Today’s prompt: “Write a script to give telemarketers to sell plastic pooper-scoopers.”
Hello sir or madam,
Have you considered buying a pooper scooper? They make it that much less likely that you will die from untreated encephalitis caused by toxoplasmosis in immunocompromised individuals, like some people named [insert-your-name-here] that I used to know.
Today’s prompt: “Come up with every possible way to describe something as ‘red,’ without using the word itself.”
Blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood
Oh, sorry, what was the writing topic for today? I was looking at the scene of your murder and got a little carried away.
Today’s prompt: “A translator doesn’t want to translate what she’s just been told.” [As always, please disregard the pronoun in the prompt if you identify as male or nonbinary.]
You would think that ASL for “Cthulhu” would involve waggling your fingers below your chin like a tentacle beard. But it’s not. True to form, the ASL for “Cthulhu” requires you to dislocate a minimum of three fingers to sign it properly. It is incredibly painful to execute, and when you must translate to hard-of-hearing attendees the warning, “Run! Cthulhu is attacking!”, you are unable to suppress a yowl of pain that the Great Old One immediately homes in on.
Today’s prompt: “James Joyce said that a man’s errors are his portals of discovery. What mistakes have led to epiphanies for you?”
Some people don’t want to be saved, it occurs to you, now that it’s too late. Some people just want to serve as bait, calling out for you to rescue them from the giant pit of marinade in preparation for Cthulhu’s barbecue.
Today’s prompt: “Write a letter to a child explaining how to do one thing (for example, ride a horse or throw a punch).”
Hey, kid. Yeah, you. I’m going to tell you about how to escape when a cult to one of the Old Ones ties you up to be a sacrifice.
So the first thing you want to do is make sure they tie you up loosely. Hold your hands in front of you with your knuckles together, and pull your hands in close to your body. That’ll naturally make a gap between your wrists. And if they tie up your arms and chest, take a deep breath and tense all your muscles. That’ll make it easier to wriggle out later. If you let them tie you up real tight, you might as well sprinkle meat tenderizer on yourself and shout, “Hey! Cthulhu! Over here!”
Then you want to wait until your kidnappers are out of the room or aren’t paying attention to you, like when they’re all busy doing ceremony prep. Do not wait until you’re in the middle of a circle and they’re chanting “fhtagn” at you. Once they’ve all got their backs turned to you, turn your wrists back and forth to make the rope even looser. Try to work one of your hands out of the ropes, or if there’s something sharp and hard like the corner of a table or the edge of a countertop, you can rub the ropes against it until you cut or tear through them.
Keep an eye on all the cultists and sneakily untie your ankles. Make sure they’re all occupied before you try to run. One nice thing about most Cthulhu-worshipping cults is they tend to wear robes with hoods that cut down on their peripheral vision. If they’re about to start the ceremony and you can’t run without them seeing you, try to disrupt things by knocking over candles. With any luck you’ll set someone’s robe on fire and you can escape in the confusion.
Of course, none of this is going to do you any good if they tie you up while you’re knocked unconscious, or chain you up in a basement.
Today’s prompt: “You are a brand-new suicide-hotline counselor. Describe how you feel during the course of your first call.”
“This is the suicide hotline, how–” you begin.
“You’re going to do it tonight after your shift,” a voice cuts you off.
“What?” you stammer.
“You’re going to die by suicide tonight after your shift. Round about 7:18.”
“Excuse me? Is this a prank?”
“Pills,” the voice says.
“Let me try this again. This is the suicide hotline. Have you been having any suicidal ideation?”
“No. I just want to report a planned suicide. Yours.”
“Look, that – that’s not how suicide hotlines work.”
“I don’t make the rules either. Just the predictions. I’m sorry. I’m guessing it’s going to be a rough night.”
We’re now past 500,000 deaths due to COVID-19, but death by suicide has also increased since the start of the pandemic. Many people have been suffering from loneliness, isolation and depression. If you have had thoughts of suicide, please get help by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
Today’s prompt: “Write a children’s story set in the woods.”
Your stepmother hands you a bucket. “On the far side of the deep, dark woods is a well,” she says. “Draw me water from that well.”
“Why can’t I just get water from the well by our house?” you ask.
“The well on the far side of the woods has magical properties,” your stepmother says. “Also, I’m your stepmother. Don’t sass me.”
“How do I find this well?” you ask.
“Just follow the path that’s uncannily making its way from our home through the woods that wasn’t there the day before,” she says.
Lo and behold, when you step outside of your cottage, there is a new path through the woods. You follow it.
The woods are so deep and so dark that the temperature falls as you make your way along the trail. Gooseflesh covers your arms.
After you’ve been walking for a while, you notice a wolf in the woods nearby, eating a rabbit. The wolf tears off strips of the rabbit’s hide. Its teeth rupture the rabbit’s kidneys. Blood coats the wolf’s muzzle. The rabbit’s intestines are wrapped around a nearby sapling – you guess that the rabbit had attempted to get away after its belly was already sliced open.
The wolf pauses its dinner and asks you, “And where are you going, little one, through these deep, dark woods?”
“My stepmother asked me to draw her water from the well on the far side of the woods,” you reply.
“Oh,” says the wolf. “I would not want to go there, if I were you.” And it returns to its meal.
You keep walking through the woods. After you’ve been walking for a while, you enter a sort of clearing – a wide area with a bit of low grass, but no trees except for eight tall, jagged stumps arranged in a perfect circle. The tops of the trees are long gone – perhaps carried off for firewood or by industrious beavers. But the trees were not sundered by man or beast. You can see on the upper edge of each stump the telltale marks where it was hit by lightning.
Just as you finish studying the stumps, a conspiracy of ravens swoops down around you. They alight on the stumps, two or three to a stump, yet they do not jockey for position. They stare at you with beady eyes. You do not see them blink.
They caw in unison. And then they ask, in unison, “And where are you going, little one, through these deep, dark woods?”
“My stepmother asked me to draw her water from the well on the far side of the woods,” you reply.
“Oh,” say the ravens in unison. “We would not want to go there, if we were you.” And they stare at you with their beady eyes until you leave the clearing.
You keep walking through the woods. After you’ve been walking for a while, you come across a house, but not a house like any you’ve ever seen before. This house is made entirely of raw meat. It gives off a sickly smell. The air is thick with flies.
An old woman is sitting on the porch with a mug of hot liquid. Flies are buzzing around the liquid, too. She takes a sip, swallows, and calls out to you, “And where are you going, little one, through these deep, dark woods?”
“My stepmother asked me to draw her water from the well on the far side of the woods,” you reply.
“Oh,” she says. “I would not want to go there, if I were you. But I guess if your stepmother sent you, you’re S.O.L.” She leans back against the meat house, crosses her legs at the ankles, and continues to sip whatever she’s drinking.
You keep walking through the woods, and eventually you see the last rays of daylight peering through the end of the forest. And there is the well.
The well has no pulley system, but you can see a rope coiled on the ground beside it. As you tie the rope to the handle of your bucket, you notice a strange sound coming from the well – half a mournful whistle, half a snake’s rattle.
You slowly lower your bucket into the well. After you have lowered the bucket for a few seconds, the noise ceases. You realize after a few seconds that you have also stopped lowering the bucket and you are holding your breath. You breathe out and begin to let out more rope.
And suddenly something seizes the bucket and pulls it down with a speed and ferocity that sends you tumbling into the well.
You are never seen again.