08 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “Your bedroom from the point of view of a stranger forced to occupy it for a week.”
It still strikes you as strange that the red-robes are keeping you here. It’s just someone’s random bedroom. White walls, except for that one dark blue one in the nook where the short dresser is. A stack of comics on the bedside table. Blinds pulled tight on the window and the French doors – is that what you call them, when it’s a double door with glass in it, but it’s not a sliding door? French doors? Whatever. Maybe you’ll Google it if you ever get out of this.
You’ve tried shouting. On the first day you shouted until you were hoarse. You didn’t think this seemed like a bedroom in a house way out in the country, but you could be wrong about that. You heard an owl the other night. Who-who-who whoooo whoooo whoooo. So yeah. It could be in the country. But it didn’t feel like they got you that far out of town when they drove you here. Maybe no one rescued you because the cultists already killed everybody in this neighborhood. Or maybe the whole neighborhood is filled with cultists.
You’ve been staring at that one cheap, quasi-arty-looking picture of R2-D2 and C-3PO for a couple hours now, ever since they last took you to the bathroom. You stare at the picture and try to remember the model names of all the spaceships in the background. When you get bored of that, you stare at the reindeer in the flannel sheets. Sometimes you call them Dasher and Cupid and Rudolph. Sometimes you call them Asshole and Stupid and Adolph.
You’ve woken up in a puddle of drool on Adolph a few times now. You try to rock yourself out of the wet spot when that happens, but it’s tricky the way they tie you up.
You don’t understand why they’re keeping you here. Why they’re keeping you at all, for that matter. Maybe they’re holding you for ransom? Doesn’t seem like the M.O. for a bunch of people who run around in red robes with dark circles painted around their eyes. They haven’t asked you any questions. They aren’t pumping you for information. They aren’t torturing you. They just come in once in a while, take you to the bathroom, and feed you. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Are they waiting on a full moon? Are they working through some backlog of murder victims that they have to ritualistically kill one a night? What the hell is with the wait?
The door opens. It’s not feeding time. It feels early for bathroom time. They usually make you wait a bit longer than that.
A red-robe enters, with a machete in his hand. “It’s time,” he says. He pulls you to your feet and pushes you ahead of him, the point of the machete at the small of your back. You say a silent goodbye to R2 and 3PO and the blue wall and Adolph, and he walks you out the door, down the stairs, and through the back door to the killing field.
07 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “The car your father drove”
The first car you remember ever riding in was your father’s orange 1980 Chevette hatchback. The last car you ever rode in was a heavily modified black 1970 Chevy Nova.
06 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “What nobody ever said to you”
The whole thing felt like it was straight out of “And Then There Were None.” Guests who didn’t know each other were invited out to a remote lodge. The bridge to town was destroyed after the last person arrived. And each of the guests were murdered, one after one, with different methods each time.
You had the misfortune of being caught discovering two of the bodies, Bree Summers, who you found dead face-first in the koi pond, and Elle Watson, who you discovered in a bathtub full of water and her blood. Things looked bad for you. The others shot you to prevent further murders.
Of course, it wasn’t you, as they discovered after that when the murders kept happening. But nobody ever said, “I’m sorry.”
05 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “A tree from the point of view of one of its leaves”
I don’t know why they bury so many bodies at us.
I know I’m supposed to turn red one day, before I die. I wonder, do we turn red because the bodies they bury at us bleed into the roots?
They killed someone at us last night. Pulled a bag off their head. Brandished a scythe. They yelped, “No.” It felt so quiet, even though it was the only sound in the woods. The scythe dragged across their throat, and then it was really quiet.
Their body dropped to the moldering leaves on the forest floor. Some of them were brown. Some of them were red. The red ones are shaped like me, but curled up and dried. I’ve always understood mortality. The evidence is right below me. One day, I too will fall, and dry, and curl, and become just a husk with a few fibers where my veins were.
They pushed the dead leaves aside, and dug a hole. On the south side of us this time. There are already bodies to our north and east. Lowered the body into the hole. Shoveled dirt over the top. The big one spoke: “All that’s left is the west.” And then they left.
One of the dried leaves still hanging on from last winter fell and landed on the mound of dirt. See? We understand mortality.
04 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “A newly invented product that will change your life”
“Have you tried the Tingler yet?”
“No. I keep hearing good things, but I just can’t get past the name.”
“Haha, yeah. A little joke by the guys who made it. You name it something like that and people figure it’s just going to tickle a little, maybe make them a little numb. Nobody expects it’s going to explode every capillary in their body, liquefy the tissue of their lungs and boil all the moisture in their eyeballs.”
“I still think the name sounds like a sex toy.”
“It’s really quite incredible, being able to cause such excruciating pain with the touch of a button.”
“It doesn’t help that it’s shaped like a dildo.”
“Look, just try mine once. It’ll change your life.”
“All right, all right.” He takes the rubbery pink rod from his friend, points it at you, and presses the button. A bolt of something like electricity bursts from the end of it. Violent spasms of pain overtake your body as all of your organs implode, explode, melt, evaporate, and collapse into a quivering, fleshy puddle with bone shards sticking out of it.
“Holy crap, you weren’t kidding.”
“Right?”
“I have got to get me one of these!”
03 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “Start a story with the line ‘When I confronted him, he denied that he’d ever said it.’”
When you confronted him, he denied that he’d ever said it.
“Sell my soul for a good Philly cheesesteak,” he said. “That’s ridiculous. I love a good cheesesteak as much as the next man, but you don’t give up your soul for something like that.”
“Good to hear,” you say. “I know it’s irrational, but I was worried, since I’ve heard how good the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah’s cheesesteaks are, and I know how much you love a good cheesesteak.”
“Well, you needn’t have worried. No matter how succulent, how tender, how juicy and mouthwatering and full of cheesy, peppery goodness a cheesesteak may be, I wouldn’t part with my soul for one.”
“Glad of it,” you say. “Because I know the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah drive a hard Faustian bargain.”
“Yeah, they’re downright pernicious. But I have my bright lines I won’t cross. I wouldn’t sell my soul for a cheesesteak,” he says. “Of course, I never said I wouldn’t kill for one.”
02 Apr 2019
Today’s prompt: “Describe one of your bad habits and why you secretly get joy out of it.”
You like to set booby traps around your house. That’s not the bad habit. The bad habit is forgetting where you put them. One day, you find yourself yanked skyward by a paracord, stabbed by the wooden stakes of your feather spear trap, and incinerated by explosives. But you’ve always loved surprises.