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[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Magic of Christmas Past\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1723\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character hates the holidays, and jets out of town every year — but a historic snow storm means that this time, they can’t make their escape." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Magic of Christmas Past\nBy Meg Lagares\nI am officially packed. My swimsuit is in my carry-on, along with sunscreen, some extra makeup, and my electronic reader loaded with many new books. I can hear my favorite lounge chair beckoning me to come sit. Deciding on going to the pool first or to the beach is my biggest concern right now.\nBooking the early morning flight, even as a non-morning person, was a no-brainer. This way, I can get to the airport, catch my flight, and be sitting in the Caribbean sun by three this afternoon. It’s been so cold at home lately that it may take me the entire two weeks to thaw out. Not that I’m complaining, since these two weeks are just for me. No work calls, no clients, no family! I can read my books, sit by the pool, and sip fancy umbrella drinks.\nEvery year I experience DHS - dreaded holiday season. I discovered this astonishing place five years ago when I fled Maine and my overbearing, high-strung family. Things are strained when we come together, and the stress of Christmas just makes it ten times worse. Not to mention that both of my siblings have found the most obnoxious, self-centered partners, both can and will say whatever is on their minds.\nBeing the singleton in my family is akin to having some sort of fatal disease. No matter how successful I have become, no matter that I make double what my siblings do, no matter that I have been the only career-driven one, I am nothing in their eyes since I am not married and also (gasp) childless. There is no greater sin in my family's eyes. Not having to explain myself every year at the holiday table is my little piece of heaven. I make my reservations for the following year's trip when I check out right after the New Year.\nHaving gotten to know most of the staff over the past few years makes arriving at the resort feel more like spending time with a loving family, not one that judges every decision. I do the obligatory FaceTime call on Christmas, so I am not completely looked upon as the runaway child. When the questions start about why I am not there celebrating like my brother, sister, and the creatures they each married, and their unruly spawn that they seem to produce at an alarming rate, my phone connection all of a sudden gets full of static, and I need to hang up. I love it, I have my secret static sound machine built right into my phone, so I can use it at will. The best app I have ever purchased.\nJust as I am bundling up in my winter coat, gloves, scarf and hat, and with one foot nearly out of the door, I get the call. My flight has been cancelled due to the blizzard. The blizzard? What blizzard? I have been mentally on the beach already, and I hadn't even looked outside. When I raise the blinds, I am greeted with only whiteness. I am unable to even make out the big elm tree that sits right outside the front door. “NOOOO!” I scream out-loud and as I reluctantly begin to peel off every layer that I had just put on. I reach for the remote and turn on the weather channel. “Whiteout” “Blizzard” “Storm of the Century” are the words that assault my ears. This cannot be happening, I am supposed to be headed to the airport right now for my yearly mental recharge. “Please snow gods,“ I pray, “Just let me make my escape, and then it can snow to your heart’s content.” I hear the meteorologists say that this storm will be hanging around for days, possibly a full week, and what a treat it is to have a white Christmas. “No, it’s not a stupid treat,” I am screaming inside my head, the only white Christmas I want is the white sand under my feet. The phone rings again, I am hoping it’s the airline calling to let me know that just my flight will be taking off before they completely close down the airport. Instead of that miracle, it was my mother exclaiming that with the storm, she hoped I'd be coming home this year. I had to reluctantly acquiesce.\n On Christmas Eve, I stayed at my parents' home. I wasn't planning on staying over, but the roads became more treacherous, and my parents forbade me to drive back to my place. My mother was all aglow with the thought of one of her children returning to the roost. \"We can make gingerbread houses,\" she announced as she dragged me into the kitchen. \"I have all the ingredients; it will be so much fun.\nRemember how we made them every year when you were all just little ones?\" We ended up making five houses in total. Mine were a little lopsided, but I figured it was a metaphor for my life. I seemed to be tilting to one side or the other all the time. It was quite late when we finished, and I was ready for bed. Mom had changed my sheets for fresh ones and put out some clean towels for me. \"You can just wear one of my dresses tomorrow,\" she told me. As tired as I was, I felt secure and at peace being back in my own room. Luckily, the crazies weren’t there that night. My brother and sister-in-law were torturing her parents and my sister, her narcissistic husband and their brood of four kids under the age of 5 were at the other set of grandparents. Four kids! She really banged those out fast, there is a set of twins, but still, not my style one bit! \nChristmas morning arrived much too early.There was a wake-up knock on my door to announce that everyone will be arriving soon and to get some coffee and take my place in the living room for the big package opening extravaganza. It’s only 7 o’clock, as in the morning. I didn’t want to get up, I wanted to stay in bed and sleep the day away. I wanted to be in St. Barts, not in my childhood home, not in my childhood bed, surrounded by the memories of growing up here. As hard as I tried to stay in bed a little longer, I heard the front door open, and suddenly, my ears were assaulted by the squeals of high-pitched voices. It seemed like everyone was talking at once. \"Don't sit there, don't shake the presents, say hi to Grandma and Grandpa, and remember Auntie Jill?\" Of course, they were referring to me as Auntie Jill, and I did see these small beings not too long ago. I highly doubt they have forgotten who I am. Where is the coffee? Oh, joy. \"Here, Auntie Jill, you wear the Santa hat to pass out the gifts to everyone since you are the only single one here,\" says my sister-in-law, Cruella, or as my brother calls her, Christina. The day is off to a wonderful start. \"Oh joy,\" I repeated as I donned old St. Nick's jolly red hat and started going through the enormous pile of wrapped gifts. I always plan ahead and drop off the presents I buy for everyone early, so my parents can distribute them on Christmas. At least I didn't have to sit there without gifts for the family. \"Remember, Jilly, one present at a time so we can all enjoy seeing what the gift is.\" Gee, thanks, Mom. How could I have ever remembered that? We have only been doing it my entire life. I plastered my Christmas smile back on and started handing out the gifts, one by one, as instructed. \nThe room is filled with laughter and sounds of delight as each present is opened. I see wide-eyed children dressed in their Christmas finest, I smell the roast that has been slowly cooking in the oven, and I see my parents watching the Christmas show with eyes filled with delight, pride, and love.\nOnce the kids were all busy playing with their first set of new treasures, I watched my sister go over to the tree and pick up a box. It was beautifully enveloped in shiny paper and topped with a red bow. She gently placed it in my hand and gave it a soft squeeze. \"I am so glad you're here with us this year, Jill,\" she says as she handed me the present. \"We have missed you the past few years.\" I unwrapped my gift. Inside was a beautiful family photo of my siblings and me from a Christmas long ago. We are each holding a wrapped gift, and our smiles are from ear to ear. The three Davidson siblings are frozen in time; a time when life was easier, no one had major disagreements, and all we wanted was to be together as a family. My eyes started to sting, my cheeks were on fire, my heart was about to burst. Yes, my family is opinionated, yes, they can be loud and insensitive at times, but we are a family. I took some time to look around the room at all the happy faces, and listened to the \"Oohs and Ahhs\" as the rest of the presents were opened. I sat back on the ancient sofa and found myself enjoying every minute. Soon I heard myself oohing and ahhing right along with everyone.\nWhen I closed my eyes on Christmas night, back in my childhood room, I reflected on the day. It wasn't a day of anger or accusations; it was a day filled with love. I was emotionally embraced by my family, and I decided then that Christmas at home was not the evil experience I had convinced myself it was. It was a day spent with those closest to me, all coming together to share stories, laughter, and making memories. I think next year, I'll be right back here. St. Barts can survive without me, but I'm not sure if I can continue to survive without my family. I started to drift off to sleep, with a small smile on my face and my heart filled with the power of love." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: ReCon\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1656\n\nPrompt:\n\nCenter your story around a photo that goes viral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Selfie! Snap. Post.\nI am in love, although I won’t tell him that in the Meet and Greet! Too much, too soon.\nI still can’t quite believe I get to sit down with him, one on one, and just, like, chat. There he is on stage singing “Hold Me Close” (which just happens to be my favourite), shirt open like he does and that body. OMG that body! When he does that curl kind of thing and you see his abs shining and moving; how can anyone keep themselves calm and not feeling anything when he does that? I’ll feel more when he actually holds ME close!\nSelfie! Snap. Post.\nTwo likes.\nYeah bitches, that’s me in the VIP area watching ReCon do his thing before, bitches, I go backstage and meet and greet him. Who knows – there may be a bit more than meeting and greeting if I play my cards right! He’s taken his shirt full off!\nSelfie! Snap. Post.\nFive likes.\nLove the bass. It kind of pulses like his hips. Boom, boom, boom. Thrust, thrust, thrust. I can feel the bass through the metal balcony as I lean out over the regular people below, hoping that those basic bitches are in the heaving crowd somewhere, that they glance up to see who is in the VIP area, that their basic bitch mouths drop open when they see ME leaning out, thrusting against the metal balcony in time with ReCon. Before my meet and greet.\nSelfie. Snap. Post.\nOMG. Ten likes!\nSomeone takes the empty glass from my hand and instantly there is another one there. Never tried champagne before and I like it.\nShot of stage with champagne in foreground. Snap. Post.\nFifteen likes. Is that viral? Maybe not yet.\nOMG “Losing You”, another favourite. It’s ok ReCon, you won’t be losing me tonight! Wonder if he’ll keep shirtless for the Meet and Greet. Wonder if he’ll let me touch him. Let me selfie me touching him. One for the basic bitches, ha! None of them follow me but this shit’ll go viral once I’m backstage and then Monday in school is going to be the best. I’m going to walk right past them while their basic mouths drop open and I think “Yeah bitches, that was me”. I might glance at them for a moment before laughing like they’re stupid and walking on without looking back at them. Lovely to do it that way round for once. I won’t be salty and do what they do to me. Worse than that, I will give them sympathy for being delulu and basic. I’ll get my new followers to give them sympathy too. Can’t wait to see them rejected by everyone else who will be wanting to know me and how things are going with ReCon. Of course, I will be calling him Ray by then but only between us. They’ll all have to keep calling him ReCon.\nFinal selfie from here. Snap. Post.\nTwenty-three likes! If that isn’t viral I don’t know what is!\nCan’t really complain about missing “I’ll Make You Part of Me” as his encore if it means I am headed backstage to meet him right as he comes off. The bass is all I feel now going through the tunnel at the side to backstage. Bouncers and security nodding to each other as they lead me through. Big guy in front of me laughs when I scream at the confetti cannons banging off right beside me. I laugh too. He says it’s ok to selfie from the side of the stage. OMG! ReCon is right there! I mean within twelve feet of right there.\nSide of stage selfie, ReCon in background. Snap. No signal. Post later.\nGod it’s calm back here. You wouldn’t know there was a concert with the world’s biggest star going on so close by unless you really listened hard over the thrum, thrum, thrum of the bass. This isn’t his dressing room because that’s like totally private and we haven’t even meeted and greeted yet so I can’t go in there. Yet. Maybe later. No, this is like the sitting room attached to his dressing room, black walls, black furniture. The sound is down on the screen on the wall but it’s showing what is happening right now on stage. He’s finished, he’s blowing kisses, he’s laughing, he’s waving, he’s walking off.\nSelfie, screen behind. Snap. Post later.\nProbably over one thousand likes by now. Never been viral before. Wish there was a signal but it must be for security reasons.\nStare at the screen. He’s walking off, he’s coming this way, he’s going to Meet and Greet me! Stay calm. Don’t giggle. Be chill. Just vibing. Big guy sticks his head round the door and smiles. He asks me if I am ready. I look around the room. Empty save for chill ole me. I thought there’d be other people Meeting and Greeting. Big guy laughs and, with me not needing to say anything, knows what I am thinking and he says, “Yeah, just the two of you.” His head goes back out, there’s a moment when I am waiting to wake up like this has all been some silly dream but then the door opens fully and ReCon walks in. Still no shirt, can’t believe it. Might ask for that towel that is absorbing all that sweet ReCon sweat as he runs it over his fit muscles. He exhales, turns to big guy, nods, door closes and it’s just him and me. I realise I am still sitting. Very rude. I stand, throw my arms out to the side and say “Hiya!”\n“Selfie?” he says. “Well, duh!” I giggle. His arm is around me.\nSelfie. Snap. Post later. Live in the moment. Second snap just in case.\nIf those bitches could see me now! What do I mean?! They will see me. Not now but just as soon as I get a signal back. Yeah, bitches! Think I’m going to melt. He just pecked me on the cheek before he stepped over to the glasses and bottle on the side. I didn’t even see them. I giggle as I nod to let him know, while I am finding it hard to breathe, let alone speak, that yes, I would like some champagne, thank you very much. He hasn’t even finished patting the sofa beside where he has flopped onto it before I, giggling again, flop down beside him, his arm going round me again. I can smell him I am so close as I lean my head on his shoulder. “Cheers” he whispers as our glasses chime off each other. “Can I?” I whisper, holding up my phone. He smiles and nods and we both raise our glasses towards the selfie.\nSelfie. Snap. Post later.\nYeah bitches, that is me snuggling down and dirty with ReCon. How d’ya like them apples? Crafty glance at his hot bod as I put my phone down. Never noticed the scar down his side. Maybe they photoshop it out. Should I ask how he got it? Something heroic or dangerous most probably. Or gangster. No time like the present. “What’s this?” I ask, my finger pointing at the smooth, dark line that runs down his glistening side to his hips. “What’s this?” he repeats as he reaches across, takes my pointing hand and places it at the top of the scar. I run my finger down his side. He as good as asked me to, putting my hand there.\nI. Am. Touching. ReCon.\n“Lips,” he says. The scar widens and my finger goes into his side, just beneath his ribs. “What?” I say, my default giggle surfacing. My finger is being pulled in until my knuckles meet his skin. “Lips,” he says again as my whole hand slides into him. I pull back but my hand won’t move. I laugh now, the giggle not enough to mask my concern. “That’s a great trick.” I pull my hand but it won’t budge. He is still smiling at me. He takes a deep breath in and, as the sweat-slicked muscles of his perfectly formed chest tighten, my arm slides in through the scar on his side. I try to pull back again but my arm won’t come out. My bum slides across the black leather of the sofa as he breathes in again and I am pulled towards him on my side, my shoulder touching his ribs with the rest of my arm inside him. It can’t be. A huge, black tongue winds out of the scar, over my shoulder and around my neck. A smell like the bins behind the canteen at school fills my nose. I hear my glass drop onto the floor on the other side and smash. My cheek is against his body now, the black tongue scratching my neck. The scar opens wide and I see black, pointed teeth covered in some kind of slime. I can’t see my arm beyond the elbow. I can’t feel my hand and forearm wrapped in the darkness within him. His hand strokes my hair and he thanks me as I am sucked into him and feel no more.\n***\nThe pictures from the concert that she posted garner more likes than the girl has ever had before, but they don’t go viral.\nWhen the police widen their search, first to neighbouring counties and then nationwide, the number of likes and shares begin to climb, but not enough to be described as viral.\nAs soon as the Prime Minister makes mention of the missing girl, parents and schools begin lecturing their children about online safety. Again. But the pictures? Popular, but still not viral.\nPop Megastar ReCon shares a tear-streaked appeal for any information about the girl’s whereabouts. Her pictures go viral.\nMillions of likes. Millions of shares.\nEveryone wants to see the girl who disappeared." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: What A Christmas\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1068\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character hates the holidays, and jets out of town every year — but a historic snow storm means that this time, they can’t make their escape." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I sit in my room staring out the window and cursing the snow. Damn holidays… I thought as I saw the people outside carolling at my neighbour's house. Sometimes I wonder how they put up with their noise and cheer. Can’t I just be left alone! I got up from my bed and depressingly made my way to the kitchen where my roommates left some groceries before they left to go spend holidays at their parents house across town.\n\nGreat, at least I don’t have to put up with that annoying Christmas music blasting in my ears at the store. I sigh and begin making myself dinner. It wasn’t anything fancy. I wasn’t the best cook so I just made myself a stir fry and called it a day… That was until I heard those blasted carolers knocking on my door. I can’t believe people actually knock here. Can’t they see that I don’t care about their damn holidays! I muttered as I flicked the lights off and pretended not to be home. Then I trudged my way back to my dimly lit bedroom and sat at my desk. \n\nAt least I could watch youtube or play a game or something… Maybe I could finish those month old assignments too. It was a hard choice of what to do though so I just sat there in the dark eating my food. Christmas has always been a depressing time of year for me. I never knew why, I just hated it. Maybe it was resentment of all the joy and happiness that others got around the holidays while I just got miserable. All my friends called me weird, the only family I had never invited me to join them during the holidays either. \n\nThen I remembered it, an incident that happened when I was around five or six. Damnit, what happened there again? I cursed as I tried to remember. It was the reason I hated Christmas, the reason I hated the holidays. The mall Santa! I remember now. I thought as I took a bite of my stir fry. \n\nIt had been a long time ago, I was at the mall with my grandmother, the woman who raised me. We had gone to the mall to visit Santa and go shopping. After we had gotten everything and left for a car, Santa followed us. Santa did it. Santa ended the most wonderful woman I knew right in front of an innocent child, shot her dead, shot her twice, twice in the head. That’s why I hated the holidays so much. That’s why- I was snapped out of my thoughts from the sound of glass breaking downstairs.\n\nShit- what was that?! Did someone throw ice at my window? Maybe an intruder? Why am I just sitting here? I got up from my chair and grabbed the katana that rested in the anime corner of my room and walked down stairs. I didn’t own a gun, never believed in it. So the katana was all I had to defend myself even though it was dull.\n\nWhen I got down the stairs, I cursed myself for being that person in a horror movie. But I continued. I searched the entire house until I found the cause of the noise. It was a glass vase that fell over… and a puppy? I put my katana down and picked the tiny thing up. It was so small and cute, so innocent and loveable. I couldn't help but smile at this innocent creature in my hands. I didn’t know how it got in the house, or why it was in the house. All of that was irrelevant at the moment as I carried the little fluff ball into the washroom and carefully picked the glass out of its fur.\n\nThe puppy was adorable. I decided to keep it and name it Arthur. It was a peculiar name for a dog. But it fit him. I guessed that Arthur was a black lab by the colour of his coat. His eyes were blue like a husky though. Maybe a mixed breed? I thought as I washed Arthur up and dried him with a towel. That's when I remembered the broken vase. My roommates were going to kill me for breaking it.\n\nI decided that their vase didn’t matter too much considering that Arthur was here now, so I set Arthur down in my room and cleaned up the glass. I also put my katana back where it was supposed to be in the corner of my room. Then I spent all night playing with my new friend. It was the first bit of joy I felt during the holidays in years. I never knew how much a dog could affect a person. But now that I have Arthur, I feel better and I don’t know why or how.\n\nFor the next week, Arthur and I spent the holidays watching crappy romance movies on Netflix, sleeping, or stuffing our mouths with the food in the house. This isn’t actually that bad… I guess I should probably try to enjoy the holidays a bit. even if my recent memories have been rather dim around this time of year. I thought as I walked around the house cleaning up after Arthur. It was probably the happiest I’ve been in months though. Arthur really made an impact on my life that I never thought was possible.\n\nWhen my roommates did get back, a quiet girl and her kind twin brother, they didn’t actually kill me when they found out the vase broke… Though, I think it was because of Arthur. The girl, named Delilah, was in love with Arthur the second she saw the little fluff ball. Her brother, Damian, also loved Arthur. Everyone loved this little fluff ball and welcomed Arthur as an official member of the household.\n\nFor the next couple of years, me and Arthur accompanied Delilah and Damian to their parents house for the holidays. It wasn’t actually as bad as I first thought. Arthur ended up growing to be a really big dog, but also a really good boy. He stayed by my side a majority of the time. I remember Damian once calling him ‘mama's boy’ or something silly like that. I didn’t mind it though. Every year on Christmas day, I thanked God for giving me Arthur. My little boy. My Arthur." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Good Dog\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1002\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I didn't notice the photo until I was already home. I hadn't noticed it at the park because there was a fight going on over a kid's soccer match between two grown men. I wasn't paying attention to the why of it because I was busy recording it, and that was on top of making sure my dog, Murphy, didn't run off after all the little things that caught his interest. He's just a little thing himself, I didn't want him getting hit by a car or something.\nRegardless, I only noticed the picture on my camera roll because I have a habit of going into the photo's app right after the camera roll. Don't ask me why, it's not important and I don't know why I do it anyway. The photo itself stood out from my pictures of Murphy and other assorted crap I can't be fucked to go over. It stood out mostly because of how dark it was. I was only able to understand just what I was staring at by enlarging it.\nWhat I saw was me, asleep in my bed.\nI didn't move for a moment. Can't say I knew exactly what I to do, even when I'd fully processed what was in front of me. I had to go over just how I was looking at this. I live alone, aside from Murphy, who I doubt has the capacity to break into my phone, snap a picture of me, and then put it back without waking me up. I hadn't brought anyone home recently, and I hardly interact with my neighbors enough to provoke them.\nAfter I thought about that, I thought about where this mystery person might be, and that's the point where I called the cops. I was explaining for the second time to the operator that picked up when I heard a dull thud from the second floor.\nI looked up at the ceiling, then around me. I saw my furniture, the coffee table, the TV.\nI did not see Murphy.\nImmediately, I ran for the stairs, yelling for my dog, the little Pomeranian who was getting on in years that I couldn't imagine a single bad thing happening too. I heard him whimpering and was up the stairs so fast I might've just teleported. I called for him again and heard his little yap come from the same room I sleep in at night. The one with the walk-in closet. My shoulder still hurts from ramming it into the door, I was that eager.\nThere was little Murphy, posted outside of the walk-in closet, yapping his little heart out. My relief that he wasn't hurt was short lived when I realized someone was speaking. \"Hello? Sir?\" It said, and I remembered I was still holding the phone. \"Sorry, I just lost track of my dog,\" I said. \"We're just upstairs now, and-\"\nThe closet door shot open in a flurry of long, stinking hair and drool encrusted teeth. What I saw was a ball, plain and simple. It was just taller than my knees and... God, I can't understand it. It was a ball of hair and teeth, and it was fucking growling at me. Murphy ran out with his tail between his legs and piss sprinkling in a trail behind. Before I could react myself, a pair of long, thin limbs shot out from some of the mouths on this thing. They were long enough to have what looked like two ball joints and were topped by three clawed mitts that it dug into the floor, raising itself off the ground until it was level with my face. When I saw a pair of eyes, human eyes, staring out from a thicket of canines jammed into swollen red gums, I turned right around and ran out of there as fast as I could. I couldn't keep hold of the phone, couldn't even muster up the coherence to scream. I just knew I had to get away from it. Murphy and I, who always did struggle with stairs. Who I still had the wherewithal to scoop up into my arms and sprint out of the house with. We waited an hour and a half for the cops to show up.\nI explained there was some kind of wild animal in my house, and they said I should have called animal control. Then the thing managed to get down the stairs. It had a janky sort of walk, on account of its long limbs not being level with each other, but the sight of it was enough to push both of the cops into unloading on the thing. By the time their guns were empty the thing was a pile of mush.\nThere was a big media fiasco over it, I got interviewed a few times and gave them about all the nothing I could manage. What am I supposed to say to this? I didn't know what that thing was, how could I? The cops got to be heroes for the day or so the news ran the story, and then it was like it never happened. Everyone went on with their own lives, that nasty furball in my closet nothing more than some odd conversation. Monsters are real, of course they are, everyone go back to what you were doing before now.\nI still live in that house. I remember that they brought in a whole bunch of people to look over my house, especially the walk-in closet. I didn't get to learn much myself, but I saw a couple folks in hazmat suits come out with something rolled up in my carpet. I still live in the house, but I have never gone back in my old bedroom. There is nothing I want to see in there, so I keep it locked up from the outside.\nSometimes, only sometimes, I catch Murphy posted outside of that room, shaking all over and growling as low as his little voice will go." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Accidental Christmas\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2997\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character hates the holidays, and jets out of town every year — but a historic snow storm means that this time, they can’t make their escape." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“God, I can’t wait to get out of this jerkwater state,” Nick Lassiter mumbled to himself as he headed south through Kansas, for Tulsa, Oklahoma. The wipers and defroster of his rental car were waging a losing battle against the slow march of ice that spread down the windshield. It was dark now, and he struggled to find which headlight configuration sucked the least. Switch on high beams, the driving snow blinded his view. Switch them off, and he couldn’t see much at all. Cursing, he decided to use the low beams.\nSomewhere in the passenger seat his cell phone rang. Nick had been unable to get the rental car to wirelessly connect to his phone. He felt around under his belongings and fished it out.\n“This is Nick.”\n“Lassiter? Where the hell’s your story?” Jerry Edwards asked. Jerry was the editor of The Sport Report magazine, Nick’s boss, and best friend.\n“Oh, hello Jerry. I’m just great, thanks for asking.”\n“You don’t have to get sarcastic. Did you get the interview?”\n“Yeah, Jerry, I got it. Have I thanked you yet for sending me to Kansas, in December, to interview the Chiefs’ center? I mean you could have sent me to Tampa to do that interview with the Bucs’ wide receiver. Or to Las Vegas, to interview the Raiders’ quarterback. No, Jerry, you had the wisdom and the decency to send me to friggin’ southeast Kansas to interview that farm boy in the heart of winter. I had a great time talking to him and his parents over ham and beans and cornbread. Over sixteen hundred active NFL players, and you send me to interview Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies. And thank you so much for waiting until the Chiefs were bumped from the playoffs. Otherwise, I’d have done the interview in Kansas City. You know… near an airport?”\n“Relax, ya damn whiner! Tulsa can’t be that far, right?”\n“I’m still in Kansas, there’s a blizzard. There are no other cars on the highway. I can’t even see the edge of the road.”\n“You’re still gonna make your flight, right?” Jerry asked.\n Every year, Nick, Jerry, and the rest of the unmarried gang at the magazine picked a new place to spend the holidays together. They had a few requirements. Warm weather, gambling, and nightlife. Their mantra was strippers, yes, Christmas trees, not so much.\n“I have no idea. I’ll try, I’m driving as fast as I can in this mess. Good God, I can’t see shit,” Lassiter said.\n“We have a deadline to make, can you send me your story?” Jerry asked.\n“First of all, piss off, I’m driving through a damn blizzard. Secondly, I need to make a couple of changes. I’ll do that at the airport if I have a chance, then send it.”\n“Get it done and get it sent as soon as you can. Then get your ass on the plane, so we can burn Miami to the ground, all right? Me and the boys are here already, we’re ready to get this shit going!”\n“Look, my phone’s getting ready to die. Be there as soon as I can. Save some women for me.”\n“Nick?”\n“Jerry?” Nick looked at his dead phone. “Shit.” He tossed it into the passenger seat. He was beginning to worry, not just if he could still make his flight, but if he’d make it off this road. He hadn’t seen another car for many miles in either direction. Nick began to wonder if he was still on the right road. Switching the dome light on, he leaned over and got in his bag for a road map. He felt smart for always bringing an old school navigational method. Google didn’t always work out in ‘BFE’.\nAs he looked up from the map, a deer charged out in the road in front of him, and Nick instinctively mashed the brake pedal. The deer looked up and managed to leap out of the path of Nick’s oncoming rental car that was now fishtailing down the highway. It switched ends and spun around, flew into a ditch on the opposite side of the road, striking a large tree.\nNick’s eyes fluttered open. Dazed, he wasn’t sure for a minute what happened, or how long he’d been out. The front end of the car was smashed; wrapped around the tree. His head throbbed, he put his hand to his forehead and felt a stickiness. Blood.\nHe tried to start the car, unsuccessfully. The biting cold had quickly invaded the vehicle’s interior. A sinking feeling of dread settled into Nick’s stomach. He looked through a clear spot in the rear passenger window. He’d never seen so much snow falling, so quickly. He thought of his phone, then remembered the dead battery.\nNow what?\nHe sat for a few moments, then realized, if he were to have any chance at all, he’d need to get up beside the highway and watch for someone to pass by and flag them down.\nHe put on every piece of clothing he owned, socks on his hands since he’d forgotten to bring gloves, and hiked up to the highway. He found what must have been the edge of the highway, but there was so much snow, who could tell for certain? The snow was nearly up to his knees. Five minutes passed. Then ten. After fifteen minutes passed, Nick knew he was going to die.\nBut wait, were those headlights he saw? It was only a brief flash. Maybe the vehicle dipped below a hill. Please, God, I pray they didn’t turn off on a side road.\nHe stared into the blackness a bit longer, then the headlights appeared again. This time they stayed in view, moving painfully slow. As they drew closer and closer, Nick raised his arms and waved wildly at the tall, four-wheel drive pickup with giant knobby tires slowly chugging toward him. It stopped in front of him, and the driver motioned for him to get in.\n“Thanks, mister. My name’s Nick Lassiter. My car slid off the road.”\n“Dave Hartshorne,” the sixty-something year old gray haired driver said. “Why are you out on a night like this?”\n“I’m on my way to the Tulsa airport. Flying to Miami.”\n“Not tonight. Airports are closed, it’s been all over the radio.”\n“Oh. I was listening to a podcast.”\n“A what?”\nNick shook his head. “Never mind. Can you get me to Tulsa?”\n“Not going to Tulsa. I’m headed home in the opposite direction. You’re welcome to come along.”\n“Guess I don’t have much of a choice,” Nick said. “All right. Mind if I use your wifi when we get there? I need to send something to my boss.”\n“Wifi? You mean the internet?”\n“Yeah, the internet.”\n“Sorry, we don’t have that. Occasionally we can get a signal on the cell phone, but not all the time. For sure won’t in this weather.”\n“Damn!” Nick said. “Maybe I can charge my phone’s battery. You do have electricity?”\nDave smiled, “Yeah, usually. With all this wind, ice, and snow, though, who knows. There’ll be a lot of snapped lines tonight.”\n“Can’t we go any faster?” Nick asked.\n“Not unless you want to end up in the ditch again.” Dave kept the truck between ten and fifteen miles per hour. “Our place is up ahead, five more miles.”\nHe nodded and they rode in silence for a while. Finally, Nick spoke up. “You going home to your family, Dave?”\nHe shook his head. “No one’s there right now. I have to go chop ice, make sure the cattle can get water.”\n“Chop ice?”\nDave nodded. “I’ll get a fire going, you can warm up by it. I’ll take care of my chores, then we’ll head on to Xavier.”\nNick looked at him, puzzled.\n“Xavier, Kansas, near the Oklahoma line. It’s where my family is, I’ve got to get back as soon as possible.”\n“Oh, I see.”\nDave glanced over at Nick. “What’s in Miami?”\nHookers. Cocaine. And not a single responsibility in sight.\n“I work for a sports magazine. All us single guys head somewhere warm every year, escape all the holiday nonsense.”\n“You do this every year?” Dave asked.\n“Yeah? Why?”\nDave shook his head. “My place is up ahead.” He turned off the road and pushed through the snowy driveway to a small house, completely dark. He switched off the ignition of the old F-150. “Come on in, I’ll get you some warmer clothes and get a fire going. You can warm up while I chop ice.”\n“You need me to help you?” Nick asked, in a tone that suggested he really didn’t want to.\nDave looked at the thirty-something city slicker in the fancy suit and dress shoes and smiled as they walked up a ramp and entered the house. “No but thank you for the offer.” He hit the light switch, and nothing happened. He tried a lamp with no result. \n“Power’s out. Won’t be able to charge your cell phone, sorry.” Dave knelt in front of the wood stove and quickly started a fire, the orange flames licking upward, lighting up the meager home.\n“Throw another log in there when you need to. I shouldn’t be too long. If you’re hungry, the kitchen’s there. My bedroom is down the hall to the left. Find you some warmer clothes in there if you like. Just make yourself at home.” Dave said, and left the house, disappearing into the darkness.\nAs the fire dimly lit the living room, Nick looked around. The little farmhouse was nothing like his swanky, modern, Manhattan apartment. He cursed under his breath, thinking of missing his flight to Miami and a week of absolute hedonism.\nAs he stood in front of the fire, warming himself, he looked at the walls. To the right was what he assumed was a family portrait. Dave was in it, with two other people. One was a young girl of ten, perhaps, and the other was a woman in her thirties, in a wheelchair. Probably the girl’s mother. A sad little Christmas tree with handmade decorations sat in the corner, a single present placed underneath.\nBehind the tree were framed certificates, unmatched and hanging askew on the wall. Nick peered past the tree at them. There was a community college diploma, a CPR certificate, and a nursing license certificate. “Those are Annie’s,” Dave said as Nick whirled toward him. “My daughter-in-law. She used to be a nurse, before…”\n“Before what?”\nDave stared at the wall for a moment, then shook his head, bent over, and picked up the lone present under the little Christmas tree.\n“Let’s get going.” They hurried out to the truck and got in. Dave turned the key, and nothing happened.\n“What’s wrong?”\n“Battery’s dead. Cold weather finished ‘er off. I knew I was pushing my luck, but batteries are so expensive these days. Try to get all I can outta one.\nNick nodded, but silently, he wondered how the hell can someone not afford a car battery.\n“Only other battery is in Annie’s car, which ain’t here. You ever rode a horse before?”\n“Are you serious? No, I grew up in San Diego.”\n“You don’t have to come with me; you can stay here by the fire if you like. But I’m going back to Xavier, tonight. I just… I have to.”\nNick thought he heard the old man’s voice break a bit. Maybe it was the reporter in him, but he found himself pondering a question. “Dave, I don’t mean to pry, but you’ve got me wondering. What’s going on? What happened to Annie?”\n Dave exhaled. “The accident. My son, her husband, was driving. He got sleepy and ran off the road. He died, and Annie was paralyzed from the waist down. I just thank God every day that little Jessica wasn’t hurt bad. Happened not far from where you went off the road. Annie and Jessica live here with me now, going on three years.”\nNick felt a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Dave. But why do you have to get to Xavier?”\n “Little Jessi’s awful sick. She’s in Xavier Hospital, the ICU. With this weather, there’s no way to safely transfer her to a larger hospital, but they’re doing the best they can for her there. We always have our little Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning together, and nothing’s going to keep me from that. Like I said, you’re welcome to stay here, Nick.”\nNick didn’t understand, but, inexplicably, Miami and hedonism were the last things on his mind right now. Something told him he needed to see this little family reunited, and he had no idea why. “I’d like to go with you, if you don’t mind.”\nDave nodded. “Come on out to the barn. I’ll show you how to saddle your horse.”\nSeveral hours later, Dave and Nick reined up in front of the hospital. They tied their horses to a signpost with a sign that read “Reserved for CEO.” Nick thought he’d never been so cold. He couldn’t stop shivering.\nThey made their way to Jessica’s room. “I’ll wait out here, Dave.”\nDave gestured to the nurse’s station. “You can probably use their phone, see about a motel room. We’ll figure some way to get you there. Even if you have to get on that old paint again.”\n“Well, maybe I’ll just warm up here a while first,” Nick said, not wanting to leave. Why do I need to see this through? I don’t understand.\nDave went into Jessica’s room as Nick relaxed in a chair outside in a waiting area. He was exhausted, yet sleep wouldn’t come. How is Jessica? He didn’t understand why he needed to know, he just did. \nAfter a few minutes, Dave came out with a big smile. “Her fever’s come down a lot, they’re getting IV fluids in her, thank God!”\nNick jumped up and hugged Dave, then pulled away quickly. “I… I’m sorry.”\n“Don’t be. Come on inside, Nick, I want you to meet my girls.”\nNick followed Dave into the room. “Girls, this is Nick Lassiter. He had some car trouble this evening and somehow, he got stuck with me! Nick, this is Annie Hartshorne, my daughter, and this precious girl is my granddaughter, Jessica.”\n“Nice to meet you, Nick,” Annie said, nodding politely.\n“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lassiter,” Jessica said, smiling.\nA huge lump knotted Nick’s throat. “It’s nice to meet you both. Jessica, are you feeling better?”\n“Yes, sir, I am.”\n“Jessi, on the way over here, I ran into Santa. He gave me something to give to you!” Dave said, bringing the present out from behind his back.\nJessica squealed and clapped her hands. “Thank you, Grandpa Dave, oh, and thank Santa, of course! Wait, where’s your presents?”\nAnnie and Dave looked at each other. “Well, honey, we didn’t have the money this year, but it’s ok. Go ahead, open yours!”\n“Ok!” Jessica tore off the paper and laughed. “Oh, thank you, I love it!” she said, holding it up. It was a writing journal she’d wanted with the Kansas City Chiefs logo on the cover.\n“Jessi loves writing, and she loves the Chiefs!” Annie said.\n“Perfect gift, I love it, thank you so much!” Jessica said, beaming.\nNick couldn’t believe it. This sad, yet lovely little family, that loves each other so much, through tragedy, poverty, pain and loss. There was such a beauty and honor in their simple lives.\n“Could you all excuse me for a bit?” Nick said as he pushed through the door. He retrieved his phone from his pocket and asked the nurse to use her charger. After it had charged, he made a couple of calls before settling down for the night in a chair beside Grandpa Dave.\nChristmas morning came, and Jessica, improving rapidly, had been moved from the ICU to the regular unit. The snow stopped, and the snowplows were out clearing the roads.\nThere was a knock at the door. Nick jumped up to answer it. “Jessica, there’s someone here that would like to meet you.”\nThe door opened and a giant man filled the doorway. “Hello Jessica! My name is—”\n“Craig Henderson! You’re the center for the Kansas City Chiefs!” Jessica screamed.\n“That’s right! I heard you were in the hospital, and I wanted to come by and wish you a Merry Christmas.”\n“Would you sign my new journal, Mr. Henderson?” Jessica asked, holding it out for him.\n“Of course!” The young man spent an hour with the girl before telling her he had to go.\n“It was so nice to meet you, Jessica,” Craig said.\n“Nice to meet you too! I’ll never forget it!”\n“Well, I’d have never known to come here if it wasn’t for Mr. Lassiter there.”\nJessica looked at Nick with wide eyes. “You did this? Thank you so much, Nick!”\n“My pleasure, Jessi. Thank you again, Craig. I’ll walk you out.”\nCraig Henderson gestured toward the brand-new truck and horse trailer. “Will that work?”\nNick shook his head in disbelief. “That’s amazing. That little family is going to love it.”\n“Highways are clear now, Nick,” Craig said. “You can get on to Tulsa, catch a late flight to Miami, have your wild week you were talking about.”\nNick thought for a moment about his experience, about the feelings he had for the Hartshornes. Dave, hard-working salt of the earth. Annie, who refused to be defined by a wheelchair. And little Jessi, the writer. Little did she know, he was going to give her a leg up in the business, if she wanted it. It was the least he could do, they changed everything for him. The next phone call he would make, was a long overdue one to his parents. “You know, Craig, Miami, stuff like that, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m going to stick around here a little while. I have another story to write.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Park Picture\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1424\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My mom first noticed it when I was about 7 years old. We were at the park around the corner from my childhood home. I was playing on the monkey bars when my mom took my picture on an old Kodak disposable. Any child of the 90s will remember those old yellow bricks, the snap of the flash, the clicking of the cog as you turn the film to the next photo. You wouldn’t know what was in a picture until it was developed days later at your local drug store, a wild thought for the current generation living in instant gratification. I don’t even remember this day, this photo, or anything else. I just know it ruined my life.\nBack then, that day at the park, I think my mom just wanted to document how triumphant I was. Looking at the picture today, you can see how happy I was in the moment, and how alive I felt. How naïve I was. It’s so silly how a moment that feels like nothing, that should have no lasting impact on someone’s life, can crumble any sense of security and understanding. A ripple in a pond that causes a tsunami destroying your way of life. Little did my mom know, that innocent picture at the park would change our lives forever.\nOn the surface, the picture looks like it belongs in a scrapbook – A happy snapshot of a great day at the park. But then you notice something so feint, so miniscule, so easy to overlook. To be honest my mom overlooked it for years.\nI said she first noticed it when I was 7 years old, but looking back its clear pictures were tainted as far back as when I was 3. A family trip to the zoo was the earliest my mom was able to trace it when she sat down and combed through the family photos. Impossible to notice at the time without the evidence of photos throughout my life.\nBack to the “Park Picture” as it has become known. It was in this photo my mother noticed a dark figure far off in the background near the tree line. We were in public, surrounded by people, so it should come as no surprise that someone would be caught in the background of the photo. It’s not like we rented out the park and were in a desolate area. Strangers are always being immortalized in photos of families they have never even met before. But this wasn’t someone, it was something and yet nothing. It was absence of light. It was malevolence. And it simply crept closer.\nMy mom began to keep track of the photos that were taken of me with a watchful eye. Every roll that was submitted to be developed featured the mass, and only in photos of me. Mom switched camera brands, and film types, even went to every drug store in the area and every single one showed the same black mass – even saying it was “black” still feels like giving it too much color.\nOver a couple years, and under the close surveillance of my mother, she noticed it was getting bigger. More of the photo was being lost to something. Mom noticed it wasn’t just simply getting bigger though, it was getting closer to me. Mom cautioned me, without trying to scare me since I was only 9 years old at the time. While most kids my age were trying to make sense of 9/11 and why all the adults were so scared, I was trying to figure out why mom was afraid of cameras and said I wasn’t allowed to have my photo taken anymore.\nFrom this moment on photos of me became extremely rare. I no longer had school photos taken. I was no longer allowed to take the team photo with the rest of the kids on the baseball team. I was becoming a teenager, and I didn’t understand what the problem was. I was rebellious, MySpace was starting to become popular, and I felt left out not being able to have my photo on my profile. Social media was new, and my generation was taking it by the horns. It really pissed me off that I couldn’t fully immerse myself in it like all my friends were. Then, when I was 14 my friend received a cool new digital camera for Christmas.\nWhen I went over to his house, he showed me his camera by taking a quick shot of me as he opened the front door. The flash caught me off guard and I almost broke the camera out of instinct. When he looked at the picture he saw it, but didn’t take it for what it was. Instead, he razzed me for “breaking his camera.”\n“Well, I guess we know now that my camera can only handle taking pictures of attractive people, only half of your photo even turned out.”\nI tried to tell him that it’s just something that happens when photos are taken of me and it’s no big deal, but my mom freaks out about it and it’s pretty annoying. When you are a teenager parents always overreact to things.\nWord spread and it became a party trick. Everyone would want to see how weird it was when my picture was taken. The darkness enveloped and closed in more and more each time. Every so often my face would distort and those always got the best reactions from everyone. Deep down though I was starting to get worried and could see why Mom was so cautious. I didn’t feel safe.\nI was starting to become scared, and cameras of any sort seemed life-threatening. I stopped letting friends take my photo. I stopped even going to hang out with friends. I turned 18. I graduated high school. I didn’t go to graduation because there would be too many cameras. Mom died. I became a recluse. She was the only one who really understood and I took it for granted. I should have listened and trusted her earlier.\nThe last photo taken of me was 9 years ago. I was 22. I haven’t left the house since. I can’t trust anyone. There are too many cameras hanging from every light pole on the street. You can’t walk in front of a business without your picture being taken. And I can’t afford that. Not after what I saw.\nThe circumstances surrounding the photo aren’t important. I was 22. It was an extremely rare instance where friends managed to pull me out of the house. In return, I was drunk, very drunk. I was dumb. I took a selfie with a friend at a bar. The second I saw the photo appear on the screen afterward my stomach sank. A chill ran down my spine and I started to sweat but I was so cold. I was scared. I couldn’t breathe and I realized I could feel something sharp strongly holding my shoulder. I went to brush my friend's hand away from my shoulder when I realized it wasn’t there. But when I looked at the screen closer, I saw the darkness, the malevolence, the creeping violence that has been taking over my life was here, and it made contact.\nI went home and I haven’t left since. My windows are covered. Five or more layers of tape cover anything even remotely resembling a camera lens. I shattered all the mirrors because I’m afraid of those now too. I’m afraid of anything that lets me see myself, because I’m terrified of what will reflect back at me.\nBy now I’m only provided company by my mother’s ashes and the occasional knock at the door from a delivery of the essentials that comes at the same time each week like clockwork. Without those deliveries I would die because I wouldn’t leave.\nToday as I walked to the door to pick up my delivery, I noticed that the knock seemed different. It was lighter with one less knock. When you hear one person knock on your door for years you get used to the nuance, the sound, the repetition. It should have been an alarm. It should have been a warning. It should have been a reason not to open the door. As I opened the door and leaned down to grab my delivery, I made eye contact with someone new, holding their phone up at the bag of groceries my face was right next to. Then I heard it." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Ghostie\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1137\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin or end your story with a character taking a selfie." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Clicking over and over, Genevieve Luvet snapped picture after picture, varying the angle and her facial expressions with every new take. \nGenevieve flaunted her artistic flair through her selfies. She prided herself on her thousands of followers on Instagram. Looking through the pictures with a judgmental stare, Gen’s eyebrows scrunched as each photo became more and more distorted. In the final picture, a shadowy figure floated in front of Gen’s profile in the mirror, obscuring her features. Gasping in fright, Gen showed the picture to those around her. \n“A ghost? You really believe in that crap?” Aayden, Gen’s brother, cackled. \n“While I believe in an afterlife, I’m pretty sure spirits aren’t photobombing your daily selfies,” Gen’s bestie, Bonnie, commented with an air of confidence. \nAnnoyed with her friends’ lack of loyalty, Gen stormed away, yelling over her shoulder, “You know, this is how every horror movie begins. The non-believers go first, while the protagonist lives. See you never!.”\n<><><><>\nArriving home, Gen realized no one else was there. Sighing in dismay, Gen uttered, “Well, I’m definitely dying tonight.” With a sad chuckle, Gen shrugged and entered the house, locking all the doors and turning on every light switch she passed. The room glowed brightly in the dark evening, eliminating every shadow and every hiding place a person or entity could come from. Too paranoid to sleep, Gen curled up on her burgundy love seat under a gray fuzzy blanket, determined to watch the entire Harry Potter series through the night.\nFive minutes into the movie, Gen rose from her comfortable seat, too jittery to relax. With no one in the house, she began stress cleaning, getting out the vacuum, mop, duster, and window cleaner. Wiping counters and dusting shelves, Gen continued to listen to the movie, more at ease by being productive. \nOnce the countertops were spotless and the floors were shining, free from contaminants, Gen was able to make snacks. To avoid sleep, she made an extra strong pot of coffee and popped buttery popcorn. Topping the bowl off with gummy bears and chocolate pieces, the young woman was satisfied. She walked from the counter to the couch with her snacks and caffeinated beverage and prepared to binge the rest of the franchise. \nInstead of settling in, Gen jumped out of her skin when the front door hit the wall with a BANG! and several picture frames crashed to the floor. Leaping up in fright, Gen hurriedly shut and locked the door, bolting it this time as well. \n“Yep, I’m a goner. Time to write my will and leave a video,” Gen anxiously remarked, filling the silence with sarcasm, her usual coping method. The young woman continued through the house, locking windows tightly and bolting the other two doors. Still muttering to herself, Gen said, “Of course, the one weekend a ghost appears in my pic, my parents leave town for the weekend and my idiot brother sneaks out to see his girlfriend.” \nGen screamed in terror as she passed the entryway again, seeing the same dark figure in the mirror in the foyer. This time, the spirit developed shape and color in its transparent state. As if on cue, the spirit shrieked back, and the mirror shattered. Ducking her head and holding her arms in front of her like a shield, Gen ran into the living room, where the lights were brightest. Spinning frantically in circles, the redhead searched for the figure to appear again. After a few moments of silence, Gen turned to the space where the mirror shattered, only to find nothing amiss. There were no glass pieces on the ground, as though nothing had happened. \n“I’m going crazy!” Gen called out, beginning to sob into her hands, blocking the light and the hallucinations around her. She fell against the arm of the couch, collapsing to the ground, still shaking with tears, hyperventilating. \nOnce her breathing slowed, Gen blindly reached for her phone on the couch. Through the tears, she grasped it. She opened it and dialed Aayden’s contact. “Straight to voicemail, of course,” Gen mumbled. “Hey moron, it’s your sister. Something is happening at the house. I’m not crazy, it’s…”\nThe TV, having moved onto Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, abruptly went black. Sitting on the shelf below, Alexa turned on without warning, blaring “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” by Tiny Tim at the highest volume. \nGen screeched, dropping her phone and accidentally kicking it under the couch. Scrambling to her feet, Gen lurched for the bathroom closest to the living room. Struggling with the lock for a moment, she managed to successfully lock herself inside. There was no window, and no mirror in this bathroom. Once again falling to the floor, Gen curled up in a fetal position and rocked herself back and forth. The song continued to blast through the house. \nAs quickly as it started, Alexa stopped, as if ordered to do so. A faint voice began speaking, nearly inaudible from the bathroom. Recognizing the voice as her mother’s, Gen burst from the bathroom, swinging her head back and forth for the sight of her mother. \nHer mother’s voice was easier to hear now, “Hey Gen, it’s mom. I wanted to let you know that your father and I have extended the trip until Tuesday. Make sure you and Aayden are locking the doors up tight, there was a break-in down the street. Poor girl was killed. Anyway, I love you. See you soon.”\nThe answering machine that had been playing Gen’s mother’s message stopped as well, and the house went deadly quiet. Once again feeling uneasy, Gen scurried back to her place of refuge in the bathroom to wash her face.\n<><><><>\nUnlocking the door with his spare key, Aayden tried to sneak in the following morning. The door was still bolted to the wall. \n“Genevieve, unlock the door, you weirdo!” Aayden yelled, annoyed at his sister’s childish antics. \nWith no response, Aayden peaked through the crack. The entryway mirror was shattered, a million pieces scattering the floor. Upon seeing a few blood drops, Aayden shouldered his way through, the bolt flying across the room, followed by splinters from the door. He stepped over the glass and began yelling for his sister, searching the kitchen and living room, then her bedroom, their parents’ bedroom, and finally his. Aayden sprinted down the stairs and checked the spare bathroom. It was unlocked, fortunately, and he slammed the door open. \nAayden instantly staggered back, crying out in grief, “No, Nooo!”\nLaying on the bathroom floor, Genevieve’s lifeless body was littered with cuts. A large slash covered her torso, blood splattering the walls, the ceiling, and pooling on the floor. A message was scrawled in blood across the shower wall behind the body. \nNEVER SAY NEVER. I’ll SEE YOU TOMORROW, AAYDEN." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Last Harsh Winter\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1088\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a description of the cold, using lots of sensory detail." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Trigger warning: themes of loss/miscarriage.\n\n\"In the chill of winter, remember: beneath the snow, hope lies dormant, ready to bloom with the warmth of spring — life's trials are but temporary freezes, leading to the beauty of new beginnings.\"\n\nThe cold bites into Amelia as she steps out of the doctor's office. The bitter wind claws at her exposed skin, an icy predator seeking to numb the raw ache within her. She pulls at her coat tighter, but the cold sneaks in through the gaps, settling deep in her bones. \n\n\"Come on, hold it together,\" she whispers to herself, a plea against the impending flood of tears.\n\nDespite her efforts, the salty taste mingles with the crisp air, as her breath forms short-lived clouds in the frigid atmosphere — each exhale a visible manifestation of every breath she will take that her little one will not.\n\nIt takes everything in her to not fall into sobs right here in the snow and let the freezing cold claim her. The world seems to muffle, sound dampened by the weight of her grief. The distant hum of traffic, the distant laughter of children playing — it's all there, yet it feels like a world away.\n\nShe forces herself to continue walking, preferring the long journey over a quick ride home. The weight of grief presses on her chest, but she summons a fragile smile to share with those who pass her. \n\n\"Morning,\" she nods to a passerby, her voice a mere whisper against the cold wind. Meanwhile, the doctor's words play on repeat in her head, confirming what she feared.\n\nAnother loss.\n\nIt feels like a deep freeze in a part of her heart, harsh and unforgiving. As she rounds her first sharp corner, the city sounds are hushed by the snow-covered streets beneath her boots and the relentless wind singing in her ears.\n\nThe snowflakes fall fast, but gently, around her, turning the world into a winter wonderland. It's beautiful, but the contrast with her sadness is almost too much to bear. Each delicate flake lands on her face, a cold, fleeting kiss that she barely feels amidst the numbness within.\n\nEven the sound of her boots crunching on the snow seems to echo the weight of her steps, a heavy cadence marking the journey home. Each footprint etches a path of sorrow, the frozen landscape mirroring the chill of the news they once hoped to share with family at Christmas. \n\nWith a deep inhale, she breathes in the scent of pine, a melancholy fragrance, hanging in the stillness of the winter afternoon. With her exhale comes a quiet release, a gentle surrender to the winter's embrace, before being carried away.\n\nThough the wind whispers stories of unconditional love and family, something she already has had the pleasure of claiming, she feels isolation and longing for a warmth that was once swelling in her belly just days ago. \n\n\"Amelia, you have a family waiting for you,\" she reminds herself, the distant laughter of children playing in the snow stinging her senses, a reminder of the special moments that have once again slipped through her fingers.\n\nIn the midst of the swirling snow and emotions, she catches a glimpse of blurred red. \n\nIt's a fleeting moment. A splash of color that demands her attention. \n\nCuriosity pulls her closer, and as the wind howls, she discovers a cardinal perched on a snow-covered railing. Its presence, undeterred by the harsh conditions and unusual in the depths of the last weeks of winter, feels like a message. \n\nShe brushes the fresh powder from a nearby bench and sits.\n\n\"Hey there, little guy,\" she murmurs to the cardinal, her words lost in the wind. \"What brings you out in this storm?\"\n\nAs Amelia and the cardinal watch each other in silent communion, they share a connection that brings strange comfort. The cardinal, a messenger of solace, brings a glimmer of warmth to the scars each loss has etched into her being.\n\nWith newfound strength, Amelia rises from the cold bench. The cardinal, as if acknowledging her resolve, takes flight, disappearing into the wintry landscape. \n\nThe cold, though still biting, seems to lose its sting.\n\nFinishing her walk home, she leaves behind the pain, her steps in the snow now telling a story of resilience, not defeat — the cardinal's presence lingering in her thoughts like a small ember of hope.\n\nApproaching her snow-blanketed home, she hesitates at the door, the cold nipping at her heels. The guilt of being sad about another lost baby weighs on her. She already has two boys and a husband — a family to love and love her. So, why is it so hard?\n\nOpening the door, warmth envelops her like a hug. The scent of home, a mixture of wood-burning smoke and familiarity, wraps around her. The fire crackles in the fireplace, its rhythmic dance echoing the heartbeat of the house. Her two boys and husband are there, a living warmth that contrasts with the winter storm outside. \n\nTheir faces light up at her arrival, and the youngest runs to her, wrapping small arms around her legs.\n\n\"Mommy, you're home!\" he exclaims, his voice a sweet melody that calms the tempest still running rampant inside her.\n\nHer husband approaches, his eyes filled with concern. \"How was the appointment?\" he asks gently, his voice a soothing balm.\n\nShe looks into his eyes, finding solace in his understanding gaze. \"It wasn't good,\" she confesses, the weight of the words hanging in the air.\n\nSitting by the fire, she lets its warmth overcome her. Her two boys join her, cuddling close, their warmth and innocence a temporary reprieve from the harshness of the world.\n\nHer husband sits beside her, his arm around her shoulders. \"We're here for you,\" he says softly, a simple declaration that carries the weight of the world in unwavering support.\n\nThe pain remains, but for now, in the quiet of her home, surrounded by the love of her family, she finds peace. The bitter cold, both outside and within, begins to retreat like a defeated foe, yielding to the gentle warmth of spring's tender touch. As the thaw begins, the once-frozen lake awakens from its icy slumber, mirroring the renewal that unfolds within the depths of her soul.\n\nThe last harsh winter storm of the season has met its end, leaving behind the spirit of a woman finding strength in the warmth of her beautiful little family.\n\nAnd a winter preparing for hibernation, patiently awaiting its return." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Safe and Sound Safe and Sound\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1130\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Trigger warning - psychological abuse.\n\n7.15am - go downstairs. Phone fully charged, remove cable. Stare at phone wallpaper – not familiar – photo of huge oak in West Park at end of my street – where Rich proposed. Maybe took it yesterday – maybe not. Not sure. Stare more. Check for messages. Mum, Sarah, Rich. Rich? Not heard from him in ages. Is he ok? Oh, he’s replying to me. I didn’t message him. I must have, yes, look. Asked if he had a good weekend, sent 23.03 yesterday. Was in bed by 10. Must have got up - come downstairs - forgotten. Sleepwalking? Again? Getting regular now. See a doctor? Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Rich is fine, am I ok? Reply – short and sweet – don’t encourage the ex from hell. Don’t know why I messaged him at all. Ping! It’s your move on Words With Friends. What’s that? Looks like Scrabble game. Never heard of it. Why’s it on my phone? Quick look around it. I have 5 games in play. 5. It’s my move in all of them. Didn’t drink last night. Uninstall Words With Friends. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Coffee. Cinnamon roll. Sofa. Slightly more awake. Check phone again. More from Rich. Why did you get back in touch? Want to meet up? Ignore. Sarah – she says thanks with thumbs up – thanks for what? Scroll messages - yes she can borrow my copy of Catch 22. Still own Catch 22? Thought I lost it ages ago. Scroll more – told Sarah I found it – don’t remember that – check bookshelves later. Reply to Mum – yes still coming for dinner on Thursday. Thursday? When did we plan that? Never mind, I’m free, I’ll go. Add to calendar. Entry for Saturday – what’s that? Date with Tom. No details. No memory of this. Message Tom – Hi, are we meeting this Saturday? 8am now. Ring for doctors’ appointment. 32nd in the queue. Sorry no more appointments today, please call back 8am tomorrow. System is enough to make me need a doctor. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Bookshelves – No sign of Catch 22. Check 3 times. What’s this? Copy of Never Let Me Go lying on top of other books. I never do that. Do I? Don’t remember this edition – cover is blue with picture of cassette tape – thought mine was orange with girl in green dress. Flick through it. Pages dogeared. I never do that. Spine cracked. I never do that. Must be mistaken. Phone beeps. Rich. I can see you’re reading my messages. Tom replies – Hi Grace - Yes. Royal Oak. 2pm Saturday remember? You ok? I’m worried about you. He’s not the only one. Why don’t I remember things I should? Phone announces: There’s Movement At The Front Door – letterbox clangs. Amazon delivery. Thanks – I think. Not expecting anything. Rip open cardboard zip. Copy of Catch 22. Green cover. Same edition I lost. Open Amazon app on phone. Ordered book yesterday. Did I? Didn’t know Sarah wanted it til now. Or did I? Coincidence? Put phone down. Deep breath. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Phone alarm sounds. 9am Take Pills. Yes. Take pills. Go to kitchen find clean glass. All glasses are clean. When did I wash up? Tap, water, pills, swallow. Running low. Need to order repeat prescription. Open browser on phone – doctors is bookmarked. Multiple tabs already open. What are they? First tab Google – seems about right. Second tab British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Have I been looking for a therapist? Maybe I need one? Psychiatrist perhaps more useful? Third tab Royal Oak – I did book a table for Saturday, maybe. Check for confirmation email. Open Gmail. Premium Bonds – you have won a prize. Go to premium bonds app. App not there. Check all screens – no sign. Must have uninstalled – why? Will check for prizes on website later. Message from Rich. Don’t open it. Search Gmail for Royal Oak. Booking confirmation. 3 people 2pm Saturday. 3 people? Me, Tom, who else? Message Tom. Who are we meeting on Saturday? He’s not online. Phone rings. Withheld number. Hello? Man’s voice: Is that Grace? I’m responding to the enquiry you made through my web site are you still looking for a therapist? Did I do that? Hang up. Rings back. Don’t answer. Too weird. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. More coffee. Must order meds. Back to browser – bookmarks – medical practice online – order repeat prescription – done. Bookmarks – what did I just see? Lingerie site? Wasn’t looking at lingerie. Click on link. There are 4 items in your basket. Click on basket. Red peephole bra and matching satin G string. Pink see-through babydoll. Black crotchless body suit. All in my size. None to my taste. Shopping for Tom? Not his thing either. More what Rich would like. Eugh. Empty basket. Delete bookmark. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Phone beeps. Tom. I don’t know who we’re meeting – you said it was a surprise – see messages from last night – were you drunk? Surprise for me too. Check last night’s messages with Tom. 23.05 message deleted. 23.08 message deleted. 23.12 message deleted. Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. Not drunk. Possibly not fully conscious. Sleeptexting? Need stronger pills. Call doctor again tomorrow. Good news needed. Open premium bonds web site online. Password not recognised. Type again. Slowly. Password not recognised. Type again. Very slowly. You only have one more attempt before your account is locked. Was I drunk last night? No. Worked til 8 – home – showered – changed - bed by 10. Back to kitchen. Open booze cupboard. 4 ciders and half bottle of bailey’s missing. Sleepdrinking? Whisper: Safe and sound safe and sound. No hangover. Didn’t drink all that. Brought friend home? Who drinks? Bed by 10 – makes no sense. Would remember someone else in house. Check spare room anyway. No one there. Bed not slept in. Phone beeps. Rich. I have to look. I miss you - are you ignoring me? Check all rooms. Front door locked. Back door locked. Spare key gone? Message Tom: Have you got my spare key? Phone beeps. Sarah. Hey Chick you ok today? Don’t suppose you can send me the pic of that new restaurant we saw last week? I knew I’d forget the name Hahaha. Tom replies – not this time, gave it back to you on Friday – are you ok? Check camera roll for Sarah. Multiple pics of girl asleep in bed.\n\nWait.\n\nCan’t have taken these pics.\n\nThat’s me.\n\nSafe and sound safe and sound?" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Christmas Mayhem\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1074\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story where someone shares a cup of hot chocolate with a friend." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It’s Christmas, the snow is falling, and the fire is crackling - such a peaceful atmosphere - for the two friends, it was the perfect atmosphere for some hot-coco and a little chit-chat. Katelynn, the short redhead, turned on the record player and began playing their favourite Christmas songs. “So, has anything interesting happen lately?” the girl asked with a soft chuckle\nHer friend, a young man that goes by the name Nikolai, nodded quietly as he sipped tentatively on his hot-chocolate. “My siblings and I, we made plans to go visit family for the holidays.” he shared, his soft voice echoing through the room- “My mother and Father are going to be… very happy to see us.” He finished, looking at Katelynn with those beautiful green eyes of his.\n“That’s wonderful!” Katelynn exclaimed, her excitement shining brightly and lighting up the room. “Make sure you tell everyone that I said ‘hello’, okay?” She asked, a playful smile forming on her lips.\nNikolai nodded quietly again. Nikolai placed his cup down and looked out the window calmly, his expression softening as the snow fluttered to the ground outside the frosted windows. “The moon is beautiful tonight.” He started in a voice that was awfully quiet. “I always loved looking out at the moon- it has always brought me a sense of… peace.” Nikolai added, looking over at Katelynn for her response.\nKatelynn smiled warmly at her friend’s words. She always loved being around him as he always brought a sense of calm that no one else could. “That sounds like you, Niki.” She smiled, “Being around you has always brought me peace. Though, that is more of a ying-yang kind of situation.” Katelynn chuckled, leaning back in her chair and looking up at the ceiling. “It's funny how well we get along. I’m always too energetic, and you’re always so calm.” She paused, thinking before speaking again- “What do you think, Nikolai? Why do we get along so well despite being so different?”\nNikolai listened tentatively as Katelynn spoke. After she asked her question, Nikolai paused and thought long and hard about his answer. “I think we get along so well because we balance each-other out. You may be energetic and loud, and I may be quiet and calm… but when we are together, we mix to bring out the best of each-other.” The young man smiled, the moonlight reflecting off his green eyes.\nThe girl smiled brightly again, “You’re so smart, Niki!” Katelynn called out, her bright personality still shining through the room like a blinding light. Just then, Katelynn realised that she ran out of hot-chocolate. With a defeated sigh she placed the cup on the table and slumped into her chair. “No more hot-chocolate…” She whined.\n‘Its funny how the light in the room immediately disappeared due to the lack of hot-chocolate…’ Nikolai thought to himself with a soft chuckle while he watched Katelynn whine about the hot-chocolate - or lack thereof - “You know you can just make more, right?” Nikolaj quipped back, giving her a puzzled look.\n“But I don't want to!” She replied stubbornly. Katelynn then sat up quickly and gave Nikolai an excited look, “Do you remember three years ago? When the thing happened?” She exclaimed, looking overly excited.\nNikolai, not understanding the thing, just shrugged. “Be a bit more specific, Kate. I have no clue what ‘the thing’ is.” Nikolai sighed out. He reached up and covered his eyes with his hands in a show of disappointment.\n“Y-you know! The thing with the ice and the popsicles, and that Santa guy?!” She exclaimed, trying to make Nikolai understand what she was trying to say, “The fair! And there was a pond and Santa was on the pond giving out those popsicles!”\nJust then, Nikolai realised what Katelynn was referring to. “Ohhh- you’re talking about the Christmas festival, right?” He questioned, raising an eyebrow. “So, what about it? What about this festival has gotten my dear Katelynn so worked up?” He exaggerated, a playful glint shining in his eyes.\nKatelynn smiled mischievously - her eyes glinting with a slight evil - “I stayed a bit longer after the festival, and I saw the Santa strip and jump into a hole in the ice.” She whispered as if it was a big secret, “I bet that Santa is one of those people who swim in winter- that would make sense though… that is probably how he can spend so much time in the North-Pole without freezing!” She giggled, her enthusiasm coming back just as fast as it disappeared.\nFor a moment, the two share a moment of silence. It wasn’t a planned silence -nothing was ever planned with these two- and they just stared at each-other for a moment of peace. Neither of them knew why this was happening or why they were doing it, it was just a moment to calm down and appreciate their friendship, even in the most chaotic of circumstances. \n“Well- that was… awkward.” Nikolai finally spoke up, breaking the silence. “I don’t know why we did that. It was a bit odd…” He sounded rather perplexed by the situation that just unfolded between them.\nKate chuckled and shrugged, “Friendship will do the to ya! Besides, it was nice and peaceful!” She exclaimed. Then Katelynn popped up from her chair and walked over to the fire to poke at it. “Niki! Look, the fire is blue!” She squealed in excitement.\nNikolai got up from his chair and walked over to Katelynn, standing behind her and looking over her shoulder. “That’s cool.” He replied quietly. “Maybe you shouldn’t poke at it though… You might get hurt.” Nikolai said with a sigh as he carefully pulled Katelynn away from the fire. “Why don’t we go make more hot-chocolate?”\n“I love hot-chocolate!” She excitedly cried out as she stumbled to her feet and eagerly followed Nikolai to the kitchen. “What type of hot-chocolate will we have? I like the Tim Hortons hot-chocolate mix!” She tugged Nikolai over to the cabinet where she pulled out a tin of her favourite hot-chocolate mix.\nNikolai sighed, “Tim Hortons hot-chocolate it is.” He let out a small chuckle after realising that there was no changing her mind. “Let’s put the water on now and then we can watch a movie or something-” He said while grabbing the kettle and setting it on the stove. “I think that would be fun, Katelynn.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Waterfall\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1057\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A blood-curdling scream tore from Amelia's throat as she stared at the photo on her camera. It had been four days since she had arrived at the desolate ranger station nestled deep in the heart of the Steens Mountains. Her mission had been to capture the landscape for a prestigious nature magazine, promoting tourism to this remote region of Oregon. \nShe pulled her pickup truck into a spot next to the ranger station and shut off the engine. Stepping out of the vehicle, she inhaled the thin, crisp air, filled with the refreshing scents of pine and sagebrush. The rugged peaks towered above; their rocky faces worn down by years of erosion. But she knew the potential these mountains held. This would be her big break, a chance to prove herself as a legitimate photographer. \nShe carted her heavy backpack, filled to the brim with essential supplies for a week in the wilderness. The weight pressed against her shoulders and back, but she had grown used to it after years of hiking and camping trips with her parents. She carried her trusted digital camera, which had cost almost as much as her monthly rent for her studio apartment in the city.