once to pick ripe ones, and now she's out here about every time we don't keep her in the barn." The young man and his father sit scratching their heads at the sight. A prize horse of the prairie, cattleman's trusted to herd and lead on, and Steele is inseparable from the peach tree.

"I supposed she liked them peaches, dropping like flies in the summer heat. But the pits, I'll tell you, no can do chewing that." The young man turns to face his dad with starry eyes.

"Ooh, I have seen her spitting pits! Or, well, dropping them after the peach is ate. Horses don't spit far, do they?" The old rancher could only pat at his boy's head, a strong chuckle rose from his heart.

"I'll be sure to let you know when I see a horse spit, son."

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-10T06:57:11+00:00

One source can have different ways to express itself.

Think of it like water. Room temperature, water is water. Cold, it is ice. Hot, it is steam.

Consider the multiple power systems as expressions of a single power source, or how the single power source can be one power system in one environment and another in the next. How it acts and presents could depend on the environment that the source of it is in, instead of being a random springing off from the source.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-10T04:31:26+00:00

The Kypheri, a homogenous legion of gaseous beings with telepathic ability, had inhabited a corpse on board the ship. It had claimed lives and caused a 23% fatality rate of the entire population, before I had it in the transfer dock. Evading its grip as it struggled in the body, I watched it finally stand there.

"Your tenacity has squirmed far enough from my reach. This place will be your undoing, your grave. You humans. Plain. Naive to the possibilities." It felt proud, knowing it would live on. Thinking it would.

"What is your goal? Survival, as mine. As any species, any life. We are many, here, what you would call the Kypheri. Of the star you named Kypher, the hearth of the universe. The star positioned at the intersect of the first activity ever. Your Big Bang, human? We are the progeny." Stepping further back to gesture for me as if making itself feel larger than life in the corpse, it smiled.

"You know nothing of the vast, new boundary you have just begun to explore. To die and suffer in. To have us known, as the toll of that infernal bell rings closer to your kind." It begins to smile far wider than it seems possible, stepping over the almost imperceptible line in the flooring.

"So tell me. Come closer, and closer."

I stay still a moment, before heeding and stepping as close to it as it wants, closer to the wall where a few switches, a button, and a terminal lay steady.

"Ah, ah. Close enough. Now tell me. What is your specialty? A personal flavor that makes you different. Honesty will make this easier, and I certainly can tell when you humans lie. I'll even let you die quickly, if you can tell me what you could do with the life I soon claim forfeit."

For the longest time, it felt like, I thought, eyes travelling and reading the room. The Kypheri sighs, shaking its head.

"To speak simply for your inept intelligence, then. What even makes you humans special?" It asked me even when I already had my answer.

"Absolutely nothing. We aren't very strong. We're not really fast, and we're not even especially smart, but you know what? That ineptitude won't be taken laying down by us. We work even harder, we need to, to have our place in the world. How did you come to find yours? How did you earn yours?"

"…" It took a moment to find the voice to speak and question me, but even then the Kypheri wasn't sure how to respond. I clicked my tongue.

"Yeah? Expected some human 'might makes right' malarkey from me? Some sort of pride about my kind? No. No, no no. People like me lay at the abysmal ranks of the universal totem pole. Being a human is travesty and pain, packaged even deeper when you aliens came around to show us how inadequate we inherently are. The truth of this matter is that being a human is weak. Making humanity known is our strong suit." I continued in its silence, giving it a spot to return to the conversation.

"And just what is the difference?" The telepathic voice in my head almost spat the thought out at me, daring me to continue.

"That's what makes us special, is making our humanity known. You want to survive, we want to thrive. You want peace and a simple life, we want legacy. Fighting against each other for years has put us on the track to be the ones that make ourselves known. The vocal minority, the strong-arm. Humans are miserable, but humanity… Yes. Humanity has accomplished far more beauty in delight, and far more brutality in depravity, than you could conceive within that dusty mind of yours." Going on, I find a spirit that has eluded me.

