Down the rabbit hole.

Down, down the rabbit hole the warrior mice went.  Their paws never moved away from their tiny swords, for they didn’t know what horrors waited for them, but they knew they weren’t rabbits.  Something foul had moved into the warren, scaring off the rabbits and forcing them to run to the mice for help.  And so it was that the Gouda Guard was assembled and sent down, down the rabbit hole.

Commander Fenniwick was prone to nervousness, making him an odd choice for a commander, but he pressed forward with his jaw set tight.  The men and women of the Gouda Guard looked to him for support and assurance, so he would not show a cowardly face to them.  And he didn’t.  At least, not until he slipped on a big black something and let out a frightened squeak.

The others came over to him to help him up, not wanting to leave the commander sitting in the mud.  As they pulled him upright, they noticed that the big black something was, in fact, a huge feather.

Turtle love

“‘Turtle Love…’”  Sergeant Silver scratched his head as he looked at the woman’s resume.  “You mind telling me about that job?”

“I help make and distribute handcrafted jewelry,” the woman named Joy said, looking nervously around the interrogation room.  “It’s an online business, so you won’t find any branches in a mall.”

“And would you be able to remember a piece of jewelry that you made?” the detective inquired.

“Certainly,” Joy replied proudly.  “I means, if I went back several years, it might get tricky.”

“Then maybe you can tell us about this.”  Sergeant Silver dropped an emerald ring in front of her, which she immediately started to examine.

Describe the last time you laughed so hard you cried.

Let me tell you about the time I laughed so hard that I actually cried…

This was a while ago, before I finished my college education at Santa Cruz.  During one of my breaks, I was down in San Diego with my family and we decided to go to a theater production where a friend of my brother’s was acting.  The play was called Noises Off and it was being held at a community theater in Old Town.  I had no idea what to expect, so I sat down and prepared myself for anything.

I could not have prepared myself for this.

The play was hysterical!  I think I actually had some of my neighbors complaining because I was laughing throughout the entire third act.  The basic premise was that the people in the play… were putting on a play.  Each act showed a different aspect: the first was a disastrous rehearsal, the second took place backstage during opening night, and the third showed a weary and broken cast going through the motions with everything going wrong around them.

"I have something to tell you..."

“Johnny…” the old woman said, wheezing for breath, “...I have something to tell you.”

“What is it, Mom?” Johnny said, leaning toward his mother’s frail form.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t tell you sooner…” she struggled to stay awake as the light started to fade from her eyes.  “But… you have… a brother…”

Johnny’s jaw hit the floor.  “...What?” he stammered.  “I had a brother this whole time?  Why didn’t you say anything?!  Does Dad know?”

“...j-jacket… pocket…” his mother whispered, before closing her eyes one final time and passing away.

Barely registering the shock of her death, he rushed over to her jacket on the chair and scrambled through the pockets.  After three tries, he found a letter with a simple message on it.

“Johnny, you should know that you don’t actually have a long lost brother.  I just wanted to see the look on your face when you thought you did.  I imagine it was a lot like that of your father and I when you faked your kidnapping five years ago to try and get ransom money from us.  See you at the funeral.  Love, Mom.”

Snow

There is nothing as pure as freshly fallen snow, hence why in some cultures it is a sign of death.  The tribes to the south see it as the frozen tears of the Guardians that weap for a fallen innocent, while the witches of the west see it as a sign that a pure soul has entered the beyond, their radiant goodness falling from the sky.  Blizzards are a little more complicated in the witches’ eyes, as you can imagine; for how can so many innocents die at once to provide such a downpour?

Myself, I believe that the snow belies both death and rebirth.  In a way, it is the world going to sleep to renew itself.

The last piece of the pie

The last piece of the pie, sitting in its tin tray or pyrex pan, always represents a bit of sadness that is to come.  For you see, there is never enough pie.  Now some cake enthusiasts would argue that the last slice of cake has the same problem, but cake is a filling beast, much like the bread it is based on, and leads to bloating and overstuffing.  Pie… pie is something special.  From the golden flakey crust to the smooth, sweet filling, there’s something about it that simply makes magic.

But back to that last slice, there really is something melancholic about it.  Once you finish it, it’s gone and you’ll have to wait for the next party or baking run to make another.  I suppose you could eat pie every week, but that would make it rather hard to get out the door, now wouldn’t it?

Write about running away from something or someone

The only sound that my mind even processed hearing was the repeating thud of my feet hitting the ground as I sprinted away.  My calves were burning and felt full of hot needles.  My shins felt like they were coming off of my bones.  My sides felt like they would come undone and spill me all over the ground.  But I didn’t stop.  I needed to keep running… needed to get away…

My foot caught something and I found myself sprawled over the ground.  The world spun before my eyes as I tried to stand upright, the dirt giving way under my feet.  But my body slumped again and my muscles sagged as it all hit me.  She had died and nothing could change that.

There was no running from grief.

In a paragraph, describe the setting for a love scene.

Picture a beautiful garden behind some sort of museum or national landmark.  Rich, exotic flowers blossom and cover the entire area in colors and shapes unimagined by the average man.  Now picture that the garden overlooks a canyon, splendent in earthy colors like browns and greens of varying hues.  Amidst this garden and its rows of perfect flora sits a bench, perfectly positioned by the cliffside so that all one would have to do is turn their head to place the beauties of both locals side by side.  That, I think, is quite the scene for love to bloom.

They found his diary under his bed

The two detectives found his diary under his bed.  Unfortunately, their hopes of finding a clue to the location of young Henry MacAilis were immediately dashed upon opening the book.  Inside, all they found were drawings of eyeballs, circles, and what could only be described as crazed writings alluding to a great one coming from the deep.  Sometimes it wasn’t even coherent; what might begin as a well-structured sentence could devolve into a random string of letters and numbers that no sane human could pronounce.

“What do you think, Joe?” Martin said.  “I’m thinking this looks less like a kidnapping and more of a runaway.”

“Maybe…” the other detective said, looking unsure.  “But if that’s the case, who does this blood on the desk belong to?”

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.