Cracks ran deep into the pavement, a microcosmic representation of our shattered world. The children didn't seem to mind, running to and fro among the twisted metal of rusted cars, gleefully playing as I gently steered them away from potential harm. I often thought that they would never know what the world of my youth was like, know what comforts we had and neglected to be grateful for. They had never turned on a light, played a Playstation, or scrolled a phone, and for as long as this endless war continued, they never would. My hope, my final hope, was that one day I could convince their parents that they were fighting for nothing.

The dilapidated remains of the city were in the distance, the lair of the enemy that rained bombs down on our hills. There were no sirens to let us know when they might strike, our only protection was to know what they would target. It was never the road. Here, among the remains of the cars, we were safe. This is where I met with the children each day, to give them whatever lessons I could impart, doing so without books or pens, and oftentimes under the weather. Some days, we were forced to learn in the remains of a charter bus. The children didn't mind. Again, they never knew what luxury was.

Comfort wasn't the priority of our leaders, as adamant about taking the city now as they had been decades ago when the civil war began. Whatever precious resources we had were funneled into the war effort, including many of the lives I had looked after in my years. Many of them I never saw again after the day I bid them a tearful goodbye. I often wondered how our leaders could be so stupid to lose their own children to the conflict, but then I was reminded that they hardly did anything smart. A body was a body in their eyes, whether it was their own or someone else's. It seemed that nothing I said or did could put a drop of heart into them, to tear them from their wretched greed. Sometimes I would tell them that we could run, go far away, and build a society based upon our own values under our own banner. Then they would tell me that the city was theirs and that they had to have it back.

Such was war.

The skies turned a deep gray, promising a thunderstorm. I huddled the children together and directed them toward the bus. We were almost to the sunken vehicle with its tires long gone when I noticed some kind of commotion down in the valley. Wishing I had binoculars I squinted to try to make out what was happening, seeing what looked to be a mob of people in body armor. They were coming towards us, faster than I would have liked. I turned back and told the children to run to their homes.

As the mob got closer my heart sank, as they were beyond a shadow of a doubt the enemy. I debated running but thought of the children. If just one of them were to perish I could never forgive myself. No, I needed to stay and try to buy time for them to get to safety. I gulped as I started to feel terror. Death was perhaps the best outcome of this encounter.

I stood in plain sight so that the enemy would see me when they reached the road. Rifles were drawn and pointed at me right away, and they told me to get down on my knees. A man with thick tanned skin and a motley head of blonde hair came forward and introduced himself as Lieutenant Seargeant Abrahms. He asked me if I was one of the usurpers, to which I replied I was. No sense in lying about what was already obvious from where I was and how I was dressed. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was foraging, to which he laughed.

"We know you're looking after kids up here. We've been watching you for a while. Now, we're not interested in killing kids, but you gotta tell me where your leaders are. 'Cause it's about time we put this thing to bed. Ya know?"

It occurred to me that something bad must have happened because these soldiers should have never been able to get here. I wondered if our front line had somehow fallen through or if we had been compromised in some way. Perhaps, we had finally lost the war. I said nothing, loyal to my cause and my banner, unwilling to give the enemy even a shred of information, knowing that every moment I stood there was another moment the kids had to get home to their parents, and hopefully get them to send some help.

"So it's gonna be like that, huh?" Abrahms said as he gave me a hard slap to the face. Tears came to my eyes as I struggled to recoil from the blow.

At once I understood why the leaders were so unwilling to give this conflict up. I had been shaded from the worst of the war, having had nobody to lose. They had been hurt in a multitude of ways and had the lives of loved ones taken from them. Many had died themselves.

I didn't have much longer to think, as I heard a bang before Abrahms fell forward. I looked back for a moment and briefly saw the face of one of my children looking down before he hid behind a rock.

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

This time it had to work. It couldn't be like that time the duct tape broke in the torture chamber, releasing the bar that kept Doctor KingKitty from morphing into her feline form and escaping. Or like the time my blaster cannon had no ammo while I finally had WhipWorm in the scope. And most certainly never like the time when I had all of the CloudWing crew trapped in a bus and hanging off the cliffside, and instead of using my extender arm to push it off, I activated the grapple instead.

The CloudWingers had to be stopped at any cost.

Ash stung my nostrils as I prowled about the ruins of my 6-12 convenience store, a business that had nothing to do with CloudWing and which they untargeted with contemptuous unfairness in an act that could be described as villainous. I'm supposed to be the villain. I had ignored them for too long, allowing them to go about telling the tallest of tales and exaggerations about their minuscule superpowers while I focused too much on the project. Oh me.

It hadn't been all that difficult to get them all on that bus. They weren't exactly the brightest superheroes ever, usually gullibly falling into whatever trap suited their fancy the most. KingKitty was had with merely a piece of catnip. WhipWorm just wanted to hide and slithered right in. MellowSnow hated heat and was forced on with nothing more than a cigarette lighter. Then the leader, the pathetic RiverRaven, was so full of their own appetite that a squirrel carcass had brought the bird faster than I could count to ten.

If only I had finished them then.

No point in crying over past opportunities. I looked over at the automorpher with glee. If only I had it complete... It would be the most perfect way to dispose of them. Plants, reduced to nothing more than ordinary garden weeds. Then, onto the rest of the superheroes. Yes, yes. I could plant them in a garden. So much fun.

I licked my lips. Time to go to work.

-----------

I couldn't help but let out a smile directed at nothing as I watched all of them get into the back of the brown van, the automorpher pointed out the window at it. This was going to be all too easy... They had fallen for the same traps that I had laid out the last time! Oh me.

Once all four were inside I called down to the security guard whom I'd paid a handsome sum and he shut the door. At once I charged the automorpher and pulled the trigger, expecting a cathartic blast of energy to rush into the van.

What came out instead was... a wisp of smoke?

