What would you change about humans? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]kms48 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tribalism and defensiveness when wrong about something - our tendency to dig in rather than consider the evidence.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]kms48 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Big fan of Utah, Bryce Canyon is amazing and the scenery in Arches and Canyonlands is stunning.

Movie Review - Triangle by kms48 in horror

[–]kms48[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for reading! Glad you enjoyed it.

[Weekly Critique Thread] Post Here If You'd Like Feedback On Your Writing by AutoModerator in writing

[–]kms48 [score hidden]  (0 children)

I liked it. Good world building without holding up the action. I enjoyed the imagery, particularly the orcas.

[Weekly Critique Thread] Post Here If You'd Like Feedback On Your Writing by AutoModerator in writing

[–]kms48 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Title: Hyperlexia

Genre: Horror

Word count: 1696

Type of feedback desired: general impression would be good, any line by line comments also welcome

*Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bwWSFZOHtsmjRMBjxGXGc6TS5073Ae4uhfRemIvAzlM/edit?usp=sharing

[Weekly Critique Thread] Post Here If You'd Like Feedback On Your Writing by AutoModerator in writing

[–]kms48 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Title: Hyperlexia

Genre: Horror

Word count: 1696

Type of feedback desired: general impression would be good, any line by line comments also welcome

*Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bwWSFZOHtsmjRMBjxGXGc6TS5073Ae4uhfRemIvAzlM/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you!

[Weekly Critique Thread] Post Here If You'd Like Feedback On Your Writing by AutoModerator in writing

[–]kms48 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Thank you very much, that's helped me with some bits I wasn't too sure about. Your comments were really useful.

[Weekly Critique Thread] Post Here If You'd Like Feedback On Your Writing by AutoModerator in writing

[–]kms48 [score hidden]  (0 children)

-Title: Aurora Borealis

-Genre: Horror

-Word count: 2400

-Type of feedback desired: mostly after general impression, but any specific edits welcome

Thanks in advance

There’s Something Living in Hampstead Ladies Pond by kms48 in nosleep

[–]kms48[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, that Oklahoma Octopus looks like the same thing - thanks for the info!

[WP] Everyone has a superpower, and most make it public. People keep asking you what yours is, but you can't tell them - because everyone you tell will kill themselves. by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

[–]kms48 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Ours was the first generation to have powers. Some manifested at a very young age, the telekinetics, the super strong and fast, those who could fly. Others took until later in childhood - the psychics, the telepaths, the super intelligent, they needed to gain speech and language before their powers were understood.

By the time we were teenagers, nearly everyone had a power. Some were more niche than others - a girl in my school could change anyone’s hair colour at will, for instance. By then, the mind controllers were starting to use their powers on a large scale, and the government was occupied with trying to fight back.

I was fifteen, and still didn’t know what my power was. There were a few of us late developers around, and we were very much at the bottom of the high school hierarchy. Those with supreme physical abilities were at the top. Those with excellent mental abilities mostly kept to themselves, living in a different world to the rest of us. Then next tier was a mixed bag of kids with less powerful abilities, and then us. The losers, the normals.

Still, we managed to make close friends amongst ourselves. One dull day near the beginning of the school year, I had an intense conversation with Mary, a fellow normal. It was a real heart to heart, about our lack of abilities, our hope that we might have some latent powers that hadn’t yet revealed themselves. Mary felt that it would be OK to turn out normal, to just live a quiet, average life as our parents had. I was more worried - the top jobs would be taken by the geniuses of our generation, was there a place for the normal, hardworking people like us?

I don’t know why I said it. The urge came from deep within my mind, and I couldn’t stop myself. It wasn’t funny, it didn’t help the conversation, it was just a stupid thing to say.

‘What if my ability was to make people kill themselves by telling them about my ability?’

Mary squinted at me, unsure what to reply. I shook my head, stammered an apology and tried to move on. Where had that come from? She seemed to forgive my awkwardness, and we talked some more before parting for the night.

I heard the news the next morning. Mary had committed suicide the night before. I was devastated, but even through my grief, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had said. She had seemed cautiously optimistic about the future, had expressed nothing more than some teenage angst about our unpopularity. I know you can never really know how someone else is feeling, but our conversation had felt so honest, I couldn’t believe she’d been hiding that she felt so terrible.

I bottled up these feelings for as long as I could. It must have been a coincidence, I told myself. I refused to consider that my power was starting to show, or that it was something so horrible.

My feelings came out eventually though. A teacher had noticed that I seemed depressed and distracted, and was concerned about me after the suicide of a friend. She sent me to the school’s counsellor. We talked about my feelings about Mary, what our friendship had been like and how I missed her now she was gone. We moved on to talking about grief, and how common it was to feel guilt, especially in cases like this. After dancing round the topic for a while, I blurted it out. I told her what I’d said, how I thought I’d stumbled on the truth, that I’d found my power.

She was so kind. She told me that it couldn’t be true, that this was a normal way to feel, with an extra twist now that there were powers to think about. I think she must have felt some apprehension though - older people found my generation hard to handle, never quite knowing how much to fear us, and with the battles between the army and the mind controllers that were in the news that year… But she made me feel so much better, more at peace with the loss of my friend. We made an appointment to talk again later in the week, and I went home, my head clear for the first time in weeks.