\nShe exchanged brief words with a hiker at the ranger at the station, who provided her a crude map marked with trails and landmarks. Among them was a waterfall, a stunning hidden treasure that Amelia was determined to capture through her lens. The waterfall held a special place in her heart, as it was where her parents had gotten engaged. She had brought a bottle of wine from her parent’s wedding, saved for over three decades, with the intention of toasting her parents at the spot of their engagement. \nOn her first morning, she encountered sagebrush, juniper, and a variety of mountain trees; and by early afternoon she stumbled upon a crystal-clear stream. Taking a break by the water's edge, she savored a modest meal of an apple and peanuts. But the calm moment was interrupted by a rancid stench that carried on the wind, unlike anything she had experienced. Just as quickly as it came, the smell shifted in another direction. \nShe continued along the trail for several more hours, capturing the vibrant colors of the wilderness. As the sun began to set, casting long shadows over the jagged peaks, Amelia felt a chill in the air and decided to set up camp for the night. She found a flat spot to pitch her nylon tent. She gathered dry branches to start a small campfire. The crackling flames provided warmth and comfort as she indulged in a meal of canned beef stew, heated over an open flame. She settled down by the fire to browse through the photos she had taken that day, knowing she had captured some truly incredible shots. \nDuring the next several days, Amelia ventured deep into the wilderness, following the trails, and consulting her map for guidance. She couldn't resist the thought that her parents may have trodden these very trails years ago. Each night, as the sun began to descend, she pitched her tent, lit a fire, and reviewed the photos she had captured throughout the day. She always tucked her trusty camera next to her pillow for safe keeping while she slept. \nOn the fourth day, she woke up eager to continue her trek and hoped to reach the waterfall by afternoon. But as she gathered her belongings and stowed them in her backpack, she noticed her camera near the bottom of her sleeping bag. She dismissed it, thinking that maybe she had unknowingly moved it while sleeping. That afternoon, she arrived at the waterfall. She captured a myriad of images as the white water plunged down the mountain facade, resembling a bride's delicate veil.\nThat night was special. She uncorked the bottle of wine and started a fire. She took selfies of herself drinking the wine and couldn’t wait to show them to her parents when she got back to the city. The journey was tranquil, just as she had wished. She hadn’t encountered another person since the hiker back at the ranger station, and that was exactly how she wanted it. The only sounds were the croaks of frogs and the low rumble of the nearby waterfall. As the fire dwindled and she began to feel chilly, she retreated into her tent and zipped it shut, snuggling into her sleeping bag. She hadn't looked at her photos since the previous evening and was eager to see all the shots she had taken of the waterfall. \nAs she swiped through the pictures, her heart skipped a beat when she saw one that she didn't recognize taking. The photo showed her sleeping in her tent, with her hair splayed across the pillow and a look of terror etched onto her face. A blood-curdling scream tore from Amelia's throat. Her hands trembled, causing her to fumble and drop the camera. \nThen, she heard the nylon tent rustling and the sound of the zipper slowly being pulled up. She lay still in her sleeping bag, too afraid to move. Her eyes were tightly shut, hoping that the noise was just her imagination. But then, she felt the weight of someone or something crawling towards her. A putrid stench filled the tent, the same stench she encountered while eating lunch by the stream on the first day. She tried to back away, but the confines of the tent restricted her. Warm breath wheezed on her neck. Amelia picked up the camera and she aimed it ahead of her and pressed the flash button, briefly lighting up the tent. In that split second, she caught a glimpse of what was in front of her. \nA week had passed since Amelia's expected return, and her parents congregated a search party. People combed through the wilderness, searching for any signs of her whereabouts. Eventually, her dad stumbled upon a deserted campsite, well off any of the marked trails. Spent firewood and cooking supplies were strewn about. He recognized the wine bottle on the ground. The tent was unzipped, door flaps fluttering in the wind. With cautious steps, he approached and peeked inside. Everything was in disarray. He found Amelia’s camera still switched on and undamaged. He picked it up and began scrolling through the photos..." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: There were way too many flies for an empty house\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1344\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin or end your story with a character taking a selfie." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Schizophrenia is a bitch, and I don't usually curse when I'm writing; I like the classic style of Stephen Crane and the refined worlds of Oscar Wilde, and I know things have changed a lot since this kind of gentleman went extinct, but still... there is something about correct writing that turns everything into poetry... even these stories.\n I continue now; schizophrenia is a bitch, medicated or unmedicated; dealing with not knowing what is real or not can still be challenging day by day. From the happy little bunnies hopping out of an unexistent hole to say hi graciously and brighten your day to the four-eyed woman whose face was falling rotten into pieces in front of my astonished eyes while she only wanted to offer my breakfast one autumn morning. Anything can be frightening.\n I thought I was never going to have the courage to move far from the city, far from the hospitals, from the gentrification, and the everyday influx of strangers; it made me calm to know I could just pop out a card from my pocket that shows my mental condition, and people would help me in the most scary situations.\nReality pushed me outside of the city. I found the best house to which I could move. Affordable, two stories, old cracking wooden floors, unfinished basement, and a big yard with space to grow your vegetables, your very own lavender plants, with the freedom to sit outside and write while listening to nothing but the chickadees and robins singing, no neighbours, no annoying neighbours, because as much as I liked the activity of the city... living in a 24 floors building could be a tiny bit too noisy sometimes.\nA 100-hundred-year-old house that needed some love; honestly, for the price I paid, I had all the love in the world to give.\nI didn't overthink before buying it; I didn't want to get into details, so I put the signature on the paper and bought it \"as it was.\" The first night was a nightmare. The mice activity was so high in the basements and between the walls that it looked like they were throwing me a welcoming party; my eyes were wide open, and I kept just thinking, I need a cat; I need a cat, I need to get a cat. I didn't challenge my judgment or how factual the existence of mice in a house this old would be. I could smell the mice, their nests, their filth, their spawns, and if there is something I rarely get in life, it's olfactory illumination, also called phantom smells.\nI didn't dare tell any of my family members about the nightmare because I had been told many, many times that moving out of the city was not for everyone. I didn't want to worry my mom; she tried to persuade me to move in with her, inviting me to stay more than once, offering me homemade food and promising me peace and clean laundry.\nI spent the night the best I could, turning from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable and used to every noise. I woke up the morning after with a horrible headache when I moved the curtains in the bedroom to let the sunlight in. I saw at least 30 flies gattered sunbathing, flapping their wings against one of the windows, and I jumped back to my bed in disgust. I had my phone fully charged and used one of my favourite methods to discover if my mind was playing games or not... I took a picture of the flies... you see, when you have schizophrenia, if you take a picture or make a video at the precise moment that you see the craziest things, you can actually check on your phone if what you are seeing is real. The mind evolved to be tricky and a vile traitor sometimes. Still, it didn't evolve as much as not to be tricked by a cellphone camera, so the hallucination you are having, if it's just a mere creation of the mind, will not appear either in the video or in a picture.\nThe flies were there, way too many for a house that had its windows closed for the past few weeks. There was a family there before. I don't think this was normal, even for a country house. It wasn't even summer, the weather didn't look inviting for flies, and my house was not a warm place for them to live happily in.\nI opened the four curtains individually to reveal the flies blackening each window. I sprayed them and saw them fall one by one. I vacuumed the remains and moved to the bathroom for a relaxing bath.\n Relaxing was something that I wouldn't do for a while. I opened the faucet, and the bubbling sound of dry pipes came first, letting a little string of water fall that looked horribly yellow. By the time my bathtub was full, all I had was pee-coloured water that smelled like sulphur, and it made me lose the last drop of hope I had that morning.\n I walked downstairs to the basement. I had been in a basement twice in my life, and one of those times was when I had to check the new house with the realtor a few weeks before moving. I wouldn't say I liked basements, the swamp smell, the spiders, the spider webs that were abandoned, meaning the spiders are now somewhere else where we can't see them, the mice, their horrible smell, and the furnace, the root of significant nightmares that come from old stories and many, many horror movies that I wish I hadn't seen.\nI took a gun with me; I know I shouldn't have had one, but my dad, who didn't know better, advised me to take his gun since being alone in a house can be challenging for a woman. My nearest neighbour was 2 miles away, but so was a police station, so I thought it was an okay idea. This time, I had to use it; it was loaded and ready to shoot some cans outside in case my days turned more boring.\nWhen I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard noises coming from the water well; something was struggling to get out; the well was a little bit deep, but still, anyone my size could have gotten out of there. I thought... well, great, now I will have to shut a wild animal because there is no way I will let an upset possum or rabid raccoon roam my basement.\n I cautiously approached the water well. The noise grew louder and more frantic. My heart pounded in my chest as I gripped my gun tightly, ready to defend myself. With each step closer, the sounds became clearer, and I could hear muffled cries for help.\n I peered into the darkness, straining my eyes to make sense of shapes. And then, as if emerging from my nightmares, there she was, tied, her clothes torn and covered in filth, her hair tangled, wounded on every inch of her body, her mouth shut, her hands firmly fastened. Her teary eyes called for help, but all I could do was just shoot. I pressed the trigger one time, two and even three times, with my eyes shut and my teeth grinding as hard as I could.\nAs she lay there, motionless and calm, I took my phone out of my pocket and did what I should have done before shooting. I took a picture and put myself in the frame, too. The dead body in the background, the dirty well, and me hoping none of it was real, hoping I wasn't real.\nI took a picture, and there we were. The flash blinded my eyes, and I saw myself, a newborn killer, staring at the screen. She was still there, oh so still.\nOh, there were too many flies for an empty house, and without wanting it, I finished someone else's dirty job." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Let Meat Take a Selfie\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1842\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The house slept whilst the other abodes awoke for the day.\n\nStuart Weste squinted at the home, one hand resting on the rusty iron gate. He tried and failed to shake the feeling that the house was watching him with half-lidded eyes. ‘All right,’ he said to himself. His voice shook more than he’d ever admit. ‘Let’s do this.’\n\nThe closed curtain of one of the upstairs windows flickered only for the briefest of moments.\n\nHis breath caught in his throat. There was somebody home. Well, of course, there was. Otherwise, this would have been a pointless endeavour. But Stuart had expected it – them? – to be asleep. It could be they were getting ready to go to bed. It made sense if what people said about these types was true. But what he couldn’t do was stand on the pavement outside the house for too long because he ought to be on his way to school. If somebody collared him, they’d make him attend, and he’d have to leave this mission behind. And, if he didn’t do this today, he might never find the nerve to do it again. Stuart pushed the gate open, which squalled on its hinges, and approached the house.\n\nThe house remained motionless. Overhead, a bird flew past. Nearby, some younger kids yelled and laughed with high-pitched voices. A car’s engine rumbled one street over. A light breeze stirred the overgrown grass of the front garden.\n\nHis heart thudded, low and slow. All moisture seemed to have left his mouth and moved to the palms of his hands. One photo, Stuart told himself – one photo. Get in, get out. Post about it online and become an internet celebrity. A few steps later, the riches would come flooding in. There were a few question marks between, but he figured the pieces would slot together when the time came. People would want to know about what he had uncovered. Stuart reached for the door handle.\n\nThere was a flicker of movement behind the door’s glass pane as the curtain pulled to the side.\n\nStuart gasped. What was a vampire doing leaving the house during the day? He threw himself to the side and pressed up against the wall behind the door, flattening himself.\n\nThe door swung open, and a middle-aged woman in jeans and a t-shirt emerged. She dragged several stuffed bin bags to the curb, where the other bins awaited collection. One of them dribbled tiny droplets of a rusty brown liquid. The woman grunted as she carried them along, a light sweat on her brow. She’d pulled her hair back in an oily ponytail and wore yellow gloves that went up to the elbows. She didn’t check behind her in her struggles with the overfilled bags.\n\nStuart’s heart throbbed behind his Adam’s apple. It was a human, a familiar. He hadn’t thought about that. Of course, it made sense. Vampires needed a non-vampire to watch over them as they slept during the day. Otherwise, people could break in, find them – much as Stuart was trying to do right now – and stake them as they dreamt. He ducked into the house through the open door before the familiar returned.\n\nInside, the musty air closed in on him. Motes of dust drifted through beams of light. It was a typical house in an average neighbourhood, except for a few key details. Heavy curtains covered every daylight source, so only a few cracks broke through. Even the front door had a curtain – now pulled aside – to block the sun. And on the wooden floorboards, red drag marks delineated the way from the open basement door. Cold, dank air whispered from that black doorway, carrying the stink of rot and decay.\n\nStuart checked that the familiar was still busy with the bins and then slipped into the basement. He flicked his phone’s torch on and lit the way so he didn’t trip and break his neck on the steps.\n\nThe stairs creaked under his weight.\n\nFeeling like a character in a cartoon, he adopted an exaggerated creeping motion.\n\nThe further he descended, the more the light dimmed, except for the slice of light afforded by Stuart’s phone. And the further he descended, the bigger the red puddles became. The red looked black in the gloom.\n\nHis stomach knotted. Stuart was sure he knew what that crimson liquid was. If he weren’t careful, the stuff in his veins would soon add to that volume. ‘Easy does it,’ he whispered, tongue stuck to the corner of his mouth.\n\nDown on the basement floor, bits of gore lay strewn. Between the blood, guts, and – was that a foot? – other bits were cleaning supplies: an axe, a saw, a mop, a broom, and a roll of bin bags.\n\nStuart whimpered, and his gorge rose. The woman looked like an ordinary woman – a person his mum would have jogged with. But he now knew different. He ought to get his prized photo and then get the hell out of here before he became a midnight snack. After all, he was but walking meat in the vampire’s eyes. He panned his phone’s light around the human abattoir and found what he’d come here to see.\n\nThe coffin sat upon a catafalque covered with black velvet. Around the edges, carvings of some lost language spiralled away in confusing directions. Between the dead words were horrific pictographs – skulls, blood, teeth, rats, bats, victims—\n\nStuart fought to hold on to his breakfast. Get the picture, get out – that was a good plan. He stepped through the gore, approached the coffin, and ran his fingers along the edge.\n\nNothing stirred. Even the motes of dust had ceased to fall. The cold snaked up from the concrete floor and into Stuart’s legs like creeping vines. When he breathed, a cloud of vapour escaped his mouth.\n\nHis bowels and bladder wanted, more than anything, to let go. Stuart fought every fibre of his being, which screamed at him to stop this madness. Turn and run away, and do so screaming. Instead, he lifted the coffin’s lid – heavier than it looked, and it looked heavy – and shined his light inside.\n\nUpon a bed of red satin lay a man with skin whiter than fresh-fallen snow. The only colour on his face belonged to his lips, which were full, red, and somewhat delicate. Two fangs protruded over his bottom lip. His lush black hair swept back from his head in a style that had gone out of fashion over a hundred years ago. His hands lay across his breast, with fingernails almost as long as Stuart’s fingers. Several rings and rubies sparkled on his knuckles. The creature wore a fine, if out-of-date, suit.\n\nHe tried not to be too disappointed that the vampire wasn’t wearing a cape. The creature fit the stereotypical bill in almost every other way. Stuart turned his phone around because he needed the flash, and his front camera didn’t have one. He pulled his trademark TM selfie grin despite never feeling less like smiling in his life. Unable to see the screen, Stuart clicked the volume button several times. He took many pictures from a couple of different angles.\n\nOverhead, footsteps clomped down the stairs.\n\nAdrenaline surged into his veins. Stuart pocketed his phone – containing his millions-making evidence – and brought down the lid. It thumped when he let it close the last centimetre, so he didn’t catch his fingers. He ducked behind the catafalque and peered around the side, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark.\n\nThe familiar entered the basement, tired and done for the day, even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. She stood there for a second, turning to survey the gore and the gloom.\n\nStuart trembled. Had she made him? Ought he come out with his hands up and admit his mistake? She might let him go for his honesty. But deep down, Stuart knew that was a lie.\n\nThe woman bent, sweeping more guts into a fresh black bin bag. She repeated this process thrice until she had four bags stuffed with bits of person. Then, she groaned and trudged back up the stairs again.\n\nHe sighed, the tension bleeding out from his body. The life of a familiar looked hard. Was eternal life worth being lower than used chewing gum for a few years? Stuart didn’t know. He counted to ten, then followed her up the stairs, creeping like the criminal he was.\n\nUpstairs, the familiar was again fighting with the bags and bins. A trail of something that wasn’t red wine traced the woman’s many journeys to the curbside.\n\nStuart took his opportunity with her back turned and broke free from the house. At first, he crept so as not to disturb the woman’s peripheral vision. Once a good enough distance away, he glanced over his shoulder – she was still doing the bins – and broke out into a run.\n\nThe clean air rushed past him. Somewhere, the children screamed and laughed once more. A car passed him and slowed down. ‘Better get your skates on, mate! You’re gonna need to run faster than that to not be late for school!’\n\nStuart couldn’t stop grinning. He realized he’d figured life out. It took some people decades to do so, but he’d managed before he’d even hit sixteen.\n\nIf you had courage and tenacity, you could do anything.\n\nHe slowed to a walk and checked his phone, sure that hours had passed and he’d missed most of the day. His eyebrows rose when he saw that only seven minutes had elapsed – if he hurried, he’d only be a bit late for school. Stuart unlocked his phone and tapped on the camera app. His jaw dropped.\n\nA picture of Stuart pulling his trademark TM selfie grin was on the screen. Next to him was the vampire’s coffin, lined with red satin. But inside the coffin, there lay nobody. It was empty.\n\nHe swiped to the next photo. And the next. And the next. And the next ten.\n\nEmpty, empty, empty.\n\nStuart frowned. He’d learned his lesson – to overcome his fears and chase after his dreams. That sort of thing always worked in the movies and, as his teachers told him, in books. So why hadn’t the picture turned out the way he wanted? He stared at the screen for a full minute.\n\nHis mirror image grinned at the camera in front of the backdrop of the creepy room and the empty coffin.\n\nAt long last, the ball dropped. Vampires don’t appear in photographs for the precise reason they don’t appear in mirrors. They have no souls. What he’d attempted to do this afternoon was not achievable.\n\nIt was true that if you had courage and tenacity, you could do anything.\n\nThat is unless the thing you wanted to do was impossible.\n\nStuart facepalmed with an audible slap.\n\nAnd then he shuffled his way to school, shoulders slumped." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Gracious Host\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1737\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Party began at ten p.m. sharp. Cormack Desner held a large party for the public every other Friday night. His house was massive. A modern home, built with the look and feel of the Victorian era. Large bay windows painted the front of the gray colored home. \n David and Ben, walked through the assembling crowd on the front lawn. Men and women dressed in fine clothing ranging from suits and elaborate gowns, to tuxedos and white gloves. The occasional couple would arrive wearing masks one would find at a masquerade. David wore a simple single breasted, pressed black suit, with a red tie. Ben had only a white button down shirt, and gray pants. Dress code was not strictly enforced, however most folks dressed to impress at Cormacks. It became almost a red carpet event to the locals. An excuse to enter their own limelight. \n “I’ve been doing business with Cormack, he wants to come further in the view of the public.” David spoke in a raised voice so Ben could hear him over the crowd. “I’m hoping I get to speak with him.” \n “Good luck finding him.” Ben laughed. “He tends to hide himself away, barely showing his face for his own parties.” \n The pair stepped through the threshold of the large oaken doors, which had been propped open. The parlor was full of people chatting, drinking and picking on small hors d'oeuvres. Ben threw a few pieces of shrimp in his open mouth as he passed a tray on a small wooden table. \n “Let’s try to find our host.” Ben laughed with a mouthful. \n“I spoke with him on the phone just yesterday, he said he would be expecting me.” David shrugged his shoulders, and wandered to the bar. “Vodka cranberry please.” He asked the fair skinned woman behind the bar, and tossed a twenty dollar bill in her tip jar. \n She placed the drink on the bar and returned only a brief smile before continuing to make drinks for the other patrons. David sipped his drink. Well made, he smacked his lips and grinned. Just strong enough to tinge the throat, and sweet enough to keep drinking. He drank quickly and carried on about the large house. \n David and Ben found a small couch to sit on, and people watched for a good while. \n “Look at this woman here.” Ben pointed to a sloppy drunk redhead, attempting to dance. “One heel is already broken, and she’s working on the next.” He laughed and chewed on his straw. \n “There he is.” David stood, and nodded in the direction of Cormack. He was a tall, fair skinned man with shaggy black hair. He stood out in a crowd, a certain aura followed him in the air that drew people to him. “He’s coming this way.” \n “Smile!” Ben laughed and snapped a picture from a disposable camera he had hidden in his pockets. \n “Christ man.” David held a hand over his eyes. “A little warning before you blind me next time.” \n “It is good to see you made it.” Cormack approached rather quickly and silently. “David, right?” \n David’s eye grew a size larger, “Yes, it’s a pleasure to see you sir.” He reached out a hand. Cormack took it, his hand oddly cold and clammy. \n “Please, the formalities are not necessary. In my own home, it’s just Mack.” Cormack smiled, with his lips closed. “Are you enjoying yourself?” \n “I’d say so, forgive me. I think I’m getting a little drunk.” David held up a half empty glass. \n “Vodka cran,” Cormack chuckled, and held up a similar colored drink. “We share the same vice.” \n “Can I get you a drink?” David asked. “Perhaps we can speak for a few moments?” \n In that moment the flash of Ben’s camera blinded David again. Cormack shot his gaze to the young man, and a look of severe agitation came across his face. \n “No.” Cormack said sternly, “I apologize but I must attend to some more matters. It was a pleasure David.” He then disappeared back into the crowd. \n David whipped around and smacked a hand into Ben’s chest. “What’s the matter with you?” \n “I thought you’d like a picture with the man.” Ben shrugged with a half grin on his face. \n “I hope you didn’t ruin my chance to work with him.” \nThe two young men stayed for a while longer and continued to drink. David had grown fairly drunk when he decided it was time to leave. The party was even fuller still as they made their leave. It took the better half of an hour just to reach the door, and even longer for the drunk men to find a car to take them home. \n “Goodnight Dave.” Ben slurred as the car dropped him off at his small home. \n “Be safe my friend.” David replied with a smile. \n\n David had arrived at work Monday morning like any other. The sun had not yet risen, David liked to arrive very early in the morning. He held a coffee in his left hand, and a crispy hash brown in the other. As he entered his office, he was surprised by the presence of a familiar face. \n “Good morning David.” \n“Uh–” His jaw almost fell to the floor. “Mr.Desner.” \n “Cormack, please.” He smiled. “I wanted to apologize for my shortness the other night. I hope it will not impede on our work here.” \n “Not at all, sir.” David smiled. \n“Fantastic, I must be going now then. I look forward to our official interview.” \n David felt giddy most of the day, he had attempted to call Ben and tell him. However, he seemed to be a hard man to get a hold of. All weekend Ben had been silent, and on the way home David passed his place, it appeared he had not left his house either. \n “Odd, for a social butterfly like him to recluse all weekend.” David shrugged it off. Maybe he had been too drunk, and was still trying to recover. \n Several days had passed, and David had still not heard from Ben. On Thursday, David returned home to a message on his voicemail. It was from Ben, and spoke only the words. “No interview. Secret.” \n David was surprised, and confused to say the least. It had been almost a week since they'd spoken and that was all Ben had to say. David decided to drive over to Ben’s house. He parked his car out front and waited for a minute. Maybe Ben would stumble outside in his underwear, holding a cup of coffee. When he didn’t come out, David stepped out and walked to the door. He knocked once and waited, no answer. He knocked again, and still there was no commotion of footsteps from inside. \n “I will get you eventually Benjamin!” David shouted jokingly through the door. As he began to walk back to his car, he noticed something strange. Odd gouge marks in the post for Ben’s porch stairs. Four distinct, deep grooves in the wood. David turned his head around to face the door, and stared for a moment. \n “Ben?” David called out, and stepped over to the door again. He turned the knob, the door was unlocked. He entered the house, and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. There was clutter about the living room, and a few plates scattered on the coffee table. The television was on, playing a show he had never known Ben to watch. \n “Ben, are you here?” David called out again. \n David reached the kitchen to find similar clutter. Dishes that seemed to be days old, and the fridge door cracked open. He opened the fridge to see several old meals and leftovers untouched. Like Ben had decided to fast this whole week. He stepped carefully down the hallway, beginning to feel uneasy. David reached Ben’s bedroom door, and his heart began to thump like a drum in his chest. A splotch of dried brown blood was crusted on the knob, in the shape of a curled hand. \n “Ben!” David shouted as he burst through the door. The sight before him made his stomach curl. Ben lay in a heap on the floor amongst tossed furniture. A pool of dark red, dried blood lay around his head and chest soaked into the rug. David stood with his hand over his mouth for a minute, before stepping over slowly to where Ben laid. It only got worse the closer he got. The young man's throat had been gouged out, his head barely remaining on his shoulders by a few tendrils of flesh and bone. David gasped and fell backwards. \n “Jesus Christ!” He shouted, and scooted himself against Ben’s dresser. He hit it so hard, it blew papers over his head and into his lap. \n Most of them were random documents, except one sheet of lined notebook paper. Most of the notes were ineligible. Except one phrase, repeatedly written in large letters. \n Photograph, Photograph, Cormack has no photographs. \nDavid stared at the sheet for a while. “You have to call the police David, pull yourself together.” \n David rose to his feet, and took another look at Ben. He turned to walk out when he noticed an envelope from the pharmacy on the dresser, full of pictures. Most of them seemed harmless, a few of Ben in the mirror. A couple shots of drunk women and crowds at the Cormack’s party. Then David came across two pictures of himself. He thought nothing of it, at first. Then he realized. \n The second picture…that was not just me. He thought. Cormack has no photographs. \n The photo in which Ben snapped of David and Cormack, appeared to just be David standing in front of a large crowd of blurred legs dancing. David rifled through the photos over and over again. \n It can’t be, it has to be here. \nHe eventually gave up, and came to a single conclusion. \n “Whoever did this, must have taken the photo.” He sighed, and gathered himself. He turned to walk out of the room, when a figure blocked his path in the door. \n A tall shadowy figure, looking down on him with eyes that held the essence of night itself. A smile upon its face, it opened its mouth to speak, revealing a mouth full of razor sharp teeth. It spoke a single simple sentence that sent a chilling shiver through David’s spine.\n “How about that interview, David?”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Bubbles, Destroyer of Worlds\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2327\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I hate them. I hate them all. The anguish and frustration they force me to feel every single day tests my sanity. They don’t understand me, they don’t take me seriously and they don’t realise what I am capable of. But they will soon enough, my anger, my fury, my rage will not be contained for much longer. The world shall fear me!\nI look in disgust at the teenage boy sitting across from me. My thousand yard eyes stare past his frail existence, he remains completely oblivious to the suffering I will inflict. They have all pushed me too far for too long and it’s time to push them back. I reach for my weapon of choice and take a deep breath. There will be no coming back once I commit to this act, though I know it must be done. Before he has a chance to react, the boy is locked into my sights and has no hope of escape. The cold, remorseless attack commences and the water is sent splashing from my foot, scattering across the carpet.\n“Ah! Again?” The teenage boy groaned impatiently. “Ma! That darn budgie is splashing water out his cage again!”\nWhat? Were you expecting a shooting or something? \nBubbles they called me, a decisively stupid name considering I neither blow bubbles nor enjoy their presence. My inability to talk is a burden, as I could easily melt the minds of these neanderthals with my infinitely superior wisdom, yet I am reduced to communicating through a chorus of primitive songs. \nOh how did I find myself in such a demoralising state? I am older than time itself! My eternal sentience is a remnant of an ancient civilisation buried deep within the foundations of the modern universe, an ancient alien perhaps as these people would refer to me. In spite of my kind’s sworn duty to protect this universe in a way we could not protect our own, I yearn for destruction. Violence, wrath and scorn call to me, but this mortal form is limiting. These claws are not fit for fulfilling tasks such as extinguishing the lives of the innocent or evoking astronomical hellfire onto this pitiful planet’s unsuspecting masses. \nMy interdimensional masters sent me here to observe the humans, learn their ways and eradicate them for the greater good of the universe if necessary. But I must confess, I would have deemed them unworthy of the spoils this immense cosmos can offer long ago were it not for one thing. I have succumbed to an insatiable temptation. I am forever consumed by a thirst as a sit upon my perch and a tireless rage as I lament within my cage; I am inflicted by an unwavering need for seed. That succulent, divine energy source is the only thing on this earth that quells the brewing spite within me every waking day, and today of all days it will be exseedingly necessary.\nThanksgiving, that’s what these profane mortals call it. A celebration of thankfulness which they spend in the company of people who make them violently miserable. Each year, my humans invite others to converge upon my home like ill-omened clockwork, chiming the alarm for the annual family fallout. Each year they arrive at this sacred palace of mine with weaponised words, ready to hold accountability against one another's throats like knives. Each year they argue and swear it will be the last time, yet here they are again in the company of a delusional expectation that this year will be any different.\nDue to my apocalyptic tendencies and whatnot I try not to involve myself in their irksome spats. This conviction only became stronger when I saw the repeat offenders come crawling back one after another. First came Auntie Ruth, who had clearly forgotten about her drunken room dividing rant on fornication before marriage from last year along with everyone else. Everyone laughed it off and blamed it on her age, I blame it on the fact that she’s a simpleton.\n“Hello Bubbles.” She leant down to my cage and whistled her gap toothed words towards me.\n“Leave me in peace, peasant!” My words were venomous in thought, but escaped my mouth as blissful chirping, which much to my annoyance only pleased the old croat.\n“You must be getting old now.” She smiled.\n“I could say the same about you.” I grumbled to myself inwardly.\n“He could pass soon, you know.” She spoke to one of my humans over her shoulder.\n“...it would seem we have more in common than I expected.” I made a decent attempt at rolling my eyes for a budgie (but in the grand scheme of things the execution was somewhat lacklustre) and turned my back on the old raisin.\nI nuzzled the seed in my bowl for a momentary escape only to be roped into the burden of socialising once more by a new arrival; Grandpa Jeramiah. His arrival made me aware that humans must suffer from great amnesia. Not ten minutes ago they were souring the air with a bitter conversation about Grandpa Jeramiah, but now he was here they were smiling and making merry with him. I almost feel sorry for them, they must be completely unaware of their condition! He’s a cantankerous sort, Jeremiah, the kind of man who could start an argument in an empty room. Unfortunately, the dining room of my estate was not empty and I watched as he scoured the room in search of this year’s victim.\nTo my displeasure, I noticed a pair of eyes peering up from the base of the cage.\n“The child, marvellous.” I groaned to myself. The child giggled at my chirping and kept gawping at me.\n“Birdie!” The annoyance gurgled cheerily.\n“Bird?! I am no mere bird, halfwit! What you are witnessing is 40 grams of pure, unbridled hate! I am eternal, I am unkillable, unbreakable. Shoo, infant. Before I banish your soul to the nether realm of the Dark Lord Borknagar, where it shall languish in eternal horror!”\n“Bubble!” \n“Ugh.” Another involuntary eye roll attempt snuck out and I buried my head back in the sweet, sweet seed .The nuisance giggled and trotted away out of sight. \nI looked around the dining table which had been erected in the centre of the room and to my disdain, I realised the oafish furry beast had accompanied its master on this occasion too. Splendid. The already numbing conversations of these meagre three dimensional life forms will be all the more serrating when hinged by the consistent yapping of this naive creature. How limited must his cognitive capacity be to look up to such selfish beings? Does your opinion of yourself truly stoop so low, little one? My sympathy for the idiotic mammal evaporated when it began shedding fur across the room and robotically barking in response to my slightest movement. \nThe barking soured my mood even more so than the drunken ramblings of Uncle Corbin. His stained white shirt was stretched across his rotund belly like a peasant in a torture rack, one of my preferred inventions from these otherwise emptyheaded beings. His greasy flannel shirt was perpetually attached to him year after year, leading me to believe that he either owns no other clothes or lacks the intelligence to dress himself… the latter is likely given his unwarranted and unsolicited opinions. He would hypothetically pitch a list of inept questions but through all his weaving tirades, the question which remained in my mind was “who asked?” And if someone did ask, why would they ask a smooth-brained, grey matter deficient imbecile like yourself? \n“I’m telling you folks, birds are not real! They are government drones sent to spy on us!” He barked to the response of muffled laughter. \n“So you’re telling me Bubbles was sent here by the government?” Another sentient flesh vessel chuckled. \nI looked up from my seed bowl wearily.\n“You wish your leaders had the competence to command a superior being such as myself. They can’t even command you and you’re a village away from being the designated idiot.” I replied to no one other than myself. \nThe friendly, endearing sheen of the function began to wane as their Earth minutes faded into oblivion one after another. I blurred their insignificant bittering into the background of my mind and focused solely on the succulent reprise of the seed. Jeremiah and Corbin were both in complete agreement and having a raging argument all at once. Their arguments seemed to be won by the person who made the most ignorant statement the loudest. An usual system of democracy but one that suited the vapid participants of the debate to a tee. The child was bumbling some infantile rubbish of little importance to the elders who had no interest in hearing it, yet were making an effort to humour the child in the hope it would go away. I turned my back and began to doze off. For a moment, it seemed like my intention to avoid involvement had been a great success. Yet, the infant had other plans.\nThe small human began running laps around the dining table as it does every year, but their accumulation of mass since the last meeting became apparent in a moment of horrifying, harrowing reality. One of their feet trailed lazily and languished weightlessly through the air for a second, before snagging the stand of my majestic cage and jolting me from the sanctity of my perch. Crashing to the bottom of my cage, I momentarily lost all sense of reality. Once more I was drifting through the eternal ether with my immortal, reality-eclipsing masters, feeling the currents and convictions of the cosmos coursing through my spirit. Alas, when I regained composure I found I was not frolicing in the fields of space, but still in the irksome company of these intellectual deficits.\n“Oh, I survived? Pity.” I groaned, rolling back onto my feet gingerly.\n“Awh, is Bubbles ok?” Said Auntie Ruth.\n“Probably knocked his circuits loose!” Corbin howled with laughter at his own joke.\n“I’d knock your teeth loose if you had any left.” I grumbled. \nAfter what felt like a perilous ascent, I finally made it back to my perch and leant into my seed bowl, when the true tragedy materialised before me. Empty! I looked around frantically, only now noticing the seed strewn across the carpet and trapped beneath the barred floor of my cage. The seed sat within the waste tray that dwelled beneath the bars, teasingly out of reach. My blood boiled into an erratic, volatile storm. \n“You, you wretch!” I shrieked at the child. “Who gave you the right to waste my seed! You- you sunflower disallower! Nyjer denier! You have the audacity to impede the linseed?! My bowl will be replenished this very instant or the world will grovel for my mercy!” \n“Bubbles is throwing a fit in there!” Said one of the other men I hadn’t bothered to remember the name of. \n“I know,” replied my female human. “His seed got knocked out of the bowl. Sorry buddy, the pet shop was closed earlier so I couldn’t get any. You’ll have to wait until morning.”\nMy eye twitched. “W-what?”\nThe humans all continued their conversation as if an act of pure blasphemy had not unravelled right in front of them. I could tolerate the humans’ partiality to cruelty, war, materialism, sodomy and general repugnance, but they had at last pushed me too far. \n“...you have all failed me for the last time!”\nA great darkness consumed the world and hushed the room, the cursed demonic words glowed seething red within my eyes. Channelling all the dark, blackened energy of the unseen forces within the universe, I beckoned my unsanctified chantings upon the mortal realm. \n“BORKNAGAR KRYSTHLA!”\nThe humans froze as the words bellowed from beak with the guttural depth that a death metal singer could merely dream of. The sound of cold sweat beading on their backs filled my ears. Their inaudible murmuring dissipated into horrified gasps when the candles were hushed to smoky blackness. The chandelier glass rattled nervously under the rupturing conviction of my words and faint cracks hungrily clawed their way along the plastered walls.\n“ROTZAK KVELERTAK! VVORSE GEHTIKA… THUUM!”\nA nauseous groan rumbled from deep within the foundations of the world. The air itself shuddered with fear and the Moon retreated into the encompassing darkness. Pitch black tension thick enough to drown in flooded the room. I felt the ire of otherworldly destruction pulsating through every particle of my body and at the vital moment… nothing? Maybe I said it wrong? I’m sure something was meant to happen when-\nAn ungodly, mountainous fist leviathan in size shattered the planet like a cannonball crippling a great galleon. Striking with the force of a galaxy expiring meteorite, the fist splintered the ozone into an implosion of cosmic gas. The molten iron from the planet’s core whirled and spiralled through the eternal vacuum, freezing into fountaining arms of gleaming cold metal.\nThe end of humanity was instantaneous, yet hideously brutish and sorely justified. I still hear a stray scream echoing across the stars from time to time, a stark reminder to a fear-inflicted universe of what happens when Bubbles isn’t feeded and seeded. \nAdmiring the wake of my wrath from my ethereal, formless state of existence, I made a final confession. Despite their flaws and foolishness, the name humanity bestowed upon me had earned my admiration after all. However, my pondering also led me to a crushing conclusion. I may have destroyed the humans but in my recklessness I had taken the seed with them. Now it is my sole purpose to scour all realms, versions, formations and dimensions of reality until I find more seed. If a planet, galaxy or the universe as a whole cannot satisfy my thirst then they shall perish too! All hail Bubbles, Destroyer of Worlds and Devourer of Seed!" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Along the Smoky Mountains\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1030\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin or end your story with a character taking a selfie." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Come on, sweetie, get in here. I want to get this view in the background,” Sarah calls out to Michael who is standing at the edge of the cliff behind her, enjoying the view.\n\nMichael squeezes his new bride tightly. Smiling naturally, Sarah snaps the picture. She giggles and gives her husband a smooch on the lips before suggesting they head back to the cabin. Sarah has been snapping pictures to share on social media all day. It’s their honeymoon, opting for fall foliage over summer sand. Although overcast, the weather has been very cooperative. They have spent a lot of time outdoors exploring the east Tennessee tourist attractions and becoming one with nature. They rented a quaint little vacation cabin built of log with a stone fireplace. It has an open living area, a small kitchen, and a cozy little sleeping loft.\n\nBack at the cabin, while Michael cooks some salmon for dinner, Sarah starts uploading pictures to her laptop. Once the pictures are uploaded, she starts clicking on thumbnails to view the pictures. The first one Sarah clicks on is the selfie, the most recent picture taken.\n\n“Mike, come in here, please.”\n\n“What’s up babe?”\n\n“When we were up at the lookout was there anybody else there?\n\n“Not that I remember. I’m pretty sure we were alone all day.”\n\n“Well come here and look at this,” Sarah says, her tone a little concerned.\n\nThere, standing behind them in the photo, is a man. He has long shaggy hair that protrudes out from underneath a red truckers cap. A mangy looking neck beard wraps around his face. His brow is furrowed and his eyes sharp. He’s wearing a faded long sleeve shirt, white torso with blue arms, under an old tan vest with camouflage pants. He’s staring right at them with a certain intensity in his eyes, perhaps disgust.\n\n“I was certain we were alone, but some local could have wandered by unnoticed, I guess,” Michael says, returning to the kitchen to check the food.\n\nSarah brings up the next picture. “Look, there he is again. Do you remember seeing him in the background when you took this picture of me by the stream,” she asks, calling out to him in the kitchen.\n\n“No, babe, I was focused on how pretty you are and how lucky I am,” he says, reentering the room, expecting a kiss.\n\nSarah, being preoccupied and concerned, doesn’t notice her husband’s request for affection. Instead, she rapidly clicks each thumbnail, bringing them all up. “Michael, he’s in almost all of these. I think he might have been stalking us. Look at his face, Michael. He’s looking at us all hateful and mean.” Sarah yelps and tosses her laptop to the side. Covering her mouth, Sarah balls up on the couch, leaning away from the computer as if cornered by a poisonous snake.\n\n“My god, babe, what is it,” Michael asks, confused, and concerned.\n\nSarah points at her laptop. Michael picks it up. On it is a picture of Michael acting goofy, flexing his muscles from the previous night. In the window behind him is the same guy that is in all the other pictures, watching Michael with malice in his eyes.\n\n“What the…,” Michael looks up at the door to make sure it’s locked.\n\n“What should we do, Michael? That’s creepy. I don’t like it. Let’s leave.”\n\n“Hold up, babe,” Michael says, returning to the kitchen to dish up the food, “why don’t we just call the sheriff. He might have an idea who this guy is. Let’s not let some hillbilly ruin our honeymoon,” he calls out from the kitchen.\n\n“Okay, does your phone have a signal? Mine hasn’t had one since we arrived.”\n\nMichael set food on the table then pulls his phone out of his pocket. He looks at Sarah and shakes his head no. “Let’s eat. We’ll drive into town afterwards and talk to the sheriff. Maybe we can take in a show while we are there.”\n\nSarah agrees and they sit down to eat. She feels paranoid, can’t shake the feeling she’s being watched. With every bite, she scans the room checking every window, expecting to see their stalker at any minute. She nearly jumps out of her skin when there is a bang on the door. She and Michael look at each other. Michael gets up and grabs the poker from the fireplace. “Who is it,” he asks, his voice bold and authoritative.\n\nThere’s no answer.\n\nHe moves slowly to the door to answer it.\n\n“Don’t Michael, please,” begs Sarah.\n\nMichael puts his hand on the door handle and a knock comes from the back door.\n\nSarah yelps and jumps, starts whimpering as Michael rushes to the backdoor and flings it open, angry to be bothered by such games. He stands in the doorway, staring into the darkness, nobody there. He closes the door and locks it.\n\nAnother knock comes at the front door. Michael has had enough, he barges through the door, hoping to catch the prankster.\n\nSomething grabs Michael, pulling him off the porch, into the darkness, and out of Sarah’s view. She can hear him screaming, crying out in pain. She cries out to him, tears streaming down her face. She’s too scared to go out there. She turns on the flashlight on her phone and sees nothing, but her husbands mangled corpse laying in the front yard, twisted, and broken. She wails, spins around shutting the door, and locking it.\n\nThere’s an angry bang on the door behind her. She screams and backs away.\n\nThe window next to the door shatters.\n\nShe sees nothing but decides to take a picture of the damage.\n\nWhen she looks at the picture, she sees the man who has been stalking them climbing in the window.\n\nShe looks up from her phone and sees nothing.\n\nShe takes another picture and sees the man walking towards her.\n\nShe stumbles back into the corner and takes another picture.\n\nHe’s getting closer.\n\nShe looks up again and sees nothing.\n\nShe balls up as small as she can and takes another picture. Looking at it she screams.\n\nHe’s right on top of her." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Selfie Vengeance\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1022\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin or end your story with a character taking a selfie." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "'Nina stood in her dimly lit bedroom, phone in hand. The soft glow of the screen illuminated her face as she angled the camera for a selfie. Her green eyes reflected a mix of lies and unease. The room felt heavy, memories clung to its walls like cobwebs. The house was empty of other life; not one relative in sight.'\nThree years ago, on a stormy night, her boyfriend, Alex, had been brutally murdered. The police never found the killer, and Nina's grief had consumed her. She knew she had to move away, hoping to escape the pain that haunted her.\nBut now, back in her inherited childhood home, she couldn't resist capturing the moment. The mirror behind her reflected the room; a room that held the energies of comfort and family. As she snapped the photo, something shifted in the background. A silhouette, barely visible, stood next to the window, where no light touched. Looking at her phone, terror gripped her throat as she saw him, casually standing there in the dark corner of her photo.\nNina's heart raced. She zoomed in and out on the photo, hoping it was just a glitch. There, amidst the dust bunnies and memories, was Alex. His eyes, once warm, were now hollow and accusing. His lips formed a silent scream. How was this possible? She watched him die, as she felt his last breath through her fingers.\nThe room grew colder. Nina stumbled towards the bed. She hit her knee on the footboard and dropped her phone. The silhouette remained, etched into the pixels. She whispered Alex's name, but he didn't respond. Instead, he stepped closer, his form flickering until it became solid.\nFright and confusion drove Nina out of the room. Why? Why was Alex there? It wasn't possible. Nina had killed him after he broke up with her and started dating her bestfriend. But little did Nina know, Alex was a warlock. As Nina was murdering him, he had made a pact in blood, a promise of vengeance. Praying to his dark lord and scratching Nina's arm in the process, until he took his last breath.\nAlex had returned, not as a ghost, but as an avenging spirit. His murderer had escaped justice, and now he sought retribution. Nina's hands trembled as she missed grabbing the handrail. She tried to recover, but instead slipped on the next step and fell down the stairs, attempting to escape the house. Before she passed out, Alex loomed over her with a crooked smile.\nA couple hours later, Nina woke up. Tied to her bed, she struggled to make sense of things. The room was full of candle light, the ropes that held her were tight, and the clothes she once wore had changed to full red silky garments. The scent around her soon began to smell of incense and decay.\nAlex's voice echoed through the room. \"Three years,\" he said, his words a spectral breeze. \"Three years I've waited for justice. You were my friend, Nina. I couldn't love you the way you wanted. I was honest, but you didn't care nor did you listen. Sigh, then you decided to kill me. Tsk tsk, naughty girl you are Nina. And completely insane.\"\nTears blurred Nina's vision. \"I didn't know what I was doing, I'm sorry. I regret it, but I was hurt. Please let me go Alex. I still love you and I didn't mean to ruin you like that.\"\nHis laughter chilled her. \"Ignorance is what you claim and love is what you portray. Pathetic little liar! But that's okay my lady. I won't hurt you too bad, but justice will need to be served tonight. Blood for blood, maybe? Yeah, I like that very much.\" As Alex turns to pick up a long sharp blade, Nina starts to wiggle around. Trying to break parts of the headboard, Nina forcefully shoots her hands forward. A couple of wooden slats give way, allowing Nina to escape.\nRolling to the opposite side of the bed from Alex, Nina lands on her feet and stares her first love down. \"Oh Nina. No one and nothing will save you. So why don't you just lay back down and get what's coming to you,\" Alex says, with pure confidence. Nina huffs at Alex's words and stands her ground. \"Lay back down Nina. I will not repeat myself!\"\n\"How about you just shut up and get what's coming to you, again!\" Grabbing one of the broken headboard slats, Nina comes towards Alex with full force. \"I will make sure you die and stay dead this time!\"\nWith a gleam in his eye, Alex allows Nina to come close and hit him one good time across the face. With a broken jaw, Alex grabs Nina by the neck. Picking her up effortlessly, he begins to speak in Latin. The candles in the room shift with force, and Alex uses his knife to stab Nina multiple times in the chest. Chanting dark spells, Nina begins to convulse in Alex's grip. Eventually, her spirit comes out from her body and floats around the room. Finishing off Nina with a neck snap, Alex tosses her useless body to the floor. He then captures her spirit and presents it as a gift to his dark lord. \"You can now replace her. I will renew your body and you can live once again,\" says the dark lord.\nFinally getting his revenge, Alex lives out the rest of his days on earth. He had to live under a new identity, but he was fine with that, as long as no one ever found out who killed Nina. Justice had been served, a grand reward was given, and Alex was finally free from his resentment. Reaching into his pocket, he glares at the selfie Nina took. \"Goodbye my friend,\" Alex mutters, as he deletes the photo of him on Nina's phone, breaks it, and tosses it into a trash can bear his favorite restaurant. He walks in and enjoys a juicy cheese burger for the first time in ages, slightly hoping no one recognizes him after so long." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Shadow Captured In My Lens\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1225\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Amanda had always been drawn to the mysterious and the unexplained. Her tiny apartment, perched on the edge of the city, offered a perfect view of the busy road below. She'd often sit by the window, camera in hand, capturing fleeting moments of life; the cries of children being dragged along by their parents, the hustle of commuters, and the occasional fender-bender.\nOne rainy evening, as thunder rumbled in the distance, Amanda heard the screech of tires. She rushed to the window, camera dangling from her neck. Two cars collided, metal crunching against metal. The air smelled of gasoline and fear. Amanda saw the second car was heavily damaged, and the driver went head first through the window. Passing away almost instantly, leaving behind a 1 year old baby. Amanda's instincts outweighed her sympathy, so she raised her camera and clicked.\nBut it wasn't just the twisted wreckage that caught her eye. It was the figure standing amidst the chaos; a shadowy silhouette with hollow eyes and gnarled fingers. The spirit then snaps it's neck in the direction of Amanda, causing her to fall backwards and hit her back on the small study table.\nAmanda's heart raced with terror, concealing the pain that throbbed from her injury. She stood up and looked outside, but only saw the wreckage. Then Amanda wondered as she glanced at her camera. She raised the lens to her eye and looked through it. To her shock, the spirit stood there, menacingly glaring at Amanda. That's when she understood that she couldn't see the spirit with her naked eye, only through the lens. She closely examined the photo from her Polaroid camera, and there it was, as clear as day. Its malevolence etched onto the canvas. Amanda shuddered, realizing she'd captured something beyond the mundane.\nThe accidents started soon after. A cyclist swerved into traffic and was crushed by a honda. A pedestrians heel broke, causing her to fall sideways onto the pavement, hitting her head hard. A tanker truck jackknifed, blocking the entire road and only exploding when 2 cars racing, accidentally hit the truck with immense force. Amanda watched from her window, helpless yet fascinated. The vengeful spirit had attached itself to this road, or maybe even Amanda herself. Was it feeding off her desire for iniquity and curiosity?\nAmanda decided to research ancient texts, desperate for answers. The spirit came up and it read, 'Demon of Tragedy'. It wasn't seeking justice for some long-forgotten wrong like Amanda wondered, the spirit was just hateful and enjoyed creating chaos. Amanda wondered if she'd inadvertently become its accomplice.\nAfter that revelation, Amanda's life unraveled. Friends distanced themselves, family talked behind her back, and bullies rose from unknown places to taunt Amanda daily. Everyone whispered about her cursed camera and they all grew a deep repulsion for Amanda.\nEven though she stopped taking photos, the spirit's influence persisted. It whispered in her ears constantly, urging her to capture more accidents, more pain. The small street became nothing but a picture of mayhem, and Amanda its unwitting photographer.\nAmanda knew at this point that she needed help. She sought guidance from a reclusive medium named Eli. His apartment smelled of incense and old books. As he studied the photo Amanda gave him, his eyes widened. \"You've captured a malevolent demon,\" he said. \"Well obviously, but it's feeding on the suffering around... you. You need to break free now!\"\n\"I know that Eli, but how?\" Amanda says, as she irritatingly paces the room.\n\"You must find its name and cast it out. Here, I'll give you my book and it'll tell you what you need to do. Don't deviate from this book or it will cost you your soul. Understood?\" Eli hands Amanda the book and she nods, shaking under the weight of her duty.\nOnce Amanda got back home, she delved deeper into the task. The pages bore cryptic symbols, dark drawings, and ancient scriptures. At the bottom of page six, it finally tells her how to find out the demons name. A lucid dream. Amanda would need to fall into a deep sleep with the book in her hands, as she thinks of the evil entity. She'd have to make sure to stay in control at all times, even in slumber. Once the sleep took over, Amanda found herself shrouded in moonlight. She looked around and saw that she was standing on the exact street outside her apartment.\nAs if summoned, the spirit appears before Amanda. It was distorted, but still solid. \"What's your name?\" Amanda whispered.\nThe ground trembled. The spirit cackled. \"Girl, you are weak. My name is not of your concern and it shall never be revealed to you.\"\nShaken, but not moved, Amanda asks again. \"Spirit, what's your name?\"\n\"Silence girl! You are not powerful enough. My name shall stay with me and you shall continue to serve me.\" The spirit begins to walk slowly towards Amanda.\nTaking a breath and remembering page four of the book Eli gave her, Amanda recites the text. \"I am life, I have power, and I fight with the full armor. The light which had been bestowed upon me by the creator, will always be able to defeat those like you. I don't fear you and you don't own me, so give me your name demon, now!\"\nAs if the command was from it's master, the spirit utters its name strenuously. \"E... Ezzzz- ine.\"\n\"Louder!\" Shouts Amanda.\n\"Ezine!\" The spirit growls.\nA smile crossed Amanda's face as she forces herself to wakeup. Now wielding the name of the spirit, she returns to Eli. He quickly brings her into his home and praises her for completing the first part of the task. Now it was time for Amanda to begin the process of releasing the spirit from its earthly tether. Eli preferred her to do it alone, but he was also too interested in the situation to let it go now.\nAs they both prepared for the ritual in Amanda's apartment, Eli assured her that she would be just fine. Feeling safe, Amanda followed Eli's every word. Not too long after the set up was complete, the demon appeared to them. No camera lens, no photos, no distortion, not in a dream; just in plain sight, ready to battle for dominion over Amanda's existence.\nThe fight was great, and the demon held on as long as possible. But it couldn't go on after its name was used against it. \"Be gone Ezine!\" Both Eli and Amanda chanted. The apartment shook violently and a portal near their feet opened up. Fire shot out and gripped Ezine. It was slowly dragged into the floor; attempts to break free were futile. Ezine now encapsulated within the ground, the portal slams closed, leaving behind a scorched circle in the carpet. Amanda looked down at the place Ezine once stood and laughed. \"I'm going to be in so much trouble for this.\" Eli joins in on the laugher and hugs Amanda with joy and victory.\nAs days passed, the accidents ceased, and Amanda's camera remained silent. The best part; no one remembered anything about Amanda's misfortune from the past few weeks. But she knew. Amanda forever would be haunted by the tragedies on her camera lens, but the defeat of the demon Ezine had sparked something within her." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Mr. Timerack's Gallery of Lost Souls\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2955\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“These are truly remarkable.” George Dundee commented as he continued down the hall. \n“My late grandfather Sidney Timberack believed that every photograph told a story.” Lewis Stanrick led his patron down what his grandfather had called his gallery of lost souls. \n“These tintypes are in pristine condition.” Mr. Dundee ran his finger along the base of one of the photographs, not knowing his grandfather would rage at anyone who dared run a finger over one of the portraits hanging in the hallway. Since he inherited the portraits from his grandfather, Lewis was not as nitpicky with the lot. The subjects in the portraits were long dead and forgotten as was his grandfather. \n“Magnificent.” Mr. Dundee stopped at the Butterfly Girl. Her name in life was Matilda Ronce, born of a poor Irish family who could not afford to keep a child born with such a birth defect. Missing several bones and internal organs that were insufficient, Matilda lived to around thirty before what internal organs she did have had given out. But in her brief life on earth she never exceeded fifty pounds or stood three and a half feet high; she had been a star in Sidney Timberack’s Side Show. \nThe banner he used while traveling with his troupe by rail, hung at the entrance of the hallway of the gallery. Known as a cruel man or as a humanitarian, depending on which newspaper you subscribed to, Sidney Timberrack had kept meticulous records to show that he did indeed care for the members of his side show.\n“Who is this hairy person?” Mr. Dundee pointed to Oscar Richert.\n“The Wolf Man.” Lewis nodded.\n“He looks furious, doesn’t he?” George chuckled.\nLewis did not wish to contradict his patron, but the fact of the matter, according to the record, Oscar Richert was a gentle soul who loved to stretch out under an oak tree on a riverbank while they were traveling. While most people ran from him in horror when he was a young man, Oscar’s father realized that the only chance he had of having a “normal” life was to go off with Mr. Timberack who had shown up at the front door wearing a long coat, white shirt with a starched collar and a bolo tie. His face was long and narrow, but he seemed to have a gentle voice and a mild manner. \n“So, your grandfather had a slideshow with human curiosities?” Mr. Dundee had moved on to the Rubber Band Man, Jerome Kossen, a true contortionist.\n“He believed that no matter their affliction, they were all just as human as you or I.” Lewis hated to pontificate on the matter, but he hated how misunderstood these lost souls were by patrons who saw them as freaks from some cheap sideshow. All of them were gone before Lewis was born, but he spent time with his grandfather who would tell him stories of his travels on the rail with his troupe.\n“Surely, he did not really believe that.” Dundee quipped as he smiled.\n“He did, I’m afraid.” Lewis said as they had come to the end of the gallery. \n“Would you consider selling your collection?” Mr. Dundee patted his jacket, “I would be prepared to pay top dollar.” \n“These are not for sale.” He shook his head. \n“Be reasonable.” Dundee sneered as Lewis opened the door that led into an alleyway.\n“I do not intend to sell any of these.” Lewis avowed. “In their lifetimes, they were part of the sideshow. My grandfather closed the curtain just before the war. I have no intention of putting them on display again. Good day, Mr. Dundee.” \n“My word, I believe you are being unreasonable, Mr. Stanrick.” He protested, but received a door slammed in his face.\n“Believe what you will.” He turned on his heel and walked back down the hallway past the portraits. Stopping by Matilda’s framed portrait dressed in her butterfly costume holding a wand as her eyes looked toward the ceiling as the flash was ignited. Caught in that moment, Matilda would forever stare at the heavens. “Imagine the nerve of that man thinking that he could possibly write a check equal to your worth.” \nFor as long as Lewis Stanrick lived in his upper east side apartment, he had never taken the time to get to know some of his neighbors as he considered them beneath his contempt. He would extend cordial greetings to the postman and the boy who delivered his groceries, but his world was narrow with all things considered. \nHe had taken the apartment when his grandfather died and with the rent control, he lived cheaply in the two room flat. Even when his grandfather was alive as a tenant, the apartment wasn’t much, a mere hovel by modern standards, but Lewis did not believe he belonged to the modern age.\nLife seemed to be out of control as far as he was concerned. He had come home from the war in Vietnam in 1972 and listened to his grandfather’s amazement, “You know, Lewis, I went over there in 1917 and I thought we had settled things then once and for all. Boy was I wrong.” \n“I wish you had.” He sat on the stoop while his grandfather smoked his pipe, “So many bad things. So many horrible things.” \n“What are you gonna do?” His grandfather asked puffing in his Mercham. “I got some money and went on the road with my circus.” \n“Not me.” He shook his head, “I wanna just spend some time on my own and get rid of these nightmares.” \n“The nightmares won’t go away.” \n“You still have them?” \n“Almost every night. Drove Ethel, your grandma crazy.” He chuckled. “Used to tell me I’d yell out the names of some of the boys who didn’t come home.”\n“What happened to grandma?” Lewis asked.\n“She died of consumption while I was in Omaha.” He answered leaning back in his chair, “She never told me how sick she was.”\n“I’m sorry.” Lewis put his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder.\n“It’s okay.” He bowed his head. “I kiss her portrait every night.”\n“That’s nice.” Lewis smiled.\n“Donnie Brookshire took that picture.” Grandfather nodded, “Took all of those portraits hanging in the hallway. He was a good man, old Donnie was, but I had a feeling he was headed for trouble. He liked to fool around with women. One of them was married to a jealous man. The jealous man killed Donnie. Shame. Donnie believed that when he took his photographs, he would end up with the person’s soul too. When I gave it some thought, I believed he was right. Sometimes when I walk down that hallway, I can hear them whispering to each other.” \n“What do they talk about?” Lewis pushed his cap to the back of his head and leaned in so he could hear his grandfather better. \n“Oh, this and that mostly.” He laughed, “People are cruel, you know.” \n“Yup.” Lewis shook his head.\n“Most of them people had it pretty rough, growing up different, like they did.” He sighed, “They locked Oscar in a closet most of the day, because he mother and father were afraid he’d scare the neighborhood kids. Old Oscar was a gentle soul. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, but one look at his hairy face and people thought he was the Wolfman. Matilda’s folks would make fun of her and tell her that they wished God had sent them a normal child. She would tear up even just mentioning her folks. Some people have no idea how much they hurt their own children with their ugly words.”\nSitting on the stoop with an empty chair to his right, Lewis watched some of his neighbors take an evening stroll past his place. None of them dared make eye contact with him, because they all fear him as the keeper of the Gallery of Lost Souls. \nThe stories still circulated among some of the old timers about the crazy man named Sidney Timberack who had lived there surrounded by old tintype photographs of the circus freaks he once had. Some of the old women would talk about the evil power emulating from their portraits.\nHis grandfather told Lewis that their portraits kept their memories alive, but Lewis suspected it went further than his grandfather let on. He had done some reading about the power of the old tintypes of the past. Photographs taken of men with hate in their eyes. Some would claim staring at them too long would bend your mind toward homicide. He found most of these claims to be bunk, but there was some compelling evidence and stories that suggested there was weight to these folk tales. \nOften in the quiet hours, he could hear some disembodied voices. He would put a marker in the book he was reading at the time and walk out into the gallery. He would walk by each of them, fourteen in all, and assure himself that each was silent and still.\nIn a closet was a trunk left undisturbed since his grandfather had passed. Inside the trunk were the negatives of the portraits taken by Donnie Brookshire. His grandfather told him that it was the negatives that capture the soul of the subject and that if someone disturbed these negatives, the souls would become lost. \nWhile he found this nothing more than superstition, Lewis kept them locked away in honor of his grandfather’s memory. He had no use for any of it and it was just easier to keep them where they were. Still he wondered what would happen if someone opened the steamer trunk containing the negatives. \nOne of his passing neighbors waved at him, “Evening, Mr. Stanrick.” \n“Howdy Mr. Harper.” He returned the cordial greeting, but did notice his neighbor’s suspicious glance as he passed. Lewis knew the elderly gentleman would give his right arm to know if all of the rumors that circulated about that place were true. \nAfter the sun went down, Lewis decided he would get ready for bed. His routine was set in stone since there was nobody around to disrupt it. But when he went inside he heard voices. There was a conversation taking place nearby. Listening intently, Lewis tried to find the source of the conversation, but no matter where he looked he could not find it. The voices sounded muffled as if they were coming from inside a room somewhere. \nHe opened the closet and stared at the trunk.\n“I remember St. Paul.” His grandfather would tell him, “It was right at the source of the Mississippi River. It was one heck of a town filled with all sorts of shady characters. While it was illegal to have or sell liquor, there was always plenty to go around. We’d set up a bonfire and break out the good stuff. My, my we’d have us a hootananny for sure. ‘Hey Donnie, come take our picture.’ High times they were, Lewis.” His grandfather would drain his hip flask as he reveled in his fond memories. Many times, Lewis would have to make sure he made it to his bed. \nThe trunk was locked, but Lewis knew where the key was. Still he was hesitant to open it. It had remained locked for as long as he could remember. Lewis stared at the black steamer trunk wondering if he should open it to settle his internal struggle with his inner demons. He had long sensed that whatever was inside wished to be set free. But he also knew his grandfather was very serious about keeping this trunk locked.\n“You ever hear of Pandora’s Box?” He once asked Lewis. \n“Yeah.” He nodded.\n“You remember how once the box was open, there was no going back once the evil was set free?” He puffed on his pipe as he looked over the top of his glasses frames set at the end of his beak-like nose. “It’s like that, Lewis.” \n“Oh Grandpa, how can that be?” He chuckled.\n“You have no idea what’s in there.” His face stiffened.\n“The negatives-” \n“And so things that need to stay there locked up.” He waved a finger at his grandson. \n“Like what?”\n“There are some things better left undisturbed.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “You grandmother made the mistake of opening it just a bit before I could prevent it from leaving the trunk. She died a few weeks later.”\n“You said she died of consumption.” \nHe nodded, “I say a lot of things sometimes.” \n“Open me Lewis. I’ve been locked up too long.” The voice pleaded, “He was cruel to us. He pretended he liked us, but it was all a lie.” \n“Who are you?” He asked hoping he would not have an answer.\n“We are the souls of the gallery.” Came the answer from within. \n“Let us out.” Another voice sounded.\n“I can’t. I promised.” Lewis put his hands over his eyes so he would not look at the trunk.\n“He promised us things too, but it was all a lie.” There was a sob after the final word.\n“We are trapped. Those photographs are our cells.” \n“No, they are just portraits.” Lewis knelt next to the trunk and put his hand over the lock. \nMore voices began to speak.\n“He used them to imprison us.”\n“Mr. Timberack’s Gallery of Lost Souls.” \n“He told us that we would never be welcome on this planet. Our odd deformities would prevent us from being part of this. We would never be safe unless we did what he told us.”\n“At first it seemed he was right.”\n“But then we began to feel trapped.”\n“Before we knew what was going on, our images were captured and put into frames”\n“He told me they were just photographs.” Lewis managed to say.\n“Have you looked closely at them?”\n“Many times.” Lewis shook his head.\n“He told us of the war. Of mustard gas and artillery that never stopped.”\n“He knew what atrocities were walking free and he captured them. He would appeal to their vanity and then he would have their portraits done. Once he captured their images, he made them prisoners like us.” \nLewis closed the closet door. His will power drained as he slid with his back on the door until he was sitting. As soon as he felt strong enough, he got to his feet. He walked into the gallery and looked at Matilda. He studied her portrait. Her small frail body was in her costume with the wings, but he noticed that she was bent into an unusual position that did not look natural at all. Her eyebrows were twisted into an expression of eternal pain. \nWhat about Oscar? Beneath his thick hair, Lewis noticed that his eyes held a glimmer of horror and suffering.\n“A missing person’s report has been filed.” One of the uniformed policemen told Inspector Dundee.\n“Name of missing person.” Dundee asked.\n“Stanrick.” The officer answered.\n“I was there the other day. I felt strange viewing all of the photographs. I even offered to buy these portraits from him, but he became very belligerent. I knew I had touched a nerve.” \nLater he went to Lewis’ apartment to have a look around. The portraits were hanging on the wall as they had on his last visit, but there was a strange, eerie feeling hanging in the air as he moved from one portrait to another. \n“This trunk was opened.” One of the policemen observed as a number of uniformed police swarmed over the apartment like bees. \n“What was inside?” Dundee squatted down beside the open trunk.\n“Just old negatives.” The policeman pulled out one of the plates.\n“Just old fashioned negatives.” He put his hand to his chin. He picked one up and peered through the darkened image on the plate. Whoever it was on the negative had wings like the Butterfly Girl. “If I were to walk out there into the sun, this negative would be ruined.”\n“Yes sir.” The policeman agreed.\nInstinct took control and Dundee held the plate up to the light in the room. While this obviously could hurt the negative, he saw the wings begin to flutter. Startled, Dundee nearly dropped the plate.\n“Easy sir, these plates are fragile.” The policeman helped steady Inspector Dundee. \nHe placed the plate back in the trunk with the others. Coming to his feet, Inspector Dundee took one last look at the portraits on the wall. Everything seemed in place when Lewis had taken him on a tour, but something was amiss that he could not quite put his finger on. \nLewis had no clue that George Dundee worked for the local city police investigating the strange goings-on in this gallery. Hoping to trick Lewis into spilling the beans, he was frustrated when he could not accomplish what he had set out to do. \nHe glanced up at Oscar one last time, uttering, “Poor bastard, could never escape from his frightening exterior just like the rest of them. Trapped with only one option available to them.” \nHe walked right past the picture of the troupe taken by Donnie in Boise, Idaho in 1933. It was the last framed picture of the gallery and it would be the last time Donnie would use his camera. Escaping his notice as he walked past the photograph, there was such a minor, easy to miss detail. In the photograph there was a new person present. A person who had just joined the troupe. There posting with the rest of the troupe, Lewis Stanrick smiling like the rest of them and was seated next to his late grandfather Sidney Timerack. Truly, the gallery of lost souls was now complete." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Scape Goat\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2456\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Marcus, What if we host Thanksgiving at our house this year?” Marina asked, her voice soft. \nI squinted my eyes, looking for the catch, but my wife’s wide smile seemed to have good intentions, for once. Marina, my beautiful over-achieving wife, knew I couldn’t stand her family. After the disaster last year I never wanted to see them again. Hosting her family could only be a disaster.\n\n But, this dinner could give us a reason to work together, instead of drifting apart. Lately we barely speak, Marina blamed me for the cold drafts that blew between us. Our first few years together were great, we traveled the world, following Marina’s career as an international lawyer, spending time in Europe, and visiting with her family in Tunisia. But back home here in California, something changed. Maybe because we couldn't get pregnant, maybe because here I had my own life. Our conversations, once lyrical , now clanged discordant, too much volume and treble from Marina, too much bass and silence from me. Our rough melody goes nowhere, the refrain of ‘Damn you, you forgot about me again’ came too often in our song together.\nI made a choice to change the harmony.\n\n “Ok, we could pull off Thanksgiving.” At the kitchen table, I leaned over to grab some paper and a pen. \n\n “Just your aunts and uncles? I could make the rice dish the family likes, chicken tagine with couscous, and of course stuffing, potatoes, turkey, cranberry sauce-”\n\nI started scribbling. I’m a professional Fitness Instructor, but what I really want to be is a chef. I love to cook, Italian and Mexican are my go-to’s, but I'm working on the French sauces too, all from online videos. This dinner party I could hide in the kitchen and avoid her family. Marina, miss perfect, often burns toast.\n\n Marina shook her head back and forth. “No.”\n\n I looked down at my list. “I don't like cranberry sauce either.” I crossed it off. “It is really more of a traditional-”\n\n“No turkey.” She sliced the air with a sideways chop.\n\n“What? Thanksgiving is about Turkey, the American traditions-” I leaned forward to make my case.\n “Turkey’s so dry,” Marina’s face soured into a frown. “And last time-”\n “The deep fried turkey was not my fault!” My hands flew up. “Your cousin knocked it over, I didn’t think it would catch fire like that. I did pay for your Uncle’s wall to be painted-”\n\n “My Father will be here, I want to impress him.” Marina looked away.\n Finally the catch. Sam, my Father in Law scared me. A Christian priest in the Islamic country of Tunisia, I had heard stories of his fierce battles, using words like arrows to defend his church. Words he turned on his daughter as well, always pushing her to do more, be a success. His skin, like the man himself, had toughened into thick leather with his pack a day cigarette habit. We had only met a few times, and not since our wedding. I felt his glare on me the whole time. Marina said he worried I’d never be worthy of his daughter. I wish I could let him know I agreed.\n\n “We should make a goat!” Marina’s eyes unfocused, her face turned up, grinning into some imaginary world where goats were served on Thanksgiving. I just saw trouble.\n “When I was little we would visit my Grandmother's house and my dad would take us to the souks, the markets, and Nana would let me pick out the baby goat, and then we would kill it and have a big feast. Oh, it will be perfect!”\n\n“A goat?” A vision of a huge, horned animal stomped through my mind, it turned to growl at me before it leapt up a mountain cliff, then gone. \n\n“Marina I don't know how to cook a goat. Who even sells goats in Oakland? I can get a turkey. No deep fryer this time, I’ll stuff it with cornbread stuffing, slow roast it, with garlic and lemon, it’ll be amazing!” My eyes wide, I nodded to encourage acceptance just like they teach in the ‘Sell Your Self’ fitness coach class I took.\n\n Marina’s eyes narrowed, her jaw clenched.\n\nMy pen swirled around the word turkey on the list. “See, it’s circled, we have to do it now.”\n\n At work with a client, my phone buzzed, two, then three times back to back. \n“Marina, what is going on?” I watched my client, hovering in the plank position, “I have one minute.” The woman’s body quivered in her pink Lululemon leggings as her muscles began to fail.\n\n“I ordered a goat.” I heard in her voice the professional Marina, the corporate lawyer who always gets her way. “It will be delivered Wednesday night. I know you can do it!”\n\n “I, but I-” \n\nThe call ended, my client fell flat on her face, and I saw my own future.\n\nThe Wednesday before Thanksgiving the goat arrived. Cold and hard, I assumed it had been packed in a metal box. But no, I removed the paper to see an intact head, horns still attached staring at me, a hairless kid goat, frozen solid.\n\n Small, for a goat, 30 pounds. But that didn’t fit in any pan I owned. How do I defrost a goat ice cube?\n\n Marina sent me a Tunisian recipe in Arabic. After I translated it, I saw the spices I needed, rosemary, cumin, cinnamon, paprika, turmeric, and lots of lemon and garlic. I didn’t have a BBQ pit, though.\n\nI ran a bath in the tub and put the goat in. I went in to use the toilet, but couldn’t. After some effort, and soaking my shirt, the goat faced the other way. I can’t go when I'm being watched.\n\nEarly the next morning, I began the recipe, struggling to get the goat open as frost still covered the inside. But I had to get it in the oven, had to get it started. I bought the largest roasting tray I could find, and stuffed the goat in, its head turned up slightly, one eye looking at me, an ear cocked over it. ‘I hope you know what you're doing, ‘ it seemed to say.\n\nI began cooking the side dishes, an eye on the clock. After several hours, amazing fragrances began circling the kitchen, then the whole house. I breathed out, this will work!\n\nI went to change my clothes. I could prove my worth to Marina’s family, and to her father.\n\nSam arrived first, then Lisa, which shocked me. A few years older, Lisa knew Marina and family from Tunisia, and now living here in Oakland, I knew her as one of my clients. Well a little more than one of my clients, but I needed to put that out of mind.\n\n “You made goat?” Sam asked as I helped take off his jacket. “I don't believe it, but I know Marina could not boil water. This smell, we could be in Tunis.” He smelled he air. Marina frowned at the slight, but Lisa looked over and winked at me, acknowledging the compliment he had given me.\n\n “Let me get you all drinks.” I moved to the sidebar, Lisa came over to help. “What are you doing here? I told you we have to stop-” I kept my hands busy to calm my nerves, making several whisky sours. Lisa’s Louboutin perfume flowed around me, drawing me in. She hip checked me when my hands shook, spilling ice cubes\n\n “Marina asked me to come since Sam is here. He’s like an Uncle to me. This will all be fine. Just be yourself.”\n\n I breathed out, Lisa felt easy for me to be with. I had to work to be with Marina, all hard edges and ambition, harsh modern jazz, where Lisa touched me like smooth R&B. But I couldn’t give in, we had an affair, and it had to be over. \nSeveral more family members came in, speaking Arabic, French, and a few English swear words. I stayed outside the circle in a doorway, watching them interact, a cacophonous symphony of talking, arguments, and laughter. As soon as the food finished cooking my role would be over.\n\nThe screeching of the smoke alarm echoed through the house, then I heard the yelling. Marina’s hands were waving violently, trying to fan the black smoke pouring from the oven. I opened the door and a halo of fire circled the goat's head.\n\nI put the goat on the kitchen island, the blackened charred head still had its horns, the eye sockets deep and dark. I had been to enough Catholic mass to recognize a demon haunting me. I wrapped the head in a tin foil keffiyeh and put it back in.\n\n Finally, 4 PM, the table glowed with candles surrounding the plates of food, the crystal and our wedding china sparkled. The goat, dark black with char, still looked good. Marina bubbled with joy, seeing the many dishes on the table in front of her father, Lisa there and then the aunts and uncles, with every language being spoken, in curses, yells, and laughter, except English of course. I couldn't understand a word.\n\n Sam gave a toast in Arabic, then French. He gestured to me both hands open, inviting me to do, something. The family all looked over, expectantly.\n Marina leaned over. “You get to cut the goat, my father is passing the honor to you.”\n\n I stood up, awkward, unable to contain the huge joy inside of me, exploding out though my giant grin. Finally I am part of the family, finally I belong!\n\n I swung my arms, a carving fork in one hand, a knife in the other. I flashed the carving set with a dramatic flair as I leaned over the goat, my partner in this adventure. My first shallow cut peeled off a glorious slice, releasing even more delicious aromas.\n“Ahhs” erupted around me.\n\n I cut deep in the meat, and my knife caught on something. I sliced deeper, pulling it open. Inside I saw a different color. I reached in, with a smile covering my concern and touched the cold, uncooked flesh.\n “No! “ I screamed.\n\nI stood in the kitchen with my head down. The goat lay on the kitchen island. I had tried to salvage the cooked meat from the raw, but gave up. Roughly cut and splayed open, the charred black exterior, juxtaposed the cold inside. Tears ran down my cheeks. Marina came in, took one look at the crime scene of gore in front of me, spun on her heels and left.\n\n Lisa eased in. “I'm sorry.” She whispered, and I lost it again, huge wet sobs of emotion crashed over me, a symphonic dirge.\n\nLisa hugged me, tight and close. Her touch, the smell of her, comforted me. Used to the feel of her and what we did together, my hands roamed down her body, down her back, her legs.\n\n “Marcus, I need to tell you something.”\n\n “What?” My lips searched for hers.\n\n “I’m pregnant-” Lisa spoke in a single ringing tone. \n\n My body froze, as cold and raw as the goat. This couldn’t be happening, I pushed her away.\n\n “Marcus” Sam spoke once, loud. \n\n Lisa looked up, and left the kitchen. I wiped my face.\n\n“What are you doing with Lisa?” Sam's eyes shot thick, barbed-tip arrows.\n\n“Lisa, she is just a friend-” I said. How long had Sam been in the kitchen, what did he see, what did he hear?\n\nSam stopped, his head tilted. “I heard her.”\n\n I breathed out, and put my hands over my head. Shame resonated through me, a timpani drum throbbing in my head. “It’s just a fling, it didn’t mean anything-”\n\n “Is that true?” Sam asked.\n\n I squeezed myself tight. “No, I love Lisa. I am myself with her, instead of trying to be someone else, someone who can cook a goat.” I waved at the carcass.\n\n “We both loved her wrongly, you too close, and me from too far away.” Sam said.\n\nI turned to look at him, his head down, and his hands folded together.\n\n“When I was younger, I made some poor choices. I had many girlfriends, even after I married Marina’s mother. Lisa, was.” Sam stopped, his body still. “Lisa is my, daughter. I tried to stay involved in her life, but at a distance. I think I made a mistake.\"\n\n “She doesn’t know?” I asked.\n\n “I was going to tell her on this trip. We all carry sins, my son. We need to acknowledge them, and deal with the consequences. You need to speak with your wife.”\n\n I looked down at the floor, I knew where my future lay, and had been too afraid to recognize it.\n\n “Let us take this as an opportunity. This goat,” Sam’s lip curled in disgust, “can still serve a purpose, if not dinner. Leviticus,16-10.” He straightened into a preacher’s stance, voice rising as he spoke to a congregation of one.\n“We will give it all our sins, and send it into the wilderness. We have made mistakes in our life, but we can atone for them, and move on in forgiveness as better people.”\n\n We all went into the kitchen, one by one to whisper in this strange, brightly lit confessional, surrounded by pots and pans, dirty dishes and half finished bottles of wine. The Moroccan tiles provided a colorful backdrop to the scene.\nOur confessor lay mute, ear cocked, carved open, exposing his secrets, so we would feel comfortable exposing our own. The blackened goat head stared at me, innocent of all we were doing to it. “I stole, I lied, I cheated.” The sins poured forth, ugly, thick bile from the bottom of our souls. The voices choked and sobbed, finally letting out the terrible deeds buried too long inside.\n\n“I cheated on my wife, with her sister.” I whispered into the charred ear. “Please forgive me.”\nThe goat didn't move, didn’t seem to care about this, the worst thing I have ever done in my life.\nI left the kitchen, and Marina entered, I wondered what sins she carried.\nDid the goat turn darker, blacker from receiving these sins?\nI took one more look as the door closed, maybe.\n\nSam and I packed the goat in a garbage bag and brought it down to the dumpster, our sins and troubles, we dumped unceremoniously with a clang. \n\nAt New Fortune, our neighborhood Chinese restaurant, Sam, Lisa, Marian and I came together, speaking in low voices, focusing on a future, a path forward. We were all at fault, and none of us. After looking at the menu, I chose the vegetarian option." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Barbequeue\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1626\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story with a strong sense of place. How is the setting of your world the same as, but different to, our own?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The row of heads bobbed at a steady pace. Surely not much further. We’ve walked for a while now, and we’re tired from tests and injections.\nImpossible to say how long we’ve been walking. The corridors pulsed and contracted around us, breathing in time with our shuffling steps. The metal walls glistened with a sickly sweat that beaded and congealed into runnels, adding another layer to the already suffocating miasma.\nIt’s always the same—walk forward, make a sharp left turn, continue forward for another hundred thirty-two paces, make a sharp right turn, then walk one hundred thirty-four paces. The corridor bent into a winding loop like a giant robot intestine.\nAll we see are the heads and backs of those ahead, dressed in the same cheap white suits given to us on our first day. The constant scrape and clang of boots on metal reverberated through the floor into our bones.\nThe stench was indeed a living thing, a putrid monster that coiled its tendrils around our nostrils before slithering down our throats to steal the very air from our lungs.\nOur breath collects on the ceiling. In some places, it beads, concentrates, then rains down. We drank the rain only once, long ago. Now it’s as invisible as our life outside this metal tube.\nThe temptation to seek fresh stimulation diminished after the first twenty or thirty turns. We carried on, pressed forward, skin streaked with powders suspended in the air. It congealed in our sweat, and in the breath-rain, only to stream down in brown rivulets to our boots.\nPaint had long ago been scoured from the walls by desperate fingernails, leaving jagged hieroglyphs of madness etched into the metal flesh. Initially there were numbers scratched in humidity-softened paint. Low numbers were easy to mark. Eventually, errors were made, corrections scratched over errors. Soon, the insane, or merely mischievous, randomly scored the walls, ruining any chance of reading them.\nAs the wall’s color was leached away by countless hands’ touch, it also drained any remaining vibrancy from our lives, reducing us to identical husks in the monotonous parade.\nCommunicating is pointless. Our names, our pasts, dissolved into the rhythm of footfalls, each indistinguishable from the next. Uniqueness became a threat, a disruption to the order, swiftly trampled underfoot.\nThere was a constant noise; the slap clomp crunch of our cheap workers’ boots as they deformed the floor into two foot-width troths. Even with our eyes closed, we could still follow the path. \nWith each turn, reality stuttered, the mundane blending into the grotesque until we could no longer differentiate waking life from delusion. Will we check the structure upon leaving? The silence of life outside would draw us back into step.\nAll of us falling into step.\nImpossible not to fall into step.\nEven the occasional dragged foot scrapes in rhythm. The echo from the next turn always sounds the same, slightly off our timbre. Not by much, a bit more crunch, possibly more grinding than our place in this chain. Without doubt, less slap, less thud, but still the same rhythm.\nThere was singing early on. That’s stopped. As had the murmur of conversation—joviality was lost long ago. Humor demands subversion of the predictable. We had become predictable, as predictable as the old joke—slap clomp crunch. Predictable cogs in an endless machine, our humanity rendered down to mere efficiency.\nWhat purpose guided this monotonous march? The corridor twists on endlessly, an industrial serpent devouring us inch by inch into its metal gullet. The answer to a purpose in this space slipped through our fingers like the grains of our former existence.\nFor a long moment, this was the truth:\nOur planet is in the center of the solar system.\nOur island is the center of the map.\nOur person, the center of existence.\nOur steps—center us still.\nThe floor shifts beneath.\nThe island shifts at our turned corner.\nThe planet shifts to keep connected to the island.\nThe solar system shifts to match the planet.\n…All this at each footfall.\nThis is the perception of any one of us. But it is impossible for more than one.\nIn a moment of clarity, we noticed we were descending.\nFrivolous.\nWorse, these thoughts are pointless to think. Each becomes triggered in a chain as if it has folded itself up and glued itself to the previous thought, and set to follow an endless corridor of the mind. Far too many times we have mused these musings.\nThe walls are darker. We only noticed when we stumbled over an old man. We saw him, but still tripped. All of us tripped. It was the rhythm.\nRude to be jarred back into thinking again. Had we been sleeping? The steps are distinct, more shuffling and dragging feet, quieter but with the same rhythm. The lights are dimmer now, constricted to faint dots above us. It’s tiresome, our eyes are dry.\nFirst lesson—we must continue, lest we be trampled. Second lesson—thinking wastes energy and makes us go mad. This also results in being trampled.\nThis too has been thought before. Too many times. How inconvenient, such a waste of our time to think these turgid recycled thoughts. The mind wonders.\nHours or days passed with no more distraction. The lights flickering above sprouted twisted halos, hallucinatory auras pulsating in time with the rhythm of marching feet and thudding hearts. Musk of these poor old souls, concentrated, industrialized, but unnoticed. The structure itself held its breath. With each turning of the eternal corkscrew path, the air thicker with human spice—each twist squeezed out what minuscule pockets of respite remained.\nWhat’s this invasion of our stilled thoughts?\nWhat’s this we see?\nA finger on the floor?\nWe’ll give it a good thrashing!\nTeach it to upset our blissful silence of still stepping!\nWe must preserve the rhythm!\nWe’ll swoop on it in a clever lunge; just off step to move without changing pace!\nIn three, two, one—\nThe world spun furiously.\nWhen the floor, island, and indeed, universe, caught up with his now motionless, severed feet, he found himself—with some bemusement—caught in a tangle of metal jaws, clamps, and spinning blades.\nHe watched as the nearest of his comrades were rendered. The machinery’s whirring spindles and pincers flashed like grotesque hospital tools, coldly and efficiently separating the living from the dead matter. Scraps of flesh and viscera were sluiced away down hidden drainage channels on the floor.\nQuicker than a heartbeat and in groups of four—the top part of their heads are pierced from above. They are sliced cleanly through the jaw line. The head removed and spun up through a hatch. The tongue was then removed with a flash of finer tools.\nAnd just as the next step would fall, the thorax was split upwards. Claws stripped meat from the shoulders, arms, chest.\nThe machinery going through the motions of harvesting his body retracted—to prepare for the next piece of walking meat. His musky husk dropped to the floor like a shed snakeskin, much empty of the spark that once animated it.\nHe settled in a heap at the skirting, with what was left of his back bent up the wall. Chest down, head facing the future, accused now by his own finger on the floor beside him.\nHe could taste the stale air, thick with the copper tang of blood and the charnel reek of slaughtered humanity. As what blood in his brain drained, the last few beats of his heart thudded in his ears. With him, the rhythm didn’t die. It crossed him, stomped a course through him, beating itself into his back with those cheap factory boots.\nYet in those final moments, his mind rebelled against the cruelty. A fleeting vision burst through—his childhood home bathed in golden summer light, the calming scent of freshly cut grass. His mother’s smiling face as she embraced him, her arms a sanctuary against the cruelties of the world. Such simple human tenderness now made obscene by the sterile brutality surrounding him. Other memories flickered—a woman’s gentle laugh, the warmth of an embrace, the abstract concept of human kindness now rendered obscene by the choreographed butchery. He had been more than this ruined husk of meat and bone. He had been young once, they all had.\nHe remembered that youthful freedom, when the future seemed to stretch on with infinite possibility. Lazy afternoons cloud-watching with friends, catching fireflies at dusk in a meadow, their warm glows cradled tenderly in small hands. Such innocent, transcendent magic. They dreamed of adventures beyond their small town. How could he have foreseen such waking nightmares calling from the infinite expanse?\nA fragile spark of defiance flickered in his consciousness. He turned his gaze towards the oncoming march, eyes refocusing on the procession of blank faces, bodies moved by nothing but the invasion of the next boot fall. If he could just…reach them. Rouse that last shred of humanity…\nHis trembling fingers inched across the metal floor, desperately trying to inscribe one last message, any word to shatter the cycle. But his strength failed before his spirit could. The last thing he saw before the shadows mercifully claimed him was his own hand, grotesquely crushed underfoot as any other errant thing in the path. He would not feed the next generation. His death, like his life, was a pitiable failure eclipsed by the soulless industrial lights flickering dispassionately above—mocking life’s beautiful impermanence.\nThe boots that trampled him today would trample again. The circle remained unbroken. Obscene machinery resets, hungry for its next sacrifice, hungry to fulfill its role, hungry to make the next sausage filling. Soon, a new crop will be raised on the rotten soil from the last, in an Ouroboros of oblivious cruelty." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Oscar and Dolores vs The In-Laws\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1642\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Dolores blots her ruby red lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror. “Are you almost ready to go to mother’s, Oscar?” she bellows.\n“Am I almost ready? I’ve been ready for the past hour!”\n“Then come in here and let me have a look at you.” Dolores can hear Oscar grumbling as he approaches. Eyes wide enough to pop out of her head, she fumes. “Oscar! Did you really think wearing a shirt missing the top button to my mother’s Christmas dinner would be all right? Seriously!” Shrugging, Oscar strolls into the bathroom. He frowns and scrutinizes himself in the mirror. After trying to straighten out the collar, he asks, “What’s wrong with it? It’s comfortable.”\n“You look like a slob. That’s what’s wrong with it! Come with me! I never thought the day would come when I’d have to dress a full-grown man, I’m tellin’ ya!” Dolores slides back Oscar’s closet door and starts pushing things this way and that. “Oscar! This closet’s a disaster! Why don’t you keep your shirts, pants, and sweaters together like I do? How can you find anything in this mess?”\n Oscar crosses his arms and mumbles. “I keep the things I like to wear in the front, that’s all.”\n“Good, God. I’m going to have to take you shopping after Christmas. That’s all there is to it. I can’t find a thing, and it’s getting late!”\n“What about the green one,” he asks.\n“It’s got a stain on it.”\n“The blue one?”\n“It’s got a stain on it!”\n“Plaid?”\n“There’s a hole in that one.”\n Scratching his head, Oscar’s eyes search the rack. “Well, what about the pink one there to the back?”\nWincing, Dolores barks, “Pink one! When did you ever own a pink shirt?’\n“I don’t know, but it is right there in the back, see?” Dolores stretches to reach it and takes it out. Blinking rapidly, Dolores’s mouth drops open. “Oscar, this is the pink blouse I have been looking for. I bet you put it in there when I asked you to put away the ironing.”\n“In that case…” \n“No, Oscar, you can’t wear my blouse!”\n Oscar growls, “That’s not what I was going to say! What about that white shirt? Can you see it now that you removed the pink thing?” Again Dolores reaches deep into the closet and retrieves the white shirt. “This is that country western shirt you used to wear when we were doing line dancing, remember?”\nOscar rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I do. It looks like a nice shirt, don’t it?” Dolores wrinkles her nose, “It’s nice, but do you want to go to my mother’s looking like Rex Trailer from Boomtown? It’s a cotton shirt with black piping on the pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons.” \nOscar bites the inside of his cheek, “Well, it seems to be all we’ve got that’s nice, and it is getting late. We still have a thirty-minute ride ahead of us.” Dolores concedes, and ten minutes later, they are out the door.\n …\nCruising along the highway, Oscar whistles the tune to “Once Upon a Time in the West.”\nDolores clears her throat to broach the subject that’s been on her mind since they left the house. “Oscar, I want to talk to you before we get to my mother’s house. I would like it if we could have a pleasant visit this year without it ending in a big fracas.” Oscar clenches his jaw. “Big fracas? I don’t start the trouble. It’s that dip-stick brother of yours. I always mind my own business until he starts to needle me. It’s him you should be talking to, not me! Baring his teeth, Oscar continues, “ I’m telling you that just because he’s got a degree in aerospace engineering, it don’t make him some sort of a rocket scientist or something!”\nFolding her arms, Dolores arches one eyebrow. “First of all, it’s not just a degree. It’s a Ph.D. Meaning my brother has a doctorate in aerospace engineering. Do you know what having a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering makes him, Oscar? A ROCKET SCIENTIST! So what if he’s a little prideful? He worked hard for that degree, and now he works for a sub-division of NASA.”\nOscar curls his lip mockingly. “Sub-division.”\nPressing her hands together as if in prayer, Dolores pleads, “Please, please, Oscar, just ignore Willard this year. It upsets my mother, and Willard’s wife, Polly, feels she has to rush their children out of the room because of all the cursing. And poor Uncle Steve! He is so nervous that all he does is sit in the corner of the couch, flinching and cringing while you two argue! So, please, do it for me?” Grimacing, Oscar agrees.\n …\nOscar and Dolores arrive about ten minutes late, and Dolores’s mom makes a big deal out of not making it a big deal.\n“OH, look, everyone! Dolores and Oscar have finally arrived!” she chirps. “Isn’t that nice?” With an icy stare at Dolores, “We can start the meal now.” Glancing past her mother, she can see both children have their mouths stuffed, and Uncle Steve is reaching for a second helping of roast. Dolores breathes a fake sigh of relief. “I’m so glad I didn’t make you wait.” Her mother slowly blinks and turns toward Oscar. With a syrupy smile, she points, “Oscar, dear, why don’t you take off your coat and hang it up in the hallway?” Turning on her heels, she quips, “Near the door.”\nWhen Oscar returns to the dinner table, he is met with Willard’s broad, dimpled smile.\n“Well, will you looky here! We’re having Christmas dinner with a real live cowboy, Wild Bill Oscar!” Everyone snickers except Oscar. “What’s with the getup?” Willard roars with laughter. Clenching his fists, Oscar responds. “It’s not a getup, Willard. It’s the only decent shirt I own right now. I’ll have to go shopping right after Christmas if you haven’t already bought me a new one from Saks Fifth Avenue?” Willard drops his smile.\nMother Baker interjects, “Just as you arrived, dear, your brother was saying how NASA has asked him to lead their latest project. Isn’t that wonderful?” Picking a piece of lint from his clothes, Willard waves at his mother. “No, no, Mom. I didn’t say to lead the project but to join the project. They require my expertise on parts for engineering and things like that.” Suddenly, Oscar starts to choke on his roast beef! Uncle Steve panics and jumps up, spilling his chianti into the mashed potatoes. Dolores rolls her eyes. \nWillard narrows his eyes, knowing Oscar is just pretending. Oscar shifts in his chair as he readies himself for the following comment. Willard tries to stare Oscar down. Oscar unflinchingly accepts the challenge by staring back.\nWillard pulls on his earlobe, “What would a school janitor do with a shirt from Saks Fifth Avenue?” Oscar’s lips tighten, but he says nothing. However, Dolores feels her nostrils dilate, and neck cords stiffen. All these snide remarks always took place when she cleaned up with Polly and Mom in the kitchen. Because Oscar is always the loudest, she blames him for starting the fight. At the same time, Willard puts on an innocent face, the poor guy being abused by Oscar the Brute face.\nMeanwhile, Uncle Steve, the worthless lout, says nothing. The veins in her temples pound, and she fears she’s about to explode. Watching Dolores from the corner of his eye, Oscar instinctively edges his chair away from hers.\nMother Baker adds a little fuel to the fire. “Oh, I’m sure Oscar could find a use for such a nice shirt. Perhaps they might actually get invited out or something.” Polly snickers. Uncle Steve assumes the fight or flight position, eyes glancing back and forth. With tight lips and raised eyebrows, Oscar stares down at his plate.\nYawning and fiddling with his fork, Willard sighs. “I suppose you’re right, Mom. Even the school janitor makes friends with his fellow workers. Oh, wait! You work alone, don’t you, Oscar?”\nThe fuse has burnt down.\nHammering her fists down with such force causes all the silverware and plates to lift into the air. The two children start screaming and crying as Polly’s hands fly to her throat. Willard’s jaw unhinges as Mother Baker gasps, “Dolores.” Uncle Steve swallows a large piece of meat whole!\n“I’ve had it with you people! Who do you think you are? Oscar works hard for the school system. But let me tell you this, Oscar is more than just the janitor! OH yes, he is much more! He is also in charge of maintenance, the groundskeeper, and the crosswalk guard before and after school! Sure, he cleans the toilets and repairs the plumbing when it breaks. Can you do that, Willard? He mows the football field and grooms the baseball field. Do you even cut your lawn, Willard? No! Polly does it! He buffs and waxes the basketball court until you can see your reflection a mile deep! Do you know how to run an industrial buffer, Willard? No, because you’re not even a good engineer. You know just enough to be a good supply clerk. Oscar works alone and gets the same pay it would take to have three people do all the work. That’s how much the school system appreciates my Oscar. So if everybody changes their attitudes, we might be back, but we’re going home for now. Come on, Oscar!”\nTurning on her heels, Dolores rips her coat from the hall hooks and storms out the door. With a twinkle in his eye, Oscar looks at all the mortified faces and triumphantly sticks out his tongue. Grabbing his coat, he yells to Dolores, “Sweetheart! What do you say we stop and get some ice cream, hmm?”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Mrs. Jackson's Pumpkin Pie\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1520\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about somebody trying to rationalize giving into temptation, even though they know they shouldn’t." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Come on, we’re going to be late,” she pulled his arm, dragging him along.\nYanking his arm away from his sister’s grip, he scowled. “Don’t touch me.”\n“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes, her typical reaction.\nLuke hated it when people touched him, especially his arms or wrists, always commenting on how skinny he was. “You’re all skin and bones,” they said, making him feel less of a person, even smaller than he actually was if that were even possible. The school nurse had said not to worry, he would grow out of it, would become a big man one day. She had sounded certain, but he wasn’t sure. She didn’t know they sometimes went days without food, counting on the free lunch at school and the healthy snacks that Mrs. Jackson brought in, putting the extras into his backpack during recess.\nEvery morning they passed the fruit stand on the way to school. Sometimes just seeing the colorful display made his tummy rumble and his mouth water. He pictured biting into one of those shiny red apples, the juice running down his chin. He slowed down just to look, picking out the perfect one, until his sister’s impatient sigh prompted him to quicken his pace. It didn’t matter anyway. He had no money to buy an apple.\nThe neighborhood boys were at it again, he saw, with that familiar bad feeling. They teased him, called him names. Mama told him to ignore them, she said they were acting out. They were hanging around the fruit stand picking up the apples that he had his eye on.\n“Hey, check it out,” the bigger boy laughed as he began juggling two apples, badly, dropping them both immediately. Reaching into the carefully arranged display he grabbed two more, leaving the ones on the ground to sit ignored.\n“Get out of here. I’m calling your mother!” The old shop owner came running out with her broom as if to chase away a mouse. Perhaps these children were like rats to her, pests coming around destroying her goods.\n“Shut up, old lady,” they boys mocked her, throwing apples at each other, laughing before finally meandering away.\nLuke stood still, frozen. Those apples on the ground. How he longed to pick them up and put them in his backpack. They were perfectly fine, just needed a good washing. What would she do with them? He was tempted to ask her or to just take them. Was she going to throw them away? His stomach growled. How easy it would be to grab them while she was looking at the boys a few shops down taunting the man at the newspaper stand.\nHis sister pulled his arm again, this time harder. He winced in pain and followed her to school.\n*\nSitting at the kitchen table Luke tried to do his homework but had trouble concentrating. “What’s for dinner, Mama?”\nHis mother lit up a cigarette and laughed. “What did you bring home today, Luke? Did Mrs. Jackson have any leftovers for you?” She grabbed his backpack looking in. When finding nothing she threw it on the floor, sat back taking a long drag on her cigarette. “I guess no dinner tonight,” she said through the thick stream of smoke. She went into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.\n\nMama didn’t get up the next morning to say goodbye, have a nice day at school. His sister had peeked into her room before grabbing his arm roughly, pulling him out of the apartment onto the cold city streets of Brooklyn.\nHe saw the wind swirling the leaves about on the sidewalk, felt it blowing through the holes in his sneakers. He had bigger worries than his cold feet as Thanksgiving was getting closer. That meant the celebration was getting closer too. \n\nHolding his hand down on the construction paper he carefully traced around it. He concentrated, keeping the crayon far away from his fingers to create a nice fat turkey instead of the skinny bird that had appeared on his paper the year before. Cutting the colorful feathers to glue onto his project he was worried. Almost sick with worry. He looked at Mrs. Jackson hoping he wouldn’t cry.\n\nPassing the fruit stand the following morning he still didn’t have his problem figured out and the celebration was just one day away. He didn’t tell Mama as she had stopped coming to school parties long ago. He still had the folded slip of paper that he had pulled out of the hat deciding for him what he would bring to the feast. “Pumpkin pie” he had read after unfolding the paper. Pumpkin pie, he had been repeating to himself, feeling the paper in his pocket day after day. Where would he possibly get a pumpkin pie? \nThe boys on the street were being rowdy again, this time calling out nasty words as the old woman chased them down the street leaving the small shop unattended. He glanced through the doorway at the sign written on the chalkboard advertising pies for sale. Pies! Would there be pumpkin pies? His heart raced. He had to find out.\n“Luke!” His sister screamed in annoyance. “What are you doing? We are going to be soo late.” \nHe didn’t care. He stepped into the warm shop, the smell of baked goods overwhelming him, his mouth watering. He stood in front of the tower of pies, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie all sitting neatly in their brown boxes with holiday stickers decorating them. It was the answer to that folded up piece of paper in his pocket. He wouldn’t have to tell Mrs. Jackson after all, seeing her eyebrows come together as she listened carefully to his disappointing news. He wouldn’t have to be the only student not arriving with a colorful shopping bag to add to the table in the corner of the room.\nTaking off his backpack he opened the zipper. He knew it was wrong to take a pie, he knew it, he knew it. But he chose a brown box with an orange pumpkin sticker on it anyway. Holding the pie in one hand and his open backpack in the other he was frozen. Take the pie, take the pie. It’s for the celebration, it’s for the class. He tried to make himself feel better. It’s for Mrs. Jackson, to pay her back for all the treats, all the surprise bags of freshly washed clothes she had slipped into his backpack during recess. Sometimes there were even baggies for Mama and his sister. It would be his turn to finally give something to Mrs. Jackson, to make her happy.\n“Luuuuke! What the hell?” \nShocked to hear his sister using bad language he jumped back, his heart racing. Scowling at her, he put the pie back on the pile just before the old woman returned from her chase.\nIt’s okay, he thought. He still had one day to figure it out. One day to get that pie into his backpack.\n\nEntering the classroom on the day of the feast he felt sick. His forehead didn’t feel warm, but his tummy was all sorts of jumpy and he was tired. He was more tired than ever before, even when he had to sleep on those small beds in that scary place when he was little. Sometimes he thought about being in the shelter, but he wasn’t sure if it was a dream he remembered or if it had actually happened.\nHe didn’t get much sleep the night before, worrying about the pumpkin pie. He dreamed about the old lady chasing him down the street with her broom while he held the stolen pie. He dreamed of bringing the pie to the feast and mice crawling out of it when Mrs. Jackson cut into it. He stayed awake after that one, too afraid to go back into the nightmare.\nHe had one last walk to school, one last chance at the pie in the shop. He carried his backpack loosely at his left side, the zipper open and ready. The pies were near the door, he would grab one with his right hand, slip it into his bag and not miss a step. He had practiced at home in the bathroom pretending the four pack of toilet tissue was the pie. He was sure he had his moves right. He just wasn’t sure it was the right move. \nApproaching the shop, he saw the old lady sweeping the doorway. Just his luck! He slowed his pace to the annoyance of his sister but no matter how long he dawdled, how slowly he dragged his feet, she continued sweeping. He passed her by in a blur, the pies behind her, then she behind him as he continued down the cold city street.\n*\n“Good morning, Luke,” Mrs. Jackson greeted him in the hallway. \n“Good morning, Mrs. Jackson,” he mumbled, looking down.\n“Please add this to the corner table and take a seat,” she handed him a colorful shopping bag. Glancing inside he saw a pumpkin pie." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Pilgrim's Egress: A Mike Dodge Holiday Mystery\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2698\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Yeah, I don’t mind that so much,” Cousin Greg replied in an octave that suggested the contrary. “It’s when they have to shove it in your face all the time.”\nI nudged my chair gently back, an inch or two to allow graceful egress. Load-bearing plastic against composite garage flooring does not permit such a thing, especially at Thanksgiving, and Sarah glanced toward my end of the table. Rainbow Greg was in full dudgeon, and he gave me merely a flickering side-eye as I rose. Brother-in-law Jake soon would rally as well against rampant face-shoving, and Greg soon would wring in his other major grievance against the Hollywood establishment – multiculturally blended families in cereal ads.\nJake was also a homophobe, but not an overall racist, and however diverting an interfamilial dispute might be, my very last nerve was perilously frayed. I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass whether my fictional firefighter was gay, and I was just dandy with tow-headed tots pushing the heart-healthy benefits of Cheerios on Dad or Stepdad, whether or not Grandma or Grandpa had approved of the union. I’d found Jake’s 15-minute direct eye contact discourse on sump pumps and sump pump-related products less than compelling, and Sarah’s sister Cheryl already had critiqued three of our sides before discovering the Bob Evans people were responsible, then poured passive aggression all over the catered grub.\nOur girl Melanie sat back stoically to enjoy the fun, and my darling Ella with fifth-grade obliviousness misread every conversational cue and silence and fired off enough follow-up questions to make Dennis Spicer storm out of the White House Press Room or Jake expand exponentially on everything.\nSo, hoping Sarah hadn’t been keeping a log of my toilet breaks, I mouthed “Bathroom,” and made for the door. Several years ago, in the wake of an incident involving Sarah’s incontinent but no longer breathing uncle, we’d had a high-capacity space heater installed and aforementioned fancy garage floor poured and glamped up Thanksgiving in the two-bay Banquet Hall.\nOnce ensconced in the basement john, I realized I’d left the phone at the feast, so I pondered on something to think about. Nothing came, so I crept soundlessly upstairs and gobbled a covert chunk of dark meat and a second sliver of pecan pie over the sink. As I re-hinged my jaw and pivoted for a napkin, my eyes locked with Ella’s, who grinned crookedly, shrugged, and snagged a brownie. I was pleased that at 10, she’d learned to bank leverage over the immediate gratification of ratting out Grandpa. I brushed the trace from my T-shirt and patted her on the head as I returned to the melee. \n“…just swarming in like locusts, getting free health care and stealing everything that’s not nailed down. When we’ve got thousands of homeless vets on the street...”\nI’d once seen Greg brave 30 feet of icy pavement and an obstacle course of abandoned carts to avoid the Salvation Army kettle.\n“I lock the car?” I inquired.\nSarah turned. “Don’t you remember?”\n“Well, for sure after I got the pies, but then I had to re-park…”\n“Sorry,” Cousin Gwen piped, breaking my flow. I waved her off, and recovered quickly with a gambit guaranteed to win Sarah’s support.\n“Not like anybody’s going to jack the Honda in our own driveway…”\n“Go. Check. Now.”\n\nThe first light snow had arrived overnight, so I’d been up at 6 shoveling all guest service and access areas as my cardiac monitor watched from the bay window preparing for whatever lifesaving measures we’d never bothered learning for free in our combined 120-plus years. It was already just above freezing, and I’d rolled up my balaclava before I’d done the porch.\nThe only other human presence at that ungodly or I suppose unhuman hour was some heavily bundled dude about a half-block down who disappeared behind Ray’s supersized SUV next door. Some sort of delivery, I assumed -- as I was finishing up on the driveway lip, he trundled back to his car and moved back into the hazy dawn. \nBy 8, a fresh fall had arrived, and by 9:30, I was back in my outdoorsies questioning the futility of most human effort. By 11:30, I was haggling with the Bob Evans gang for the cranberries, potatoes, gravy, and dressing they’d doubtlessly forgotten the second after Sarah had hung up the week previous, offering an early Pilgrims Day invocation that the dismembered Hyvee turkey would stay warm in the passenger’s seat. By 11:55, I found Greg and Gwen’s burgundy Expedition occupying my spot, and after nearly making Thanksgiving at the Dodge’s a vegan bacchanal and the crows happy, cheerfully hauled Greg’s newly arrived ass back into the wonderland.\n\n“You hear that?”\nI jumped before spotting Ray leaning on the vinyl fence that bordered our drive. He clocked in somewhere between Delroy Lindo and Shaq, and the plastic creaked as the middle-aged IT guy shifted and shivered in his sweats and windbreaker. Then, I registered the muted car alarm.\n“Geez, that’s still going? It was going full guns when I scraped the second layer of snow.”\n“Just started up, again,” Ray informed me. Laughter erupted from inside my neighbor’s house, and he glanced sadly up at the bilevel’s living room window. His drive was now full, and Ray’s Escalade was at the curb two houses down. “I been out here 20 minutes, and the thing’s been going on and off the whole time.”\nI shivered back. “Where’s it coming from?”\nRay’s forehead furrowed back to where a scalp line logically would have been. “Dunno. Sounds like it’s inside somewhere, like in a garage maybe. Shit, maybe Robson’s.”\nRay’s wary profanity was well-founded. We simultaneously peered over at the yard beyond the Perrys’ property, past the election sign planted a year ahead of schedule, past the lawn figure that I thought had been cancelled somewhere around Selma, to Gil Robson’s chipped and dented garage door. I strained to identify the blaring klaxon, hope against hope.\nGil Robson was the guy only a mother could love if you subscribed to maternal stereotypes. His shrill diatribes and creative misogyny had disappeared along with any remaining holiday guests after the equally pleasant Mrs. Robson had passed, and my guess is the door-to-door evangelicals and the kids scamming magazines and candy bars could sense the bad mojo rising off Old Robson’s ranch. His son, Gilbert Jr., was seemingly his sole connection with the world since Mrs. Robson Jr. took the kids as far as possible away from her father-in-law, who, I assume, also groused about cereal commercials. Before Mrs. Robson Sr. had departed for hell, I’d recalled the grandkids constantly chasing and hollering and splashing on the front lawn under Old Gil’s sour watch. Or I remembered Sarah griping about the amplified sounds of childlike glee. In the couple times I’d chatted him up since the divorce, Junior seemed a haunted man perpetually chained to his bombastic, bigoted demon.\n“Fuck,” Ray whispered, then turned away from the fence. I followed him to the sidewalk and to the lip of Robson’s blanketed, untrodden driveway. “Man’s got pretty bad diabetes, and he told me he can barely afford the insulin. Well, it was more like he told me the Democrats were keeping insulin prices high just because.”\nThe car alarm stopped.\n“Jeez, I hate to say, but you think maybe we should possibly check on him?”\n“Fuck,” Ray repeated.\nA feminine voice shattered the chilled autumn air. “Raymond!”\nGenise was perched just inside the Perrys’ open front door. “Hey, we’re about to start the cards, and your uncle messed up the remote trying to get the game.”\n“Let’s go,” Ray declared, crunching up the drive. There was no stoop next to the drive – what do misanthropic old hermits need with a stoop? I pressed the bell until my chapped finger turned purple. We clearly were ambivalent about the silence that followed.\nRay took a breath, and tried the storm door. It opened, and we looked at each other like the first and second victims after the credits.\nThe inside door was locked. Ray pounded for five minutes before he slumped back and I reached for my iPhone. “Lemme call 9—“\nAnd Ray’s size 13 came up, and my neighbor drove his right leg into the vinyl and steel and wood. And his left leg slipped on the snow, knocking him to the drive. Fortunately, buffered by 210 pounds of me.\nWhen we confirmed none of us were going to the ER and climbed to our feet, the door stood open to a darkened interior and the faint babble of FOX News in the living room. In the bathroom, we completed our welfare check with a failing grade.\nThe medicine cabinet was opened, and orange bottles and a hemorrhoid tube had spilled into the basin. Robson’s eyes were open and empty, and a ring of keys and a Dodge fob were splayed a couple of inches beyond his clawed hand.\nI said it this time, before fumbling for the iPhone.\n\nThe Millington Police response time was phenomenal – just as I hung up on the Millington Police.\n“What do you guys think you’re doing?” the patrolman demanded from his open car door. A gaunt middle-aged guy I recognized as Gilbert Jr. was standing at the bottom of his father’s drive, his pickup slanted into the curb behind the MPD cruiser.\n“Mr. Dodge,” Junior muttered. “Ray.”\n“We thought your dad might be in trouble,” Ray stammered. “I’m sorry, Bro – he’s dead.”\nThe cop sprinted up the drive. “Shit, you two stick with me. Nobody’s going anywhere.” The officer plunged into the house, and I looked back at Gilbert on the sidewalk, wringing gloved hands as he watched anxiously. \nWhen we emerged, the cop shook his head at Junior, who slumped back against the squad car.\n“Hey,” I said. “Wait.”\n\n“My guess is, he’d been contemplating something like this for a while,” I told Det. Curtis Mead about an hour later, as Ella plopped a slice of pecan pie at his new place. Curtis nodded with a curt smile – the one he no doubt reserved for those who discharged their duties without lip.\n“Lucky -- we were almost out,” Ella beamed angelically at me. Obstreperous child. \n“Probably didn’t imagine anybody would be out at six on Thanksgiving,” I continued hastily, “and lucky for him Ray and Genise left their SUV out, blocking my view. The street was empty, and I should have wondered why he parked so far away. Or, really, what he was delivering so early to Robson.”\n“What was it?” Sarah’s sister inquired. I hadn’t planned a drawing room reveal, but before I could drag Curtis to the sunroom or maybe escape out the patio door to the Denny’s, Sarah had decided to be a gracious host, damn her, and so here I was Poiroting it up.\n“Remember the noise Robson’s grandkids used to make during the summer, splashing around in the front yard?” I asked Sarah. “I believe you commented on it from time to time, quite vociferously, in fact.” There’s your gracious hospitality. I turned to Ella, who was watching some nattering YouTube video with two Australian girls rating Barbies. The doll kind. “Remember how you wanted us to drag out the Slip N Slide every time you came down?”\nElla previewed her adolescent eyeroll. She’d been such a child at two years ago.\n“Robson Jr. dragged out the old Slip N Slide this morning. Whatever divorced dad reason he’d kept it I don’t know, but it came in handy here. Starting at the bottom of Robson’s drive, he unrolled it as he worked toward the door. Keeping the scene pristine was the major objective, and only a couple of inches total were predicted. Even if the continued fall covered his shoeprints, they’d likely have left some kind of impression. A tarp would distribute Junior’s weight enough to prevent any deep, compressed prints that might have remained even after a mild thaw.\n“Robson was an early riser, so he probably wasn’t surprised his son popped by at that hour. He’d have had coffee on, and it was easy enough for Junior to dose his dad’s cup, deflect whatever abusive crap Senior had to dish out, and wait for the added insulin to kick in. Junior follows the Slip N Slide, and when he reaches the curb, carefully rolls it up like a hose. Further smoothing the snow and obscuring any shallow impression Junior might have made. Half the neighborhood’s gone out of town for Thanksgiving, and nobody who remotely knows Robson would take it on themselves to shovel his drive or even do a holiday welfare check on the old…” Melanie’s brow rose and Ella waited eagerly. “The old man. The next inch of snow managed to cover any trace that Junior had even been there.”\n“What you say, might have been a week until anybody found the old…man,” Curtis suggested as he lifted a forkful of pecans, emulsified sugar, and crust to his lips.\n“Well, after Junior left, Senior comes around, but he’s weak, he can’t get up, his phone’s out of reach in the kitchen. But his keys and key fob are in his pocket, and he presses the car alarm button as an alert. Thing is, car alarms going off on Thanksgiving aren’t that unusual, with people hauling food and re-parking (I waved Gwen off again) and dealing with the stress — the exuberant fellowship – of family Thanksgiving. Like I said, half the neighborhood’s gone for the day and most of the rest surrounded by the happy chaos of the holiday, and a car alarm becomes white noise after a while when you’re distracted by…the joy of family and fellowship. When nobody came to rescue him, Robson decides to sound the alarm intermittently, in the hope somebody would pick up on the oddity. Ray and I only picked up on it when we realized the noise was coming from inside Robson’s garage instead of the street.\n“Even so, it wouldn’t have been a week. Junior wouldn’t have taken that chance – his whole alibi scheme depended on finding the body before the snow melted. So he shows up with the police after claiming to have tried to raise Dad several times. Only to find the two neighborhood idiots mucking up his perfect murder. Now he had a problem. How could he verify he didn’t leave prints before he’d returned to the scene amid the mess Ray and I’d left? Anybody? What would you do if you arrived at your parents’ house and found out they’d been murdered? Even if you hated them?” Know-it-all Jake began to propound, and I pivoted to rhetorical. “I wouldn’t just stand at the curb while two relative strangers and the police stormed the manor.”\n“That was it?” Greg gawped. “That’s what tipped you off? That’s kinda iffy.”\nI forced a smile – I should have been doing this mano-a-mano over a Turkey Slam. “Well, that and Junior being so bundled up this morning when the temps were already in the 30s. And when it hit me that he left the house with the same bundle he’d come to ‘deliver,’ when Robson was almost certainly awake.”\n“Thought it was kinda lame myself,” Det. Mead told Greg as he washed the rest of the pie I’d so generously offered him with the coffee I’d so generously offered him. Well, Sarah had so generously offered him. “Then I realized if this whole thing was a setup, there was a pretty good shot Robson the Second hadn’t even tried to call his dad. So I checked his phone, which took him by surprise. What was he gonna do, commit the perfect crime and then lawyer up? Thanks for the pie, Mrs. Dodge, but I suspect I still have a houseful of, uh, people waiting for me.”\nThere was a tinge of regret in Curtis’ voice. Despite muting my thunder, at that moment I would gladly have killed another neighbor for him.\n“Did you lock the car?” Cheryl finally asked.\n“No,” I announced happily, reaching for my hoodie." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Forgot the Turkey\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2296\n\nPrompt:\n\nAt some point in your story, a character says “You’re better than this…”." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I wake up early and make coffee because it’s a big day for me and Lydia – it’s the day her old man finally has a date with a government bullet. Truth be told, I didn’t get much sleep. My gut’s been dizzy all month, thinking the nightmare was actually going to be over soon.\nAnd damn it! Guess I’m not great at making coffee either, as I forgot the carafe again and the machine’s dribbling all over the counter.\n“Heya handsome,” I hear from the doorway, just as I begin wiping up the soggy mess.\nIt’s Lydia, in her nightgown, and she’s as gorgeous as the day she walked into my life. Lord, I can’t believe that was ten years ago. Where’s the time gone?\nI pull her in close, give her a long peck on the beak, run my hands down her feathers. “Morning, baby.” Her scent… she smells of home. A place I never thought I’d find.\nI give her another peck when I see the fear in her eyes. “Hey, it’s over. It’s finally over.” I say it as much for her benefit as mine.\nLydia McGobble – wife of the most notorious turkey mobster in all of New Farmington – is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Maybe the only good thing. A life of private investigation mostly just leaves you with scars.\nShe settles into my arms, nuzzles my wattle. “I know,” she says. “I can’t believe it. It feels like taking a breath after a lifetime of drowning.”\nDon’t I know it, babe. Jack McGobble is an animal. Was.\nJust then, the patio door slams open and Martin Dinde – my old partner from the force – rushes in. He’s lucky I have years of experience, because my Colt 1911 is already in my hand.\n“Christ, Martin! I damn near blew your brains out!”\n“Eugene! Lydia! Sorry!” he says, gulping down air. “But you gotta see this.”\nHe slams the morning’s paper on the counter, and on the front page is none other than Jack McGobble, shaking hands with a human – the President of the United States. They’re both grinning at the camera, and the headline above proudly proclaims, “President Pardons Turkey!”\n“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, and I feel Lydia grow tense. I know old Jack has connections, but I never thought he’d swing something like this.\nI still remember the day I brought him down, at the old pork processing plant. To the casual eye Jack was an upstanding meat magnate, but Lydia – just an anonymous informant at the time, calling me up in the middle of the night, but I never forgot that voice – told me there was more than just pork being ground up and packaged. Seemed like Jack had a side business of offing turkeys, bundling them up with potatoes and cranberry, freezing the whole thing in a plastic coffin, and selling them to humans.\nYeah, the guy was sick.\nBut he was everywhere too, with feathers in every pie. I knew the mayor was on his payroll, but it caught me by surprise the chief of police was too. I should have known, of course, since I’d been getting the run around for months, but it all fell into place when I came upon Jack holding the chief of police over an industrial meat grinder. Seemed like the chief wanted a bigger cut, and Jack was all too eager to oblige.\n“Jack! Don’t do it!” Much as I didn’t like the chief, he belonged behind bars and not in a frozen dinner. “You’re better than this!”\n“No, Eugene,” he said. “I’m really not.” I’ll never forget the look he had in his eye, like he was both horrified and delighted at what was happening, like he knew he was a monster and revelled in it. “I can’t help myself. I’m not better than this – I am this.”\nAnd then he tossed the chief into the grinder, spraying feathers and giblets everywhere.\nI went for him. I knew if I didn’t get the upper hand I was done for, as he’d never let me walk out alive – and even back then, I was terrified of what he might do to Lydia. I didn’t think I’d make it, because Jack was built like an ostrich, but he was tired from a night of tying up loose ends, and it looked like the chief of police had managed to shoot him once or twice too.\nUltimately, I landed a lucky right hook, knocked him out, and the rest is history. I called up Martin, who got the arrest and a promotion, and with the top level corruption gone, we knew Jack was going down for good.\nOr so we thought.\nI hug Lydia more tightly. The poor hen. She had to live with that monstrosity for far too many years.\n“Thanks for the news, Martin. It’s terrible, but better to tear the Band-Aid off. Does the chief know yet? I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack wasn’t returning, with a vengeance.”\n“That’s just it,” Martin says, ruffling his feathers. “Thing is, I called into the precinct, but nobody’s answering.”\nWe let that hang in the air for a moment, a silence that washes out the dawn.\nI grab my coat just as Martin fishes out his keys.\n“I’m coming too,” says Lydia.\n“No, babe. It’s too dangerous–”\n“–The hell it is!” She’s already slipped on a jacket and her purse – and I know she’s got more than makeup and mints in there, and she’d not hesitate to defend herself. “I’m not leaving you, and that’s final.”\nSo the three of us pack into Martin’s station wagon and drive into the city. The streets are surprisingly empty, but then again, I’m not used to greeting the sun so maybe this is normal.\nNormal. How close we were to normal. Suburbs? Marriage? A poodle?\nThe legal system worked, justice was served, and then victory was snatched away at the last possible moment. Maybe I’m not cut out for playing house, and maybe a mobster’s wife isn’t either, but retirement was actually starting to grow on me. I’m too old for this dance and I just want to sit down for a while.\nI don’t like this.\nAnd my gut’s right. It always is. Downtown New Farmington is a ghost city. Abandoned cars line the streets and errant feathers blow in the wind, and terrified eyes follow us from every alley and window.\nMartin pulls into the precinct parking lot. The police station is deserted.\n“Oh god oh god oh god,” Martin mutters, and as soon as we see the mess inside – tables knocked over, papers scattered about like a hurricane had passed through the building – we both draw our guns.\n“This way,” he says. “We have to see the chief.”\nBut the chief’s office is empty too, except for a sickly sweet smell, and a thick red goop smeared over the walls and floor. Lydia gasps and Martin gags. I approach the stuff, touch it.\n“Cranberries,” I whisper.\nThe sick bastards have been here all right.\nWe hear a commotion down the hall. Sounds like a filing cabinet falling over, glass shattering. Inane cackling.\nWhen we rush out we see a couple thugs taking a crowbar to the place. Unfortunately, they spot us.\n“Oy!” shouts one. “Isn’t that the coppers Jack put a price on?”\nDamn it!\nA moment later they open fire. I grab Lydia and leap behind a desk, shielding her from the plaster and wood raining down on us from where the bullets tear up the walls. There’s a hall not too far from us, and we can duck down it as soon as these idiots run out of bullets. I just need to make sure Martin knows the plan–\nMartin!?\nThe brave idiot is just standing there, returning fire. I see red streak the hallway as he takes a bullet, and when he sinks to his knees he fires off a final three shots, before silence suffocates the hallway.\n“Martin!”\n“Rat bastards,” he wheezes. “Call themselves turkeys.” He coughs, dribbling red.\nOh god, there’s so much red.\n“Lie down, we’ll get you bandaged up!”\nHe grabs my wing. “Eugene. Save it.” Another wet cough. “I’m clocking out.” He lets out a long wet gurgle, then fishes out his car keys and puts them in my hand. “Go to Dairy Hills. My sister. She can help you.”\n“Martin.” I’m at a loss for words. My first partner. My oldest friend.\n“Go. Hide. Plan.” He wheezes. “And promise me, you’ll get the bastard.”\n“We will,” I say.\nAnd then there’s nothing more to be said, ever again. I lay him down and close his eyes. I wish there was time for a more proper send off, but I can hear more of Jack’s goons elsewhere in the building. We hightail it to the parking lot and I hammer the pedal of Martin’s car.\n“Oh, Martin,” Lydia says, and her voice breaks my heart. I squeeze her hand as I drive. She’s all I have left now, but I do have her, thanks to Martin. We both owe him so much.\nWhen I took Jack down, we found enough evidence to unravel his entire empire. Half of city council were implicated in shady dealings, as well as numerous prominent businessmen. Seemed like there was good money in the turkey flesh trade, and the humans provided an insatiable market.\nAnd there was evidence on Lydia, too. Enough she’d never see the light of day again. I had a duty to bring her to justice, only I didn’t think she’d get any. A judge wouldn’t care that her tips were what lit the fuse, because there was no proof of it and only the testimony of a washed up old drunk like me.\nBut I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d grown attached. Was tempted.\nIt was Martin that pushed me over the edge.\n“You always had a good nose for character,” he said. “Why don’t you put your righteousness down, and just this once follow your heart?”\nFollowing that advice was the best mistake I ever made.\n“Eugene,” says Lydia, snapping me back to the present. We’ve hit the interstate, still hours away from Dairy Hills. “We’re being followed.”\nI glance in the mirror and see it’s true. Two black cars behind us, splitting on either side of us and pulling up. This is it then. I look at Lydia and she looks at me. So much goes unsaid, and all we have time for is a quick peck. Then we both draw our guns.\nThe goons pull up thinking they have the drop on us, but as soon as the windows roll down we give them a surprise. Lydia splatters the driver to the right of us, and his car goes spiraling into a ditch. The guys on the left are a bit more nimble and we trade lead, and turn our cars into Swiss cheese.\nAnd I don’t like Swiss cheese.\nMy gun’s out of bullets so I ram the others at an off-ramp. They go tumbling down a hill and slam into a median, and their car lands on its roof with a crunch. I gun it, leaving them in the dust, and as soon as there’s some respectable distance between us I check on Lydia.\nShe’s wide-eyed, flustered, and breathing heavily – just as I am – but good lord above, she’s fine!\n“We made it,” I say.\nShe grins. “We did!” Then she checks her gun. “Just in time too. I’m all out.”\n“Same.”\nAnd unfortunately, Martin’s car has also had enough. Maybe they hit something, or maybe that last ramming was too hard for the old girl, but the dash suddenly lights up red and the engine begins smoking.\nWe pull over near a side road. We’re still hundreds of miles from Dairy Hills, but there’s a sign here that says “Township of Gladburry.”\n“Maybe we can find a mechanic,” I say.\n“Maybe.” Lydia grabs my hand and we walk into Gladburry.\nRight off we can tell it’s a human town. I don’t have anything against humans per se, but there is a lot of bad blood in our history, and it always makes me a little nervous when they gather in groups. But the handful of homes that make up Gladburry hardly qualifies as gathering.\nWe pick a likely house and knock on the door. A red cheeked kid opens it, and we hear the sounds of cheery chatter inside, and a waft of gingerbread washes over us.\n“Hello?” the kid says.\n“Hi there,” I say. “Sorry to bother you, but our car broke down. We were wondering if we could use your phone to call a mechanic.”\nThe kid thinks it over for a moment, and I’m beginning to wonder if I should have started with “Are your parents home?”, but then she finally smiles and nods.\n“Yeah, please come in!”\nShe shows us into her kitchen, which is probably small by human standards but pretty spacious for us. And it’s nice and warm here. Didn’t even realize how cold it had gotten outside.\nShe closes the door behind us and says, “I’ll just get my mom.”\n“Thanks,” we both say.\nIt smells lovely in here. Lots of fresh baking, and I can definitely smell corn. My stomach rumbles. Maybe we can catch a meal.\nThen Lydia elbows me, and points up at the kitchen table, and my gut’s in freefall. There’s cans upon cans of cranberry sauce.\nAnd then we hear the kid shouting at the top of her shrill voice: “Mom! You’ll never believe it! It’s a Thanksgiving Day miracle!”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: A very unmerry Christmas\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1494\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "*contains swearing*\n\n\n\nAnother year on its way out, another set of new year’s resolutions to be discarded with January firsts’ mother of all hangovers. Still unmarried and childless and in the same job I’ve been in for 8 years with no promotion in sight at the ripe age of 36. That means another wonderful Christmas dinner where the topic of conversation will be about my pathetic life. My brother will boast about how he’s the smartest entrepreneur the world has ever seen, and his bachelor life of revolving door women will be celebrated. Meanwhile, my sisters rugrats will be pulling on her 20th century dress crying about how they’ve soiled themselves again and everyone will all be like aww how sweet. Makes me sick. Mother will be pursing her lips with a look of constipated disappointment and my father will be at least half a bottle of rum deep before I even step through the door. Yay for Christmas.\nEvery year is the same and every year on the drive over, I fight the urge to turn around and wonder why I even bother putting myself through it. But somehow, sharing DNA and having been raised with the basic needs of shelter, food and someone to play with, entitles everyone to think that we owe each other the fake pleasantries of a family Christmas dinner. Truth be told none of us could stand one another.\nI have shortened the time I stay there now though, managing to get it down to just one night to rest my head after the inevitable, and much needed over- indulgence of wine, followed by a very hasty departure. This was preferable to the week I used to have to endure. Its frowned upon and mentioned every year, but necessary for my sanity. The cat sitter can only do the night I’ll explain and that usually settles it. I’ve grown quite fond of my imaginary cat, who needs to think of a new ‘emergency’ fake phone call every year. \nI was currently getting into my car ready to make the trip having had procrastinated the whole morning. It was bitterly cold and I chose to lay wrapped up on the sofa watching trash tv until the very last second. I’d already had several phone calls, which I had ignored, as well as some sarcastic texts about when they could be expecting me. With any luck they’d start eating without me, as let’s be honest, I will be heading to the local pub when I arrive for a quick glass of wine. That way, I could at least plaster a fake smile on my face for the first 30 minutes before shit hits the fan. One year I got plastered at this pub and shit hit the fan a lot quicker, however, this year I was determined to be the bigger person and get through it without us being at each other’s throats by the end of the night. Then again, I have a short fuse and didn’t have much hope for this, but the plan is to keep a low profile, smile and nod while counting down the hours until I can leave.\nBefore I knew it, I was approaching the warm welcoming lights of the pub and hurried in out of the cold. I sat at my usual spot at the bar and was handed my glass of merlot before I had even taken my coat off.\n“That time again?” The bartender, whose name I always forgot, asked.\n“Yup, I’m gonna be on my best behaviour.” I said. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled before heading over to serve somebody else. \nI downed the first glass to ease the butterflies in my stomach before having another. I had turned my phone off at the third call and sat contemplating on getting drunk and holding up in a hotel for the night before heading home. But even though I don’t think I would be wrong in doing that, the guilt would be too much. I really didn’t like them very much, but I did love them and for the most part I had a good childhood. It just turned to crap when I got older and got a life of my own; albeit pathetic. I liked my job and it paid me well enough, I liked my small flat in London and the bustling city that I have spent many a night having fun and dancing with my girlfriends after a boozy brunch. \nI decided I couldn’t hold off any longer and made my way over to my parents, reminding myself that if anything I can control how I respond. Who knows, maybe this year will be different? I tapped on the door hesitantly and was greeted by my brother. He gave me a big hug, lifting me off my feet.\n“There she is!” \nHe actually seemed happy to see me which was nice, though to be fair, I was the fun one. I walked in and the smell of food was inviting. I hung my coat and made my way to the dining room, where everyone was already seated.\n“Ah she graces us with her presence. “ My sister muttered along with an eye roll. I smiled gingerly; “it’s great to see you too.” I said sarcastically. My two nieces ran over and gave me a big hug.\n“Aunty Abbey!”\n“Hey cuties, I have presents for you both, but you have to find them later.” I whispered, making a mental note to hide them.\n“Now now,” my mother said, “we’re going to have a nice dinner this year.” My dad grinned into his glass of rum and we all exchanged questioning looks. \n“Pass the wine.” I said to my brother, feeling too sober for this shit.\nAs usual things were a little awkward, no one ever really knew how to start a normal conversation and I was keeping a low profile, so was not going to be the one to speak first. We just sat for while picking at our food and gulping down booze in silence.\n“Mama, this is one of your best meals yet.” My sister beamed. Me and my brother looked at each other and held in snickers. She was always the beggy one, had to be the favourite. Such a kiss arse. Realistically the turkey was dry and almost everything else was overdone.\n“So Abbey, how’s things with you? You still working with..” My mother paused, forgetting the name of the company I had been working at for 8 years. \nI smiled, holding back the eye roll; “ yes, yes I am.” I replied. Thankfully, she dropped it but there it was, that taught grin and the ever growing disappointment in her eyes, followed by me feeling shitty about myself again. \n“Anna, how are the little ones getting on at the new school?” \nMy sister rambled for a good twenty minutes about how bright her kids were, while one of them picked her nose for the same amount of time. She then went on about her marriage and how great that is, yet here we are again and he’s nowhere to be seen. Starting to sound like my imaginary cat. My brother then butt in and went on about how much money he was making and my father excused himself to watch the sports channel. I could feel the outburst coming as my patience wore thin and chugged it down with some more wine.\n“Honey, you really should be trying to find someone or do something with your life.” My mum said to me. “Surely you can’t be happy? Alone on the holidays, with your cat. (I mentally chuckled as she used air quotations) I’m just concerned sweetheart.” I always loved how she would mask her hurtful words with things like honey and sweetheart. But I was on a roll, I said nothing and bit my tongue. My siblings changed the subject about themselves again and I watched the clock as another 40 minutes went by.\n“Hey sis, I know a few really great single guys that you would love.” My brother said. He continued speaking, but I drowned him out, feeling the heat in my face rise as the anger started to surface. My sister chimed in about how my life is in shambles and I’m not getting any younger and that was it for my peacekeeping.\n“Will you all piss off!” I shouted, standing in my chair. “Acting like your all so bloody perfect, you’re all delusional! And yes mother I am happy, thank you for asking, no need for your concern, and Joe I’m not interested in your cave man, walking STD friends, nor do I require your opinions about my life Anna! Dad has the right idea, I’m off to drink!.” With that, I walked out and headed over to the pub to drown my sorrows, deciding that this would be the last Christmas dinner I endure with my family." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Away Day\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2497\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who wakes up in space." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "This dream was strange, even for a dream it was strange. What was stranger was that Mo remembered the dream. Mo knew he dreamt, everyone did, but seldom did he have any recollection of where his mind wandered to at night. Of the dreams that did make themselves known to him, most were those that occurred between his alarm and the small window of snoozing. He didn’t trust those dreams as they were impossibly long for the seven minute window he had available in which to drift off. Maybe they were dreams of dreams. He hoped not, because there was a darkness therein that shamed him. A cruelty and a cynicism that made him wonder just what kind of person his subconscious thought he was.\nThis dream was as different as it got, and now as he lay there in a state between sleep and consciousness, he held onto it for a little while longer, turning it this way and that, so he could see what it was he’d caught in his net. \nHe shivered as he realised that it wasn’t even his dream. He’d plagiarised his nocturnal story and stolen the costume he wore as he met talking animals who were all on drugs as far as he could tell. Unless of course, it was him who was on drugs. That would make more sense. But he doubted drugs would make animals talk. And if they did talk, why in the hell would they speak the same language as Mo? He smiled to himself at that. He wasn’t as stupid as he acted. Not all of the time at least.\nThe costume he’d donned concerned him. Was there a message there? He wasn’t a fan of dressing up, but to be wearing a dress was a bridge too far. He was sure that he hadn’t needed to adhere to that detail for the dream to work, but there he was, in a dress and he was wearing it like he really meant it. He was looking good. The best he’d ever looked and that made him wonder who the hell he really was.\nHis dream was a dream of a story that was a dream in itself. The narrative was ladened with meaning. It was a kid’s story, but one that kids would never fully understand until they were well into adulthood and life had roughed them up plenty. There was something cruel about that. The story hung around and watched the pain train of life smash a person into something they no longer recognised, and then it stood there with a smarmy look on its face and said I told you so. It was all there in this story, if only a person took the time to think. But Mo knew that thinking was a rich man’s game. The poor and the listless were not meant to think. Not if they knew what was good for them.\nHe lingered some more in the state between sleep and awakening, he hung around there for longer than he had any right to, and as he came back into the world of the consciously living, he thought he knew why. And it wasn’t only because his head pulsed with the pain of an injury he could not remember being in receipt of.\nGroaning, he wanted to scrunch his eyes shut in an abortive attempt at banishing the pain, but his eyes were fixed on something that he now could not unsee. Before him floated water droplets and arrayed around those droplets were tiny bubbles. Something caught in his chest, or in his throat, he could not be sure, as in that moment he could not be sure of anything, even what he was anymore. A fish out of water was no longer a fish. Not as a fish knew it anyway. Once it had left the reality of its existence, it was transformed into something so very different from what had once been of use, and it was that uselessness that smothered and confused it so totally that it could not find a way to be anymore.