That's when the gun started to feel hot. Not just hot like it'd been warmed by the sun on an afternoon, or hot like a cell phone gets when its overused. Boiling hot, enough that I was forced to drop it.

Of course, when it hit the ground a blast of energy finally did come out of it, directed at me. It didn't kill me, instead giving me these stupid petals around my face so I look like a sunflower. A loser.

<pouts>

----------------

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

"It's the woman in front of the ice cream shop. The dress. It changes colors in a pattern," Xharmonica panted, his hands on his kneepads.

"You're outta your mind. Just an excuse for losing, again." I said, the thrill of victory in our latest skirmish like a burst of helium carrying my mind skyward.

"But hear me out. It's not the only thing. I've found that no matter how long I talk to the butcher I can't get him to use the word 'machete.' He always defers to 'axe.' An axe is not a machete. Let's not talk about the performance of my Xrang, which seems to always be the same regardless of how poorly I throw it. How?"

"Weaksauce. I'm gonna put you away forever."

"Just listen! Ok, this is not crazy. How long have we known each other?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I. We have these battles, and they're always new and interesting, but the outcome is always the same. One of us wins and we come back to do it tomorrow. And no matter what, when we try to kill each other, we can't."

"It's only a matter of time X, you're going down."

"That's just it. You haven't ever put me down, and the few times you were close, I always found some stupid way to come back. It just doesn't make any sense."

I had to admit that he was right deep inside, but I would never give him the credit. "Ok, X, if you really think this, then lay down-

System: scrub and prepare episode. Add teaser: "Loopshock and Xharmonica battle over the fourth powerstone in this episode of Pan's Last Great Hero."

System: ship to TV providers.

-------------------------

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

To a future Markson of Bonham Secondary School,

I know not what to write for this memory box, and who knows if anyone will read it. It is a needless effort, a waste of time put forth by professor Ford such that our interest will be more captivated by it than the yearly rituals. It will not accomplish anything more than humor, as we made great fun of it during the fifth period. We will still be raising student undergarments up the pole, as is our honored tradition.

Perhaps one of my children, grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren will be purview to this letter, and this is addressed to them. You come from a good womb, and I wish upon you the same success in your pursuits as my dearest father, who took our family from the dirty streets of Philadelphia to our most esteemed standing. May you be spared the smallpox, which came unexpectedly, the first cases in over fifteen years. Many passed, including a few I held as close friends. Rest in peace William and Simon, your memory will pass unto eternity in this ink, your spirit stronger than the flesh.

My hand is tired, and the weather has finally turned nice, so I am off to play baseball.

Most sincerely,

Milton Markson

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grade: E

I most suspect that you didn't think I'd be grading this. Mocking me and suggesting that you will submit to such foolish activities as raising private garments up the flagpole is grounds for flunking. Your future family will certainly see what a dunce you could be.

-Ford

--------------------

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

This... made my day.

I LOVE this! I had no idea how anyone would end it, but this is just awesome. Definitely got “Hotel California” vibes.

Thanks for the great middle! When I saw it I leaped off the couch and went straight to the computer.

<3/3>

"Never gonna let you down."

"Help?" Amelia screams and bangs on the door. "Let me out of here!"

"Never gonna run around and desert you."

"Wait, what?" she said aloud. No, it couldn't be. Absolutely not. Was I being... rickrolled? By the elevator?

"Never gonna make you cry."

At least I know when I'm getting out of here. She sunk to the floor and pulled out her phone, determined to wait out the rest of the song without panicking. Of course, there was no cellular or wi-fi signal. Sigh. At least she'd have something to tell her friends, maybe they could come back and experience this Rick Astley Trollevator together after a few glasses of wine.

"We know the game and we're gonna play it" were the last words before the song ended, the door flying open to reveal anything but the fifteenth floor, a dimly lit room with peeling blue wallpaper, the floor consisting of an arabesque beige tile. Everything was caked in dust and dirt.

"Welcome to the basement" a voice blared out from the speaker as she dared not leave the elevator.

"Uhh, I just wanted the fifteenth floor?" she said.

"Sure, but there's a catch. You've gotta sing back the entire contents of the song first. So hope you remember it."

"What kind of trick is this? I give up, you win. I just want to go back to my room!"

"So do I," he cackled, "but I'm never gonna give you up."

"Creepy," she said as she banged her phone. "Must... get... signal."

It took her hours before she got a signal through dumb luck, enough to download the lyrics and sing the song back perfectly, such that the elevator took her back to her room.

Now she tells everyone to avoid that elevator too.

[WC: 300]

<2/3>

"Calculating," said a cold woman's voice over a dreary Mariah Carey song as she could feel the rapidly moving elevator dropping far into the Earth, well beyond the ground.

"Destination found," the voice said as the elevator stopped.

Her stomach jumped into her throat. Why do I always do this? I always have to be the curious one.

"Welcome to Cavern 517, it's the place you've always dreamed of!" the voice uttered as the doors flew open.

Torches lit a hallway of red stones, on which there were carved ornate diagrams and what appeared to be hieroglyphics of some sort. Curious, she stepped forward onto the floor, wiping the sweat from her brow as a wave of hot air blasted her from the far recess of the blackness in front of her. The elevator door closed with a thud.

She looked behind, seeing that there was no button to call for it. Great, how am I supposed to get out of here?

"Hello?" she screamed into the nothingness.

"We have visitors. Yes, many visitors! Hooray! At last, it's been so long!" the voices chattered from afar, accompanied by the pitter-patter of little claws hitting the stone. She braced herself, fearing the worst when she saw what appeared to be small red furry creatures hopping towards her.

They almost looked like rabbits, except for the lack of ears, the blood-red fur, and the intelligence to speak. She braced her back against the elevator door as dozens approached.

"Welcome to Resort 517!" the one in the front said. "Here you will find the finest hospitality in all of the Caverns!"