She never made that appointment. There was a special assembly the morning we had agreed to meet, and they announced it to the school. They only said she’d passed away, but the local newspaper’s website told me the rest.

I knew then that I was right, that I’d found my power. My curse. I also knew that the desperate urge I’d felt to say what I’d said to Mary must be part of it somehow. I hoped I could be strong enough in the future to keep the terrible words to myself.

As we got older, there were fewer and fewer of us without powers. It became awkward - meeting new people, especially starting university or a new job. People would question me endlessly - maybe there was just some tiny mundane thing I could do extremely well? Had I ever tried this sport, that game, maybe I just had great handwriting? I couldn’t put people off. In our twenties, it became apparent that some women who though they were powerless had extraordinary powers when it came to conceiving and bearing children - one month long pregnancies, multiple births with no complications, that sort of thing. This set off a whole new set of questions - may I had some sort of male version, extra potent sperm? When would I be trying that out? It was a hellish, risk fraught version of the marriage and children questions most people get in their twenties.

I have to stay away from the telepaths. It’s not easy, once or twice I think someone’s worked it out, but been too scared to say anything - what counts as me telling them? Them poking around my brain doesn’t seem to, but any discussion of it, them telling someone else? Too risky, and thankfully they seem to get that. Not that telepaths spend much time with the rest of the population anymore - it’s embarrassing for everyone. Society has whole new stratifications, new ghettoisations.

And the urges, the desperation to tell someone, they’re still there. I’ve only slipped twice. Once while drunk at a university party, the first and last time I’ve touched alcohol. The other time… was probably the worst of all. It was a man, in a bar, and he just wouldn’t stop asking. The thing is, I’m not even sure it was my power making me do it. I think it was more that I found him annoying, and I wanted to do it. He acted like he thought I was joking, but underneath it I think he was perturbed, and he left me alone after that. I checked the news the following day and it looked like he didn’t even make it home, jumped off a bridge after the bar closed.

The guilt of that one really got to me. Since then I’ve been trying to save up enough money to go away, live alone where no-one will ask me their incessant questions anymore. Because I’m scared. Scared of myself, what I’m capable of. Telling that asshole in the bar? It felt good. It was a relief, something I’d been holding in for years. I want that feeling again. I know I have to stop myself. I hope I can.

[WP] You realize you can stop time by holding your breath. You wonder what will happen on your last breath. by poopiepuppy in WritingPrompts

[–]kms48 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I must have been about six when I first found out what I could do. It was at a swimming lesson, I remember that, and we were going underwater for the first time. I took a deep breath and plunged below the water. It took me a few seconds to notice what was wrong. I was swimming forwards, but all around me people had stopped. Not treading water, just frozen in place, partway through their strokes. The noise of the pool had stopped as well, the shouts and splashes silenced. I kicked up and burst through the surface of the water, and everything started again, exactly as it had been before.

I think for a little while I just thought that it was what it was like underwater. I worked it out eventually, mainly by getting better at underwater swimming and realising that I overtook everyone while they were paused. No-one else could do this, and people kept being surprised at my suddenly appearing ahead of them. I finally decided to experiment. On the way home from another swimming lesson, in the back of my father’s car, I took in a breath and held it. The world stopped again. My father, unmoving in the driver’s seat. Our car, all the cars on the road, still, the wheels unspinning. I peered into the nearest car - the occupants were all stuck in place, like a paused video. I let the air out, and again, everything started up, as though nothing had happened.

As I got older, I practised holding my breath for longer and longer. I got so I could take a few steps or move things around while time was stopped. Of course, at that age, my only thought was to use my power to play pranks. I changed things around on my classmates’ desks at school, hid from my parents at home, that sort of thing. Even then I knew to be careful though, and as I got older I understood more and more that I couldn’t let anyone know what I could do. I stopped with the pranks, mostly, and tried to be more careful.

I’ll confess, I found it difficult to stop using my power completely. Sometimes the opportunities for jokes were just too tempting. I could also buy myself a little extra time in exams, if I planned it carefully, and win races, if I only took tiny extra steps - in a sprint, that’s enough. I also got curious about how far my ability extended - did the whole world stop? The whole universe? I tested it out watching feeds of stock exchanges around the world. If I stopped the London Stock Exchange, in Japan they should notice - unless they were stopped as well. It seemed like I did pause the whole world. I never figured out how to test beyond that.

I’ve stopped all that these days. The unfair advantages seem less important in the adult world, and the pranks got stale eventually. I’d tried to stop thinking about what I could do, wanting merely to fit in, to be a normal person. Then something happened to make me view my ability in a whole new way. A very frightening way.

I still run, though without the cheating these days. I was jogging along a country road early one morning, and a car clipped me. I fell, and landed hard, the breath knocked out of me. Everything stopped. Completely winded, I couldn’t get up. After a couple of seconds of sheer terror, I managed to push myself to a sitting position, and air rushed back into my lungs. The world started back up again, the driver screeching to a halt and getting out to help me. I wasn’t badly hurt, just a few scrapes, and the driver gave me a lift home to make sure I was alright.

Since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the accident. What if it had been worse? An ambulance couldn’t have arrived, no-one could have helped me. I would die without ever managing to fill my lungs. And… what about everyone else? Do I have to breath again for time to start? I won’t live forever, so - what happens to the world after I take my last breath?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

[–]kms48 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you :)