09 Mar 2020
Today’s prompt: “The weekend in St. Tropez”
It’s not easy being a Christian in 65 AD.
Nobody really knows what happened to you, but the legends say you were martyred during Nero’s reign. Maybe you were a knight who was a bodyguard for Nero and then converted to Christianity. That might also be a bunch of romanticized bunk. Anyhow, the legends say that Nero asked you to renounce your faith. When you refused, Nero had you decapitated. Other legends say you fled to Pisa and were recognized and executed by the prefect there. There really aren’t any reliable records.
At some point, though, you throw the lack of an evidentiary record out the window and embrace the fuck out of the legends. That point is when I read that your head was thrown into the river Arno and your body was put in a rotten boat with a rooster and a dog in the hopes that they would eat you as the boat floated to Liguria. Supposedly, a holy woman had a dream that your body would arrive in her city, and indeed, the boat landed there, with your body complete un-snacked-upon by the dog and the rooster. Is this early Christian nonsense? Probably. But it’s great early Christian nonsense.
After the boat landed, the rooster flew away to a nearby village, which was named after it – Cogolin. The dog wandered off toward another village, which was also named in its honor – Grimaud. And the city where you landed? They named that after you – Saint-Tropez.
Since then, many a weekend in Saint-Tropez has been celebrated by sailors, of whom you are the patron saint. Your feast day, April 29, has been celebrated since 1284 on weekday and weekend alike – not to mention the other festivals you’re honored in. But it’ll never be anything like that first weekend in St. Tropez – the weekend after your body was discovered, when people first congregated around their newly found martyr.
07 Mar 2020
Today’s prompt: “What does your sleeping, dreaming mind think in the moments before you wake up? What are its last hopes, fears, or promises to itself as the alarm goes off and it feels itself vanishing?”
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming….
Cthulhu stirs awake and blinks at his alarm clock. 9:47? What? He could have sworn he’d set it for 8:30! Oh outer gods, he’s going to be late to his Spanish final.
Cthulhu quickly flies off to class, which would be normal except for the fact that his wings aren’t flapping, and his torso is flopping down at a right angle to his legs, which float parallel to the ground.
Cthulhu bursts into his classroom. He’s about 20 minutes late to his test. He’ll probably get a bad grade, but at least it’s not too late to take it.
Titters ripple through the rows of classmates at their desks. Cthulhu looks down. Oh outer gods, he’s completely naked!
Cthulhu covers his groin with his hands and attempts to unobtrusively take his seat. The teacher scowls at him and hands him his test.
That’s when Cthulhu remembers that he hasn’t attended a single Spanish lecture all semester. The letters on the test might as well be heiroglyphics from a non-dominant species on a backwater planet in the fourteenth dimension.
And that’s when Cthulhu realizes how incredibly hungry he is. As though he’s been hibernating for eons, and his stomach has been churning on nothing but acid for centuries. As he fades into waking dream, Cthulhu vows to eat the next human he sees.
Cthulhu stirs awake and blinks at his watery surroundings. He remembers the hunger, and the truth of the hunger. And he remembers the surface above. And he swims up.
It was a bad day for you to go to the beach.
05 Mar 2020
Today’s prompt: “You’ve had a really rotten day, you’re mad at the world, and in an evil moment you decide to give a classroom full of impressionable, hopeful young writers all the worst possible advice anyone could possibly give…”
There is nothing new under the sun. That clever idea you think you have? It’s been done. Maybe ten times over. So why bother trying to find a new way to say something, a novel approach to say the same thing we all feel and know? People use clichés because they work. Embrace them.
Brevity is for fools. Using tons of dependent clauses shows how complex and rich your ideas are. I expect lots of semicolons.
The active voice is for active people. Can you run a mile in four minutes and thirty seconds? No? Then it’s the passive voice for you, bucko. “Mistakes were made,” that’s what I expect from you from now on. Now drop and give me twenty. Haha just kidding. On the pushups part, not the passive voice part.
Cthulhu loves it when you read poetry at him.
03 Mar 2020
Today’s prompt: “Describe ascent using the most innovative, outrageous metaphors, similes, and physical descriptions you can think of.”
Ascent – the Old Ones mushroom-clouding up from the bottom of the ocean, breaking the surface like the rotting carcass of a whale filled with gas produced by bacteria eating away at its core. Ascent – they rise, as though the ocean currents were an escalator, ready to launch Cthulhu and his cronies onto the land. Ascent – they explode from the water and violate the skies, backs arched, wings unfurling, voices roaring.
And there you are, a morsel on the shore.
