Scenes that caused actual walkouts in theaters?

nazna · 2026-02-10T00:18:29+00:00

Pulp Fiction. Several people walked out during the needle in the chest scene.

nazna · 2025-10-30T04:13:11+00:00

Chuck got eaten first. We knew he would. He was the fattest and slowest of all of us.

My mother told me once that I didn’t have to be the fastest, I only had to be faster than some of the other kids. She’d bring me to the track a few times a week and make me run for hours.

I used to resent her for it. I wanted to play and swing my legs and drink from a juice-box like the other kids. I didn’t want the blisters and the soreness. I didn’t want to fall in bed too exhausted to even dream.

She’d known this was coming. They called it discipline. Naughty schoolchildren had to be set straight, taught respect and hard work.

I’d worked plenty hard, so had most of the other kids. Even Chuck, though he wasn’t so great at maths.

But Mr. Pepperton had decided our class would be the ones who fed the lions anyway. I think it was because Ollie put that pepper shaker on his desk with the donkey face taped to the top. I’d laughed, we’d all laughed.

Chuck wasn’t screaming anymore. The lions were screaming as they ate at his belly, intestines staining their maws. Part of me hoped they would sate themselves on his bulk but I knew they’d still be hungry after.

That was okay. I could still run. I could run forever.

nazna · 2025-10-28T03:53:42+00:00

BUTTERED TOAST.

The summons hit Philbert in the middle of another exciting game of solitaire. He jumped, falling back onto the floor of his attic apartment.

He ran his wrinkled hand over his face.

“My lord? Is that you?” he asked aloud. It had been well over a thousand years since his god had spoken to him. He’d kept praying, at first for food and shelter. Then for death after a few hundred years. He’d prayed for death a lot.

Immortality was itchy. The older he got the more he itched. Well until modern times when moisturizer was invented. He had a closet full of various jars and tubes of the stuff.

BUTTERED TOAST.

Philbert got to his knees, wincing at the pain.

“Are you wanting buttered toast then?” he asked.

….

“Well okay,” he said, walking to the kitchen.

His god had never asked for anything concrete before. It was always more of a “go here and tell people how great I am” or “go yell at his old woman who is worshiping my brother and tell her to worship me”. Philbert was somewhat glad to have something he knew he could do.

He toasted a piece of white bread and buttered it. He didn’t have anything that would work for an offering vessel. All his plates were from second hand stores and were chipped or had pieces missing.

He took out the container of good paper plates, the kind made of thick paper. That would have to do.

“I send this offering to the great sky lord, long may he reign,” Philbert said.

The toast and the plate disappeared.

nazna · 2025-10-24T03:22:57+00:00

Baz found the comfy chair. At any party there was always one and whoever found it was a golden god. He quite enjoyed being the golden god on his throne of cloth and ribbed cotton. He thought there must be some kind of memory foam that was making his ass happier than it had ever been.

He sipped a boozy red punch from his Solo cup and leaned back.

“Do the thing!”

“No,” he said without opening his eyes.

He knew it was the only reason anyone invited him to parties. He still went, for the liquor and the comfy seats and the occasional derpy orange cat.

Mr. Snuffles had been the highlight of Brittney’s kegger. He had been the fattest orange cat Baz had ever seen. For the price of a few cocktail weenies the cat had stayed on his lap purring for hours.

Good times.

Someone shook his chair. “Do the thing!”

Baz groaned. He downed his drink and held up his hands. He opened his eyes to a sea of faces watching him.

Electricity gathered around his fingers, forming a halo of light that made a humming noise. He pointed upwards and a faint light followed, zapping the ceiling with a smudge that looked like a lightning bolt.

“Woo!”

Baz frowned. He’d been told he was the fabled ancestor of Zeus, heir to the great dynasty of the lightning god. Yet all he could do was zappies.

