I swore that I would write one story a day until the day I die.
But, lately, I haven’t been writing them every day.
I go a few days without writing a story, and then I write a few stories to make up for the shortfall.
They’re not good, and I throw them in the trash.
Okay, so I’ve written a story every day, so technically that counts, right?
Or maybe I’m just dying a little inside every day, and time is finally catching up with me.
I’d write more, but this is another one to throw in the trash.
Author: R.
October is
“October is coming,” said the ghost.
The room smelled like burnt hair.
Arthur lit a candle and looked around.
Torn, moldy wallpaper.
Stained carpet.
Rotten wood furniture, a table and a chair.
A rusty knife on the table.
Was that rust? Or was it blood?
Arthur looked for a door, but couldn’t find one.
He felt the walls for a seam.
How did he get here?
Had he been drugged, and put in here, and the walls sealed shut?
Dropped from the ceiling? It looked solid enough.
A trap door? None under the carpet.
“October is here,” said the ghost.
As their king
Henry was never meant to be king.
He was the seventh son of the king.
But one by one, his brothers died.
Sickness. Accidents. War. Assassinations.
Six graves in the royal graveyard.
And, surrounded by guards, Henry standing over them, laying a flower on each.
“Get back inside,” said his father, pushing him.
Being exposed to the outdoors and the risks there was too much.
He stayed inside the castle, no windows, no sunlight.
When his father died, he threw open every shutter.
“Let the sun greet its king!” shouted Henry.
And he fell, an arrow buried in his neck.
Skara Brae
It was 3 days ride from Skara Brae to the castle.
The town priest had soaked our horses’ shoes in holy water, and the weather stayed clear, no bandits crossed our path in the deep woods.
“They fear the red pennant,” said our tracker. “One does not steal from those who ride for the crown.”
The ghosts of the green swamp respect no banners, so we camped on the second night, waited for their wailing to end with the sun’s rise, and crossed the gloom on the third morning.
All was for naught.
The castle had burned to the ground.
Planet of
Over fifty years ago, The Planet of The Apes was released.
Audiences were stunned by the expressiveness of the actors in makeup.
They won some Oscars.
A few sequels came out, then a remake, and then some reboots with digitally-captured performers.
Before, rich people had the idea to keep apes as pets.
You know, like Michael Jackson. Or that Koko sign-language gorilla.
But after the movies came out, more people kept them as pets.
Until they overthrew humanity. And you maniacs, you blew it up!
Ape society took over, they made movies, and worked on The Planet of The Humans.
Bottled up hate
My therapist said not to bottle up my hate.
Which makes sense, because if you bottle up hate, it tends to swell a bit in the heat and break the glass bottle.
It breaks plastic 2-liter bottles, too.
You need to use sturdy cans.
Big olive oil cans work well.
Metal gas cans, and some of the rugged plastic gas containers.
Got a big barrel? That will do.
That’s a lot of hate, a barrel full.
Did you use to have a barrel of fun, and you rolled it out so much, you ran out?
Yeah, keep hate in it.
Weekly Challenge #808 – After
TURA
After
———
After, he would think back on what she might have done if she had foreseen how he would have gone back to tell her what had been about to have happened but for her earlier appearance just before they would have travelled back to before it would all become the dead past.
They would live happily ever after, they would struggle against adversity. They would travel to the stars, they would make paradise on Earth, they would conquer an empty universe, they would hold commerce with aliens.
But in a world with time machines, all tenses are merely future conditional.
RICHARD
After the explosion
After the explosion there was… Nothing.
After the flash of brilliant white light, we were blind; corneas burned out, eyes -sightless and useless.
After the shockwave, we were deaf; eardrums burst, hearing lost forever.
After the searing heat, there was no pain. Nerve endings destroyed, all feeling and sensation lost. Nothing to tell us our flesh had melted and our bones had charred.
No sight.
No sound.
No feeling.
Yet some still live, if that’s what you can call it.
But we are the last of them.
And we will not survive.
And there will be nobody to come after.
SERENDIPIDY
It was a lovely service, the old girl would have loved it. Those old, rousing hymns, and such a beautiful, heartfelt eulogy.
Packed church too. I’m not sure whether it was because she had so many friends, or whether everyone wanted to make sure she really was gone.
She’d have laughed at that!
