15 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “It took her five million years to decide on a sandwich. But when ____ asked her to marry her, she knew the answer was yes. Her friends and family said this was the wrong call. So here’s how the whole mess played out…” [I guess even bi people have their heteronormative moments, because when I first read this prompt, I misread the second “her” in the first clause of the second sentence as “him.” By the time I realized my error, I’d figured out how to turn this into a death scene and it doesn’t really work if I make it two female characters, so I’ll be slightly modifying the prompt.]
It took her five million years to decide on a sandwich. But when Cthulhu asked her to marry her, Idh-yaa knew the answer was yes. Her friends and family said this was the wrong call. So here’s how the whole mess played out…
There were only four people in line when she got to the counter, but the line out the door to the deli was stretching for half a block now. “Okay, so I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the chicken salad or the turkey. The pecans sound pretty good in the chicken salad, but I just noticed you can add on avocado to the turkey and that sounds pretty tasty too. Do you know how many calories are in those two sandwiches? If you get the avocado on the turkey?” Idh-yaa asks you.
“Nope,” you say, pulling yourself briefly out of your glassy-eyed haze. This giant worm and her tentacly boyfriend are taking forever.
“I bet the turkey would be lighter if we go light on the mayo,” she says.
“Babe,” Cthulhu says, “just pick one.”
“Or I could be bad and have the pastrami.”
“Be bad,” Cthulhu says. “Have the pastrami.”
“All right. Sold!” Idh-yaa says.
“Do you want turkey pastrami or beef pastrami?” you ask, and immediately regret saying a word. Cthulhu glares at you.
“Oh gosh, I don’t know. Let me think about that for a little bit.” She closes her eyes and starts clenching the end of her giant worm tail the way someone might absentmindedly clench their fists. “Turkey or beef … turkey or beef … hmm … uh … what kind of mustard comes on that?”
“It comes with French’s,” you say.
“Can I sub in brown mustard?”
You sigh. “Sure.” You turn and yell to Sid in the kitchen, “Sub brown mustard on that pastrami.”
“What pastrami?” Sid yells back.
“They haven’t decided on what kind of pastrami yet so I haven’t put it in.”
From the kitchen: “Oh-kaay.”
“Can I get provolone instead of swiss?” Idh-yaa asks.
“Babe,” Cthulhu says.
“Provolone on that pastrami,” you yell.
“Does that come on rye?” Idh-yaa asks.
“Babe,” Cthulhu says.
“Yup,” you say.
“Does it have a lot of caraway seeds in it? Sometimes I don’t like a lot of caraway seeds,” Idh-yaa says.
“Babe, my lunch hour is almost over and I have to get back to work soon and I have something very important I want to ask you,” Cthulhu says.
“Well, what is it?” Idh-yaa says.
“Not now,” Cthulhu says. “When we get our lunch.”
“Oh, okay.” Idh-yaa says. She turns back to you. “Does it have a lot of caraway seeds in it?”
“I think it has the normal amount of caraway seeds in it.”
“Do you think I could sub in wheat bread instead of the rye?”
You sigh again and turn to yell at Sid. “Wheat bread on that pastrami.” You turn back to Idh-yaa. “Have you figured out if you want turkey or beef pastrami yet?”
“Ooooooh, turkey or beef, turkey or beef, turkey or beef…”
“She’ll have beef pastrami,” Cthulhu nearly erupts.
“Okay,” you say, pushing the button for beef pastrami. “Beef pastrami, brown mustard, provolone, on wheat bread.”
“Yes,” Idh-yaa says. Cthulhu relaxes a tiny bit.
“And what to drink?” you ask.
In a rage, Cthulhu shoves you into his mouth and swallows you in three large gulps.
Sid wraps the pastrami faster than he’s ever wrapped a sandwich in his life and tosses it to the counter. “Free of charge,” he yells. “Help yourself to the soda and chips.”
Before Idh-yaa can dither between the salt and vinegar chips and the sour cream and onion, Cthulhu grabs a bag of every flavor of chip and pours two extra-large Diet Pepsi’s. He and Idh-yaa leave the deli and make a beeline for the closest park.
“Oh my gosh, this is so many chips,” Idh-yaa says when Cthulhu spreads them out on the picnic table.
Cthulhu seems to soften. “I know you have a hard time choosing. Why don’t we start with one of each.” He pinches a bag between two claws on his left hand and two claws on his right hand and rips it open, then delicately removes a single barbecue kettle chip and reaches it toward Idh-yaa’s mouth.