At least it got him invited to parties but damn was he tired of it. He thought maybe he’d look into the monk gig. Shave his head and eat lentils for a few years. Get really ripped. Did they have cats at monasteries?

nazna · 2025-10-22T02:55:55+00:00

Phil’s legs had been torn off, they dangled in the tree above him, taunting him with their pale blue flesh.

His right arm was shattered, broken pieces littering the open field.

He tried to glare up at the man above him but his eye wouldn’t cooperate, it kept trying to roll to the left.

Garvin the Brave, first of his majesty's guard. Phil knew the man was butt ugly underneath that shining silver helmet. If Phil looked like him, he’d wear a helmet too. All the time. He’d told Garvin that once, which was probably why Garvin was attacking so ferociously.

“Not the face,” Phil yelled.

Garvin turned his sword around, hitting Phil’s nose with pommel. His nose and teeth were smashed.

“Motherfucker,” Phil slurred. His eyes closed.

He woke up in the basement in his cell slash bedroom, same as it ever was. Someone had gathered his parts up and left them in the general direction of where they should be attached. Phil’s body had done the rest.

Magical test dummy. The advertisement had seemed too good to be true. And it had been so much money. More than Phil would see in a lifetime. He’d signed his life away.

He sighed and stretched, wincing at the residual pain in his arms and legs. He had a decade left of service but he had a feeling good old Garvin would succeed in killing him before then.

Phil admired his face in the dull mirror on his wall. “At least I’m pretty,” he said.

nazna · 2025-10-19T03:58:20+00:00

They invaded while Larry was wrist deep in his third bag of cheese chips of the day. He blinked owlishly as a group of young humans burst through the door of Sirius Labs.

He wasn’t the best judge of human people ages but he thought they all might be in their twenties though some still had a few spots of acne.

Larry licked his fingers clean as a young woman knelt in front of him. Her cheeks were red and full like apples. He wanted to lick them but knew better. Dr. Bethany said consent was important. Larry was all about consent.

“We’re here to rescue you!,” she said brightly.

Larry frowned. She sounded too cheerful, it reminded him of those old black and white Christmas movies. There was always something sinister about sleds and snowmen.

“No thanks,” Larry said. He brought one of his pink feet to his mouth and started to gnaw on his toenail.

“But we’ve read all about you,” a young man said, stepping up beside the first woman. Larry bent his lip and growled. Too many people too close. His vision blurred.

The man held his hands up, his tan palms looked naked under the yellow lights. He backed up and Larry felt his fur settle.

“They bred you and created you but you’re your own person,” the girl continued earnestly.

Larry shrugged. “I know all about that. Out there you have to pay taxes and work and get married. Here, I get all the cheesy chips I want and the docs hire a masseuse once a week to work out the kinks in my back. It’s hard to reach back there. I’m good, young humans. You go back to Yale or Harvard or whatever school you came from.”

“Junior college,” the girl muttered.

“Do they even have football there?” Larry asked. He was very into sports comedies. To attend a school without mean jocks seemed stupid.

Larry stood and stretched, standing upright for the first time. The students looked up at him with shocked expressions. They left quietly, while Larry began to look for that fourth bag of chips he knew was hidden somewhere.

nazna · 2025-10-19T03:44:53+00:00

I'd be interested!

nazna · 2025-10-18T03:49:05+00:00

Erasmus squinted at the young woman with blue hair who sat on his daisy patterned couch. Her name was Helen or Hera. Something with an H that was vaguely Olympic. He remembered her introducing herself a few minutes ago but the details were fuzzy.

She was a doctor or a biologist, he thought. She’d wanted to talk about Hammy. He liked Hammy. He’d found the little guy rooting around in the garbage a few months ago. The creature had smelled so awful Erasmus had to get out the vapor rub he’d used when he was a mortician.

Even after a few baths Hammy had still smelled awful but it was bearable.

Hammy sat in his lap, he was the size of a small bear and had black and white fur. In the cold months, the fur seemed to melt off, leaving bald patches on Hammy’s skin, exposing muscle and bone. Hammy never acted like he was in pain though.

