This is cool, feels very supervillain or like child genius? it reminds me of the evil genius trilogy.
The phone is ringing. I have to get up.
I open my eyes, my tired body too limp to simply rise from bed.
There’s writing on the wall, phone numbers and incomprehensible notes from the person who lived here before me. The wallpaper is peeling, revealing layers of grey and blue materials.
It’s not a pretty room, but there wasn’t anywhere else to go.
I stare at the ceiling, feeling the emptiness around me, the familiarity of the ugly almost turning it into something beautiful.
I know I should answer the phone, but I don’t have the energy to get up.
I flop an arm over my forehead and close my eyes, promising myself it’s just for a few minutes.
Yeah, I guess. I was thinking along the lines of child genius/psychopath, but supervillain works, too.
This is cute, I like it
It’d been… A long time. He wasn’t sure how long, exactly, but long enough he was pretty sure he shouldn’t still be alive. It’s been getting worse recently, though, so maybe he was finally dying… If he was honest, that seemed like a superior alternative to continuing to live like this… Alone, misunderstood, secluded… It wasn’t a life worth living, really, and it’d been a long one. Full of joy, sadness… Grief. It hadn’t been totally a bad one, though, and he’d faced each phase as ready as he’d ever be. If it was finally coming to an end… He supposed, he was ready for that, too.
They were all frozen, the sizable crowd stuffed in the clearing all with their eyes on me, though they didn’t know it was me.
My fingers were wrapped tightly around the tree trunk, knuckles white, though I’d never been afraid of falling from trees. My heart hammered in my chest as I wondered what reaction they would have, all these people who hadn’t known me until now. Did any part of my song resonate with them?
Several seconds had passed, the only sound the leaves flapping and fluttering in the trees around the clearing and my heart pulsing in my stomach, harder and harder as the moment stretches.
Then Mela started clapping and an enormous wave of sound washed over me, the roar of the crowd louder than any sound I’d heard before.
It’s probably for the best, all things considered. It’s a lot harder to find three people when they’re spread across the world than when they’re huddling in one room.
I was okay with that. Okay with it for a long time. It was keeping us safe and, after all, I had the bracelets to assure myself they were alright. I’d see them again. As long as I had those three bands on my arm, I knew everything was okay.
But now they’re not on my arm anymore. Now they’re fraying scraps of thread kept in a box on my desk.
Well, two of them, anyways. Mine’s still on my wrist.
So many generations have passed. The magical amber in my chest has grown smaller and I’ve aged a noticable amount, my skin sagging. I guess I’m not immortal after all. It’s well past time I got old and passed on.
I put a hand on the head of my great great great great- I’ve forgotten how many greats- granddaughter.
She smiles at me, her face bright like the sun, new and excited by a world that has grown too familiar to me. More people will come after her, be excited to see the rise of a new day.
Czesh, the immortal who these gems came from, is still young. Somehow, that spark remains in her eyes despite how time has worn on remaining Gem folk.
Matilda and Torian are long gone, Neris has long since tired of tormenting people- last I’ve heard they’re studying human brains and ethics in some remote fairy village on a mountain. Leilah hasn’t been seen for many years. Perhaps she’s lying at the bottom of the sea or in space watching the world go by.
Crystal, despite the incredible amount of time that has passed, is still working on projects to help the world. She learned a wide range of complicated skills in a time of boredom and is currently working on the next wave of medical technology.
Despite the fact that something is driving her forward, last time I saw her it occurred to me that her eyes used to look brighter. Perhaps I’m misremembering.
“Darius?” the child asks.
I’ve forgotten her name, or how old she is… perhaps she’s Flora? No, Flora was from a long time ago. Daisy? Penelope?
It doesn’t matter. Soon she’ll have moved on as well, grown up, died.
The patterns repeat themselves. I’ve stuck with a branch of my family, though they no longer look much like me. I’m from a time long gone. Humans were never meant to live this long.
i did not know this place existed XD
also, ignore all of my mistakes, it has been a long time since I have written anything XD
__
No one tells you how cold space really is.
Amy and I thought sneaking out of the compound with space suits would be a good idea. And it was- at first.
