Prompt: A sheep is tired of grazing around with his fellow sheep, and wants to become a rocket scientist and go to space.
The new grass was the old grass, and it was far worse than Rummy the sheep remembered. Back aboard the Poker station he’d been able to eat a hundred different things. The astronauts let him munch on grass from every one of their experiments and every one of the cultivars they had. Some of it was crummy, but much of it was transcendent. Continue reading
Prompt: There is a futuristic civilization with tiny people and a primitive collection of human-sized tribes
From the moment he was captured, the life of Second Housefly Admiral Narbin Deez had been nothing but iterations of rank darkness. He’d been plucked out of the wreckage of his ship and immediately dumped into a sweaty shirt pocket from which he could not clamber out. After that he’d been transferred into a sock with ten other prisoners, some of whom were not human. The praying mantis in the bunch certainly ate its fill.
Currently he was held, alone, inside a match box. He knew it was a matchbox because of that unmistakable smell of potential fire. They left him a solitary match as company, a thing as tall as him that he could barely wield even if given the opportunity. It was his first chance to reflect on the crash. Continue reading
Prompt: Gremlins vs. pixies causing chaos in the human world, which will gain dominance?
The idiotic human had no idea that he’d saved two lives by parking in the garage that day. It was the middle of winter: the worst season for the nature pixies generally. A few of them, however, specialized in manipulation of the wind and ice, and one of them, Hoarfrost, waited patiently outside that garage for her prey to emerge once more.
The human thought of himself as someone who appreciated nature, so he sat in his car with the garage door open, watching the snow fall and cover his driveway. He had a red crinkled bag of bacon-flavored potato puffs in his lap, and he chewed on them lazily while he stared out at the frigid street and the trees beyond. The engine still ran, keeping him nice and toasty. At some point the general toastiness overwhelmed him and he slipped into a nap, a potato puff half hanging out of his mouth. Continue reading
Prompt: Two brothers defend a dying kingdom.
The king was dead and the kingdom soon to follow. They followed as directly as possible, marching along the same path the king’s body had taken when carried through the fields of Tascott. His coffin was filled with red and purple silk, made from solid gold, and carried on supports of silver. A tenth of their wealth had gone into the ground with him.
The people of Varnhold had invested in their kings and queens for centuries. The crown’s success was theirs. The crown’s joy and sorrow were theirs as well. The birth of a prince was the swelling of familial pride all across the land, a swell with effects as positive as a bountiful harvest. Continue reading
Prompt: A man walks up to a shop girl and hands her a slip of waxed paper. It has the word ‘impermanence’ written on it.
The shop would close soon, evidenced most notably not by the switched-off lights, the calm music, or the closed sign itself, but by Buttercup’s yawning. She was a champion at it by now, after three years working the register at her mother’s shop. She could yawn like a hippo, loud enough to drive the last lingering scent-hounds out of the store.
The reason for calling them scent-hounds, as well as the excuse for her yawning, was in the nature of the shop itself. They sold candles. Oils. Incense. Extracts. Dried things in bundles from every continent that could grow sprigs or branches. They had all the positive smells in the world, but about seventy-three percent of them were relaxing. Every shift was a battle against fatigue, especially with the humming of the folk music in the background all day. Continue reading
Donut fired his weapon. Well, it wasn’t his weapon. None of this belonged to him, though it certainly felt like it did in the moment. It felt like it was his revolver, his badass vest and cowboy hat, and his actual wiry mustache. It took significant focus to remind himself that he couldn’t even grow a mustache reliably. It was more like trying to grow chia seeds in a sink drain.
Still, he felt masculine. The bullet, garlic-infused, left the gun and struck Strusse in the chest. He was a vampire at the moment, so he was forced to recoil in agony. Steam, rather pleasant-smelling steam, shot from his wound as he tripped over one of the giant noodles and sank into the spaghetti that Donut was also entangled in. Continue reading
Now you probably want to know when I lived, and you probably won’t listen when I tell you that it doesn’t matter at all. I know you’ll think me quaint anyway when I describe my family’s kitchen, which is the most relevant stage in my tale aside from the one other one.
You’ll judge me as soon as I tell you we didn’t have electric ovens or plastic stove tops. I did not even know what plastic was until after the events in question. In all honesty I would happily give that knowledge up for a handful of pleasant memories, seeing as plastic has been no help in the fields of meal-making. Continue reading
Humanity of all stripes was gathered around the giant monitor. It was an autumn day and they were sheltered from the biting wind as it crumbled leaves against the building’s glass wall. It was the Institute for Colonial Communication: a building that had been mostly without a purpose for close to a hundred years. Every so often workers would come in and update the equipment as technology progressed, and some of those workers, now quite aged, were there to see it take effect.
The colony ship had been launched one hundred and twenty years ago. Things went well on the journey, as well as anyone could hope hurtling through space at varying incomprehensible speeds. Communication was constant if uneven. Everyone knew it would end when they landed on GM1. Continue reading
They kept the Ricardos in absolute darkness in preparation for their appearance in the arena. They had to stand there, feet conforming to the neon footprints on the ground, and wait for the wall before them to rise. The whole family had been dragged into it: Mom, Dad, the teenagers Mark and Philippe, and little Selma who was just nine. Philippe was most familiar with this place; he’d seen it before, granted it was only in videos. He was surprised they didn’t snatch up their goldfish as well and put a stupid helmet and knee pads on it.
“Aaaaare we ready folks?” a voice asked through the wall, but it wasn’t asking the Ricardos. A crowd roared its approval, clapping their hands or slapping elongated balloons together. “Who wants to seeeee… some dirty laundry hung out to dry?” They roared again. “Let’s hope there isn’t any raaaaaaiiiiiiiiin!” The noise grew so loud that the Ricardos feared it would tear the wall down on its own. Continue reading
Pet Shop Campaign was getting to be a little long in the tooth. The video game was more than five years old at this point, and most augmented-reality-massively-multiplayer games died off in the first two. There was always something new to try that siphoned the public’s adrenaline drops. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 