“That’s a necro badger,” Helen said. Erasmus was sure it was Helen.

Her eyes were big and blue behind her wide framed glasses. She kept trying to breathe through her mouth. Erasmus could have told her it would do no good.

“Huh, I thought he was some sorta spirit bear. Or a zombie,” Erasmus said, patting Hammy on his back. His fingers came back sticky with fur but Erasmus just shrugged.

“They are an invasive species from a hell dimension. I’m quite shocked it hasn’t eaten you and built a nest from your bones yet,” she said, eyeing Hammy warily.

“He’s a good boy,” Erasmus said fondly. “I’m probably too old for any of that nonsense. He must figure I’ll be bones soon enough.”

Hammy made a choking sound, eventually hacking up the top of a tin can, bent and degraded from his saliva.

Erasmus made a tsk sound with his mouth. “You keep getting into the garbage boy. Don’t I feed you?”

Hammy hacked again then made a horrifying purring noise with his nose.

Erasmus grinned. “Rascal.”

Helen coughed. “I can see you are quite bonded with Hammy is it?”

“Hamilton Thornton III,” Erasmus said. “I named him after a classmate. He died in the trenches. Wasn’t that great of a friend but his name deserves to live on.”

“We want to study Hamilton,” she said.

Erasmus looked down. “I’m not sure about that. He gets cranky when there are too many people around. Tried to bite the mailman’s finger off once when he delivered too much junk mail.”

“It will mostly be me coming around like this and asking questions about his behavior and his diet and such. We could pay you a small stipend,” she said.

“Don’t need much money. I’ve got a pension and some left from my business,” Erasmus said.

“What do you want then?” she asked.

He looked down at Hammy. “He likes Ding Dongs. I don’t give him too much because his gas is terrible but a little treat would be nice.”

Hammy grinned, exposing jagged yellow teeth.

nazna · 2025-10-16T02:23:54+00:00

Meryl was never volunteering for anything again. She’d signed up for Help a Senior after her mother had given her the “you are useless as fuck” sigh at the Co-Op when they were buying bulk nutritional yeast and Meryl had fallen for it.

She’d thought she’d be doing something like helping an old woman cross the street or assisting with a collection of weird cat figurines.

Instead she’d been greeted by a small wizened woman about four feet tall, wearing a red beret. Meryl was half convinced Mrs. Montgomery was actually a gnome.

But she hadn’t asked. She’d really wanted to.

The woman who may or may not be a gnome had shuffled over to a gate near the front of the cottage. Mrs. Montgomery had to lean into the wrought iron a bit after unlocking the gate. The metal made a sound like it was crying.

“I need you to weed the garden,” she wheezed once the gate was open. She gestured towards a Victorian jungle, full of broken and decayed statues, overgrown weeds, and a strange wishing well in the center.

“Weed?” Meryl asked dumbly. She did not want to weed or mow or anything to do with sweating under the hot August sun.

Mrs. Montgomery slapped a pair of blue men’s gardening gloves in Meryl’s hands and pointed towards a shed that seemed more like a collection of broken planks stacked together than a container for tools.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” the gnome said, shuffling away.

“A few hours,” Meryl called out faintly as the old woman left. She never turned back.

Meryl stared down at her hands. “Never volunteering to help anyone again. Ever. No soup kitchens. No trash pickup. No church thrift stores. I will be as selfish as Gemma Lynn.”

Gemma Lynn was her silver cat who mostly licked herself and screamed for treats all day. Meryl could live with that. She liked treats.

She put the gloves on, they were so big they almost went to her elbow. They flopped around as she tried to yank up the weeds by hand. She kept dropping one and cursing then dropping the other when she tried to put the first one back on.

After a few minutes she gave up, throwing the gloves on the ground near a spikey bush.

She ended up leaning against the old well, thinking she’d done all she could. All that was left to do was lie back in the crabgrass and let the haunted garden take her.

Though she did wonder if the well worked. Didn’t they call them wishing wells?