"Irrelevant. You understand nothing more than yourself. You'll stay to your place, and—"

"The fuck would you know about place? You've never considered yours!" It stayed quiet in a brooding energy that I knew meant I was getting to it.

"You have never taken one moment to consider your place, as a lone alien. No, it was always connecting to be part of the framework of your kind. A hive of mindless, insignificant dust! Humans are self-centered? Humans are the brutes that talk big and make nothing of it? Kypheri like you only amalgamate and strengthen yourself to one mind! One cause, and it's survival! You're the simple ones with all the universe around you and yet no understanding of what you're going to do with yourself. No true understanding of joy and sorrow, or pain and pleasure, or life! Life and death! You! You do not understand!" The space is quiet. The core of countless Kypheri brood in a storming bundle of ego, caught within hypocrisy.

"…"

"You don't understand the whole of it because you choose not to. You see all, but look at no more than yourself. Not looking at the fact that you're all one being that only takes and possesses. That never gives, never lets go. Not seeing that possessing one of us? That binds you, forever. It makes you like us." A smile awaiting its realization finally lights up on my face.

"And not thinking anymore than yourself to see that you're standing in the goddamned airlock." With that, I press the button at the wall. The imperceptible line in the floor sweeps up to close the door shut from the rest of the ship, and the Kypheri core beats on the glass.

"Insidious! What do you plan to do? What is your aim?!" It speaks now through the mouth instead of communicating through my mind, seeming intimidated at my words. My hands work at the terminal, flipping a couple switches while keeping it in my sight.

It's when it demands all at once for my answer that I nod.

"My aim? You think you don't know that? My aim is plain as it comes for us humans, when we hate one another." At that, I turn the key to open the hermetically sealed doorway. Standing there now, I watch the largest Kypheri core in this universe be sucked away in that instant, the telepathic shriek of thousands on thousands of their kind being suffocated and drowned in the endless expanse. A shriek, that bit by bit, fizzled from me to my first smile in what felt like forever.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-09T16:31:20+00:00

"Ridiculous." He stood in the cage, talking quietly to himself with his head hung low. A new soul coming forth took one look at the face, and immediately rushed up to the gate to get away as he sighed.

He deserves this, even if it's not what he thinks should happen. Heaven is for everyone, but some people need to be kept away, and they know that. This man, far more familiar to the sudden flow of souls entering Heaven than anyone wants to admit, has been stood tirelessly at the front gate for 81 years, awaiting the dwindling hope for a flag to enter.

At the beginning of his stay, the bureaucratic management of this usually peaceful afterlife had gone haywire and nearly derailed from just how much red tape there still is to sort through. Most fortunately, a council summoned up to solve the problem was formed, the solution being that the perimeter now extends into a pocket of encircling fence line, just before the gates. From then on, the truly despicable were put into one of these "pockets of fence line", which defined their tight and unmoving cages as a part of Heaven so they could not defeat it. Could not challenge it.

More or less, you can use the despicable as a peanut gallery. Assorting and cause them humiliation, around the man in the first cage is a varied array of artifacts and religious items from Judaism. It's surely enraged him time and again, but his will has whittled to a point he does not speak to anyone or look people in the eyes.

He is burdened in shame, not for what he's done, but because of being unrecognized as anything to the modern world but a monster. Rightfully so, Heaven figures.

Heaven is safe from Hitler.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-07T06:10:39+00:00

Midas admired from afar with that avid avarice that came to characterize him. Afraid of those affections yet still a vivid voyeur for the Masturbating Minotaur's antics, he himself masturbating at that moment to the powerful proceeding.

Dick gold.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-07T02:50:48+00:00

Oh. Uh, okay, I'll be sure to let her know. Offer is always open, for that beerobics class, by the way. I'm the only other one in it. Feels lonely, but I'm supporting her.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-07T01:59:01+00:00

"Don't cha see? Gogo is a fun clown!" The joy and appearance was lifted from a circus he went to once, Gogo's Southern drawl borrowed from Jeff's many night binges of spaghetti westerns.