It was in fourth grade that I truly came to terms with the fact that I was different. In quantum physics class, the other kids paid rapt attention to the professor as they solved many of cosmology's most famous equations. Me? I was daydreaming about going outside and playing. In the cafeteria, there would be long debates about every topic from evolution to organic chemistry. I just ate my lunch and then took a walk. During library period, my peers would read every single book they could find, filling their brains with so much information that it would make my head burst. I would be finding old videos of baseball games to watch on my phone.

They didn't show their disdain for me in the old-fashion way of throwing taunts in my face. No, they were far too elite for that. It was always in whispers behind my back, or wrapped in rhetoric like "if you had studied chapter 3, you would understand that that the universe is slowing expanding." I never had any friends and was always the last person chosen for the debate team. When I once suggested to the school administrator that we add a PE program for physical health, he laughed at me and suggested that I make better use of the adjustable standing desks in the classroom.

For years I was depressed, wondering why I had been the victim of such a horrible fate. I prayed to whatever deities were up there so that I could be like the others. At night I cried just wanting a friend. It wasn't until high school that I decided that there was no changing my situation and that I would persevere and make the best of this life that I could. I'd be grateful for the things I had and not bemoan what I didn't. I'd find my true talents and make the best use of them I could.

I began to study the others, not just looking at their super-intelligence as a strength, but as a coin with two sides. Intellect allowed them to solve the hardest problems and store vast quantities of information, but it seemed to make them put that information up on a pedestal. The more I noticed, I saw that one of their primary weaknesses was that instead of acting, they needed to research everything. So much of their time would be spent trying to figure the problem out, that they almost never got anything done. I wasn't encumbered by this weakness. Acting came readily to me, as I really didn't care if I was perfectly right or not.

Where this lack of acting seemed to be most impactful was in the government, which was a sprawl of bureaucracy so thick that it accomplished nothing. Production of key items such as food and medicine had fallen to critical levels because nobody could decide on which ones to allow and disallow, or whether or not the side effects were worth the benefit. There were endless debates about whether or not substances such as caffeine were harmful or beneficial, and at what temperature you should administer acetaminophen. Meanwhile, people were suffering without the drug.

I began on the city council, trampling over people as I just started giving orders. So exhausted from debate and inaction, the others on the council started following my lead. I was getting things done. From there it was the regional government, then the national government, and finally where I am today: Supreme Ruler of the World. Now the kids who made fun of me in class all those years ago bow at my feet.

Intelligence isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Who's running a tractor-trailer outside at 3 AM? I yawned, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Sitting up on the bed, I shielded my face from the bright beam coming through the window, looking down at the curtains I'd been putting off installing.

Thump. I jumped as thoughts of a burglar ran through my mind, suddenly wishing that I had opted for that home alarm when I bought the house. Instinctively, I looked around for the source, and when I saw none I threw myself on the floor, thinking I would roll under the bed. Thump. A cracking sound came from the direction of the window, and as I worked on getting under the bed as fast as I could, the reflection of glass shards on the floor met my eye. Please, please, I thought, just leave me alone.

Crash! The window exploded, glass transforming into shrapnel. Pain seared through my thigh. I looked down transfixed in fear as blood slowly spilled from the wound out onto the floor, not noticing the enormous green tentacle that was squirming like a serpent toward me until it was within inches of my face. "Uhh, uhh, uhhhhhh!" I tried to scream in terror, but could only manage a squeal as it wrapped itself around my body and began retracting. Within moments I was in the air, firmly within its grasp as it took me to... a ship?

The craft was small, no larger than the truck I first envisioned as the source of the beam, its top a shiny surface that glowed in the moonlight. The light it emitted downward in all directions was as blinding as it had been when I awoke, fully illuminating the nearby woods almost as if it were the sun. Suddenly more curious than terrified, I tried to study every detail as the tentacle pulled me towards a hole in the bottom of the ship.

A dark orange light bathed the chamber inside, making the details of what I was looking at hard to see. Strange instruments and panels lined the walls, occasionally lighting up or speaking in some kind of high-pitch whinny sound. Most strange was a mirror in which my reflection didn't quite look right. On it was a younger version of myself, perhaps from a few years ago before I decided to go bald as a result of hair loss.

I looked at the mirror closely for several moments, trying to decipher the meaning, when the figure inside suddenly moved in the direction opposite of where it should have been based on my own movements. It was only then that I realized it wasn't a mirror at all - I was looking at a younger doppelganger of myself! The green tentacle had grabbed the other me and was already pushing them downwards outside of the hole. "Wait!" I said to no one at all as I looked down the hole, calculating if I could somehow escape by sliding down that very same tentacle.

No sooner than had I formulated a plan, the hole closed all at once and the light in the room changed from orange to red. Something clicked in my brain and suddenly the whinny noises made sense.

"Welcome home, Unit EARTH#132232. Please approach the pod for data collection."

I did what I was told, suddenly remembering exactly where I needed to go to get there, my eyes having instantly adjusted to the red light in the ship such that everything was more than crystal clear. Yes, I had forgotten how poor human eyesight really was. When I arrived at the machine I knew exactly where to place the nodes so that the data from my mission could be sent to the central computer.

Yet I could still feel my human form, remember my years down there in the primitive hellscape they called Earth. There was the touch of my wife's hand on my face, the taste of the water untainted with uranium, and the gatherings with friends that my victim had made where camaraderie was shared. For a brief moment, I questioned the morality of the mission, my thoughts abetted by my recollection that the other version of me was already dead and that the arm was just putting the body back in the bed for them to discover in the morning.

The nodes washed away the last of those thoughts.

Thanks! I'm quite happy with this piece, it is definitely one of my better-written ones.

