25 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “Your favorite moment in film”
Hands down, it’s got to be that iconic moment in Alien when the chestburster erupts from Kane’s torso. Absolutely terrifying – the physical violation of it all, forced to be a human incubator for another species’ young, only to die with their violent birth.
So when Atlach-Nacha, the Spinner in Darkness, chooses you to be the host for its egg sac, and millions of baby spiders with human faces hatch, then gush from your body – first through your mouth, then forcing their own openings, coming through intestines, through stomach lining, through artery walls – you have something to relate to.
24 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “What a character wearing something red is thinking”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you do this,” the woman thinks as she stands over you, her dress drenched with your blood. “There’s always more blood than you think there’s going to be.”
23 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “A man giving a speech to a crowd of thousands is suddenly caught in a bald-faced lie.” [I’m going to avoid the gendered language here.]
“My fellow citizens,” you address your constituents. “There are those who seek to terrorize us. They wish to control us through unfounded fears. To weaken us through rumors and innuendos. But the fact is, there is no monster hiding under the bed. There is no big bad wolf. There is no dread lord Cthulhu coming to devour us all–”
“You lie!” a man in a black robe and hood shouts and points at you. Then points at the sky above you.
Inky black clouds have congregated overhead, and they swiftly part, allowing through a long tentacle that snatches you from your podium.
22 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “A woman thinks she might be living next door to her grandson.” [This one was awkward to do without a little gendered language. If you want a story from a male perspective, sub in “gramps,” “he’s” and “him” in the dialogue.]
You see him out in his front yard again, shirtless, pushing a lawnmower back and forth. He looks so much like your son. Could it be?
Your son had a way with women when he was younger. In fact, he had his way with a lot of them. Most of them, he never saw again. It’s a possibility.
Those same long, rangy arms. Same scruffy dishwater blond hair. Same craggy jawline. You’re practically staring holes in the back of his neck. He turns for a second. You focus your gaze on your iced tea.
What are you supposed to do, though? Walk up to him and say, “Hi, I think you might be my grandson?” Obviously not.
Maybe you can get to know him a bit, casually ask him about his family. Except you’ve never really gotten past “Nice day we’re having” with him.
You hardly know anything about him, other than the fact that he mows his lawn without his shirt on and he has guests late at night. You’ve never seen them. You just hear them, with their weird music. Kids these days have such strange taste.
He’s already putting the mower away. You don’t know how you’ll ever figure out how to talk to him. And yet, on this fine warm Saturday, you think you might stay up to watch him greet his friends.
Nine-thirty rolls around and you’re already yawning. It’s all you can do to stay awake until 10:30. At 11:30, you hear cars pulling up to the house next door. You turn on your porch light and walk outside, a drink in your hand.
The people getting out of the car are in long black robes and blank white masks. They walk up your neighbor’s driveway to the house. Your neighbor answers the door, wearing the same exact thing. Your mouth gapes.
Your neighbor peers over in your direction, surprised to see your porch light on. He pushes his mask up on top of his head.
“What are you doing out here, granny?” he asks.
“Wait, so you think–” you say, then realize he probably calls all old people “gramps” and “granny.”
“Ugh, she’s seen too much. Grab her,” he tells his visitors.
Before you can rush inside and lock your door, they’ve got you. They pull you into your neighbor’s house. He holds a curved knife up to your throat.
“I hate. Nosy. Neighbors,” he says. “Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t be tonight’s sacrifice.”
“Um, I think you might be my grandson?” you say.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says, slicing your throat open.
21 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “Write a short story that is set in Detroit in 1956, in which a car floor mat plays a crucial role.” [As with the Argentina one, the floor mat will only have a minor role.]
Nineteen-fifty-six. White racists were freaking out about the uppity blacks who were boycotting the buses in Montgomery and attending the University of Alabama. Joseph McCarthy was still freaking out about Communists, though nobody really believed him any more. And nobody was freaking out about cults attempting to usher in the death of everyone on Earth by waking the Elder Gods, though they probably should have been.
None of those things concern you that much. You’re just a factory worker building T-Birds in Detroit. You don’t understand much about popular culture these days. You don’t get those beatniks with their weird-ass poetry, or the kids with their Elvis records, or everybody in the art world with their obsession with big pictures with nothing but paint splatters on them, Christ, a kid could do that. But you do get why people love the Thunderbird. God, that car is gorgeous.
Today you left your coat at work. You don’t want to freeze tomorrow morning, so after dinner, you drive back to the factory to get it. And there, next to the conveyor belts, is this bunch of weirdos in black robes standing in a circle and chanting. You catch a few words before they see you and stop.
“Uh,” you say. “What’s Cthulhu?”
They swarm toward you. You back up the way you went, then bolt for the door. Your hand is on the door handle, when out of nowhere a woman in a robe smacks you in the face with a rubber floor mat. You’re thrown off balance for a second – just long enough for them to grab you.
Ford started doing crash tests two years ago. The one they put you in is a lot bloodier than usual.
20 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “The best thing that could happen”
You know what the best thing about dying is? Knowing that you’re going to provide nourishment to Shuy-Nihl, the Devourer in the Earth! What an honor!
19 Feb 2019
Today’s prompt: “The worst thing that could happen”
You’re already going to die. You know that much. The worst thing that could happen is if, just prior to your death, you undid all your life’s work. If you talked.
There is a secret cabal that has worked tirelessly for generations to open a rift to the Earth from another dimension, a rift that would allow the Old Ones to come and devour us all, to rip asunder all vestiges of human society. And there is another secret society aware of the existence of the Old Ones and the cabal, ready to do anything to protect the Earth.
It’s a tale as old as time – gather intel, infiltrate, counterintelligence, thwart, retaliation, murder, and then the cycle begins anew. A constant game of Spy vs. Spy. But this time, for once, there’s hope. An end to the cycle.
Or there will be. As long as you don’t talk.
“One last time,” the stubble-faced man says, his left hand pressing down on your first three fingers, his right hand holding your pinky upright. “Where. Is the rift. Going to appear?”
“Do your worst,” you say.
The stubble-faced man jerks his right hand, and your pinky breaks. You definitely thought you could play that cool, but you can’t. You scream. He moves on to the next finger.
“Where. Is the rift. Going to appear?”
“^&$ you, %&($%@,” you say.
He breaks your ring finger. You scream again.
“Where. Is the rift. Going to appear?”
You’re out of catty quips. You stay silent. He breaks your middle finger.
“Where–”
“Look, can’t you tell I’m not going to tell you? You might as well kill me now.”
“Where. Is the rift. Going to appear?”
You stare into your torturer’s eyes with as steely a gaze you can manage under the pain you feel.
He breaks your index finger.
You have to admit to being impressed. You’d always seen the resistance as goody-two-shoes types. But they think they’re doing the right thing, fighting on behalf of humanity. They’ll do a lot of dark things for that.
Still.
He can kill you, or the Old Ones can when they come through the rift you’ve set into motion. You’ll never tell.