The sickening snap of our cords to the ship broke the joyful atmosphere. No one knew we were out here, no one would look for us.
There was no telling how long we had been gone, just drifting away. At first we had promised each other that we would be fine, that someone would find us, but I stopped believing that after I couldn’t see the ship.
I let go of Amy’s hand after her oxygen tank stopped beeping. No point in dragging someone with me.
I hope they can’t see the blood. I tried to wash it off. Got into the shower with all my clothes on, scrubbed and scrubbed at my shoes, my hands, tried to get the last of it from under my fingernails.
I approach the table where the rest of my family is gathered, my entire body shaking as I internally scream at myself to act normal, act normal.
My nerveless fingers fumble at the chair a few times before I succeed at pulling it out, and I sit down, perched on the edge of my seat like I’m about to bolt.
Look normal, act normal! Nobody will have any idea if you don’t give yourself away!
The seconds drag by as mom brings out the first course.
“You’re awfully quiet, Greg,” my brother comments.
I laugh, it sounds shrill and overly loud to my ears but I keep going, my words tumbling over one another like rocks.
“Oh, just thinking about my latest game. It’s been fun, super fun, it’s addictive, it’s good.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
i barely manage to stop myself from rambling on. Jun and Dad give me strange looks and my breath comes shorter, dark hazy walls lining my vision.
Breathe, breathe, relax.
“Well, whatever. Have you finished that paper with Rex?”
At the mention of his name, the walls draw in and my heart speeds up. I can vaguely feel that I’m in no state not to give myself away, that any control I had over how I talk is long gone, but I can’t think of an excuse to leave, I can’t act suspicious now in the hours before he’s found.
Don’t say much, just get through things.
I mumble some vague response,
“It’s close,”
and as the conversation turns to something else and a miniscule fraction of the weight lifts, I grip the edges of my chair and pray, pray that I’ll wake up from this nightmare.
I’ve climbed and climbed to get here.
There were people living on the middle levels, some even higher than I’d thought they’d be.
There are such a variety of materials on this mountain, melded out of the dreams of so many people. At the bottom it was more regular cities, if way more vertical than normal. Brick, wood, plaster. I could walk at times down there, but it took an endless amount of climbing to get here.
I’ve pulled myself hand over hand up hard plastic playground bars and trash bags filled with soda cans, sunk my fingers into colorful, mushy clay, even stopped to taste a brief area made of candy.
As I neared the top, things became seriously eerie. There was a city of metal houses made of shoddily welded metal where I could just barely put my fingers on the uneven ledges and lift myself up. Passing the giant, empty square doorways, I tried not to look. I felt like if I let my eyes wander into those endless black holes I’d be drawn in and never come out.
Past there, there were more playground bars, then they became transparent and no longer felt like bars anymore, but something cool and smooth.
I feel lighter, too. Here, perched on top of this mountain, I know if I jumped I would float.
There are no more bars above me. I lift my head to look at the blankness above, wondering what wonders I’ll see here, what awesome prize, and the emptiness drawns me through space and-
I sit up, the real world flooding back into my mind and the dream world becoming faint, vague snippits of details. The feeling of triumph from getting to the top of the mountain stays with me as I get to my feet, putting on my clothes as the dream rapidly fades into nothing, replaced by the worries of the day.
it’d be so interesting if there was a shared dream world. maybe you’d get drawn to something like what you were going to dream about anyway.
People would just have these varyingly vague memories of meeting each other. Now I want to write about a world where there’s just one dream world and people’s souls are transported around there every time they sleep. maybe dead people live there. somebody’s probably already written something like that but still
It really would be interesting, and actually I don’t know of anything quite like it out there. I do know of one other person writing something similar, but theirs is set up more like virtual reality, to my understanding, anyways. If you want to, I would say go for it! I’m writing about mermaids right now, and goodness knows that’s been done before. It’s all about the spin you bring to it.
let’s see if I can keep death out of this one… Been awhile since I’ve done that.
Every night, I close my eyes. I try to sleep, but instead I think. Well, I don’t think so much as I just feel. Every night, when I try to rest, I’m left to realize the day is gone. I can’t get it back. I always feel like it’s been wasted, like I could have done something which meant more but I didn’t. And it never seems to matter what I did in that day, it’s still time gone, and it still feels wasted. As if I’m running out of time, coming closer to something I’m dreading, but I can never tell what. Or why.