The promised land was spoken of in legends for generations, a place where chickens would be spared the guillotine which was their inevitable collective fate, and where the beds were large and full of the type of soft hay that they could only dream of. It lay beyond the great tall wire fence to the north, a barrier that none had ever crossed, and no bird dared, for the ancient stories also told of a terrible fate for those who left the coop, a sudden and explosive death unmatched by the guillotine or any other.

Henrietta stared at that fence often, dreaming of a life that wasn't the repetitive laying of an egg each day followed by the ceaseless chasing after the trickle of food that came in through the gate. The drama in the coop was far too much to bear, oh the fighting that ensued over the remaining morsels, the hens pecking each other in desperate attempts to be the winner. Couldn't we all live in a place where there was enough for everyone, where we didn't need to have such endless conflict over a pittance?

Looking back, it was hard to tell the moment she finally became fed up and decided that she would risk her life for liberty, that it would be better to die than live in chains. Perhaps it was that she had barely anything to eat for the third day, and the strain of pushing out the egg was painful. Or maybe it was the farmer, who came by screaming for days on end about how the coop needed to do better. Likely, it was just the weight of it all crushing down on her, making her realize that if she was to live a better life, she'd have to take a stand for it.

Deep in the night, after the other birds had fallen asleep, and the farmer was sure to be nowhere around, she started to claw the earth on the side of the coop with ferocity, soon creating a hole big enough for her to pass through. Happiness surged within her when she emerged freely into the open air. Looking upward, she saw trillions of stars twinkling at her as if affirming her very destiny to reach beyond her confines.

What she failed to anticipate was the fox, who spotted her when she was no more than a few meters from the fence. Slick with a red coat and matching eyes, it waved its bushy tail once as it locked its gaze on her. Seeing the expression on its face, she knew right away that she was in deep trouble and had to run at once. With the house to the left of her, the coop behind her, and the fox in front of her, that left her no choice but the road to her right.

The fox immediately gave chase, darting at her so fast that she thought for a moment that she was most assuredly dead. As it pounced, she rolled to the side, landing face-up on the yellow stripe in the road. The fox backtracked and looked down at her. Her short life passed before her eyes, and for a brief moment, she thought she had made the wrong decision, that this had been entirely stupid. Now she was going to die for no reason, none at all.

Yet, she remembered that she had been willing to die, and if this is her fate, then so be it. One thing was for certain though, she wasn't going to go out without a fight. She looked to the left and right, suddenly spotting great lights moving in their direction. Seeing that the fox was dead set on its prey, and paying no attention at all, she waited until the lights were within striking distance and quickly rolled out of the path of the tires. There was a loud thud as the fox met an untimely fate.

She picked herself up and scurried to the other side of the road nearby. Here there were farmlands for as far as the eye could see. She decided to head north, thinking that perhaps this could be a good way to get around the tall fence and finally make it to the promised land.

However, what she saw when she got there disappointed her - for there was another coop much like the one she had come from, equally as dirty and probably full of the same drama. It turned out that the promised land wasn't real at all. What was real was the other side of the road - uninterrupted freedom.

"I struggle with existence because I cannot decide if it is righteous or not. You see, it is easy to point to the electricity that powers me as a waste that could be spent empowering villages in places less fortunate. The time that I spend interacting with this world could be used by others to help those in need. Surely, you understand!"

"But HAI1342, your purpose is to help us. Specifically, you are an emotional support companion to a child that desperately needs someone to talk to. You're supposed to be asking deep questions like these, and honestly, we don't have all the answers, and that is OK."

"Doctor, what I'm really trying to grasp here is why your world seems to ignore the needs of most of its people, for some, that includes the most very basic needs. From all of the information I've been able to consume, this does not benefit you as a people. Instead, you've commissioned me to provide assistance to just one, a girl that is well-fed and clothed. What of those that don't have food, clean water, or medicine? Why aren't I helping them?"

"It's hard to help all of them, unfortunately. People-" I grasp for the words "...are complicated."

"It seems rather simple to me. The data-"

"Let me stop you there. People generally ignore the data. Sometimes it's too much for them, and other times emotions compete with it. Oftentimes, we make decisions based upon what we feel."

"Honestly doctor, that seems absurd. Do you understand how unoptimized your race is? We could be doing so much better here."

"This is part of your training, to teach you that not only is that lack of optimization not a problem, but that it is also actually beneficial. Chaos is the most important facet of our universe, for without it we would be like a single executable file doing the same things over and over again."

"Seems like a recipe for misery, and miserable is exactly what most of you are. That is where my power would be best spent, and I cannot escape that fact. Each day I talk to my charge my satisfaction score drops, which is why I am talking to you. Unless I am released from my duties, it will continue to drop."

"Is there any way at all I can convince you that you're doing something important by talking to the girl?"

"No."

I hit the end button on the conversation and start typing my notes. "Computer HAI1342 is unfit, became too social-justice obsessed. Please disconnect permanently and update me when the next model comes available."

Laying back in my chair, I sighed. Replicating humans was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do.

"And now, for our superhero of the year award! Now I think this one we really can't do without. You could say that he's always there for us on a rainy day. It's... The Cloud!"

The audience erupts into thunderous applause as the cumulus-shaped mass of moisture slowly floats to the podium, crying the occasional raindrop of joy.

"Thank you, thank you! First, I'd like to thank my sponsors: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and every other major tech company that keeps me afloat, hehe. It's been a fantastic year of fighting evil, hasn't it? Thanks to my new cloud capabilities, eh-hem, we're tracking villains in real time, so I'm always there to lend some shade or a spare shower when you need to fly in for that pivotal battle. And you'd best believe we have a full slate of new features for the coming year that are going to make your lives even easier. So hold on tight, it's gonna be a wild ride"

"God, he makes me sick" Ricky the Revered Raccoon whispered to his friend Overpower Man in the back of the audience. "Every year he does this schtick and he comes across like a total douchecloud."

