He was excited to find 150 new emails in his inbox.

He was excited to find 150 new emails in his inbox.  And only 69 of them were spam!  Martin had never gotten so much attention before, so he plunged right in and started checking them.

The first one was asking about a school assignment.  Fair enough.  The second one was a student-wide email asking for people that wanted to go on the annual hike and cookout.  That sounded exciting.  Several more were asking where he bought his shirt, a few were reminders of weekly meetings on the hall and… a boy was asking him out to dinner?

Martin’s day was made.  Punching the air, he started taking things out of his storage trunk and seeing if he had anything good to wear out.  After finding a few things, he flopped on his bed, smiling.  He had a feeling he was going to like this college.

He didn’t want to go out on such a night, but…

He didn’t want to go out on such a night, but what else was there to do?  They were out of good firewood in the house and if they didn’t warm up soon, it would be an awful for his family.  Putting on his coat, Jack pulled it tight and opened up the door.  Immediately, he was greeted by torrents of rain splashing into his face a gust of wind that nearly threw him against the wall.

Pulling the door closed behind him with great effort, he walked up the stone steps to their garage.  His socks and pants were becoming icy cold as the storm drenched them, but he kept at it.  Once he got to the garage, the wind suddenly picked up and he was almost lifted off his feet.  But he grabbed the garage door and pulled it open, hanging on for dear life as the gale threated to carry him away.

The whole family had been cursed since…

“The whole family had been cursed since the last winter,” Old Hedgin said as she limped along behind Carlos.

“No kidding,” he said, paying mild attention to her.  It was starting to slow, though very lightly, and the shawl he was pulling tightly around himself wasn’t going to be much protection.

“Yes indeed,” she replied.  “So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from that girl on the hill!  Her curse will bring ruin upon you!  Understand?”

Carlos wanted to turn to Old Hedgin and say that who he spent his time with was none of her business, but thought better of it.  She was quite elderly, after all, and he wouldn’t likely here the end of it from his mother if he disrespected an old woman so.  Instead, he turned and said, “Look, I’d rather not discuss this.  The snow’s coming and we both need to get home before we freeze to death.”

What happened to 2015?

It's New Year's Day. You wake up to find it's 2016. What happened to 2015? Try to piece together 2015 using pictures from your phone or Facebook.

Where had the year gone?  There was no Rip Van Winkle beard across my chin, so I had clearly been

active.  But what had I done?  Why couldn’t I remember?

As with everything in the new millennium, the answer is social media.

Logging into my computer, I began to look scroll through my profile to see what had become of my

missing year.  Oddly enough, there were no Christmas pictures, which meant that I wasn’t conscious

or something really bad happened around then.  Once I reached the month of November, everything

became clear when I saw a mountain of condolence posts about my missing beloved.  Missing?

Not dead?  What was this?

I am delighted by...

I am delighted by the atmosphere that comes around every holiday season.  No matter what December holiday you celebrate, there’s always something magical about this time of year.  People seem friendlier, places seem more inviting, and sentiment hangs in the air like mistletoe.  In my house, we celebrate two holidays, so the air is like fusion cuisine over here.

Our Christmas tree sits right next to our couch, ready to bathe the evening in multicolored lights.  A little ways from it on the counter is the menorah, passed down from my mother and ready to wash the room in a different kind of light.  It’s almost poetic how these two symbols of very different cultures come together in harmony, perfectly encapsulating the best ideals of the season.

To be honest, I could get used to this kind of thing every December.

She clung on to the piece of driftwood, praying for daylight

She clung on to the piece of driftwood, praying for daylight.  The icy cold waters lapped against her fingers chilling them to the point of numbness.  But she dared not let go, for letting go would mean death in this frozen sea.  She was exhausted, having drifted for hours, but she knew that she couldn’t fall asleep.  Tonight, sleep meant death.

