Red Meat
22 Apr 2019Today’s prompt: “Think of an object that describes you. Describe it.”
You look like how I like my steak. Entirely more bloody than is good for you.
Today’s prompt: “Think of an object that describes you. Describe it.”
You look like how I like my steak. Entirely more bloody than is good for you.
Today’s prompt: “The first time you were worried that you had come off sounding racist”
“Oh, no, it’s a Cthulhu!” you scream as you run down the street.
“Wait, what?” says Ob’mbu as it stops in its tracks. “Dude, what the fuck? I’m Ob’mbu. I’m not Cthulhu. Cthulhu and I don’t look anything alike. He’s got head-tentacles and webbed arms and bat wings. I’m a reptilian that’s shaped like a giraffe.”
“Oh. I just meant, you’re like one of those old ones….”
“Great Old Ones.”
“Right, right. And, like, Cthulhu is the best-known Great Old One, so I figured –”
“You figured we’re all interchangable, somehow? What, do we all look the same to you? Do you call all black people Denzel Washington?”
“Well, no, that just wouldn’t make any sen–”
“But it’s okay to call all Great Old Ones ‘Cthulhu’?”
“Are you calling me a racist?” you ask defensively.
“Wait, are you one of those assholes who think it’s worse to call someone racist than it is to actually say racist shit? Man, I don’t even normally devour humans, but for you, I’m going to make an exception.”
Today’s prompt: “Make a case for your favorite fruit.”
Raspberries would never, ever kill you.
Unlike strawberries.
Today’s prompt: “Write stage directions for an actor that insult him or her personally all along the way.”
You knock, like a moron. If any nefarious figures within the house weren’t already aware of your presence, they are now. After a moment, you enter stage left, fully oblivious to the danger around you.
YOU: Hello? Is anybody home?
In your naivete, you walk center stage past the staircase, failing utterly to check the room and opening yourself up to attacks from all sides. Hooded Figure 1, carrying a scythe, silently walks down the stairs, unnoticed by you, who are far too unobservant to pick up on such things.
YOU: I was driving past the house when I thought I heard a scream. Is everybody okay?
You walk stage right, still foolishly unaware of your surroundings. Seriously, what kind of nincompoop just walks into a house like that when there could be danger? Hooded Figure 1 continues down the stairs. Hooded Figure 2, holding a spiked club, enters quietly from the kitchen (up stage left).
YOU: Hellooooo….
You exit stage right. Hooded Figures 1 and 2 follow. You scream, offstage, an inevitable victim of your own folly.
Today’s prompt: “You get to be any singer you choose and sing one song in a live concert.”
You are opera singer Frederick Federici, performing as Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust. You’ve just finished the finale, and are descending dramatically into the trapdoor in the stage, a dark devil falling from grace, when the heart attack comes.
No? Not an opera fan?
You are Wallace Hartley, a violinist and the leader of your band. You and your band members were hired to play aboard a fabulous new ship, the RMS Titanic. When it hit an iceberg, you led the band in a production meant to calm the crew as they worked to save as many passengers as could be fit onto the inadequate number of lifeboats. You finish with “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and call to your bandmates, “Gentlemen, I bid you farewell,” as the waves drag you under.
You’re more of a metalhead?
You are “Dimebag Darrell” Abbott, formerly of Pantera. You’re now the guitarist for Damageplan, and you’ve gone on from your glam metal roots to pioneer a new genre of music, groove metal. You’re performing in Columbus on your Devastation Across the Nation tour when a fan rushes the stage and shoots you with a Beretta. You are buried in a Kiss Kasket.
Sorry. Those are your options.
Today’s prompt: “You bring someone back from the dead. Who is it?”
You gasp for air. Your lungs fill with oxygen. You feel like you’ve been drowning. Your whole body feels numb – all your limbs are tingling like when your leg falls asleep. You try to move the fingers of your right hand. It feels like moving underwater, like fighting against currents, against water pressure, but they obey. You raise your hand. You bend your arm. You touch your left arm with the fingers of your right hand. It feels like stone. You move to your chest. Okay, not stone – you feel yourself breathing – but you’re so cold. And then it hits you. You’re waking up at room temperature. You have no memory of the last few – minutes? Hours? Days? You don’t know how you got here. And you’re waking up on a table – no. A slab in a morgue. You’ve been dead.
You remember now. You remember them stabbing you. Your hand travels down to your abdomen, to the wound. It’s still there. You feel a bit lightheaded.
Heels click, and a woman’s face appears, hovering over you. You recognize her.
“You!” you say. “You – you brought me back?”
“Yes,” she says. “I did.”
“Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.”
She eyes you silently. Your fingers flit across your abdomen, and your thoughts flutter to the memory of the knife entering your belly.
“They killed me!” you gasp, still barely believing it.
“I know,” she says. “I’m very angry with them.”
“This is going to sound crazy,” you say, “but I could have sworn you were one of them.”
“I am,” she says, raising a knife. “I’m very angry that they didn’t wait for me.”
Today’s prompt: “Her secret obsession”
Her secret obsession is death. Like, the cosmic entity Death. And like a cat bringing a dead mouse to its owner, she makes offerings to Death. Once a week. Twice if she can manage.
I know, totally a Thanos thing, right? But unlike Thanos, she doesn’t have an Infinity Gauntlet that allows her to murder half the population in a single stroke.
All she has is a knife. A knife and her obsession.
Her gloved hand drops a new head into the terrarium and lifts your skull out, shaking the remaining dermestid beetles from your eye sockets and nasal cavity. And into the peroxide bath you go. A few hours later, you’re pulled from the bucket, rinsed in a few changes of water, and set on an old bath towel to dry.
She comes back, dressed in black lace. She takes out a tube of burgundy lipstick and smears a thick layer onto her lips. She picks you up and carries you into another room filled with lit candles and dried roses. She kisses you on the top of your head and sets you onto a small table in front of a mirror, then sits in a chair and waits.
Death comes. Death takes your skull. She smiles at her devotee.