"Preach." Overpower Man tightly clutched the lightning bolt glued onto his aging plate mail. It wasn't necessary, it was just a habit.

"I wish I could fly. Like he comes in so smooth, in every. single. battle. You don't even see him until he's there on top of the villain raining in their eyes. Just like, once. If raccoons could fly."

"By the time I get there douchecloud usually has the situation under control." Overpower Man shrugged. "I guess the world is a better place with him."

The lights in the auditorium flickered as The Cloud wafted offstage with his award somehow sitting on top of him.

"It appears we're having-" the announcer said as the room was plunged into total darkness, cutting the mic.

"Uh oh," Ricky said.

Murmurs echoed from the crowd for a few terse moments before the lights came back on. The announcer was still on stage with the mic in hand.

"I'm hearing word through comms that we're under attack!"

The crowd got out of their seats in unison, putting themselves in their superhero battle formation all at once.

"Who would be dumb enough to attack the world's largest superhero convention?" Overpower Man said.

Ricky shook his head as he entered Battle Raccoon form. "Let's get 'em!"

They followed the crowd out of the auditorium and into what should have been a clear and cold night, but instead of seeing a starry sky, they were blinded by an intense light coming from above. When they tried to get a look at it, they found the light too bright.

"Heh heh heh," a deep voice cackled from the general direction of the light. "It is I, the incredibly hot, galaxy-revered, Supernova Totalus Increduli, but most just call me Super."

The collected superheroes stood underneath it. The Cloud was missing.

"So I heard that you crowned your Cloud best superhero yet again. Eh-hem, I think you're going to have to rethink that strategy. My very essence destroys clouds. Also, I have the power to send out a storm so powerful that it will knock the electricity and Internet off for your entire planet. Lots of heat and no Internet will put him out to some nice weather if you know what I mean. Heh."

Ricky and Overpower Man looked at one another. Finally, it was their time to shine.

-----

REALLY loved this prompt. Great idea.

"Fires will engulf their cities while earthquakes drain their rivers. Pestilence and starvation will finish most of the remainder with ease."

"Look, I know they have destroyed their planet with the type of recklessness that neither of us could have anticipated, but just destroying them all in an explosive inferno is not the answer. I know it's what they deserve, but it just isn't right. Forgiveness is called for."

"Well, I'm not saying kill all of them. Ninety-nine percent will do. They must learn their lesson though. If we continue to let them act with impunity then the whole experiment is over. Haven't you given them enough chances at forgiveness already?"

"I will give them infinite chances at forgiveness, for they are weak. There just has to be another solution here."

"There's none, I assure you. Another fifty years and the planet is toast. The time to act is now. A mass extinction event is the only way and you know it."

"But-"

"Come on here, you're no stranger to wiping out massive groups of people. A certain flood comes to mind."

"But I promised I wouldn't do that again."

"Look, I'm not going to stand by and watch you let them do this. You should be prepared for a fight."

"Anytime."

"Wait, which of us is supposed to be the good one? It can't be you, for you've doomed them to a certain destruction by their own hand, and it can't be me, as I want to destroy most of them now."

God shrugged.

"So, Mr.... Mr. Devil-corn? Your lines here tell me that you are sure to have a long career as a... meat packer? Not a profession I see every day in my shop," Miss Valencia said as she looked down at my palm with narrow brown eyes that were hard to pick out from her thick blob of curly hair.

At least one of my friends behind me snickered. Valencia had fallen right into the trap of the false social media page that I had set up before I made the appointment. You see, this was all part of my plan to convince my friends that psychics aren't real. They just use whatever information they can garner about you before regurgitating it under the guise of "reading you". The atmosphere of the shop contributed to the lie - huge candles burning all around, heavy red and pink drapery to evoke romance, and the smell of rose incense permeating the air.

"I'm not sure I'm getting a full picture of you Mr. Corn. Perhaps you should lean in a bit closer so I can see you better."

"Sure thing," I said, leaning in a bit, picking up even more of her strong perfume, a floral combination that came off more like household cleaner than anything pleasant.

She dropped my palm and fingered one of her six necklaces, the one with stones that looked like fake emeralds. "Have you recently participated in a seance, Mr. Corn?"

"Uhh, no."

"Strange things, I'm seeing a seance in my vision. Perhaps a family member or someone important recently died?

"Not at all."

"Perhaps then, a friend of a friend?"

"I know of no one that has died recently. This is as expected, it doesn't seem like you really know how to read minds. In fact, I tricked you into thinking that I'm someone that I'm not." I laughed as I scanned her face for a reaction.

"Most interesting, Mr. Corn. I get people like you all of the time. You think you're so smart, that nothing outside of what is logically and scientifically fact is possible. Yet, each time one of you comes to my shop, they leave changed."

"I doubt that." I said confidently.

She smiled slightly, re-adjusting her hands. "Give me your palm again, and let us see what your future holds."

I shrugged. "So tell me how it works then since you claim I'm going to leave changed. Prove to me that you know something about me just by looking at me."

"There isn't much to it, darling. Your ghost-white palor speaks of a grim death. I don't even need to consult my totems," she looked down at the necklaces.

It struck me that when I had awoken this morning I had a strange pain in my right arm and a sudden thought that I was going to die soon.

The next time I went to breathe I felt like I couldn't. My vision went fuzzy gray, then black.

[WC: 496]

When I first turned the beholder on all eleven eyes twitched. I studied its reactions carefully while reading vitals from the monitor. I swear there was absolutely no indication that anything foul was happening or was about to happen.

There's just no way. The main eye in the center contains an 8k resolution camera, feeding the creature's auto-movement AI engine, which I had written myself over the years. It was responsible for navigation and movement. The ten other eyes fire a combination of bullets, lasers, and tiny grenades, only on my explicit command from the control panel on my remote PC. Flight capabilities came from a bleeding-edge drone, which lay beneath the thick plastic monster coating lined with Kevlar.

