13 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “The missing software engineer”
“It’s no good,” the kidnapped software engineer told his captors. “I’m not going to give you the doomsday device software I developed totally by accident with the intent of building something more beneficial for society in a plot point ripped out of a B-movie. And you can’t just keep me here until I do. I suspected this might happen, so I never checked the code into a version control system. The only copies of my code are on personal devices that are stored near a self-destruct system. If I don’t push a button on my phone, which can only be unlocked by my fingerprint scan, once a day, the self-destruct system is programmed to emit a limited-range EMP which will make my laptop and all my backups with the doomsday device code on them go kablooey. And that’ll happen at 7:00 tonight.”
“Master! I can slice off his hand with my laser blaster! We will take his hand and use his fingertips to unlock the phone and keep the doomsday device code safe until we can retrieve his computer!”
SSSSHHHHRRRRAAAAACCCCKKKKK
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
“You fool! Your blast missed his wrist and burned off his fingertips! Now no one can turn off the self-destruct system!”
Fortunately for the world, the software engineer developed his self-destruct system effectively. The doomsday device code was destroyed. Unfortunately for you, his next-door neighbor, his EMP generator had a little bug. He had meant for the range to be limited to the boundaries of his home and the safe house where he kept his backups. But each EMP blast hit a full city block, and the one that went off at his house took out your pacemaker.
11 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “The last chapter of the relationship”
Foreword
Dear reader,
I’m really sorry that not only will you be unable to finish my fantasy mystery novel, you’ll also be unable to finish this romance novel I wrote that you decided to pick up instead after you got depressed reading the foreword to that book. Look, it really doesn’t matter what book you read, even if it’s not one of mine. You’re still only going to get about 40 pages max in before you keel over. So I’m afraid that while you should just have time to get to the meet-cute in the darkened alley next to the Korean bulgogi place, you’re not going to make it to the last chapter of the relationship. And after the dismal sales numbers for my fantasy mystery novel, I’m not going to spoil the end for you. Last time, too many potential buyers read the ending on this blog and decided not to buy the book because it had already been spoiled for them. I’m not going to make that mistake again. So I’m sorry, you’re never going to know how this story ends.
Skip to the end of the book.
Page 341 Again
The graveyard chill nipped at her calves and nearly froze the tearstreaks on her cheeks. “I’ll never forget you, Dawson,” she said as she placed a single long-stemmed rose on the coffin, a handsome mahogany number not unlike the model you will be buried in, dear reader.
But which is the real page 341, and which is just an illusion? Maybe this is a Schrödinger’s cat kind of thing, and the act of observing the ending without having actually read the book is changing it. You know what, the last ending was a lot nicer than this one. Maybe you should try turning back to that one.
Try turning back a page.
Page 341
The splayed fingers of Dawson’s hand pressed into the small of Morgan’s back. Warm breath tickled her neck as the two figures slowly swayed. They danced long into the night, on the hardwood floor of their apartment, not, to be very clear, on a grave, and certainly not on your grave, dear reader.
Did you really think you could just skip to the end and thwart my narrative will? And are you even sure this is the last page? Sometimes pages tend to stick together. Maybe this isn’t the last one after all.
Try turning the page
Also Page 341
“I left your stuff there,” Dawson said, standing in the doorway and pointing to a box on the porch.
“Can I just come in for a minute?” Morgan said. “I just want to explain.”
“It’s too late for that. I don’t even want to think about what you did, and I really don’t want to hear you talk about why you did it.”
“Dawson, I’m so sorry.”
“There’s no coming back from that. Not from what you did.” And Dawson closed the door on Morgan, closed the door on their life together, a lot like closing the lid on your mahogany coffin, dear reader.
I’m sorry you’re dying, dear reader, and I’m sorry you’re never going to be able to read this book properly. Not as sorry as Morgan is for mucking things up with Dawson. It’s not every day you meet the love of your life in the alley by a bulgogi place.
08 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “A roomful of people who want to sleep together”
Her smoldering eyes locked with those of the man sitting across the room from her, then dropped to your lifeless body, then locked with the man’s eyes again.
“There is nothing hotter than doing a murder with someone,” she says. “I’m so horny, I want you to fuck me right next to that corpse.”
