Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

🆕 New Here? ✏ Writing Help? 📢 News 💬 Discord

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

"Where are we going? I'm quite happy where I am and I haven't done anything wrong.", I said, annoyed by the suit and the two goons that had showed up on my doorstep.

"You can do this the easy way or the hard way Mr Yibblibobbly".

"For the third time, that is not my name. I am James Kowalski".

"Brrraaapp! Listen to the sanity on this one!".

The suit started hopping on one leg and the goons followed, guffawing like demented gorilla amputees.

"Come with us Mr babbly Bibby, there are plenty of comfy chairs in the sane asylum!", the suit screeched, eyes rolling. Without warning, one of his hoodlums jumped me and I was forcibly dragged into the back of the windowless van, the door slammed behind. Inside was a hot tub lit in lurid neon green lighting, filled with purple foam and containing a rubber duck. I was fully clothed and hence soaked.

I sat up inside the tub and held on for dear life as the van screeched off and veered across the road while the suit and his goons honked the horn and sang sea shanties loudly and raucously. The journey lasted around an hour but i wasn't sure as they had confiscated my phone and watch. Most of the foam from the hot tub was emptied due to the erratic driving by the time we arrived at the destination.

The doors were opened and I slid out onto the grass in a pool of purple foam, dazzled by the bright light of the sun. "Where are we?" I moaned, nursing my bruises from the hellish journey.

"Why it's Snoop Dog's house of course! He's the most sane person alive! YARRRRRRP".

With that I was hoisted over the wall and rudely dumped onto the grass. The goons and the suit could be heard howling like dogs as they drove rapidly away. Snoop Dog was there on the lawn waiting for me with a cup of tea and a scone.

I should've known my activism would lead me to this point.

It was common sense that the president wasn't a magic wizard whose powers just happened to be undetectable. Who even started such a ridiculous rumor?

It started off as a joke. "I should be president because I can make the sun go dark," he'd declared at the start of his campaign. The next day was a solar eclipse. Most people took it as a regular joke, but there were some people who thought he was serious. Surely, he'd mentioned that at his next speech: "My first act as president will be to make our education system better."

But then, he rolled with it. His supporters thought he was some sort of god. Over an eclipse! My friends and I laughed about it for weeks.

"With my weather powers, I will make it rain tomorrow!" he said the next week. He was in Seattle in the middle of winter, and the meteorologists were already confident on the rain. Somehow, more people started to accept him as a wizard.

I felt like I was losing my mind, but it was actually all of society who were. Slowly, more and more people started to accept him as their new wizard-god-overlord-president. Over the course of three years, it became a social pariah to mention that you didn't believe him. Even my friends, the ones who had laughed with me over the eclipse incident, would scoff if I tried to mention how ridiculous it was.

The only place to go was the internet. And sure, I wasn't too careful about it, but it was still a free country for the moment.

Then, one day, I came home from work to find all my friends and family sitting in my living room. I immediately regretted giving my mother a spare key. "Come, sit," she said, already teary-eyed.

"What?" I gave a weird smile as I sat down on my couch in between my parents. "What's going on?"

"We've found your online blog," my father said.

"What, the one about the president?" I rolled my eyes. "It doesn't say anything too bad."

"This is clearly unhealthy," my father continued. "There is so much evidence that President Isaac is a god."

My jaw dropped open. "Are you serious? There is no proof."

"We've already contacted a mental hospital. This is for your own good, Katie."

"You're insane," I snapped as I tried to book it to the front door. Instead, I was met with the buffest men I had ever seen, who put me in handcuffs and threw me into the back of a creepy white van.

Two hours later, and I was finally dragged out and into the hospital. It looked like it was from every horror movie about asylums I had ever seen. Standing there was a woman with impeccable posture and the tightest bun I had ever seen.

"Welcome to Avondale," she said.

"What's Avondale?"

She smiled. "Your grip on reality is too strong for this society. Welcome to the Sane Asylum."

My new life at the Sane Asylum isn't so bad.