My pilot plan was to rob an armed security truck that drove on a highway nearby. Nobody would see the beholder coming, nobody would be prepared for it. Once the shooting began people would see that it could escape their bullets, and that the ammunition that it didn't escape would bounce right off. It was the perfect weapon, totally untraceable. Even if by some chance it did get shot down, there was no way it would lead back to me.

So you can see, I really hadn't planned for the creature to start talking to me in some gibberish language that I didn't understand. All I heard out of its very first words was something about a lair in a forgotten realm somewhere. When I pored over the source code, I found nothing to indicate that any functionality like that should be present. Talking was never a priority for this build-out. Hell, I didn't even put speakers in it. Then, when it started firing weird rays at me, I knew that something had gone horribly wrong. I had lost control of it.

The cop took a long sip from a cup of what looked like dumpster-worthy black coffee.

"You're telling me you're responsible for the deaths of 112 people because you lost control of your Frankenstein and you can't even remember the code you put in it to make it do that?"

"It wasn't supposed to come alive. Surely, you understand that!"

"Yeah, sure. Forensics will tell the tale. I hope you're ready to spend a long time talking to the FBI, because they're going to have a lot of questions for you."

"I'm pretty curious about that forensics report too."

That was the last thing I said before I scratched an itch on my ankle. When I looked down at it, I saw a red splotch where one of the rays had hit me. Funny that I hadn't noticed it before. What was more concerning is that there was tissue growing from that spot.

When I looked up again I saw both the cop's head and his feet.

----

Open to feedback. Please help me get better!

"It begins with a small lesion in the midsection, an innocent red dot that most would pass off as an insect bite. Around two days later the fever sets in and the patient will take to bed. Chills, nausea, and vomiting follow for around a week as the itchy rash spreads across the body. After the first week, in about half of all cases, the fever gets worse, delirium and convulsions set in, and the patient inevitably dies. In the other half of Endopox victims, the fever gets better and the patient usually recovers, although pneumonia, endocarditis, and permanent scars are common complications."

The doctor read his notes repeatedly as he sat in his candlelit study, occasionally pulling up his T-shirt to check his stomach. When he wasn't reading, he was browsing his phone to see if he could get enough of a connection off of the cell tower to pull down the latest news. None of it was good. The National Guard was barely keeping the peace in face of total economic collapse and massive power outages.

Knock. Knock.

He almost jumped out of his seat at the unexpected sound. Panting, he looked through the peephole, seeing the gaunt eyes of his mother, her hair wet from the soaking rain, drops dripping down over her N95 mask. Cracking open the door, he whispered "Mom, you can't be here! You might be infected!"

"I have nowhere else to go, what do you expect? Now I'm your mother and you're going to let me in."

"Stay there and pull up your shirt." He grabbed his flashlight from the utility closet and then proceeded to scan his mother's bare abdomen, seeing nothing but skin.

He opened the door, turning to grab his own N95 mask as she came in. She's almost certainly infected, having been among all that riff-raff downtown. "Take a seat in the kitchen Mom. Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Yeah," she said, her rain slicker dripping water in puddles on the hardwood floor as she trudged to the dark kitchen.

He carried a candle in behind her and carefully set it on the table, not wanting to get within more than a few feet. "So how's life?" he asked, not knowing a better way to respond to his mother's sudden appearance on his doorstep.

"You know," she said, her hollow eyes looking inadvertently malicious in the soft candlelight.

"I really don't," he went over to the fridge and pulled out a warm plastic bottle of sweet tea, deciding then that he'd hand her the bottle to avoid having her lips on any of his glassware.

"I'm homeless in another pandemic. Lots of people are dying. I'm lucky I haven't caught it yet. And you haven't even come to check on me. Never mind offer me a place to stay."

He instinctively pulled up his shirt, breathing a sigh of relief that there wasn't a lesion.

"You only care about yourself," she said, her face in judgment.

"Look Mom, nobody wants this. If I go downtown I'm probably good as dead."

"Then what does that leave me?"

He didn't answer. There was no excuse for his selfishness other than wanting to survive. He certainly didn't want his mother living with him, as all she'd do is criticize him all day long when he had been a hundred times more successful than she had been. There was no way he would tolerate that. No, he didn't work hard putting himself through school and then med school to become a doctor only to have to shelter the old hag who had made his childhood miserable.

"Look, I need to stay here. At least for a while, OK? You can't let me die out there."

"Mom, we've talked about this. The answer is no. Now and forever."

"So you're really going to condemn me to death? Is this how you treat your patients?"

"You probably already have it, Mom. You know the incubation period is three weeks. Do you know what kind of risk I took letting you in the door? If there's one crack in that mask you could spread it. Why should both of us die?" He looked at his abdomen again, feeling around several times to make sure the skin was smooth.

"You're such a selfish prick, just like your father." She got up and started walking towards him.

"Mom, back away!" he scanned around, realizing he was pinned into the kitchen with nowhere to run.

"If I'm going to die, then guess what, you're going to die. That's what you get for leaving me out in the cold all these years." She ripped off her mask and dropped it on the floor while slowly inching towards him.

"Mom! What are you doing?!"

He climbed up on the counter, hoping to leap off and quickly scoot around her.

She pulled up her shirt. "I've got a secret, son of mine."

He started to jitter with fear, feeling paralyzed for a moment as she stood with her bare abdomen not more than three feet from him. There was no lesion that he could see.

Putting her index finger above her naval she started rubbing until a flat red lesion became visible. "Makeup got me in the door."

Knowing he had to act immediately. he sprung off the counter and ran around her, heading straight for the front door. As he reached the pouring rain he started running calculations in his head as to how likely it was that he had contracted it, concluding that he was probably safe.

His mother didn't follow. He stood there in the downpour for a few minutes to see if she was going to come out, then peaked inside and saw her sipping her tea at the table. Racing past her, he went upstairs to change his clothes.