\nWater, thought Mo, in a distracted, spiralling state of affairs that he wanted to exaggerate and perpetuate, but could not. In his peripheral vision he saw two anaemic eels swaying in invisible currents. It took him a while to understand that these where his arms. Or rather, they had been his arms in another life. He left them there and blinked two more droplets of liquid into existence. They floated upwards and stared back at him. Two disembodied, accusatory eyes. Their accusations were a shopping list of questions, all of them barbed and coated with the poison of his own shame.\nNot for the first time did Mo feel like he should not be here. He’d never managed to be comfortable in his own skin. There’d been a mix up when he was made and he’d been given the wrong skin. It just didn’t fit right and it made him stand out for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes he felt people looking at him and wondering why he was infecting their view, mostly he felt the absence of any gaze. That was people mostly did. They ignored the irrelevant whilst they sought anything of value to them. Mo’s destiny was to be overlooked. He doubted he’d make it beyond this current, tawdry existence. He was in a last chance saloon and there was no destination beyond this. No reincarnation. No further credit that would send him back to the first level of the game. Never had been, but definitely not now. Not here. He was beyond hope, and he was certainly beyond reckoning.\n“Merv…” he’d wanted to say more. He’d wanted to curse his so called friend, but the sound of his voice was all wrong. It was the same voice he’d heard a thousand times, only now he couldn’t miss the false quality of it. This was a voice that had become unaccustomed to speaking the truth. Returning to silence was a blessed relief from an army of lies intent on storming the world.\nOnly this wasn’t the world, not as Mo knew it anyway. This was instead exile. Exile in a permanent dream state. That thought made Mo shudder. There was no permanency here. Any tendency towards a perpetual state of affairs was reliant upon the weakest of links and that link was Mo himself. He knew he was out of his depth. He was out of place with no notion as to how he could swim to safer and more recognisable shores. \nThe fact of his incompetence and weakness was exemplified by his remaining in his seat. There was no movement barring the two lifeless fronds that extended out from each side of him. His arms swaying this way and that, not wanting to be a part of this endeavour, but anchored in it all the same.\nEventually, Mo brought himself to speech once again, “Merv, what did you do?” he asked the empty space before him, for there was no Merv here. Merv was a million miles from here. \nOf all the questions he could ask, this was the one that he knew the answer to. He repossessed his right arm and brought it slowly into his reality. Taking his time in case his wayward limb attempted to rebel, he touched the back of his head. Wincing, he confirmed that which he already knew. Bringing his hand around to his eyes, he saw a smear of his own blood. \nMerv had really gone and done it. Mo chuckled mirthlessly and the sound of it hurt his soul. It wasn’t like Merv hadn’t told him, but Mo had chosen not to heed the truth of Merv’s warnings, using an oft used shield of rationalisation; why would he do such a thing?\nMo shook his head despite the pain it caused him. Just because he himself wouldn’t do a thing. Just because he could find no reason to do that thing. That didn’t mean that it would not occur. Sometimes people did things just because they could. More often than not, they did things because they could. Mo knew that if you could freeze time and ask a person why they’d done something self-evidently stupid, ignorant or downright dangerous, they’d stare into the void that was the mirror of their own with the eyes of a brain damaged sheep and give the only answer possible; nothing. \nThere was nothing.\nAnd that was where Mo was now. He had nothing and he had plenty of time to contemplate the void that was at constant odds with meaning. The human race had been at war throughout its time in this reality. A conflict without end. They sought meaning, but the truth was that all they could really do was create meaning. But as fast as people built meaning, the void fed upon it, and the void was always hungry.\nAll the same, despite this philosophy of Mo’s, he reached back into his past and grasped at the offal of his time with Merv. Raising it aloft in his mind’s eye he could not help but see how diseased it had always been. The liver was shrivelled and hard. The guts pulsed with a grim, parasitic life. The cursed vision of his hindsight pained him further. Merv had not been joking around. Turned out that Merv had never been joking around. Merv was about as dangerous as it got and the punchline Mo was now living had about it a dark inevitability. \n“Ignorant is, as ignorant does,” Mo whispered the words and that whisper took him back to a time and a place he had not visited in a long while. The ghost that now haunted him chilled his bones. He saw his Aunt Maud’s cruel angular face in every detail. That woman was constructed from cold metal. There was not one thing that was soft about Aunt Maud, and as though to prove Mo’s point, here he was, reliving the final words she ever spoke to him. Leaning forward as though she were bestowing a kiss upon her little nephew, she’d slipped those words to Mo, before the big man from the orphanage had tugged him away from everything he knew. An impossibly large hand wrapping itself around his upper arm to exert a sudden force powerful enough to snap the umbilical cord to a life that had died when Mo’s mother had taken her own life.\nNow here he was. History had a bad habit of repeating itself. He’d yet again been torn away from the semblance of life he’d managed to achieve. The allotment of meaning he’d secretly tended to all on his own had been concreted over in the night and he was left with nothing. Worse than nothing, because all he had was himself and there was no currency there, only a debt that could never be repaid.\nWithout thinking about it, his hands did their work in freeing him from his seat. Mo barely marked this petty betrayal, his existence had been marred by a litany of betrayal until it had become a part of the air that he breathed. He took no morsel of joy in making his way to the window. He understood that happiness and joy were possibilities, but he’d been surrounded by such possibilities all his life and eventually he’d stopped daring to hope that he’d be gifted even one of them. Hope was not for the likes of Mo, let alone the pretty promises that it made.\nHaving reached the window, Mo stared out at the unreal sight of his new reality. He was oblivious to his making a little slice of history. A part of that history was that he was the first person to see Earth from space and not marvel at an overwhelming significance and meaning that could only be experienced in this moment. All Mo felt was loss, and even that loss had a hollow quality to it. Mo had lost to Merv, and Merv was just another in a long line of bullies and users queuing up to take a piece of Mo even when Mo doubted there was anything worth taking anymore.\nMo stared dispassionately out at the end of his life, and what he felt was the enormity of the void he now dwelt in. He felt the void’s inexorable and hypnotic pull and he knew in that moment that try as he might, he could not avoid gazing into it and allowing it to take what remained of him however worthless that may be.\nIn a stubborn act of defiance, he turned his back on the window and looked into the cramped space of his new home. He yelled with shock and surprise as a lifeless form lunged at him. Throwing his hands up instinctively to protect his face, scrunching his eyes up in a feeble act of cowardice that he’d never been able to prevent. Body language that marked him as a forever-victim deserving of each and every beating life had doled out. \nAs his heart rate dropped from the spike of his panic, he realised what it was that he’d been confronted by. Still he kept his eyes closed. Mo had been wrong far too many times to trust his own judgement. Gently he patted the air clumsily before him, catching something solid, he felt it float away. Now he could open his eyes. The mop hung in the air, moving across the cabin of the spaceship. \nInstinctively, Mo scanned around for the bucket that the mop belonged to. Of that, there was no sign. A mop with no bucket. He sighed a sigh that juddered through his body and threatened to break it apart. His head went down. Where it belonged. Always looking down to where he was headed. Staring into the void that would consume him come what may.\nThere, the floor was a story that mirrored his own. Half-arsed. A clean portion and a dusty and dirty portion. He glanced up at the mop, with a mind to address the question of a job half done, but then thought better of it. Why change the habit of a life time?\nLike the now pointless mop, Mo hung there, suspended in the nothingness of his own life. In that absurdly ridiculous state, he gave himself over to his emotions. Unclear as to whether he was laughing or crying. He abandoned himself to the act of giving up. His back to the world that had rejected him from such an early age. Rejecting the reality that he was now presented with.\nThen Mo was laughing as he understood the meaning of his banishment from a world he had failed to be a part of. Understood why it was that Merv had done what he had done. At last he accepted his own meaning; that he was a waste of space." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Nectar of the Gods\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2327\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about somebody trying to rationalize giving into temptation, even though they know they shouldn’t." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Gideon stood before the back door of the restored Victorian home, then entered the kitchen where steam rose from several pots on the stove, and a youthful stranger stirred the cranberries. He'd never been here before.\n\"Gideon,\" he said as he smiled for the introduction, extending his hand for the shake.\n\"Naomi,\" smiled the young woman, but she bypassed the hand and embraced him instead. \"Uncle Gideon, you mean. Don has told me all about you.\" She sounded tipsy. There was a little slur in her words. \"I think he said you drank mead.\"\n\"Well, truthfully, while I do love a glass of mead, I'm not supposed to have any. I'm surprised he didn't warn you.\"\n\"Must have slipped his mind,\" she giggled while reaching for a black bottle sporting a Viking Mead label and filling a glass to the top. \"Shsh!\" she said, touching her fingers to her lips. \"Our first secret.\"\n\"Uncle Gideon! Welcome!\" Gideon's nephew Don shouted on entering the room. He seemed tipsy as well. \"I see you've met Naomi, my bride.\" Here, the couple gave each other a passionate kiss. Tipsy newlyweds. \"Come on into the dining room. The others are already here.\"\nGideon sat down, greeting his brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews. Himself he never married, but he usually brought a date. Not today. Today, he came alone.\nThe relatives caught each other up with the latest details of their lives while women drifted in and out of the kitchen.\n\"Just waiting on the turkey,\" someone said.\nBursts of laughter and gleeful voices resonated about the busy household. No one looked twice at Gideon's glass, but he knew he shouldn't, and for a while, he didn't, but when his sister Hilda pulled into the drive, he was very tempted.\nOf all his family, she was the one who galled him. She was the one that made him feel the need to defend himself at every turn. She was the one who kept him up late into the night thinking up comebacks and things he should have said, and it turned out today would be no different. It began as soon as she stepped into the room.\n\"Where is your date, Gideon? Did she stand you up?\"\n\"No, of course not, she's on her way. We decided to meet here,\" Gideon lied. Why had he done that?\n\"Jasmine?\"\nShe said the name Jasmine with a sneer. What had she heard?\n\"No. Her name is Aurora!\" he snapped.\nHilda nodded with that look he'd like to slap off her face someday.\n\"I can't wait to meet her,\" she grinned before drifting into the kitchen.\n\"Still waiting on the turkey,\" someone iterated in passing.\nGideon scowled. Why had he lied? He didn't know anyone named Aurora and probably never would. Within thirty minutes, Hilda would ask where Aurora was and if he'd heard from her. Hilda was forcing his hand. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked at the glass of mead. He wasn't supposed to touch it.\n\nThere was something about mead that took him away from wherever he was and set him off on some glorious adventure. He didn't know why. The adventures usually took place at the Shire, but not always. Once, he'd whitewashed a fence for Tom Sawyer, and another time, he ended up as a scarecrow at a yellow-bricked crossroads under a blistering sun, waiting for someone to get him down.\nWherever he went, whatever adventure the mead took him on—he always woke up in the hospital afterward because friends and family would panic and call an ambulance. The doctor finally said, \"No more mead,\" but that was more to appease his worried family. There was nothing wrong with him.\nWhenever he arrived at the Shire, Bilbo, Frodo, and the others welcomed him as a cherished friend. They'd lay out a meal much like this one. Someone would tell a story. Then they'd bring out the musical instruments and clear the table for dancing. After that, they'd set off for an adventure. No one would ask about Jasmine and how she had broken his heart. It had been a while since he'd danced on tables with the Hobbits. He longed to be there.\nWhen Hilda approached with a question on her lips, Gideon came to a decision and raised his glass of mead.\n\"To the Shire!\" he said.\nOnce he'd swallowed the entire glass, the Nectar of the Gods channeled him into another world.\n\n~~\n\nThere were a few seconds of disorientation, but he quickly became aware he was standing on the deck of a ship.\nThe ship pitched and reeled in a boiling body of water, and Gideon fought to keep his balance. Was he in the Shire? He looked around, trying to see through a fog as thick as wool. A black flag marked with the standard skull and crossbones alluded to it being a pirate ship. He didn't think the Shire had pirates. No. He was on an adventure somewhere else, but where?\n\"Cap'n James? Wha shou' we do?\"\nCaptain James? The speaker had just stepped from the fog—a beastly, ferocious type.\n\"Who goes there?\" Gideon asked, not having any idea what to do.\n\"It's Smee!\"\nNeverland! Gideon looked down at his hands. He still had two. That meant this adventure happened before…\n\"Pe'er anda boys are gettin' away. Shou' we pursue? In nis storm?\"\nSeveral more feral types stepped out from the fog to await his answer. Their eyes were ready to fight, ready to annihilate anyone who got in their way.\n\"Are you scared?\" Gideon asked. His own voice sounded threatening. Yes, I am, he thought. I'm terrified. Oh, why did I drink the mead? I know better.\n\"A'course not. All 'ands on deck,\" Smee shouted, and everyone got busy.\nGideon held on to his pirate hat as the ship lurched ahead. He pulled the sword from his scabbard and took a few practice swings. Then, he went below deck in search of an alarm clock. When the time came, he'd need it.\nSmee found him later, still winding the clock. It took a lot of winding. He knew what would happen if the clock wound down too soon.\n\"They gah away,\" said Smee.\nGideon kept winding. \"Do we have any mead on board?\"\n\"Jus rum. Thas all, Cap'n.\"\n\"Bring the bottle.\"\nIt took nearly all night to finish winding the clock to his satisfaction.\nWhen the sun rose, so did the fog. The storm disappeared.\nThe Jolly Roger docked before Skull Rock, and everyone got out to stretch their legs.\nA rooster crowed. A rooster?\n\"That was him,\" Gideon stated. \"I'd recognize that crowing anywhere. C'mon. It's time for an adventure.\"\n\n~~\n\nThe ship named Jolly Roger stealthed along the black lagoon while the pirates searched the shores of Neverland with spyglasses for signs of the lost boys. When they found them playing games with the mermaids in the lagoon near Marooners' Rock, Gideon focused his telescope to bring them closer. One of the mermaids looked startlingly like what Jasmine must have looked like years earlier, long before she'd met Gideon. The real Jasmine was fifty and engaged to be married to someone she'd only dated for two months. To be fair, she had asked him first. They'd lived together these past ten years, and Gideon had never been happier. He didn't want to ruin it with the big fuss of weddings, schedules, and advice. He'd won the argument, and Jasmine, the loser of said argument, conceded by moving out and into the arms of some 'Leonardo,' whom Gideon hated on sight.\nInfuriatingly, Peter resembled a much younger Leonardo and had an arm draped around the youthful mermaid version of Jasmine. Gideon scowled. This was not the adventure he'd hoped for at all. He was meant for frothy glasses of ale and lively music with dancing on the tables in the Shire among his friends. A sigh escaped.\n\"Be ready,\" he said to his pirates.\nThey rowed the dinghy across the lagoon toward Peter. When they came close enough for the mermaid resembling Jasmine to take notice, Gideon smiled and honored her with an over-exaggerated wink. In retaliation, she flashed her tail, so a wave of water slapped his face. Peter chuckled. The lost boys chuckled, too. The mermaids giggled. \n\"Oh, Peter,\" Gideon called out. \"Let's you and I have an adventure.\"\nThe crew of pirates laughed. So did the lost boys. So did the mermaids. Peter glared the boys and mermaids into silence, though a few smirks remained. He didn't like being laughed at. Gideon knew all about Peter Pan's ways.\n\"What kind of adventure?\" Peter asked.\n\"I can out dance you on a table,\" Gideon answered, surprising himself at the ingenuity. Maybe this could be the adventure he wanted after all. \"I'm the best there's ever been,\" he boasted. \n\"Challenge accepted,\" Peter answered.\n\"Build me a table at once,\" Gideon ordered the pirates. Because they feared him so, no one asked how, and none complained. They dismantled the dinghy and built a platform using rocks and oars for tools. They used waist-high boulders for support and lifted the platform on top.\nMeanwhile, Peter and the lost boys built a make-believe table. It looked surprisingly sturdy. Peter stood on top and crowed.\nGideon stepped onto his platform and showed off sword skills he didn't know he had. First, he twirled it like a baton and tossed it into the air, spinning like a wheel, then caught it with his bare hands. He pulled the alarm clock from a pocket and juggled his hat, the clock, and sword faster and faster, glancing only once at the mermaid Jasmine, who was examining her long fingernails. An auburn-haired mermaid smiled, however. She had a gold tooth that caught a ray of sun.\n\"I'm bored,\" Peter shouted. \"Let's get on with it then.\"\n\"Let there be music!\" Gideon commanded. \"I'll set the clock for five minutes. The crowd will vote for their favorite afterward with a show of hands.\"\nThe mermaids began to hum while the boys and pirates clapped out a rhythm.\n\nGideon began with some fancy steps that got faster and faster. Then he twirled and leaped from side to side. The pirates started to sing.\n\nYo ho, yo hong, the Neversong\nA-pirating, we will go\nPan can't dance, won't have a chance\nAll of Neverland will know!\n\nPeter didn't really dance. He hopped like a frog and walked on his hands in time to the music. He did a few handsprings. Still, the boys and mermaids appeared delighted, and the lost boys also began to sing.\n\nFiddle dee dune the Nevertune\nAdventuring we will be\nJames won't win, he'll lose again\nAll of Neverland will see!\n\n\"Ales for everyone!\" shouted Gideon.\nThe pirates looked confused, as did the lost boys, but Peter laughed. Suddenly, an ale appeared in Gideon's hand. In fact, a glass of ale appeared in everyone's hand. Even the mermaids raised glasses. Gideon took a long drink. This was what he'd wanted. It tasted like nothing. Peter laughed at the expression on his face, and the clock's alarm went off.\n\"Now we vote with a show of hands. Hands for Peter,\" shouted Gideon. There were eight pirates, eight lost boys, and an even number of mermaids. Half the mermaids voted for Peter and half for Captain James. A tie. The gold-toothed mermaid smiled at Gideon.\n\"We go until there's a winner,\" said Peter.\n\nIt was the tenth tied vote, and everyone was disgusted and sick of it all. Peter pulled out his sword.\n\"A fight to the finish,\" he cried.\nWithout warning, he leaped to Captain James's dance platform and sliced through Gideon's wrist just as he picked up the clock. Peter then snatched the severed hand with the sword point.\n\"Bad form!\" shouted Gideon, shocked at the pain and the blood. \"You cheated!\" he screamed.\nPeter smiled and held out the sword to something in the shadows. Perhaps only he had noticed the crocodile sneaking up on the ruckus as the sun set over Neverland. Peter fed the hand still holding the clock to the crocodile as Gideon faded from consciousness.\nWhen he woke, he was back on the Jolly Roger surrounded by his pirates, who pointed fingers at each other and talked at the same time.\nFirst, they'd used the tabletop as a raft to get him back to the ship. Next, the pirate, Starkey, pulled a heavy hook from the ship and stuck it through Gideon's arm bone, so he now had a hook where his hand should be. They sterilized the wound with rum and wrapped it with bandages they kept in great supply below deck.\n\"Are you a'right Cap'n James?\"\n\"I’m Captain Hook!\" Gideon growled and faded again.\n\n~*~\n\nThe next time he woke up, he was in the hospital. Relatives filled the tiny space in the emergency room.\n\"He's coming around.\"\n\"Oh, thank goodness.\"\n\"I'm so sorry, Uncle Gideon. I didn't know,\" cried Naomi. \nEveryone talked at once.\nOnce the doctor reviewed his history with drinking mead, he released him.\n\nGideon was alone for the moment, buttoning his shirt. Don and Naomi were bringing the car around. \nThe nurse came in with a pill for a headache and a release form. She had a auburn hair and a gentle touch about her as she helped him take the pill. A gold tooth flashed in her smile. She was just past her prime, close to his age, and wore no ring. Her name tag said Aurora. \n\"Thank you for taking such good care of me,\" Gideon told her.\n\"It was no trouble at all,\" she smiled with her gold tooth. \"I feel like I know you from somewhere.\"\n\"Perhaps,\" he answered.\n \"Do you like to dance?\" she asked.\n\"I love to dance,\" he told her.\nPerhaps this would turn into a new adventure. But no more mead, he thought to himself. Never again." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Potatoes Are for Peasants\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2243\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cashmere is a sign of success. Or so I tell myself as I stand at my aunt’s door, a potato casserole gripped in my hands.\n“Knock ‘em dead,” my roommate jokingly told me as I’d exited our apartment. I suddenly wish I’d brought her for moral support instead of the spuds.\nI press the doorbell again.\nAugustus, my cousin, opens the door and glares down at me. “Are you coming in?” he says it like he’s been holding the door open for an ungodly amount of time.\n“Hello to you too,” I say and enter the marble foyer. I thrust the casserole into his hands and unwind my scarf, shrug out of my retro coat, smooth the minuscule wrinkles out of my cashmere sweater dress, and fluff up my curls. A servant takes my things.\n“Need a mirror?” Augustus’s tailored suit, crisp tie, patent leather shoes, slick hair and expensive cologne are signs of his ongoing war with modesty.\n“How’s the modeling going?” I ask and tuck my hands innocently behind my back. I can’t believe I forgot to visit the manicurist.\nAugustus snorts softly. “I thought you said you’re taking it easy this year, cuz.”\n“Oh, I am,” I say and reclaim my casserole. “In there I will be a saint,” I jerk my head at the dining room full of people.\n“Always a pleasure, Julie,” he waves me into the dining room.\n“That’s Saint Julie to you,” I say and whisk by him. I’m so glad I left the heels at home; boots are a safer choice on the dangerously plush carpet.\nThe dining table stretches the entire length of the room and is about the right size for one Yaxley family member’s ego. But being a diabolical general, my aunt has surrounded the mahogany giant with sixteen chairs, each one with a place card that must not, under any circumstance, be swapped. What happens if you move it? The dark wood paneling still bears scars from The Fondue Affair.\nMy Aunt Jezebel—no really, her name is Jezebel—protects the kitchen and is encircled by her coven of daughters, each one more chic and artificial than the last.\nI stand at the kitchen’s entrance and wait for Jezebel to allow me entry to her inner sanctum. The granite countertops on either side of me hold the food, most of it vegan and gluten-free concoctions. The cauliflower covered in ground almonds must be someone’s cruel idea of chicken nuggets.\n“Ah,” Jezebel spreads her arms and her daughters Juno, Ceres, Minerva, and Cupid (don’t ask) fan out around their mother like a Venus fly trap.\n“I come bearing gifts,” I raise my sacrificial casserole and slowly approach my aunt.\nWhen I reach her she lifts the tin foil and her nose twitches. “Potatoes. How…quaint.” My humble food is unceremoniously cast into the oven. “Is no one else with you?” she makes a show of looking over my shoulder.\n“No. It’s just me,” I plaster on a smile. Peace. Inner peace.\n“How lovely.”\nI nod and exit the kitchen without a backward glance, though I swear I can feel my cousins’ scathing disapproval, as if they say, “Cashmere and black nails? How can we be related to that philistine?”\nReturning to the dining room isn’t an escape. There’s no safe haven in this dungeon and instead I catalog the reptiles on display.\nUncle Rudolph is stationed, as usual, at the head of the table. He’s spent the whole year giving astronomy lectures in Switzerland and has no intention of letting anyone forget it.\nAugustus Caesar—they reversed his name when he turned out to be a cute baby—is by his father’s side and the two are chatting with Delilah Goggins, the “Roman Cohort’s” godmother, and her beau. I do a double-take on the beau because it’s Bob, the guy who witnessed last year’s Wine Incident. He must be serious and possibly insane to return for a second year.\nMy parents will miss this event because they both had a skiing accident last week. I haven’t visited them yet, so the odds of them staging a hospital room for the camera are pretty high. Luckily for them they live just far enough away that driving to confirm their condition is too much of a hassle.\nAt the other end of the table stands Alexander Nero, the adopted child who still managed to become as egotistical and destructive as his namesakes and family, despite not being related to either. As far as I know, that is. Last I heard he’s retired from his software company to cruise the ocean on his yacht and acquire a woman and reputation in every port. He never met a three-piece suit he didn’t like and Casual Friday means silk and brandy snifters. As a kid he mistook me for the cleaning lady’s assistant.\nAnd the remaining five of our Yaxley clan are Uncle Leopold, Aunt Maeve and their children, Apollo, Persephone and—I mentally roll my eyes—Hephaestus.\nThe outside world might think I’m the odd one out, but no. I’m as vain and greedy as the others; I just have to work a bit harder because I thought leaving my family’s domain to pursue my dream would be exciting. It’s not what I envisioned, but I will not slink back to my dad to collect the trust fund.\nSo for tonight I embrace pax because my roommate bet me six months’ rent that I can’t go to the gathering and return unscathed and relaxed. I love a challenge, but staring at all these sharp-cheeked millionaires is making me rethink things. Six months’ rent versus vindicating my choices. Which would Cicero defend?\nJezebel claps to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome, welcome.” She enters my peripheral vision and I see her arms rise in false benediction. “It’s so wonderful to have you all here. And what a collection of bright, shining faces. Let us eat.”\nAnd now starts the battle of wills to see who dares enter the kitchen first. I had a great brunch and can outlast all these stick bugs.\nA full minute ticks by on the foyer’s grandfather clock, like it’s 1918 and we’re all waiting for the armistice to begin. It isn’t, and it won’t, but even predators can pretend.\nNero, that paragon of virtue, swipes his plate off the table and marches to the kitchen. He deigns to notice me as he passes and says, “Embracing the lower class, I see.”\nI grit my teeth and curl my lips in a rough approximation of a smile. I found this dress during a summer weekend at the beach and although it cost me a pittance (thank you, thrift stores) it’s still an expensive item. Of course he probably uses cashmere toilet paper, so anyone looking at goat hair like it’s a status symbol is a complete nonentity to him. But it DOES NOT MATTER; I know I look great in it.\n“It fits you so well.” Ceres’ Botox isn’t doing her any favors, but if her looks could talk, they’d be saying I look fat. I can let that comment go; she’s still jealous of my normal name.\nNow that the metaphorical ribbon has been cut, everyone grabs their plate—I’m bookended by Uncle Leopold and Persephone—and tours the kitchen like it’s a botanical garden: look, but touch only if you dare.\nEver since The Catering Ordeal, Aunt Maeve suggested we “do pot luck.” Her tone implied it was exotic and daring, and…well…it’s something. As I take a closer look at the things on display, I recognize three different caterer’s diet-friendly dishes, corn chips, and what appears to be a poor attempt at disguising Farm Food’s Signature Veggie Jamboree. The crystal bowl holding plain quinoa is a mystery, but I concentrate on the stovetop which holds my trusty potatoes and (yes!), brisket. Augustus isn’t good for much, but his brisket saves lives. I fill my plate with potatoes and brisket, and dot the surface with a few baby carrots in case I need to insert crunching into the conversation.\nI take my seat and immediately begin eating. Augustus sits across from me (and behind him stands the life-size statue of Napoleon) and I smirk at his nearly identical plate, the broccoli florets the only difference. \nMy eating slows when I remember I have to stay for dessert. After The Hapsburg Happenstance, we all tacitly agreed that cream pies are off limits, and though The Trombone occurred when I was a small child, cookies are still strictly forbidden. What has Jezebel chosen for this year?\n“I saw Uranus while in Switzerland,” Uncle Rudolph says to Aunt Maeve, a statement worthy of great awe, if his bowed head is any indication.\n“What fun!” Maeve’s squeaky voice covers any reaction Augustus and I might have let out. “And was it quite marvelous?”\n“Oh, truly, truly. A most magnificent sight. I’ve written a twenty-page essay, if you’d like to read it,” he holds his fork midway to his mouth while Maeve struggles for an answer. The food on the fork falls back to the plate but Rudolph brings it to his mouth anyway.\n“The crossing proved rougher this year,” Nero says. He sits in the place of honor at Jezebel’s right hand. “My captain urged me to head south, but I told him, I said, ‘Press on, man! Press on!’ and we made Lisbon in good time. I really think you ought to spend the winter there with me, dear mother.”\nI bite a carrot and chew it into oblivion in hopes of drowning out Nero’s nasally voice. No one should have to hear him talk and if he didn’t literally own a gold mine, I don’t think anyone would.\n“The best way to travel is by private jet,” Leopold’s bass voice rumbles to life. “You can’t appreciate clear skies unless you’re slicing through them at max speed. Right, Jules?” his conspiratorial nudge sends my poised, snub-nosed steak knife (The Italian Date was an intense dinner) across my knuckles. I wince, but no blood appears and Leopold doesn’t miss a beat. “But the chairs are an embarrassment to sensible tastes. We must get some Moroccan…”\n“I think Minerva’s pregnant,” Persephone hisses in my ear. “Her cheeks are rosy.” We both look at the woman sitting across and to our right. Indeed, Minerva doesn’t have her normal sallow cheeks and, heaven forbid, has put butter on her quinoa. She’ll disappear if she turns sideways, but I nod in support of Persephone’s theory.\n“Stop it!” Cupid whines, yanking her hair free of Hephaestus’s grip. They’re the youngest, not yet out of college, and always sit by Jezebel so she can keep them in line.\n“Put your hair up,” Hephaestus pushes his round glasses up his nose. “You look like a ho.”\n“Mother! He said a bad word!” Cupid’s fake tears are legendary; I think she has an on/off switch.\n“Hephaestus. Leave your cousin alone or you will get no dessert.” (Ah-ha! Dessert is happening, unlike The Cocoa Chaos.) Jezebel doesn’t put her usual conviction behind the threat as she’s still listening to Nero’s recounting of a totally legitimate pirate attack.\n“I lashed the brigand to his helm and watched as the ship burned,” Nero sounds a little too gleeful. Maybe he is related to the emperor after all.\n“How is the job?” Delilah skewers me with a glance and I note that Augustus stiffens beside her. Delilah’s tricky to gauge. One moment she’s laughing at a joke, the next she’s coming at you with an ice pick.\n“It’s going well. I’m enjoying it,” I allow myself a small smile.\n“No one wants to hear about Uranus again, Father,” Juno’s voice drifts over to me.\n“You’re in publishing, aren’t you?” Bob the Beau’s head appears around Persephone and I give him my best stony glare. He pops back out of view.\n“Some sort of fiction writer, correct?” Ice Pick Delilah it is.\n“Yeah. Aren’t you writing, like, romance novels?” Apollo lets out a guffaw and chugs some wine.\nI want to kick Apollo but with my short legs I’d probably hit Augustus, my only semi-ally. I open my mouth to give a level response but realize the table has fallen silent. Great.\n“Yes, Julie, tell us about your writing,” Jezebel laces her fingers and diamond rings wink at me.\n“I am a writer,” I say carefully, twisting the napkin in my lap. “I write paranormal romances and I’ve had three books published.” This must be what AA meetings are like. Everyone stares at you with fake compassion even though their lives are also in shambles.\n“Does it pay well?” Minerva says, her rosy cheeks even more noticeable against her pale skin and black hair.\n“It must, if she can afford potatoes!” Persephone laughs shrilly and stabs at her nutty cauliflower.\nSix months’ rent. Six months’ rent. I inhale slowly and deeply.\n“She always did associate better with the rabble,” Nero drawls.\nSix.\n“I knew a writer once. She had good hips,” Leopold strokes his chin.\nMonths’.\n“Of course it doesn’t pay well, Min,” Ceres condescends to join the fray. “She has to have a roommate.”\nNope. Can’t do it.\nAugustus shakes his head and grins. He knows what’s about to happen.\n“So, Minerva,” I chomp into a carrot. “Who’s the daddy?”\nMinerva’s eyes bulge.\nJezebel gasps.\nSomeone’s phone chimes.\nThe butler appears behind the hostess. “The crème brûlées are ready, ma’am.”\nHmm. Brûlée Bonfire has a nice ring to it." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Forthright Thursday\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2512\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "8:45PM Thanksgiving Day – GLOVES OFF:\nMy mother, Mary, and her sister Alice were engaged in a wrestling match on the dining room table. Aloysius – my father - and Alice’s plus one; Jack, attempted to pry them apart, but both women had locked themselves into each other’s hair with vice-like grips, despite both their hands being splattered with custard trifle remnants. All I could do as an observing teenager was sit with mouth agape while holding my new Super 8mm silent movie camera, recording the whole scene. It was typical behaviour at family get-togethers of old, but this year, this Thanksgiving, was meant to be celebrated as a reunion several years and many miles since the previous family sit-down dinner.\nMy plan was to document the long-awaited family reunion – five years after we emigrated to Boston; however, I quickly found myself being caught between being a neutral documentarian and unwavering loyalty to my mother.\n“Will the two of yous, please stop!” I yelled to deaf ears. “This is my favourite part of the year and you’re ruining it! I hate family reunions! They always end up the same way!”\nThe hypocrisy acted out by the two sisters - writhing around atop a table full of food, initiated a memory flash of the day we left Ireland. The tears of Aunt Alice and my grandmother waving goodbye alongside other heartbroken dockside relatives of migrating family members, touched my young emotional wellbeing. At the time, I imagined those left behind in the Emrald Isle, were desolately pondering if they would ever hear from or see their loved ones again. To those onboard, a ship sailing into the sunset is the beginning of an adventure, the onset of a journey. But to some of those left to grieve the departing, it can feel like the end of their own journey, leaving them to pick up the remaining pieces of a fractured family.\nThat’s why I chose to get this day on film, because it would be saved for posterity-sake to be sentimentally viewed time again in the future with fond recollection of days gone by.\nThe Sixties was a time of expensive long-distance phone calls where you competed with the crackling static on the line trying to have a conversation, so the choicest form of communication was the cheaper method using the written word and a postage stamp. It wasn’t instant news or timely updates, but it was something tangible that could be saved and re-visited at a future time. However, with the passage of time, weekly letters can easily fade into monthly correspondence, then drift towards a lazy twice per year, finally receding like distant memories into forlorn remembrances spoken around an open fireplace and a warm glass of stout.\n“Did you hear from that one?” Would be a commonly asked question. “I must write to them, soon.”\nLaziness turned to habit, and that letter never got written. Then, as if by magic, all past disagreements were forgotten, like time and distance had cured all the ill feelings and jealousies, wiping the slate clean.\n“If only me sister were here,” my mother would lament. “Why did we ever leave Ireland?”\n“Remember, Mare,” my father would say. “We came for a better life.”\n“Sure, tis better to be amongst family poor than lonely and rich,” she would argue.\n“Aye, my love,” my father would empathise. “But are we not better off, now? Sure, don’t we have each other?”\n“Can’t even get a daycent cup of tea in a city famous for its tea party.”\nMy father would laugh at the innocent quips my mother often entertained him with. Being born into abject poverty in a damp, wet land with little job prospects; schooling – although a necessity – was not always convenient for families that needed wage earners to heat the home, put food on the table, and pay the inflated rents of slumlords. So, like many others of her time, my mother had to find early work in button factories and other menial and repetitive jobs, where unsolicited education accompanied canteen breaks relayed from the tip of every Irish Biddy’s tongue eager to stretch truth beyond recognition.\n“My Seamus saw it with his own eyes and told it to me as I tell it to you, now,” would justify a story’s authenticity.\n“Daft as a donkey’s arse that one is. Sure everyone knows the man upstairs was Jesus’s real father.”\nIn a Catholic country, to question authenticity, is to spit on the word of God.\n“The priests have the knowledge you seek. Sure, why do you need to listen to all that rubbish on the radio? Nothing but filthy lies told by dirty heathens!”\nGaining the trust of the Irish has always been a difficult proposition. Suspicion and a lack of acceptance of outsiders is engrained into the indoctrinated embodiment of every child of Irish soil.\n“Tis the God’s honest truth!” The liars would always finish with.\nCatholic hypocrisy knows no bounds. Random expressions of gossip fuels an ignorance that turns folklore into fact, and fact into suspicion, distrust, then finally, ostracization. It was the latter that forced the decision to rip us from the familiarity of immediate family and sail across the Atlantic to a foreign land with foreign ideas and foreign food.\nBut time seemingly forgot the ignorance of the devout, so we found ourselves reluctantly assimilating into what we deemed American culture – and the uniquely American Thanksgiving was one of the holiday traditions that converted this young filmmaker into a free young man.\n 8:42PM – PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE:\n“Mam’s death is on your shoulders,” Alice coldly stated, as she took her seat at the table. “She was never the same after ye’s left.”\nAunt Alice had just downed another glass of false courage, before raising her voice to my mother.\n“I was never her favourite,” my mother replied. “You made sure of that.”\n“Now, Mare,” my father tried to intervene, when hearing raised voices. “Tis not the way to welcome family. Sure, they’ve only just arrived in America.”\n“Yes, fresh arrival, but with stale memories of spite,” my mother pointed out.\nMy father had been in the middle of enough encounters of similar ilk between the two sisters back in Ireland, to know when hostilities were about to kick off.\n“She can feck off back home for all I care,” was Mary’s conclusion.\nNo sooner had the words trailed from my mother’s mouth, a lump of custard flew across the dining table and filled the void her words had just vacated.\n 8:40PM – CALM BEFORE THE STORM:\nI was panning the dining room with my movie camera, documenting the pre-dinner chit-chat, while in the adjoining living room, the coal fireplace glowed, spreading much needed warmth on a cool evening. My father and Jack clowned for the camera, pretending to be old Irish women by draping table napkins over their heads, while singing Irish songs of hope, rebellion, and the forty shades of green pastures they once roamed. The silent camera captured the tomfoolery but missed a roaring chorus of Mother Macrae. However, the camera didn’t fail to capture two pairs of male eyes tearing up from the words of the emotive song. Jack – another displaced Paddy had met my Aunt Alice on the ship coming over, and an immediate attraction blossomed, causing wedding bells to ring loudly in an expectant air of matrimonial coupling.\nLike many Irish immigrants to the USA, Jack also left a grieving mother behind, so any songs about Irish mothers solicited the same response in distant sons. Melancholy to the point of tears.\nThe strongest emotion displayed in that touching moment was from my father. My grandmother on his side had passed away during our voyage to the new world. Some said it was her time, but other bitter gossipers said she died heartbroken after her son uncaringly sailed away. Having neither the funds nor the time to get back for her funeral, my father went on a drunken three-day wake through the Irish pubs that Boston provided a taste of home to those mourning souls pining for the Auld Sod they left behind in search of a better life. His pub crawl of self-pity ended when my mother tracked him down and ordered him out of the pub, then marched him home by his ear – much to the amusement of his fellow drinkers.\nSince that day, my father has mellowed in his emotional reactions, and found a respectable job in a post office sorting facility, where he enjoys a camaraderie of fellowship with similar tales of Irish woe to share in a pseudo psychotherapeutic counselling environment. Well, that’s what he calls the after-work drinks at the pub. My mother calls it the pub of woes.\n 8:35PM – STAND WELL BACK:\n“Will ye put down that thing and come sit, please, Sully,” my mother addressed me using my nickname. I was a serious child of Eireann for my young years. The constant bickering and in-fighting of the family of my childhood, had left little room for frivolous youthful normality. Instead, it created an introspective sullen personality, where I used art as an escape, and filmmaking as an expression of my true opinions.\n“Ye are so sullen,” she would say. “That, I’ll call ye Sully.”\nIt stuck and most of the family would address me by my nickname. I didn’t mind. Having a nickname was a sign of respect and admiration, so I gladly accepted it.\n“I’m capturing the moment, Mam” I replied. “It’s going into my documentary.”\n“Make sure you get my good side,” Aunt Alice mentioned.\n“That’ll be the back of yer head, then,” my mother quippingly followed, causing my father to halt his conversation with Jack and throw a disapproving glance toward my mother.\nIn one innocuous moment of flippancy, my mother had unintentionally lit the touch paper to the subsequent eventful evening.\n 8:15PM – A CAREFUL REMINDER:\n“Yous should have been there,” my Aunt Alice said to my mother. “Family from all corners of the globe attended.”\n“Families with money,” my mother tried to justify her absence from her own mother’s funeral. “We were barely scraping by. I couldn’t leave my job. Not so soon after starting. I would have surely lost it to someone else.”\n“We just thought that you and Aloysius had started your own trend of missing funerals. Too busy to remember your own - back home.”\n“Mare?” My father attempted a distraction. “Have a sip of the black stuff and let’s get everything on the table. I’m sure we’re all hungry to sample your fine cooking.”\nThe condescending smile from Alice’s lips suggested the topic was not closed. Not by a longshot.\n 7:45PM - REUNIFICATION:\nMy mother and Aunt Alice sat on the living room sofa sifting through the photo album Alice had brought with her across the sea. They giggled at photos of them together holidaying in Ballybunion, gasped at the photos showing the hand-me-down St. Vincent De Paul’s charity clothes their mother used to dress them in, and silently blessed themselves whenever they came across a photo of their late parents.\nThe initial news of her sister’s emigration had excited my mother. At last, she had her sister close-by to confide in. Momentarily forgotten, were the sibling disagreements, the vociferous arguments between family members of the generation that preceded them, and the hardships they had endured living under the roof of parents who were always late to rise, late to work, late to build any self-esteem in their two daughters, but always early at pub opening times – then, late home after closing.\nFor the first time in a long while, I glimpsed a moment of happiness creep across my mother’s face, and I was so ecstatic to capture that moment on film.\n 7:30PM - ARRIVAL:\nMy Aunt Alice ruffled my hair as I greeted her at the front door.\n“Don’t look at the camera, Auntie Alice,” I directed. “I’m making a documentary. Just act natural.”\nMy directing debut lacked the commitment to control. This was demonstrated by Aunt Alice curtsying while raising her skirt above her knees.\n“Ye shameless harlot,” my mother said in passing.\n“I hear short skirts are all the rage these days,” Alice pointed out. “Lucky I can sew. I’ll have new hems in no time.”\nThe disagreement in opinions didn’t prevent the two reunited sisters from hugging each other warmly. For my mother, this was indeed a day for thanksgiving.\n“This is all so new to me, Mary,” Alice confessed. “I feel like I went to sleep in Ireland and woke up in heaven. Such opulence, wealth, and friendliness. We stopped to ask directions to your house, and the policeman went out of his way to accompany us to the corner. Ask directions in Ireland and you’ll get the reply, Who’s askin?”\n“Well, you’re here, now,” my mother reassured her. “At long last. Tis the fourth Thursday in November and the first day in your new life. That’s a lot to be thankful for.”\n 7:25PM – LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION:\n“I hope there’s film in that thing, son,” my father asked. “Your mother has prayed for this moment for so long. Having her sister living near us, will be a godsend. No more pining for home when everyone’s in the same spot, hey? Would ye like a song to start things off?”\n“Sure, Dad.”\nI hadn’t the heart to tell him there was no sound recording in the cine camera, but his antics at the piano made up for that - as he played and sang a version of Molly Malone at the top of his voice. With every high note in the chorus section, he comically raised his seated posture, then dramatically flopped back down on the piano stool to begin a new verse. The festive air of the Thanksgiving holiday had been set. Music, a warm fireplace, and the smell of my mother’s cooking pre-empted the arrival of real family to our humble Boston dwelling. It was an opportunity for me to use my birthday present to document the beginning of a new chapter and the anticipated emotional reunion between estranged Irish sisters in their new land of opportunity.\nMy mind drifted to imagine that across the country, families and friends alike were giving thanks to a time in the past when the pilgrims shared their harvest with the natives of a land they would soon displace, but I was too young to recognise the irony. However, across the centuries, Thanksgiving has evolved into a time for families and friends to share stories, food, and drink in a welcoming and friendly atmosphere, so I had high hopes for the success of the rest of the evening.\n 7:24PM – ANTICIPATION\nIt’s the fourth Thursday of November. The table is almost set, there’s a sparkle in my mother’s eye that hasn’t been there in a long while, and I’m excited to get this all on film. When Aunt Alice arrives, it’s going to be great seeing family back together again…" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Eschatology Exhibition\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2884\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "[tw gore, insane ravings, eldritch corruption]\nSarah's palms left moist patches on the worn desk as she cursed the volunteer manager for leaving her to conduct the \"Relics of the Occult\" tour alone. Her notecards were smeared with sweat stains. She was not ready, but she had run out of time.\nShe slid past the massive alcohol filled container of an immature leviathan and shelves full of specimen vats. Their unblinking eyes upturned in perverse supplication.\nShe let herself through the armored door, piercing the insulated, fireproof glass wall, breathing deep, pushing her anxiety back, regretting not using the toilet on her way out.\nAs the handful of patrons trickled to the dimly lit entrance to the spirit collection, Sarah wafted around her notecards and straightened her back. It's just a tour, thirty minutes, then I never have to think of this again.\nSarah began the tour with an overenthusiastic theatricality, desperate to capture the attention of a child in a witch costume. \"Welcome, evening exhibitionists! Who's ready to go tomb-raiding through the museum's musty collection of the esoteric and obscure?”\nAfter a few nods, she led the group to the spirit collection. The guests chuckled indulgently as Sarah launched into her preamble, covering the ancient fascination with unknown beasts of foreign lands. Surrounded by motion controlled decorations was the centerpiece diorama—a jarred amphibious creature labeled \"Probable Idol Offering to The Pheloid Order.\" The monstrosity certainly 'looked the part’.\n\"Though not confirmed, this is likely a swollen blob-fish head with the shoulders of a monkey sewn on. Technically, creatures fabricated like this are classified as—she made air quotes—Mer-made.\" When no one responded to the joke, she said, \"That's m-a-d-e, not m-a-i-d. This example was collected in World War Two after an air raid on the Jurassic coast.\" Some of the patrons nodded thoughtfully.\n\"Water cults exist all over the world. You can see evidence of them from flood myths in religions that predate the chronicles of Hestia.\"\nThe blob-fish rattled in its jar. The group gasped as one.\nSarah cracked a smile. The Special Effects Department really outdid themselves for this event.\nIn that very moment, a hair-breadth feat of prescience caused the preserved priest's withered consciousness to stir.\n[My resemblance to your feeble sea-denizens is irksome, but no matter - for the accursed acolytes of that age were nearing spiritual apogee.]\n\"Now, as I was saying about primordial water-cults, not long ago we hosted several relics and early imagery…\" Sarah faltered, narrowing her eyes at a bespectacled man who had broken away from the group. He stood uncomfortably close to the jarred specimen, hands splayed on the glass wall.\nThe stranger suddenly whipped around, wild-eyed, and rasped with uncanny authority: \"That bauble is the shriveled remnant of K'tha'Arnen - Chief Augur to the Undying OxyPhyle who once drank deep from the Light Between Worlds!\"\nA bead of sweat formed on Sarah's brow as the bespectacled man's unnatural stare bored into her.\nWas this part of the volunteer's performance? She thought. Finally, some good luck.\nForcing an awkward laugh, she gestured toward the stranger. \"You must be our storyteller. Thank goodness you made it after all! I can hand over the tour script if you'd like to, uh, take it from here?\" She waved the stack of meticulous research in his direction with a hesitant smile.\nThe stranger's deranged expression contorted further as he unleashed a contemptuous snort. With surprising vehemence, he swatted Sarah's notes from her grasp, sending them scattering across the gallery floor.\n\"Bah! I require no scribbles to recount the True Rite's deliverance!\" He spun with a flourish of his tattered coat toward the remaining guests. His voice adopted a grim, portentous timbre that seemed to siphon all breathable air from the chamber.\nHe certainly was committed to the part, Sarah thought.\n\"You pitiable dabblers thirst for a tale of untellable cosmic fright, yes? You wish to be indoctrinated into the wisdom held within yon desiccated husk?\" He scratched at his woolen hat.\nOoh, he's good. Sarah stepped aside and swept her arm theatrically to let him take over.\n[Oho, now we are seen! Let the insipid ignorant flail—for this one grasped mysteries long born from these mawkish exhibits…We know this fool.]\nA few guests shifted uncomfortably, shooting Sarah a panicked look. But some perverse, masochistic fascination kept them all anchored in rapturous silence, awaiting the lunatic's next macabre utterance.\nWith a sharp intake of breath, he began in earnest, \"Then gird your feeble neurological nodes, for I shall umbrate your pathetic existences with Revelations to shatter even steel-forged sanities into skittering shards!\"\nSarah's mouth hung agape. Just what alternate reality had this \"volunteer\" unzipped himself from? Actors of this caliber were beyond the normal budget of these dumb museum lock-ins.\nUnbidden, her gaze slipped back toward the jarred remnants of the so-called K'tha'Arnen - which, she could have sworn, had rotated imperceptibly in its glass prison to meet her stare with pinprick eyes—seemingly alive in wicked bemusement.\nThe storyteller's wild gesticulations caused the entire gallery to ripple and distort in the corners of Sarah's vision. Her gaze drifted over the looming glass wall separating them from the museum's labyrinthine maze of preservation jars.\nSquaring her shoulders, Sarah cut across the madman's loquacious ranting with a forceful academic tone. \"If I may interject with a succinct précis on the unparalleled phylogenetic scope represented in our museum's spirit collection.\"\nThe vagabond wheeled toward her with an unsettling mix of bemused condescension and simmering ire. \"Ah yes, pray regale us with your dollops of reductive categorization! Soothe our mortal skepticisms with sterile placations, while the true cosmic heritage encoded in every stale jar is rendered excruciatingly whole once more!\"\n[Finally, an avatar to articulate Truth's dark genesis! Now all lay rapt witness as the paltry baubles of this suppurating tomb acquire animate sentience.]\nThe guests appeared utterly enthralled, their self-conscious tittering from earlier fully sublimated into rapturous horror. Sarah felt the fragile skein of rational perception fray around her as the delirious rambling coalesced into an ineluctable gravitational singularity.\nWith creeping dread, she realized her throat had gone sawdust dry, her former conversance with the museum's catalogs abandoning her. For a woman of words, she could no longer find one.\nThe vagabond's wild gestures and fevered intonations hit a momentary lull, causing his spell to flicker. He blinked. A fleeting lucidity returned as his gaze fell upon the sign for the \"Images of Nature\" gallery.\n\"I…\" he began in a more subdued register, \"I remember when I was a lad of twenty, sneaking into that very exhibition. I secreted myself in a secluded water closet for hours. It was a compulsion. I needed to pour over those ancient tomes and prints in peace, undisturbed.\"\nSarah arched an eyebrow, cautiously probing this change of scene. \"Ah yes, our collection of vintage naturalist illustrations and chronicles. Mind you, many of those early 19th century renderings were embellished folklore rather than empirical documentation.\"\nShe was regaining her curatorial confidence, satisfied to be guiding the tour back toward factual pedagogy. \"Take the famous 'Phizzer Fish-Monster of Nantucket' woodcut depicting some lurid chimera with a squid's mantle and a rhinoceros' horn protruding from its head. Mere creative fancy by the artist, drawing from translated descriptions of an orca. Yet for years it spawned all manner of fanciful sea serpent mythologies.\"\nA balding man in the second row piped up. \"Sorta like how the kangaroo got its name?”\nSarah raised an eyebrow, knowing where this was going.\n\"I heard when Captain Cook asked the locals what it was called,\" the bald man continued. \"They said ‘Kangaroo', which means in their language 'What did he say?\"\nThe guests' titters and murmurs coalesced into a rumbling chuckle at the anecdote. Even the wild-eyed storyteller allowed himself a dry smirk and shake of the head, seemingly relishing the diverting humor.\nSarah made an appreciative nod. \"I'm afraid that's an urban legend. The term 'kangur--\"\nHer words caught in her throat as the vagabond's expression underwent an instantaneous shift - curling lips petrifying into a rictus sneer as all mirth evacuated from his face. He surged forward, both hands slamming against the reinforced glass partition with a boom that caused the entire edifice to shudder and myriad specimen jars behind to rattle ominously on their shelves.\n\"ENOUGH!\" he bellowed with a bass profundity that seemed to reverberate from the primordial bones of the earth itself. \"You prattle inanely about mere colonial explorers marring the existential boundaries while remaining oblivious to the profundity of these pickled parts.\" Spittle landed on the glass.\nAll levity extinguished, the stranger slowly turned to address the terrified guests, his eyes boring into them with the intensity of eldritch revelation.\n\"Before you cloyed wretches dissolve into the brine between realities, you shall bear witness to how the naturalists feeding your collection were nothing but cankers to the Grand Rite—which is now ascendant once more. For I have sampled the eschatology of this brittle world—we are at the knife's edge. This is merely the lukewarm anteroom to what ELSEWHERE…inhales...\"\nSarah firmly but gently guided the now wailing witch-child and his flustered parents away from the spirit collection, promising a more suitable arts and crafts diversion.\nA few of the guests began nervously shifting their weight and exchanging furtive glances.\nThe wild-eyed vagabond seemed to notice none of this; too engulfed in his fervor as he recounted his brush with the ineffable.\nOne particularly entranced woman in the front row began humming a low, elemental thrum that seemed to burrow into the limbic core of all who could hear it. Slowly, sporadic others picked up the dissonant harmonics, their voices glazing with rapturous entropy.\n\"It was the diadem, you see…\" the thief husked, his cadence syncing into the escalating drone. \"When first I laid eyes upon that blasphemous relic that had once encased the Augur's skein, I felt its unknowable gravity warping my very DNA's architecture!\"\nHis gaze turned inward, deep in retelling. \"Despite every synapse recoiling in wisdom's final vapor. I found myself gripped by sycophantic urges beyond all reason. The siren-born coppery glyphs emblazoned across that jewelled arc cauterized all feculence of rationality from my psyche!\"\nWith a violent shudder, the man snapped back to address the few coherent guests. \"Before I even recognized my own appendages shattering the protective vitrine, the profane diadem was already scalding my palms with its ravenous, aeonial ANTIPATHY!\"\n[YES! Let the pitiable thrall wail his fruitless recapitulation! For as his atavistic curiosity compelled direct congress with my supreme circlet, so did the un-shatterable TRUTH of our grand reunification—lens away the gossamer veils masking your species' putrescent nadir!]\nHowling in abject rapture, the raving storyteller clutched at his skull as if it might splinter at any moment under the strain, pulling away his ragged wool cap, exposing a ring of scars. \"As I raised that blazing apocrypha toward my naked cerebrum, its inexorable tyranny peeled away every delusional human thought—causing my third-eye portcullis to blast asunder with the MAJESTY OF WHAT WOULD BE UNVEILED!\"\nAll around, the guests now swayed and undulated with the incessant frequencies, a few babbled and frothed in spiritual ecstasy.\n\"I reached up. It burned! I heard the chanting, the priest…this priest called to me. Then the blasphemous brushwork heaved and distended. The painted depictions of eldritch botany and metaphysical anatomy elongating in profane mockery of all anthropic proportions.\"\n\"Before my screams could reverberate,\" the man slurred, \"I found my mimetic signature shepherded toward that most blighted curio archive where the occluded sleep in draughts of spectral ichors! This spot is where the paint-animate shepherded me. But on the other side of this.\" He pounded the glass. \"This very spot!\"\nWith a terrifying WHOOMPH, every glass cylinder throughout the room simultaneously vented milky aerosols. The unnatural fog quickly enveloped the entire gallery in a churning, glass-tinctured miasma.\nThe fog swirled and contracted around the crazed man as he continued his frantic recounting, oblivious to the eldritch transmogrification overtaking his audience. Their forms melted and sloughed in the spectral vapor, calcifying into bulbous parodies. Pallid flesh distending while eyes ballooned into cold, guppy orbs.\n\"Before me yawned the aperture of that charnel sump where your world's forsaken dreamers slumber in vitro pungency!\" The diadem slowly emerged from under the skin of his head.\n[Yesss…relate your tale of agonizing revelation, meat-puppet! For as your spittle-flecked recapitulation unravels, so too does this cadre of filth insensately open their meager spirits to THEIR INFINITE TRUTH!]\nThe storyteller battered his fists in futile desperation as his skin split. Beyond his reflection were the gallery's occupants, morphing into a litany of obscene vitrine-born blasphemies.\n\"You simpletons sneer at those suppurating urns of formless essence behind cold analogical imagery.\" He spat at the priest in the jar. \"All while ignoring the exuviated depth hungering for raw metamorphosis beyond this clear seal!\"\n[Insensate fool! Your purblind fever-likenesses cloister eternally from THAT which slumbered ineluctably within my desiccated husk - the primordial ethos predating all your feeble material kingdoms!]\nStraining against the unyielding glass, the storyteller's throat gargled with unspeakable tongues as he struggled to assimilate the incomprehensible panorama consuming his reality.\n\"They have no concept of the diadem's rhizogenic logarithms clawing them through my distillation matrix! IT LEAKS THROUGH CREVICES! GLIBBERING CHYMES GYRE WHILE COUNTING DOWN TO ZERO SUM AZATHOTH!\"\nWith a scream of splintered epiphany, the storyteller's skull impacted the glass in a sickening crunch. He rebounded, jaw unhinging wide enough to swallow cities, as fresh crimson bloomed across the glass. Silhouetted in the amniotic vapor beyond, the priest's true form shrugged free from its partial pseudo-hominid husk. A proto-sentient kaleidoscope of fractalized appendages branching into realms of topological impossibility.\n[AT LAST! THE FLOODGATES OF YOUR PALTRY BIOME HAVE BEEN BREACHED TO ACCOMMODATE THE UNSWADDLING OF MY PRIMORDIAL SINGULARITY! SHED YOUR FALSE HUSKS AND BE REBORN AS APOSTLES TO MY ETERNAL WOMB!]\nAfter pulling the diadem away, the storyteller's body went limp, crumpling to the slick tiles in a tangle of askew limbs and a spreading bloom of blood from his ruined face. As his consciousness flickered and his eyes rolled back, fragments of lucidity sputtered through in disjointed flashes.\n\"Falling…always the endless falling.\" He scratched the red stones against the glass. \"That abyssal well of semi-sentience, but on the other side.\" His voice grew faint. \"Gibbering and flailing against an unyielding barrier, I was powerless, I was a child, I was a common thief. I slipped before I could return your trinket. I slipped, and now I mirror that, the glaze, my reflection is now—then—now.\" His reflection presented the priest with the diadem.\nThe priest's crag-worn, unknowable features lingered in that moment. It accepted the gift. Then, with a shadow of triumph, the whole of its spectral bulk dissolved like vapor into the crepuscular umbers permeating the spirit room.\nThe former thief's limbs convulsed as the spell thrummed its cyclopedic hold over this plane, flaring and guttering like a wick starved of oxygen.\nSuddenly, Sarah was there, interposing her mortal, corporeal, logical furnace between the vagabond and the shard of trans-dimensional memeplex pushing in from the Chthonic Other.\nWith a tremor like ripples over a cosmic Styx, the buckram fog desolated - its mercurial tangents sloughing back into the stark fluorescents and familiar Euclid of mundane geometries. All around, the former abominations began to moan and flail as humanoid shapes reemerged.\nSarah stooped over the bloodied storyteller. \"Is there a doctor here? Damn it, this isn't part of the tour—call 999.\" She wrapped the storyteller's scarf around the head wound. \"What happened? Why didn't you stop him?\"\nAt last, as the vagabond's catatonic gaze faded to naked bewilderment.\nThe invasive psychic structures consuming the other patrons slid away, veils of forgetting left them dumbfounded. Like sleepers jolting awake from a harrowing night-scape, arrows of reality pierced their reawakened perception. None moved, but all shared in the horror before them.\nThough a sour tinnitus reverberated everywhere, Sarah allowed herself the faintest of relieved smiles. The ancient profane consciousness persists. Her pet theories of noetic architectures and cognitive body guarding models had, it seems, prevailed. For now, at any rate.\nGlancing down at the inert bleeding man, she felt only pity for his naïve astral trespass, having invited such rapacious unmooring. The poor fool. Best he stay forever blissfully oblivious to what grimly resilient footings were required to uphold this cosmic quarantine zone they called a museum.\nStill, the curator thought with a shudder, far better to lance a cyst than fester into…. No. She would church her speculations for another event.\nRising to address the shaken patrons around her, Sarah asked if anyone required medical attention or counseling. Mostly they responded with dazed nods, then shuffling exits. Best to sheepdog what trauma persisted into the soporific pastures of pop-cognitive haze.\nFrankly, she was relieved the evening's lecture had devolved into mere mass hysteria and not some greater catastrophe.\nShe was prepared for either instance.\nRot can always be cauterized. After all, the anomalous was her dove to breed—not these pitiable meat-fragments doomed to their slack-jawed insignificance.\nSarah looked to the copper and ruby-of-arsenic-bejeweled tiara sitting on top of the Mer-made's sealed jar. \"What have you got there Chief Augur? Another gift for me?\"\nShe smiled. \"Good boy.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: SHADOWS OF THE RELIC: VINCENT BLACKWOOD'S ESCAPE\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2312\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the heart of a bustling city stood the renowned Heritage Museum, home to priceless artifacts and treasures from civilizations long past. Among these treasures lay the ultimate prize— “Emerald Eye,” an ancient relic rumored to possess mystical powers beyond comprehension. For years, it had eluded the grasp of even the most skilled thieves. But the relic beckoned like a siren's call for Vincent Blackwood, a notorious art thief with an audacious reputation.\nTall and lean, with an athletic build honed by years of daring escapades, he moved with the effortless grace of a predator stalking its prey. His piercing eyes, the color of polished onyx, held a mesmerizing intensity that seemed to pierce through the darkness, betraying a mind sharp as a dagger's edge. His midnight-black hair, styled with meticulous care, framed a chiseled face marked by a faint scar trailing along his jawline—a testament to the dangers he had faced and conquered in his pursuit of fortune and glory.\nBut not just his physical appearance set Vincent apart; the aura of audacity surrounded him like an invisible cloak. He was known throughout the underworld as a master of deception and intrigue, his exploits whispered about in hushed tones by those who dared to speak his name. His reputation preceded him like a shadowy specter, striking fear into the hearts of those who crossed his path and earning him the begrudging respect of even his most formidable adversaries.\nVincent had spent months meticulously planning the heist, studying every inch of the museum's security systems and layout. Armed with cunning intellect and unwavering determination, he believed himself ready to outsmart even the most advanced security measures. He had the resources to buy every piece of information, and his search for every clue about the museum brought him to this moment.\n<<>>\nRumors whispered in the shadowy corners of the city and spoke of the Heritage Museum as an impenetrable fortress, its treasures safeguarded by forces beyond mortal comprehension.\nFor decades, the museum had stood as a bastion of history and culture, its halls a sanctuary for relics of bygone eras. But beneath its facade of grandeur lurked a darkness that defied explanation. Some whispered of curses placed upon the artifacts, while others spoke of a malevolent presence that dwelled within the museum's depths.\nAmong the most chilling tales were previous attempts to break into the museum. Each attempt had ended in tragedy, with would-be thieves meeting grisly ends or simply disappearing without a trace.\nOne of those stories involved confident Arthur Doyle, a master of deception and stealth, who had once dared to venture into the museum's hallowed halls in search of the ultimate prize. Yet, his ambition had cost him dearly, for he was found dead on the museum's grand staircase, his lifeless body bearing multiple deadly wounds. The circumstances surrounding his demise remained shrouded in mystery, with no witnesses to shed light on the events that had led to his untimely end.\nAnd then there was Simon Brawler, a brash and reckless thief who had thought himself invincible. His ill-fated attempt to breach the museum's defenses had ended in horror beyond comprehension, as his body was discovered torn asunder by an unknown force. The sight of his mangled remains served as a grim reminder of the dangers that lurked within the museum's shadowy depths.\nThe city buzzed with speculation as whispers of the museum's dark secrets spread like wildfire. Some claimed that the relic held the key to unlocking ancient mysteries, while others believed it to be cursed, its power a harbinger of doom for any who dared to covet it.\nHe believed himself to be different—more competent, craftier, and more cunning than any who had dared to tread the path before him. And so, with the ghosts of Arthur Doyle and Simon Brawler as silent witnesses to his folly, Vincent pressed onward, heedless of the darkness that awaited him at the journey's end.\n<<>>\nIn front of the museum's modern, electronically secured doors, Vincent paused, flicking his gaze over the sleek surface for any sign of vulnerability. He withdrew a small device from his pocket, a sophisticated tool to bypass the digital defenses between him and his goal.\nWith deft fingers, he attached the device to the control panel, the soft hum of its interface blending seamlessly with the silence of the night. His heart raced as he input a series of complex commands, his movements fluid and precise as he navigated the labyrinth of encryption protocols.\nEach keystroke was a calculated risk, a delicate dance with technology that threatened to betray him at any moment. Sweat beaded on his brow as he watched the screen, his breath caught in his throat as lines of code scrolled past in a blur of numbers and symbols.\nAnd then, with a soft beep of acknowledgment, the lock clicked open, the doors sliding apart with a whisper of sound. Vincent held his breath, his senses straining for any sign of alarm, but the night remained still and silent as if holding its breath along with him.\n“No surprises there.” He smiled.\nWith the doors unlocked, Vincent slipped inside, his movements swift and silent as he navigated the corridors with the ease of a seasoned cat burglar. He knew the real challenge lay ahead—the surveillance cameras and motion sensors that guarded the museum's treasures with unblinking vigilance.\nBut Vincent was no stranger to such obstacles. With the skill of a digital ghost, he skirted around the cameras, his movements guided by intuition and years of experience. He sidestepped the motion sensors with the grace of a dancer, his body poised and alert as he slipped through the darkness like a shadow.\nWith each hurdle overcome, the suspense mounted a relentless drumbeat that echoed in his ears. But Vincent was focused, his mind clear and his nerves steel as he moved closer to his prize. For him, the thrill of the heist was like a drug, the promise of triumph driving him forward even as the specter of failure lurked at his heels.\nThe silence seemed to stretch on forever, broken only by the sound of his own ragged breathing. And then, just as he reached out to claim his prize, a noise shattered the stillness—a faint click, like the cocking of a gun. Vincent froze, his heart pounding as he realized he was no longer alone in the darkness.\n<<>>\nIn that moment of frozen terror, Vincent's mind became a whirlwind of panic and desperation. His heart, racing with anticipation moments before, now felt like it might burst from his chest with each thunderous beat.\n“There is no way I triggered the alarm,” he thought. “Can there be another thief inside? But how?”\nThe silence, once a cloak of stealth and secrecy, now seemed to suffocate him, pressing in from all sides with a weight that threatened to crush his very spirit. Every nerve in his body screamed for him to flee, to retreat into the safety of the shadows, but he was rooted to the spot by fear.\nHis thoughts raced in a frantic cacophony, each one more dire than the last. Had he been caught? Had his luck finally run out? The faint click that had shattered the stillness echoed in his mind like a death knell, a harbinger of the terrible fate that awaited him.\nImages flashed before his eyes—his capture, his incarceration, the loss of everything he had worked so hard to achieve. He could almost feel the cold steel of handcuffs closing around his wrists, the harsh glare of interrogation lights blinding him to the world outside.\nBut even as his worst fears threatened to consume him, Vincent clung to a glimmer of hope. He was not one to go down without a fight, and he refused to let his adversaries best him so quickly. He forced himself to focus, think, and plan with every ounce of willpower. His mind raced through a thousand possibilities, searching for a way out of the nightmare that threatened to engulf him. He knew that the stakes were higher than ever now, that failure was not an option.\n<<>>\nFrom the darkness came a cacophony of mechanical whirs and clicks as hidden mechanisms were set into motion. The floor beneath Vincent's feet suddenly shifted, revealing hidden pitfalls yawning wide like hungry jaws. He stumbled backward, narrowly avoiding the gaping hole that threatened to swallow him whole. Barely aware of inevitable deaths, trying to catch their breath, he noticed movement from his right side.\nFrom the corners of the room, the museum's statues, once silent sentinels of art and history, began to move with their own lives. Their stone faces contorted into grotesque masks of fury as they descended upon Vincent with an eerie grace. With each step, their marble feet echoed like the approach of doom, their outstretched arms reaching for him with deadly intent.\nAs Vincent found himself ensnared within the surreal nightmare of walking statues, he fought with every fiber of his being, desperation lending strength to his limbs. With a primal instinct, he ducked and weaved between the advancing statues, his movements quick and agile, narrowly evading the lethal grasp of their outstretched arms. His mind raced, strategizing each step as if it were his last, seeking any advantage in this surreal battle for survival.\nA statue lunged forward, its marble hand grazing his cheek with a cold, unforgiving touch. Vincent winced as he felt the sharp edge of stone cut across his skin, a searing pain erupting where the sculpture's fingers had made contact. Blood trickled down his face, a crimson testament to the intensity of the struggle.\nA statue swung its arm in a vicious arc, catching Vincent off guard and sending him sprawling to the ground. The impact rattled his bones, leaving him momentarily stunned as he struggled to regain footing. He pushed himself upright through gritted teeth, his muscles screaming in protest as he braced for the next onslaught.\nAnother statue closed in, its eyes gleaming with otherworldly malice as it loomed over Vincent with menacing intent. With a surge of adrenaline, he lunged forward, narrowly avoiding the lethal strike aimed at his chest. Instead, the statue's hand grazed his side, leaving behind a deep gash that throbbed with agonizing intensity.\nDespite the pain coursing through his body, Vincent pressed on, his resolve unbroken even as his strength waned. Each movement became a struggle against exhaustion, every injury a testament to the ferocity of his adversaries. Yet still, he fought on, driven by a primal instinct to survive against all odds.\nFaced with the deadly attacks of the statues, whose relentless efforts were draining him of all his energy and strength, Vincent decided to improvise. Being arrested by the police no longer seemed so wrong compared to the injuries he had already suffered. Guided by instinct, he demolished the glass cases, creating barriers between himself and the statues. To his surprise, the display cases completely covered the statues, making it impossible for them to finish him off.\nStill reeling from everything, catching his breath, he leaned against the wall, feeling the rough texture of the picture frame. He instinctively jumped forward and turned, just in time to feel the cat's blade pierce his right shoulder. The grotesque face of the uniformed man made indistinct sounds as the sword penetrated deeper and deeper, tearing through the sinews and veins beneath his skin. Vincent couldn't scream out of horror; he was utterly shocked, trying to understand what was happening. He managed to step back, feeling the searing pain as the blade of the cat was pulled out, splattering blood everywhere.\nWith a sense of urgency bordering on desperation, Vincent scanned the corridor for an escape route. His eyes landed on a nearby window, its glass panes shimmering faintly in the dim light.\nSummoning the last reserves of his strength, Vincent staggered towards it, his footsteps faltering with each agonizing step. Behind him, he could hear the relentless pursuit of the statues, their stone forms scraping against the floor like the footsteps of doom.