01 Mar 2020
Today’s prompt: “Two dollars isn’t a lot of money, unless…”
Unless you’re running sound for a play and your mom calls during the first act and she doesn’t usually call you, usually she texts, and so you know something’s up, and you know exactly what it is, because your grandma was hospitalized a few days ago, and she’s been in hospice since then, and you visited her yesterday and she was just lying in bed unresponsive and didn’t even have a wig on, and the whole time you were there she didn’t say anything except moan when the nurses came in to turn her and give her more morphine, so even though you let the phone call go to voice mail you know without looking at the transcription on your phone that your grandma is dead, and during intermission you call your mom, and when you hang up you start crying, and you grab your purse and go to the bar inside the theater and you order a whiskey, and you stare for about five seconds at the Square screen asking for you to pick an amount for a tip before selecting two dollars. Two dollars is a decent tip, but more than that, that two dollars takes on a certain meaning and significance. The same meaning and significance that the gum on the sidewalk you stared at took on while you were outside talking to your mom. The same meaning and significance that your grandmother’s wigs took on when they were both sitting on top of her minifridge in the middle of the day yesterday.
Ordinarily I’d be talking about your death today, not my grandmother’s. In the grand scheme of things, your death was probably much more interesting, what with all the buzz saws and the alligators. But I’m afraid I just don’t have the emotional capacity for yours right now.
28 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “The thirty-year lie”
You spent the last three decades translating ancient scrolls, gathering mystic ingredients, and studying inscrutable and arcane rituals. And today, you and your comrades are gathered by the shore, chanting, as a mass breaks the surface.
The mass stands on enormous, muscular, scaly hind legs. Wings unfurl from its back, and tentacles stretch out from its face.
You turn to the man on your right. “Goddamit, Rick,” you say. “You told me we were raising Atlantis.”
26 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “Describe nearly drowning”
True story. Several years ago, my team at work decided to go kayaking together as a team-building activity. My team lead was an experienced kayaker. So was our company’s QA manager Rob; we invited him along so between the two of them they could help out the rest of us noobs if we got into trouble. I was a Software Development Engineer in Test at the time – basically, I wrote test tools for other code. SDETs were pretty rare, and Rob joked that he wasn’t going to let any SDETs drown.
I had experience in a canoe on mostly still lakes, so I had the basics of steering down, but I’d never steered a raft or kayak in whitewater. And I had no experience reading a river, translating the way the currents moved into a path you could traverse. But I was game to try. Our QA didn’t have experience steering a canoe or kayak, but she had way more upper arm strength than I did. So we paired up in a two-person inflatable kayak. She went in the front to power the kayak; I went in the back to steer.
I got a feel for steering in whitewater pretty quickly. Before long, I was able to take us through the more fun-looking parts of the rapids. But then we got to one of the trickier parts of the river, called “Mike’s Hole.” Before we got too close to it, our experienced kayakers told the group we would need to steer left as soon as we hit the whirlpool. Then one by one, each of the kayaks went through. My QA and I went last. I was highly focused on trying to steer us left just at the point in the rapids that they’d told us. I pushed my paddle backward into the river to create as sharp a left turn as I could.
The next thing I knew I was underwater.
I’d flipped off the back of my kayak and been instantly sucked down by the whirlpool. Miraculously, I had a mouthful of air. Time slowed to a crawl.
“Oh my god. I’m going to die,” I thought.
Then, “I’m not going to die. Rob won’t let me.”
“I just need to get to the surface,” I thought. I immediately started doggy-paddling.
Then it dawned on me. “I don’t know which way is up.”
“I’m wearing a life jacket,” I remembered. “Just let it do its job.” I stopped paddling and let the life vest carry me up.
When I broke the surface, I called out for help as loudly as I could, sure my weak voice was being drowned out by the sound of the rapids. I was too exhausted to swim. I could only cry out, “help. help.”
They were already looking for me, of course. When they saw I wasn’t in the back of the kayak, my whole team was terrified.
Rob paddled his one-person kayak over to where I was. He didn’t try to get me back on my kayak right away; he just draped me onto one of the other kayaks until we could all get safely to shore.
On shore, we took a break and had some sandwiches. And then, sensing all eyes on me, I put on a show of bravado and said I was eager to finish the trip. Everyone seemed relieved. The rest of the trip was uneventful. The rapids were easy to steer through, and my QA and I caught some good whitewater.
I got lucky.
But at least I have some idea of what was going through your mind when that cultist held your head underwater until the last bubbles escaped from your lips.
“Oh my god. I’m going to die.”