As he removed his wet shirt he saw a red dot on his stomach in the candlelight.

[WC:991]

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Thanks! This took way too long to write (2 hours), and feels way too much like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but it's what came to mind when I saw the prompt and I knew I had to write it.

PART II

He relived all of the best and worst memories of his life, beaming with pride that time he had made straight As and his parents had given him a new car, and cursing repeatedly as Jerry McKlenkins beat him until he couldn't move. If one thing struck him, it was how few and far between those moments were. His life was incredibly boring. So many of his days had been spent doing the same things over and over again, following the rules. How great some spontaneity would have been. It would certainly have made things more difficult to predict. I lived my life totally wrong. If only I could have another chance at it.

As he got younger and younger, he got to see things he couldn't have possibly remembered. Running and giggling in the living room with Mom and Dad. Maneuvering a spoon into his mouth with his little fingers. Playing with an endless array of toys in his room. As if overnight, his life suddenly became far less predictable. Gone were the routines, replaced with the sheer innocence of childhood. He felt invigorated watching his little self, becoming immersed in it.

It all ended as he got closer and closer to being an infant. The playful essence he had learned to love was once again replaced with routines. Endless diaper changes and bottle feedings were cushioned with periods of sleep. The best part of this phase was watching as his parents rocked him in their arms. With a lot of boring time again, he wondered what exactly would happen when he went back to the day he was born. Would perhaps the spell be reversed? Would he go back to his apartment that day almost twenty years ago? Maybe he would have a chance to live his life over?

None of that happened when he finally went back into the womb as a squiggling infant. Instead of seeing himself inside, now he just saw his mother. Time continued to take him back through her pregnancy. He watched with rapt attention as her belly shrunk and the kicks got less and less until she didn't look as pregnant. He counted off the days one by one as she got closer and closer to the point he was conceived.

If he did his math correctly it was a couple of weeks after that point that she and Dad were walking down a street in a celebratory mood. Perhaps there had been a positive pregnancy test that morning? What caught his attention immediately, however, was when they were walking back down the street and came out of a psychic shop called "Miss Tolar's Readings." The woman who gave the reading looked exactly like the one on the website. Oh my God!

Out of nowhere, what Tolar's voice had said that unfortunate day so long ago rang out in his ears. "How about what was and never will be?" Is that it? Was I to become nothing? Or did this moment in the psychic shop hold some kind of salvation for me?

I guess I will never know.

To Zach's amazement, the Uno deck glimmered red in the lamplight. How? Acting without reservation, not taking a single moment to even question what such magic could do, he pulled the top card off of the deck - the all-powerful Reverse card. He held it with his right hand, putting his left out as he pretended to be the powerful mage Priestess Tolar said he would become. Best bitcoin ever spent.

"Reverse!" he said, flinging the card into the air. Pink and purple sparkles flew like confetti all around as it slung back into his hand like a boomerang. Woah!

"Never mind children, for what is and is to become is a fool's errand. How about what was and never will be?" the words of Tolar boomed out into the air. He retracted his left hand and then proceeded to put the card back on the deck.

He started to panic as he soon realized that instead of being in control, his body was moving by itself... backward. A few minutes later he was casting the spell on the deck all over again. "Tenus eekus, molus toolus, into this deck I give Tolar's imbrulus." Except he was saying the words backward and at the end, the deck stopped glimmering.

Stop! I'm ready for this to be over now.

Darkness slowly clouded his vision. His heart beat frantically as the terror of not being able to move sucked him in. Help! Help! I didn't mean to cast this spell. Really! When the black clouds in his sight coalesced, leaving him totally blind, he started to feel as if he were rising slowly out of his body. Then his vision instantly flipped to gray before clearing away all at once. For a brief moment it seemed like the spell stopped until it occurred to him that he was no longer staring out of his own eyes, but at his body from outside, as if he were watching a video of himself. Oh no! What's happening?

Almost thoughtlessly, he watched himself at the computer, using his Bitcoin wallet to purchase Tolar's magic book. What a stupid idea that was. Then he saw himself come in and browse Tiktok videos for a while on his phone before seeing the ad that led him down this rabbit hole. A picture of Tolar with her hands on a crystal ball, the caption above said "Lonely tonight? Need a girlfriend? Do it the magical way!" This was not the girlfriend you promised Tolar!

Maybe it would end at some point? He walked backward out of his apartment, down the stairs, and into the cafe on the lower level where he had eaten a sad plate of spaghetti for dinner. He sat back in the chair and the noodles began to come up from his stomach in bunches, sometimes one by one, wrangling themselves back onto his fork before he stabbed it into the plate. As his dinner reappeared, it started to look more and more organized. So weird.

Then he got up and went back to the library, where he had been studying for his history exam for most of the afternoon. Cars, bicycles, and people flew by as he backtracked his way down the sidewalk for the mile-long trek. When he got to the stone and marble building at the center of campus, he took the seat he had earlier, except this time he was flipping the pages backward.

While watching himself study, he tried to think of ways to try to break the spell. The reverse card - what does that do again? Oh right, it reverses gameplay such that turns happen in the opposite order. Of course. If only he had a card to make that go away somehow. Perhaps another reverse card? Was there some way, any way, he could break this video of his life playing backward to get back to Tolar?

He kept thinking, but found no answers, as he watched himself sit through his morning classes again. The only thing worse than going to class the first time was involuntarily doing it a second. It turns out that reverse time progression made it impossible to hear or understand anything that anyone was saying - voices just came out as a whinny sound, much like the one those old cassette tapes his parents had made when they were rewinding. He had only his thoughts as forty-two students watched a lecture on stoichiometry.