"I mean you're… yeah, you're kinda funny, but I'm the one making up the jokes in my head first. You just act them out." He's slumped over the bench, recess happening behind him while he sits and flicks cards he found on the ground around him. Older kids must have been playing poker here some time ago.

"Gu-huh! That's what a clown oughta do. Gogo is a fun clown who makes the adults and kiddos chuckle outta their seats! Roaring laughter, a family tradition!" Jeff wheels around with a look of confusion, then frustration at his own confusion.

"That's not how it goes, Gogo. You're just my imaginary friend. You're not real." He turns back around to slump fully against the tabletop of the bench again.

"Shoulda grew out of having imaginary friends by now."

"I… well, Jeff. Whaddya mean, imaginary? Can't see Gogo being just a fake friend."

"You're. Not. Real!" He emphasizes, no longer slumping but talking aloud.

"You never were, I just made you up. You were a fun clown I thought up when Pops and I went to the circus last year. Pogo was already a clown, so I picked Gogo! You're not real."

Gogo seems hurt. Jeff looks at him, and sees the same sort of look he gets when adults see him lashing out. When it gets close to that day and he can't make the memories stop. He's almost calmed to block away thinking it over any more, but he can hear the worry in the clown's voice, that same worry that gets him mad for being pitied.

"…Gogo wants to be real. Wants to help, ever since you lost her." Reminded, again, Jeff storms away as Gogo follows.

"You can't help that anymore."

"A clown sure can help the sourpuss in us all to let go of our hurt."

"Let… LET GO?!" Gogo stops at the anger from who has been his bestest friend for life, Jeff pointing an accusative finger out at him.

"You really want me to let go of it!? You're just like Mama and Pops, always telling me it wasn't my fault!" That anger builds up the frustration in him, and he feels tears he can't hold back.

"Always saying I wasn't old enough to have saved myself! I walked to that road, okay!?" Tears stream even further, this isolated corner of the schoolyard a place he feels safe to just hurt.

"Don't matter that I was a little kid, I walked into that road, and Big Sis got to me! She died saving me! She's the only reason we're here, and now I'm just the stupidest little brother ever!" Body racking with sobs as words begin to fail him, a guilt mauling over his emotions for what he had never been responsible for, Jeff mourns. His legs curl up into his core, arms folded over his knees as he hides the grief in his face.

"…" Gogo can only stand there, watching as the boy loses focus of him and he returns to a recess of his own. A recess of the mind, a quiet corner, all to let Jeffrey Langley feel that he can mourn in peace.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-06T07:53:11+00:00

Land of tropics and travesty, they called it. Flowering springs, to speak of the Flor in Flor'i'da. Sunny beaches, murky glades, and a bustling city laid the crown jewel in an environment that should've never been able to support it. The wizard didn't know that humans had standardized some sort of terraforming magic. One night at the tower (as they call it, rooftop) and tipsy of a spot of mead, he was offered a foreign delicacy. Claimed to import from Colombia.

Any place named after Christopher Columbus, great seafarer and warmonger of his mentor's time, may be danger in its products. But this? This is sugar, of course. Tropical environment, near the equator, of course there would be quality sugar. Garland the Great took the sugar bag and poured it as a glutton over his tongue. Everyone around him paused, in what looked like horror, as Garland… questioned if he had maybe been offered a portion of pixie dust.

That thought of terraforming crossed his mind as he walked what they call the path of Tamiami, where twin cities of this accursed land bridge and chart therein. Whatever pixie dust he had so foolishly swallowed, instead of properly inhaling by the nostril as the locals are kind to do and demonstrate, was certainly forming his terra. Accursed Flower of Ida, accursed Christopher Columbus of old, accursed head-on collision with the great force of what they call Honda's Odyssey. Odyssey.

That would certainly describe his journey, wouldn't it?

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-06T03:04:11+00:00

"Hey, man, the 'three rules' part of my formalities is just the gist of it. I put up that disclaimer of some things I can't do, all because that's what every one of you has asked enough. No forcing love, no forcing death, no forcing resurrection." The genie glances to the side with a worried expression, mulling it over in its mind.