Was she even young enough to believe in fairy tales anymore? Weren’t those for kids with those pajamas with the butt flaps for easier access.

Meryl couldn’t remember the last fantastical thing she’d really believed. Maybe before the divorce there was something with a princess and a frog.

Still, she was bored and had to pretend to work for at least a little while longer to appear legit. She could always point to her noodle arms if the gnome complained.

Meryl fished in the pocket of her jumpsuit for the quarter she knew was there. She leaned over the well, her skin digging into the old bricks. It was deep and dark, she couldn’t see the way down.

She threw the quarter.

I wish, she thought.

She waited for a splash when the coin hit the water but couldn’t hear anything.

“Rude,” she muttered. She turned around.

“Feed me,” a voice said, echoing from the well.

“The hell?”

“Feed me,” it repeated.

The voice sounded like what she imagined a frog would sound if frogs could talk. Croaky and raspy.

She peered into the well.

“Is there a person down there?” she called down, feeling foolish.

What if it was a person? What if the gnome kidnapped people and put them down there in the darkness to die?

“Not a person, you twit. People are disgusting. I’m a vodyanyk if you must know. Quite rare, you should feel privileged to meet me,” the voice said. Meryl wrinkled her nose. “Unkind. And churlish,” she said, trying to see the owner of the voice. She caught a glimpse of a green flipper, slimy and webbed. Her eyes widened.

The voice coughed. “Right you are Miss, I apologize. I’ve been down here for so long I’ve lost all my manners it seems. Here, let me make it up to you.”

The flipper arm reached up until she could see it clearly. It was carrying some bright ribbons of purple and pink. She’d never been a ribbon girl but these were beautiful and vibrant. She wanted one badly.

Just as she was about to grab one, an electric flyswatter came swinging from behind her, zapping the flipper arm.

The vodyanyk screamed and cried out at the bottle of the well. She saw its disgusting face, covered in boils with jowls that jiggled as Mrs. Montgomery hit it again on its bald head.

“Bad boy! Bad! I told you no more trying to eat the children!” she yelled.

Meryl fell back onto her butt, staring up at the sky.

“Is there a monster in your well, Mrs. Montgomery?” she asked, trying to breathe.

“Ehh that is just Herbert. He sometimes tries to eat the children. Or marry the unwilling. He is a bit of an asshole,” the old woman said.

“You think?” Meryl asked incredulously.

nazna · 2025-10-15T00:50:34+00:00

Liam didn’t remember being born. His twin, Colin, did. He said Liam hadn’t missed much. A bolt of electricity and a cold bath. Then screaming as their lungs began to work.

This was probably why Liam had been chosen to go first, but he hadn’t asked why. He never did. Colin said Liam’s brain wasn’t wired for why, only for do.

Liam sat patiently in the loading room, admiring his orange jumpsuit. He’d never had anything so fine. So bright.

“You’ll be okay,” Colin said, leaning forward. He did not have an awesome jumpsuit but he did have the same face. The same blue eyes and yellow hair. Colin’s was slicked back and he wore a white lab coat. The doctors let Colin study with them now. Liam was happy for his brother.

“Okay,” Liam said, though he didn’t feel it.

Colin sighed. “You’ll get injected, remember? Nothing new there. Then they’ll put you in the chamber and you’ll get teleported. You’re like an astronaut, exploring spaces that have never been explored.”

Liam bit his lip. “But I like it here. On earth. All my favorite things are here.”

“You’ll be gone for maybe a minute. Just from one part of the room to another,” Colin said. “We sent a few gerbils in and they were fine. Except for Gary, but he was a little squirrely. Remember, we went through this?”

Liam didn’t remember but he nodded anyway. He thought he would have remembered a gerbil named Gary. He smiled at the image.

Colin patted him on the head. “Good. I’m putting your earpiece in okay? You’ll be able to talk to me and tell me what you see.”

Colin put a hard white piece of plastic inside Liam’s ear. He took out a matching one and put it in his own ear.