She didn’t have to look around to know that the ship was still sinking; she could still hear the large bubbles from the undertow gurgling loudly in her memory.  Onward she looked as the driftwood floated on, hopefully to some shore.  If she was lucky, she would float to Nova Scotia before day broke.  Then she could run to get help for her injuries and get treated for what had to be hypothermia setting in.

Just think of Canada and America, she thought…

I don’t know…

“I don’t know what you want from me!” Lawrence cried out as the masked men cuffed him to a radiator.

“Quiet,” one of them snapped as they started to go through his pockets and drawers.  “Boss Mackrel says that your money’s overdue.  Should have kept an eye on the calendar.”

“Boss… who?” he asked before getting a fist to the jaw and duct tape pressed over his mouth.

“Hey guys…” one of the masked men said, looking in an envelope on the table.  “I think this guy’s a dentist.”  They all stopped and looked over.  Then they looked back to Lawrence.

“You… are Lawrence Baker, right?”  Lawrence nodded weakly.  “The same Lawrence Baker that runs the horse racing track?”  He shook his head.

The asteroid was hurtling straight for Earth…

"The asteroid was hurtling straight for Earth…"
 
"Stop."
 
The  writer looked up from his notes, shocked by the abrupt interruption.   "But I haven't even gotten through my pitch yet," he said softly.
 
"I  don't need to hear anymore," the executive said.  "I can already hear  the beats in my head and I can tell that it's box office poison.  It'll  be like a zillion other movies that have already come out."
 
"But there's some clever writing in here..." the writer began, but the executive cut him off.
 
"The planet Earth busts all their resources to try and stop it, but they can't, right?"
 
"Well, yeah, but..."
 
"And in the end, it all comes down to one everyman to solve everything, right?"
 
"...yeah..."
 
"But  he's saddled by emotional baggage that keeps him grounded and relatable  and drives him to complete his possibly suicidal mission."
 
The writer didn't say anything.

braise, glutton, fourteenth

Once he had gotten through his fourteenth plate of succulent short ribs, Hal had officially been declared a glutton by the staff.  They didn’t even have time to braise another order of the ribs before he was calling for more.  He had already worked his way through a mountain of corn, once dripping with butter but redoced to nothing but cobb now.  The mashed potatoes, rife with garlic and rib dripping, had been polished off as well, along with the many artichokes bathed in the oily sauce that gave them just the right amount of salty flavor.

All of a sudden, as he was making his next order, Hal’s eyes bulged out and, after a moment of turning a vivid green, keeled over onto the floor, still as a scarecrow.  Everyone was in an uproar as the local doctor came over to him and looked him over, doing every test he could without a lab.  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it looks like the poor man has died.”

“Of a heart attack?” a scared customer asked.

“No,” the doctor replied.  “Of hunger.”

Tell a sci-fi story in six words

The sun died.  The crows woke.

Heaven, nuts, strawberry

There were many wonderful dishes at the party, but everyone agreed that the nuts and strawberries in cream dish was pure heaven.  Truly, this was the greatest get-together the noble house of Tethirim had ever thrown.  Everyone tired from their horse races could enjoy the deliciously tart citrus blend, ice cold and a perfect remedy for the summer heat.  Anyone who needed a quick snack could enjoy the miniature fish tarts or the crab puffs, fresh out of the oven on the hour.  And of course, who but the vegetarians could say no to the honey glazed roast ribs, dripping with a thick brown juice that tasted of the sweetest trees in the countryside.  But everyone was still in agreement: the nuts and strawberries in cream put them all to shame.

Write about a white coat with a stain on it

Except for that one stain, the lab coat was as white as snow.  Then again, considering that stain was a microorganism colony growing over time, it was reason enough for the coat to be quarantined.  Every now and then, when tours would be given of Ghienrick Labs, the tourists would be shown this lab coat behind a hermetically sealed glass case as a reminder to always handle lab equipment with care.