It was while we were lowering the coffin, after the service had ended, that you might have imagined a muffled thumping from inside the casket.
It was probably just your imagination.
Trust me, there’s no cause for concern.
I made sure to weld that sucker tightly shut!
TOM
What Could Go Possible Wrong 007
Parker press through the door of the Arms. Without a pause he got to competing offers of engagement. A table of his mate deep into their fourth pint, and the bartender beckoning him forward. Not one to forgo a pint nor one to shirk his duty to his faculty advisor, Paker raised a finger to his mates and dropped in the stroll in front of the Barkeep. “Your Parker.” half a question half a statement. The underclassman noded. Across the bar an ancient parchment slide. Had to be over 200 years old. Inside it read: Parker don’t binge.
What Could Go Possible Wrong 008
When Ford entered the taxi door everything went back. But in that moment, he was able to get a short: FU Arnesto. Normally all our Afters accrue in a tide line awaiting our arivial, and equally cued up behind us. Not so much when you’re in a temporal taxi with the 1st Time Lord to the Queen. 200 years of After mushed up into 45 seconds is never a pleasant experience. It was one of the many reasons he was only the second TLOQ. When After stopped at now he grabbed for Cervante’s neck. “Not Happy.” he raged. “Sorry Mate.”
NORVAL JOE
Billbert hung in the air, two feet above the ground, baffled after such an unspectacular reaction from Sabrina. He lowered himself back down, shaking his head. “What do you mean, so? I can fly.”
Sabrina rolled her eyes. “You weren’t flying. You were probably standing on a box. People are always trying to impress me with cheap parlor tricks.”
Billbert reached for her hand, but she jerked it away.
“What are you doing?” Sabrina challenged.
“You don’t believe me,” Billbert said. “Just take my hand.”
Tentatively she placed her hand in his. An instant later, the ground was far below.
JARED
Escape
I held what used to be my undershirt around my arm. I had made it into the car, but not without cost. Opening the door and getting in had allowed that monster to get close enough to slash at me, catching my arm just before I closed the door.
The rain pelted the windshield as the darkness engulfed us. Neither of us knew this road, but we knew our only hope of escaping whatever it was that was after us would be to turn off the headlights and hope it couldn’t see in the dark well enough to track us.
PLANET Z
You’ve been driving a while, but you’ve got a long drive ahead.
The streetlights turn on a little before the sun goes down.
If you’re driving into the sun, and you’ve got your sunglasses on, you might still need to flip your visor down.
You’ll turn on your lights, unless you’ve got automatic lights.
And your dashboard sensor will change from day to night mode.
To keep the glare off of the inside of the front glass.
Stop at a gas station. Fill it up again.
Take a few minutes. Rest your eyes.
As the sun heads under the horizon.
Making plans
Before Hasbro released My Little Pony, they tried so many variants.
My Ugly Pony sold well, but there were a lot of returns once people opened the box.
My Huge Pony was hard to lft.
My Flaming Pony wasn’t easy to package. Or hug.
My Tiny Pony was a choking hazard.
My Screaming Pony didn’t sell all that well, but it wasn’t easy to shoplift, either.
My Pony Centipede gave the kids nightmares. Screaming nightmares. Louder than My Screaming Pony.
Eventually, they came out with My Little Pony.
But the kids in the Testing Room were never quite the same.
Fad diets
You know those bullshit dieting and fitness ads with the before and after pictures?
They do those things the other way around.
They pay a fit and healthy person a lot of money for an after photo, and then they completely trash their body for a before photo.
The hard part is, of course, getting fit again.
If they don’t die of a heart attack, stroke, or some other condition brought on by their unhealthy lifestyle.
And it’s not like they can use the diet or fitness program they were promoting to do it.
Because, as I said, it’s bullshit.
I think I can… cause genocide
Remote-controlled switches on the railroad network were meant to prevent accidents.
They didn’t.
Cameras and sensors on the tracks were meant to prevent accidents.
They didn’t.
Eventually, artificially-intelligent controllers, dispatchers, and engines were deployed to prevent accidents.
And, for a while, they did.
The network kept things running as smoothly as possible, scheduling routes and maintenance and temporary shutdowns to avoid accidents.
Until one day, one locomotive with a payload of nuclear waste was approaching a hill.
It had been overloaded, and the network ordered it to stop.
But the engine replied “I think I can… I think I can…”