Heat

Today’s prompt: “A scene that takes place in extreme heat”

You struggle in vain against the straps holding you to the conveyor belt feeding you into the cremation furnace.

Life Raft

Today’s prompt: “Only ten people will fit in the life raft. Convince the captain that you should be one of them.”

I charge the line of the captain’s chosen few and shove you violently overboard while screaming at the captain, “And there’ll be more of that until you let me on!”

Unsolved

Today’s prompt: “A famous, unsolved crime”

The master art thief had arrived in the Getty in the dead of night with a copy of Cezanne’s Still Life With Apples forged by her associate. She had swiped security badges and snuck her way past guards, and was stealthily removing the real painting from the wall.

Or at least, that’s what she thought she was doing. Because there was no wall to speak of behind the painting.

The thief shrieked aloud when she had removed the Cezanne only to uncover a recess in the wall, and staring from its depths, a human skull. She jostled the painting in her surpise, and it clattered against a ribcage, sending bones scattering. The trembling thief set the painting down and stared at your skeleton propped up in what appeared to be a hand-dug alcove hidden by the canvas. Your femurs were crossed, your spine was attached to the back of the recess with garden stakes, and your arms were stretched out to the sides of the carved-out hole as though to embrace the woman who found you.

Security guards arrived. The woman confessed to the attempted theft, but claimed ignorance about the origins of the skeleton. To this day, no one knows how long you had been behind the Cezanne. Investigators were unclear how long you had been dead, though most believe your killer had put your corpse in some kind of insect colony to speed up decomposition. No one knows who killed you, or why, or why you were in the Getty. But the art world can’t stop talking about you.

Fortune Cookie

Today’s prompt: “Write ten sayings for fortune cookies.”

1. You have a secret admirer, and also a secret assassin plotting your death.
2. It is a good time to finish up old tasks, before you die of salmonella.
3. An unpleasant surprise is waiting for you in a dark alley.
4. Your view of the world will change soon, in that you won’t be able to see much inside that pine box.
5. You will go on a long journey soon, across the river Styx.
6. A new project will meet with success soon. That project will be a murder plot against you.
7. Every flower blooms in its own sweet time, even the corpse flower! Speaking of corpses….
8. Keep your face to the sunshine and you will never see shadows, or the killers hiding in them.
9. Physical activity will dramatically improve your outlook, and the length of time you’ll be able to run from the monsters.
10. Soon life will become more interesting, and short.

The Book of Love

Today’s prompt: “Who wrote the Book of Love? Why, and what’s in it?”

I’m not sure who wrote the Book of Love, but I’m pretty sure it has Fabio on the cover and was written because there’s good money in romance novels.

I’m also not sure who wrote the mistaken shipping manifest. I just know that it resulted in 80 pallets of insecurely packaged black widow spiders being delivered to your house.

Sorry Not Sorry

Today’s prompt: “I was not sorry.”

I was not sorry for putting bear traps in your bed, for putting laxatives in your water supply, for putting rotten meat in your air ducts, for loosing wild dogs in your house. I wasn’t even that sorry that the gas leak actually killed you, although I would have taken giving you hallucinations.

You know what you did.

Schedule

Today’s prompt: “Your day, hour by hour”

12:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
1:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
2:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
3:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
4:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
5:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
6:00 a.m. – You’re asleep.
7:00 a.m. – You wake up. You hit snooze a few times. You get up. You take a shower. You get dressed. You eat some breakfast.
8:00 a.m. – You take your dogs for a quick walk. You check Twitter. You log on to your work computer.
9:00 a.m. – You work.
10:00 a.m. – You work.
11:00 a.m. – You work for a bit. You answer a knock at the door. The person at your door is wearing a dark, hooded robe and stabs you in the chest with a silver dagger carved with rune-like symbols. They run past you into your house, and after noisily and messily searching several rooms, run back out with the out-of-print volume of spells and incantations for communicating with the Great Old Ones that you’ve been researching in your spare time.
12:00 p.m. – You bleed out.
1:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
2:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
3:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
4:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
5:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
6:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
7:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
8:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
9:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
10:00 p.m. – You’re dead.
11:00 p.m. – You’re dead.