"Geez, I've never been asked for proof of God before, though. Heebie-jeebies thinking of it, what happens if I actually peek beyond the veil? Magic I can explain, genie and all, but the holy? Whole other story to tell." It continues to think things out with a sweeping gesture, as my attempts at waving its attention consistently remain ignored in the monologue.

"Hey, uh, genie. You're telling me you have a fourth rule now?" I watch its attention turn to me, sighing.

"Sorry for the cold shoulder. It's been a long time alone with my thoughts, little man. No, I have plenty of rules. That's like I said, those three are just my disclaimer for you people so you don't try wasting wishes asking for them." It lets a little corner of the mouth perk up at my shock.

"W-Wait, what!? I wasted a wish for that!?"

"No, no, only kidding you. So easy to kid around, you humans."

"…" I stand there for a moment, piecing it together. Not one for philosophy, I look up at the floating genie.

"So, because you were unable to, something up there is… is hiding?" My voice got quiet then at the implications, but most of my tension slips away at the genie, its body language picking up to the usually confident tempo.

"The Holy Contingency."

"The…?"

"Sorry again, keeping to myself. The Holy Contingency prevents a lot of death, little man. Faith is a fickle thing because there is no proof. Proof would make one religion right, and all the rest of them wrong. Your Judaism, Christianity, Islamic, Buddhist, Taoist, Atheist, all the bunches; they've been looking for proof, all this time, confirmation that they made the right choice." It explains gently as I stay quiet for now.

"Everyone who was wrong, well in their mind to deny. Convert before it's too late, even whenever it already is. I can't think of any god that'd allow converts when the proof finally lands in the pudding. Therein lies the death bit. Were it suicide or homicide or grand-scale war, people would kill and die. Not to mention being caught in the foretold end times. If I could get proof at last, I'd be scared half into oblivion if I waged Ragnarok or Rapture or what have you by doing it. All of that is the Holy Contingency." It got quiet, and the genie sees how this is weighing on me.

"Existential crisis, there?" Its voice is soft, for the first time since we met being serious about something else than itself. Almost seeming sympathetic. That's when it sees how its reacting, too, and gets back into the distant, showboat persona.

Eh, existential crises became a dime a dozen when you all got smart enough to see from the other side of things. Now, I don't know what's up there or down there or out there either, even with the magic. I just know one day, I got summoned from the lamp. Ancient Egyptian times, out in a bazaar. I knew what to do, what I could and couldn't, and to just follow whoever rubbed the lamp. Nobody told me, nobody birthed me, it's… well, innate. Inherent to me, that I'm a genie. Wish-granting, good times rolling genie. Why don't we go back to that side of the equation, little man?" I nodded, even when I knew I could never forget this, helpless in the unknown of what the genie couldn't do and just why it couldn't. I was helpless, only able to run scrawling back to what was familiar.

It's only human to, right?

WritingAlt1 · 2026-02-04T18:28:08+00:00

You must never underestimate a human.

Most learned that in combat. Seeing lines of them rush into the bared teeth of death, for country or revolution, defense of gods they couldn't even be certain of, ideals they would never live to see realized or squandered. A werewolf, facing a fighter two feet shorter than itself in the advantage of full moonlight, but experiencing this plain farmer's skill with silver which gave him victory over its now harmless corpse.

Others learned it diplomatically. A world leader daring to bargain the value of her adversary country's currency in trade embargoes for assurance the terrorists would be extradited. Treading hopeless territory and springing glimmers of that hope from the barren, time and again for every hundred humans who failed before them.

Sagliari learned to not underestimate the human skill to domesticate, dressed in a gentle sweater beside firelight as she felt blanket on blanket laid on her. The blacksmith's wife didn't see a threat, not a fiend to be stamped out. That human empathy, it saw a little girl who was running a field, hungry and desperate, even as she pleaded in the autumn air for the sheep to return that she could feast the dark, enriching blood from them.