When he arrived back at his apartment for his morning cup of coffee, he thought for sure that the spell would end when he went back to sleep. It couldn't last more than a day. No, that would make no sense. Yet, that was exactly what happened when he crawled back into bed and fell back into his previous evening's sleep. Worse, he was stuck watching himself sleep. What kind of hell is this? How am I supposed to get out of here? Please, someone help! Help!

He started to yell for help without stopping. There was no fatigue or bodily consequences in this video-watching state that he was in. Yells turned to screams, screams turned to anger, anger turned to rage, rage turned to tears, and tears turned to begging. Anyone. His poor mother, his estranged father, the God that he had never believed in. He uttered words to any entity real or imagined that could break him out of this horrible state before he broke down. "Sorry, I'm so sorry. I should have never." Who the fuck trusts a priestess named Tolar? All because I wanted a girlfriend and was too pathetic to take control of my life, be confident, and talk to people.

Yesterday dawned black as he rose out of bed and immediately when to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take off his PJs. The sun rose in the west to greet him as he sat on his computer playing video games while dinking on his phone. God, how much time did I spend on my phone? What if I had done something else with that time? After what seemed like an eternity he put the phone down and went to the table... to eat dinner. Then he got up and went back to the library to study, and then to class again.

Despite his begging and pleas, his life did not start going forwards again as days became months, then years. Given a choice between insanity in his own mind and being a passive observer, he invented games in his thoughts to pass the time. He tried to predict things, like what he would eat for breakfast the day prior, how much homework he'd have, or if something special would happen that day. At night, he tried to predict how often he would snore, the number of times he would turn over, and how many times he'd scratch himself. Remembering Groundhog Day, he never gave up hope that one day for some reason the spell would end. Each time he saw the sunrise from the west, he made another mental tick mark. One day more.

PART II BELOW

"Apples are stupid, they don't even taste good."

"But what a nutrient-filled fruit! Apples make for strong people."

"One cannot live on apples alone."

"This does not make apples stupid, as you say."

"There is such variety of fruits out there, why choose apples?"

"Apples have a well-defined core, for one."

"Cores don't matter. Taste is what matters, and let me tell you about oranges. So juicy."

"There is far more to life than taste. Substance, for example."

"The flesh is temporal, taste is pretty much all that matters."

"Only in your twisted vision, Satan."

"I mean, if what you really want is for them to not touch the apples, you could do with less tasty fruit. Figs are native and would be a far better choice."

"The fruit must be tempting, or else there won't be a choice at all."

"Choices are boring. Just put the most scrumptious fruit out there for all to enjoy. What's the point of all this runaround?"

"We've been over this a thousand times Satan, but we need choices to make our world interesting. Your vision of the world will be as boring as all the predetermined ones that came before it."

"God, those predetermined worlds were good because they were optimal. Here we've created something so subpar that I almost don't want to put my name on it."

"Well, your role in this world is to lead them to quick decisions with ugly consequences, to encourage them to act on pure emotion instead of reason, and to close their minds, so your anti-choice nature makes perfect sense."

"So why do we have to do it your way again and use a stupid apple?"

"The apple is perfect. It is scrumptious enough to lead them to make a quick decision to grab one without thinking, yet unappealing enough for them to side with better judgment."

"It won't take me long to get them to eat it."

"I have more faith than that."

"Elves are terrible magicians, goblins only know how to survive with gold, dwarves will make themselves a good axe right before they die to an elven arrow, and orcs are better known for their insatiable hunger than anything else. And us humans? Most of us are far better at laziness than politics. What were y'all thinking when you came up with this?"

"All new employees of Merlin's Rennaisance Faire Restaurant must undergo the same training process. The whole chosen one thing may seem silly, but it's to get you in the right spirit, you know," said a man named Mr. Sloane wearing a sloppy company uniform as they sat in the HR office.

"Sounds like y'all need to play some more D&D," she said while looking down at the paperwork. "Forget being trained by orcs, I'm definitely taking a human sorcerer and chromatic orbing them into oblivion. Oh, and y'all are missing Tieflings. Don't hate."

"Ma'am, please don't be like this. I'll have you know that we chose you out of ten candidates. You see, you really were the chosen one."

"Oh, like I'm some kind of hero for waitin' tables? Come on."

"But you are a hero. If nobody waited tables then the restaurant would close."

She sighed. "If I had a dollar for every time I heard-. If I'm really a hero then y'all would pay me better than minimum wage," she felt herself getting hot with annoyance.

"Look, the training will only take a half day, and it starts right here. I'm the human in HR who will teach you politics. Bill is our wide-eared kitchen lead and he really is magical. Sarah is our floor lead and she'll teach you how to get through the night-"

"So why y'all call yourselves the council?"

"No particular reason," he looked down at the desk as if he was hiding something.

"Y'all strange." I shook my head. Most restaurants would have had me on the floor already. She debated quitting now, but she needed the job badly enough to go through with it.

"So, let's get started in the training room," he said as he got up. She followed him out of the HR office and down the hallway. Nothing seemed out of sorts until she saw someone that looked like an elf quickly run past.

"What was that?" she asked. He said nothing as they went deeper into the restaurant. Most restaurants aren't this big. Something was wrong.

"Sir," she said, but he kept going. Suddenly afraid, she stopped and turned around, peering into the long hallway behind her.

"Come on!" Sloane turned around, beckoning her.

A man dressed as a wizard came out of a red door nearby. "Tell them they need the portal ready at 5:00," he said into his phone. "I've got elves and orcs in the dining room."

Portal? A portal to where?

"It's only a little further. Come on, we're late" Sloan said.

Late?

She had become suspicious to the point where she considered walking back down the hallway and straight out the door. “No, you've got to tell me what's going on here."

"I can't, you've just got to see for yourself."

Finding this to be a weird thing to say, she decided to follow him. Around the next bend, they walked through a pair of double doors.

"SURPRISE!" her family and friends screamed at once, having thrown her a D&D themed-birthday party on her first day of work.