The staff has been ordered to keep my mask on at all times that I am outside of my soundproof dorm. Due to my toxic influence of stupidity whenever I opened my mouth to ask a question, the doctors and nurses were ordered to never try and communicate with me, to only give short, simple, easy-to-understand commands when they have to. They kept their distance, but that didn't mean I'm left all alone.

The head counselor put me in a full dorm with three other guys. None of them were particularly bright to begin with, but that's the company I've always ran with. I guess that was good thinking on their part. I don't want to make anyone whose already in this tough situation get themselves even worse off for coming here.

All the residents here have got something particular to their conditions. I've got my brain-shrinking bad breathe. My bunk mate's got a forehead that displays his inner thoughts. My best friend in the dorm's got a thing where he's constantly making the left switch with the right, right with the left, the whole surrounding universe flip back and forth, which gets very confusing when we're trying to straighten out whose bunk is whose. And his bunk mate does this thing where he burns in the sunlight. That's it, thought. No other vampirish characteristics. He just melts in the sun.

No one here gets especially bitter or angry at our situation. We know it's technically an asylum, but we've all still got our heads on right, so no one's trying to put us in diapers or spooning tapioca into our mouths. It feels kinda like an eternal summer camp, where the state pays for our toys and we don't have to worry about earning a living.

I don't mind being the smartest person in the room anymore, even though I have no choice.

[deleted]

The fervent cries of religious ecstasy hung on the night air like dewed cobwebs. Entrapping. Utter rapture. All false.

That did not stop the torrent of sound, crashing down upon you like dark waves at high tide, threatening your sanity. Ironically, this was the reason you were bound at the wrists, listening to the preachings of the hooded figure before you.

“You have been sentenced,” he states simply. The court of lies was quick to pass its judgement - “to rehabilitation in the Asylum until you are deemed worthy to continue our work in spreading Her word.”

The priest leans down, his rank breath and mottled hood tickling at your face. His blackened teeth glisten in the firelight as a tongue slithers past, grinning.

“You are starting to see things for what they truly are. Only the chosen. Only the righteous who are steadfast to Her mission should be allowed that honor,” he whispers. Rising jeers at his back would have ensured that this was not heard, regardless.

A quick motion of the hand and you were dragged to your feet. His lean straightened; the priest turns to the crowd that had gathered to watch your sentencing with hungry eyes. Bloodshot eyes that almost glow red in the covering darkness. The voices that carried were not the ones that belonged to them, rather, the ones that came from the flickering orange of the burning village.

Could they not see?

“Her kindness. The favors that She bestows upon us. Her eternal, everlasting love is wasted upon this… wretch,” he says, voice carrying with the weight of an executioner’s axe. “Stripped of name and title, the Asylum will make right.”

The practiced arms, locked tight around your own, move you forward. They belonged to towering men, steadfast in their belief. They knew Her will and they knew when the priest was finished all too well. Dragging you forward through the throng, you are able to take in the truth. Clothes that were little more than rags hung on skeletal bodies, worn like well-tailored garments by those who could not see. Beautiful faces, gaunt and smeared with blood like tainted make-up, shone in the light revealing what they were. You knew and they did not.

The village that loomed in the darkness grows as you enter, walking along with legs that wanted to turn into jam. The fires that burned in the distance roar like beasts now, the heat causing you to sweat. Was it the heat that caused that? People that are not the denizens of this place watch you like beasts themselves. Bodies strewn throughout the streets are kicked aside by your entourage, offal spreading across the ground in a fresh glaze.

A man standing too close to a broken window, a charred corpse hanging out of it desperate to escape the fire, is licked by the flames. His shirt smolders, having burnt out on its own before arriving, exposing an arm and shoulder blistering and crackling as he shifts. Blood streams down to his elbow, sizzling and evaporating. The smell of burning flesh and blood turning to steam causes you to turn your head away and hold your breath.

You turn your head to face a family watching you. They coldly condemn you. You, the heretic.

Their young daughter, having learned from her parents and the surrounding members of the community, does the same. In her hand hanging limply is her doll. The severed hand and forearm of a missing body. She squeezes it tighter and brings it up to her chest, the bloody sinew and tendons adding another layer to her sullied dress.