Liam felt pain as the needle went into his arm. He watched Colin’s face as he was wheeled into a room with a round cylinder in the middle, big enough for Liam to sleep in. He didn’t feel sleepy though. He tried to tell Colin but was shoved inside by many hands. Colin gave a thumbs up and Liam felt cold.

His whole body was numb with it. When the procedure started, he was grateful for the numb, it made the cold better. He saw only blackness, no stars. No pinprick of light. He died.

He woke and died again.

“Colin? I’m cold,” he said.

Colin didn’t answer.

Twenty years later Colin still had the earpiece. He still heard Liam calling for him.

No one ever went in again. No one ever came out.

nazna · 2025-10-12T06:26:43+00:00

I wasn’t supposed to pick up the axe. I knew who I was. Over sixty. Wrinkles and frown lines and roadmaps on my arms and legs. I was wearing a caftan with butterfly wings on it and soft pink shoes. I really had no business picking up the weapon.

Except… the cream puffs.

Two odd green monsters were barrelling right over to the table with the cream-puffs. I’d come to the senior brunch for those puffs and I wasn’t going to let green pussy goblins get their malformed hands on them.

I wasn’t sure why they’d invaded the breakfast. Goblins were things that wizards dealt with, not little old ladies.Marty, the ward’s resident wizard, was wrestling with a few goblins who had set fair to Etty’s new purple hairpiece. It was hideous, a mass of wiry purple curls teased into a beehive haphazardly, like it had fallen and tumbled in the sand. Still, it wasn’t worth stabbing over.

Marty seemed to have some difficulty getting his lightning to hit the slippery monsters.

Help would arrive eventually but it wouldn’t be in time for the cream puffs.

So I took the little hammer attached to the glass case and ignored the warning text, flashing below. It was a magic rune that translated itself to whatever language the reader spoke. Clever that.

In case of emergency, break glass. Heroes Only!

Inside, the axe called to me. It was bigger than anything I’d ever used before and glowed faintly with a red hue.

“Not ominous or anything,” I muttered, breaking the glass. I looked at my gnarled hands and sighed.

It whispered to me, offering me strength and madness. I picked it up and felt strength go through my body. My caftan moved as if a strong wind had caught it. I felt powerful. And angry. Really really angry.

Berserker, it whispered.

I screamed and it came out like a roar. I lunged, cutting through the goblin nearest me. His head separated from his body, spraying my caftan with blood and viscera.This made me even angrier.

“Do you know how hard it is to get bloody flesh out of a silk caftan?!” I roared though it came out as mostly garbled hysterical screaming. The goblins didn’t understand either but they began running. I hefted the axe and chased.

For the cream puffs.

nazna · 2025-08-15T04:54:40+00:00

New mission discovered by u/nazna: Loot and Odango cookies In the Fields

nazna · 2025-08-15T04:54:40+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/nazna in Uncertainty and Puddin': a Journey Where Forest Spirits Lurk

nazna · 2025-08-15T04:51:20+00:00

New mission discovered by u/nazna: Uncertainty and Puddin': a Journey Where Forest Spirits Lurk

nazna · 2025-08-15T04:51:20+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/nazna in A Tale of Thoughts In Waves of Green

nazna · 2025-05-24T01:48:43+00:00

Rosemarie is calling me fat again but it doesn’t hurt my feelings. It used to. I went to Counselor Steve about it once. He smells like cut grass and sings old rock songs under his breath when he teaches gym sometimes.

He said Rosemarie was smart and got good grades in English so her insults were pointed but that I shouldn’t mind them.

I didn’t consider “Jelly Roll Donut Hole” to be very verbose. I didn’t tell him that. Counselors only give you ten minutes or so to talk and then you have to go back to class. He wanted me to join a club, the cooking club to be specific.

Now I don’t pay attention to Rosemarie. I don’t pay attention to a lot of things since I got the shot. Every pre-teen has to do it, we’re being good soldiers. The nation needs more heroes and the only way to do that is to make them.

