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…”