(I wrote about mermen once! the only interesting spin I remember putting on it was my illustrations XD and one little worldbuilding fact about tails)
I just love the idea of this- the way that people are in varying states of altered mind in dreams, dreams are so random and shifty and magical (and just generally awesome for people like me with huge fantastical dreams), and people remember the dreams varying amounts- there could be so many interesting interations there. And then the dead people are just sitting around watching these drunk ghosts fade in and out XD
The problem is, I have two major story WIPs and one comic WIP. And I’ve had at least two other really awesome ideas like this, but it’s hard to make a cool idea into a story sometimes. I had one that was a world where there were all sorts of technological and magical and theological stories going on at once but they all had mind erasing methods and there was this one guy who was immune so he’d see the world almost getting destroyed by something crazy every week, there was one that was a narrator talking a story into existance and there was one character who could hear them and knew about the real world, and I had a random magic system that takes way way too long to explain involving multiple dimensions and the related physics. I didn’t even start writing that one, I was completely blanking on a story using it.
I feel like I’ve had things verging on a shared dream world like this before but not like this. I’d have to think of characters to go in it, or put it in a story, and actually think of a plot using it. I have trouble attaching my coolest worldbuilding ideas to stories.
XDD
:0 sourceless anxiety sounds like the worst
somehow I love flash fics about negative topics like this- feelings fit nicely into flash fic
I was caught outside when the storm started. When I realized it would be a heavy snowstorm, I started walking back to the village, but before I knew it visibility was gone and I couldn’t tell which way I was going.
If I were a normal cat I’d be desperate to find shelter right now. My blood would be rapidly dropping toward freezing.
However, I don’t have blood.
With my body being entirely made of magic, weather has no effect on me. That doesn’t mean I like being stuck out here while the villagers huddle up together in Mrs. Crocodile’s house, though.
My stubby legs sink into the powdery snow, and I find that I can’t move. I’ve stubbornly refused to use magic or change my shape for years now, both to keep anybody from finding out who I am and to experience living like a cat, but my resolve wavers as the snow piles around my head, my senses only taking in darkness and cold.
I shift the snow out from around me, the feeling of controlling frozen water still a completely natural motion for me. Fifteen years means nothing to the thousands I was the Ice Queen. I plan to be a cat for a lot longer to wash that taste away.
feels strange to put explanations in flash fic about these characters XD
I have a bucket of slime. I want to pour it on someone, but there’s nobody around. So I pour it on the ground instead, hoping someone will slip. The black oily goop sits on the ground, reflecting my own face back at me, the old, proud face of a reverse janitor demon. I know this can’t be all there is to life, the purpose and path decided for me by my superiors at the start. I know I can’t just be meant to un-clean up people’s houses. There must be a greater purpose for me out there. But I’ve put off finding it, scared that my superiors will hurt me if I leave. Life as a reverse janitor demon is bleak.
I’ll hold you closer,
I won’t let go,
I won’t go forward.
I’m stuck.
Here,
now,
in this moment.
I’m losing you,
again,
forever.
They say it’s not my fault,
There was nothing I could have done,
But they don’t know,
The things I didn’t do,
The things I didn’t say,
The places I didn’t go.
Worse,
Still,
They don’t know what I did do.
I guess this is goodbye,
my friend,
and I suppose we won’t be seeing each other again,
So there’s not need for “until we meet again.”
You’ll move on,
you always do,
And I’ll stay here.
I struggle and struggle to be free of the body that confines me. I’m trapped in his nerves, the feeling of cold chains digging harshly into his wrists and ankles.
It’s futile. Somehow they’ve bound me to this boy. I wonder what he did, that they’d do this to him.
I check his soul, but he’s still in too much emotional distress to listen to me.
Bored out of my mind, I lap against the edges of my flesh prison as hours pass in the cold grey jail cell. I miss freedom, I miss flying through the sky unbound by the limitations of mortal flesh.