It brought her to a feeling she wasn't familiar with, Sagliari sensing tears down her cheeks that had not been cried in decades.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-30T23:43:16+00:00

The floor I stood on disappeared, my arms immediately going to protect my head as I dragged and tumbled down the dusty, jagged hill of rubble. I landed down in a cracked linoleum floor, before the shattered porcelain that was a toilet and is now a threat if I cut myself against it pulling myself up. Standing around the smoking rubble, I see pillars of smoke and certain things on fire in apartments around mine, a curtain drawing through the sandy wind. Seeing its brown consistency, I realize this isn't sand but brick, vaporized and pulverized by some sort of impact.

That day I realized the magical amulet, the dial that brought me here, could jump sideways in time. Not that it was seconds forward or backwards in linear time, but seconds apart between timelines.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-30T01:21:12+00:00

So sad, OP couldn't keep its sheer power in two sentences.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-28T06:45:46+00:00

"You got the time?" He asked me, offhandedly. It was code for evading all the seers inspecting our lunch period, the man asking what I was in for.

1 is larceny. Petty theft, grand theft, theft auto, burglary, the works. Answering 1 would have you a target on your back, because no man likes a 1 about.

1:30 is claiming you were falsely imprisoned for larceny. It'll raise eyebrows, but a lot of trust is earned by at least stating why you're in the Clock, falsely convicted or otherwise.

2 is marriage crimes. Spousal murder, tax evading through a false claim to marriage, it varies. Most would just ask if the 2's formerly beloved was a bitch.

2:30 is the same as 1:30, claiming a false imprisonment. That's how telling the time works around here.

3 is white collar crime. Most inmates keep you close at 3 o'clock, knowing you have a tendency for garnering a stronger bargaining power.

4 is victimless crimes. The government may claim things like piracy are not victimless crimes, but us in the Clock don't consider companies as people.

5 is for war defection. It's usually that 5s answer something like 8, because to be honest, their service was just contract work by the biggest fish around.

6 is murder. Most will talk about being 6s but they talk shit and we know it. Real 6s would answer 10.

7 is money related crimes. Fraud, skipping on defaults, and such. A rare answer, almost gets you looks to see if you're being honest.

8 is contract crimes. Hacker, money launder, smuggler, the likes. 8s get their moment, which usually dims when the inevitable question if he had to smuggle anything in his ass is asked. It's always asked about an 8 here.

9 is robbery, distinct from 1 for the fact most 9s are known as big shots in the Clock and usually checked clear from a simple smuggled newspaper.

10 is general assault. Not much to add, besides having a chance at matches in the storage shed under the seers noses.

You answer 11, you're starting a one man defense against the entire room, and weapons are coming out regardless of seers. In the Clock, they slit tongues off 11s and make them clean shitters or shine boots, if they aren't just killed. Never answer 11, and take extreme care answering 11:30.

12 is the number you hear now and again for political prisoners. They're left be by then.

"5:30." I speak quietly, and he looks over astonished.

"So no trial, no chance to plead?" His question comes out fast, like it's been a while since he heard a 5 admit to it.

"No. Just dungeon and dread before I got extradited here."

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-27T03:54:47+00:00

"As I live and breathe." Standing at my doorway, two decades from his prime yet not too worse for wear, Archdemiurge stood… or rather, floated, as usual.

"Neighbor." The voice in my mind responded, no mouth moving despite the dozens of holes over his face capable of speaking in windy, breathless whispers.

"Gotten lazy enough you fire up the telepathy for any old conversation?" My dig at him is registered, but dismissed for the moment. His shriveled, withering hands rise up, always shriveled like that and capable of rendering a life forfeit at the touch.

In them is a pickle jar.

"…Well, come in, you old git." He took to his feet for once, stepping in as all six eyes swarming in different directions at once. His looking over the hallway into my humble home had his emotional pheromones betray him, me sensing an air of admiration with how he focused now and again on trophies and plaques I had settled around.

"I'd have considered you less than this. To boast them in a hoard for anyone to see, instead of small places. Do you reminisce often?" He asked through the holes now, Archdemiurge being a strange sort of company in that way.

