Writing Prompt of the Week: May 22-28 (Fantasy & Sci-Fi (Speculative Fiction))

[Wisp]

Welcome to the 49th Writing Prompt of the Week!

---

GUIDELINES:

For a refresher on the guidelines, see this topic here:

Writing Prompt of the Week Guidelines

[Review Badge_Legendary-icon] Writing Prompt of the Week Guidelines Once a week, we will post a new topic with a prompt. Here’s how it works: TIMELINE: Prompts are posted on Mondays at 12am CST. You have until Friday at 11:59pm CST to post a submission. Then, the post closes and the weekend is reserved SOLELY for voting. Winners are announced and badges awarded sometime the following Monday. [Review Badge_Legendary-icon]VOTING: Please use the icon to vote…

DISCUSSION:

The chat feature will be enabled for the category (not individual topics). Please keep any extraneous conversation about the prompt, submissions, etc in the chat channel. We’d like to keep the topics clean and for submissions ONLY.

If you’ve got more questions, please ask in the Writing Prompts chat channel (tag CJ or the mods).

---

Week of May 22-28
Submissions: May 22-26
Voting: May 27-28
Winner Badge Awarded: May 29

---

Fantasy & Sci-Fi

Fantasy and Sci-Fi encompasses the broad genres, from paranormal to space opera to high fantasy to aliens. All things fantastical, magical, futuristic and paranormal are allowed in these prompts. There should be at least one of these elements in your submission.

---

This Week’s Prompt

You can taste lies. One day you’re comforting your best friend after a tough day and almost vomit at the foul taste the words bring—“After all, you’re only human.”

[leighyeann]

(Should’ve written it last week… But here it is)

I hate having to cheer other people up. I'm simply not good at it. Every time, I embarrass myself and spew irrelevant sh1t. Still, I do it because I care about my friends.

This time, of course, is no exception. Ashlee cries her eyes out over losing her job for the third time in a year. She has never been good at keeping jobs, but this has to be the craziest dismissal she’s ever faced. For the first time, she finally found something that would be good for yet… Yet, it slipped off her fingers.

She sobs. “I don’t know why Francis let go of me. I thought he’d be satisfied with my job. I suspect he let go of me so that he could promote his stupid girlfriend!” At first, I’d dismiss this reasoning as bullsh1t. However, Ashlee does have a point. Her ex boss, from what I gathered from her stories, has a history of favoritism towards his close knit circle.

“I wish I could put that 4ssh0le in his place! Like, for example, hurl him to the Moon and beyond.” To Ashlee, it’s merely a joke. It isn’t, though. I could literally destroy that jerk with my bare hands if I want; yet, no-one knows.

“It’s not like you can do that, Mia. After all, you’re only a human.” I feel like throwing up. Ashlee is lying. One of my hidden “powers” is that I can detect lies by taste. The nastier the lie is, the worse it tastes. This one has to be the worst I’ve heard in, like, five years.

I vomit, drenching poor Ashlee with the disgusting, slimey reflux. She recoils, but doesn’t seem to be disgruntled at me over that.

Where do I come from? Why do I have these powers? Do I know anything from my past? The only thing I’m certain of right now is that I owe Ashlee an apology for staining her dress with puke—and a cup of tea.