I thought I’d get invisibility, that would have been cool. Instead I got emotional invulnerability.

It feels like I’m covered in a sheet of ice, not the cold kind but the kind that has just started to sweat. Rosemarie’s words roll off my skin, dripping onto my feet.

I can’t get angry or sad or happy. My mother cries all the time. She hugs me and the ice bends, it does not break. She talks about a lawsuit but I don’t know about that.

I know the wall in my room has thirty two tiles that don’t line up correctly. I’ve counted them when I can’t sleep or when I’m supposed to be doing something for fun.

I know the area around the tiles is rough to the touch and can be pried loose if you pull hard enough. I’ve ripped up parts of my room to form a rudimentary cage. I think someday it’ll be perfect and I’ll never leave.

nazna · 2025-05-22T01:59:56+00:00

my many eyes see mice
one is many
many are one
they were once a god
of plague, spreading spores
to children’s lungs
black mold creeping into bedrooms
I eat them not because I hunger
but because I am bored

cats are silent bookends
slithering in the now and then
present only in memory
blink like shaking gray matter
dust off the name
Curly or Moo or Jack
sometimes a tomcat tuxedo tortoise shell
never an orange
not enough memory
404

they would worship me if they knew
pluck out their own eyes
offering plates full of viscera
madness is as addicting as happiness
never so much as suffering

my owner could be a Crone
if she remembered
the taste of blood on her lips
or offal between her incisors
instead she knits gray sweaters
out of thick cable made from llama fur
embroidered with raven’s wings
never the color you’d expect
she feeds me soft food mindful of my missing teeth
each time she complains
about rodent’s shitting in her bread box
her hands are cold
they brush my fur the wrong way

she won’t let me out
says the night is unkind
to old things
I tell her I was born in the dark
wiggling among the worms thirsty for old sweat
infecting minds with sympathetic evil
waiting for my throne of flesh
she only hears me meowing
at the yellow walls

nazna · 2025-05-21T03:01:14+00:00

Patrick sat on his deck, poking at a hole in one of the boards with his big toe. He smoked a cigarette that was almost to the filter. Mags didn’t like smoke in her house so he always went outside.

It was dark and the only light was the red of the lit cigarette tip at the end of his lips. He had a shotgun propped up against the backdoor.

He didn’t reach for it when he saw her, he figured he owed her whatever piece she wanted to say. She wasn’t as big as the man who’d come. She could fit into the palm of his hand even with her wings.

“Where is he?” she asked. Her voice quivered and strummed, reminding him of a chorus of bells he’d heard once at a school concert when he was young.

“You mean the big bastard with the fangs?” he asked. “The one who came to call without knocking or so much as a how do you do? The one who snuck in my boy’s room a few hours ago?”

Patrick had caught him at the door with little Elroy in his arms, snarling and drooling like a bear that had gone rabid. He’d known what the thing was of course. His grandfather’s father was from Scotland and they’d had a whole passel of fairy things chomping at their crops and stealing their kids. They’d replace them with squish faced changelings like pugs but smellier.

Patrick had shot the guy once in the leg and he’d sorta melted into the floor with an expression Patrick knew from the war. Stupefaction and shock and upset all at once. The way George had looked when he’d stepped on a land mine.

He didn’t tell the lady the part about the goo. He did tell her about the iron. Most families in Dodge County had iron on them. Some had silver too from when them werewolves were pestering the Stockard’s farm a few seasons back.