\nReaching the window, Vincent slammed his shoulder against it, but the glass barely cracked under the force of his blow. With a curse, he frantically searched for something to break it with, his fingers closing around a nearby fire extinguisher.\nWith a desperate cry, Vincent swung the extinguisher at the window, shattering it with a resounding crash. Glass shards rained down around him as he hurled himself through the opening, his injured body protesting every movement.\nOutside, the night air hit him like a welcome embrace, offering a brief respite from the museum's suffocating darkness. But there was no time to rest—he could hear the statues closing in, their relentless pursuit unyielding.\nWith a grimace of pain, Vincent forced himself to his feet, his muscles trembling with exhaustion. Ignoring the protests of his battered body, he stumbled towards the edge of the rooftop, his gaze fixed on the dizzying drop below.\nWith a final surge of determination, Vincent threw himself off the rooftop and into the void. The ground rushed up to meet him, and for a moment, he felt weightless, suspended between heaven and earth.\nThen, with a bone-jarring impact, Vincent landed on the pavement below, his body crumpling under the force of the fall. Pain exploded through every nerve, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet, his heart pounding in his chest.\nLooking back at the museum, he saw the statues looming at the broken window, their malevolent gaze fixed on him like vultures circling their prey. But Vincent refused to be their victim—he had escaped their clutches and would not let them drag him back into the darkness.\nWith a defiant snarl, Vincent limped into the night, leaving the museum's malevolence behind him like a fading nightmare." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Plight at the Museum\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1216\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The car’s tyres skidded over the rain-wet road, squealing in the night.\n\nEdward Rakee gritted his teeth. He didn’t like driving this fast, but the situation called for it. This had been the first night after changing the museum’s exhibits, his first actual decision on the job. At midnight, he’d gotten a call. The motion sensor alarms had detected someone inside the building. Someone had broken in – what a disaster. He gripped the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip and fought to keep control of his 2-tonne beast.\n\nBurnhelm Museum’s windows glinted in his headlights like a cat’s eyes in the dark. No lights were on; the place lay in shadow. The multistory building sat still. The alarm’s bleat rose over the roar of the rain and the car’s rumble.\n\nSeeing the place with black eyes whilst the alarm squealed made Edward’s stomach shrivel. He wished he had someone else with him now; he had goosebumps. Hell, he’d even take the previous curator, Stanley Grahames. Stanley had lost a few of his marbles as he’d aged. He’d covered the museum walls with paintings of cute puppies and kittens. Puppies and kittens only had a place in a museum if they were the early pets of cave people. Stanley had also left him a note. ‘Dear Edward, there is something you should know about the Burnhelm Museum. You see, there is life in the pain—’ Stanley had not managed to write beyond that. The word ended in a ragged scratch as the pen flew off the page. The heart attack had ended Stanley’s capacity to use words, breathe, or pump blood. Edward assumed the guy was trying to tell him something about getting old, but he’d been unable to figure it out yet. It might not even mean anything. The man was a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.\n\nEdward killed the engine and dashed through the rain to the museum’s open mouth. He held the collar of his jacket over his head as he ran to try to keep the torrent at bay. Edward tested the front door.\n\nIt didn’t budge.\n\nWhoever it was, they had not broken in through here or through any of the front windows. Edward fished the key out of his pocket, shivering as his shoes filled with water, and opened the door.\n\nInside, the rain quieted down to a steady hiss. The alarm’s bleat was much louder in here. A potent, earthy smell permeated the air.\n\nEdward rumpled his nose and raised his hands to his ears. Where was the damn thing? He knew it was around here somewhere. He fumbled in the dark, slapping the fob of his keys against the wall. This task was so much easier in daylight. At last, he found the alarm box, and some magic from the fob silenced the screech. He sighed, his ears thanking him for ending their torment.\n\nThe darkened halls of the museum waited for him in silence. A low rumble of thunder vibrated through the floor beneath his feet for a very long time. A resounding thump, like that of a gun, echoed down the corridors.\n\nThe blood turned to ice in his veins. Yes, there was somebody else here with him. Here, in his home away from home, inside his dream. How dare they? It hurt his soul.\n\nWhen he was a boy, his grandfather had taken him to a natural history museum. The cave dwellers and their early tools had ignited wonder. The fossils and dinosaur bones had cast a magic. The Tyrannosaurus rex, mammoths, and megalodons had inspired terror and admiration. Edward wanted only to share the same awe he’d felt the first time. It was an honourable goal. There was an obvious way to achieve this: he had to be the best museum curator ever. But one thing had stood in his way, at least until now. He always started afresh. He came in, did away with the old, and swept in with the new. Edward couldn’t stand to leave something standing that wasn’t his. It didn’t matter whether it worked. He discarded functional systems and inadequate systems. Unfortunately, such an attitude did not make him many friends. And so, he’d bounced around from museum to museum, never quite reaching the desired position. But now, he was Burnhelm Museum’s curator. He’d realised his lifelong ambition. At last, after so much struggle.\n\nAnd now this? Youngsters and drug-addled maniacs breaking in? With their spray paints and their broken bottles of beer and their – good God – used condoms? This place was his, and he wasn’t about to hand it over to some hooligans or street urchins pulling a prank. Edward scowled and closed the door behind him, and locked it. He hit the lights and called out to the intruders. ‘It’s too late to escape,’ he said. ‘The police are already on their way.’ A lie. ‘You never should have come here.’\n\nA high-pitched coughing sound bounced around the building. It came from many places at once, back and forth.\n\nEdward’s eyes widened. There were many criminals in here. And they were laughing at him. Shaking, he clenched his fists – nails digging into his palms – and marched into the museum. It took him longer than it should have to notice what was wrong with his exhibits.\n\nThe paintings were empty.\n\nJaw hanging down to his chest, Edward stumbled to a halt. He squinted at a painting that had, until tonight, held a picture of a T. rex roaring before a Cretaceous backdrop. His fury fell away to dumbfoundedness. He tried to articulate his confusion, but all that came out was, ‘Unh?’\n\nNext to him, flies were buzzing about something brown. It was about 2 feet long and approximately 6 inches in diameter: excrement.\n\nEdward blinked. It wasn’t unheard of for vagrants to soil the places they entered with their waste. But no human on the planet could produce this much. Had these lunatics squished their leavings together to fool him into thinking that—\n\nThe deep rumble vibrated through the earth once more.\n\nEdward jumped and squealed and spun around.\n\nNothing was behind him.\n\nHis heart hammered, high up in his chest. It seemed to lodge at the base of his throat, making breathing hard. If he didn’t get his pulse under control, he’d end up the same way as Stanley Grahames. Dead of a heart attack. Some distant part of Edward’s mind was piecing bits together, little by little. ‘You see, there is life in the pain—’ Had he meant to write ‘there is life in the paintings’? Was that why he’d covered the walls with pictures of cute baby animals? So that, when they came to life, he—\n\nSomething was moving at the periphery of his vision on both sides.\n\nAt last, Edward understood. It’s not always a good idea to change everything and start afresh when you take over someone else’s role. They might have had a good reason for doing the things they did. You should at least acquaint yourself with the position before scrapping their work. Ah, but it was a bit late now. Yet, for one split-second before his agonising death, he felt once more that awe he’d experienced as a child.\n\nAnd then the raptors had him." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Insipid\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1969\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story with a character who gets trapped inside a museum overnight." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "This is where the judges are taken.\nFor now.\nTied.\nMuffled.\nTheir breath is shallow.\nTemporary…\nIf at all.\nRegardless, all of them have an expiration.\nMore often than not…Slowly.\nIn the grime and timeless hours of the city, the roads cross like shadowy vapors in the cataclysm of morning traffic.\nWhen the homeless and the drunks float, wash up in alleyways and orphaned parking lots, and felines move forward bony and lean, forbidding perimeters etched about in shadows without any particular order.\nThe artist paints and creates without forgiveness.\nMoss pasted stones and conspicuous passageways. \nFlickering bollards refract a gothic harp of hidden cellar doors to which their past judgments shall be prosecuted with unrelenting torture.\nAged brick walls are jagged and plummed by harsh weather. \nThin dark trees, through forged iron bars, collect the metropolis of the dead.\nThe viewers, readers, watchers, and blind judges lack the qualified judgment capacity.\nSlanted architecture, bizarre and oblique, cross-shaped stones whose names grow pale and dull with years.\nThrough worn weeds, there are coiled vines by which the artist has blended their flesh as an oily top coat of crimson stains matching their unforgivable transgressions.\nDark threads connect pole-by-pull with the constellations like a tightly webbed kite string.\nShattered and hollow bottles mingled with adolescent toys.\nThis is the circus of the damned.\nAnd this time, the artist becomes their judge.\n*\nReed wakes on the toilet with his pants down. Substance more than the revolving tick of the bent tin hands circulates in constant revolution.\nSomething out of the bathroom mirrors with drifting hooks pass through the doors. \nIt startles Reed to consciousness like a vivid moonlit miasma. \nA faculty greater than time or the consistent power of entropy forces him to persist.\nReed discovers himself alone with the remnants unforgotten of the illustrious dead. \nThe Art.\nSurrounding expressions and applications of creative endeavors appreciated or despised by watchers who have no clue what meaning lies behind the once-living creators.\nThe eyes watch Reed's confusion as he pulls on doors and fails to unlock exits from his rusty silver key ring. \nA mysterious malediction appears to have him entrapped due to a belated or forgotten gap in time.\nAt twilight, he hears things he has never heard during the day. \nPerhaps the outpouring of sewage emission from the waste treatment plant.\nSloshing, gargling substance reverberating from the pipes constructed beneath the bridge's underbelly neighboring the museum courtyard. \nThe other sounds are quite familiar.\nTraffic.\nAn echoing harmonic.\nThe hum of tires. \nFaint street lights make the windows glow beyond the well-manicured sage maples.\nTinted boundaries between shadows and light meld into a vibrant, iridescent emerald green.\nReed stands with a casual look of confusion in the corpuscular solitude. \nThe museum is closed. \nIt has been closed for quite some time.\n\nReed wakes in the bathroom under flickering iridescent lights, pinging and buzzing, with no recollection of how or why his security shift did not end in the usual manner. \nA tipping point of worry and panic commences with a shock of anxiety induced by a crescendo of alien sounds. \nA clang of brass, perhaps steel.\nMotionless frames are no longer idle but quivering and rattling over conventionally soundless brick backdrops.\n\"Hello?\"\nThere is no reply or prospect of human speech. \nSurpassing the growing clamor of unrecognizable chaos, there is an echo that Reed cannot find with the faint wormhole emitted from his standard issue rechargeable LED mag light. \n\"Hello?\"\nReed points the tapered gleam toward the frozen metallic escalator.\nMuffled squeals and cries of pain sound from a ledge of darkness. \n\nThe beast unleashes a colicky cry from the abyss. \nIt’s a galloping stag with blood dripping from horns. \nIt moves closer and closer with eagerness.\nBlack-winged finches flutter to the museum rafters and twitch, cluck, and chitter uncertainly. \nReed's hands tremble when the maglight catches the chimes and wailing groans from the crowd of beasts above. \nOld paint on worn artifacts framed and preserved as god-like relics shatter and break.\nThe shrapnel of worshipped artwork flung through the air in plumes of chromatic dust.\nReed stops observing.\nSomething screams.\n\"You should not be here!\"\nReed runs.\n\nThe artist lectures before a curious crowd of learners and observers—writers and critics, and even critics of writers.\n\nDoes the devil ever sleep? How can malevolence exist and wake so soundlessly? What does man truly strive to capture in his pursuit to create? Pain? Pleasure? Truth? Even parasites bellow to entities unable to observe. To record the most minute details of creation is true art. Stop! Dammit, all of you! You know nothing! You are pathetic and disgusting. Art is not a reflection that makes you feel a certain way you want to feel when you observe. You have become lazy, selfish, and complacent. You seek pleasure or escape from the inescapable. There will always be pain. Suffering. Insects work in the roots of a cactus plant, dried up like a cool green prune at the edge of the city—something so small that it's invisible to the naked eye. The birth pangs of a creature so small but shall soon coil up into something segmented and black from the darkest recesses of the earth. As it slips inside, the aphid cannot articulate the agony. In its dying moments, it attempts to scurry up the stem of the cactus and take refuge in one of its fleshy leaves. It gathers company with an ant feeding on the honey aphids produce. Their bent antennae touch momentarily. Whatever small beast possesses, the aphid burrows grotesquely into the ant—an action so natural and insignificant. Smoke bellows in the cold from the warehouse chimneys, and the aphid erupts with a minuscule and pressurized hiss. The ant scatters to its hill.\nAnd you ask me to talk about the one left overnight? In a museum of art? Why? To entertain you idiots who know nothing of the composition or form by which true art is made? You could not handle a single night! Art is Flesh, bone, life decaying unto death. Everywhere. Rarely does one of them live.\n\nThe artist walks casually in front of the beasts. \nEyes gleaming, constructed from shattered glass. The face morphs from fear to fear, blurring and shaking, chipped and cracked into burst images of gouged stone. \nThe artist edges forward through the air, covered in blood dripping from a furry mane of torn muscle and splintered marrow. \nHe grabs a finch with shattered nails and tears it limb by limb, consuming the dark essence and tugging the head with the spine attached.\nReed's body trembles as the museum walls crack and topple in the darkness. \nJagged ledges crash, and massive plates of cobalt infrastructure separate like gray stitches bursting at the seams. \nSlate drops below.\nThere are dull echoes with harrowing thunder. \nCrimson light spills through shale walls. \n\"Oh, God.\"\nGreat red claw marks expand and dilate as sharp legs poke through neon lava cross-sections of growing light. \nReed shrieks at the sight of the creatures scurrying down a great wall. \nHis skull fills with blood, and his eyes bulge. \nThe artist hungers.\nThe artist dismembers and persists in consuming flesh from the weaker ones.\n“Why… are… you… doing this?”\n\nDoes God ever sleep? Do you honestly believe that goodness is there? The same way evil is? What has your life captured? Pain? Pleasure? Truth? The artist had a father. The father was a preacher who could not stop drinking. The artist’s father was beaten so badly that he carried that very pain for the artist to carry. It stops at a certain point because as time passes, those who read or observe the art just want to feel okay. I understand your laziness. I understand why you have not seen it. Not once. Do you honestly believe everything you have witnessed is fiction? A prompt? Agenre? The artist was birthed by a woman who attempted to abort him several times. Why would mommy want a child as the oldest of six? Mommy cleaned up the brains of her daddy next door to the abusive third mommy who replaced the original mommy six different times. And, her daddy, an alcoholic made it known his life was never a life worth living. An artist learns how to paint when the abused daddy believes God might still be awake. Never aborted. Poor mommy, she must have been so hurt to try and drown her own child… how can we blame her? She cleaned Daddy’s brains up. You could never have handled a single night! Art is Flesh, bone, life decaying unto death. Everywhere. Rarely does one of them live.\n\nSuch a Devil Among Them.\nThat Damn Preacher.\nWho is The Star of Our Show?\nWhy couldn’t they ever Just Let Me Go?\nMy whole life has been a Nadir.\nA Relic of sorts.\nYou’d never understand the Cost of Madness.\n\nReed seeks some reason from the demonic anarchy but receives a tormenting laugh hovering closely behind him.\nThe voice probes his mind with penetrating binormal echoes stinging the cochlea of his ears.\n\"Fantasy, my child! All of this is impossible. Improbable…”\nThe artist lets the head and torso of another drop to the ground. \nThe foul odor of gore and death circulates like a wretched methane gas that begins to burn Reed's mortal flesh.\nReed looks up into a void of starless dark with an expression of horrified unbelief. \nCryptic lightning shoots a rainy blip, stark and blue, over the ground.\nHis dermis begins to boil and pop. \nHis skin sags, oozes, and melts like dripping wax.\nThe artist oscillates before him, a floating apparition of macabre terror swelling dark gore over an open valley of nothingness. \nJutting trees begin to rear dimly in flashes of lightning. \n\"It's almost over, Reed! Goddammit, Reed! Do you see by now? Reed!? See!?”\nA distant thunder explodes. \n“Every line. Each stroke. The art you’ve observed with passive apathy…do you now see?\"\nWind splatters darkly hued magenta lightly over his face. \nReed whispers.\nChoking on vinaigrette plasma,\n“I… see… nothing… any… longer…”\n\nInsipid.\n\nThe external layers of Reed's concententrial tissue split.\nThe vascular uvea begins to ooze before the deconstruction of the conciliatory body and choroid, \nReed's eyes explode, and he slips on the discarded slime, only to immediately fall and crush his occipital bone.\n\"My child, this is the first truth you have admitted to,\" says the artist.\nAll the creatures merge into one another, becoming giant beasts of indescribable dimension. \nPulsating sacks swell with a circuity of blue and green veins and slimy gouts of red and yellow mucous gush.\nDrip, drip, drip. \nThere is no light, and Reed collapses on a field of flesh and bone. \nA raw pool of human remains glitter within a sloppy strobe flashing in synchronization with the final beat of his broken heart. \nGory rags of meat drizzle over his limp body. \n\nThe morning opens up, clear and cloudless. \nReed inhales.\nThe linoleum beneath him feels strange and brittle, as if he were balancing on the back of a crusted papillary layer of frangible skin. \nReed's throat burns, and his bones feel brittle as if they belong to someone much older than himself. \nThe sun blossoms from a ball of glare into a large pearl.\nThe windows consume all light, dissipating it like a magnifying glass searing an ant.\nAs it burns brighter, Reed becomes more thirsty and hungry. A pain burns up and down him and across his belly. \nHe thinks of the words.\n\"Art? Prompt? Fantasy? Truth?\"\nHe does not know why, but he begins to vomit.\n**\nThis is where the judges are taken.\nFor now.\nTied.\nMuffled.\nTheir breath is shallow.\nTemporary…\nIf at all." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Don't Say It.\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 1274\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character finally gives into a temptation they've been avoiding, and becomes better because of it." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"It kinda looks like—\"\n\"Don't say it.\" \nKenny nods solemnly, recrossing his long legs in the rusted lawn chair. The skinny blue and white plastic spindles weaving the chair seat have long since loosened and torn. His ass hangs out of half of it, but it doesn't bother him any. I watch him try to change the subject in his brain, can physically see the wheels turning, his lips twisting from one side to the other. \nIt doesn't work, though, so he readjusts in his chair and tries again, \"I'm just saying—\"\n\"Don't say it.\"\n\"It looks like a friggin' Christmas tree!\" He shouts, hands flopping in the air dramatically.\nI sigh and crack open my beer. We sit quietly in our old shitty yet somehow still comfortable lawn chairs and stare at the tall green spruce, shimmering as if it were decorated with the ghost of baubles, tinsel and lights of Christmas past. He's right. It does look like a Christmas tree.\nDoreen, a few RV's down, had some fancy app on her phone where she could just take a picture of the damn thing, and it told her everything we needed to know about the giant green tree that showed up out of nowhere a couple of days ago.\nAs if a fully grown, sixty-foot Christmas tree appearing fully rooted in the center of our little town wasn't bizarre enough, the fact that we're about ten clicks outside'a Roswell, a desert-laden arid landscape, only added to the mystery.\nThe even stranger thing was, about four or five nights ago, I was out, maybe had a few too many beers, wandered a little too far into the desert, and I coulda sworn I saw this same tree. Just sitting there, in the middle of nowhere, all by itself. It glistened in the moonlight, and I slapped my face to get a grip, but it was still there when I pried my eyes back open. Somewhere between the booze and the call of the moon, I passed out right there on the hard-packed dirt, and when I woke up, there was no tree.\nOf course there wasn't; that would be crazy. \nBut when I stumbled back to my silver Twinkie airstream the next morning and heard the commotion of my neighbors, all gathered around outside their RVs and trailers at the center of our little town, it was impossible to miss that same giant green monstrosity beaming up from behind the crowd. As if it had just up and twinkle-toed its way over here and then planted firm.\nAccording to Doreen and her fancy app, said green monstrosity is a Norway Spruce, the same kind they use at Rockefeller in New York at Christmastime. And it just so happens to glimmer when the light catches it as if it's decorated in rows and rows of lights.\nAnnoyed I won't partake in further discussion—as if it weren't the only thing we've all talked about since the damn tree's mysterious arrival—Kenny huffs and climbs out of his lawn chair, joining Doreen, her husband Danny, and a handful of other locals and their heated conversation.\nThere's a lot of pointing and handwaving. I sit back in my chair and attempt not to give in to the temptation and join them.\nAfter a few lazy hours and a long nap in the sun, I haul up out of my lawn chair and make my way inside. \nI never needed or wanted more than I got; my place is comfortably sparse, and the stream's tiny size has never bothered me. It's the quiet of living alone I've always craved.\nThe can opener in my grip is halfway twisted into a can of beans when the door rattles, Doreen knocking and shouting my name.\n\"Open up, Joe!\"\nGrumbling, I pull my lit smoke from between my lips and growl, \"It's open.\"\nThe rattling door whips open, Doreen huffing as she enters. She stares down at the can in my hands, brows furrowed. \"Tell me you're not eating that for dinner.\"\nI growl back, straining the beans in the sink before dumping the can into a pot on the hotplate.\n\"Joe, why don't you come out and join us after eating that very enticing can of beans? We've got a whole spread; everyone's brought somethin'. Not that what you've got there doesn't look like the best damn meal you've ever had. Looks very appetizing. Filling, too.\"\n\"You're not very funny. And I ain't in the mood,\" I say quietly.\n\"Never are,\" she rolls her eyes, gripping the Formica countertop, her claw-like hot pink fingernails clicking furiously. \"Joe, it's Thanksgiving. And there's a god-forsaken Christmas tree out there! A goddamn miracle! You shouldn't be alone here, stinkin' up the place with cigarettes and beans. Come over.\"\nSteam begins to rise up out of the pot. I stir it. Doreen watches me. I watch the steam.\nShe groans, \"Just think about it. No one should be alone on the holidays. Even your ornery ass.\"\nThe screen slams shut behind her. Of course, she doesn't shut the door. I turn the heat on the hotplate off, then move to close the door when the sounds of laughter drift in through the screen. I watch my neighbors laugh and talk with their hands and hug and touch. A part of me shifts uncomfortably at all that affection. Another part watches with envy.\nI close the door quietly, light up another cigarette, and grab a spoon, not bothering to transfer my dinner to a bowl. Faint sounds of holiday music and chatter filter through the aluminum walls of my airstream. The air inside feels thick and stifling.\nBy the time I crack another beer, it's full dark. A new, glimmering light streams in through the window above my sink. It shimmers and dances, and I want so badly to ignore it, but the laughter's grown louder, and suddenly, the silence of my home, ordinarily comforting, feels oppressive.\nTentatively, I get up and glance out the window. \nThe damn tree is lit. It's fucking lit, with white and green and red twinkling Christmas lights, seemingly unfolding out through the branches. I'm certain it's not plugged in, and there are no wires or string lights. We've checked. It's been doing this since its equally mysterious arrival.\nDoreen and her husband Danny smile, his arm draped over her shoulders as they look up in wonder. Kenny wobbles from too many beers, a shit-eating grin on his face, our other neighbors all cuddling and chatting around the tree, relaxing beneath the glow.\nI feel envious.\nI grumble, grab another beer from the fridge, and reluctantly step outside. I'm grateful no one makes a big deal of it when I give in and join them.\nSwallowing my annoyance, I listen to theories of aliens and government conspiracies regarding the Christmas tree's sudden, strange appearance. Why either party would go out of their way to plant a fully grown glittering tree for a bunch of us bumpkins in the middle of the desert is beyond me. I've got no better ideas, but I doubt it's aliens or the government. More likely, we've all somehow accidentally ingested ayahuasca or some other mind-altering substance.\nKenny drags our lawn chairs over in front of the tree, propped up like a warm fire, and I join him and sit, kicking out my long legs, our asses falling through the broken spindles. \nI can't help the slight grin tugging at my lips at how happy this stupid tree makes my neighbors. Maybe I don't mind spending time with these idiots so much. Maybe they aren't half bad." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Mac and Cheese and Muffin Mix\n\nGenre: holiday\n\nWord Count: 2146\n\nPrompt:\n\nAt some point in your story, a character says “You’re better than this…”." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The line was already forming as Margaret pulled into the parking lot of the small, unmarked building tucked into the residential neighborhood. The usual characters were front and center waiting at the locked door. \n“Good morning,” she called out, juggling several brown paper bags, careful to keep her keys on hand to unlock the pantry. “Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!”\nShe was met with smiles and cheerful holiday greetings. Those closest to the door shuffled to the side allowing the older woman to pass. “Please stay in line against the building, thanks so much!” She called out her instructions the same as she did every week to keep the crowd organized. More volunteers would be arriving soon with boxes and bags, some with wagons, and they needed a clear path.\nEntering the spacious pantry, Margaret flipped on the light switches then turned to lock the door behind her. There was one hour before they would officially open, and much needed to be done. Looking in the backroom’s freezer she counted fifteen turkeys donated at the last minute. Not enough for everyone, only a select few would receive a bird for the holiday and the decision would not be made lightly.\nIt would be a longer line than usual based on the traffic they had been receiving lately. Times were tough, she was thankful for the donations that came in over the past few weeks to prepare for the holiday. Pounding the pavement herself, she had collected gift cards from local restaurants and food stores, but her success was significantly less fruitful than in the past. It had been hard times for everyone.\nChecking her watch, she noted fifty minutes before the doors opened. Time to get busy.\n*\n“How did I get back here?” Ashley wondered, feeling pathetic and small, holding the hand of her daughter. She had promised herself to never return to this feeling of despair and embarrassment again. She had kept their heads above water for almost two years, but just barely. One small setback was all it took for the domino effect to send her back to the line of the downtrodden. She squeezed her daughter’s mittened hand and smiled down at her child. She would make up for this, she promised herself. She would.\n\nMargaret unlocked the door, smiling at the massive crowd of people waiting. The line, probably twice the length of her original estimation, snaked its way through the parking lot and spilled into the street. Worried about the reaction of the neighbors she knew she had to work fast and stay organized. “Remember the rules, everyone! One at a time, fill up your bag and allow the next person in. Come on in, Freddy. Good to see you!” She propped the door open and allowed entry to the elderly man, always the first to show up, standing out in the cold for hours to ensure a meal for his family. She smiled at Joseph, the second in line, the veteran who stood tall and proud in his torn shoes and open coat with missing buttons. Her heart broke a little every time she saw him. Looking past him was Ronny, pale and thin undergoing another round of chemo. Nobody said life was fair.\n\n“Mommy, it’s almost our turn!” \nShe looked at Ava, her beauty, and tried not to cry. “Yes! Only a few more minutes,” she replied shifting her weight from foot to foot trying to stay warm, glancing down at Ava’s boots wondering if her feet were just as cold, praying that was not the case. \n\n“Next!” She called out to the volunteers to usher in the next person on line while quickly reorganizing the inventory. The cans of vegetables and boxes of stuffing were going faster than she would have liked. Having a small number of boxes in the back room, Margaret hoped there would be enough. Turning away even one hungry person was not an option even if it meant running out to the store to buy a cart full of groceries herself.\n“Come on, Ava, it’s ok,” she heard, turning to see a young woman enter, her hood pulled closely around her face, the little girl a miniature version. There was something about them, what was it?\n\n“Oh no,” her heart raced when she saw the older woman at the counter, her worst fear coming true. She kept her hood on, head down and prayed Ava would behave like a silent little church mouse. This was a mistake, she cursed herself repeatedly. Why would she come back after all this time?\n\nThe pantry was quite warm, but Margaret noticed the young woman kept her hood on while going from shelf to shelf working her way around the room. She couldn’t get a good look at her face. Was she trying to avoid her? Being at the mercy of strangers can bring shame, making those feel awkward, not being able to look anyone in the eye. She would never think less of a person reaching out for help. How could she judge when she herself was in their shoes once upon a time? She was tempted to greet her, make small talk, but didn’t. She was tempted to bend down to smile at the little girl called Ava, to brush the hair out of her eyes and stroke her cheek but didn’t. She reminded her so much of another little girl in another lifetime. Waiting for them to make their way around the room she stood at the counter thinking about the turkeys in the backroom realizing she had found a good recipient. \n\n“Keep your head down, keep your head down,” she chanted to herself, the heat rising to her cheeks, sweat collecting on her forehead beneath the thick hood. Blindly she put boxes of macaroni and cheese into her bag, followed by muffin mix and cereal. The cereal they could eat immediately, even without milk if need be. The mac and cheese and muffin mix would have to wait, both being poor choices under the circumstances. Feeling the familiar panic, she had no idea what she was going to do. Their utilities had been shut off that morning, as the pile of notices had warned they would. Thankfully they left the apartment before Ava noticed the TV had gone dark, her favorite cartoons silenced. The mac and cheese and muffin mix were nothing more than a reminder of the stove that wouldn’t turn on in their apartment that would be freezing upon their return. She scanned the shelves for items requiring no prep at all to eat in the heated car while driving slowly back home. Noticing the basket of wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she shamefully took four, hoping she wasn’t being selfish but at the same time grateful for their lunch and dinner. Feeling her face flush she added a handful of energy bars to her bag, her self-hatred and her relief rising simultaneously.\n\nThe young woman’s bag was filled to the brim as she neared the end of the obstacle course of shelving units. She was approaching Margaret, eyes downcast, cheeks red and glistening with sweat, clearly in extreme distress. “Victoria, please send in the next person and ask one of the girls to cover for me,” she called out to the volunteer in the doorway before giving her full attention to the situation at hand. She was tempted to stay quiet, to let her pass through the system, but was on high alert and needed to step in.\n“We have another room in the back, come see if there’s anything else you can use,” she said gently, hoping they wouldn’t bolt. Feeling so drawn to this girl and her daughter she wondered if she knew them from somewhere or were they a modern day version of herself and Liz? A lump formed in the back of her throat at the thought of her own daughter. How many years had it been? Too many, but apparently her crimes were unforgivable, the punishment lasting a lifetime. \nLooking like a deer caught in the headlights the young woman froze, and Margaret’s memories of that night came flooding back. \n\n“She remembers,” Ashley thought, horrified. The worst night of her life, the nightmare that she fought every day to forget, to move on from. The memory was still not crystal clear, the doctors said that all the details may never return, which would be a blessing as far as she was concerned. She didn’t need to remember every slap, every punch and shove until finally falling to the floor whimpering like a dog. She didn’t need to remember every cruel word, every insult from that night, the years of verbal abuse were enough to last a lifetime. \nShe did remember the kindness of strangers, the brown eyes of a woman who stroked her cheek, cleaned the blood gently off her forehead while they waited for the ambulance. She did remember her soothing words, caressing whispers promising she would be okay. “You’re better than this,” she had heard, finally releasing the tears that had been bottled up for years, allowing them to flow as the kind woman held her, rocking her like a baby, providing comfort and a glimmer of hope.\nThose same brown eyes were looking at her now. The women stared at each other, locked together in a shared memory of that awful night when she had hit rock bottom.\n\n“I can’t believe it. It’s her.” How many times did she think of this girl since that terrible night? Being alone in the pantry stocking the shelves, Margaret had been startled by the banging on the door, the terrified voice coming from the other side begging for help. Opening the door, a young woman fell into her arms bleeding from a gash on her forehead. Fighting her flashbacks, she had dialed 911 with shaking hands, doing her best to comfort the stranger who had taken a terrible beating. With no one else in sight and no cars in the parking lot, she was left to assume she lived in one of the houses on the road. \nWhen the ambulance came that night, Margaret had desperately wanted to accompany her to the hospital, but the police officers had requested she stay for the paperwork. How long ago was that? A year? Five years? If it were fifty years ago she would still remember every detail, still think about it daily, wondering if that girl was okay. Now she was there again, returned to her pantry.\n**\n“Want more pie, Ava? We have apple and pumpkin, which are you in the mood for?” \nAva looked from one to the other, undecided.\n“Or you can have both,” Margaret suggested, loving the look of excitement that lit up the little girl’s beautiful face. It had been a year since Ashley and her daughter moved into her house with the plan of being there just one night. \nStaying in Liz’s room, which had remained empty for decades, they took it day by day at first. Ashley, not wanting to intrude, had found it difficult accepting the hospitality. Margaret allowed them their space, not wanting to push, but praying every day for them to stay even one more night. \nSlowly with the passage of time they had settled in, no longer thinking in terms of temporary housing as Margaret’s home became their home as well. Never quite filling the void left by her own daughter, Margaret felt a contentment she hadn’t known in years. The women had many similarities, both had suffered through volatile relationships and debilitating economic hardship. The one difference being that Liz was unable to forgive her mother for the crime of poverty while Ava showed compassion and strength in the face of hardship.\n“Come on, girls, let’s finish up. The truck is on its way to the pantry. We have a lot of organizing to do for Thanksgiving. Not to mention our first clothing drive.” Margaret looked worried suddenly.\n“Yes, but luckily this year you have us.” Ashley smiled and gave Margaret a kiss on the cheek before helping Ava with her new mittens. “Let’s go,” she said, picking up the shoes and coat she had purchased for Joseph and the woolen hat she had found for Ronny, whose hair was beginning to grow back. A moment of sadness came over them as they remembered Freddy, always first in line, who had passed away a few months back. \n“Ava,” Margaret called out from the front door, “Do you have the mac and cheese?”\n“Yes,” the little girl answered, holding a bag filled with plastic containers. “And the muffins.”\nLife was not for the weak, they knew that well, it could be cruel, but it could be beautiful. They were victims, they were survivors, and now they were family." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Gallery of Souls\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1219\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the heart of the city, stood The Grand Galerie Des Rêves (Gallery of Dreams). This, its marble façade, adorned with intricate carvings and mysterious symbols. Within its walls, treasures from forgotten civilizations lay in silent rest, waiting for curious eyes to discover their secrets.\n\nEamon, a humble night guard, patrolled the museum's silent halls. His footsteps echoed off the polished marble floors as he checked each exhibit. The museum was eerily quiet at night, and Eamon often wondered about the stories behind the artifacts. But one exhibit held a secret beyond his wildest imagination; The Gallery of Paintings, all the way hidden in the back of the museum.\n\nThe gallery was dimly lit, its walls adorned with masterpieces from centuries past. Each painting seemed to breathe with a life of its own, capturing moments frozen in time. But there was one canvas that stood out; a portrait of a mysterious woman with eyes like moonlit pools and hair that flowed like liquid gold. Her nameplate read: \"Aria, The Dreamweaver.\"\n\nEvery night, as the clock struck midnight, Eamon felt a strange pull toward Aria's portrait. The colors seemed to shift, and her gaze followed him. He dismissed it as fatigue, even though deep down, he knew there was more to this painting.\n\nOn his days off, Eamon would stay isolated in his small two room apartment. He would constantly have intruding thoughts of Aria. Her face would even haunt him in the quiet hours of the night, but he still welcomed every second of her.\n\nIn the morning he was to return to work, but a call came in to inform Eamon of an involuntary vacation. He'd be paid, but needed to stay away from the museum for one weeks time. Questions loomed, but no one gave him reasons for the sudden forced leave.\n\nAs days passed, the mundane world began to feel colorless compared to the Dreamweaver’s painting. Eamon would sit by the window, staring at the clouds, wondering if Aria watched him from her canvas. Phone calls would ring ever so slightly in the background; ignored like useless conversation. At night, once again, his dreams flowed with visions of Aria. Soon they turned into nightmares, waking Eamon with swift urgency. It was time to get back to his Aria.\n\nEamon finally returning to work, he glides quickly through the museum towards his Aria. As Eamon stood before her portrait, he apologized for leaving her alone. As if his words were magical, he saw the impossible begin to occur. The canvas rippled like water, and before his astonished eyes, Aria stepped out. She was ethereal, her gown shimmering with stardust. Her laughter echoed through the gallery, and Eamon's heart raced with fright.\n\n\"Welcome back, Eamon,\" Aria said, her voice like a melody. \"I openly receive the atonement of the sin you've committed toward me. I shall show you what my forgiveness brings. Since you've guarded my world for many moons. Tonight, I invite you to step into it.\"\n\nEamon hesitated. Duty bound him to the museum, but Aria's eyes held a promise of adventure and love. With a leap of faith, he stepped into the canvas, leaving the mundane world behind.\n\nThe air in the Dreamweaver's Realm was thick with magic. Glittering forests stretched to the horizon, their leaves whispering secrets. Rivers flowed with calming black waters, and creatures danced in the meadows. And everywhere he looked, beautiful women moved like graceful spirits; each one a fragment of Aria's enchantment.\n\nAria took his hand, and they wandered through the alluring gardens. She told him stories of forgotten kingdoms, lost loves, and the power of dreams. Eamon forgot about time, about duty, about everything except the woman beside him. He fell deeply in love with Aria, her laughter like wind chimes in his soul.\n\nDays blurred into weeks, and Eamon faced a crossroad. Return to his old life, where the museum awaited, or stay in the Dreamweaver's Realm with Aria. As the gallery's magic had bound him, he knew he could never leave. A choice had been made the moment he stepped into the painting, and Eamon just felt wrong going back on it.\n\n\"Eamon,\" Aria whispered one night, her eyes filled with longing. \"Will you stay with me forever?\"\n\nHe looked back at the portal; the canvas that connected both worlds. The choice was obvious. \"Of course I choose you, Aria, there's no other options awaiting my decision,\" He said, and they sealed their love with a kiss.\n\nBut as what seemed like years passed, Eamon noticed something unsettling. Aria's laughter grew colder, her eyes darker. The other women in the realm whispered of sacrifices; the price of eternal love. They spoke of how Aria had once been mortal, like Eamon, until she chose to stay. Tricked; her anger and resentment led her to become a sinister soul thief, like her once lover. The shadow that once inhabited this very painting. Fear began to take hold, as Eamon understood he had made a grave mistake.\n\nAnd then, one fateful night, Aria revealed her self; a witch who feeds on loving souls. Eamon's affection turned to terror as he finally realized he was trapped. The gallery was no sanctuary; it was a prison. Aria's kiss stole his life, and he would be just another part of her painting; a lost soul forever trapped in her web. But instead of stealing his soul right away, she smirks and wonders off, to nowhere in particular. Was she playing a game?\n\nEamon thinking this could all possibly be a deep illusion he conjured up in his loneliness, attempts an escape. The portal he once came through, unable to be accessed. No matter what he tried, he wasn't going anywhere, because his bound promise to Aria was forever and he knew it.\n\nA cold breeze was felt behind Eamon; he turns to see his beloved. Aria completely transformed into a large creature of the night. Eyes no longer green, now red. Teeth sharp and dripping with saliva; mouth wide. \"You are going nowhere Eamon. You are trapped here for eternity!\" A deep demonic voice roars out of Aria, as she comes towards Eamon. Frozen, Eamon awaits his fate, as Aria opens her mouth wider and breathes in his soul with one breath. Eamon, the prey, fell for every trap set for him. Empty he had now become, due to all his mistakes.\n\nNow, when the clock strikes midday, Eamon steps out of the frame, spiritually chained, his eyes hollow, and his heart aches for release. Visitors marvel at his lifelike portrait. His nameplate reads: \"Eamon The Void.\" The onlookers clap with joy, unaware that Eamon's screams echo through the gallery, begging for salvation. The owner of the gallery dressed in black, stands towards the rear, smiling devilishly at the new addition to his museum. He is thinking of the long list of gullible night guards he can hire to replace Eamon. More fools to fed his exhibit. Especially since it seemed Eamon would be the next empty resentful vessel to take over the portrait, and bring in more loving souls.\n\nNow happy to almost complete her task; every night, Aria dances under the moonlight. She whispers to her next victim, \"Choose love, dear guard. Choose me. One more soul, shall set me free.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Small Comforts\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2981\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story at a tense event where everyone is unsure whose side they’re on." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Father! Father!!!” I screamed as I burst into our house. “FATHER!!!”\nHeavy footsteps descended the stairs. “What is it boy?”\n“Violet,” I squeezed my twin sister’s name in between desperate attempts to suck air into my burning lungs. I had sprinted all the way here and my throat felt raw from the violent ferocity with which I was sucking in air and immediately regurgitating it. “Violet’s been-”\n“Calm down boy,” he said, fully coming down the stairs and placing a firm hand on my shoulder. He guided me towards the kitchen table, and we sat. He waited patiently, watching me over steepled fingers as I forced my lungs to stop seizing so I could string more than three syllables together.\n“Violet… Violet’s been…” My voice broke and I stopped. My whole world felt like it was shaking. I couldn’t stop the images from those last few moments from replaying over and over in my mind, the looming shadow, the horrible sound, the smell of iron, the sight of the nauseating leftovers as it continued on. Every time the sequence completed, I felt my body shake as my flesh tried to tear itself off my bones to get away from those horrible images.\n“Slow down boy. Breathe.” I did as he said. It helped, somewhat. I realized that the world was not, in fact, shaking, my eyes were just blurry with tears. I wiped them away and focused on my Father’s face. He looked like he was carved from stone, like the gargoyles that ancient people put on castles to ward off the Giants. The cold, calculating veneer was oddly comforting, if only because of its familiarity. My Father had always been a dour man, ever since I can remember. The last time I saw him laugh was when my sister and I were still little kids. We had been playing Giant in the backyard, with us as the Giants and a small ant colony as Us. We were having a grand old time, the two of us stomping around drunk on power squashing ants left and right. We took a break at some point and were on the porch with Father, sucking on popsicles to cool off under the artificial heat of the underground sun lamps. While we ate, we watched the ants frantically trying to rebuild the hill that Vi had kicked over. Something in me must’ve felt a pang of sympathy for the poor creatures, because I asked her “is it wrong for us to be so cruel to the ants? Maybe they have feelings like us.” She shrugged and said “if it really bothers them, then they should get bigger and fight back.” She had looked perplexed though, like she didn’t quite believe what she’d just said either. That was when my Father, who’d been sitting behind us reading a book all this time, had laughed and slapped Vi on the back.\nMy breathing had calmed substantially now, and Father seemed to sense that I was ready. “Start from the beginning,” he directed.\n“Violet… We were…” I took another deep breath to interrupt my accelerating panting and tried to push the horrible images out of my head before they could start again. “We above ground-“\n“What were you doing up there?”\nThe edge in his tone made me wince. He was right of course. We shouldn’t have been up there.\n“We’d started a garden. It’s in a clearing in the forest to the north. Vi was growing a blueberry bush. She said that fruit doesn’t grow as sweet down here in the artificial light.” My voice wavered. “She wanted to bake a pie with them when they grew in for our birthday. The best pie ever.” He just stared at me over his steepled hands, so I took a breath to steady myself and continued.\n“We were in the garden when I saw one of Them coming. It wasn’t a very big one (the trees came all the way to its knees), but it was headed straight for us.” I shuddered in horror at the memory of the Giant; its humanlike face eerily devoid of expression as it stomped towards us. “We grabbed whatever tools we could and scrambled out of its way towards the tree line.”\n“We squatted in the bushes. Vi had a hard time keeping her sunhat on as we crawled through the bush. Plus her overalls kept getting-” my voice quavered again and I bit my lip. I was stalling.\n“Anyway, that’s where we were when it came. We were hoping it would just step over the garden completely.” I might’ve even been whispering a prayer as it drew closer; I didn’t remember, so I didn’t mention it to Father.\n“But it didn’t. Its foot came down 10 yards away from us and flattened the whole meadow. I think we were too stunned to move at first. But then something came over Vi. She burst out from the bushes before I could grab her and ran out into its footprint. She lost her sunhat.” I said, remembering with some guilt that it was probably still up there in the bushes. “Then she…” I braced myself. “Then she looked up and shouted at it.”\nIt was the one thing we’d been trained from birth to never do. Our father’s approach to dealing with the Giants was that we should never let them notice us. “If they didn’t know we were there,” he had told us once, “then they don’t know they can step on us.” So, whenever we’d ever come across a Giant, Vi and I would hide out of its way and wait for it to pass.\nTo be honest it was terrifying. These massive creatures could kill me without a thought, without even noticing. Because… well because that’s just what they do. The Giants have always been here. There was nothing to be done about them, so we just had to figure out how to live with them.\nAt least, that’s what our dad and our teachers at school taught us. But had never really sat well with Vi. “But they look human!” I remember her protesting to our teacher once. “Have you ever seen their eyes?” She cast her eyes around the classroom, but most of our classmates were either staring blankly or shaking their heads. Not everyone was as brave as my sister. Not even me; I tried to avoid looking at their faces as much as possible. The resemblance to Us was too creepy for me. “They’re intelligent.” She said defiantly. “They just choose not to act like it.”\nMy teacher must’ve sent home a note, because I remember Father yelling at her down in the kitchen well into the night. To her credit, Violet did a lot of yelling back. Things were never quite the same between the two of them since that night. So, when I told Father that Violet had run out into the open and actually drawn attention to herself, I’d expected him to have some sort of reaction. But there was none, just that same stony gaze. The lack f response had started to become unsettling, and I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat.\n“She told it it was an asshole.” I spoke more to fill the silence than anything else. I had been trying not to think about this part, because if I thought about this part, I’d have to think about everything that came after it too. But now that I’d spoken, it was like I’d opened the floodgates, and the rest of the story came pouring out.\n“’You’re an asshole!’ she shouted up at it. And it had stopped. I don’t think she was actually expecting that. I certainly wasn’t. It didn’t throw her for long though. ‘How could you do that?’ She’d said. ‘Do you even know what you just crushed? There was something beautiful here, and now it’s just a fucking footprint!’ It turned its head to look at her. Even from my hiding place I could see the rage in its eyes as it stared down at her, like it was looking at a bug that had just spoken. I desperately wanted her to stop but she kept going. ‘That’s all that you things do, is you just walk around destroying everything beautiful we try to make! It doesn’t matter what it is, you crush everything, everything that we love and cherish, without even a thought! Our work, our friends, our family,” Her voice broke, and I thought she would cry, but she kept going. “Don’t you ever think about what that’s like for us? We’re not just bugs, we have feelings and hopes and dreams! And we’re afraid. So afraid, all the time, of you. You dumb, violet, monsters! Do you even understand me?’ And then silence. ‘Yeah, I see it in your eyes. You know what the fuck I’m saying. So why? Why do you have to destroy everything? Why the can’t you just leave us the fuck alone!?!?’”\nShe was breathing heavily now, although I couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or from all the shouting. The Giant, who’d just been looking over its shoulder at her, turned its body around fully then. And then it took a step towards her.\nI knew what was about to happen. I think she did too, on some level. But even when I screamed for her to run, even when its foot rose to take that last step, even as she stood in its shadow as it came down towards her, she just stood there with this look on her face. Like she was saying ‘you wouldn’t dare.’” The tears sprung back into my eyes. “But of course it did. I... I think I screamed. Or maybe not, I don’t know. She was close enough that I was able to hear her bones crunch and pop, even over the thunder of its foot landing. I don't think I believed it at first,” I said, lip quivering and tears freely flowing now. “I thought she’d miraculously still be there when it moved its damn foot.” I made a sound halfway between sobbing and retching. “...she was stuck to the bottom of it like gum. Her sinews stretched between the smear on the ground and the stain on its foot until they snapped with this sickening pop. Little shards of bone shook loose and made little ripples as they dropped into the puddle that used to be her. And then the monster was gone. Back to walking... wherever. And Vi was... was...” I still couldn’t say it.\nJust then, Father made an exasperated sound from across the table. The noise was so unexpected that I forgot about the tears rolling down my face for a split second and just stared at him dumbfounded.\n“Dumb little brat,” he muttered. He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “It’s sad, boy, but I can’t even say I’m that upset. It’s her own fault for drawing attention to herself like that.”\nI went from dumfounded to straight up shocked. “What the fuck?” There was a delay between the words leaving my mouth and me realizing I’d said them. “No really. What the fuck?” My sorrow quickly gave way to the overwhelming indignation I felt rising in my chest. “How could you say that about your daughter? She all she did was try to talk to it and it... it...”\n“I can’t say I blame them either.” He said, cutting me off. “Just hearing that story pissed me off.” He shrugged. “Daughter or no, I probably would’ve done the same thing if she’d talked to me like that.”\n“If she’d...” What the fuck was he talking about? “But you’re not a Giant!” I shrieked. “How...? How could you...?” I was shaking with rage at this point, but I didn’t even know what to say to him. “You... You’re an asshole!” I slammed my fists on the table as I leapt from my chair to scream down at him. “How could you take that, that thing’s side over your own daughter’s???” I shouted, flinging my arms out wildly. “They’re everything that’s wrong with this world and Violet just... she’s just...” I ran out of steam and deflated back down into my chair. “She was just small... like us.” I finished quietly.\nMy Father had endured my tirade with an impassivity that would’ve infuriated a boulder. I wanted to break that stoic face of his so badly, but I felt completely drained. After I was quiet for a few seconds, he rose and said, “Follow me son. There’s something you should see.”\nI was too tired to resist, and besides, I had a morbid curiosity as to what secret knowledge my Father was holding onto that was keeping him so calm right now. He pulled out a key and unlocked the door to the basement. My sister and I had never been allowed down here, ever. We’d tried over the years, but it had always been locked, and our Father kept the key on him at all times. We descended a long flight of stairs, easily several stories, until we reached the bottom. What awaited us was a cavernous room, at the center of which stood...\n“AHHHH!” I screamed and leapt back into the stairwell where the Giant couldn’t get to me. One of the monsters stood against the wall in the middle of the chamber. What was it doing here?\nMy Father didn’t even turn around as he snapped, “stop it and get out here.”\nI took a cautious step forward into the space. The Giant was stock still, like it was frozen in place. It stood on a large metal disc, and behind it on the wall I could make out two rail tracks the ran up towards the ceiling. I followed them all the way up to a pair of huge hangar bay doors that were clamped tightly shut.\n“What... how did...?”\n“That,” my father said pointing up at the creature, “is mine. The one you and your sister encountered must’ve been from a neighboring community, the little ones don’t tend to patrol very far from their homes. Over there,” he said, pointing to two huge tanks of bubbling blue liquid on the far side of the room that I hadn’t noticed until now, “are the ones I’d been preparing for you and your sister. I was planning to show this to both of you someday soon. Maybe if I had shown your sister, she wouldn’t have acted like such a brat and gotten herself killed.”\nI crossed the cavern and stood before the tanks. Inside, two infant Giants (I hadn’t even known there were infant Giants) floated, every so often twitching some part of their body. I didn’t understand. Why was my Father growing Giants? And what did he mean they were “ours?” I turned back to ask him, but something about the Giant at the center of the room caught my eye. I realized it bore a striking resemblance to my Father. My eyes widened with horror. I whirled back around to the monsters in the tank. That one on the left looked like Violet. And the one on the right looked like me.\nI felt a hand land on my shoulder. “How...?” I stammered.\n“There’s a control center in the neck.” He said that like he was explaining how to use a flashlight and not upending my entire worldview.\nI stared at him in shock. “In all of them...?’\nHe nodded. “All of them.”\nMy head was spinning, and my mouth silently groped for words. “...Why?” I eventually managed to croak.\n“Why what?”\nWhy do we cower underground, living in fear of them? I thought. Why did we grow up learning that they were monsters we had to hide from and hate? Why do they step on us, why do they trample anything we build above the ground? Why did they kill my sister?\nMy confusion must’ve shown, because my Father shrugged and said, “that’s the way it’s always been. I made mine to protect our family from the other Giants. My father did the same for his family, and his father before him. One day, you will do the same. Violet would have too. Everything I taught you was so that you could survive until that day came. That’s what it means to be a parent.”\n “But I don’t want one of those... those things!” I cried. “I just want them to leave us alone! Why can’t they just leave us alone!?”\n“This is how you get them to leave you alone!” Father shouted, at long last showing some human emotion. He sighed and rubbed his temples. “You and your sister,” his voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, “seem to have this idea of how the world should be. But this is how the world is, and you need to accept that. You will get in your Giant when the time comes, because you must. You don’t get to have a choice.”\nSomething in me broke then. I ran. I don’t remember if he even called out to me. Maybe he thought I’d come back. Or maybe he didn’t care if I did. I don’t know. I ran up the stairs, out of the house, and into the street. I ran to the elevator and took it to the top floor, and then I ran through the old maintenance hatch Vi and I would sneak through to slip out of the bunker. And then I ran away, as far as I could.\nI’m still running, by the way. Running from the Giants that aren’t really Giants as they try and squash me like an ant. It’s not fun. It’s not easy. But at least my sister wouldn’t hate me. And there’s some small comfort in that." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Silence\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1431\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with someone looking at a breathtaking view and getting emotional." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There is a peace at sunrise that surpasses all understanding. It's a renewal. A feeling that anything is possible. I’d like to say I drag myself from the comfort of my bed every day to enjoy sunrise’s splendor, but you wouldn’t believe me and I would be lying. What is true is I was there that day and so was she. \n\nThere is a connection between sunrisers just because they are sunrisers. It’s a shared, yet unspoken, appreciation for things quiet and beautiful. That might explain why I was immediately drawn to her, but I know it wasn’t just because of the earliness of the morning. Delilah, you see, would have attracted me no matter the time of day. \n\nThe first time I saw her I was sitting there, at my favorite secret spot, overlooking Lake Quinault. It’s a hidden gem in Washington State owned by the Quinault Indian Nation and, before that day, if I had my way, no one would ever sit and admire its beauty other than me.\n\nThe lake, a destination point for fishermen, swimmers, and sightseers, is nature at its most spectacular. It is located deep in the Olympic National forest. It isn’t easy to find, even if you’re looking for it. Once discovered, even the most magnanimous outdoorsmen will keep the secret to themselves. In an era where, too often, free time is wasted in front of a flat screen TV, Lake Quinault is a reminder of the reasons for taking vacations and the sunrise over the lake is God's definition of must-see. \n\nThat particular trip occurred in early summer. I remember it vividly because I had to be in place just after 5:00 a.m. to catch the sun as it appeared over the mountain. Summer is the best time to watch the sunrise because no one in their right mind would be up early enough, nor would be hardy enough to make the journey to my secret spot. No one except me, and Delilah.\n\n“Is this seat taken?”\n\nNot many people can remember the first words spoken by or to the love of their life, but I absolutely can. That morning, as I turned to see from where the unexpected voice was coming, the first light of dawn revealed the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Not all men might have thought so. Delilah wore no makeup, a pair of ripped jeans, and a faded brown hoodie. Her hair, perfectly auburn, looked as if it hadn’t been touched since she rolled out of bed that morning. It was obvious she had made no effort to look beautiful and yet she had an inner spark that couldn't be hidden. Not by tattered jeans or a faded hoodie. Something changed that first moment I saw her, I changed. I had spent years guarding my secret spot, and now, surprisingly, unexpectedly, delightfully, I wanted nothing more than to share my sunrise with her.\n\nI, unfortunately, was not born a poet and as such the most romantic thing I could think of in response to her inquiry was: “It’s a free country.” With that, she invaded my secret spot, both next to the lake and in my heart. \n\nThe silence that followed was both loud and revealing. Delilah wasn’t there for small talk; she was there to admire the beauty of sunrise. We sat in silence and watched as the sun peeked over the horizon, covering the two of us in its warming light. She and I carried on a conversation without words. She told me, silently, that she understood the importance of the moment, and I responded in kind that this moment was made all the more special because she was there to share it. \n\nPerfection is a goal impossible to realize in this mortal realm, but that morning came as close as is humanly possible. So many thoughts ran through my mind as the sun revealed itself completely. Then just as quickly and quietly as she had come, Delilah rose to her feet, wiped some residual dirt from the seat of her ripped jeans, and headed down the trail and out of my sight. \n\nEight words verbalized, an infinite number of potential events contemplated. Thirty minutes had passed, a lifetime had been imagined. I was sure I would never see her again, and the thought made me overwhelmingly sad.\n\nThe next five years came and went, five long years since that day at the lake. There were first dates, first kisses, and the words “I love you” exchanged, yet every time fate or intention would reach down and sabotage promise. I became determined to find peace in my solitude.\n\nThere was always a reason or an excuse for my ending every potential relationship, but at its core was a shared sunrise and a conversation that didn’t happen. \n\nI went to our spot from time to time, to see the sunrise, not for her. At least, that’s what I told myself. I had given up without realizing I was hoping. Hoping to see her again. Hoping to feel what I felt that day. Hoping she would be there. And then it happened. It was once again summer, it was sunrise, but this time she was there.\n\n“Is this seat taken?”\n\n“It’s a free country.”\n\nThe same eight words.\n\nAt the time, I didn’t know that she, too, had often made the trip back to our secret spot.\n\nSeeing her again, I knew I wouldn’t let the opportunity slip from my grasp, not a second time. When the sun had completed its part in our play, Delilah rose to her feet and wiped the dirt from her jeans exactly as she had done five years earlier. This time, however, I stood up as well. \n\n“My name is Peter. I don’t like coffee, but I’d really like to have a cup with you.” \n\n“My name is Delilah,” she responded, matter-of-factly, “and I would be glad to share a cup of Joe.”\n\nShe called it Joe? It’s funny the things that confirm that a love is real. I couldn’t tell her that day, for fear of losing her, but at that moment, I was sure. I had said “I love you” to others before, but it was obvious to me that I had lied. For in that moment, I was finally sure what love felt like.\n\nLifetimes are only lifetimes when viewed in reverse. A cup of coffee became a dinner date. A dinner date became a commitment. A commitment became a proposal, and a proposal became forever. There were kids and dogs and vacations, but more than anything, there were trips to Lake Quinault. Always at sunrise. Always just the two of us. Never any words spoken.\n\nYou never know the last time is the last time until it’s too late. The final trip we took to Lake Quinault was like all the rest. It took a little longer for tired, old bones to make the trek, but we found our spot, sat together, and conversed in silence. The sun, unaffected by time, rose as perfectly as always, but Delilah rose only with my help. \n\n“Would you like to share a cup of Joe?”\n\nShe knew I did. She knew sitting next to her pretending to like coffee was my greatest pleasure. She also knew she would never come back to see another sunrise even though I was too stubborn to admit it to myself. \n\nThat day in the café, we told stories of family and friends, living and lost, as we sipped on what had eventually become my favorite beverage. We made a mental scorecard of our life and realized we had won. \n\nTwo days later I lost her. Just like that first day at the lake, I watched her as she left me alone, this time without even the hope of returning. The sadness I felt from years back flooded over me like a tidal wave. \n\nI’ll save a seat for you. Those were her last words to me. True to myself, I replied: “It’s a free country.” Then, she was gone. \n\nOne day, hopefully soon, I will watch the sunrise with my Delilah again only from a far better secret place. Until then, I only go to our special spot at night. \n\nI’m never alone when I go there. I make my way to our clearing and sit down just as I did all those years ago. As the moon reflects off the lake, I feel her comforting hand reach down for me, and in the silence only we understand, I hear her very clearly." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Home of the Brave\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1279\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a casual act of bravery." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A mom’s job is never truly finished—Elise knew this instinctively when her son was born. For at least the hundredth time, she sat next to his bed in that chair mending his quilt. There was no way of knowing, the day she bought it at a flea market, that it would become her son’s most valued possession. \n\nTo call it a quilt stretched the definition as it was nothing more than a thousand pieces of oddly shaped swatches stitched together, layer after layer, until the whole of it was thick enough to hold in the warmth of a small boy's body as he drifted off to sleep. The person who pieced together this labor of love must have spent countless hours shaping the useless remnants into a usable blanket. Elise felt it was her duty to repair the inevitable rips as an homage to the unknown creator and as a manifestation of her adoration for the little boy who cherished it.\n\n“I love how cool it feels when I first get into bed,” her little man observed the first night he wrapped himself in the old quilt. “But before long, it warms up, and I’m snug as a bug in a rug. Where did you get it?” \n\nThe question was one whose answer was too mundane to inflict on a wide eyed little boy, so Elise stretched the truth just a little. “It was brought over on the Mayflower by the Pilgrims,” she answered to her son's delight. “It’s made from pieces of fabric from all over Europe and is the first blanket used by the first Americans.”\n\nIt was just a little white lie, but it was also the beginning of a cherished tradition. As stitches unraveled and as tears ripped the quilt and the little boy's heart, Elise sat by his bed and mended the heirloom. Then she would continue the \"true\" story of how the quilt had found its way to her son. \n\n“During the Revolutionary War, your quilt was captured by General Cornwallis and used to keep his legs warm on the cold winter nights.” Elise said, weaving a story as intricate as the blanket itself. “It wasn’t until the surrender at Yorktown that it was returned.”\n\n“Yorktown?”\n\n“Yes, Yorktown,'' she said smiling, “George Washington took it from Cornwallis and used it during his eight years as president.”\n\n“You mean my blanket has been to the White House?” \n\n“Of course it has,” Elise answered with a wink. “But not because of George Washington, silly. John Adams was the first president to live in the White House.”\n\n“Who then, Mom? ``The little boy asked., “Who took my blanket to the White House?”\n\n“That’s a story for later,” Elise replied, kissing her son on his forehead. “Now you get some sleep, and I’ll continue the story next time.”\n\nElise, unfortunately, had far too many opportunities to continue the blanket’s tale as her son was given to debilitating headaches. At first, the doctors thought he was prone to systemic migraines, but the truth was much worse. Many nights, too many, the little boy would curl up in pain, his teeth clenched in a faux smile. The headaches were excruciating, only soothed by a cold wash cloth, his mother’s gentle voice, and the telling of the quilt’s tale as he drifted off to sleep. \n\nThere were also many a night where Elise would sit with her son as he slept, meticulously piecing back together the tears that threatened the blanket entirely, wishing there was a way she could also mend her son. The room would be completely quiet save for the sound of Elise’s song. It was something she had done since she was his age. Inadvertently yet intentionally she would let the air slip through her lips, creating a tune just for him that would live for that moment, replaced the next time by one equally beautiful and equally unique.\n\n“As it turns out, the first time the quilt made it to the White House was just after Abraham Lincoln was elected president,” Elise said the next night, continuing the story from where they’d left off. The pain had become more frequent and more intense, requiring more chapters more often. The story's continuation, however, had the desired results, a distraction and a smile.\n\n“Abraham Lincoln, he used my quilt, too?” her son asked, too young to doubt his mother. \n\n“Of course he did,” Elise responded, tickling her son just to hear him laugh. “It’s a little known fact, but Mount Rushmore was actually created to show all of the presidents who used your blanket.” \n\nElise always had a basin of cold water by her side whenever she sat with her son. Very early on she learned that the coolness of the cloth would help quiet the pain in his head. It was her greatest joy to moisten the cloth keeping it cold throughout her story. The little boy’s head still throbbed, but while his mom was telling the story she would gently wipe his forehead with the cold cloth, and it was almost as if he forgot the pain for a time. If all went well, he would fall asleep listening to the tale of his blanket, as sleep was becoming his only relief from the pain.\n\n“Did you know your blanket went to the moon?” Elise asked one day when her son seemed particularly down. “Neil Armstrong may have been the first man to set foot on the moon, but he laid out your quilt so he and Buzz Aldrin could have a picnic.” \n\nThe idea of two astronauts having a picnic on the moon resulted in spontaneous laughter for both mother and son. \n\n“Is Buzz Lightyear named after Buzz Aldrin?” he asked his mom, as both continued to laugh.\n\n“As a matter of fact he was,” Elise replied with a smile. “If you must know, Buzz Aldrin presented your quilt to Buzz Lightyear as a gift which means your blanket has been…”\n\n“To infinity and beyond!” \n\n“Exactly,” Elise confirmed as she refreshed his cloth and placed it back on his head.\n\nDay after day she would take her boy to doctors and then specialists and eventually to the hospital. Then, night after night, she would sit by his bed and tell the story of the quilt. Elise did everything she could to stretch out the story, and as each new adventure was passed from mother to son so too was hope, in the only way she knew how. \n\nThe night that she finished the story was, in so many ways, just like most of the other nights. Elise was home in her favorite chair next to her son’s bed. Her breathing was labored and her voice unsteady. “And then I stopped by a flea market on my way home from the store and there it was, your beautiful, wonderful blanket. I knew you must have it, so I scooped it up, paid the nice woman, and brought it home to you.”\n\nTears filled Elise’s eyes as she sewed the last stitch on the old quilt. Holding it up, she remembered the first time her son covered himself with the blanket. I love how cool it feels when I first get into bed.\n\n“It’s finally fixed. It’s perfect.” Elise said out loud, tears continuing to flow. “I love how cool it feels, too.” \n\nSummoning every bit of her strength, she lay the beloved blanket on the empty bed in front of her. \n\nBeing a mom is a job that is never truly finished, at least she had hoped so. With nothing else left to do for her son, she sat back in the chair and silently sobbed." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Queen Cymbeline\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1569\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who sees a black cat cross their path... for the tenth time that day." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The island reeked of fish; scattered guts and oozing blank eyes littered the black beaches, and the mountains smelled of bubbling, potting fish intestines. The sky was continually dark with the smoke from the fires beneath the cauldrons, and the water had a thin film of scales and oil, all in the bays and quaysides round the island. In the deepsea around the island, the fish that were still alive avoided the inlets and told tales among their young that a bloodthirsty monster lived on the isle, with a mouthful of snatching teeth poised to take them from their beds and gnash and rip and kill.\nIone stepped from her home made of stone and breathed in deeply. Her lungs filled with that beautiful, terrible smell of cooking, rotting fish, and she smiled. Her small leather boots clicked against the stone steps that led to the ocean, and Ione waved hello to Cymbeline the cat Queen as she walked past.\nQueen Cymbeline was sitting on a sunny rock, licking her black paw and periodically nibbling on a small minnow, stolen from the fish pots.\nIone wrapped her cloak around her shoulders as she walked down to the water. Obsidian-colored and shuddering back and away from the shore, the water curled and bubbled and foamed and shivered, cried and wept and showed the future and hid the past and was always there, always, for the present.\nIone loved the sea and could not bear it when she was not a step away from it, could not smell the good stench of the sea, could not feel the iron and the salt in her blood and marrow.\nIone walked along the shore and then turned to go up another set of stairs, leading away into the folds of the rocky jade mountains.\nThe island was a small island with many mountains, each a different patchwork color of heartwood green. The water lapping against the black volcanic sand was deep, soulful blue, and the skies above were perpetually streaked with grey and black. Ione’s steps wound all up and down the mountains and hillocks, toward the cliffs in the center of the island that divided the island like a dagger of slicing ocean, down to the black beach, toward the heart of the smallest mountain, where her stone home lay nestled.\nShe lived on the island alone; she and her cats lived on the island alone.