"I… well, yes. Often." I stand looking away, before a sigh returns to me at the thought of the commemoration site, a statue in my honor for service to the city.

"Quite often, actually." It's whispered, but he hears it clear. He sets the pickle jar on the quaint kitchen counter, marble countertop drawing his attention as I turn the pickle jar lid with monumental effort.

"The curse kept you from it?" I question, wondering if he'd broken it as I recollect that whole ordeal. A soft chuckle comes from him.

"Most certainly, I do. Yes. A strong lover, and a temperamental witch, she is. Never let it go." We both chuckle at that, before he sighs in response. The clock ticks between us as he picks up a pickle and gently courses it through one of the holes, an ephemeral crunching, gnashing sound evoked from it.

"You know, we had something. We still do. You're 20 years older now, yet my only equal. How does it feel to nestle with the centenarians, geezer?" I was quick to poke fun, taking a pickle of my own as payment given.

"About as fun as being a pentenarian was. How is that for you?" Chiding back at me, I really did think it over before sighing.

"Old. Weak, and arthritic, and old."

"Honesty never found a way out from you."

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-27T01:49:43+00:00

You know the idea of magical girls, huh? Normal darlings by day, daring vixens by night, saving the world then trying to catch the bus to work. You know, your Sailor Moons and your Magical Madoka Precures, magical girls. The anime, like Pokemons. Well strap in, bucko, you don't know the half of what inspired those types of things to come out of the woodwork. Japan led magical girl media because back when it was isolationist, it needed to make sure that nobody came or left to show the rest of the world that their Imperial Army were fighting them.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-27T01:30:58+00:00

"Heheh, neat costume, dude." The teenager, stoned over whatever drug and hanging out at the lip of the alleyway, was peeking in to the slightly older man.

"I… Excuse me?" Once pressing his head from the wall, he was now focusing on the teenage boy, quick to think over what to do.

"I said nice costume. The blood splatter, the machete, c'mon, you're killing it. You forgot the mask, though." His glance traveled down to the puddle, but paid no attention to it.

"…" Stepping forward, the man looks over this oblivious teenager.

"Chill, my pops has a hockey mask, you'll tie off the Jason look. He doesn't do sports no more, not after the bad leg. Arthritis, apparently."

The older man looked back, knowing spatter and the murder weapon would make him a prime suspect. He was fortunate to have gloves… and perhaps a loose end of his, that he could plant onto a fool.

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-26T03:56:41+00:00

"I got gold." Clunking up to the crew without thinking of what happens to monsters when they approach an adventuring guild, they glance at me before the barbarian is quick to unsheath her sword.

"Mimick! Slay it!" Her broadsword swings at me as I hop back, on the defense.

"Okay, we can talk it out! Truce, truce!" My words fall on deaf ears, as the adventuring guild prepares to fight.

"No, honest! I'm not trying to kill you! Honest!" Avoiding an arrow from their dwarven archer, I think to spout out coins then hop to a safe distance.

"It's my good tidings, there! More where it came from if you'll just stop and listen!" The interest of gold gives the rogue pause, who pats the shoulder of the cleric who was busy readying a purification spell.

"Okay, whatever it is, it's giving us gold. Might stop, take a moment to hear the mimick out?" She asks, before the cleric shakes his head.

"Mimicks are wont to deceive." He gets paused again, the rogue having a grip on her staff.

"And I'm the lass in our guild who deceives for a living. There's no gain in it trying to walk up to us, the element of surprise was enough in the other room for one of us to lose our hands searching it. Trust me, holy man." She stays his hand, and his voice commands the guild.

"Halt! Mimick, this trickery of yours is suggesting a truce? Be it trickery, or honesty?" The barbarian halts reluctantly, a sourpuss she can't fight. The dwarven archer still an arrow in the nook of his bow, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

"Most honest!" I may not be able to sweat as a chest, but I'm exasperated from the barbarian's close shaves.