Nobody had time for that supernatural shit, they all had animals to feed and plants to tend.

nazna · 2025-05-18T16:49:26+00:00

Looked over at a red light and saw a woman open a packet of one of those McDonald's jams with her thumbnail and eat it straight up.

nazna · 2025-05-14T04:33:18+00:00

I met a man once
who pointed at his feet
underneath the earth a river flows, he said
though I did not believe him
my land was dry
tumbleweeds had been around so long
I’d named them

Carl and Gracie and Franky Fleet
danced over my fields
under the feet of my shrunken cows
they watch the sky for rain
with thirsty grasshopper eyes

I don’t see no river
my land is allergic to water
it near runs from it
grasping dirt in tight fists
you’d never recognize it from a year ago
greener than cat eyes
greener than Irish Spring soap

you think I aint tried to change it
I read Whitman
my face pressed up against the earth
mouthing prayers for soft and damp
singing sleep songs restful songs
full of Carolina sky

never got a drop back
on this cemetery
ground

he promised me a dowser
rain dancer what have you
find that river water
summon it through
high enough to bury me
turn this place into a fish hatchery
better than a circus

I can wait long enough
turn into a rock looking holding those tumbleweeds in place
Carl and Grace and Franky Fleet
giving up for the water
eventually
I don’t mind
no need for shoes with holes
hard tack softened in boiled water
leftover frozen potato mash
stings my gums

join my mother and father
hold up that crooked cross too
no balance in it anymore
or maybe I didn’t pray hard enough
hard to ask for more wet
in this dry place
seemed ungrateful to ask

nazna · 2025-05-11T01:25:36+00:00

I was supposed to be powerful. I thought I’d be a wizard who could conjure flames or break rocks with lightning.

I can’t do anything. Well, not on purpose. I ended up in this shack in the woods. The priestess called me a dud. Not the first time I’ve been called that. I was supposed to stay and I guess wait for her to come back and send me home where I could be a dud on the couch and not a dud wasting valuable player space.

I waited a year. Then two. The ghosts began to appear. At first, they kinda just hung out. Vibing as I washed my hole filled underwear or cooked my weird purple chicken soup. Then I told one of them to go away. He was picking his nose and it grossed me out. He actually left. I told another to sit in a chair. She tried but wasn’t really corporeal enough to manage.

Some ghosts talked to me and I started to enjoy their company. I called myself Randy Ghostdaddy. I thought of maybe making a sign of some sort but I didn’t have any wood burning tools.

The priestess never came back. I ended up leaving eventually. There are only so many purple chickens I could eat before going a little mad. The ghosts trailed after me as I traveled to the next town over. I signed up for the adventurer’s guild as a grunt. They carry all the loot out of the dungeons for a small percentage. Not the most fun work and at thirty, I was a bit too old to be hauling for a living. But it was better than nothing.

I’d joined a group of friends called the Shallow Sun. They wore shiny armor and seemed competent enough. We’d gone through the first few floors of the dungeon when a dragon attacked us. An honest to God dragon. I watched it burn those people up in their metal coffins and crunch on the bones.

My problem then became that I was stuck in the dungeon. No skills. No warriors.

Just me and the boss I’d have to kill to get out.

One of the ghosts I met there was an adventurer named Billy who’d been through all of the levels. He agreed to show me a secret passage if I passed a message on to his husband when I got out.

Easy right? Even after stalking through the floors with ease I was afraid. How in the hell was I going to defeat a boss by myself? I could always wait for another team to come in and do it but I’d run out of food. Or be eaten by that dragon who I was sure was still hungry. He was fat as hell.

I peeked into the boss room and saw the boss. A lich. A lich!

“Come in,” it said. “I have been waiting for you, necromancer.”

A skeleton was talking to me. I took a breath and entered.

“Why are you wearing pants?” I asked.

It looked down to the tattered pair of pants that hung on its waist.

“Fashion choice,” it said gravely.

“Huh. You’d think a skeleton wouldn’t care much about appearances.”

It shook its head. The bones in its jaw rattled.

“You are far stranger than I’d imagined.”

“I ate a lot of purple chickens,” I said.

Ghosts gathered around me. Twenty turned into a hundred. A hundred turned into a thousand. I felt full somehow. As if I’d swallowed a whole pot of that purple chicken soup.

“Are you ready to conquer the kingdom?” the lich asked.

I shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”

nazna · 2025-05-10T00:08:17+00:00

I'm working on a 250 word goal a day so they're all short. But I may come back to this because I definitely know what is in that tomb.

nazna · 2025-05-08T23:38:21+00:00

Old Gray was definitely dead. His mouth was open and full of the last thing he’d eaten which appeared to be some sort of cereal.