Of course, they glossed over the part saying that this entire thing was a freak accident that no one could have foreseen.  The test the scientists were running was supposed to be a simple chemical combination.  However, beyond anyone’s understanding, one of the compounds had fermented or mutated or something like that.  Thus, when the chemicals combined, the beakers containing them completely melted, some of the residue getting on one of the coats.

The night was dark and so still nothing seemed real.

“The night was dark and so still, nothing seemed real.”

“Already bored.”

“No, shut up and listen, dinkus.  I swear, there was something following me in the trees.  I don’t know how to describe it.  It was almost like a person-sized cat.”

“Sounds like a good description to me.  What’s your point?”

“Take the dicks out of your ears and I’ll tell you!  God!  Look, I had the feeling that I was being watched, but whenever I turned around, it just felt like there was a silhouette missing.  Like I knew where it should be, but it was just gone.”

“Oh shit…”

“What?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“When?”

“A long time ago.  And I know what it is.”

“What is it?”

“It’s your brain.  It’s been missing all your life and now it wants to come home.  OW!”

Write about the old woman whole lives in Apartment 567.

If you go up to the fifth floor of the old Birch Woods complex, you’ll find a plate of cookies waiting for you.  Eat one.  They’re always fresh.  Once you do, the door will open and the old woman who lives inside will invite you in for some tea and a chat.  Don’t worry about her, she’s harmless.  Her and her mechanical helpers.

She has an absolutely brilliant mind and would have done a lot of great things if it weren’t for her early crippling arthritis and rheumatism.  Luckily, before it got too bad, she managed to build one robot helper that would follow her directions and be her hands.  With it, she built more and even though she can’t move very comfortably, she has no trouble doing things or reaching out through the Internet.

Oh, the stories she has, from doing a video chat with Stephen Hawking to contributing to the particle accelerator.

“I wish I had a backup copy.”

“Oh no,” John said, staring at his laptop, now submerged in the rainwater.  A telltale spark told him that everything he had on there was gone, including his graduate thesis.  “Why, oh why, oh why did I not make a backup copy?!”

Yanking it out of the water, his mind went into overdrive.  Could Shirley fix this somehow?  Or maybe there was some kind of specialist in town.  He bolted forward toward the nearby crosswalk, refusing to believe that his future would be destroyed just like that.

It took him fifteen minutes of running, but he had finally gotten to Shirley’s house.  Her boyfriend had let him in when he knocked, saying she wasn’t home from class yet.  The wait made John all the more nervous, sometime slipping into quiet prayers to try and secure some kind of goodwill.  When she finally got home, he told her everything.

After he finished, Shirley just massaged her temple in silence for a moment.  Finally, she spoke.  “Look, I may be good with computer engineering, but…”

Making a monster

"If you could create your very own monster, what would it look like? What would it be called? What types of things would it do to scare people? Where does the monster live? Tell me everything there is to know about your monster."

The monster that comes to my mind is a short cretin called the Angler Man.  He lives in deep forests and looks like a very diminutive traveler, at least on the fog-filled nights when he comes walking.  He is never seen without his lantern, which he waves as a method to beckon lost travelers to come and follow him.  But those who follow him are doomed, for he leads them back to a shack with warm light that turns out to be an eternal trap.  Those who go inside are dragged into the cellar by the Angler Man, where he steals their breath and voice to lure their loved ones to his hideaway.

No one knows what happens to the people trapped below, for none have ever escaped.  And yes, it may seem like an easy thing to avoid remote shacks, but it is said that the light is hypnotic and impossible to break away from.

 

Designing a haunted house

"If you could design a haunted house, what would you name it? What types of rooms would you have? Describe, in detail, 3 of the best rooms in your haunted house."

