11 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “Write about a difficult conversation you’ve had recently. Then rewrite the conversation, saying what you couldn’t say at the time.”
Look, I get it, you’re angry. You have a right to be angry. It’s part of the whole Kübler-Ross thing. But I’m just the narrator here. I didn’t cause your excruciating death, and I’m powerless to stop it. I know how you will die, but I don’t know any way to prevent it. I know it as it happens, not before, so I can’t help you avoid it.
They don’t teach you this in narrator school. They don’t teach you about the whole limited omniscience thing. That you’ll see people die over and over, but never in time to do a thing about it. Cursed to describe people’s last moments, but incapable of interfering. It’s not like we’re like the Watchers in Marvel Comics, those guys with the ginormous heads who watch all the events of the universe happen and are sworn not to meddle, except for the Watcher Uatu, who breaks his oath all the freaking time. We’re more like ghosts, invisibly watching the events of your life unravel, but too intangible to lay a hand on anything. Not a part of the story – existing just outside it.
I’m not even supposed to tell you this. It’s not supposed to be about me. The story’s about you.
So when I tell you a band of cultists kidnaps you and tortures you and kills you by forcing rats through your intestines, it’s not that I–
Oh, I’m a c*&t, am I?
Screw you, too.
10 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “Screw you.”
Look, I get it, you’re angry. You have a right to be angry. It’s part of the whole Kübler-Ross thing. But I’m just the narrator here. I didn’t cause your excrutiating death. I just describe it, that’s all.
Wow. You did not have to use that word.
Look, I get that you’re in a lot of pain, but you do not need to take it out on me. I’m not the one who’s actually torturing you. You don’t have be rude about–
Okay, you know what? Screw you. I’m going to narrate you one hell of a death.
Your captors have the imagination of medieval torturers, but the resources of the modern day. So they start by applying liquid nitrogen to your genitals. They brand your chest with a hot iron in the shape of a pentagram. They strap shincrushers – these curved metal plates with spikes along the insides – to your calves and tighten them until your tibia break. They stretch you on the rack, and they crush you on the Scavenger’s Daughter. They pull out your fingernails and toenails with red-hot pliers. They force you to drink massive amounts of greywater. They revive an old technique the British military used on Irish rebels, called pitchcapping – they cut your hair short, pour hot pitch into a paper cone, press it onto your head, let it cool, and then yank it off, taking bits of scalp with it. There’s usually a while between each of these tortures while they ready the materials for the next one. In that time, they keep you in stress positions. You finally die when they force rats into your body and the rats gnaw their way through your intestines trying to get out.
Jeez, I wonder what you did to piss them off so much. Eh. Who cares. Screw you.
09 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “Boxers or briefs? Discuss.”
You know that whole thing about mothers telling their children to make sure they wear clean underwear because you never know when you’re going to get hit by a bus? Clearly, they didn’t know squat about the physiological processes that occur when you die. Without getting too graphic, when you die, as is about to happen, all of your muscles relax, including your sphincter. So if you’ve got a lot of stuff in your bowels, a little bit of poop might come out. Boxers? Briefs? Nobody cares. If you want my advice, make sure to go to the bathroom regularly, consume a reasonable amount of fiber, and gravitate toward underwear in dark colors. It’s all a little late for that now, given that you’re chained to a stone altar and the scythe is coming down, but, you know, for next time, if that’s how these things work.
08 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “Parades”
The papier-mâché head of Cthulhu wends its way through the streets, its giant tentacles mechanically raising and lowering. The marching band follows, playing an instrumental version of “Cthulhu Fhtagn.” Mascot versions of Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep throw tentacle and eyeball-shaped candies to the crowd. And after that, rows upon rows of men and women march in perfect formation, holding pikes with heads. Yours is in the fifth row back, third from the right.
07 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “The greatness of sandwiches”
Sandwiches. They’re just great, aren’t they? So delicious. They’ve got that nice little coating on the outside, but then when one bites into them, there’s that wonderful red, juicy pulp. And then the crunchy bits! So good!
Isn’t it funny how sandwiches think they’re people? Ha ha, so silly, it’s adorable. I mean, not cute enough for me to swear off sandwiches, obviously. I hear Lythalia is a vegan now. Crazy, right? Eh, what do you expect from a Forest Goddess? But I can’t imagine never eating sandwiches again. Or people, or whatever the sandwiches are calling themselves these days.
Hey! Sandwich! Yeah, you! I’m talking to you! The gods made you with legs so you could walk into our mouths. My mouth is this way, you ridiculous biped! You’re going the wrong way! Hahahahahaha I’m kidding, obviously. We didn’t make you with legs so you could march right into our gaping maws. We made you with legs because it’s so much fun to catch you when you run. You don’t seriously think you could outrun a being 50 times your size, do you?
Om nom nom nom nom.
06 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “You’ve just realized that you’ve lost something valuable in a nightclub (a necklace, a wallet, a phone). What happens next?”
You lost your sense that the world is a normal place where people are generally good to each other, and your surroundings can be defined by the laws of physics and Euclidian geometry, and humans are at the top of the food chain, when a group of cultists rushed into the nightclub, stabbed the bouncer and several customers, and opened up a portal to another dimension that hungry, reality-distorting elder gods began streaming through.
After that, you lost your life, but that kind of goes without saying.
05 Mar 2019
Today’s prompt: “Pick a person, then ask yourself: What is the hardest choice this person has ever had to make?”
Why does someone become a leader of a cult dedicated to the overthrow of humanity and the destruction of the Earth by malicious entities from a dark, impossible realm?
Was he brainwashed? If so, by whom? He seems to be the one calling the shots. The one doing the brainwashing, if anything. Was he mesmerized by one of the Old Ones with hypnotic or zombifying powers? He seems in full control of his faculties. He’s certainly a charismatic leader. He’s attracted many fervent adherents to the worship of Cthulhu and his ilk. Or was he raised in the cult, growing up a believer? Perhaps making a series of small, daily choices to stay in the cult, but never really knowing anything other than that?
Or did he, as seems likely, make the choice one day to start worshipping the Old Ones and working to deliver the Earth into their tentacled grasp? Did he read the Book of Azathoth on a lark and become convinced to pledge his soul to the elder gods by signing his name in blood in its pages? Did he have a vision of one of the Old Ones, who called him, charged him with ushering in an era of blood for humanity and feasting for the elder gods?
What convinced him? Did disembodied voices whisper to him in the night, promising him power? Is he so convinced of his superiority that he thinks the rest of humanity deserves to die, but that the Old Ones will preserve him? Was he poisoned by dreams, his sleeping mind infiltrated by an elder god providing his subconscious with marching orders?
Or does he just relish his power over others? Does he enjoy barking orders at his underlings in the cult? Did something wreck his faith in humanity? Abuse, perhaps? What could make him want to watch cities burn and crowds be devoured? Does he enjoy the pain of others? No, it doesn’t seem like that. You see no gleam of pleasure in his eye at what he does, nor a burning for revenge.
You’d like to think that the hardest choice he ever made was to slit your throat and draw a pentagram in your blood. But you know that’s not true. He did it so emotionlessly. There was nothing in his eyes when he drew his knife. Nothing that belied a tortured soul, a hint of doubt about what he was doing. No. You may never know his reasons for it, but his hardest choice came years ago, when he first pledged himself to the Old Ones. Everything since then has been inevitable.