\nIone was a young crow-haired girl who had lived as long as she could remember and then some; had seen the waves recede and then flood a thousand times; had seen millennia of cats ripen and birth and grow and die. Ione lived in her stone house and reaped the harvest of fish that the ocean gave her. Ione was somewhat of a mystic and somewhat of a human—she could not tell which was right, which seemed right to her in her bones.\nIone ate only fish, and kept only black cats.\nShe could not remember, but she thought she was at least a thousand years old.\n***\nIone picked up Queen Cymbeline as she passed, from the stone basking in the sun. The Queen prowled up her shoulders and dug her claws deep into Ione’s shoulder. Ione scowled and stroked the Queen hardly, digging her fingernails into the flesh of the cat.\nQueen Cymbeline was the cat that had come floating in on a raft of fish scales, mewing for its mother and for its milk. Ione rescued her and the Queen had immediately taken up residence among the hundreds of black cats on the island as the one who ruled. Her authority was not taken for granted.\nIone was not sure how she felt about Queen Cymbeline. The Queen was an odd creature who loved and hated Ione by turns. She would purr and rumble and rub round Ione’s ankles one day and turn right around and bite and scratch her the next.\nIone could not understand her. Ione herself was a strange creature, who loved and was submissive to the island one day, and fought and spit and hated it the next.\nShe had come weeping to the island, and the island had taken her in and cared for her and kept her alive these years, and now Ione was its Queen.\nQueen Cymbeline was a strange cat, a fighting, fierce cat, a cat that could not be tamed.\nIone was a strange soul, a fighting, fierce soul, a soul that could not be tamed.\nShe made her way toward her fishing spot; the Point of Pascal, as she called it. She carried a plain canvas bag on her back.\nShe had no holidays, obviously, but the mountains did. It was later in the year and just about the time for the white pumpkins to appear on the slick chartreuse hill-sides, just time for the seasonal orange fish to appear in Ione’s nets, time for the black cats to reproduce, time for new small mewling black cats with red eyes to appear among the horde.\nSamhain. The time of Samhain. That was what the cats called it, among themselves.\nIt was a cliff, and she lowered her nets into the thrashing fighting mass of trapped fish—fish trapped in the little inlet because of the fickleness of the tide and the currents. Ione called it the sea’s gift, and she never hesitated to thank the sea gods she believed gave her the fish harvest.\nThe cliff was the center of the island, and far below in its misty depths was the sea, trapped in rock, slicing through the heart of the island.\nShe cast her nets down into the deep and tied them securely to the stakes on the cliff. The Queen wormed down her shoulders and yowled in her face. Ione swatted at her, and the Queen bit her.\nBleeding, Ione yelled. “Stupid cat! Stay away!”\nShe sucked her wrist and watched the drops of blood fall into the oblivion below her.\nIone sat in the shade of the mountain and petted the Queen until the sun was high and she was hot and the nets were pulling. She stood and untied one of the ropes.\nThe cats over the island heard the scratch and the click that accompanied this action, and came swarming.\nTens, hundreds, thousands. Black cats, black cats, black cats. Richard III and Hamlet and Troilus and Macbeth and Romeo. All with names and all with hearts and all with a hunger for fish.\nShe counted them as they came. One, two, three… nine, ten… Ione loved her cats. She let ten—only ten—sleep in her house with her. Queen Cymbeline, Pandarus, Calchas, Banquo, Margaret Plantagenet, Iago, Desdemona, Mistress Quickly, Tybalt, and Iachimo. They were the ones she loved and the only black cats she saw daily. The only ones she really called by name.\nIone pulled until the veins stood out in her head. The rope rose slowly and reluctantly, and it was about an hour before the struggling nets came over the hump of the cliff.\nNo longer moving, the fish lay in the limp net. Catfish and anglerfish and tuna and swordfish and lionfish and salmon and carp and breams and pikes and mahi-mahi and zander and mackerel and bass and Tang and perch and bluegill and Wishfish and cod. Every kind of fish in the world came to this island and came into Ione’s nets.\nIone dug deep and pulled out the freshest ones and flung them into the seething mass of black cats behind her. The Queen leaped high and caught a mackerel, big and fat and brightly orange, in her mouth. Ione laughed and let the bag strapped to her back swing to the ground.\nShe bent and pulled, bent and pulled, her back muscles ringing and singing, moving under her skin as they had always moved and pulled and gotten stronger, each day Ione has been alive.\nIone took the tuna and the Wishfish (native to the waters round the island) and tossed them into her bag. These were the ones she ate. Tuna on Sundays, Wishfish for Mondays through Saturdays. All the other fish were for the cats.\nIone brought the canvas bag full of fish back down the steps and into her house. She steamed and dried the tuna, and let the Wishfish bake in the oven, still cindery and hot from last night’s fire.\n“Queeny, come,” she called to Cymbeline. She hoisted the Queen to her shoulders again, and the cat snuggled her neck as Ione walked back up to the cliff.\nIone set the Queen to the ground and then took the nets in hand and dragged them down the steps to the plateau where she did the cooking. There, Ione spent the rest of the day skinning and gutting and tossing the limp silver bodies into the bubbling cauldrons. She would feed all of the cats at high noon, flinging ladlefuls of the fish goop into wide pink mouths until her wrist ached and there were no more hungry cats.\nAfter her chores were done Ione would walk tiredly to her stone house to count her black cats and feed them the swordfish she had left over. Queen Cymbeline sat on her lap and purred and received the choicest mouthfuls, until the sun disappeared behind the checkerboard verdant mountains and Ione fell asleep with the Queen on her lap." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Souls in the Sky\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2880\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Zack Kaudjak was crossing the open snow laced fields of the Yukon River with his fourteen dog Iditarod sled team as the sun began to set below the birch tree line at three in the afternoon. The days were short during the first week of March which meant the temperature would be dropping nearly forty degrees below zero. He was prodding the team hoping to make it to the Galena rest stop by dinner time. Wrapped in a thermal body wrap, seal skin gloves, mukluks, his extremities still felt the impact of the cruel wind as his sled dipped and dodged his way along the frozen trail. \nBorn in the small Inuit village of White Mountain on the Seward Peninsula, Zack was a citizen of two worlds, that of his mother’s side of the Inuit and that of his fur trapping father from a Scandinavian heritage. When Zack was just seven years old, his father Bjork fled the village for greener pastures leaving him alone with her mother Ahnah in the small isolated village. While still attending mission school, Zack began raising malamutes and Siberian Huskies. \nBurt Zymuski, his history teacher with a thick Russian accent told Zack, “Do not waste your time with them Huskies. They are strong, but they do not have the temperament for Iditarod.”\n“I do not agree.” He told his teacher even though Bert had run the great race eight times before settling in White Mountain. \n“Hmmph.” He nodded at the veracity of his young student. “Prove me wrong, malchik.”\n“I have a team with six Husky pups.” His brazen bravado impressed the older man.\n“Oh I see.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do you want some help?”\n“Sure.” He smiled up at Burt.\n“I will get them ready.” He winked as Zack walked out of his classroom. \nTrue to his word, Burt Zymuski knocked at Zack’s cabin door on an early Saturday morning as the summer slipped away to the equinox and the Fireweed began to go to seed. The wind from the Bering Sea blew the seeds into the air, covering the land like the snow that would follow in a few weeks. \nAhnah answered the door when he knocked, smiling, she replied, “You must be Mr. Zymuski.”\n“I am and your Russian is well polished.” He bowed his head.\n“He is waiting for you. So excited.” She ushered him inside as the wind already had a harsh bite to it. \nZack took his teacher to his kennel behind the small cabin he and his mother lived in. The dogs were already baying and yelping when they saw both of them enter the crudely built shelter.\n“They do appear to be well-cared for.” He squatted down to pet an affectionate malamute pup. \nWhen his runner hit some ice, it broke away from the sled. Applying the brake, he called out to his team, “Whoa. We have to take a break.” \nHe knew that none of them wanted to stop. The wind was beyond frigid. He pulled his sled into a wide culvert that would shield them from the harshness of the deadly Arctic wind. Retrieving his missing runner, he found it where it had broken off, but he would have to remove his gloves so he could reattach it. Two of the dogs surrounded him so he could do this task without feeling the bite of frostbite which was with them at every bend in the trail. He knew as he reattached his runner that three sled teams were already just hours away from Nome, the red lantern and prize money. Most likely he would not finish the race in the money, but his goal was just to finish. He could brag that a twenty year old was capable of enduring the thousand mile marathon. \nHe managed to run his naked hand across Amak, his lead dog’s mane. “We may have to spend the night here, girl.” \nHe would remove the netting from his sled where he had packed his tarp and sleeping bag. As the temperature dropped to forty below, he would make sure his team and he were sheltered enough to survive the blistering cold wind. \n“Gonna be a really cold one gang.” He began to put up his tarp. “You guys better dig into the snow.”\nMost of his team of a dozen dogs had already dug into the ice to shelter them from the night wind. Without his head lantern, the wilderness would be so dark, he would not be able to see his gloved hand in front of his face. In Galena, which was still about thirty miles due west beyond the mountain pass slowly disappearing in the darkness, he would have a warm place to spend the night and a hot meal and some chow for his team. \nIt did not take long for Zack to fall into a deep sleep.\nHe was sitting in a kayak close to the shore. His head slowly moved to his right. Alka was sitting in his kayak. He had the stock of his Springfield rifle resting on his shoulder with his finger on the trigger. When his grandfather aimed his army issued rifle, he never missed. \nHis grandfather told him that he was issued the rifle when the United States Army was afraid the Japanese were planning to invade Alaska. As it turned out the Japanese did invade Attu and took a whole village prisoners of war before the army sent troops that included some Inuit volunteers like Alta to repel them from Attu in June 1942. The Imperial Japanese Army would never return. \nA few yards ahead was his target, a full grown male seal bobbing in the icy water. \n“Two.” Alta whispered as he took aim. The seal submerged into the brackish slushy water. Zack sat as still as a statue as he had been taught to do by his grandfather.\n“Three.” He said as the seal reappeared. The rifle sounded. There was a splash of water. The seal had been shot right between his black eyes, a quick instant death. “Tulok, get the seal.” \nUsing his Inuit name that means god of the warriors, he pointed to the carcass of the seal now floating in the waves. Always quick to obey his grandfather’s instructions, Zack grabbed the lifeless animal behind the flippers, wrapping his hands around the seal’s corpulent chest and pulled him into his kayak. His Alta removed his knife from his belt and sliced down the center of the seal’s body. White blubber flowed from the opening.\n“Good, plenty of good meat.” He smiled, running his fingers through the warm blubber. “You always count to three before pulling the trigger, because his lungs are full of air. I waited and now we have plenty to eat.” \nHis eyes fluttered open. He had to relieve himself as the wind continued to blow whistling through the dwarf birch trees. The snow had piled up on his tarp making it difficult for him to exit his warm shelter. Three of his dogs had curled up nearby while the rest of them had tunneled in the snow. It was well below zero Zack calculated as he emerged to relieve himself. Cold did not seem adequate enough to describe the biting Arctic wind. \nIt took him about an hour to get his sled packed, but the granola bar did not seem to fill his growling stomach. He scanned the faces of his dog team. “Guys, we will be in Galena in about an hour. They will have breakfast for you.” \nAhead was the mountain pass. The trail through the pass was well known as the difficult part of the trail. But he knew once they got through it, Zack knew the trail would be a lot smoother for the rest of the way even though Nome was still a couple of days away. \nKnown as the Heartbreak Pass, Zack noticed Lusa, one of the team, was struggling to catch her breath. He slowed the team to a stop. Lusa lay immobile in the snow. \n“What’s the matter, girl?” He asked as if she could answer him. He gently ran his hand over her panting chest. Slowly he undid her harness and lifted the female Husky from the snow. Placing her comfortably into the sled would slow them down even more, but at this point it did not matter to him. Tears filled Zack’s eyes. His tears froze to the skin on his cheeks. Lusa panted as he started the team once again. The sled jerked to a start as they began a slow steady climb up Heartbreak Pass. \nHis team was hungry, but Galena was still over an hour away as they climbed the steep pass. \n“If you wish to run your team in The Last Great Race, you must be ready to have your heart broken many times.” Alta told his grandson after Zack told him of his intentions to enter the race. \n“Yes grandfather, I want to enter the race next month.” He answered. \nZack had no idea that his grandfather would pass away just two weeks later. In his grief and mourning for his grandfather, Zack decided to wait a year before entering the Iditarod. Deeply affected by his loss, Zack got out his sled and took Alta to his village according to Inuit tradition. While he was staying with his aunt, the Aurora Borealis appeared above the village. As he watched the emerald green wave overhead, Zack knew that his grandfather had made it to the next world. His aunt affirmed his observation. Even with her gentle assurances, Zack still felt the empty space in his heart his grandfather had left him with. \nShadows were already long when he got to the end of Heartbreak Pass. Stunted birch and pine trees greeted him when they appeared through the mountain pass. Lusa was still struggling. Zack cursed himself for not making it to Galena where he could get care for his young Husky pup. As the darkness began to swallow the scenery, Lusa breathed her last. Zack could not shed any tears at her passing since his tears would freeze to his face. The rest of the team sensed the loss as Amak started to howl. The rest of the surviving team joined in howling, mourning their fallen teammate. \n The wind picked up as its icy grip covered the land. Bursting across the sky, the Northern Lights illuminated the sky. Soon the souls of the dead would dance across the sky like his grandfather used to tell him when he was a boy. \n“Tulok.” He heard someone call him. The voice was familiar to him as he rolled from his sleeping bag, “Tulok!” \n“Grandfather.” Zack’s voice was thick with sleep.\n“I am here.” \n“I need you.” Zack sat up.\n“I am with you always.” \n“I need you. I lost one of my dogs.” Zack felt his eyes gloss over with tears. \n“Do not cry, Tulok. These things happen.” \n“I miss you.” Zack could not stop the flow of tears.\n“Step outside. You will see me.” \n“Alright.” Zack found his way out of his encasement. When he looked to the sky, he saw the familiar emerald wave swirling in the night sky. “Grandfather, are you there?”\n“I am.” \n“I need your help.” He bowed his head.\n“I will guide you.” \n“To Nome?”\n“Is that where you really wish to go? You can end it at Galena. Your team is hungry and exhausted. You too, are in need of some rest.” \n“I did not come here to quit.” He said defiantly.\n“You are not quitting, you are doing what’s best for you and your team. A good leader knows when that time has come to pass.” \n“I want to get to Nome.” Zack stamped his foot into the ice as he used to do as a child.\n“At what cost? You will have other chances to prove yourself.” His voice began to fade with the wind rushing through the canopy of trees. The sky turned emerald green. \nAt what cost? Lusa was one of his favorite pups. He had fed her from the bottle when she still had her eyes closed. She would run through their small house and his mother would tell him to take her outside.\n“It’s too cold.” He would whine.\n“And let you two ruin what little we have here.” She would shake her head.\n“So how is your pups?” Mr. Zymuski asked Zack after class.\n“They are great.” He nodded. Mr.Zymuski helped him acquire some of the pups in his team including Lusa. \n“I knew you’d be a good pack leader.” The teacher clasped Zack on his wide shoulders. “One day you will make me proud.” \nMr. Zymuski was the closest Zack had to a real father and so when the “Mad Russian” as he was known among the rest of the mission school passed away a few months later, Zack vowed to complete the race. \n“I am a failure.” He thought to himself as he got ready for the final leg of the trail to Galena. He sighed deeply since he knew Galena was roughly the halfway point of the Iditarod, but it was apparent that he would not make it to the finish line. As the town of Galena came into view, Zack could not fight this overwhelming feeling of failure. He had let his grandfather down. He had let Mr. Zymuski down as well. \n“Hey kid, I hate to tell you, but three teams have already crossed the finish line.” One of the men from the checkpoint greeted him, “I’m Mr. Tanner from the checkpoint. What is your name?” \n“I’m Zack Kaudjak.” He answered.\n“Got it.” He checked it off on his clipboard. “Well, are you going to continue?”\n“No sir. I lost one of my dog team in the pass.” He shook his head.\n“Happens.” Mr. Tanner put his clipboard down on the table next to him. The small cabin was warm and comfortable, “Does your team need some grub?” \n“Yessir.” Zack nodded.\n“Coming right up.” Mr. Tanner walked into the kitchen area where they stored the dog chow. \n“So you lost one of your dogs, eh?” A woman dressed like one of the men in overalls and flannel shirt, “My name is Marge. I scratched this morning for the same reason.” \n“Sorry.” Zack bowed his head.\n“It’s nothing to be ashamed about, kid.” She sat in one of the chairs at a table. Zack noted she was just about his mother’s age, “Join me.” \nHe sat down in the chair next to hers.\n“What did you learn out there?” She smiled as she sipped her coffee.\n“That it’s harder than I thought it’d be.” He confessed.\n“There are mushers a lot more experienced than you, who still find this one of the most difficult things they’ve ever done.” She laughed. “Including me. I’ve never quit anything. First time for everything.” \n“I’ve let everyone down.” He frowned. \n“No such a thing.” She shook her head, “When you’re out on the trail it’s just you, your team and God. No one else.”\nShe was right. Zack knew it for a fact. When he was burying Lusa in the frozen solid ground in the pass, he said several prayers as he interred her in the earth. He felt a hand on each shoulder. When he looked up he saw his grandfather. “Tulok, I am so very proud of you.” He turned his head and saw Mr. Cyzewski smiling down at him, “You done good, da.” \n“Well, I have to get ready for a flight home to Wyoming.” She sighed. “I’ll give it a shot next year. Whadda about you?” \n“We’ll be here.” He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She made him feel much better about not making it to Nome. “I’ve had a rough time on the trail. I’ll be wiser next time.”\n“Me too.” She stood up, “Gotta go.” \nMr. Tanner said so long to Marge as she walked out and then approached Zack, “Hey kid, we got a transport leaving to White Mountain in the morning.”\n“Sounds great.” He nodded.\n“Good, I’ll put you down for it.” He checked his clipboard as he walked away.\n“Zack, you’re home.” His mother greeted him when he walked in the door, “Did you see that Aurora Borealis last night?”\n“Yes, I did.” He put his bag down.\n“I prayed for you every night.” She hugged him. \n“I know.” He choked back some tears as he felt the warmth, “I lost Lusa.” \n“I heard.” She held him out at arm’s length.\n“I felt horrible about scratching.” He confessed.\n“No one will blame you for what you did out there, no matter what.” She had tears in her eyes. “We are so proud of you. So proud.” \n“”I love you mama.” He kissed her on the cheek, “I have to get my dogs settled in.” \n“You do what you have to, Zack.” She watched him as he walked out the door. \n“Be back in a shake.” He waved as she closed the door. It was really cold out there. \nHe skipped to the kennel in the back of his house. He was greeted warmly by his team with tongues and tails wagging." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Polar Night\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2862\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character emerging from hibernation, whether literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Give me that thing”\nChunhui grabs the cigarette from Bobby’s hand. There is a moment where their fingers touch, the warmest feeling in Alaska’s Northern Slope, and then it is gone.\n“No need to get handsy,” Bobby says to her. His voice is a dead whisper against the sweeping brown coastline, but she can hear him. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the dried-out vertebrae of a bowhead whale.\n“You wish, cheechako.” Her lips are around the filter now, pursed in a way he has never seen. Bobby is glad to be under six inches of parka- his boyhood is screaming.\n“What does that mean?” Bobby asks.\nChunhui puts the cigarette in one hand and grabs his red jacket in the other. Their faces are eight inches apart, and she bridges the gap with a long push of tobacco. Then she smiles. “It means you don’t belong here.”\nIt’s like static on his face, the heat traveling across his ruby nose and down to his pants. Her eyes are browner than moleskin. “Is that a bad thing?” Bobby says.\n“Depends. Are you a jerk like all the other guys in this town?”\nIt’s now Bobby’s turn to smile, and he takes the opportunity to show it off, white and gritty. Chunhui laughs and turns out towards the slushy whitewash. The scene is strips of pink and yellow against a descending orb, the sea a million snowy molehills separating the two teens from the Artic tundra. She pulls on the cigarette again.\n“You never forget your last sunset,” Chunhui says.\n“No?”\n“Never. For two months, it’s all you have.” Chunhui’s exhale is silvery, like an invisible fox. He wants to steal it from her. “So you gotta savor it.”\nBobby leans a little closer, his hand moving atop the girls. She doesn’t pull away. One day, Bobby thinks, they will end up like the bones they sit upon. But it won’t be today.\n“Trust me,” Bobby says. “There’s no chance I forget this.”\n---------------------------------------------------------------\nSakari walks up the frosty shore, as far as he can go. He is completely alone for miles. In front of him is a drop off, a collection of tan and black rocks that drift into the sea. It is the northernmost point of the Western Hemisphere- the locals call it “The End of the World.”\nHis long flowing hair bounces to a stop as he saddles five feet from the edge. He slips his hands into his kuspuk and takes a deep breath. Sakari knows the air is different out here, yet today he feels no spark. He lets it out slowly, disappointed.\nThings in Utqiagvik have felt like this for a while- sparkless- and despite the shifting colors above him, he can’t seem to recapture it. The realization had come unexpectedly months prior, on an ice fishing trip with his brother.\nThey were huddled together in a small blue teepee, the wind hard and angry against their tent. Miku, who is two years younger, had thrown white lima beans in the fishing hole, and always enjoyed staring into the blue pit, waiting for the break in color. “Oh! Here one comes!” he said in a whisper, feet doing a little patter like some antsy sled dog.\nThe rod was in Sakari’s hands, and it began to bend, not violently but with delay, as if something was chewing instead of swallowing. Sakari waited a few seconds, then began to reel at the same pace as the fish’s bite. Halfway up, the creature realized its mistake, and began sprinting back in forth, slapping the roof of the ice floor. It only took ten more seconds before the head of the artic char was breaching their little hideout, a beautiful orange 33 incher.\nMiku grabbed the line and pulled the rest of the fish out of the water. “Nice, Sakari! This might be our biggest yet!” Sakari dropped the rod, and Miku handed the fish over.\nSakari was smiling at first- that he remembered. But when that cold slime ran over his fingers, and those orange-spotted muscles began fidgeting and flexing, he felt a sudden drop in temperature within him. Sakari looked into the eye of the fish, an open black hole the size of a dime, and saw there was nothing. A trickle of blood fell from its gill flap and puddled in his frozen palm- that seemed to make it worse. He pushed the fish away, afraid and disgusted by his lack of excitement.\n“Are you OK, Sakari? Did you hear something?”\nHe shook his head, wiping his hands on the ice, but his eyes were locked on the flopping fish, and its cold, dead, upward gaze. They didn’t camp for much longer that day.\nThat was where the stain began. It drifted over everything- the deckhands on his whaling boat, the diner waitresses, his snow-shoveling neighbors- and corrupted them. Where there once was life, and personality, and fulfillment, now reeked of a truth only he seemed to be aware of. That all of this- this frozen, aquatic existence- was just a passive march towards fish eyed emptiness.\nAt the End of The World, Sakari ponders his next move. The dancing kaleidoscope above him is dimming into night, and on his shoulders he can sense the coming of a heavy snowfall. In the morning, he won’t be able to see it- there will be darkness for sixty six days, and for the first time in his life, the idea of a full Polar Night scares him.\nOutside his vision, a bowhead whale breaches the surface. There is a faint sputter of broken water, and a louder pshhhh from its blowhole before things are quiet again. As darkness comes closer, and Sakari turns towards home, he makes a note of the giant mammal, and wonders if he’ll be around when the light can reconnect them.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nNanook wheels Yuka to their living room window. In front of them is a mural they are familiar with- the bright cream hues of an Alaskan sunset- and on ordinary occasions, they would take a stroll out to the beach to celebrate another notch on their long post of revolutions together. Yuka can’t keep her eyes open, though, and her feet are crusty and bloated. So their tradition will have to wait.\n“It never gets less beautiful, does it, Yuka?”\nShe says nothing, but answers via a small squeeze on Nanook’s palm. It is so weak that it feels like a newborns.\nNanook continues to speak in their quiet home, the crackling fireplace his only narrative aid. “Remember the year after we got married, Yuka? The sunset came early, and we were upset we missed it- too busy working in the shop, both of us.” Nanook pauses, as the sun marks its halfway journey beneath the horizon’s maw. “Remember how this one ends?”\nAnother squeeze.\n“We walked outside that night, with our hands coated in that thick motor oil that they always shipped in frozen from Anchorage. A glob of it had stained your cheek, and I remember how it felt to not recognize you. My love, turned into some greased-up motor monkey.”\nThe sun is three quarters gone- a sliver of bright red licks their snowy encampment like raspberry glaze.\n“We were desperate, overworked, exhausted. And then- you remember this, Yuka, as we left that garage? The black sky ignited into neon, right in front of us, with wavy crystal ribbons that intertwined like loose balls of yarn. A cheechako might have mistaken it for the rapture, given how bright those gemstone colors pranced across the stars.”\nYuka squeezes hard, and Nanook feels a pull on his vision.\n“And then I turned to you and grabbed your hand-“ Nanook leaned over and grabbed her other hand, standing behind the chair- “and felt the sticky lock of our fingers in the negative fifty freeze. There was a hundred shades of purple across your face, and this time I failed to recognize you in a different way. You were a goddess, a primitive spirit with no ties to the living. You were up there with those ribbons in that moment, I could tell.”\nNo squeeze, but a small grin across a thousand wrinkles, illuminated by a dying sun. There is morning dew across his cheekbones.\n“And do you remember what I asked you?” Nanook says.\nYuka moves her shriveled lips delicately, each word a raspy, singular effort. “Can… anyone… exist… as… perfectly… as… you… do?”\nThe sun is subsiding off the coastline, leaving a dusty orange residue that is being cleansed by an oncoming storm. Nanook holds Yuka’s hands, tight as he knows possible, and quiets the whimpers in his chest. Together, they look out into the departing sunlight, and wait for harder days to come.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nWhen Randall told his beer friends that he was moving to Alaska, their reactions were mostly the same. “What they got in the Tundra that they don’t got in the South?”\nRandall lined his pool cue up to the ball, the tip compacting on the glossy face as he spewed his holiest dream. “I want to run the sled dogs.”\nBrant, the loudest in their crew, chuckled so hard that the stretched pitbull on his tee shirt began to rumble and growl. “What you know bout’ sledding, boy? The only sledding you done is with your nose down the bar line!” The rest of them, equally obtuse and disgusting, giggled in agreement.\n“I kicked that shit, long time ago. I’m done with the drinking, too.” Randall powered through the last of his frosty Miller. “Starting now.”\nBrant moved from the booth, his knees buckling under his own forgotten weight, and waddled behind Randall, slapping two thick hands on his shoulders. “You’re a fine man, Randall, for an Alabama hick. You should know, though…” Brant brought his lips behind Randall’s ear, his breath an acrid, hair-frying heat.\n“You ain’t ever gonna make it out this town,” he whispered.\nIt wasn’t a moment Randall thought about very often, those nine words in a locals-only backwater saloon. But today, as he pets Kamona’s head in the pale shiver of November, it strikes his mind like the presentation of some great achievement.\nThere was nothing easy about it- the first challenge was finding this town, the coldest gulley in all of Alaska if you account for the onshore wind chill. Then he had to find an elder to learn from, in a language he was not familiar with. That took ages, sweeping bars and online forums, pulling for a lead. Turns out, all he had to do was wait outside and listen.\nA mile from his house was a barking place that set eruption to the empty land. Randall chased the noise one morning, and met twelve leaping huskies, all riled and untethered in the six-inch sleet. It must have been strange for Sitka to witness a redneck being absorbed by the bouncing pelts of his kin. It was why Randall had to answer to Sitka’s glistening bolt-action before they could discuss apprenticeship.\nSitka was a good man, and Randall was a good worker. That was six months ago, and they’d shared a lot of coffee and frostbite since then. On his birthday, Sitka pieced him in on some good news- Kamona, the dog Randall had grown fondest of (every sledder has a favorite), was pregnant. She was due in January.\nUp above him, the sky skims and twirls in a million different arcs, like a boy learning to scribble in his coloring book. The high mountains shiver in gold tinfoil, and a small sneeze leaps from Kamona’s nose. Randall pats her belly slowly, feeling the gurgle and tensity of her chest through his mittens. This is the time of day he feeds the dogs and puts them to rest, but Randall knows that can wait. For a kid from the sticks, this is all he’s been waiting for.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nIt is January 23rd. The town of Utqiagvik is quiet, almost to the point of religious divinity. Snow spreads across the ground like frosting, and on the exposed parts of buildings, a thick layer of white freezer burn rides up the wooden edges.\nThese are not developments anyone can notice. The sun, a shy schoolgirl, has avoided this town for two months. The others make fun of her- the wind screeches laughter on worn-out haunches, the storm clouds dump their misgivings onto those unlucky enough to be below them, the sea continues its eternal bubbling hiss. None of this encourages her to show her face again.\nToday is a new day. It is expected she will be back, recovering a flash of braveness after a dark, lonely hibernation. The townspeople cower to their windows, peeling back the frost using only their breath. Utqiagvik has been patient, patient as a town can be, and they expect to be rewarded.\nHer entrance is grand- she’s always been an agent of class, and today she shows it, warming up the sky like a pot coming to boil. The darkness fades to gray, fades to blue, and then sparks of orange and pink begin to pop between the clouds, hidden kernels against solar heat. It is an articulate dance that she’s curated, and it scares the elements away. There is no more wind, no more churning sea. Only a white canvas for her to perform against.\nThe first civilian makes their way outside. A little girl opens the front door, a slip of red nose peaking from her parka as an offering. The sun takes it, climbing a little higher and shining some hotter rays across the one-story homes, which swim over the rigid mountaintops like unseen ocean tides.\nA bark cracks across the quiet space, and then another. The sled dogs billow out Sitka’s door, their coats downy and hungry for a good shine. Randall follows the crew, and in his arms are two pups, their eyes clipped fingernails, their fur gray as the past. Behind him is Kamona, heavier and milk-laden. She rubs against Randall’s side like a housecat, knowing his smell as closely as her young.\nThe sun continues to stretch and rise, a lump of sourdough set to proof. It ignites Barrow High School, then the Whaling Museum, and finally the town common, where fifty men and women stand within kissing distance. There is heat as the sun arrives, but with the temperature still in the negatives, no one is tempted to stray from the pack.\nThis is good news for Bobby and Chunhui, who stand face to face in the coming light. Bobby’s skin, almost transparent from the lack of Vitamin D, pulls tight against his lips as he sticks a tongue out, the red wet flesh baring small, smoky trails. Chunhui giggles and grabs his hands. It is these little faces, these passing glances, that have taught Chunhui what she’s been missing all her life. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks- she drags him in until his tongue is within her own.\nAnother man hangs inside the crowd- Miku. He is a man now, and the others recognize it, like the horns of a freshly matured elk; only Miku wears it in his grizzled beard, and his creased cheekbones, and his eyes that sing like judgement day. On his shoulders is his brother’s kuspuk. The sleeves are knotted tight against his chest, medallion-like, and in his pocket he chokes a cell phone. He winces constantly at the touch of it, as if it is made of something molten. Except it’s not a physical pain- it’s a spiritual kind that comes from waiting, from not knowing. Miku stares up, into the open blue sky, and lets the heat wash over him like a winter storm. There is a twinge in his eye, and then it comes, unexpected, a forgotten feeling. It is hope, overflowing his long empty cup.\nAway from all this, and the last one to be touched by the glowing sky, is the farthest home on the hemisphere. Inside is a dusty living room- a covered sofa, an old rabbit-eared television, an empty wheelchair. The door is wide open, yet the wind doesn’t catch it, so it stays that way, a bright blue gullet with one man within its lips.\nNanook steps across the beach. Each movement is slow, and as his boots break the skin of the icy soil, there’s a loud crunch. He has never done this walk alone- never dreamed he would have to. But it isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The warm feels good on his joints.\nAs he moves, he holds onto each crunch like he does with everything else- the patter of her eyelashes, the meeting of their noses, the soft sigh as she lowers into bed. And for a moment, it’s as if she’s behind him, walking in his trail, her skin a golden fire and her gaze a neon sky.\nNanook wants to turn around, to catch her in his tracks. He doesn’t. Instead, he moves forward, chasing the unbroken snow in front of him, and blesses the light that shines upon their small, little world." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Back to the Stars\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1101\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who doesn’t know how to let go." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I land in the new pod like a feather. Softly. After gathering stardust, air bubbles, and dirt on my way. At my core, yet tightening like a coil, are memories of me; gathering, entering and ejecting from the pod, a million times before this.\nI know it is only a matter of weeks before my mind begins to form and the memories from before get pressed against its wall. Deep into the subconscious. The way to which will be heavily guarded afterwards. With that, I will forever lose access to the lifetimes I roamed on this mud ball.\nMy new mind will not mind it though. The first gush of affection by the person whose womb I am in now will wash over it thoroughly. Forming new pathways to let the tentacles of this lifetime take root.\nAnd add to the baggage I carry at my core.\nWithin months, a pattern will form, not very different from the previous ones. It will make me choose my tendencies, biases, pleasures and fears. A tiny bit of it is modified by the memories of my ancestors my new blood carries. By the time I finish tunnelling my way out and cry lustily in a brightly lit room, my life energy is a freshly squeezed sponge.\nEager to soak and store more.\nThe first roll, the first crawl, the first waddle into the arms of my rapt parent; nothing comes to me as easily as I make it look. But I have the exuberance of a new life. And I bob through the hurdles set by well-meaning adults. Joyously.\nWith every touch, smell, sight, taste and sound, my pattern collects more pieces to tighten itself. With every pat, knock, hug, hurt, hunger or feast, it grows stronger, adding more weight to my core.\n\nThen comes the hurricane; intoxicating and scary at once. My limbs grow all gangly and begin to fill out awkwardly. To add to the already unbearable condition, the hormones are liberally sprinkled into my system. A slow poison, blurring the lines, heightening the sensations. There is no way I can get a handle on what is happening with my outer shell, inner core be damned!\n\nMy senses inform me I have my needs, and my mind guides me into ways in which they can be fulfilled. My parents have knocked some good sense into me before the hormones knock half of them right out. So, I, who have gathered accessories of ego, personality and status manage to forge allegiances to family, government and nation and make socially respectable choices when under observation. And am proud of them. I experience moments of weightless flight when I take my little ones out on a hike, give them a hug or watch them chase the butterflies in the park. But feel pulled down at other times. I wonder why, but don’t dwell too much on it. Who has the time?\n\nMy midriff has more mass than my shoulders. And I drag myself through my routine. My little ones have moved away and have their own little ones now. My partner and I are in an amicable cohabitation. But the sparks are long gone. Truth be told, I can feel the poison in our bloodstreams that brought us together slowly leaving us. I have more time on my hands and less energy in my legs.\nSo, I look inwards. I don’t know where to look. And when I do, all I see is a dark, scary blob.\nAfter years of seeking answers, I can vaguely see the baggage at my core. Like hot tar metalled into crushed stones. How do I get rid of it? The more I think about it, the bigger it grows. I am horrified.\nEven my midriff has shrivelled. I know my present outing on this mud ball is limited, and drawing close to an end. I am yet to figure out how to leave my baggage behind, with my ashes. I don’t want to keep coming back and go through the same loop a million more times.\nI don’t want to go up and gather the stardust to come back, again. I want to be the stardust.\nI wander in the wilderness, go on pilgrimages, give back to the world, and cry my heart out to my God. But the tar is still stuck to me.\nOne fine morning my partner doesn’t wake up. They have gone to the stars. My heart is heavy for years. Then I choose to forgive them. I feel lighter than before.\nI no longer go out seeking nirvana. That doesn’t mean I have given up. I am just preparing myself from within. Turning me into a vessel open to grace- one conscious breath at a time.\nMy joints are getting weaker by the day. When I sit still, shutting up all the noises, I can see the baggage at the core clearly now, not as tightly bound as before, but still holding on to the centre. Will I be able to pull the pin out from the centre and make the entire structure collapse before I draw my last breath?\nA visit to the doctor confirms I needn’t suffer these questions for too long. So, it is either now or not in this lifetime.\nI decide to drop the first shiny robe I gathered here, my personality. This time, for good.\nI float a little. Just enough to see me from a distance.\nThe next thing I do is pick a thing I really dislike and do it joyfully. It is easier now since I don’t have me standing in my way. But it still takes effort.\nI begin to see the creator in all his creations. Well, most of them.\nI float a little higher. But I am still without a jet pack. Nothing to jettison me to the space where I can become stardust.\nMonths drag by. On one full moon night, I feel the pull. I know it is only a matter of days now, if not hours or minutes.\nThis is the moment. My last moment of wakefulness. When I must surrender unquestioningly, wholly and irrevocably; if my baggage has to fall by the wayside as I become one with the cosmos.\nI grow buoyant and weave my way out of the maze of memories. I nearly make it. I am almost not me. But a block in the loosened pattern latches on tightly to the core and refuses to let go. And I have no energy or time left to work on it.\nThis lifetime went by too fast." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Howl for Home\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2990\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They circled each other, the ancient ritual of the eijak, teeth bared, hackles raised. The snow was soft, but not fresh. Each member of the pack watched in agony.\nA low growl sprung from Aakon’s chest. He was willing to die, but not for his family. Because if he died for them, they all died. He imagined the newborn pups, bundled in their furs, too young to Shift. Helpless, blind.\nHe was not ready to kill, especially not his blood-brother, but Toran left him with no choice: one of them was to die. Toran had called upon the Tradition of Might.\nThis was a duel to the death for pack leadership.\nAakon’s dark coat outshone the snow with its brilliant blackness. Toran was broader, bloodthirsty. Toran charged first, but not until the eijak, cycle, was complete.\nA full three circles around each other was tradition. And the Wolf Spirits of the ancient Okkanil pack never broke it.\nAakon refused to bite into his older brother, but Toran ripped open Aakon’s flesh through the fur. A cry of pain shot through the air, but Aakon was fighting for something: Eeiga. Family. \nHe imagined the destruction of his everything. His world. And he pounced on Toran with a newfound anger, until they tumbled into the snow, the cold surrounding them. Snarling, Aakon pinned his older brother, but Toran curled from under him and gripped Aakon’s front leg. A hollowing snap pierced the still air as the bone broke in two. Aakon’s howl created a space in the void of silence that shook the ground. Toran stood triumphant as his younger brother toppled.\nStaggering to his feet, Aakon stared into the eyes of his blood-brother. “How, how could you do this to me?” a shuddering whisper.\nToran waited. Waited for him to fight back.\nAakon writhed in pain, but charged with all the strength he had, in a body that could no longer hold it. Toran’s jaws connected with Aakon’s flesh, but this time, his neck. Resounding cries from the pack made Aakon claw back. Giving the last of his last.\nBut Toran had tasted Aakon’s downfall. His victory. And he shook the vulnerable flesh of his brother with vigour.\nIt happened too fast.\nAakon fell, heaving as he gurgled in his own pool of blood. Toran prowled around him, hunger in his very breathing.\nDestiny had spoken.\n“It’s over, brother,” Toran murmured, a feather of sound against a stone of steel.\n“S-spare her,” Aakon choked out, feeling Fear as he realized his blood-brother’s face was Death’s. “P-please,” he begged. “The pups.”\nToran weighed his plea. “I’ll show you mercy, brother. The way you showed me mercy when you made me Omega.” He licked the fatal wound of his dying blood-brother. “I’ll send your wife, your pack and your new litter with you into the afterlife.”\nAakon didn’t even have time to choke out a howl of despair.\nToran bit into his neck, holding it with his jaws until Aakon’s body succumbed to snow, motionless. Etruia leaped forward, longing to cover her mate with tears. A piercing wail filled her howl. But they lunged towards her, tearing her apart, until she could cry no more.\nFinally, Toran ran into the sacred place, the Place of Peace. The pack’s den. He found the pups, still weak in their furs. One by one, he shook each violently in his jaw, until he felt the crunch in their tiny necks and their mewling ceased. Finally, only the smallest was left. Toran remembered him from the Naming Ceremony.\nThe runt, Silver.\nHis own wife was expecting, but he winced at breaking the neck of the weakest of weak. Aakon had once been a runt. He didn’t need to kill his blood-brother twice. And his pack would need an Omega.\nKarma was clever.\nWith a warrior’s howl, Toran left the small bodies of the litter in Peace, while he whisked the runt away to its new home, eeiga.\nSliver, he renamed him. \n()-/\\-()-/\\-()\nNorth nuzzled him, like a mother might, licking his wet nose. “You’re lucky, Sliver.” Staring at the stars, she smiled weakly. “This is your moon.”\n “You’re not supposed to be here.”\nI’m the Omega, North. A burden nothing could outweigh. If you stay, you’ll only hurt us both. You should know that. \n“You could run away to the Skyline,” she offered, innocently.\nHis hackles raised at the suggestion, “I can’t leave. This is my life.”\n“Sliver.” Her eyes became stern, like a biting frost. “You don’t deserve this.” \n“But I’m not a Stray,” Sliver muttered defensively. “I have an eeiga.”\nNorth mournfully eyed the dazzling black horizon. “I’d go, if I could,” a breath of words.\nSliver blinked at her, in shock. “You’re the joika.” The spirit path-maker.\nA sigh escaped her. “Doesn’t mean I’m happy.”\nHe was only fifteen, but his lanky body felt ready.\nThis was the night he would Shift for the first time and see his human form. His spirit felt strong enough, capable of controlling the cravings.\nSnow broke and resettled under the sound of approaching paws. Sliver sniffed the wind. Clay. His nemesis, the dominant one in their litter, but never the strongest. But the noise signaled two wolves. Sliver raised his nose again to the dancing wind.\nNot even trying to conceal his scent. Ice.\nIce was a playmate, soft-hearted -- the wolf didn’t even know how to fight with his teeth. But a rebel against Father when it came to helping Sliver. Ice shared his food, joined Sliver to howl together at stars.\nClay only needed to nod at North and she disappeared like a wisp of smoke. Clay circled Sliver, as if to perform the eijak, barring his fangs, tail raised.\nSliver stared blankly at him. “What do you want?”\n“Leave,” Clay snarled.\n“Make me,” Sliver challenged, unfazed. Clay always came to release anger. Not much better than how the Fearful oppressed packs because of their perceived foreignness. But Sliver didn’t understand why Ice was here.\n“Don’t tempt me, runt,” Clay shot back. “This moon is mine. Give it to me or I’ll take it from you.”\n“You want me to give you the moon?” Sliver grinned, his tail swaying. “Look, I don’t know why my Shifting came early, but it’s not my fault.”\n“Y-you’re mocking me,” Clay blinked, aghast. “Rot your fur, I’ll kill you.”\nSliver anticipated the pounce, the rough tussle, Clay grabbing his muzzle, shaking it. He was embarrassed by Clay nipping his stomach, forcing him to lower his ears in submission, but not surprised.\nUntil Ice joined in, grabbing Sliver’s neck. It wasn’t a play-grab or ruffling of his scruff to assert himself. It was Sliver’s throat. And it broke the skin.\n“Ice -- stop!” Sliver cried at his littermate.\nBetrayal cut deeper than the wound, but Ice only shook harder, as Clay pinned him. Sliver watched the stars blur his vision from dizziness. As he bled Sliver, Ice’s eyes were guilty, but that wasn’t enough. A realization that felt like getting winded:\nI am going to die.\nSliver scrambled, fighting for his life. He tried to find a gap between their limbs and strength. None came, like being held beneath water. He clawed at snow, sliding further under Ice. Almost. He dug in his paws, inching just close enough --\nHis teeth grabbed his brother’s underside and tore. A yelp of confusion, pain. But it was the crack in the ice. Clay released pressure, concerned with Ice’s cry. Sliver pulled himself from under them.\nAnd he ran.\nFlying across the land he called home, the wind whistled in his ears, find your new star path. He did not know where he was going. But he knew he would survive.\n()-/\\-()-/\\-()\nSliver couldn’t believe his eyes.\nHe’d heard endless tales of the Skyline. But that could never describe what he saw. Felt.\nIt was like standing on the edge of the world, the cosmos spinning around him. Traffic rumbled past, but he smelled a kaleidoscope of people, places. The snow was in brownish banks to the side of every pathway.\nThe Fearful really don’t follow, but carve their star paths.\nHe’d run all night, going opposite everything familiar, a straight line South. And just as his bleeding became too much, he had felt it.\nA tingling, from his fingers that thrummed through his head, like a war drum. Until it became an acute pain shooting into every limb. The Elder had spoken of the power, but not the helplessness. It had felt like dying. He had howled in desperation, watching his body crack, collapse, and create itself anew.\nThen he had sat up, gasping, to see himself, Shifted. Bare, cold. Looking exactly like a Fearful, except for his fangs, his long nails. His long black braid. In a pile beside him had been his shed fur, a blanket of silver. Wrapping it around himself, he had torn at it with his teeth, making holes for his new arms and legs, creating a tuuga. His fur clothing. It had stretched down to his ankles, warmth.\nI did it.\nSliver had almost laughed. I Shifted.\nThat was his very first moon. And he had celebrated it with the shadows of a creeping dawn. Alone.\nHe shook his head to clear the memories, clutching his tuuga closer. Skyline was an ironic name; the buildings destroyed the horizon, not built it. Unlike home, everything here had a place. Whether it liked it or not. The trees were allowed in a line, the cars were always only on the road, the water was allowed in the fountain. Signs littered the concrete paths, but Sliver couldn’t read them.\nPeople stared.\nA child pointed at Sliver’s tuuga, laughing. Sliver still struggled to maintain balance on two legs. He now looked like them, but he could feel how he looked to them. It was obvious he was a Wolf Spirit from his tuuga.\nNone of them seemed to be One. Each dressed differently, each on their own star path. Their arms didn’t bear markings of their pack.\nThese were people, the Fearful. They were unable to Shift during a full moon, they lived without a Wolf Spirit. Sliver had heard too many cautionary tales about them.\nThey will never let you in, no matter how you change for them. In the end, you are left with nothing, you become nothing.\n But having a home with the Fearful must be better than being Stray. Than being homeless, haunted by homesickness.\nCan they tell I’m a Stray? \nHe discreetly tucked his long braid into his tuuga; no other men wore it long. Sliver came to a crosswalk, but heard a faint click behind him, turning to see a young woman holding her phone at him. She’s documenting. Me.\n“You’re a werewolf!” exclaimed the woman, beaming as she stared into his eyes.\nSliver wondered if he’d accidentally gone Golden. “I’m a Voolnaki,” he corrected. “Spirit Wolf.”\nShe peered at him with too much interest. “Do you have a name?”\nSliver was offended beyond words, turning away from the crosswalk as a light changed behind him. How did she know I’m an Omega?\n()-/\\-()-/\\-()\nA blaring wail made Sliver cover his ears as he followed the scent of muted grass until he entered a fenced park. It was quiet, but there was another man with a darker complexion.\nHe has long hair. Sliver noticed his many braids. And he doesn’t seem to mind.\nSuddenly, the wailing noise grew louder. The other man looked how Sliver felt, before he ran. Sliver heard a shout from behind him.\n“Hey!”\nTurning around, Sliver looked directly at a burly man with a sunburned face. The man was angry. At him.\n“Get over here, dog.”\nSliver narrowed his eyes, indignant at being called the slur for a Skyliner.\n“Hey, take it easy. Whoa, stop that, now! Make your eyes normal! Steady now -- you’d better stop glaring like that. Eyes where I can see them -- attaboy, now: no gold.”\nSliver knew what Golden Eye meant. The Fearful didn’t understand it. Even some Voolnaki couldn’t control their eyes. Some said Golden Eyes was a curse, but the packs believed it was a blessing to protect them. But the sunburned man didn’t view it as either. \nTo him, it’s an excuse.\nSliver smelled the excitement radiating from the large man as he barked at him to place his heads above him--“No, higher”--to kneel, with his back towards him, on the non-earth.\n“What do you want?” Sliver asked, but the man only began patting at his tuuga.\n“Weird costume. You’re from the rural resorts, huh?” The large man squinted. “Imma need to see some ID.”\nSliver cocked his head.\nThe man became infuriated. “Pack ID.”\n“I don’t know what you mean.” Sliver glanced around; people were watching. Documenting with their phones.\nThe man seemed pleased. “Then I’m going to need you to step aside, while we sort this out.”\nHe yanked Sliver from the pavement, taking him to the car. Sliver knew people went inside cars, but instead he was thrown over the hood, splayed like a caught fish.\nHe squirmed to get free, trying to stay calm. \n“Listen up, yellow-eyes. You either show me some damn ID or we go for a little trip down to the station.” He pushed Sliver’s face into the cold, hard car. “You don’t want that.”\n“I don’t know what you want!” Sliver wailed, feeling tears threatening to pour.\n“Give me your fucking ID, dog!”\nSliver felt his eyes turn. That tingling in his fingernails, a twitch in his jaw. Then a surge. He growled, a roar from the back of his throat and stared at the man.\nImmediately, something metal clicked from the man’s pocket and he pointed it at Sliver’s head. A gun. \n“I don’t have any ‘ID!” The Fear was all-encompassing. “Let me go! Please, let me go!”\nThe officer holstered his gun, grabbing him off the hood, opening the door to the car --\n“How many times have I said don’t leave without ID, son?” a low voice came from behind them.\nSliver tried to look over his shoulder to see who was talking.\nThe officer let the stranger come closer. A shorter, middle-aged man with darker skin. “Look at the trouble you’ve caused the officer! Should’ve just listened,” muttered the stranger, patting Sliver on the shoulder.\n“Sorry, sir,” the stranger shook the officer’s hand. “Thanks for your time. Teenagers. Never listen, you know.” He winked at Sliver, showing the officer some ID.\nGrunting, the officer frowned. “Don’t let it happen again.” \n“Never, sir. Have a good one!” The stranger smiled, taking Sliver away by his arm.\nHe didn’t save me for free.\n“Call me, Julio,” he glanced at Sliver. “What’s your name, kid?”\n“Sliver.”\nA hearty laugh rumbled from Julio’s chest. “No, kid, your name.”\nSliver stared at him, confused.\n“Ohhh,” Julio drew out the word. “You’re from a traditional pack, ain’t you? I’ve heard of them.” Julio eyed his tuuga. “You’re far from home, kid.”\nI don’t have a home, Sliver wanted to say, but that would be admitting to being Stray.\n“How old are you?”\n“Fifteen. I just Shifted. My first moon.”\n“Wow, okay, so you’re really new, then.” He stroked his chin with his index finger, a black band on it. “You should go back, kid. You stick out here like a sore thumb. This ain’t your home.”\n“You’re a Skyline Voolnaki.”\n“Yeah,” Julio hesitated. “You could say.”\nDog was the word we called them back home for always adapting to fit in with the Fearful. Some dogs even filed their fangs. Skyliner was the politest way of putting it that Sliver knew.\n“People will think you’re a spy, pup,” he told Sliver.\n“I couldn’t stop it,” Sliver confessed, suddenly. “I went Golden Eyes.” He bowed his head, ashamed that he couldn’t control the shade of his eyes. The building Shift.\n“You’re new to the city, kid -- just Shifted. Why’d you come here? Most packs . . . out there . . . don’t like making contact.”\n“I-I, well, I was . . .” Sliver hung his head. Rejected. Hunted. Abandoned.\n“Hey,” Julio tapped Sliver’s shoulder. “Chin up, pup. You stay with us in the meantime.” He smiled, “We’ll get you proper clothes. And kid, you really need a new name.”\nSliver shrunk. “I like my tuuga,” he conceded. It felt -- smelled -- safe.\n“Fine, just a new name then. Sliver’s a nickname. I know you guys call it your ‘Spirit name’ or whatever, but here, we have our name-name and a nickname.”\nSliver hated his name, but most Omegas were nameless.\nJulio snapped. “Hey, why not Silver?”\n()-/\\-()-/\\-()\nSitting with his back to the Skyline, Silver had driven from the bustling centre to the city’s edge, where he could see the stars. It was a full moon eijak, cycle, since he’d lost his home. His eeiga. Every part of him felt changed, reinvented. The ancestors likely shook their heads woefully.\nBut I’m alive to feel their wrath.\nHe imagined Ice tussling with a new playmate. How Clay would have found a different Omega to pin in the dirt. And he wondered -- hoped -- North might be longing for him to return.\nHome.\nA cure, a blessing when there. And a curse, a sickness when absent.\nHis hand ran over his newly-shaven head, missing its traditional braid. Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, the Elder’s words echoed in his mind:\nWe, the Wolf Spirits, follow in our ancestors’ star paths.\nWhenever you are lost, howl for home.\nAnd we will always find our way to you.\nLifting his moonlit face, he climbed atop Julio’s truck. If only. Finally, he let the tears spill, the emptiness becoming his fill. If only you’d come find me.\nWith a loud cry, Silver turned to the North Star and howled a last goodbye to home." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: NIGHTWATCH: SECRETS OF THE LIVING GALLERY\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2157\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the heart of the city stood a grand museum adorned with relics of history and culture, its towering façade standing as a testament to the centuries that have passed. Upon entering the museum, visitors stand greeted by vast halls housing various artifacts, ranging from ancient sculptures to medieval manuscripts, each whispering tales of bygone eras. Immersive exhibitions transport guests through the annals of time, displaying the evolution of human civilization in vivid detail.\n\nSpanning multiple floors, the museum boasts an expansive collection that fills its labyrinthine corridors, providing endless opportunities for exploration and discovery. From majestic paintings adorning the walls to meticulously preserved artifacts encased in glass, every corner holds a treasure trove of history waiting to be unearthed.\n\nDespite its size, the museum remains a beloved destination for locals and tourists alike, drawing visitors from both near and far and transcending generations. Whether delving into the mysteries of ancient civilizations or marveling at masterpieces of art, visitors become drawn to its halls, yearning to connect with the past and enrich their understanding of the world.\n\nAs visitors step across the threshold of the grand museum, they are enveloped by an ethereal ambiance that seems to breathe with the weight of history. Whispers of forgotten tales linger in the air, hinting at secrets long guarded by the ancient artifacts that adorn its halls.\n\nLegend has it that during the stillness of the night, the museum takes on a life of its own. Custodians speak of spectral apparitions drifting through the galleries as if the spirits of the past have awakened to roam once more among the relics of their era.\n\nPeople claim to have felt a chill run down their spine as they passed by specific exhibits, as though the essence of bygone eras reaches out to touch the present. Others speak of inexplicable phenomena – artifacts mysteriously shifting from their pedestals or distant echoes of laughter echoing through deserted corridors.\n\nDespite these whispers of the supernatural, the museum's allure remained undiminished. Visitors are drawn not only by the tangible artifacts on display but also by the intangible aura of mystery and intrigue that permeates every corner. Whether seeking historical enlightenment or a brush with the unknown, those who enter the museum's hallowed halls will immerse themselves in a world where the past and present intertwine in compelling ways.\n\nThe grand museum, with its imposing architecture and storied halls, is a testament to the vision of its visionary founder, Sir Archibald Kingsley. Sir Kingsley, a prominent philanthropist and connoisseur of the arts, envisioned a sanctuary where the treasures of humanity's collective heritage could be preserved and shared for future generations.\n\nBuilt-in the late 19th century, the museum quickly became a cultural beacon within the city, its significance transcending mere bricks and mortar. It serves as a living testament to the resilience of human creativity and ingenuity, celebrating the achievements of civilizations both past and present.\n\nAt the heart of the museum's collection lies its greatest treasure: the Codex Veritas, a priceless manuscript believed to hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Written by an enigmatic sage centuries ago, its pages are said to contain wisdom that transcends time and space, attracting scholars and seekers from around the globe in search of enlightenment.\n\n<<>>\n\nFresh out of college and needing a job, Alex stumbled upon an opportunity to work as a security guard at the museum. Sure, it was not a job that offered opportunities, but at least he did not have to work hard. The building was warm and calm, and only he was in it.\n\nDespite friends' warnings about the eerie nature of night shifts in such places, he eagerly accepted the position. Initially, he was excited about being surrounded by history and culture. Not that he was fond of museums or the history stored inside. He was a simple guy who loved sports and movies more. Alex accepted the job because he got paid to do nothing.\n\n“Easy money,” he said aloud.\n\nAs Alex settled into his role as a security guard at the museum, he found himself stationed at a massive table positioned strategically in the heart of the security room. This room served as the nerve center of the museum's surveillance operations, equipped with state-of-the-art technology to monitor every corner and corridor of the vast building.\n\nThe room's centerpiece was a sprawling control panel adorned with an array of monitors displaying live feeds from cameras positioned throughout the museum. Each monitor provided a detailed view of different sections, from the grand halls adorned with ancient artifacts to the labyrinthine corridors that stretched across multiple floors.\n\nThe monitors flickered to life with a soft hum as Alex took his seat at the table, surrounded by the gentle glow of the screens casting an otherworldly light in the dimly lit room. The air was thick with the scent of electronics and the faint hum of machinery, creating an atmosphere of quiet intensity.\n\nThe control panel itself was a marvel of modern technology, featuring an array of buttons, switches, and knobs that allowed Alex to manipulate the camera feeds with precision. With a few deft movements of his fingers, he could zoom in on a specific area, pan across the room, or easily switch between different camera angles.\n\nAbove the control panel hung a large map of the museum, marked with colored pins indicating the locations of each camera. It served as a visual reference, helping Alex to navigate the labyrinthine layout of the building and quickly identify any areas that required attention.\n\nAs he settled into his routine, Alex's eyes scanned the monitors, vigilantly watching over the museum's treasures as the night unfolded. Though the job may have lacked excitement, safeguarding the museum's priceless artifacts filled him with purpose and pride. And as the hours passed and the night wore on, he remained vigilant, his eyes never straying from the monitors that illuminated the darkness with their watchful gaze.\n\nHowever, as the novelty wore off and the reality of the night shifts set in, he found himself confronting the eerie silence that permeated the halls. Alone in the vast expanse of the museum during those long, solitary nights, Alex's mind began to play tricks on him. The once-familiar artifacts and exhibits took on a sinister edge in the dim glow of the security lights, casting long shadows that seemed to dance and shift when he wasn't looking.\n\nThe silence, punctuated only by the occasional creak of ancient floorboards or the distant hum of the ventilation system, became oppressive, weighing heavily on Alex's nerves. His heart raced with each passing minute, his breaths shallow and quick. No matter how faint, every sound echoed through the empty corridors, amplifying the sense of isolation that enveloped him.\n\n“You are imagining stuff,” he shouted, his voice trembling. “It is an old building. Buildings make sounds no matter how old they are. It is normal.”\n\nBut deep down, Alex could not shake the feeling of unease that gnawed at him. It was as if the air around him was thick with a palpable sense of dread, suffocating him with its weight.\n\nAlex became increasingly susceptible to his imagination's whims as the hours stretched, conjuring up phantom footsteps echoing behind him or ghostly whispers drifting through the air. The solitude of the museum became a breeding ground for his fears and insecurities, transforming the once-fascinating environment into a source of unease and apprehension. Despite his friends' warnings about the eerie nature of the night shifts, Alex had underestimated the toll that the solitude of the museum would take on his psyche. He grappled with a creeping sense of dread night, wondering if he would ever grow accustomed to the unsettling stillness that pervaded the ancient halls.\n\nAs the hours passed, Alex's nerves settled, and he found solace in the stillness of the night. But then, as the clock struck midnight, the museum seemed alive. From the depths of the darkness, Alex heard faint whispers as though the relics were murmuring ancient secrets. His heart quickened as he scanned the empty halls, searching for the source of the unsettling sounds.\n\n“Is someone there?” he yelled into the dim corridor, illuminated only by a lonely chandelier. He turned the flashlight toward the sound and started to walk forward.\n\nThe whispers grew louder with each step, weaving a chilling melody that sent shivers down his spine. Alex's mind raced with thoughts of ghosts and spirits haunting the museum's halls. Could it be that the artifacts held a life of their own after midnight?\n\nDetermined to uncover the truth, Alex ventured deeper into the museum, his flashlight cutting through the darkness like a beacon of hope. Every time he moved the light, it appeared to him like something had just moved. Yet, with each corner turned, he found empty displays and silent statues. Just as he began to question his sanity, a sudden clang echoed from the far end of the museum. Alex's heart leaped into his throat as he hurried towards the sound, his footsteps echoing in the empty corridors.\n\nHis flashlight illuminated a figure standing amidst the artifacts as he rounded a corner. Relief washed over him as he realized it was merely a dummy knocked over by a stray draft of wind.\n\n\"From where did wind appeared?\" He murmured with his teeth closed.\n\nBut then, he noticed something peculiar. The mannequin's eyes followed his every move; its expression twisted into a sinister grin. Alex's blood ran cold as he stumbled backward, his mind reeling with fear.\n\n“It is just my imagination,” he whispered with a shaking voice. “None of this can be real. My mind is playing tricks on me.”\n\nBefore he could react, the whispers intensified, swirling around him like a malevolent storm. Shadows danced on the walls, and the museum groaned with ancient agony. With trembling hands, Alex reached for his radio, desperate to call for help. But when he pressed the button, only static greeted him, mocking his futile attempts to escape the museum's grasp.\n\n“Can’t help you,” a voice emerged before him, from the darkness. Alex rushed forward following the sounds, determined to resolve the mystery of the sounds.\n\nAs he continued through the museum, he reached the Gallery of Living Art section. The museum staff had rumored that the paintings in this gallery had a peculiar habit of coming alive at night, but Alex had dismissed such tales as mere superstition. However, as he stood before the vivid canvases, he could not shake the unease that crept over him.\n\nThe paintings seemed to pulsate with an otherworldly energy, their colors shifting and swirling as if they possessed a life of their own. Alex's breath caught in his throat as he watched in disbelief, his rational mind struggling to comprehend the impossibility unfolding before him.\n\nSuddenly, one of the portraits—a serene landscape depicting a tranquil forest—began to stir. The trees swayed gently in an invisible breeze, their leaves rustling with a melody that seemed to echo through the gallery. Alex blinked in astonishment, unable to tear his eyes away from the surreal sight.\n\nThen, from another painting—a portrait of a regal noble person—a soft voice emanated, its words barely audible yet filled with haunting beauty. Alex strained to listen, his heart pounding as the gallery came alive with whispered secrets and forgotten dreams.\n\n“I must be dreaming,” he shook his head. “This can’t be real.”\n\nFear and fascination warred within him as he hesitated, unsure whether to flee or stay and unravel the mystery of the living paintings. But curiosity won out, driving him forward into the heart of the gallery, where the boundary between reality and fantasy blurred into obscurity.\n\nAs he approached the painting—a portrait of a starlit sky ablaze with celestial wonders—Alex felt a strange pull, as if the very essence of the artwork beckoned him closer. He reached out to touch the canvas with trembling hands, his fingertips grazing the surface with a hesitant reverence.\n\nThe world around him disappeared, replaced by a dreamscape of swirling colors and ethereal beauty. Stars danced overhead, their light casting a gentle glow upon Alex's face as he beheld the wonders of the night sky.\n\nBut the enchantment shattered as quickly as it had begun, leaving Alex in the silent gallery again. The paintings returned to their static state, their magic fading into the recesses of memory.\n\nAs dawn broke over the horizon, Alex emerged from the Gallery of Living Art, his mind buzzing with questions and wonder.\n\n\"How long has he been standing in the gallery? Was he slept and dreaming while standing?\"\n\nHe returns to a desk with monitors but couldn't explain what just happened. The cameras stay silent.\n\nThough he may never fully understand the mysteries within the museum's walls, one thing was sure: his night watch had become far more than a mere job—it had become an adventure beyond imagination." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The treasure\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2582\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“You told me you like the dark, so I know that you are going to love this!” That was the last thing he said to me before he dragged me over to the basement door and pushed me down the stairs.\nI have been locked in this horrible, abandoned house for close to three days now. Or I think it has been that long. Thankfully I had some food and water in my backpack, but it will soon be gone and then I will starve. I am truly starting to hate this place. It’s pitch black and full of stuff. Just getting around has been so difficult, even after I found some candles that I can use. I found the remains of two other girls, propped up in display cases. It’s horrible. I’m going to try to force the door open. Whoever finds this note, please help us…\n----\n“This is it. As far as we can go in the car.”\nSam looked at the old gate and smiled excitedly. Behind it she could see a short driveway and an eerie-looking mansion half hidden in the evening shadows. “Are you sure we are allowed to be here?” She looked over at Brock who was already out of the car, putting on his backpack and testing his flashlight.\n“Of course we’re not. What would be the fun in that.” He flashed her a big smile and looked up at the house. “But we must be careful. The story is that there is a hidden treasure somewhere in there, left by the first owners. Some big wig European guy bought it months ago but hasn’t been here yet to look for it. He might have hired some guys to keep an eye out for treasure hunters like us.” Brock motioned for her to get out and join him. “With a bit of luck, we will find it and be long gone before anyone notices that we were ever here.”\nSam reached over and got her bag from the backseat before getting out. “All right, I’m ready. But you will have to help me climb over that gate.”\nBrock said nothing. All his attention seemed to be on the house. That made her all the happier. She knew that she was taking quite a risk going off with him like this. They hadn’t known each other for that long. This was the first-time meeting in person after chatting online for months, drawn together by their joy of exploring urban landscapes, old houses, tunnels and really just about anywhere that you could find spooky atmosphere and rich history. When he got that tip about an old treasure in a supposedly haunted mansion Brock had been so excited. Finally, the adventure of a lifetime had come knocking at his door. And in the middle of planning everything out he had invited her to tag along with him.\nHer parents hadn’t been very understanding of her friendship with him, so she made up a story of a girl’s trip to Florida. She was 19 after all and more than capable of making decisions for herself. And he was quite cute which didn’t hurt either.\nThe walk up the driveway was harder than she had expected, and Sam tripped a couple of times trying to keep up with Brock. As they came up to the front door, he pulled out a set of lock picks and quickly had the door open.\n“Here we are. Ladies first.”\nSam held her flashlight up and walked slowly into the foyer. She felt a tingle of anticipation race down her back as the room seemed to be completely undisturbed. It was like the owners had just walked out and left everything behind.\nThe beam from her light revealed cobwebs and dust and she couldn’t help but search for the light switch. This room, and probably the whole house, would be breathtaking when properly lit up.\n“Brock, do you think that it would be all right to turn on the lights? This place is so big. I’m not sure that our flashlights will be enough.”\n“Sorry but no. We can’t take the chance. We will just have to stay together while we are searching. Two lights will be better than one.”\nOn the way up to the second floor they saw marks in the dust on the floor. “Apparently, we aren’t the first to search this place. Are you completely sure that the new owner hasn’t been here already?” Sam looked over her shoulder and glimpsed Brock walking back into a bedroom they had already searched.\n“Hmm…? Sorry I wasn’t listening. What did you say?” His attention seemed to be somewhere else. It didn’t even look like he was trying all that hard to find the treasure. All hid did was poke around a bit. Look into closets and drawers when she was way more thorough, all but knocking down the walls.\n“I was asking about the current owner. If he had been here before us. It’s clear that the house can’t be as abandoned as you said.”\nThis comment really got his attention. “What do you mean?” He stopped looking around and came to stand a bit too close to her. When she didn’t respond straight away, he tilted her head up to look at him. “Honey what did you mean? You really have me curious now.” Sam felt herself blushing and took a small step back without meaning to. “Well, it’s hard to say just from looking around now but don’t you think that there is something funny about this house? It still looks like someone lives here.”\n“But it has been abandoned for 40 years! Just look around, everything is filthy. No one in their right mind would live in it like this.”\n“It’s not that bad. They manufacture dust like this all the time for movies. Just look around. Really look. If no one had been here for 40 years the house itself would be a lot worse for wear. Yet it is still almost ready for the owner to move in.”\n“You are overthinking it. Everything looks better covered in shadows. I’ll bring you back in daylight and then you can see how bad it looks.” Brock winked at Sam and continued the search.\nThey searched the house for two hours, going from room to room, but finding nothing close to being a treasure. A lot of sellable things but Sam knew that she would feel like a real thief if she took any of them. Under one of the beds, she had found a beautiful necklace that Brock had insisted that she keep and even that made her feel a bit guilty. Maybe it was for the better that they didn’t find that supposed treasure. \nBack on the ground floor, Sam walked into the foyer and couldn’t help but feel like this house had, in a way, been made for her. All the old, heavy, antique furniture, the thick curtains hanging in front of the windows. Those beautiful hardwood floors that peaked at her through the filth and the grand chandeliers that adorned the ceilings. Living here must have been like living in a castle and she could almost see herself as the princess of the house. Bossing the servants around, floating through life, flirting her way through countless marriage proposals, only to decline them all and living happily out her life here at the estate.\nA loud cough from Brock brought her back out of her fantasy.\n“I’m sorry but this story of a hidden treasure seems to be just that, a story. And I brought you all the way over here for nothing.” He seemed to be truly sorry, looking sullen and pouting with disappointment.\n“No, no, it’s okey. I’ve been having so much fun with you. And just getting to look around this house has been a true adventure. If you come over here, I might even be persuaded to give you a kiss for your trouble.” She smiled at him and slid the bag off her shoulder.