Idh-yaa giggles and opens her mouth like a baby bird. “Mmm. Thank you.” She munches. “So. What did you want to ask me?”
Cthulhu actually looks nervous, something you wouldn’t have thought was possible for a green monster with mouth-tentacles and bat wings. Not that you can see it. You’re in Cthulhu’s stomach.
Cthulhu fishes a large, velvet-covered box out from among the scaly folds of his hide and opens it, revealing a massive ring with a diamond the size of a serving platter. “Idh-yaa,” he asks, “will you marry me?”
Idh-yaa screams in delight. “Yes! Yes, I will! I love you, Cthulhu!” She raises the end of her tail into the air, and Cthulhu’s claws extricate the ring from the box and slide it onto her.
“I love you too, Idh-yaa,” he says. “I want to make you happy.”
“You have,” Idh-yaa says.
They kiss. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so horrifying.
We already know how this story ends. Idh-yaa’s friends and family were right about Cthulhu. He cheated on her. With his sister. He broke her heart, and left her to take care of their four children. A year later, and it still stings when she sees him out with that coiling, betentacled tramp. But then she looks at her kids. Ghatanothoa, who’s gotten so good at playing sports with his varied appendages; Ythogtha, with his beautiful eye; Zoth-Ommog, her little star, with his cone body and starfish arms; and her sweet baby octopus-girl, Cthylla. Was saying yes the wrong call? No, Idh-yaa thinks, as one of Cthylla’s tentacles curls around the end of her tail. Never.
12 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “A scene that takes place in extreme cold”
This year I did a couple of reading challenges. When you read a lot of books, sometimes you’ll find weird connections between them. Like how Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and Whiteout by Greg Rucka both contain fun facts about Antarctica. Whiteout is on my bookshelf, so I can share a few from that book. Fun fact: While temperatures at the McMurdo research station on the Antarctic coast are typically around -5 degrees Celsius, which is warm enough for penguins, seals, insects and fish to survive in, the interior of Antarctica tends to stay at -70 degrees Celsius in the winter. Fun fact: Not even bacteria can survive at -70 degrees Celsius. Fun fact: Antarctica’s Vostok Station once recorded -89.6 degrees Celsius, a world record temperature that’s cold enough to freeze water vapor in your lungs. Fun fact: None of those temperatures are including wind chill, and winds sometimes get up to 320 kilometers an hour there.
I don’t know why you took that job in the Antarctic research station. And I don’t know why you walked out of the station alone on a frigid, blustery November day. But here’s another fun fact: You don’t survive Antarctica.
10 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “You are the Grim Reaper. Write three different opening paragraphs for your autobiography, trying out very different styles.”
You think I’ve got the spare time to write an autobiography, let alone three different versions? As if. Have you seen my to-do list lately? I’ve got to get Mabel Fitzroy right now, and then I have to cram in Julian Ortiz, Andrei Vasiliev and Margaret Chung in the second after that. And then I get a whole two-second break before I have to retrieve Liu Zihan, Ng Kwan and [insert-your-name-here], and then Zawadi Abdi, Seamus O’Hanrahan, Ajay Kapoor and Antonia Sousa. And that’s just the next six seconds. Gotta go. Places to be, people to reap.
08 Nov 2021
(No prompt today; this is just a story I wanted to tell.)
You wanted to look like the girls in the magazines, which was a mistake, because even the girls in the magazines don’t look like the girls in the magazines.
So you went to see a plastic surgeon. “The problem,” he said, “is your skin. No one who’s anyone just has skin anymore. Too prone to blemishes and acne. Too many pores. It just doesn’t have the right feel. SynthSkins are in. SynthSkins are now. A silicone blend that looks like skin, but better. Flawless.”
You went in for the operation and the surgeon carved off your skin and fitted you with a SynthSkin. And you felt gorgeous until you went on Instagram and saw the pictures of all the celebrities who’d gotten cartilagectomies, their perfect synthetic skins stretched tautly over nothing but bone.
You went under the knife again. No cost is too high for beauty.
Then you went out on a first date. It seemed like it was going all right, until the end, when your date told you, “Has anyone ever told you your kidneys look kind of lumpy?”
“What?” you said.
“Maybe not lumpy. Asymmetrical, though. It’s not bad. It’s kind of charming.”
You end your date feeling miserable, and making an appointment with the plastic surgeon to remove all your internal organs.