As the hours pass, I retreat to the darkness inside the body, wondering if I can make something malfunction so he dies and I go free. I feel bad for him, but I just want to get out of here.
“Am. Do you feel anything different?”
I come to the surface to see an older man with robotic eyes standing in front of me.
“It is with me,” Am says, focusing his attention on me.
“Good. Spirit, we need your help,” the man says, meeting Am’s eyes with his bright red mechanical ones.
Oooooooooo this is cool. I wanna see what happens next!
“If we make it out of this alive, you’re gonna kiss her, right?”
Jem blinked, staring up at his friend in confusion. “Wha- Who? Kip, I feel like we’ve talked about this…”
“That red head,” Kip answered. “The one who escaped.”
Jem rased an eyebrow. “You do realize we’re just friends, right?”
Kip nodded. “Oh, yeah, I know you’re ‘just friends’ and all, but you’re less ‘just friends’ than we are, Bud, and we’re less ‘just friends’ even than… Say… Ange and Shaneva.”
Jem froze in his steps and blinked several times before he managed to look over at Kip. “What…” He paused, just staring at the taller boy for a moment. “What do you mean by that?”
Kip waved his hand absently, hopping to his feet. “Oh, you know, you like her, she likes you, the whol-”
“Not that, Kip.” Jem shook his head, making a fist and resting it against the wall the way he always did when he was stressed. “The thing you said about you and me… What do you-” He stopped short when he glanced at Kip. His friend’s face was flushed and he’d looked away a bit.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “It’s nothing, just ignore it.”
Jem nodded slowly, turning his attention back to the wall. He knew there was a door in it somewhere, he just wasn’t sure where, and he wasn’t about to rule out the possibility it was in the ceiling or the floor. The wall itself, he took a moment to notice, was made of some kind of stone…
Cool to the touch, in fact… He might even go so far as to say it was cold. “Hey, Kip?” He said after a moment, fingering the smooth stone. “Where do you s’pose we are?”
“Skyrrii,” Kip answered without hesitation, then looked around. “Or… Maybe not?” He stood up, stepping over to Jem’s side. “Actually…” He ran his fingers along the stone like Jem had. “I don’t think we are…”
this feels like it’s from a bigger story, it makes me curious about their relationship and the wider world
There’s a rift between me and everyone in this town. The woman running the bakery was friendly when I bought a pasty, but there was a guarded look in her eyes.
One teenager asked me if I thought that masked singer who apparently held a show in the forest the other night might have been an angel like me, but despite her neutral life force I could tell she was scared of me.
As I walk down the street I see no sign of humans and demons not getting along, but most of them move to the other side of the path from me.
Perhaps a human disguise would do me more good here… but would they still recognize that I’m not from here? The ones with dark life force would be able to sense my barrier, definitely.
It is, yeah, or… It could be. I’m not entirely sure where’d I put it into the plot, though… Scene has potential tough, I like it. The whole story is a massive exploration of the world for me, basically, so it’s a lot of fun.
Oh
Hmmmm…
Intrigue…
People say a lot of things.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, for one.
Or here’s one: Time heals all wounds.
And maybe, for most people, those things might be true.
Maybe the first one is even for me.
And maybe the absence isn’t the problem.
Maybe it’s the presence. Don’t get me wrong, I love every second she’s with me, but every time I see her again, she leaves again. It cuts deeper every time.
it’s just a random worldbuilding rule- basically the dark and light lifeforces can sense each other in strong enough force, particularly when it’s in use as magic and not inside somebody. Dark lifeforce mostly belongs to demonic species, but humans/other species that usually have neutral lifeforce and rarely angels can have it too.
There are a lot of random worldbuilding stuffs around the magic system in that universe, which I’ve used most in daydreams and some flash fiction
A forest with no path,
stumbling dark eyed through nightmares,
trapped in a sea of wrath,
never crawl from here
A forest with no name,
stumbling empty soul
everything looks the same
crumbling empty soul
everything sounds the same
A soul with no purpose
trees with no focus
light is lost here
sleep is lost here
Yeah, I guess. I was thinking along the lines of child genius/psychopath, but supervillain works, too.
this is nice
this is cool. I wanna see what happens next!