“You don’t deserve Her!” she shouts at you.

Could they not see? You do not want Her. This dark god. This god of madness.

You are helpless. Your mouth is both dry and wet with the threat of vomit at the same time. You cannot speak a word against the atrocity of this place. To defend yourself against the words of a child. No one could see but you. The way that your group had descended upon this village that stood no chance against Her flock. Ripped from beds. Butchered alive. The village refused to answer Her call. Now they answer to nothing.

A babe, cradled by its mother, bounces gently as you pass. The mother’s eyes stare at you in disgust. How dare you question the gifts of your god. Flies swooped around the baby, landing on its face. Crawling. Entering. Exiting.

Your stomach tightens, bile teasing the back of your throat. She looks away from you to coo at her infant, her hum tickling the layer of flies, causing them to lift and begin their cycle of flight and landing again. The gray face looks up to the sky, holes where the insects nested never questioning.

“They will make the wretch right again,” she reassuring her child, loud enough for you to hear.

The burly men half carry you at this point, your legs giving way and feet bumping helplessly along the cobbled ground. You cannot help but look up at them, surely you are not the one who is mad amongst this mob.

The one to your left, closest to the repugnant mother, nods to her. “Your babe will grow up strong and help us stand against the ones who reject Her.”

No. You are not mad. You reassure yourself, almost like a mantra. You will get out of this. You will get help.

As if reading your mind, the guard that spoke looks down at you with cold eyes. “This one will get all the help that’s needed.”

Do you think it's easy to build an entire world out of words?

J.R.R. Tolkien spent years and years building Middle Earth, He put a part of his soul into the world, figuratively and literally.

And yet, with all of the work put into it, the stories of that world and the cursed piece of jewelry have plot holes, why didn't the eagles just carry them up the mountain? Why didn't Legolas, with all his perfect aim, just tie the damn ring to an arrow and fire it off into the volcano? Why didn't Gandalf just give Pippin a gun?

So, if Tolkien couldn't fix every little plot hole with his many years of work, How could some random guy writing short stories for an internet forum scrub all of his plot holes out between college classes?

I certainly believe that's not entirely possible, in fact I know it's not entirely possible, a short story like that, created just for the eyes of a few internet denizens, is going to be more hole than story if you attempt to imagine a full picture of the world these people live in.

So, I'll ask you, what do you think happens when a character written to be a perfect logician uses their perfect logic to find one of those plot holes in their own story?

You get the author's will home for the comically sane, where logical folks who have pieced together that they're in a book go to wait out the plot.

After all, the writer doesn't really care what happens after the story ends, none of that will be written out and shown, I just have to wait here until my friend Travells finishes his case with the pun loving opossum, then his story is considered over, and I get to go wander the little world that the writer has assembled.

How did I end up here? Well, despite the fact that I live in a world with magic, I pieced it together from something incredibly mundane. One morning I went to the grocery store and bought a pound of peaches. On the way home It occurred to me that I didn't know of anywhere that could grow peaches and ship them here, fresh, in the middle of January. So, I googled where the brand imported their peaches from and was met with a blank page. Like any curious intellectual, I went directly to the fruit company to ask, when I entered the building I was met with the writer eating peaches in an empty void.

Yeah, I know it's an existential crisis and a half, but it is what it is.

Now, if you excuse me I'm going to take advantage of the fact that my roommates are all exceptionally smart, I haven't had a challenging chess match in ages.

I will not describe the chess match as the writer does not know how professional chess works.

(Yes I know that there are reasons they didn't just have the eagles carry them, unfortunately I can't actually think of that many plot holes in the Lord of the rings.)

[removed]

[Poem]

Abandoned by the world,

My life soon unfurled,

The diagnosis arrived...

Crippling sanity, and a touch of apathy.

Left with little,

In a small sanitarium.

Monotony multiplies in my morose mind,

The ceiling is textured,

A strange pattern indeed.

This page is my sole solace.