After the operation, you text your date, but he ghosts you. You flip open a magazine, but you feel terrible. You browse Instagram, and you feel worse. You cry yourself to sleep.
The next morning, you delete Instagram from your phone. You throw the magazines in the recycling. You drive out to the desert. You unzip your SynthSkin, and you lay down in the dirt beside the sagebrush, and let the sun bleach your bones. And for the first time in your existence, you feel beautiful.
05 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “You’ve been stranded on an island for five years now. Describe your typical day.”
Later today, I’ll try to catch a few fish while it’s still cool and the insects are out and the fish are catching their breakfast. Then I’ll check the traps and see if I’ve caught any of those muskrat-looking creatures. I’ll desalinate some water. I’ll dig up some roots. I’ll roast anything I’ve caught or gathered. I’ve got my routines down now. After all, it’s been five years since the plane crash. Four years and eight months since you got that look in your eye, that it’s-you-or-me look, that these-supplies-would-last-much-longer-for-one look. And because of that, there’s one very important part of my routine, the thing I do before I go out to catch fish or check traps or gather roots or tend to the fire. The first thing I do every morning is drink some desalinated water out of your skull.
03 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “You are Luke Skywalker. Write three different opening paragraphs for your autobiography, trying out very different styles.”
The Force has always been strong with me. What’s the Force, you ask? Mass times acceleration, bitches.
It all began when my Uncle Owen sent me out to buy a couple droids to help out on the moisture farm. I was repairing one of the droids, R2-D2, when it began displaying part of a recorded holographic message from a woman I would later find out was my sister. “Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi,” she said, “you’re my only hope.” Contrary to scurrilous rumors, I did not say, “She’s beautiful,” as I could sense the familial ties even then. Those of us who are strong in the Force are sensitive to things like that. I definitely didn’t say that, and I definitely didn’t kiss her, and anyone who says differently is lying. But her message did change my life. I set off with the droids to talk to Old Ben Kenobi, and that sent me down the path to adventure. One day I was drinking blue milk with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and the next I was rescuing princesses, destroying the Death Star, and working my way up to becoming a full-blown Jedi knight.
My story begins in tragedy, in loss, in mourning. Early one morning I left my family’s moisture farm to talk to a nearby hermit, Old Ben Kenobi, about a mysterious message found on a droid we had recently purchased. To this day, I still think back on my last hours with my family and friends before I left. My last glass of blue milk with Aunt Beru. My last conversation with Uncle Owen, when he told me to forget about Old Ben, the Imperial Academy, and the strange message on the droid, before bringing up my father, and then quickly telling me to forget him as well. My last time shooting Womp rats in Beggar’s Canyon with my childhood friend [insert your Star Wars name here], who, unbeknownst to me, had stopped by my aunt and uncle’s house for lunch while I was gone, right before Imperial stormtroopers slaughtered all three of them and set fire to the family farm.
01 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “Start a story with the line ‘My mother broke every plate in the house that day.’”
My mother broke every plate in the house that day. It started when a demon from the Madrina dimension flattened its face against the kitchen window, all teeth and eyeballs and pustules and snarls.
Mom shrieked. “Dear god, what is that thing?” And then she said to me, “Do you recognize it from your studies?”
“Guarja demon, I’m pretty sure,” I said, grateful those had been on the last Demonology 201 pop quiz. I grabbed my copy of Rathbone’s Introduction to Demon Physiology: 4th Edition and flipped to the index, then to page 327. “Yep, Guarja. From the Madrina dimension. They travel in enormous packs.”
“So I see,” my mom said, as hundreds of eyes stared at her through the kitchen window.
“They ooze an incredibly acidic secretion from their pustules that can easily cut through metal,” I continued reading aloud.
“Oh dear,” my mother said, listening to the sizzle of our steel door. “What do we do?”
“We’re in luck,” I said, stabbing my finger at a paragraph midway down the page. “They can be easily warded off with broken crockery. We just need to make a large enough perimeter to protect ourselves.”
Mom handed me a stack of large bowls and got to work smashing the dinner plates. We swept most of the broken pieces into a large enough circle that the Guarja demons couldn’t get close enough to us to spit acid on us. We kept a pile of crockery chips in the center and chucked them at the demons until they howled in pain and eventually abandoned us.
As I duct-taped cardboard over the hole in our door and my mother swept up the broken dishes, I asked aloud, “I wonder who opened the rift between their dimension and ours.”
Turns out it was you, and they tore and oozed you apart. And that’s what you get for opening an interdimensional rift before you’d even finished Demonology 201.