Were I to design a haunted house, I would call it the Old Cronos Place.  Each room would be themed after a different time period and would transition from one to the other with surreal seamlessness.  I can imagine a lot of rooms would be good, but my three favorites would be unique and memorable.  The first favorite would be the Fallout Cellar, taking people into the basement into a world of Cold War paranoia, complete with radioactive glows and Communist zombies.  The second would be the Plague Room, where rats would hang from the ceilings and people in doctor masks would stalk ominously around and condemn people as being infected.  Finally, the third would be the Grand Battlefield, converting the entire backyard into one massive warzone where ghostly soldiers from every war would stare eerily at all the patrons.

When visiting Cuba, a strange event occurs…

Everyone just stopped.  Not “stood still,” but literally froze in place.

It was the hottest and busiest day of the summer, citizens and tourists alike rushing to get somewhere, some were climbing into cabs and trucks while others were reading and talking.  And then, without warning, the entire crowd froze in place, some in midair or midblink.  Even when the wind blew through, their hair didn’t move an inch.

And then, the strange figure came lopping out through the crowd.  It wasn’t very human-shaped nor did it even have feet, but it did have some form of head and eyes under its brown garments that draped over its morphing form.  It slid through the crowd for frozen faces and began looking at each one as if searching.

The shine of water

The shine of water from the creek made the light on the redwood trees dance near the campgrounds.  This, combined with the birds warbling at their loudest, gave Stephanie a clear signal that it was time to get up.  Stretching out, she shook out her limbs to get some motion and activity into them before getting on her jeans and her loose fitting flannel and stepping outside.

Maria and Toby had already gotten up, now prodding and poking the logs in the fire pit to try and kick start the fire.  She gave them a friendly wave before going over to their gas stove and starting the kettle.  Today was a hot chocolate morning.  As she waited for the water to heat up, she noticed someone staring at the campsite on the other side of the bushes from hers, completely obscured by a wall of brambles and trees.

She thought the shields looked like giant nipples

“I’m just saying,” Amy said, “those shields look like enormous nipples.  I wonder if they were prepping to fight an army of babies.”  She let out a snort at her own joke.

                  

Graham, meanwhile, was not amused.  He didn’t even look around to see if the other museum patrons were staring at them.  “Why do you have to be so crude?”

“Gee, I dunno,” she replied, the grin disappearing from her face.  “Why do you have to be so uptight?”

“I am not uptight,” he said through gritted teeth.  “I just don’t think that this place of history is the right time for lowest common denominator humor.”

“Lowest common denominator!?” she shouted, drawing heads their way.  “Is that what you think of me!?  Look, I’m sorry if the things that randomly pop into my brain aren’t the stuff of Socrates, but don’t you dare treat me like I play to the Adam Sandler crowd!”

“I’d really rather not do this…”  He started to turn away.

Photographs shape public opinion

A picture’s worth a thousand words.  Everybody knows that.  But there are times when a single picture can be a shot heard around the fucking world.  One snap of a politician getting into a car with a hooker or someone cheating on their significant other at a party, and suddenly the public’s view is shattered.  Their faith takes a gut punch if they liked the guy.  And more often than not, everyone descends on the person like scavengers ready to pick their flesh off while their down.

It’s how tabloids try to make their money, by putting a suggestive picture with a headline meant to shock people.  But here’s the thing, those vague photos are nothing compared to the smoking gun picture.  It doesn’t even come close.  Sure, there are some sheeple who will buy into those tabloids, just like there are people on the Internet who insist with all their heart that the moon landing was faked.

Smoking

“Jesus H. Fuck!!”

Black fumes billowed out from under the truck’s hood, causing will to fall back and nearly hack up his lungs.  The smoke kept rising in upward torrents and the machine part hissed so fiercely, he could swear that a batch of snakes started mating in there.  Will, his lungs clear, rose to see if anything was visible in his engine compartment.  No such luck.  The smoke showed no sigh of clearing and blocked whatever problem it was from view.

A car honked loudly as it swerved around the truck and Will had to fight back every urge to flip them off.  He didn’t ask to break down right in the middle of the roadway and whatever the problem was made it really hard to push the thing to the side of the road.