“I want to fuck you right next to that corpse.”
“And I want to fuck all eight of you right next to that corpse.”
06 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
Probably that time you got shrunk down to the size of an aphid and a colony of fire ants pulled you to pieces.
04 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “Extend a short interaction (e.g., paying for coffee, talking to a phone operator) for as long as possible.”
You would have preferred it if the wraiths had just torn your intestines out with their long claws. But no. Instead, they are delicately tugging them out of your open chest cavity and spooling them around large dowels as if they planned to weave a shirt from your innards.
“How’s that, dearie?” one of the wraiths says as she gives a short jerk to your guts.
“Euuuughhh,” you say.
“Still alive then, that’s good, that’s good. Tell me, does it hurt very much if I do this?” she says, tugging your intestines again.
“Eeeyoowwwwwwwww!” you shriek.
“Got it, got it, got it,” the wraith says. “Eunice, do you have another spool?”
“I think I left it out in the car,” Eunice, another wraith, calls back.
“We can take a quick break from this while she gets it,” the first wraith turns to you.
“Oh, don’t wait on my account,” you say. “You could just kill me off and finish pulling my guts out afterwards.”
“Oh, no no no,” Eunice says. “That’s now how that works at all. Say Meredith, did you bring any snacks?”
“I did!” the first wraith says. “There should be some cheesy crackers and some veggies and dip in the back seat.”
“I’ll bring those in when I get the spool,” Eunice says. “The sight of all that gore has me feeling a bit peckish.”
“I could go for some nosh as well,” Meredith says. “We’ll just take a slightly longer break from this, okay dearie?” she turns to you.
“Eeeuuurrrrggghhh,” you say.
“Very good,” Meredith says.
01 Oct 2021
Today’s prompt: “What is the worst thing that you ever did?”
You were backing out of your driveway when a high-pitched scream reverberated through your neighborhood. You hit the brakes, and the source of the scream, a blond girl around age 10 with a pageboy haircut, appears in your rearview mirror. You put the car in park and hop out. The girl is crouched down near the back of your car. You see traces of fur and blood.
“You backed over my puppy!” the girl cries.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” you say.
“He was just chasing a ball, and you ran over him!” she says.
“I’m so so sorry, I didn’t see him. This is awful, I’m so sorry,” you say.
“How. Could. You.” The blond girl’s pupils glow a deep red, and you realize too late that you really, really should have checked your mirrors.
29 Sep 2021
Today’s prompt: “Choose a person who interests you. Write about following the person home.”
You’re familiar with the concept of the multiverse, right? The idea that in an infinitely large universe, there could be an infinite number of worlds, all different, because an infinite universe contains infinite beings making infinite choices. Perhaps some would only be different in that you had one less cup of coffee yesterday than you did in another realm. In others, you might never have existed, and in still others there could be massive differences, like watching historical fiction spool out where the Confederates or the Axis powers had won. Authors of genre fiction like to play in these realms, and comic books are notorious for them. There’s canonically a Marvel universe that’s just like the main Marvel universe, except all the members of the Avengers have beards, including Scarlet Witch and the Wasp.
Authors like to play with metafiction, as well. Canonically, comic books exist in both the Marvel and DC universes.
If the interpretation of multiversal reality that allows for all fictional universes to exist somewhere is true, then certainly some intersection with metafiction must also exist, where elements of a world are both true and believed to be fictional. Magic may exist, but be believed not to be real. This can be dangerous. And you are living in a particularly dangerous metafiction-come-true universe.
The problem with living in a world where Lovecraftian horrors exist just outside of time and space, and are worshipped by frightful cults making human sacrifices in an attempt to appease the dark gods and bring them to our realm, but whose existence and worship are otherwise unknown to the human race except where tales of their exploits have bled into fiction, is that when you’re seen reading the wrong book by the wrong person, you might be seen as a threat. You thought you were enjoying some classic horror stories. But the man who saw you checking out At the Mountains of Madness thought you were doing research to interfere with him and his fellow members of the Chesuncook Witch Coven. And that is why he found you interesting enough to follow home, fingering the knife in his pocket all the way.