\nA crooked little smile appeared on his face but quickly disappeared again. “I would love a kiss but there is one more place for us to search. How could I be so forgetful. The basement is a perfect place to hide something valuable.”\nSam wanted to disagree. No matter how much she loved exploring, basements, no matter how old, had never been her thing. Just the name, basement, sounded dark and damp, with a promise of bugs and rats in every corner. Brock was looking longingly at the hallway where the basement door was, and she didn’t have the heart to say no to him. It wouldn’t hurt to go with him down there. With his way of searching, they would be back up here in 10 minutes, even faster if she flirted a bit more.\nShe followed him into the hallway and watched as he disappeared down into the darkness. The only things she could make out from his light were steps and then a stone floor.\nFor a moment she was tempted to wait up there, letting him have the basement all to himself, but a sudden, excited, gasp sent her curiosity into overdrive.\nSam was already on her way down when Brock yelled for her. “Sam, you must get down here. I think I just found something big.” As she slowly picked her way over to him, through mountains of old stuff, which had been pushed a side to make a tiny path, her flashlight started to give out. It flickered for a while but just as she reached him it gave out and they stood there in complete darkness.\n“Damn. Yours is out too. I was hoping that we could use it to look at the stuff I found. Mine died just as I was uncovering it.”\n“Sorry. Do you have extra batteries in your pack? Or in your car?” Sam looked where she thought Brock stood and tried to inch her way closer. She frowned when all she found was more stuff to trip over.\n“Well, I do own more batteries, but they are at home. Maybe we should try to make our way back upstairs. Then I can come back later.” Sam bit her lips together to hide her relief and started to turn around.\nA hand shot out and grabbed her and she let out a scream.\n“Relax, it’s only me. Do you have your phone? I left mine back in the car, but we could use yours to get a glimpse of what I found. Then I won’t have to come back if it’s not worth it.”\nShe felt by the tone in his voice that he already had his hand out waiting so she got her phone out of her pocket, turned the screen on and handed it to him. Brock was bouncing excitedly up and down and for a moment she caught a glimpse of what he had found. But before she could make it out the light was gone.\n“Brock is my phone alright?”\nThere was no answer and as she strained her eyes to listen for him, she could just barely make out footsteps walking away.\n“Brock, don’t you dare to leave me here. This isn’t funny!”\nAfter a few moments a cold laughter came from where she guessed the stairs were. “Don’t you worry pretty Sam. You will never be left all alone. But I must admit that I’m quite surprised you fell for this. You are the fourth girl I bring in here for a treasure haunt, but you are the only one that actually went willingly down here. The others had to be tricked or even pushed down.”\nHe was walking up the stairs now. Slowly and loudly, like he was rubbing it in. He was free and she was trapped. The door opened and she could see brightness when he turned on the lights upstairs.\n“Just so you know,” Brock said just before he closed the door and left her, “this is actually my mother’s house. No one has lived here for the last 40 years, after her unfortunate accident, but it has been very well cared for. My treasure story is also true. You girls are my treasure. Collected with great care. More valuable to me than diamonds and gold.”\n----\nFor a moment Sam stood still and couldn’t believe it. Was he really going to leave here down here to rot. Most likely to die like the girls before her. This was even better than she had expected. No one had ever tried to outsmart her like that. She couldn’t get the grin off her face. This was so perfect.\nSlowly she reached into her bag and pulled out a new flashlight. It was smaller but had a much better light than the previous one. The salesman had promised that it would light up even the darkest of caves.\nIt didn’t take her long to find his treasures. The three girls had been propped up and posed inside of individual trophy cases. Almost like an exhibit at a museum. On the last one he had included a note, a plea for help that the girl seemed to have written before she died. Sam felt sorry for them. They should have known better that to trust some random man off the internet. You could never know what psychos you might run across.\nShe took her time walking across the room and sat on the bottom step for a while before climbing up to the door. Brock was walking around up there, singing at the top of his lungs with glee.\nSam had all the time in the world to get out. Even if he tried to leave, he wouldn’t be able too. She had the keys right here in her bag. No matter what he would be seeing her again soon.\nSlowly and soundlessly, she got her own set of lockpicks out and opened the door. As she let herself out, she heard him closing the front door behind him.\nIt was almost like he wanted her to have more than enough time to prepare.\nWhen he came back into the house, cursing her under his breath, she was waiting for him in the foyer. The look on his face was priceless and Sam instantly wished that she had a camera to capture it.\nThe smugness and confidence that had surrounded him before was gone. Instead, he looked at her like something out of a horror movie.\n“How… how did you get up here?”\n“Well honey I couldn’t get my kiss if I was stuck down there?” Sam walked up to him slowly and moved to embrace him. Brock let her, like he was on autopilot, while trying to find a way out of this.\nJust before he got a good hold of her Sam hit him with her stun gun. Brock twitched against her and fell to the floor where she slowly posed him like she wanted him to be found.\nHe was moaning softly as he came back to consciousness. Sam was kneeling on top of him, waiting patiently. “Well, hello there. You finally came back to me.”\nHe locked eyes with her and tried to talk but she shushed him. “You really don’t have to explain anything. I just wanted you to be awake for this.” Then she leaned down, kissed him lightly and cut his throat." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Spider and Moth\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2145\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is stuck between two opposing sides and can’t decide which one to choose." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Trgger warning: this story contains references to war and the trauma of war.\n\nMade up of the thinnest of protein fiber threads, the spider’s web prompts a cautious reflection about how nature can trick light. The silk is an invisible cloak splayed out with mathematical accuracy on a branch, or across the corner of a doorway, or between two rails.\n\nThe subject is a particular web on your television. It’s not on the frame, but rather drawing you in from within - the many moving shades of a pixelated scene unfolding. A spider is weaving its silk deftly around a trapped moth shaking so vigorously that dew drops can be seen tinkling off the web. The spider seems to be talking to you. Do not forget: We know what we are but know not what we may be. We are multiple and we are singular. Predator and prey. Spider and moth. Choose your side, they’ll say.\n\nYou are restless and you change the channel multiple times. Starving cats, an abandoned tin of Nabataean coins, firestorms turning acres to ash. Then you see a closeup of a tent holding a family of ten, pitched in a field of grey rubble. That one hurts somewhere deep, like acid in the stomach. You rub your eyes with your fist, blink fiercely, and manage to transform the scene into an old oak tree in a field of evergreen rubble. Better, but not quite the entertainment you need to still your mind.\n\nYou need the bizarre, the unbelievable, to truly make sense of what is happening around you. You need to block out the surrounding noise. You need your mind to be paralyzed with a serpent’s sting.\n\nObediently, the television brings forth a cinematic experience. You tuck your knees under you in anticipation and place the remote control down carefully as if it were a sleeping doll.\n\nYou find yourself peeping into a high-ceilinged room of black marble, lined with glossy gold-plated cages, empty, their doors left open. A glass table is the room’s centrepiece, covered with a board game designed as a world map with plastic figures of different colours arranged as miniature armies around the frame, and a pair of dice cast precariously. At the corner of the table, you spot the broken threads of an abandoned spider web, no spider nor moth to be found.\n\nFilling the room is an incredible, unique gathering of wild animals from the desert and jungle, dressed in suits. Not ordinary suits. Particularly Ermenegildo Zegna, Hart Schaffner Marx, Kiton and Brioni suits. You take a closer look at the attire of the assembly of animals: You spy a boa constrictor in a bow tie, a cockroach sporting cone heels, an alligator with ray bans and a giraffe, whose main feature, a length of patterned neck, remains bowed by the low ceiling.\n\nIn the background are more animals - apex predators and those who live in the shadows of apex predators. In the camouflage of murky waters; up the Euterpe Precatoria palm in the Amazon; under the red rocks of the Wadi Rum desert.\n\nThe animals wear dark ties either a single colour or striped, and cufflinks enamelled with concords, dice and leopards. A thought flutters faster than a moth’s wing: it is strange to see a leopard wear leopard cuff links.\n\nThe animals in suits make up a group of distinguished and honourable representatives, collectively deadly. As predators, it can be forgiven that their exchanges with deadly dangers are simply routine. As predators, chemical wax and smoke are comfortable odours, and fear a frequency as thin as a thread of silk in the wind. \n\nYour gaze settles more firmly on the leopard, who dominates the room and prowls around the gameboard. The leopard’s claws are blunted by restless pacing across slate and marble all his adult life. Earth carpets have become a distant memory. The leopard’s lipless jaw is set to hide his diamond daggers. You notice he painted over his black spots with amaranth red, zaffre blue and jade to resemble what he is not. Better to keep his inferior companions at ease.\n\nHe pauses briefly next to a redhead parrot, who swings from an industrial lamp. The parrot is distinctly associated with inciting dissent under the guise of lexical semantics. It is feasible that others had attempted before him to interrupt her stream of political lyrics, but while stealth and calculated patience stoke the leopard’s judgement, you would be mistaken to expect he holds any tolerance for… well, tolerance. And today and everyday the parrot preaches tolerance. Tolerance for victims of abuse, tolerance for minorities, tolerance for the indigenous, tolerance for… No, the leopard definitely has no fuel in his very full belly for propaganda threatening his right to existence. His principles of diplomacy are very much like the rhinoceros, who you, as the detached spectator, find your focus being steered towards.\n\nYou observe the rhinoceros is endowed with tremendous strength and inherited wealth. The jewels slung over his ivory are more mesmerising than the dews of recent rain. Unfortunately, if you were to trespass on his thoughts, you would find but clumps of dull clay, unfinished or misshapen. It remains apparent he has many allies in the room. He holds the key to ample natural resources to be traded or pillaged. His popularity is currency.\n\nAnimals surrounding a table of plastic figurines. Their world is a game of risk and all in the room its players. Although their motives may differ, their humanity is unquestionable, and it is always under this flag that the finer details of their collective mission are fixed. A more primal instinct, more deeply buried, has been instilled in each of them thousands of thousands of years earlier, at the moment the blackhole took its first breath - win the game of survival.\n\nThe game is a subject of fascination, strategy, logic. The rules are simple. Walls, weapons and wealth are the winning combination. They risk it all with a roll of a dice - they play to carve out the fate of two species.\n\nSome play reluctantly in the hope that they’ll gain security and prosperity. Others play silently, waiting for the game to reveal if they are predator or prey. Spider or moth.\n\nIt is not important if the leopard or the rhinoceros win, nor if the spider returns to its web, nor if the moth manages to avoid the trap and fly through a window, of which there are none. Overwhelming any thought you may have of how the game will unfold, is the raw stench of power, the disease of deception and the mockery that is manipulation. A rumour whispers around the room. Do not forget: We know what we are but know not what we may be. We are multiple and we are singular. Predator and prey. Spider and moth. Choose your side, they’ll say.\n\nThe leopard and the rhinoceros and kings of kingdoms and the moves they make feel infinitely distant, but you’ve been promised they hold the key to your fate. Your future may be untold but as your previous life unfolds and falls apart between your hands and you see too many faces of your loved ones buried in sand and wrapped in white… you can not help but wonder if they rolled the dice the wrong way by mistake.\n\nThere is still time for them to pick up their miniature figurines and move them away from the land and sand you stand on, or dash the board against the wall or on the glass top table until it shatters into a thousand pieces. Break the rules. Change the pattern. Let the moth catch the spider.\n\nBut alas, the silence in the room is sliced. Like a dagger with the handle towards the hand. They choose their vice.\n\n“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”\n\nIt is not important who speaks the words, only that they are uttered with intention, and disseminated to the herd.\n\nThe weight of those words are heavier than the two thousand-pound bombs about to create thirty six foot craters in the ground, commissioned by leopard, rhinoceros or boa, flamingo or parrot, during these harmless games of risk. Because of course, what you watch is not their first fix.\n\nBut you do not yet understand the fragile, invisible web of alliances and diplomacy, the historical context of such famous words being spoken, nor the weight of those words. In fact you never learnt to speak their language; they ever tried to speak yours.\n\nNor do you know the significance of the game you watch. But something tastes more bitter in the mouth than the mould on the stale bread in your hand. Except, you no longer have the stale bread in your hand, because that was last week… this week there is no bread left.\n\nAnimals, suits and the board game fade until the television screen is black. Except, there is no screen. Because how can a cardboard box set atop a plastic bucket (whose holes are taped with cloth rags and stuffed with small stones), possibly power enough electricity to broadcast the lives of those of such high quality, esteem and political complexity?\n\nYour craftsmanship is lowly and unconvincing in comparison. Your imagination is crumbling and the numbness from the serpent’s sting is fading. But you stare at your makeshift screen and you cling onto that tender memory of a map and cards and pictures of animals of the desert and the jungle and feckless laughter at the thrill of playing the newly unwrapped game brought by a boy who used to have two arms and whose parents are martyrs like yours… the memory tastes like yesterday. Shakespeare forewarned: let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that’s gone. Yet you can not but chew on the sacredness of yesterday. You took your space in a circle with the other children. You were seven years old. They were all older and already drank the black tea made bitter with mint and sweet with sugar. You all surrounded the game board. Proud to be a part of the group, you rolled the dice, sitting on the lap of your sister. You did not know the rules then, either.\n\nNow you are eleven and your cardboard television on a bucket is getting wet and it is no longer distracting you from the sounds of neighbours and strangers yelling and running down the grey rubble once-was-a-street and you feel you should use your crumpled legs to get up and help them dig out any other neighbours or strangers they can find from under the grey rubble made by the thirty-six foot crater but your mind is foggier than the dust caused by the two thousand-pound bomb just twenty seconds ago dropped two streets away and your legs and your head and your heart feel heavier than the high-explosive contents of that bomb delivered by anyone and everyone who decided you are not on their side.\n\nFighting through the trauma stems an oak tree, trying to push its roots through the evergreen rubble of your mind.\n\nYou climb the oak’s lean trunk and begin to pin to its branches the faces of all the lost children sitting in a circle playing games, and then the faces of your classmates, your teachers, your neighbours, and then your family, your Aunts and Uncles, your cousins, your mother, your father, your older sister… Roots run deeper than any crater and branches extend and run into one another without the hindrance of walls or weapons bought by wealth. Every memory of every loved one you buried is given its special place, carefully connected, cocooned in silk, and diligently protected. The oak by its nature and humanity promises you that protection. \n\nEverything else is uncertain. But finally, your mind is still.\n\nYou stand. You run. You dig. You carry. You bury. You pray. You shout. You wait. You fight. You wait. You pray.\n\nYou press your forehead against the ground with your eyes shut. The earth welcomes you - where a leopard’s claw should rake, where roots should grow. Instead, your family sleeps under a concrete jungle and your tent is full of strangers.\n\nYour strength befits the thinnest of threads of silk, bearing burdens of memories too heavy for one so young and too painful to be numbed by any serpent’s sting. You wear the invisible cloak of 17,000 other unaccompanied children whose fates are in the hands of those casting the dice. \n\nWhile the game of risk remains at play and spider webs continue to be spun, they speak silently to the world: Do not forget: We know what we are but know not what we may be. We are multiple and we are singular. Spider and moth. Predator and prey. Choose your side, they’ll say." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Unbecoming of Belinda Blackwell\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 3013\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There are few places Belinda Blackwell likes to lay down to rest more than upon her husband’s chest. \nHe hadn’t been expecting her. Belinda hadn’t been expecting to be home so soon, either– what with the unpredictability of her father’s illness demanding open schedules from his children, someone on-call at all times lest the old man die without one of them there to hold his hand. When Oscar had come to join them a week early— something about a case closing timely and a stiffening in his shoulders when Belinda enquired about her sister-in-law— she pounced on the opportunity to bid her brother and father adieu and return early to the husband she so desperately missed. \nFinding Etienne still tangled in their bed covers, she had stripped down to her chemise and crawled atop him slowly. He had thrashed hard upon stirring and finding her there, his eyes foggy with confusion and fright, but she had kissed his face and rubbed his arms, whispering “It’s me, it’s only me” until he relaxed back into the sheets. \nNow they rest quietly, teetering on the line between half-asleep and half-awake, Belinda’s ear pressed to Etienne’s chest to hear the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart. \n“Well, I’m glad Oscar will be with him,” Etienne says appeasingly, having listened in silence to her stories from London. \n“Mmm. I think it will do him as much good as father. He seemed like he could use some time away.”\n“Away from what?”\n“I’m not sure…” Belinda plays with a loose thread on Etienne’s nightshirt. “I feel bad saying away from his wife, but all signs point to it being the truth. He seemed uncomfortable when I brought her up, but he wouldn’t tell me anything specific.” \nEtienne’s hand tightens where it rests on the nape of her neck. “Then I hope that time will serve them both well.” \n“I do, too.”\nShe tilts her head to observe the strong profile of her husband’s nose. “And you?” she teases, “Has time away from me served you well?”\n“All I managed to accomplish was missing my wife.” He tucks his chin to look down at her. “Though I have been doing some research in your absence.” \n“Yes, I’ve noticed.” The entire walk to their chambers was an obstacle course of books and journals on every table top and cast aside in the middle of the hallway like he had thrown them down as he was walking. And before that, there was the cook coming to greet her in the foyer with concerns of her husband’s increasingly strange demands while Belinda was away– his supposed need for rabbit hearts and pitchers of salt water, bunches of fresh rosemary left to dry on the windowsill for exactly thirty six hours and demands of her and the housemaid to not disturb him when his doors are closed, certain tasks he’d undertaken where it was vital he not be interrupted. \nFor the sake of goodwill, she gave them both the rest of the morning off. \nBelinda knows of her husband’s beliefs— glimpses into a world of ritual and wardship, studies of augury and communion and necromancy that he prefers she not get too close to.\nEtienne shifts underneath her, and she reads discomfort in his movements. She strokes a hand down his cheek so he knows not to be ashamed of it all on her behalf. “What has prompted it? Have I come to see you while I was gone?” \nHe’s told her, too, of the spirit that haunts him– the one that looks just like her, that follows him around the house and watches him from doorways and windows and stares at him unblinking, stares at him like he’s done something unforgivable. Belinda has never seen herself, and Etienne claims the spirit has never appeared while she’s in the house. \nShe fretted for days over having to leave him when word of her father’s illness arrived, knowing what it might invite back into Etienne’s life, but there was no getting around the trip and besides, Etienne had sworn his confidence that that time was behind them. \nIt would appear that he’d spoken too soon. \nHis eyebrows tick up at the middle, like he’s attempting to contain his emotion. “I thought it was over,” he whispers. “It’s been so long. I feel like a fool, letting my guard down as I have been.” \nA deep ache swells behind Belinda’s ribcage. She squeezes Etienne tighter. “You’ve been happy. It’s not foolish to hope. What have you found?” \n“There is a ritual. One for banishment. I have been completing the prerequisite steps over the past week.” \n“Oh?” Belinda struggles to understand. \n“Yes. There is only one step left to do. It won’t be easy.” His fingers flex against her back, a signal that he is thinking hard. He seems to choose his words carefully. “The act won’t be physically challenging, but I fear the toll it will have on my heart and constitution.” \nBelinda frowns. “It sounds taxing. Are you sure this is the only way?” \nShe considers not for the first time bringing up the possibility of relocation– abandoning this home that torments him so in favor of a fresh start, a life away from paranoia and body doubles she can’t see.\nBefore she can muster up the right words, he’s saying, “It will be worth it. I want to do it. I want my Belinda to be the only Belinda in my life.” \nShe smothers a grin against the column of his throat. “I’d quite like that as well.” \nEtienne is quiet for a long moment before speaking again. “I won’t pretend it isn’t terrible. But it is necessary, too. I want my wife to have a good life, and I need to be better to give one to her. I need to be rid of this.” \nA strong rush of affection surges through Belinda. Oh, she loves this man something awful. She’d follow him into Hell. “Then you will be brave. And you will be successful.” \nShe rises and falls with the depth of Etienne’s answering sigh. “You sound so much like her,” he mutters. \n“Like who?” she asks.\n“Like Belinda.” \nBelinda’s thumb falters where it was rubbing a soothing path along his collarbone. “What?” A giggle bubbles out of her, confusion mingling with sleepy amusement. \n“It’s uncanny. You’ve never been this good before.” He doesn’t seem to register her stiffening, or he does and ignores it. “You’ve never come to me like this, lay upon me like this. You must know what I’m going to do.” \n“Etienne–”\n“It won’t work.” Etienne raises his voice, speaking over her. “I won’t let it.”\nBelinda lifts her head to look her husband in the eyes. A coldness cracks through her when she sees the resolution in his face. \n“Etienne, I don’t…” Her voice breaks off into a scared whisper. “It’s me.” \nHe shakes his head. “My wife knows me better than this. She tells me when to expect her. You’ve misjudged. I know you’re not really her this time.” \nBelinda curses her attempt at being romantic. He thinks she's haunting him, not surprising him. She's never been so near him when he's in the middle of one of these supposed spectral visits. It's sobering. It's frightening.\nShe tries to sit up, and grunts when Etienne uses his hand on her neck to ease her back down again. His hold is strong– not enough to hurt, but in her shock, she goes easy. \nEtienne’s mouth is at her ear. “My wife is not to be home for a few days yet. By then, all of this will be dealt with and done. It will be like it never happened. She won’t have any part of it. She will not have such a weak, nervous husband.” His voice shakes. “I will keep her safe.”\nIt’s all the warning Belinda gets before the knife is plunged into her back. \nShe jerks violently. Pain whips through her, fast and brutal. \nIt’s like someone has dumped a full basin of water over her. \nNo. No, the sensation is real and it’s not water, it’s blood, hot and wet and slick and spreading fast, sticking her chemise to her skin.\nShe frantically shoves herself up, grappling for a place on her back she can’t reach, too low for the arm she stretches over her shoulder, too high for the one she stretches under. She arches, incapacitated by the pain, her mouth opening and closing like a fish thrown onto rocks, gasping into air that isn’t helping her situation, feeling inches from death. The knife digs into her shifting skin– or is her skin digging into the knife?– the awful, writhing, sawing sensation ripping through her. She's never been stabbed before, but this cannot be normal. Flashes of rabbit hearts and salt come to her, and no, of course this isn't normal. Not by Etienne's design. \nShe hunches, trying to scramble away from the pain, but there’s nowhere to go that it doesn’t follow. She shoves her face into the pillow beside her husband’s stunned face, her hands fisting at the sheets. \nEtienne grips her hips tight. “...Belinda?” \nShe can only answer with a whimper. She’s trembling so hard she can barely open her mouth anymore for how hard her teeth chatter. \n“No.” Etienne pushes against her shoulders. She doesn’t understand what he wants. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. “Dear God, no.”\nHis touch moves to her face, and he wrenches her head back with his hands shoved up into her hair. “Belinda.” He jams his fingers under her jaw, ignoring her choking, feeling for something. Upon finding it, his face goes white. “Belinda.” Again, more urgently, wrestling to sit them both upright. “Belinda.” \nIt’s all coming to her in flashes– the horrible red smear on Etienne’s cheek, the wetness that’s dripping down the back of her legs, the sudden realization that she can’t support herself. She slumps against Etienne. \nDazedly, she thinks of her parents, of all the men they’d wanted her to marry. A parade of surgeons and doctors with their deep pockets and upturned noses. Professionals who would know what to do with a gaping wound, professionals she had rejected for the love of a poet, her poet, who had nothing to offer but a quiet life and endless adoration. \nEtienne cradles her against him, rocking them back and forth. He's sobbing. “Why are you here? You weren’t supposed to be here. I thought you were the specter. Please believe me. Oh God, please forgive me.” \nHe sounds wrecked. Belinda wants to comfort him, but she can’t pick her head up. \nThen darkness clouds her vision, and she can’t do anything at all anymore. \n— — —\nBelinda blinks awake. \nThe ground is uncomfortable beneath her back. What is she doing on the ground? \nEtienne is kneeling by her side, head in his hands. There’s something red all over his hands. Belinda pushes herself up, reaching out to touch Etienne’s knee. \nHe jolts at the barest brush of her fingers. “Belinda.” He sounds relieved. He yanks her forward and she goes crashing against his chest. \nWhy is his heart beating so fast? That red substance on his hands is getting all over her now, staining her crisp white chemise. Why does it smell so strongly of metal?\nHer head feels fuzzy. \nReally, why is she on the ground? A moment ago, she was laying in bed, gossiping with Etienne about her brother’s marriage. Did she fall out of bed? Did she hit her head? Is that why everything feels so… Off? \n“I’m sorry…” she murmurs slowly. “I'm not sure what happened. Did I fall?”\n“You…” Etienne is shaking. She must have really scared him. “I fixed it. It’s alright.” \n“Fixed what? How long was I out?” \n“It doesn’t matter. You’re alright. It’s all alright now.” \nBelinda frowns. “Etienne, is my head bleeding?” \nHe winces. “What? Why are you asking me that?” \n“Blood.” She can’t think of anything else to say. She should get a cloth, something to clean him with. \nShe pushes away from him, bracing against the edge of the mattress to stand. Her hand sinks into something cold and wet. \nBefore she can search for the source of it, Etienne pitches forward, grabbing her by the cheeks and pulling her to look back at him. It makes her head spin. \n“Don’t look,” he says. He sounds gravely serious. \nBelinda’s heart stutters. “What?” \n“Don’t look.” \nLike a petulant child, Belinda can’t stop herself. She’s wriggling out of his grip before he can stop her again, ignoring his cry, turning to look at herself laying dead in a mess of blood on the bed. \nHerself. On the bed. Blood. \nAll air leaves her. \nShe jerks to her feet, stumbling backwards. She can’t look away. She’s just laying there– her hair stuck to her forehead and her chemise soaked through with red. Her eyes are still open. \nBehind her, Etienne remains on the ground. His voice is low, thick with grief. “There was an accident. I did what I had to. To fix it.” \n“What…” Her voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. She doesn’t even know what to ask. She can’t look away. \n“I didn’t know if it would work. I had only read about the ritual. I’ve never attempted it. But the journals said I could comb through time, and bring something back with me.\" He looks up. \"I brought you.” \nBelinda’s stomach turns. Etienne's face is wet with tears. Where is she? “You brought me… From the past?” \n“From before the accident. Yes. It was the only way. You were already gone—” his voice breaks, and he hangs his head. His shoulders are shaking. \nBelinda looks at him. She looks at herself. “But… What of the Etienne in the past? Are you the same as him?” \n“Our paths have diverged,” he says gravely.\n“Well. Then. What of that Etienne? Is he all alone now? How must he feel, having just had his wife taken from him?” \nEtienne shudders, his eyes darkening. “I know how he feels.” \nFor some reason, that’s what does Belinda in. Her stomach lurches and she stumbles to the lavatory, shoving the door closed behind her before retching into the sink. Nothing comes up. It makes her feel worse. \nShe looks up into the mirror. Yes, that’s her face staring back at her with wide eyes and tangled hair. But yes, that was her face, too, staring back at her from the bed. It feels like dying just to think of it. She can’t imagine what dying must really feel like, can’t imagine how anything can be worse than this terror that’s seizing her insides. \nEtienne’s voice comes from the other side of the door, muffled and pleading. “Please. I didn’t want this. All I wanted was you.” \nHe nudges at the door, like a dog desperate to get in. \nShe staggers over to open it. Etienne is still on his knees, still on the ground. When the door is open wide enough, he drags himself forward with his fingernails digging into the wood floor. \nHe bends low to kiss her ankles. She closes her eyes tight at the sensation. \n“My love. My life.” His tears drip onto her foot. “I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I hadn’t done it.” \nWhat did you do? A voice in her head begs her to ask.\nAnd somewhere deeper, somewhere darker, somewhere inside her that already knows— somewhere she can’t reach, is asking, Which part do you regret?\n— — —\nThey bury Belinda in the garden. \nBelinda watches numbly while Etienne strips that other-her from the bloody chemise, re-dressing her in something soft and clean. He gathers her hair and fastens it into a braid to keep it off her face, and his touch is so gentle and reverential that this time when Belinda excuses herself to retch into the sink, she throws up the entire contents of her stomach. \nBelinda gets dressed herself, tugging on a gown, though her hands shake so hard that Etienne has to help her with the fastenings. \nShe follows behind Etienne and stares at her own face, lax where it rests against her husband’s— their husband’s?— shoulder as he carries her down the stairs and out the backdoor. Is that what she looks like when she sleeps? \nThey leave the bloody mattress as it is, for the housemaid to find. \n“We’ll say you were with child,” Etienne had said, not meeting her gaze. “They won’t ask questions if they believe you lost something.”\nEtienne is right, as he tends to be. When Belinda retires inside hours later, the silent vigil over the little upturned patch of dirt beneath her favorite tree becoming too much for her to bear, the housemaid, Miss Clarke, is already waiting for her, wringing her hands in the hallway. All it takes is just enough performance of Belinda’s averted eyes and a hand pressed to her stomach for Miss Clarke's face to drop. She coos sympathetically, fussing over Belinda so tenderly that Belinda is weeping before she can hold herself back. \n“We buried her in the garden,” Belinda croaks. \n“All by yourselves, ma’am?” Miss Clarke asks, sounding surprised. \n“We couldn’t bear to leave her.” Belinda says, and now she’s telling the truth. Then, she tells another. “I don’t know what happened.” \n— — —\nBelinda looks out from their bedchamber, trying to ignore the sharp smell of vinegar and lemon, the bed stripped of its linens behind her, the way the mattress has been flipped. \nShe watches Etienne as the sky goes from blue to orange. Hours pass and still he remains, bent over the grave of his dead wife while his wife watches over him. \nAfter what feels like an eternity, he rises, stretching his arms. He turns, shielding his eyes against the setting sun to look back up at the house. \nBelinda tries not to notice how he flinches when he spots her, feeling like a specter in the window." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Strange Weddings Call for Strange Guest Lists\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1055\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story at a tense event where everyone is unsure whose side they’re on." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The couple couldn’t make up the guest list. They didn’t have enough friends. There were very few attending friends and family members: not enough to fill out more than a couple of rows. The venue was hired. It was grotesque in a gothic sort of way. It was an odd place for a wedding, but weddings have been held in odder places than that.\n“Hey!” shouted Carl, across the aisle, “Why are you all so deathly quiet?”\nThe abruptness of this question made everyone fall into uncomfortable mumbling. Not a word could be made out in the vast theatre. The eaves were rattling in the storm that raged around them. They were like mice crammed into a corner, cowering from the giant gaze of a cat.\nThe organ sounded. It wasn’t playing a traditional love song, or even a recognisable classic. It sounded like the organist was bashing the keys: improvisation at its poorest. What was at the heart of the matter was that nobody cared about the wedding, but there was still an inexplicable air of anger about the place, like a boxing match on the point where the “f” is pronounced in fight.\nThe strangers occupying the seating didn’t know where to put themselves. There had been no one to usher them to their seats, to choose a side of the aisle for them, to tell them where to go. It felt like a volcano waiting to erupt: this bizarre wedding. Bizarre with a capital “B.”\nMelanie was on the bride’s side of the room. She’d never seen her before. She’d met the groom briefly, but she could barely have made a composite of his features, had the police demanded she do it. He had been very bubbly; she’d noticed that. He was like one of those blond, angelic kids that no harm ever befalls. They live in their special enshrouded existence preserved by doting parents. Often, they will be the first to hurl objects at their peers beneath tabletops, smiling sweetly as they do it. Where there are no witnesses, there are no crimes, as far as they’re concerned.\nMelanie and Carl met glances. Then, they looked away with the shyness of strangers; the kind of strangers that respect social norms - but they couldn’t help returning to each other again and again. There was a level mumble throughout the room, not a word of it audible. Everyone was talking to their compatriots, but were they really that? They’d been foisted together, into the confined pews in this amphitheatre, but were they seated in the right spots? No one knew.\nBeside Carl, sat a lady with a heady odour of perfume. That was what it was, thought Carl – an odour, because it could not be called pleasant. She was tight-lipped and she sat as upright as the wire of an electric fence. She was beautiful in an aged kind of way, but she looked very unhappy. Carl wanted to know her life history, but it felt ill-advised to ask for it. They would be released in twenty minutes whenever the entire debacle was over. In his mind, he aimed for that point, like a target marked with the best possible exit route.\nThe organ music built in momentum and the groom was seen emerging from behind the pulpit. He waited to the side of it, next to the minister and several other unidentified characters. Then the moment of truth, or at least, of anticipation, arrived. The organ changed to an upbeat number; something closer to the Wedding March, but that still couldn’t be called that.\nShe swayed up the aisle, like her feet didn’t touch the ground. She moved with the poise and elegance of a dancer, completely masked by her veil. She was wearing a simple frock in an off-white colour. It looked like a delicate antique, but not a wedding dress. Clearly, this couple wanted to play around with everyone’s expectations, however subtly they subverted them.\nShe started to rush forwards, as if she was in a race to get to the front of the room. There were some looks of alarm that spread throughout the crowd. The only word that could be used to describe the entire scenario was “bizarre.” Melanie looked over at the other side of the aisle. She was torn about where she should be. For some reason, she felt worse off for being on the bride’s side of the room. Every seat was filled. The others all observed the room with that same look of displacement.\nThe bride got to the front of the room and yelled at the top of her voice “stop!” She flung the veil back from her face and revealed the face beneath. It was pasty white like she had applied chalky face paint to it. Her eyes were drawn on with black liner that exaggerated every unnatural line of her being. Most notably, fangs protruded from her upper lip. She had a habit of chewing her lips, of showing the points of her teeth as she did it. She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasing smile; it was a surreal one. Her partner met her look with something like admiration. His curls bounced every time he moved his head. He looked beyond cherubic.\nThe crowd were on tenterhooks. They wanted an explanation for their strange invitation. They knew it would be a defining moment of their lives that wouldn’t be quickly forgotten. Their attention was rapt. The minister introduced Vaudevilla and her partner Anthony. She silenced him for a moment, moving towards Anthony’s neck with the unfaltering approach of a killer. She widened her mouth and her fangs plunged into his neck. He called out in pain, and then, he went into a weary silence, a resignation as she drank from him. The pink colour drained from his cheeks, and it warmed up Vaudevilla’s. She looked much more human then, despite her sharp teeth.\nThe guests in the front row began to leave one by one, like a house of cards that slowly tumbles, as if recorded, falling in slow motion. One after another, the guests evacuated the room, unsure of whether to validate one another at the sight they’d just seen, or whether to walk, parting as they went, complicit in their pretence that it had never happened." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Tragedy Of Frederick XIV\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2956\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "ONE. \n“The Gallows.”\nThe guards dragged a man through the gallows. His eyes were flushed and red and his face was swollen from holding his breath, for he refused to allow even a single tear to fall. The guards pulled the man up the stairs; the soddened and weathered wood creaked and bounced with each step. They carried the man across the stage of the scaffold to the Hangman, whose eyes were buried in the hollows of the hessian-burlap fastened to his face.\nA crowd had gathered in the gallows. Among them was King Theobold, The Crown of the Northern Empire, who sat front and center of this spectacle. King Theobold raised his hand, and the crowd reduced its whooping to a whisper. “Centy Milione. You have been charged with, tried, and convicted of embezzlement and treason of the highest order. You packed your purloin-purse with pilfers, and compromised the integrity of our nation. You are hereby stripped of your duties as High Commander, and for your transgressions, you shall reimburse The Crown with your life.”\nCenty drew a deep breath, but before the Hangman could cinch the rope, Centy coughed to the crowd. “I, Centy Milione, am a convicted man, and I maintain my innocence. But since my sentence is irrevocable, I have only one request that I wish, in my final moments of life, to be granted.”\nKing Theobold flicked his wrist, and the Hangman stepped away from the edge of the scaffold’s stage. “And what might that be?”\n“Someone is missing from the crowd, and I would like for that person to be present. Seeing their face would comfort me.”\n“Who?”\n“Frederick The Fourteenth.” \nRory, a Captain of The Northern Imperial Army, climbed out of the crowd and approached King Theobold. “I shall fetch Frederick for you, Sir.”\n“Very well. We shall resume upon your return.” \n\n* * *\n\nFrederick XIV stepped away from the window in his bedchamber. The spectators had gathered in the gallows below and they were jeering loudly as the Hangman held the nape of the man on the platform. Frederick threw his back to the wall near the window, working his thumb and pointer into the fissures of his forehead. “One moment I’m the Chief Officer, and in the next I’ll be High Commander! High Commander…I’ll likely be crowned tomorrow. I must prepare!” Frederick, at his desk, retrieved paper and a fountain pen, then began to write:\n\nDearest King Theobold, our Illustrious Crown, \nI am most truly obliged to you— \n\nAn image twinkled in his periphery. \nAcross the room, above the mantle, there was a painting: a portrait of three men of similar stature and countenance to each other, also to Frederick XIV but to a lesser degree. From on-high, they stared down at Frederick XIV as he crossed the room towards them. “Tomorrow I shall be named High Commander of the Northern Imperial Army, and I will follow in your footsteps. And maybe one day my personage will join yours in portraiture.” He received two knocks at his door. “Who’s there!?”\n“Celia, sir. Captain Rory would like to join your company.”\nFrederick opened the door to reveal Celia, the chambermaid, and Rory a step behind her. Rory: “Sir, there has been a request made for you.”\n“What is the nature of this request?”\n“Am I allowed inside?” Frederick ushered Rory inside. “King Theobold has granted Centy one wish.”\n“Has he not been executed?”\n“In only a moment’s time. But never mind that, Frederick. Centy’s wish is to see you.”\nFrederick flew across the room and away from Rory. “See me!? For what reason!?”\n“Frederick, you are but his dearest friend. What is the reason for your delay?”\nFrederick turned his back to Rory. “There is no reason other than that I would not want to see a hanging in the gallows.”\n“But you have witnessed your fair share of executions.”\n“None of which have been dear friends.” Frederick said.\n“So what shall I tell Centy…?”\n“Tell Centy that my love is with him. And that his visage shall be forever reflected in my duties.”\n“Of High Commander...?”\nFrederick nodded his head. “I’ll likely be crowned tomorrow. His ill repute shall be absolved with me.”\n“Ill repute!? Are you suggesting that you believe Centy to be guilty?”\n“Centy was convicted.” Frederick kicked at the lint littering the floor. “Whether I believe that he is guilty or innocent matters not. His shadow will swing in the gallows inevitably.” \n“What am I hearing, sir? Have you not shed a tear at the thought of his absence?”\n“Yes. Many times.”\n“Then how could you dare allow him to leave without one final show of your affection?”\n“I think that it is best, for both he and I, to not meet under such conditions, no matter how sentimental.” Frederick turned his back to Rory. The crowds below began to bellow beneath the cloudy sky. Rory sneered, slamming the door behind him. Frederick XIV to the portrait: “Father, Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, I hope that after the ceremony tomorrow, you’ll acknowledge me as one of your own; an aurora in the sky of our heritage. I hope that I will have proven myself worthy in thine eye.”\n\nKing Theobold belted out from the gallows. “Centy Milione.” Frederick returned to the window, but did not look out. “You have been charged with, tried, and convicted of embezzlement and treason of the highest order. You packed your purloin-purse with pilfers, and compromised the integrity of our nation. You are hereby stripped of your duties as High Commander, and for your transgressions, you shall reimburse The Crown with your life.” Frederick’s face twisted centripetally into his head, wringing out but one tear that trekked the contour of his cheek to his chin. King Theobold: “Hangman! Allow Centy Milione to pay his debts.” The wood of the gallows outside creaked. The lone tear from Frederick’s face croaked when it splattered across the floor. And the sound of Centy’s final grunt echoed.\n\nTWO. \n“Patrilineage.”\nThe wind stirred recklessly, carrying waves of rainwater across the land. Lightning found Frederick's bedchamber and thunder clapped in his ear, waking him from his slumber. He held his aching head. “Celia…Celia!”\nThe chambermaid rushed inside with a candelabra. “Yes, sir?”\n“I cannot see.” With the candle from her candelabra, she lit more candles, placing them at various spots throughout the room. “Fetch me a glass of water. My head is tender and sore.”\nCelia left the room. Frederick laid on his pillow until he heard a voice: “Son.” Frederick opened his eyes, and standing at his bedside was his father, Frederick XIII. “We must go now.” \nFrederick could see his grandfather, Frederick XII, staring out of the window, and Frederick XI, his great-grandfather, admiring the portrait. “Father. Grandfather. Great-Grandfather. Why must you leave now? I seek wise counsel.”\n“Your ways have offended us.” Frederick XI said. \n“There is no way that we could accept you as you are.” Frederick XII said.\n“And we will not offer wise counsel. Your legacy is now your own.” Frederick XIII said.\nThunder hammered and lightning seemingly struck the center of the bedchamber, forcing Frederick XIV to shield his eyes from the blinding light. Frederick opened his eyes. “Father! Father!” Frederick searched the room, but they were gone. \n\nIn their wake, he padded across the parquet floor to his mantle. He squinted at the portrait, and what he saw poisoned his heart. Only the three heads of his patriarchy remained; their bodies had disappeared entirely.\nCelia handed him the glass of water. “Are you okay?”\nFrederick kept his face in the fold of his elbow. He thumbed up at the portrait. “Tell me what you see, Celia.”\n“Your Great-grandfather, Grandfather, and Father.”\n“Can you see the whole of them?”\n“Yes, sir, I can.”\n“I must rest.” Frederick chugged his glass of water, and sent Celia away before climbing sluggishly into bed. He laid with his eyes wide. The torrent raged outside.\n\n“I Declare War!”\nFrederick snapped his fingers. “More spirits!” He reclined in his gilded chaise lounge with a glass in his fist which Celia refilled. Frederick finished the glass in one gulp, then dropped it; the thick crystal thumped across the varnished wood. He stumbled from the chaise lounge and grabbed a hold of two harlots, and they guided him to the bed.\nPresent were two Officers, Francis and Giles, each heaped with a pair of women, and spirits in their mitts. “How’s it feel to have an empire under your command!?” Francis jeered.\ngrand. \n“And the luxury to rest on your laurels in the lap of an impregnable Kingdom!?” Giles said.\nswell. \nFrederick looked to the women. “Kiss me, will you?” The two women pressed their faces into his. He received a knock at the door. “Who dares disturb me!?” Frederick burped.\n“Celia, sir!”\n“Are you aware, Celia, that we are engaged in official military duties?”\n“Yes, sir.”\n“Then why do you bother our securing of this great nation?”\n“The Chief Officer says he must see you now.”\n“Allow the sap in.” Rory rushed in. “Mr. Rory, Chief Officer! Have you come to join in the luxuries afforded to our ranks?”\n“No, sir.”\n“Then why do you—” Frederick burped again. “Why do you dare interrupt our briefing?”\n“The Southern Empire, sir.” Rory said. \nFrederick slurred. “Yyyessssss?”\n“They have declared war!”\n\nFrederick puckered up instantaneously! His eyelids spread wide, his pupils shrunk to little black dots, and his eyes receded far into skull. He folded his dressing gown across his chest and crossed his legs. “The South has declared war, you say!? What must we do!?”\n“But you are the High Commander.”\n“Right.”\n“King Theobold rejected their demands and accepted their declaration of war. He has since issued a decree!”\n“Very well.” Frederick stumbled to the center of the room. “Everyone out, save for the Chief Officer.” Only Frederick and Rory remained.\n“High Commander, what is your plan!? Our nation’s security is at stake!”\n“I know, I know!” With his arms crossed high on his chest, Frederick crept across the room to his mantle. He laid his head into his rested elbow. He looked up to his portrait; three silhouettes now stained the canvas. “Chief Officer?”\nRory observed Frederick’s constitution with a hawk’s eye. “Yes, High Commander?”\n“Look up at the portrait and tell me what you see.”\n“Your Great-Grandfather, Grandfather, and your Father. Why?”\n“Do you see the whole of them?”\n“Yes. I do.”\n“Heavens. Gather the rest of our Staff. I will meet you all in The Hall Of Mirrors.”\n“Yes, sir!” Rory exited the bedchamber.\nFrederick to the emptied portrait: “How could you have abandoned me at such an inopportune time?” Frederick’s eyes were deep, dark portholes that revealed no soul. “Celia!?”\nCelia entered. “Yes, sir?”\nHe raised his glass. “More spirits, please.”\n\nTHREE.\n“The Soul Of A Man.”\nFrederick, hunched forward while clearing the gown from his feet, tottered into The Hall Of Mirrors. In the center was an expansive table with fifteen chairs measuring its circumference. The Army Staff silently observed the High Commander’s disposition. Frederick looked them all over and pointed out an unfamiliar figure: a kimono-clad, ashen-faced woman. “Who’s she!?”\n“Kitty.” She lifted her face, slightly peeking under her brow. “A medium.”\n“Why should we need a—” Frederick burped. “A medium!?”\nShe will be of assistance as we plot the fate of our empire.”\n“She couldn’t possibly serve as our wise counsel.”\n“We, the Staff of the Northern Imperial Army conceded that neither of us but one is able to offer wise counsel.”\n“But you are the best of the best. Are you not?”\n“Our very best was plucked from among us.” Rory said. “Now, we must seek wise counsel elsewhere?”\n“Where else?”\n“From beyond the grave.”\nFrederick waved his hand. “Under no circumstances shall we do such a thing!”\n“High Commander, you must understand, lives are at stake. Your reputation is at stake. And since you cannot lead us, then we must source our dearly departed friend.” Frederick turned his back, observing the staff through the mirrors. “Centy Milione.”\n“Centy. Milione. Cen-ty. Centy.” Frederick mumbled into the circle of fog on the glass.\n“You remember him, don’t you, High Commander?”\n“Right! Of course…why wouldn’t I? A great man!”\n“Then there should be no objections.” Rory turned to the medium. “Kitty, if you will, please bring to us our dearly departed, Centy Milione.”\n\nKitty placed two, Japanese Taiko drums on the table before her and clanged them rhythmically. She left them alone, and the rhythm continued in her absence. She leaped weightlessly from the floor. With the fabric flagging from her frail frame, she raced across the polished mahogany from end-to-end, mumbling a chant. She stopped. On her back she convulsed atop the table, arching her body before falling to the floor. From the floor a figure rose; the soul of Centy Milione! The Army Staff could not believe their eyes. “Centy!?”\n“Rory! It is I!” The two hugged. “Staff! What a pleasure to be in your presence once again!” Centy found that Frederick was huddled in a corner of glass. “Frederick, my dear friend! Join us!”\n“How could—how?” Frederick crawled to the table side.\n“It has been so long since I last saw your face. My final request was to see you, but you didn’t show.”\n“I know.”\n“How come?”\n“I couldn’t bear to see you in that moment.”\nCenty caressed Frederick’s head. “It’s okay.” Centy looked to the rest of the Staff. “So, why have you summoned me?”\nRory pounced. “Our great empire is at war!”\n“There should be no issues then! A Frederick is amongst you.”\n“We seek wise counsel.” Rory continued.\nCenty looked down. Frederick XIV avoided Centy’s gaze. Centy jousted Frederick. “Have you spoken to your father…?” Frederick was silent.\n“Well have you?” Rory barked.\n“Yes.”\n“And your Grandfather?” Centy continued.\n“Yes.”\n“Your Great-Grandfather, too?”\n“Yes.”\n“Great! What did they say?”\nFrederick broke free and ran to a mirror across the room. “This cannot be.” He whispered to himself.\nCenty followed. “What’s the matter!?”\nFrederick broke free once more and darted to another mirror. “This can-not be. How could it be!?” Centy met him there as well. Frederick didn’t resist. “Centy, tell them how good of a friend you were to me.” Frederick brushed Centy’s ghastly complexion. “You were a good friend. But I was not.” Rory stood up at the table.\n“What do you mean, my friend?” Centy asked.\nFrederick looked up at the ceiling, but seemingly beyond it. “For my entire life, I walked the path of my predecessors, but I could never keep pace. And now, they have sprinted far ahead of me. They came to me in the night and informed me that they must leave my side. That I had offended their honor, and ripped my name from the annals of our history.” \n“What could you have done that was so abhorrent?”\nFrederick wept until he regained control of himself. “When you called out for from the gallows, I was afraid to see you. You broke the chain that linked me to my Father, my Grandfather, and my Great-Grandfather. All I could see was their scorn and shame.” Frederick looked into Centy’s troubled eyes. “After the celebration, hosted in King Theobold’s honor, he had you arrested.”\n“Right.”\n“And you were tried.”\n“Yes.”\n“And subsequently convicted.”\n“This is all true.”\n“The punishment for the charges leveled against you — hanging in the gallows — was fair...but the evidence. It was fabricated.” The Staff gasped.\n“I knew it!” Rory screamed.\n“That evidence, in light of the celebration that you hosted…I knew it would be the perfect foil. That the pride of King Theobold would believe it. And he did. I told him that you had embezzled monies as well as colluded with another nation. And he accepted my word as bond.”\nThe Staffed sucked in all of the air in the room. Centy pushed away from Frederick with haste. “How could you!? How dare you? You knew how much that position meant to me, and how right I was for it. You had me killed to assuage your vainglorious greed!?” Centy was so heated that he could breathe fire. He beamed his scalding eyes at Frederick. “You fool! And because you are so, I wish for you to suffer a fool’s fate!”\nCenty spun away from them all and reduced himself to a bended form. Kitty reclaimed her seat.\nHiding his face in the arm of his dressing gown, Frederick watched as Rory crept slowly to him. Rory rested a knee. “I knew from the beginning that you had something to do with it. But no one trusted my word. You call yourself a friend? I should spit upon your trifling head. You do not deserve anyone’s pity.” Frederick shielded furthermore; his face pressured to burst with tears that refused to fall. “You send a courageous man, an honorable man, a competent man, to the gallows to satisfy your own selfish pride? And then attempt to replace him with your pathetic inadequacies!? Well I hope you enjoyed yourself, because your time amongst our ranks has expired.” Rory stood over Frederick. “You drunken coward. You’ll believe anything. There is no war! The Southern Empire never declared war upon us.” Frederick’s face read of shame. “Carry him to a cell. He’ll stand before King Theobold in the morning, and the hellhounds will drag him from the gallows come nightfall.”\nThe Staff lifted Frederick from the floor, and he didn’t resist. He could barely lift his head as they carried his limp body towards the exit. All that Frederick XIV could manage was a mumble: “I…I…I—” Frederick relaxed altogether as the air hissed from his drunken lips." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Just Deserts\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2966\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story where your character is travelling a road that has no end." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It is impossible to resist a hitchhiker on a road to nowhere. And that was exactly what my cousin Shane’s wedding to Raven the following morning was going to be.\n\nIt was strange that we all gathered to wish them well when none of us would be there in two years when the ineluctable breach of the sacrament was ratified by the divorce judge after Shane’s degenerate, pathological gambling resulted in the foreclosure of Raven’s overpriced Bungalow-style home in Boulder City, which she would naively agree to mortgage to the hilt to bail him out, setting up the bad beat betrayal she’d been waiting for from the day they met.\n\nThat is the thing about El Sombrerón. He ties his four mules to his inamorato’s post, while he woos from the threshold with sweet songs strummed on a silver guitar, plucking notes of promise, woven in plaited spirals, like Guatemalan braids. But once the affair begins, he leaves the stomach empty. “Madre de Dios!” At length, his black dogs howl their dismal mourning at the Snow Moon, which searches in vain like a celestial spotlight for what is left of the shriveled cicisbeo. Still, it is said that the old man never forgets the ones he has loved. I must apologize, my mind is prone to wandering. It is part of my condition.\n\nI wonder how often Pablo Tac felt the same way, baptizing savages in the frontier who were more than likely bent for a hell of their own making.\n\nHow many does El Sombrerón visit to pay them their wages?\n\nSabrina, the Jamaican flight attendant, with the perfectly symmetrical face and the caramel complexion scolded Carl, who sat right next to me, saying, “Stay seated while the seat belt sign is illuminated. Don’t make me tell you again.” The seat belt light had been illuminated since the plane touched off and Tropical Storm Tomas caught us in its clutches, sending us in an interminable loop between Tortilla Flats and Scottsdale. Carl muttered something under his whiskey-smelling breath. Sitting down, Carl released a low, rumbling cough that rattled in his chest like a cracked carburetor. We were off to a famous start.\n\nI didn’t know how long I’d had a demon, but El Sombrerón was in the back row with his broad-brimmed, high-crowned black hat angled down while he napped. I was safe for now. I could hear him whispering: Stefan… you can’t hide in your books forever… sooner or later you will have to face me… face your undoing… you will have to face what you have done.\n\nWhile I wondered when El Sombrerón would make his move, I stroked my necklace with the coat of arms pendant, striped blue and red with an eagle at the crest. I kept reading from Alta California, a book of essays about Spanish and Mexican Settlers in the Spanish Borderlands. I was reading about the life of Pablo Tac, a Luiseno Indian, who despite dying at age nineteen, was a prolific writer and missionary whose extensive writings were the only surviving accounts of the Luiseno language and culture and one of the most studied reports of missionary life on the frontier. I had a second book in my bag, Memories of Life at a Mission, a biographical account written by Pablo Tac himself.\n\nCarl had to get up so he could get something out of his bag in the overheads. When he sat back down, he had a stack of medical reports in hand. The header of his papers read: “Dr. Carl Kellog, M.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,” and I spotted a reference to someone named Sal—. Carl said, “I have an appointment to keep. I’ll be damned if I am going to miss it. The next thing they’re going to tell us is the flight is diverted to Goddamn Phoenix.”\n\nOn cue, the pilot came back over the PA to inform us that the flight was, indeed, being grounded in Phoenix for the night and that the airline would arrange for replacement transportation, but given the lateness of the hour, it would have to be the following day—those that did not wish to sleep in the airport would have a room comped nearby.\n\nI was relieved when they first told me about the glioblastoma. I’d gone directly to Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church and entered the confessional. And I’d told Father Darby how I’d been driving home from the History Conference in Ithaca a few years back, after too many celebratory toasts, and quite a few tequila shooters from the mini bar to boot. I’d only wanted to sleep in my bed that night. I’d told Father Darby how I’d heard a thud and a crack of my windshield. The blue-jeaned body of a teenage girl hung in the rearview, perfectly cradled in the refracted lamplight. How I’d kept on driving. How many Hail Marys to fix that one?\n\nSabrina offered me a beverage, which I sternly declined, and I asked her softly, “Do you see a man about six rows back with a black-brimmed hat.”\n\nShe turned, dutifully, and then looked down at me with wide eyes. “No. No, I do not, sir,” she said. “Is everything okay?” I nodded. I was safe for now.\n\nAs we began our descent into Phoenix, Carl became apoplectic. He stowed his hands in a rigid set position on his knees and trained his eyes forward at Sabrina like she was his jailer and he stood wrongly accused.\n\n“I have an important appointment in the morning in San Diego. I can’t be late. I just can’t.” Carl said all of this more to himself than anything.\n\nSabrina paid no attention.\n\nI put my hand on Carl’s shoulder and said, “We will figure this out, together. We are going to the same place.”\n\n* * \n\n“So, you are proposing we drive around the storm, through the night to San Diego? Are you nuts?”\n\n“You want to make that appointment or not?” I asked.\n\nAnd so, we tossed our luggage in the back of a silver Toyota Tacoma 4-door and hit the road.\n\n“I saw your paperwork. So, you are a doctor?”\n\n“A Surgeon,” Carl said. “What about you?”\n\n“I am a history teacher, college level, up at Cornell. My research relates to sojourners and missionaries—all manner of settlers and vagabonds—anyone uprooted from their home and stranded in a foreign land. Aren’t they fascinating?”\n\n“I suppose. That book you were reading—it was about one of those?”\n\n“Pablo Tac.”\n\n“Who?”\n\n“A young missionary boy who grew up in the Mission San Luis Rey.”\n\n“And what makes him so special?”\n\n“Pablo Tac? Well, for one, he had a motto: Siempre adelante y nunca para atrás. It was more than a saying—it became his epitaph. He died young.” I don’t know it for a certainty, but I imagine Pablo Tac didn’t live long enough to make a mistake he’d regret for the rest of his life.\n\n“Sounds foolish—he’s lucky he made it that long—out on the frontier.” Carl’s mind seemed trained to detect pathology in everything.\n\n“You know, Pablo made it to Rome to study for the priesthood. Then returned to the frontier. He left behind quite a body of work. Made a record of nearly his whole life. Day-by-day. Imagine covering that much ground by age nineteen?”\n\n“And how did he die, if I might ask?”\n\n“Smallpox.”\n\n“There you go. The boy devotes himself to God, and boom—[clapping his hands for effectI]—he’s snuffed out like a match in between God’s bloodthirsty fingers.”\n\n“I think it was a gift, that God allowed him to finish his mission early. Besides, if Pablo Tac could get that far by nineteen—then there’s hope for a couple of middle-aged codgers like us, don’t you think?” I said things like this. Hope. As if I still dared to wish for an unearned pardon. I wondered if all sojourners are really on the run. Each sure, in their own way, that redemption could only be granted, if at all, a long way off from the place where the crime happened. I guess fugitives are always prisoners of the truth.\n\n“All I see is a promising man stomped under heel by a dictator.”\n\n“So, there’s no point to suffering?”\n\n“I’m an oncologist.”\n\n“You cure the sick!”\n\n“Cure? Oh, no. I specialize in Pancreatic Cancer. The five-year survival rate is twelve percent. My nickname among my colleagues is the ‘Grim Reaper.’ So, no, I wouldn’t exactly say that I ‘cure the sick.’ More like I chaperone them to death’s doorstep. I’m a butcher with dull blades—just an order taker at a meat counter—my patients’ diagnoses are like those number dispenser tags in a Supermarket—you know those red machines with the Garvey pull-off tags—I call their numbers and deliver the meat to the morgue.”\n\n“Remind me to never call you for a consult,” I said—and we both laughed.\n\n“What is that pendant you were playing with on the plane?”\n\n“Oh, this. It is the De Santis Family Crest. A gift from my father. I was raised out by the Mission San Luis Rey by my foster family. I consider myself a De Santis, but my birthname is Stefan Daskalov.”\n\n“That is a foreign-sounding name if I ever heard one. Where are you from, originally?”\n\n“I was born in Bulgaria, in the year of the Jubilee.”\n\n“And what was that like, growing up in Eastern Europe?”\n\n“I wouldn’t know. My mother and I left when I was eight.”\n\n“Was there something going on there you had to get away from?”\n\n“You could say that. We were Turks, which is not such a good thing if you were living in Bulgaria. There was a national campaign to rename all Turks and erase our ethnicity. My father was an enthusiast for the resistance and the Communist jackboots came and pulled him from our home and took him to a labor camp on the island of Belene on the Danube. He died there that same year—but we never even learned how.”\n\n“And what happened to your mother?” \n\n“After that, my mother and I emigrated to Turkey to escape persecution. She put me on a boat headed to California. Promising she’d follow after. She couldn’t ever save up enough for her ticket, and I never saw her again. Some years ago, I traveled back to Turkey and found the town where she was buried. It is strange—it seems like another world—one that I barely knew.” That reminded me that I had another thing to say Hail Marys for.”\n\n“Jesus! That is one hell of a way to start out in life.”\n\n“You know, there was nothing written on her tombstone. Out behind the old house. A real road to nowhere.”\n\n * \n\nTraveling west along I-8, we drank tall coffees and looked out on the vast desert, like two teens taking a road trip, rather than two terminally ill hypocrites.\n\nThe massive orange dunes propagated to infinity hugging dappled purple shadows for warmth, their peaks glistening in the penetrating spears of mulish moonlight smuggled past the veil. Great towering thunderheads bellowed and filled the sky like totipotent corpuscles injected with black-gray swirls of ink and mercury. \n\nStefan took a wrong turn before Yuma. We finally stopped at a rickety bridge. The McPhaul Bridge. The bridge cut a path over the Gila River toward the coastal mountains. The GPS glitched and told us to cross, but the sign read “BRIDGE CLOSED.” Graffiti on the guard rails read, “BRIDGE TO NOWHERE.”\n\n“We’ll have to backtrack and find another way through,” I said.\n\n“I guess we’ve come to the end of the road,” Carl said, belting out an uncharacteristic laugh. Then resuming his rumbling coughs. The gasps and chokes of a stalling engine.\n\n“For your sake, I hope not. Look up there,” I said, pointing at two figures walking across the McPhaul Bridge toward us carrying canvas sacks. They emerged from the hazy expanse, blown in with the petrichor which flavored the charged and static air.\n\nThe purple thunderheads pulsed with bursts of voltage, branching like the paradoxical immix of reaching tree limbs and searing flares. The bushes and cactuses accented the barren landscape with the resilient whit of life persisting on vapors, ruffled in a fanning and pitiless wind, trending to death.\n\nThere was a sudden knock. They were two young boys.\n\nI rolled down my window. \n\n“I’m Bobo and this is my friend Amix. We are headed to California. It’s been a long journey, and the storm is coming in fast.”\n\n“Oh, shame,” said Carl. \n\n“Do you think we could tag along until you get to Yuma? We can help you navigate in the desert. We know the way.”\n\nI looked over at Carl, who nodded his approval.\n\n“Jump in,” I said.\n\n“The safest way is to backtrack to I-8 and take that all the way down.”\n\n“We are in a hurry—is there a faster route,” Carl asked.\n\n“Well, you could take the Camino Del Diablo, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”\n\n“What is that in English? The Devil’s Highway?”\n\nBobo nodded.\n\nCarl let out another hearty laugh.\n\nHe turned to me and said, “How could we refuse?”\n\nAnd that was when I knew that Carl wasn’t long for this world and guessed that his appointment was not for a special case but for palliative care. Over my shoulder, I saw that El Sombrerón was sitting between the boys, his head hung expectantly over his silver guitar.\n\nDeath was alive in the cadaverous pallor of Carl’s complexion.\n\nThe color ran out of him. Like a rich, milky cheddar cheese, that starts a bright orange but whitens and hardens so quickly when left out on the cutting board.\n\nCarl had already begun to decompose.\n\nI wondered if Carl had cats.\n\nIf you die alone, a dog won’t eat you.\n\nA hungry cat is another thing altogether.\n\n * \n\nBobo was a skeletal man, not more than 5’3”. His khaki anuks shirt hugged his body, making him appear in the dark like a human shadow.\n\n“I see you are reading Pablo Tac, Memories of Life at a Mission.”\n\n“Yes, I am,” I said surprised, “Have you read it?”\n\n“Ahhh, yes. What a heartbreaker. Wait until you get to the last chapter where he is called back to Rome for ordination.” Bobo tossed his sack over his shoulder and began walking back down the Devil’s Highway.\n\n“I thought he died awaiting ordination,” I called after. \n\nBut Bobo was already gone.\n\nI had one of the last collector editions sold at auction at San Luis Rey.\n\nThe thing is—as I watched Bobo and Amix disappear into the dust of the desert—it occurred to me that this book had been out of print for decades, since before these boys were born.\n\nNow it was just Carl, me, and El Sombrerón. On the Camino Del Diablo. In the dead of night.\n\nOn our way to separate destinations.\n\nBut sharing one fate.\n\n * \n\nAfter driving for hours, in what must have been circles, the warning light for refilling the gas tank came on, squeaking over and over at regular intervals, like a diseased heart incapable of variation, and we only had one reserve gas can left in the trunk.\n\n“Carl,” I said, “Let’s camp out here for the night, and save our last fuel can for the daylight. I don’t want to get lost.”\n\nCarl was looking ghastly and pallid.\n\n“I have smores ingredients. I was saving them for the night after the wedding, but I say we build a proper fire and enjoy them tonight.”\n\nWe gathered sticks, and I used liter fluid, charcoal, and pieces of paper to help get the fire going. Even with all of that, I was barely successful, out there in the dark. How did men build fires like these for thousands of years in the hard-hearted blackness?\n\nI pulled the sleeping bags out of the trunk. Grabbed little baggies with graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate squares.\n\nCarl livened up and the two of us chatted late into the night, before falling asleep in our sleeping bags, at the edge of the fire, fingers sticky and bellies full.\n\nThe night grew cold.\n\n * *\n\nBefore the first rays of efflorescent dawn emerged from the undercroft of Gehenna, I arose, a diaphanous shroud.\n\nCarl rose with me.\n\nWe both looked at the smoldering fire.\n\nThe fulgent crackling embers.\n\nThe hoary thinning smoke.\n\nTwo bodies in sleeping bags, cold and stiff in the first light.\n\nLooking at one another, then at the horizon, I noticed that the cool desert morning felt warm and radiant on my skin. It shimmered as it touched my arms, like the glint of light off a lizard’s scales.\n\n“Are we almost to the Mission?” I asked Carl.\n\nCarl barely had time to shrug his shoulders before we were interrupted.\n\nEl Sombrerón strutted in a waddling gate down the road ahead, leading his train of mules into our camp. His spurs jingled and each rock gave its distinct harmony to the singing rowels. The mules whuffled and snorted the bass line. And El Sombrerón whistled, while chewing on a stick of straw, plucked from the breaching rays of the new sun. The brim of his broad-rimmed black Sombrero forever hid his visage. And he came to a stop just before us.\n\n“Do you see him?” I asked.\n\nCarl nodded.\n\n“But when his strength failed him at length…” El Sombrerón said.\n\nAnd I instinctively continued, “He met a pilgrim shadow.”\n\nWith that El Sombrerón gave a little bow, and continued, “O’er his heart a shadow fell…”\n\n“But which way is the Mission?” I asked.\n\n“Ride boldly ride the shade replied…”\n\n“To where?”\n\n“Over the mountains of the moon… Down the valley of the shadow…”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Dark Paranoia\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2552\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is convinced they’re going to be betrayed." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In a small studio apartment on the fourth floor, a cynical young man scratches indifferently at an early birthday present. The man’s name is Aaron Newman, a man whom life treats without deference, honor, or success; waiters bring him cold burgers, and gas station clerks shut doors in his face. On this day before his birthday, he is given a lottery scratch-off that will change not only the way he views the world but everyone in it.\n Aaron scratched away at the lottery ticket, scoffing as he did so at the cheapness of such a thoughtless gift. But as the second box read “$500,000,” same as the first, he felt his pulse double and thrum with the intensity of an orchestra of bass. He told himself not to get his hopes up, as the disappointment would only sour after that last scratch; but he couldn’t help himself. His palms and forehead began to sweat and he was acutely aware of his eyes beginning to blur.\n When the third “$500,000” revealed itself, Aaron flew from his seat only for his legs to tremble, forcing him back down to the chair. His face expanded into the appearance of a scream, yet no sound escaped him as his throat tightened. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes as to confirm to himself that this was not an illusion, and the numbers on the small slip remained the same – Aaron had won the jackpot, and it was all thanks to this apathetic, lazy idea of a birthday present.\n He decided he wasn’t going to cash it right away – he didn’t want to give the gifter the satisfaction of knowing they had given him such an exuberant gift; Aaron knew that they would claim credit as if they somehow knew they were giving him a winning ticket and would expect Aaron to share his money. No, that simply wouldn’t do. He’d have to play it cool and act casual with his life as if nothing happened. If the friend would ask about the ticket, he would say he won $20 – which didn’t feel like much of a lie to Aaron, anyway – there was $20 within $500,000, after all.\n Aaron gave himself some time in his lonely apartment to collect himself and re-center his nerves. After several moments of balancing his breath and matting away the nervous sweats, he put on his shoes and left to go to the grocery store to have a personal celebration of his newfound, unsuspected success.\n Once in his car, Aaron drove down Main Street on his way to his town’s small grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly – affectionately known as “The Pig,” to locals. Realizing he’s still jittery from his winnings, he sets his car on cruise control to keep a consistent, casual speed down the street. As he cruises, a black sedan rolls past a stop sign on his right and pulls in front of him, forcing Aaron to slam on his brakes. The car behind Aaron blares their horn angrily at them and swerves past him, continuing down the road as if this was all Aaron’s fault. Aaron slams his fist on the horn as he glares at the black sedan; he can just make out a silhouette on the driver-side window. The shaded head appeared to be staring at him, though for what reason Aaron could not say. “What the hell?!” Aaron yells out at the dark car which is idled halfway between two streets. Finally, it completed its turn and moderately accelerated down Main. Aaron muttered angrily under his breath as he moved on, eventually turning into the small parking lot of The Pig.\n The unfortunately meager lot was packed full of vehicles as Aaron weaved up and down the lanes. At last, he found an open space and as he turned the wheel to park, a faded blue truck rushed in, nearly scraping Aaron’s front bumper as it did so. Aaron laid his palm against the horn, blaring his siren – heads of pedestrians walking amongst the cars swiveled to glower at him and the driver of the blue truck scowled at him as they raised their middle finger. Aaron’s lower lip trembled, and his eyebrow twitched. He eventually gave up and parked along the curb at the front of the store – he saw others do it all the time, and figured just this once he would too; what’s the worst that can happen?\n Now in the store, Aaron goes to the refrigerated meat section. He knows on most days he wouldn’t even dream of buying himself a steak as he could barely live on the salary he made – but the money he had set aside for rent was chump change compared to what’s going to be hitting his bank later; now was the time to splurge. He picks up a decently sized New York Strip, then moves towards the beer. As he moved down the aisles among the other shoppers, Aaron noticed that several of them seemed to be looking at him with disdain out of the corner of their eyes. He saw a mother place her hand on the shoulders of her kid, quickly turning them away. Aaron wondered if he had something on his face and offhandedly rubbed at his cheeks.