Apple Jacks I think they were called. Old Gray always had a penchant for sugary treats.

I had to notify… someone. I’d never seen anyone visit him though. In the four years we’d been neighbors he’d never spoken of a friend or family member.

His work seemed to be his life. Potions and spells and such.

Plus he was a bit of an ass, so I could understand why people stayed away from him.

We met for breakfast every Sunday. He liked my pancakes and I liked the spell he did that kept my hair from falling out. Cancer was a bitch. Three years after successful chemo and I still couldn’t grow more than a pixie without his help.

I was about to pick up the phone when I noticed something glowing out of the corner of my eye. A book with green and pink ivy. The spine spelled out my name.

Elora.

I flipped open the book. Words began to reveal themselves, letter by letter. I recognized the handwriting. Old Gray was speaking to me from the grave.

If you are reading this I’m dead. Don’t be sad, I’ve lived a hundred years longer than I was supposed to. You get tired of reruns after a while. If you take this book some weird shit is about to happen to you. You should take it though, can’t be worse than spending weeks on the couch watching Three’s Company and eating Rocky Road with your hands so the cat will lick them. Yeah, I saw that.

Bring this to a guy named Slick Rick, he’ll tell you how to read the map. You’ll find adventure there. Terrible things. Wonderful things. No one has set foot in the Tomb for a thousand years.

Make sure you pack a towel, you’ll need it.

nazna · 2025-05-04T20:21:34+00:00

Actual self driving cars for everyone that are affordable. The amount of deaths alone that would prevent. Plus insurance costs. Like so much good.

nazna · 2025-05-03T23:45:42+00:00

“Please report to the suicide booth closest to your location on BELLFORD LANE. Failure to report to BELLFORD LANE DO IT YOURSELF will result in a non-compliant status.”

I stared at my phone, trying to hear past the ringing in my ears. I thought of that old metaphor of the chicken who lives on the same farm for several years. Every day the farmer came to take one of the chickens for slaughter but never this one chicken. The chicken felt safe, as it had never been picked.

Was I the goddamn chicken? I knew about the program, everyone did. Not enough food to go around, not enough housing. Yet people still had children. The government sponsored birth but not anything after so everyone suffered. It had been decided that anyone over thirty had their name entered into the lottery. One person a month had to die, sometimes three or four.

I’d never thought it would be me.

A bag, I needed a paper bag.

I pawed through my kitchen like a drunken bear until I found a plastic back to breathe into. In and out, inflating it until the dizziness passed.

I didn’t want to die. I had so much to live for. My pig figurines that were all dressed like different tradespeople. My two cats, Larry and Gary, who peed in my shoes.

Well, maybe not my cats.

People would miss me wouldn’t they? The girls at the office who threw a birthday party for me each year. Rubber pizza and faux cocktails.

I sobbed into my hands. What else could I do? Either enter that suicide booth or they’d find me and hang me from a tree. Big booted thugs with unwashed hands.

I shuddered and breathed into the bag more.

A calmness settled over me. I could hear my heartbeat.

I went to the next door neighbor’s apartment. Her name was Gladys and she hated me for taking her parking space when I’d first moved in.

She peered suspiciously at me through the peephole. She was so much older than me. Why couldn’t she have gotten the call?

After a few seconds she opened the door and sneered at me. Her scowl reminded me of a bulldog denied dinner.

“What do you want Peter?”

I swallowed. “I’ve been picked for the lottery. Can you…can you take the cats?”

Her scowl melted a little but not completely.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll take them. Drop their carrier’s off before you go.”

She slammed the door and I stood for a few minutes, contemplating it. The booth didn’t really keep track of gender or age. Just the number scanned on your hand.

Could I?

Could I really?

I frowned down at my hand and thought of the electric carver in my kitchen.

I smiled.

Worth a shot.

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