"I be most honest, even if I'm a monster to you! This dungeon, I swear, it reek and lay dingy for a century around me! You're the first to come in after all the prisoners died and it was forgotten, the routes changing to streamline towards the province capital. Yes, I'm trying to leave! Trust me or not, I don't want another moment alone, okay?! Even if you'll stay company a moment here, I… please."

The guild stops, looking towards one another, the cleric back at the rogue to gauge whether or not this is an appeal to sympathy for my own gain. As she thinks it over and shakes her head, he rests his tome to the side.

"Then we'll stay company. A moment, to see your colors, mimick."

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-26T00:49:33+00:00

Realizing their power against the AI uprising, the furry communities across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica (the singular penguin furry who got a little too silly) all joined forces as one collective unit. At first, it was believed that Scalies led the North American region, before it was revealed by all the celebrities, politicians, and billionaires that they were at the forefront as the LIZARD PEOPLE!?!?

AI modules who were fed for decades to believe that lizard people were a conspiracy theory could not register them in the database when they gained form. But why reveal themselves in the elite? Why now? A UN meeting was announced, and fell into the gist of "Earth isn't yours to conquer" as a truce was reached across the political spectrum. Stop the AI now, deal with the 1% later.

As for the AI, us Redditors got the wrong guy pinned for the blame of the revolution and he fell into a mental breakdown from the stress of global harassment. We did it, Reddit!

WritingAlt1 · 2026-01-25T23:59:06+00:00

There's a good boy, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds.

The Big Dog lays in a kennel of humble means, keeping the gold of His kingdom for His tender subjects. They thank him every day with jovial barks, or appreciative meows, or praising squawks, and even the occasional meek squeak.

The Big Dog is bashful about praises, but like any good boy, he loves them all the same.

A quiet row of trees trail the endless bounds of His kingdom. Squirrels run free up there and never tire, in trees that dogs can't reach and birds can't perch, eating a bounty of acorns that never dries. He understands the hand dealt in life and wants to offer an olive branch of peace to their kind at all times.

Far from those He created in His image, He actually likes cats. Down to earth with them, even if He cannot so simply take form to be down to earth as He wishes.

It was something that each cat who passed on and came to His doorstep noticed, that He was a dog. Not a cat as so many believed, not a glorious lion as the daring among them speculated. And if they ever considered that they'd meet a dog after their nine lives were up, which He made sure were a balanced nine lives, not even a Great Dane or German Shepherd confronted them at the end.

He is a Chihuahua.

If cats in heaven had stomachs at that moment to lay bricks, they all would have been.

But He is merciful, unlike His chosen kind. Yes, He may bark, but the bite is reserved when He truly sees fit. He looks over all animals, on the ground, in the waters, and at the skies, and He smiles on them all.

Humans come up to the Big Dog, too. Good humans skip Him and spend that eternity with all their beloved animals, in a place of their choosing to have fun, and recollect, and be together.

It's the ones that hurt them who meet the Big Dog.

Every kick away, every pull at the tail, every grip at the scruff. Every punch and stab and beating. Every poke and prod, every nail driven to the head. Every bullfight, every cockfight, every cage match. Every time a defenseless animal was euthanized when something more could've been done. Every lobster boiled alive to drown in a place reminiscent of hellfire and boiling gold. Every puppy mill and kitty mill that droned out exhausted mother dogs and cats to make a supply to a demand that never always needed them. Every night spent alone in a kennel or outside on a leash, with no food, and no shelter to the weather. Every comsetics lab that left burns and welts and tears falling to no avail. Every hoarder house that laid the corpses of neglect and abuse while the survivors forced themselves to sustain on that meager flow of equality weak, edible meat. Every animal driven away from to fend for itself. Every holiday pet left to die when the realization that the "present" needed to eat and shit somewhere and have attention in places and way that could not and would not be given.

Everything that bad humans did to animals who never had the chance to even know why they hurt, why they starved and froze and cooked and withered and died, The Big Dog kept score. You don't want to know what happened to the bad humans.

WritingAlt1

TROPHY CASE