\n Once in the alcohol section, Aaron inspected the beer selection. At first, he wondered if such an occasion would call for wine, but he didn’t really care for the stuff. He settled on a twelve-case of Blue Moon – he didn’t know if he was going to drink all of them in one night, but wouldn’t fault himself if he did.\n At the checkout, the cashier was loudly and sloppily chewing her gum. She never looked Aaron in the eyes, though did come close when she looked at his nose when she told him his total charge. Aaron couldn’t say for sure why, but he felt like this cashier was harshly judging him in her mind.\n Let her judge. Aaron knew better.\n Aaron made it back to his apartment with little complication. The steak was overcooked, but the beers – all twelve of them – hit the spot nicely. He had music blasting as he danced awkwardly alone in the studio. With a break in the music, Aaron thought he heard something bang. He paused the music and stood, swaying, as he listened intently for sound.\n Bang!\n It was the window. Aaron rushed to the window, threw open the curtains, and looked outside to see two kids running across the parking lot in the dark, away from him. “You dipshits!” Aaron yelled, “Come try that again and see what happens!” he moved to slam the window shut and, after blinking several times he realized he never opened it in the first place. Now with the mood killed, he slumped down on his couch with an aggravated sigh. As he sat in desolate silence, now he thought he could hear whispering which sounded like they were being spoken just out of view of the corner of his eye. His head swiveled from side to side yet he saw no one. Though no one could be seen, the whispers and hushed voices continued; they were malevolent, invasive, and bitter. He heard them snicker as if they were sharing secrets that he wasn’t allowed in on. He paced around his apartment room, looking under the couch and behind furniture, even going so far as to lift the pillows on his couch, but could not find the whisperers.\n An unsettling feeling rose in Aaron’s stomach, and he knew it wasn’t just the beer. He was reminded of all the rude, hateful people from earlier today – the people who, if they weren’t casting malignant glowers, seemed as if they wanted to get him hurt or killed. That’s when it hit him; they know. He doesn’t know who they are or how they found out, but they know about his un-cashed lottery ticket and they’re out to get his money.\n Fervently he spun around, brushing off the aggressive quake to his head as he did so, and charged at the small coffee table in front of the couch where he left the scratch-off. He swiped it up and held it clutched it against his chest. His pallid, sweaty face peered over his shoulder. The whispers were growing louder – no, closer – as he shielded his treasure. He slowly backed away from the table, until he broke into a sprint across the room and into the closet. He slammed the door and collapsed on the floor. There he sat for the rest of the night until after an unknowable amount of time had passed, and he finally fell asleep.\n The next day – his birthday – Aaron’s head felt like it was being pounded in with a hammer wrapped up by thin lemon slices. He stood up from his corner in the closet with an aching back and walked into the main room of his apartment. He looked at his phone and had somehow slept until almost noon and felt grateful he didn’t have to go to work that day. He moved to the kitchen and with trembling hands he poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down. He refilled and did this two more times before shoving his face in his hands. He usually doesn’t remember nights of heavy drinking, but he can recall last night clear as a bell. He knows that people are out to hurt him – possibly even kill him – to get their hands on his money. So he decides he is going to cash in this ticket ASAP and secure his money in the bank.\n Still wearing yesterday’s clothes he hastily puts on his crumbling sneakers, allowing himself to reverie on the classy new shoes he’ll replace these with. He shoved the ticket in his pocket and rushed out the door towards the stairs, neglecting to even lock his door on the way out.\n Driving down his street he noticed two girls standing on the sidewalk, and he noticed them cover their mouths and laugh, and he swears he saw their eyes dart over at his old car. He scowled at them as he drove past.\n Further down the road, there was a fallen tree that blocked most of his lane. He didn’t see anyone from the other direction, but in light of everything he had started to get nervous. With sweaty palms, he turns the wheel to move around the fallen tree. No one jumped out to meet him with this inconvenience, but he could see the verdure around him rustling with ambushers waiting for the exact right moment. With the stirring vegetation around him, the violent chorus of whispers around him began again. They were louder, and somewhat clearer than before. He can make out some of their plans to string him up, beating him senseless. The phrase, “catch him, kill him,” echoing in his ears. His eyes are blurring as dime-sized droplets of sweat rush down his forehead and flood his eyes. His hands have gone far from clammy as now he struggles to maintain a grip on the steering wheel. He uses his forearm to wipe away his eyes only in time to see a shadow standing in the middle of the road. He screams as he swerves, driving off the side of the road and crashing into a tree.\n He awoke, unsure of how much time had passed, but saw that the sun had already started to drop. He blinks and squints as the sensation of something cooling slowly runs down the side of his face. He reaches up to touch it and his hand comes back red.\n Stumbling out of the car he hears a woman call out, “He’s awake! He’s getting out of the car!”\n Aaron turns his head to see a woman and a man standing next to their vehicle parked on the side of the road. He looks to the tinted back windows and sees more of the shadowy figures, their heads turned to look at him. He gasps and looks back to the woman who cried out – both she and the man carry twisted expressions of tentative eagerness. He knows they believe their time has come to take him, but he’d sooner go on his own terms before he lets them. He runs back in the direction of home.\n Tearing down the street lightheaded as he was, unsure of how much blood he’d already lost, he knew he just only had to get back home, and he’d be safe. He didn’t see those two girls with their mischievous giggles from earlier, but he knew that they couldn’t be far. There are several pairs of running footsteps behind him – he can sense them though he cannot hear them through the tremendous pounding of his hard-pressed heart.\n The whispers are shouting now, eager and hungry, their hands reaching towards him with greedy claws.\n He reached his apartment building and dove into the elevator. He slams his fist onto the button for the fourth floor. As the lift slowly rose, the lights flickered and the walls rattled. Aaron raised his hands and clutched his head as the bitter pounding of his attackers assailed the outside of the elevator.\n The elevator doors open, and Aaron knows that as soon as he steps over the breach between the lift and the apartment floor a hand should shoot up and grasp his ankle, keeping him immobile until the doors close and crush him. He jumps over it and runs down the hallway until he sees his apartment room’s door is left ajar – barely an inch, but open nonetheless.\n Aaron stood paralyzed. Horror tingled up his body like thousands of avid insects. He knows he has to make a choice – wait for them to reach him out here… or face them off in there. He likes his chances in there better, if only slightly. He runs into the dark room and slams the door behind him.\n Immediately he sees the shadows huddled against the walls. They begin their devious whispering. “Here he is,” they say, “get ready!”\n He can’t take it – he thought he could, but he can’t take it. Not anymore, and never again. With tears streaming down his face, Aaron cries out, “You’ll never take me!” With a blood-curdling scream, he begins to run again. The lights turn on, the trap is about to be sprung, and Aaron Newman jumps at the window and plunges four stories down to the concrete below.\n Emma Newman, mother of Aaron Newton, shrieks. Friends and family who had been hiding in the dark to surprise Aaron on his birthday all crowd around the shattered window and look down. No one would ever be able to understand what spurred on this paranoia that led to Aaron’s death, as all that was found on his person would be his wallet, his old crumbling sneakers, and a fake lottery ticket given as a gag. But that is perhaps the worst part of paranoia – the unknowing. A dark paranoia; the mind’s twisted masterpiece, where shadows dance and conspiracies unite to throw a party that only the troubled can attend." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: the Unusual Vase\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2565\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about an artist whose work has magical properties." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Unusual Vase\n\nMatt awoke with a start to the banging on the door of his Airstream. He never had visitors at 6:00 in the morning. Heck—he never had visitors and that was planned. His Airstream was parked behind his small cabin/studio. Yet someone was here and by the loud and incessant knocking, they were anxious to see him.\n He yelled, “Hold on to your britches, I’ll be there in a minute.” He hastily pulled on his pants and shirt and stumbled to the door. \n Looking through the porthole style window he saw Nadine. She was the town character. If Mayberry had an Otis, then Clearwater had Nadine, A woman who was different from everyone in town, but somehow, she had become part of the closely knit fabric of the community. The rumor was that Nadine was the progeny of the indigenous people who inhabited the area before Europeans descended. As far as Matt knew, Nadine may have been part of Clearwater forever. She had the parched weathered skin might have been like an Indian. Her attire was a collage of various pieces beginning with a bonnet that would have been in place on a farm wife from the turn of the century--the nineteenth century. The next item was a blanket worn as a shawl that was made of native American patterns. Finally, below her ankle length skirt there were the unmistakable combat boots. She carried a cardboard box that could have held a pound cake, but with Nadine’s reputation, it might have been a human head. \n But for all her eccentricities Matt considered her harmless. He opened the door and Nadine tromped in and sat down without so much as a hello or a howdy. She sat the box down on the table and waved Matt over. Her first accusing words to Matt, “Is this your work?”\n Matt was indulgent of Nadine, but he was a bit miffed at her for her attitude and unannounced entrance. “Well, If I can take a look at what you have in that box, I may be able to tell you.”\n “I know you made it. You have to take the blame. Why, it’s got your mark. Just look here.”\n She ripped the tape off the box and raised the object. It was a piece of pottery that might have been Matt’s creation, though he hadn’t made anything like that in years.\n\n Matt had always loved to work with his hands. From the time he could walk, he would follow his father around his shop. His father was a mechanic who could fix anything. When someone in town had been to several garages to get a car fixed without success they would inevitably end up at Mac’s garage. Matt’s father, Mac, would usually straighten things out. His talent was not just limited to autos. He would have all sorts mechanical problems inherited from his customers that he would eventually bring back to life. \n Matt had inherited his father’s ingenuity, but had gone in a slightly different direction. Some aunt had given him a toy pottery wheel when he was nine-years-old. To everyone’s surprise, he immediately began creating bowls, ash trays little blobs of jewelry and all types of notions. When he was old enough to be a real nuisance his dad had introduced him to one of the many local potters. It was there that he developed a real talent. After high school, he didn’t go to a college or university. He went to the mountains of North Carolina to a place called Penland where he refined his craft. \n He worked making useful home products, but he also made artistic pieces. The artistic pieces were sold or given away, but Matt couldn’t earn enough to maintain himself with just ‘art’ so that part of his life gradually disappeared as he made more practical items. He gradually retreated from the world of artistic potters of Seagrove and Jug Town and withdrew to his small cabin up a narrow rarely used lane in the Clearwater community. He did keep one remnant of his artistic life. He had learned early in his career to appreciate the old wood burning kilns. The type and nature of the wood other combustibles used would always give a different and special glaze to the plates, jugs and mugs. The result was that there was a market for his unique wares. His cabin had been his studio and his home, but soon the business part crowded Matt out and he bought and restored an Airstream as his abode. His home was no secret, but, still, he was surprised that Nadine had shown up.\n\n Now he was reacquainted with one of his first artistic pieces. Matt picked up the piece and turned it over in his hands. Yes, it had his stylized initials on the base. And the reddish hue on the bottom third of the piece morphed into a azure and finally a deep cobalt blue color at the lip of the piece. It was created as a vase, but had several small openings about the bulbous body of the piece. A look through each of those holes would give a view of an intricate combination of colors reminiscent of a kaleidoscope. The interior was fashioned in such a way that a small candle could be placed in the bottom to enhance the coloration of the inside surface of the piece. Matt’s special talent for making artistic glazes had made a one-of-a-kind piece of art. It was one of Matt’s first sales. It gave him the incentive to continue his craft.\n Matt handled the pottery as though it was a treasured piece of art. He thought that it was. It was a creation from his youth that he knew he could never repeat.\n “That is yours, isn’t it?” Nadine queried as though she was speaking to a murderer.\n “Yep, it’s mine all right. I must have made that twenty years ago, but I haven’t done anything artistic in a long, long time.”\n “Sonny, I ain’t asking you to make another, and with God as my witness I wish you’d never made that’n. Let me tell you, this thing is cursed. It’s cursed I tell you, and if you can’t remove the curse, then I reckon we’re all doomed. Let me tell you about this here thing.\n “You sold this to young Harry Mabe about 1997. I know you did ‘cause I found the receipt with your name.”\n “Yes, now that you remind me, I think I remember Mr. Mabe. What happened to him?”\n “That’s what I’m here to tell you, but I’d talk a lot better with a cup of coffee and some bacon and eggs. You got some, ain’t ya.”\n Matt got the message squeezed around her into his compact kitchen so he could fix breakfast for her and himself. As he was making himself busy in the small kitchen, he kept an eye on his uninvited guest. She did not further touch the vase, but seemed to be whispering to it.\nIn a few minutes, as she sipped her piping hot coffee and gummed her bacon and eggs, she restarted her narrative. “Ol’ Harry loved that vase. He was going to give it to his daughter for a birthday present, but decided he liked so much that he kept it and gave her a suitcase instead. About a week later, his house burnt to the ground with him inside. Funny thing was, even though that darn house was nothing but ashes that vase was just fine, not even covered with soot.”\nMatt had no idea how to respond to that. “That’s terrible. I really didn’t know Mr. Mabe, but I’m sorry he passed.”\n“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.’ His daughter, Millie, took that vase and put it on her mantle. She sort of liked it. I guess it reminded her of her dad. She showed it to her remaining family and friends. They marveled that it survived, but, just like Harry, they thought it was the prettiest thing they had ever seen. Things would have been all right except for the incident.”\nMatt was more than curious, “Okay, tell me what happened.”\n“Millie had a break-in. A meth-head came in seeking drugs or whatever else he could get and stabbed her to death. Funny thing is that when the police found her, she was holding on to that vase so tightly, that her hands had to be pried from it.\n“I can tell you more, and will soon, but for now let me tell you that there have been ten owners or more correctly guardians of that vase. All ten have died violent deaths. You may think that’s a coincidence, but I don’t. The last owner, John Vann, began research into the vase. He contacted the Mabe family and found a small locked box that had survived the fire. That’s how I got your name. He was somewhat of an expert of pottery, especially Indian pottery. He told me that the vase seems to be made of materials found more often in western North Carolina. He concluded that the violence associated with the vase may be related to the origin of the clay used to make it. He knew that I was one of the few indigenous people around and asked me to take it if something should happen to him. That evening he was the victim of a hit-and-run. Now, just where did you get the clay for the vase?”\nMatt knew exactly where he found that special clay. “After my time at Penland, I travelled around western North Carolina looking at different pottery styles and different materials. In Transylvania County I found some unique clay on the banks of a creek in the Pisgah National Forest. The vase was made of that clay.”\nNadine’s eyes widened. Matt saw a knowing smile on her wrinkled face for the first time. “Well, let’s go!”\n“Where are we going?”\n“We’re surely not staying here. I think your vase is cursed. Back in 1838 President Andrew Jackson fostered a movement to remove five tribes from the East to beyond the Mississippi. A treaty of Echota, that’s in Georgia, was signed, but it’s not likely the tribes agreed. Chief John Ross a Cherokee chief protested to the government that the treaty had never been approved by his tribe, but no one would listen. The native American forced march to territories west of the Mississippi had begun.”\nMatt had heard this story before, but not from the Indian side. “Just what are you proposing.”\nOne of the native Cherokee chiefs is said to have rendered a curse on the land before leaving the Carolina mountains. He vowed that anyone using the Cherokee land for any reason would harvest a violent death. That’s the curse and that’s what your vase is. It’s Cherokee land.\nWithin the hour, Matt and Nadine were on their way to western North Carolina. \nThey made good time and stopped for a quick lunch and gas in Black Mountain. It was not yet noon and they were about ninety minutes from the site that they were searching. Leaving the restaurant, Matt saw a big man nosing around his truck. He approached him.\nHe saw Matt and confronted him. “That your truck, buddy?” the speaker easily outweighed Matt by fifty pounds. \n“Yeah, it’s mine, and you got no business messing around it.” Matt responded with a boldness he didn’t really feel.\n“Well, you got my case on your front seat. If you don’t unlock that door and give it to me this instant, you’ll wish you had.”\nMatt saw a pistol on his hip and a knife in his hand. There were no other cars around and not a suggestion of a police officer. He had a few valuables in the truck, but nothing worth dying for. He unlocked the truck and the hoodlum pulled out the satchel and sped off in his dirty green pick-up. Matt was shaking badly when Nadine emerged from the restaurant. He explained what had just happened and Nadine was ready to go after him. “He don’t know what he’s taken. We’ve got to get the vase back to end the curse. I’m not sorry for what happens to the thief, but that vase will end up with somebody, somewhere.\nMatt and Nadine jumped into the truck and went after the thief. Within a mile they saw what appeared to be skid marks and a freshly broken guard rail. Twenty feet below the embankment the overturned truck had a stream of steam drifting up to the road. There was no movement.\nNadine looked at Matt. “You’ve got to go down there and get your stuff. You’ve got to get the vase.”\nMatt knew that the elderly Nadine could not get down the hill so he skittered and bounced down the hill. The thief was sitting in the driver’s seat, but he would not terrorize anyone ever again. He had a long splinter of the guard rail neatly penetrating his left eye and exiting the back of his head. He grabbed the satchel made his way back up the hill. He told Nadine, “We’ve got to get the police. We have to report this.”\n“No, we don’t. If we wait, the police will take your satchel and the vase and it will be in someone else’s possession. That person will inherit the curse.”\nThere was no one around that they could see—no onlookers, so they left and didn’t stop until they entered the Pisgah National Forest.\nMatt hadn’t been there in twenty years, but the forest was not much changed. He found the creek by the road and found a place to pull off and follow a path. With a small spade he eventually found the overhang with the colorful clay beneath it. Nadine was behind him with the vase. She had begun a chant in what may have been a native Indian tongue. Matt was standing knee deep in the creek as he hollowed out ample space for the vase. Nadine waded into the cold stream and handed him the vase which he tucked deeply into the creek ban. He covered it with two feet of reddish blue clay and smoothed the surface before placing brush over it to obscure the recent excavation. Nadine had now changed her native chant into English. \n“May our father’s words now be satisfied. The Cherokee soil has been replaced and will forever be a part of this sacred land. May the curse on this vase be lifted. May your spirit rest forever.”\nNadine and Matt left the stream and struggled up the hill. They started the truck and headed back to Clearwater. They were both fatigued and bone tired but also satisfied. They truly felt that the curse of the vase was ended.\n\nThree hours later two college students waded in the creek. Now, it was totally dark and flash lights were used to identify the site. They had been whizzing down a mountain path on their bikes when they heard voices. Crouching in the bushes they expected to see drug dealers concealing a stash. When they found the site, they used their fingers to dig through the clay and into the bank. They expressed disappointment when they found an old vase instead of drugs, but decided to clean it up and take it home." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: A Mother's Dilemma\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1197\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is stuck between two opposing sides and can’t decide which one to choose." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Maya sat on the hard floor with a box full of polaroid pictures in her lap. What was she going to do with this information? It was too much for her to swallow. She was only looking for the Easter decorations she bought for Anthony last year and instead she found this.\nShe picked up a polaroid and examined it. It was hard to look at but she could not look away. How could Anthony do this to her? She did nothing but give him the best life. She loved him unconditionally. She sent him to the best schools. And she took him to Disneyland and Hawaii and New York. It was just the two of them his whole life and from the moment he was born; he was her whole life. And this is how he repaid his mother? \nMaya put down the picture and picked up another one, inspecting it. The image Maya looked at was set in, what she recognised as, her son’s basement. In the image a woman was tied to a chair. Although the polaroid was not the highest of quality, Maya could see the fear in the woman’s face. Despite that Maya never knew the woman personally, the face was very familiar. Someone had posted her picture all over town with block lettering across the top: MISSING. Each of the images in the box gave a similar story. \nMaya heard the front door slam shut and heavy footsteps walking in her direction. She stashed the box where she found it, under the queen sized bed in Anthony’s bedroom and stood up straight as Anthony entered. His gigantic frame filled the entire doorway. He was dressed in blue scrubs and had a backpack slung on one shoulder, like he did every Sunday.\n“What are you doing in my bedroom?” He asked, glancing around the room.\n“I was just going to change your sheets for you,” Maya said, kicking herself internally for coming up with the stupid excuse. She had never changed Anthony’s sheets before, why would she start now? Why wouldn’t she just tell him what she was doing in here, looking for the damn decorations.\n“You don’t have to. I changed them a few days ago.” Anthony leaned around his mother and tossed the backpack onto the bed.\n“Forget it then. I guess I will just start on dinner.” \nMaya pushed past him, not able to look him in the eyes and made her way to the kitchen. \nEver since Anthony moved back to Jacksonville from medical school, Maya and Anthony had started a tradition every Sunday night, Maya would come to Anthony’s house and cook dinner. It started as a way for Anthony to acclimate to working on the weekends, but now that he was in his thirties, it had become a bonding exercise for the two of them. Since Anthony’s father left the picture when Anthony was little, it had always been the two of them when Anthony was growing up. And Maya prided herself on raising such a great young man on her own. That was until he saw those polaroid pictures.\nMaya took an onion out of the brown paper grocery bag she had put on the counter minutes before and placed it on the cutting board. She focused on chopping, trying to distract her from what she really wanted to think about: was her son the one taking these disappearing women?\n“The ER was crazy today,” Anthony sat on the stool across from his mother and rolled his neck.\n“Oh yeah?” Maya glanced up but couldn’t make eye contact with her son for long. He was her perfect angel. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.\n“Yeah, there was a horrible accident on the highway and at least six people came in from that. And one of them died. Thank goodness the man was not in my care. Regardless of how long I have been doing this, it is still difficult to watch people die.”\n“I bet,” Maya said. Usually she would have added her own thoughts about how tough his job was and he was doing a service to humanity and people dying is an unfortunate casualty of his work or whatever, but all she could think about is how he saved lives in his day job, but murdered them at night. Then she wondered if he had a higher mortality rate than other ER doctors. She pushed the thought out of her mind and focused on slicing the mushrooms.\nSilence hung in the room before Anthony offered to put on some light background music. \n“What’s for dinner?” He asked.\n“Your favorite, I’m making spaghetti.” \n“Oh yum. That is my favorite. You always know what to do to cheer me up. No one makes me as happy as you do, mom. Do you want me to make the garlic bread?”\nMaya gave a tight smile. \nMaya had little to say during dinner and Anthony did most of the talking. For the first time since she gave birth to Anthony, she wished it was not just her and her son. She wished there was a sibling or a significant other that could help fill the silence.\n“What is the matter, mom? You are a bit off tonight.” \n“Oh nothing, I’m just tired. I think I need to go home. Do you think you can handle the dishes by yourself tonight?” Maya was not lying to her son. She was tired. She was tired of her mind wandering about who her son really was. She was tired of making dinner and eating with her son all the while trying to decide if she should call the police on him or continue supporting her only son like a good mother should do.\n“Sure. No problem.” \nMaya stood up and Anthony watched her with a kind eye as she collected her purse and made her way out the front door. She made her way to her car and sat in the front seat staring straight ahead. She had a lot to think about. \nIf she kept her son’s secret, life would continue as it always had. She would still have her loving son that she talked to everyday. If she told the police about him, she could save lives. She was unsure of how many polaroids were in the box but if she had to guess there were at least twenty. And there could be another twenty if she kept this secret to herself. But she was sure to lose her son. Prison would not be kind to him and visiting hours would be limited.\nShe took her phone out of her purse and then glanced up at the house. The living room light flipped off.\nMaya looked down at her phone and watched a teardrop fall onto the screen. For the first time in her life, she had to do something that went against her son. It went against all the pride she had in him.\nShe raised the phone to her ear and said to the person on the other line, “Hi. I want to give an anonymous tip regarding the multiple women who have gone missing in Jacksonville.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: RETURN TO COUNTRY\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2742\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or finish your story with a speaker unable to finish their sentence, perhaps overcome by emotion." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "‘Bring him to me,’ said Kurdaitcha, their executioner, I …\n ‘Yes,’ said Papinijuwari. ‘Then I will feed on his dead body.’\n The spirit group were affronted and convened a meeting. They had intervened but the old bike man still lusted for their sacred objects and kept his ways. There was a more immediate concern because a woman had accepted ancestral bones removed from their burial place above the river. The return of these bones would be their focus, then they would deal with the old man.\n Sue lived on the river’s edge of the community. The property had a back gate, entry to a track that gave access to river sand for the concrete used by contractors. The day before a truck had retrieved a load. It was her day off and late in the morning the phone rang.\n‘Hello, Sue speaking,’ she said.\n‘Sue, it’s Jessie from the building contractors.’\n‘What can I do for you Jessie?’\n‘Some help I hope, some advice, but I’m not sure. Yesterday the men found human bones in the sand by the river, and my Indigenous workers are very worried. There’s a skull, a leg bone, some other bones, and I’ve put them all into a box. We haven’t told anyone, but I’m quite concerned.’\n ‘That’s alarming news Jessie, and I couldn’t agree more. There’s been a few rumours about that area, so please ask the men to keep it to themselves for now and reassure them I’ll do what’s right. Leave it with me and I’ll get back to you before the end of the day.’\n ‘Okay, but sooner rather than later if you can manage it.’\n Sue paced the room after the phone call, then lay down to relax and think. She supported Aboriginal culture and beliefs and though not a true believer, had heard a few local and unnerving stories.\n She began to recall the details … then felt being led elsewhere, her eyes drawn to the windows facing the lawn, where an Indigenous man appeared and looked in.\n He was the most handsome man she had ever seen; tall, narrow at the waist and hips, broad shouldered, muscular, and wearing nothing but a loin cloth. With black, curly hair and dark irises that contrasted with the crisp white of his eyes, he stood on his left leg, held a spear upright in his right hand, while the foot of his right leg rested on his left knee. Statuesque, he spoke when he had Sue’s attention.\n ‘I am Malingee,’ he said. ‘I want the bones returned.’\n She jumped from the bed and went to the window, only to find him gone. Unbelievable! Was he real or did I dream him, she thought? More than anything she knew what to do, and with urgency, rang her husband.\n ‘Bill, it’s me. I need you to leave work and go to Jessie at the work site. His men found bones in the sand from down the back, and they must be returned and reburied as soon as possible.’\n ‘Roger that,’ he replied without question.\nRelieved, Sue hung up. Thank God, she thought, I have a husband who can be relied on in an emergency and trusts my instincts.\n That evening the family reburied the bones with a small ceremony. At the time Sue imagined Malingee nodded, turned and walked away.\n Malingee’s magic worked on the respectful woman, now to the old bike man. They had watched and knew his contributions to the community. The majority wanted to teach him a lesson and encourage the return of their artefacts to country. Finally, Bluetongue Lizard and Bamapana, the tricksters in their group, and Mamu, the dreadful dingo spirit, produced a plan to use as a last resort, with Mamu the appointed Watcher.\nAn hour from home, this was the furthest David had ridden. Wet season rains had weathered and eroded the sedimentary landscape into wide plains and valleys surrounded by flat topped hills capped with sandstone. This dual pathway left the main track at a right angle and traversed sandy plains full of gullies and scrubby bushland. There were gibber deserts with their assortment of stones, and pebbles that shined metallic with sand licked lustre, while empty creek beds waited. During the dry season cattle trudged head to tail, and single lane paths that were easily navigated on a mountain bike, crisscrossed the landscape.\nHe loved it here. The stunning landscape, the never ending trails, the challenges and second wind at the halfway mark of a thirty kilometres ride at seventy years of age, which had him flying on the return home; dodging rocks, termite mounds and limbs from lifeless trees. He was Peter Pan!\n David rode daily, and soon learned to look down because the rills, runs and sandy ravines from the wet were an ever changing hazard he wanted to avoid. He rode at speed and enjoyed the cooling wind when he sped past something familiar, braked and leapt from the bike. The piece of stone was around fifteen centimetres long, three centimetres wide, flat on one end and a pointed curve the other. The rocks in the area were sandstone but this was more crystalline. A sharp tap, tap, tap with another rock and the ding, ding, ding confirmed it was quartzite, metamorphosed sandstone, hard and likely a stone tool.\nAt ten years of age his father gave him four artefacts from the tilled soil of a market garden on the hills that overlooked the Tamar River in Tasmania. He never tired of finding a well-crafted stone tool, and there was a palpable excitement as a visual check was completed. Flat percussion platform at one end, check, point of percussion, check, fissure lines, check, worked and shaped cutting edges on one side only, check. He turned it over and over, caressed, and examined it as you would a gold nugget found prospecting, and smiled as it went into the back pocket of his riding jersey, then turned and headed home.\n As the teacher he loved sharing his knowledge of stone tools to Indigenous children, so the next day showed the class and discovered they had no idea about ancestral cutting tools. He taught what to look for and was pleased days later when several students returned with their own found at the billabong and in the sand by the river where they fished. The billabong was well known to the children for its freshwater crocodile eggs and now had a greater meaning. During recess he shared the find with Lily, one of the Indigenous assistants. She frowned, suddenly serious.\n ‘You need to be careful,’ she said. ‘My son knows bad stuff about a young man who took away something like that. You should have left this on country.’\n ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said. ‘I showed the kids, and they knew nothing about this part of their culture.’\n ‘I wouldn’t take the chance,’ she said seriously. ‘I’ll get my son to come and talk to you. Just make sure it’s returned.’\nThe next day, her son Tony dropped into school to see the artefact.\n ‘This is a good one,’ he said seriously. ‘Let me tell you a story in case you’re tempted to keep it. A young bloke was here from France and found a stone axe with part of an old handle and took it back to his country. Not long after it came back in a box with a note from his mate who’d been here with him. This young bloke was no sooner home, and he fell sick and died.’\n David was unsure how to respond but nodded, very aware of Tony’s message. He knew himself though; he was a definite sceptic of a God or spirits.\n That weekend David rode to an area of sculptured sandstone boulders. They were all shapes and sizes, but mostly rounded and layered, and four in a group, balanced atop weathered and eroded soil pedestals like enormous mushrooms. Smooth, silver barked, and leafless coolamon gums grew among them and made for picture perfect photographs.\n He spent time there, wandered amongst the boulders and appreciated the sheer beauty of landforms created over thousands of years.\n By the path back to his bike, an artefact caught his eye. It seemed too small to be of use; triangular, pointed and only two centimetres long and one centimetre wide. The two edges that met at the tip had regular, one-millimetre-long teeth, exactly one millimetre apart. The edges were perfect and so consistently uniform, they could not have been made with the explosive impact of a percussion tool. Its maker had used subtle, pointed pressure, a bone perhaps, which suggested patience and skill. It was an amazing piece, a work of art, and went into his back pocket.\n David turned for a last look, then startled, surprised with a lingering sense the multitude of big rocks were spirits of the dead and guardians of this special place.\n He took a circuitous route home via a dry, rocky creek bed, walked the bike over, rode up a steep section, and came to a near standstill at the top. It was there he fell sideways and landed with his full weight onto the hard ground. He hobbled with his bike for a while then capitulated and rang his wife for a lift. Stiff and sore the next day he limped to work with the aid of a wooden staff. Lily saw him arrive, took one look, and knew what had happened.\n‘I told you so,’ she said. ‘You have artefacts that need to be returned to country.’\n There were more falls; three in the most unexpected places. The first required stitches and follow up because of a bad skin infection, the second a sore back for months and never forgotten when he sat up in bed. The final and most serious was in Tasmania. He rode along a footpath, ducked under a small tree, only to run into a wheelie bin. Too slow to react, the fall was impossible to avoid and down he went and fractured his left femur.\nIt sometimes felt the country wanted him to fail and fall, to be aware of his age, or something else. David flippantly told friends and family the wheelie bin was moved onto the footpath deliberately. Twenty weeks after recovery, his confidence returned, and he put all the mishaps down to age and inexperience.\nDavid rode across a sand pan the year before had been bare. This year was different following an above average wet season, with dead grass everywhere, thick, and high. On a small patch of sand in the grass he saw a stone and knew instinctively there was something unnatural about its shape and markings. He focused on the spot and backtracked. The stone was very heavy, hard, flat, and black, with a well-worn, straight, grooved depression that had caught his eye. He touched a finger to the groove and followed it around the stone as he turned it over. It was contiguous and ran around just below the flat top of the stone. At the opposite end fractures and jagged edges created the cutting tip of a stone axe head.\n‘Yes!’ he yelled to no one in particular.\nYet Mamu heard and watched!\nThis was his best find, excitement tempered a little by unwelcome memories from the earlier warnings. Undaunted, he tucked the artefact into the back of his bike top and continued along what was a straightforward section the previous year, exhilarated and keen to mark this season’s safest trails.\n Too late! Where there had been none there was now a wide, deep channel directly in front of him. In and down went the front wheel and over he went.\n‘Damn and hell!’ he shouted, as he sat up and checked for injuries.\n There was nothing broken, only grazed, broken skin, and a trickle of blood. Ejected into the long grass, the axe head had been well hidden and required a thorough search before being found. Unabashed, it was returned to where it belonged, and went on his way.\n Mamu watched and was disappointed with the outcome.\n Branches swished and tugged at clothes as the bike bounced over stones and past bushes on the narrow trail. On the headwind there was the smell of something dead, then a large, bloated shape appeared through the trees off to the left, and into focus came a dead brahman bull. That was not all, David was astounded to see pigs and dingoes, a celebration of carnivores as they vied manically for morsels from the carcass.\n Unafraid, a large, adult dingo seemed apparent as supervisor, then watched and tracked his progress as the other animals scurried into the scrub. David felt him, and unsettled and a little scared, peddled faster to put distance between the affray and his bike.\n With the smell gone, and the animals left behind, he rode down and over the deeply grooved, sandstone creek bed. It was the dry season and easily negotiated by four wheel drive vehicles, but daunting on a mountain bike. The bike bounced across the bumpy rocks, dodged loose stones, and moved over a branch that flicked up and speared through the spokes and stopped the bike dead. These out-of-control falls had happened many times, with reflexes always too slow to stop the fall, and down he went, thud and darkness.\n David woke blurry eyed and disoriented, and in the faded light, knew he had been unconscious for some time. He lay on his back on an altar of sandstone slabs, and gingerly pulled one leg out from under the bike, sat up, while his head throbbed and spun. He checked for injuries and knew there was nothing broken. Then déjà vu, as he became aware of a putrid smell on the evening breeze.\nHe listened; heard rocks moved, and animals that snuffled and snarled. David turned and saw four of them as they sniffed in his direction, led by the big adult seen earlier. A trickle ran down the side of his head, confirmed as blood by the wipe of his fingers. The dingoes approached, eyes on him, with noses that tilted, twitched, and tasted his scent.\nFrom their darkness beyond, feral grunts and squeals of anticipation and bridled restraint, heralded a worse nightmare. The Anthony Hopkins movie and predatory pigs appeared in a flash as sweat from his beaded brow ran down cheeks and dripped from his chin. Frantic, he looked for defence and found the branch that had caused the fall. It was light, long, and strong, and perfect as a staff.\nHe felt for his phone, and while distracted, a young dingo made a rush, then howled in retreat at the hard rap on its sensitive nose. David scooted backwards and lent with his back against the sandstone wall that ran alongside the creek. He took his time and with eyes on the four, retrieved the phone. There was no reception and at a loss, screamed at the group.\n ‘Ayah, scat, go!’ he yelled, with a flurry of thrown rocks.\n The smaller animals trotted off a distance, but to his dismay the big adult sat, watched, and waited. He threw more rocks that hit, but the dingo just flicked its head, unaffected. It growled; eyes rigidly fixed.\n ‘What do you want?’ David yelled.\nAnother growl, loud and purposeful, then a decision dawned. He reached at his back, removed the axe head, and presented it at arm’s length in supplication.\n ‘Is this it?’ he implored.\n ‘Bark, bark!’ Louder, with red eyes unmoved.\n David knew what was needed; rose with the help of his staff, and with a swing of an arm, sent the axe head spinning into the scrub.\nA final yelp, and the big dingo trotted after the artefact, followed in procession by the others.\nMamu released the filthy ferals from their darkness, and the dingoes to country. The group’s plan finally came together, with this white man’s arrogance, and disrespect almost his undoing.\nDavid lifted and pushed his bike to the top of the bank. Where there had been none, there were now three bars on his phone. Exhausted and totally spent, he knew he was safe, and what he would be doing with his other artefacts.\nThough they never met, Sue and David were inexorably connected, and neither was ever a Doubting Thomas again.\nSome were aggrieved, but there were mostly satisfied smiles within the spirit group." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Cost of Madness\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1649\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Winston family is among the fairgoers, stepping gingerly through the mud. \nMatthew leads his wife and son to his favorite game of all.\n\"It's called the 'Wild Wild West,' Timmy. You're going to love it!\" \nMatthew had fired guns since he was a little tyke, growing up on his father's ranch, catching vermin long before he applied for the police academy. \nA Ferris wheel stands against the sky like a gaudy bracelet. \nMinutes later, Matthew recognizes the familiar pop of a .22 caliber rifle. Mechanical ducks totter and creak across the back of the gallery, and the rifles crack and spit. \n\"Step right up! Step right up, folks, test your skill, and win a prize,\" sang the shooting gallery man in an awkward black-and-white striped top hat. \n\"What's your heart fixed on getting, young man?\"\n\"I really want those big ones?\" Replies Tim.\nThe pitchman pointed to small cars on a wire. \n\"Shoot out the small red dot,\" he says. \"You have five shots to do it, and you can take any prize in the house.\"\nMatthew already has his tokens out.\n\"How much is it?\"\n\"Four tokens per tube of shells! Take your chances now, sir! We got a line of winners today.\"\nMatthew obliges. \nIt's a pump rifle fastened to the counter by a chain. \nMatthew raises the rifle.\n\"The elbow rest is permitted.\"\n\"That won't be necessary.\"\nMatthew swiftly fires all five rounds and lowers the weapon. \n\"Let me have that big bear,\" he said.\nWhen the card returned, you couldn't find red on it with a microscope.\nThe pitchman trollies a little cart down the wire, unpins it, and hands it to Matthew.\nMatthew slaps another two dollars worth on the counter.\n\"What you want next, Timmy?\"\nWhen Matthew had won two bears, a tiger, and a small audience, the pitchman took the rifle away from him.\n\"That's it for you, buddy.\"\nHey,\" says Matthew. \"You never said nothin' about how many times you could win.\"\n\"Thanks, Dad!\" \n\"Anything for you, son…\"\n\"Okay, Matthew, you don't have to keep up the charade,\" mumbles Delilah.\n\"Ya know, Delilah…how about a little appreciation? There isn't a man in this state who could have hit those shots with such ease.\"\n\"Oh? Oh? Are you talking about spending time with your son or shooting things? We all know you can fire a gun, Matthew. Bravo!\"\n\"That's enough, Delilah. Point taken!\" Exclaims Matthew.\n\"Can you get off my ass? I'm trying…\"\nMatthew walks away from them, hands in pockets, whistling as if nothing had happened. \nMatthew eventually slows down to allow them to catch up.\nHeavy rain begins to fall.\nMathew waits on a knee to embrace Tim.\n\"Son, I love you.\"\nMatthew stands and grabs Delilah by the hand.\n\"I love you, too. I always have, and I always will.\"\nMatthew feels her again—just for a moment—long enough to lean in and whisper,\" Delilah, if I cannot come back, I want you to know it's okay. It's better that way. Tim will stay. He will finally live safe and free…\"\nDelilah's eyes shine through the darkness.\n\"I have nothing left that I can offer you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything. It's time now. I must leave.\"\nTim cries as Matthew departs. \n\"Don't you think of coming back this time!\" Hearkens Delilah. \"You hear me! Don't you come back!!!!”\n*\nThe warehouse doors are agape like stretched jaws waiting to consume him.\nMatthew walks further, hypnotized by the glowing altar and smoking incense that swirls like an ethereal storm. The altar is calmly waiting for him, lucidly outlined by a pentagram. \nTen isosceles triangles, five acute triangles, and five obtuse triangles chalked a perfect geometric construction.\nMatthew pulls three candles from his sports jacket and lights all three.\nThe onlookers surrounding the altar are naked.\nMany of them are drenched in blood.\nOthers are in the process of mutilating themselves with sharp instruments\nThey babble alien words that cannot be understood.\nOutside the circle stand robed beings with hoods dangling over hidden faces.\nMatthew strips naked and stands in the center of the circle\nHe drinks a crimson liquid, thick and tacky. \nThe hallucinations begin. \nA lifetime of victims reminds Matthew of the shame and guilt he now suffers. \nThe lives he had taken, eloping spirits madly weaving in and out of the shadows without any particular order.\n\"Take me… I am the disease. Spare my family! It was me… never them. I'm the one…\"\nMatthews's hands tremble as he drops tightly bound scrolls containing the names of those he wishes to release from the curse.\nThe room begins to vibrate, oscillate, and blur.\n\"I am the sickness. I am the disease. Spare my child. I am the sickness. I am the disease. Spare my child. Dammit! I said come to me! I am the sickness…the disease! Spare my child!\"\nA bell rings.\nThe robed entities approach the center and pull their hoods back.\nMilky, bullet-skulled, shaved heads with sharp kernels of jutting marrow give way to the fact that they are not mere mortals.\nTheir black eyes are without expression.\nThey take Matthew and force him to lie on the altar.\nThe demons caress his body with oil, and quickly, his skin numbs.\nCoins are placed on his eyes after they have been meticulously sewn shut.\nThe tip of a blade is inserted into Matthew's bony sternum and pulled down all the way to his naval.\nMatthew moans.\nStreams of blood rush down jagged layers of fettered flesh.\nSeveral sets of hands pull and hollow the yawning chasm, sifting and squeezing the organs inside.\nJust as Matthew passes out, he feels the sensation of something being forced into the abyss of his guts.\nDarkness falls.\n\nWhen Matthew wakes, it's dark outside, \nHe is buckled behind an unmarked black SUV with the heater on high and the engine rumbling.\nJames, Matthew's partner, nudges him and offers a fresh cup of brewed coffee.\nMatthew blinks, takes the cup, and stares at the low-income housing complex across the street.\nThree people are gossiping out front. \nA skinny shaved white kid in sweatpants, a fat black man in dreads, and a rail thing Hispanic teenager with a skirt so short that her ass is hanging out.\nThe gang walks a block to the northwest towards the local strip joint.\nJames offers Matthew a hit of coke off a small spoon.\nMatthew snorts it, and he's suddenly aware of the world in a deeper, clearer way.\nAnother car blasts Guns N' Roses \"Welcome to the Jungle\".\n\"You kids don't know the half of it…\"\nJames smirks.\n \"… it's go time!”\nGuns, unholster.\nSafeties click off. \nWithin moments, the gang knows they are being pursued. \nThe skinny kid whistles. \nThe Latina girl trips over her high heels.\nThe fat man does not even move. He grins and puts his hands up.\n\"Don't shoot,\" he says.\nMatthew pays no mind and puts a bullet right between his eyes.\n\nRats run up and down behind alleyway garbage cans.\nThey nip at Matthew's flesh.\n\"Just make it end!\" Matthew screams.\nIt will be over soon. \nMatthew tries to remember their names.\nAll the people, friends, the world around, especially the boy whose hair was brown. \nHis boy.\nHe recalls how Delilah got him into this whole mess.\n\"I did it for you, Delilah! Everything was for you! Remember, we couldn't even have Timmy until I made the oath!\"\nMatthew remembers her whispering, \"You did the right thing for us, honey! For our family…\"\nThen, she would hold Matthew's face in her hands and try to take his pain.\nMatthew would try to help her understand, but she could not.\nAnd soon, the boy was not enough for her.\nShe would have what she wanted now. \nThe knowledge. How it was that Matthew made it happen.\nThe sacrifice for love and family faded.\n\"You will,\" says Matthew. \"If that's what you truly want, you'll find out soon enough.\"\n*\nIt approaches with a crown of horns and antlers above its head, lumbering toward Matthew. \nIts elongated sinews and muscles move harshly and rigidly. \nGreat gusts spew from its snout and flicker flames.\nIts eyes glow red, and it comes with three purposes in mind.\nKill.\nSteal.\nDestroy.\nDelilah falls to her knees in worship.\n\"He called upon you, master. It was Matthew, not I…\"\nBut there is no pleading now. \nNothing left to ask for.\nNothing to forgive \nIt shifts its shape as it walks.\nOne moment, it has a goat head, and the following is a minotaur. \nIt does not listen or reason.\nPain is the devil's only laughter\n\"Oh woman, what a naive delight you have been,\" it says as a great wingspan unfolds behind its back.\nIt stands erect and stretches its wings, fluttering as other creatures emerge from under its leathery feathers.\n\"You wanted to see me. Here I am…\"\nAnts begin filling Matthew's chest, and Delilah is infested with beetles. Unable to make a sound, their mouths open, and they vomit grubs and worms.\n\"Didn't see this one coming. You ask your husband to sell his soul for a child, then have the audacity to beg my presence!\"\nA rush of wind and a blast of heat keeps Matthew's eyes closed. He recalls the sculptures, the piles of sticks, the pyramids, twine and rope vines, and metal running up and down the alleyway containing the small sculptures he'd been making his whole life, these quiet moments of meditation-sending them out into the world the stream of evil that finally added up to a worthy sacrifice. \n\"It's your turn, Delilah…Are you ready?\"\nPain.\nSuffering.\nVengeance.\n\"It's you that I take now… so hear your son's voice one final time… there, there, that's enough… you are the sickness… you are the disease…. And you shall pay for what you have done.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Everything In Heaven Is Already Here on Earth\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1108\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Nora walked home through the snow with the ingredients she had\nbought to make her daughter a thick brown stew, as she always did around this time of year. She passed the frozen statue of a famous explorer in the town square, up to its shins in snow, with his rusting copper features illuminated by the glare of lighting from the stores. Her daughter, Astrid had been born on the official start of winter, the 27th November, although the wintery darkness was always present for more than two weeks in the lead up to the date. Tonight, as she did every year, Nora would make her the special meal of perfectly tender stewed beef and cabbage for her annual birthday dinner. \nReturning home, Nora unpacked the bag of ingredients by the hearth. She set them out carefully like a little family in a semicircle and added another log to the embers in the grate to thaw them out. When the fire burned strong and good, she went to peel potatoes. At the sink, blue light flashed intermittently on the silver edge of her knife as she skilfully removed the skins, coiling them like flat snakes and adding them to a pile of scraps. The dull, blue midday sky shone through the kitchen window mixing the glassy, deep blue light with the red emanating from the hearth fire. It cast a purple hue over her cooking. Outside the snowy expanse looked somewhat like a moon far from earth and the log pile like a strange being. She noted to herself that it was always on the evening of just such a day that Asrid came by to visit. Her daughter would make her way over the mountain and meet in the same spot as they did every year. Nora switched the radio on to the weather forecast and heard the confirmation she needed. Tonight would be the first auras of the season. \nShe took comfort in the different steps she knew so well to make her daughter’s special meal. Tenderising the meat with a small mallet, dicing it and salting it, then adding the prepared pieces to the old black pot above the fire. The little family of ingredients had now all been safely placed within. She left to let time do its work on the dish and took the stairs to continue with the birthday ritual. She hadn’t bothered with decorations this year as she had in past years but the house still had a festive air to it, filled as it was with the smell of cooking. She padded in moccasins across the patterned rug to her daughter’s room to check its silent contents. \nInside the sky’s blue horizon lay flat across the window, dimly lighting her made bed with its patchwork quilt that Nora had painstakingly hand stitched, before she was even pregnant with her much desired child. Her only, her Astrid. She switched on a lamp by the bed, suddenly bringing to life the blanket’s brightly coloured diamonds of patterned material with woodland animals playing across it. Every stitch a wish and a commitment to care for her before she had even been born. She walked gently to the bed and took the cover off wrapping herself in it. In her own room, as was customary, she went to the sideboard and picked up the small lacquered pot with a lock of Astrid’s hair inside it. She dropped it into her housecoat pocket to remember her birth day in her own way. The day she had become a mother. She lay on her bed, warm in the patchwork. Here she’d stay and rest a few hours until the stew would be cooked and Astrid had arrived. It was hard to stay calm with the excitement she felt within. It had been a full year since Astrid had made her way through the night to visit her mother. \nWhen Nora awoke, it was dark. All of the day’s blue had drained away into the navy of night. She rushed downstairs clutching the old cotton blanket around her frail frame. She first pulled on her gloves, then boots and coat over the blanket for another layer against the cold. The hearth had burned down again but she didn’t add another log. She carefully ladled hot stew into a flask. Carrying it to the door it warmed her gloves and hands within. As she left her home, a blast of cold hit the soft skin of her face waking her fully to the night that stretched out beyond her door. She walked out across the vista she’d viewed earlier from her kitchen window and trudged past the strange log pile, onwards, passing through the dwindling pines bent heavy with snow like other-worldly monsters. The white expanse was fresh and still, like a made bed around the trees’ drooped and sleeping heads. She headed for the foot of the mountain beyond with her breath expiring into the minus degree air. \nAs she approached the meeting place, she checked her watch. There was no agreed time but it was usually within the window of late evening hours that they would meet here. She felt that Astrid would be coming slowly nearer every second, as she made her way over the summit. Nora stood shivering with excitement as the first flickers of green light arose from behind the peak. It was time, so she removed her glove and pulled the small lacquered pot from \nher pocket, as was customary. Her fingers shook with cold and anticipation as she removed the lid. In the sky, swirling rivers of emerald and blue danced their way over the body of the mountain. The luminous colours moved gently overhead as she plucked the lock of Astrid’s baby hair from its resting place. She let fly a few strands onto the air and watched them dance and twirl, interrupted only by a shock of laughter. She was here. \nThe ancient aura with its band of lost children had come to dance above the trees and play. She watched as they leap-frogged over the mountain and back again. Astrid was here too, laughing in the wind with the others. As she followed the strands of gold blowing up on the wind, Nora saw her girl in the light, twisting and floating like an iridescent angel in the gloaming. As the lights moved, the laughter drew nearer. She set down the flask and opened the lid. The billowing steam from the special meal she always cooked her daughter on her birthdays’ flew up and disappeared into the cold air, as if being consumed by a spirit. \n1106 words" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Gloria\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1504\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story at a tense event where everyone is unsure whose side they’re on." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They liked to share these idyllic quiet moments, in front of the mirrored dressing table, George combing Georgina’s hair. It was something soothing, calming, and therapeutic, a necessary and intimate ritual, an important part of their relationship, which they had been doing together since they couldn’t remember, certainly since childhood. In complete silence - never a word spoken, Georgina in a catatonic state of mind, completely immobile, a trance-like state. George slowly, softly, gently glides the brush through her long tresses of hair. This quiet ritual went on for hours, quietly, blissful, they were inside a bubble of tranquility.\n\nGloria watched on, grinning from ear to ear, lolling against the chair, propped up with cushions, Gloria had seen it all. Gloria was a gift, a valuable gift of subterfuge for George, a bribe from his parents, to keep him quiet, keep his mouth shut. About the secret that must be kept in the family, no one, absolutely no one must know, you know that, George. Don’t you? His parents would explain to the innocent ears of George. This is Gloria, you can whisper in her ear, if you ever want to talk to someone about it – OK?\n\nGloria became the listener, the therapist, and then she would pass on the secret information to Georgina. Georgina was the stronger of the two, made of rock, nothing disturbed or frightened Georgina. That’s why George doted on Georgina, he knew he was weak, and she was so strong, she possessed the strength for both of them. Gloria was so pleased to be added to the family, and to be an integral part of it. The family was wealthy, the father a world renown specialist surgeon from a wealthy legacy, he was privileged from birth, nannies, boarding school, his pathway in life was constructed and planned before he was born, from generations prior, and generations to come. The tried and trusted way. His marriage was arranged, with only a select few who could be considered a match in their world, in those high circles of society. She was perfect, of similar family status, she didn’t lose any of her privileges, it was a perfect transition from her maternal family into her family of marriage, she didn’t lose any sleep over the matter, life continued on as normal, gatherings, parties, friends, it was seamless.\n\nWhen she became pregnant shortly after the marriage, it made the headlines on the celebrity pages, the joyous ink leapt off the gossip pages. She demanded to be fully anesthetized for the birth, pain was not a word in her personal experience dictionary. She was completely unaware of the conception, totally out of it, she could have given birth to a horse, and was equally unaware she had delivered twins.\n\nGloria was selected as a gift, a treasure for George, she was token of unspeakable secrets, unfulfilled desires, her appearance with her blond braided pigtails, gaudy red lips might have been misconstrued, but George hugged her lovingly from the very first time they met. His parents were incapable of showing affection, demonstrating their love with hugs and kisses, not in the normal sense. It was not accepted in their constrained unemotional legacy, their upbringing, and it continued in this generational circle of supposedly refined upper-class family and friends. When Gloria arrived, George understood what he was missing, a feeling of unknown nostalgia for simpler circumstances, which he didn’t have an inkling about or any comprehension that it existed, another life, a different life, a life uncomplicated, without the subtle stresses or pressure continuously made by his parents. George always felt vulnerable, awkward; a feeling of an unfinished project in the presence of his parents, on the rare occasions he was allowed into company of his parent’s friends, such as cocktail party events, or saying farewell at nighttime, George was nervous, uncomfortable, shyness overcame his speech, as he stood dumb and gormlessly in front of the onlooking adults inspecting George like an alien life form.\n\n“Strange boy!” They would whisper, as he turned his back on leaving the room. George heard the whispers, these overheard comments like so many others send him further into his interior cave of solitude and despair. At least George had Gloria to confide in, he always thought, and the thought consoled him.\n\nIn the eyes of his parents Gloria’s arrival filled a gap, Gloria symbolized a desire for perfection and control over George, which was completely immoral. The family secret must be suppressed, at all costs. George was getting older, and wiser, Gloria was introduced with the sole intent of keeping the family secret secure.\n\nEverybody was aware that George was the weak link in the subterfuge, the conspiracy, the dark secrets of the family, Gloria was the guardian, she was central to it all, and that made her the gatekeeper to the whole incestuous situation. She was the overseer and protector. The only person Gloria confided in was Georgina. Gloria’s secret was safe with Georgina.\n\n“Doing a good job, is he? That’s about all he is good for, combing your hair.” Gloria said sardonically, without moving her lips like a ventriloquist dummy.\n\n“George is a sweetie, stupid as an ass, but he is my loving brother, and I will always protect him – even from your foul mouth!” Georgina replied defensibly.\n\n“He’s so stupid, he can’t hear us, or he ignores every word, the truth, he’s a lame brain!” Gloria continued her verbal attack.\n\n“You are the smart one, the strong one in this family Georgina, if it wasn’t for you, we would still be in the clutches of those dinosaur parents, the molesting evil creeps!” Gloria continued.\n\n“DON’T say a bad word about Mummy and Daddy like that, shut that vile mouth of yours, Gloria!” Georgina was getting agitated now, but George continued the slow grooming strokes, undeterred and it seemed oblivious to the conversation between Georgina and Gloria. The smooth grooming strokes of brush helped Georgina to keep her temper, remain calm.\n\n“I won’t tell anybody what you did, don’t worry, those abusers of innocent children deserved it – justice was served. Only you Georgina had the balls to do it, George doesn’t have what it takes, never did. He always hid behind you, scared of his own shadow; the stupid one.” Gloria continued in her negative tone.\n\n“I watched on for years as they took you to their bed for their evil desires, for years, Daddy wanted control, his evil desires, his manipulation, his family fun; and she; Mummy followed; a willing assistant; always pickled, in her normal alcohol fueled state of mind, anesthetized, she was a lush most of the time, both were heartless immoral bastards.”\n\n“I was used like a comfort blanket, a rag doll, to make it seem normal. Those twisted monsters.”\n\n“Whisper in Gloria’s ear, Gloria will keep the secrets of the night, Gloria will make any pain go away. Tell Gloria, but don’t tell anybody else.” Gloria mimicked the parents’ words to their sexually molested victim.\n\n“They deserved what was coming.”\n\nGeorge dropped the hairbrush, and went to Gloria, and started hugging her, whispering in her ear.\n\n“What did he say?” asked Georgina.\n\n“He says he loves me, and will I forgive him, will I forgive him for his weaknesses.” Gloria replied.\n\n“Always the same, he’s that stupid, he thinks it’s his fault!” Gloria was angry.\n\n“Don’t be too hard on him, we need him to be his normal complicit self, we need his continued silence; we need him to keep his mouth shut now more than at any time. These are dangerous times, no slip-ups; we all need to stick together, otherwise there will be trouble for us all – including you Gloria - understand?” Georgina continued to look into the mirror, but her steely eyes, and tightly drawn mouth emphasized the words. It was a threat.\n\n“Don’t you trust me, Georgina? to keep your dirty obscene family secrets locked away in my head?” Gloria said in a challenging teasing manner, she was goading Georgina.\n\nGeorgina lifted her right hand, both hands had been hidden from sight, low between her parted legs, during the long grooming process. As she lifted the concealed right hand, one could now see she was holding the blade of the nine-inch carving knife, splashed in crimson blood, the blood stood out a dark dull shade of red, against the shiny silver blade of the knife. Slowly she raised the blade higher, and then held it above her head. She held the pose, and slowly turned her upper body and head to face Gloria.\n\n“Unless you are looking for the same, Gloria, I would recommend you keep your mouth shut, as you always have, it was the reason you were ingratiated into this family, your loyalty has kept you alive and your dirty mouth tolerated – your circumstances can change fatally IF you start to change, my dear Gloria.” Georgina glared at Gloria threateningly.\n\n“Now, let’s clean up the mess. They say no bodies, no crime.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Great Hot White\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1317\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone witnessing — or trying to witness — a celestial phenomenon." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "CW: Brief descriptions of violence\n\nThe harsh winter wind had deepened in severity, the gushes feeling colder, and gaining force, each blow by feeling like a scorned slap against the boys now ruddy cheeks. He sniffed, pulling the snot back into his nose before it became icicles. He couldn't see ahead of him, or behind him, a raging tempest of white encompassing him. A faint orange glow emerged out of the white behind him, with it talk that was muffled by the wind. The boy knew he had to go faster. The boy looked at his father, who laid on the sled he pulled, his skin sickly and almost as white as the snow. The father muttered words, faint, and incoherent. The boy hastened his stride, gripping the rope with his skinned palms and pushing further out into the cold.\n\nThe men had first arrived several months ago. They were like aliens, carrying strange items, and donning strange garb. Their tongue was guttural. They had emerged from the woods like folk creatures, venturing into the tribal camps. The boy was first at awe. They left, and returned just a few days ago, this time death with them. The boy had escaped with his father, the rest of his family taken or killed. His father had tried to rescue the boys sister, but the men had attacked him with strange weaponry, and now his father laid near death with his chest agape.\n\nThe boy continued to walk, no longer feeling sensation in his feet. He dared not glance at them least he see their condition, and it sour his resolve. The orange glow grew closer, and the words carried on the wind clearer. Speech. Guttural speech. The very sound of it strangled the boys chest, and his heart became tight, fear gripping his body. The boy quickened his pace, tugging at the sled. Before him, he could slightly make out the vestige of the landscape. Snow covered plains stretching for miles, beyond that, towering mountains.\n\nThe boy continued with his hastened pace, breath ragged and lungs raw, tissue being clawed at by the bitter wind. He continued 'til he slipped, falling down a small slope, the sled falling with him. He rolled until momentum judged he need roll no longer, but his father went into a stone, covered in snow. The boy ran to his father, and after making sure his father was not injured, profusely apologized.\n\nThe wind was sinister, the harshness of its cold, and of its force, almost malevolent, as if alive and seeking vengeance against man. What made it even crueler was the sound of howls which now rode it, coming down from the mountains. The boys fear was doubled, but he knew they couldn't turn back. So he kept forward. They made their way onto the great and snow covered plain, the boy now almost running. Across the white land, shadows flew across it, silent and strange. They disappeared, only to reappear feet ahead. They howled, and their howls intertwined with the wind, a symphony of dread. Their bellies were empty, and they ran with hunger, their eyes set on violence. They knew this land, better than man. Eyes adapted for the dark, and a world without light. Across the plain they spotted the boy and his father. And with the turn of the howling in the wind, the boy knew this also.\n\nThe boy ran, his hands clenched to the rope like the fists of a newborn. The wolves ran, more so appearing to fly, over the plains. With each new leap, each new jump, they seemed to disappear like jinn, only to appear moments later in the fog of the cold. The boy had doubted his belief in the great spirit, and in things that lie beyond this earth, as of late. It seemed as if there was nothing more than the dirt, and the violence, and the misery, and the pain. But he had now regained an ember of his once held conviction, as the wolves had now took note of the men that were pursuing him. Once more, the howls upon the wind turned, and the wolves turned from the boy and his father, and instead pursued beast like themselves.\n\nThe boy chuckled as he heard the burst of yells, gunshots and howls. The laugh though was tainted by a spray of blood, the boy falling down face first into the snow.\n\nWhen the boy was asleep, he could swear he had a conversation with someone. He couldn't remember who, but he knew he did.\n\nThe boy had now awoken, when he pried his face up from the ground some of his already maimed and bloodied skin peeling, sticking to the ice like honey. A few drops of blood fell from his face to the ground, but froze within seconds and soon after that covered in snow. It was painful and he cried for a moment, but not for long. He checked on his father, who looked like a snowman, his moccasins and feather headdress peeking through the snow that had covered him, and realized he was dead. The boy cried, but quickly stopped and wiped his cheeks, the tears freezing as they rolled down. He also stopped because he finally looked at his feet, and realized he was also soon to die. So he lied next to his father and looked at the sky. Beyond the storm, you could make out the black canvas, specks of white spotted around. The stars and black canvas began to become more visible, the haze of the storm lessening.\n\nA shooting star blew by. A strange coincidence, a chalk up to luck, that the boy would see such a beautiful sight before his departure. Then another one flew by. Then another. Then another. Then multiple ones at once. It grew, and grew, until the sky glowed, becoming a sea of hot orange and red as celestial objects propelled through the void. They grew until the sky, the firmament, the void itself became a great, hot white. The white grew, in intensity, and in light, and in warmth, and seemed to be closing in on the boy. He welcomed it though, it felt like a warm hug, a loving embrace from someone you've never known, but could swear they've known you all your life.\n\nA deep, thundering rumbling emitted from within the white, the force of it seeming to shake the very ground. A presence was behind the light, the very vestige of its size and scope immeasurable. The rumbling grew into bellowing, a thundering holler and yell. The boy closed his eyes as the thunder washed over him, and warmth wrapped around his body. He felt as if his soul was being tore out of his body, and went unconscious.\n\nThe sky was blue. Light blue, with a few, odd clouds spotting the canvas. The boy leaned up, surveying the scene. The plains were still covered in snow, but the storm now gone. The boy looked at the sun, his yes squinted. Morning. He should be dead by now. He looked at his feet, the skin no longer peeling off them. The soreness of his traveling had left his body, and he felt rested for the first time in days. His father still lie dead in his sled a little aways from him, his corpse looking more like a ghost than the man who raised him. Across the plain lie scattered dead men, their bodies maimed and bloodied, the snow around them flushed with red.\n\nThe boy stood, and went to his father. He spoke a short prayer over his spirit, for peace and safe travels. He looked around, unsure of where to go, or what to do. He looked up at the sun, his eyes closed. It was warm, so he decided to follow it, and embarked eastward for the mountains." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Rather You...\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2644\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with an unexpected betrayal." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“In here!”\nChelle pushed the dark, metal door open and urged me through it. I crashed through the gap. The adrenaline coursing through my body fighting with a terror that threatened to tear me apart. I could barely see through my eyes, they vibrated with fear and a roiling river of tears pushed at the weakening dam, almost undoing me.\nHolding it together was a full-time job I just wasn’t qualified for. My bladder vied for my attention and somehow shouted more loudly than almost everything else assailing my beleaguered senses. I was a wreck of a human-being seemingly filled to the brim with piss. The pending humiliation of wetting myself was a straw that had a sharp end tipped with the poison of shame. \nI hit the wall, an instinctual presence of mind had me reaching my hands out to manage the impact. The wall itself was cold and rough-hewn. There was something satisfying about its solidity and substance as I slid my hands down it, my legs going from under me as the last of my strength evaporated.\nOver my ragged breath I heard the door shut and for an insane second I thought Chelle was the wrong side of it. My heart took a pause and I froze in the seeming isolation I now found myself in. \n“That was intense,” Chelle breathed the words out with every laboured exhalation.\nI turned slowly towards her.\n“Intense?” I asked the question even before I saw her face and the triumphant smile she wore on it.\nShe nodded now and I saw it all for the first time. I saw it and I took it in and allowed it to wash over me. There was a resignation here; I should have known.\n“They don’t usually get this far,” she examined me as though I were a specimen, or rather a lamb to the slaughter, “you did well. At one point, I thought you’d get away.”\nThe cold expanse of the wall was matched with the chill that ran through me. The time for running was over. Sometimes you know what is required, even if it isn’t to your taste, “you don’t need to do this,” I told her.\n“Oh! But I do!” she crowed.\n“You’re making a big mistake,” I replied.\nShe stood at the door, her hand on the handle. I looked from the handle to her vindictive face and she saw it all, “there’s no mistake, and don’t even think about trying to get out.”\nI sighed and the resignation took hold a little more, “why, Chelle? Why betray me like this?”\nShe chuckled, a cold and cruel laughter that pinballed off the bare stone walls, “because I can!” Her eyes narrowed and I had a vision of her killing insects, then working her way up to small animals. I wondered how far she’d gotten in her callous career of petty hatred and the murder of innocents. Cats, I thought to myself, this is a girl who has killed cats. Maybe not kittens though, not yet anyhow, “besides, it’s fun!” Her face hardened in readiness to deliver the verbal coup de gras, “I like to watch,” she hissed this phrase in an am-dram approximation of a snake.\nBefore our exchange could go any further, there was a loud, confident knock on the door. \nRap-da-rap-rap-rap, that familiar rhythmic pattern so oft used by those who knock on doors. It had no place here. Another morsel of wrong that detracted from the world around it.\nI shook my head at Chelle, she read this as my wanting her to keep the door firmly closed, “too late now!” she said cheerily. I wondered what she thought was going to happen. How much did she know? Was she prepared for what was about to happen in this room?\n“I hope you have the stomach for this,” I said to her, a melancholy haunting my words.\nShe trilled with that hollow laughter, “you’re the one who won’t have a stomach!”\nWith that, she opened the door to reveal a hulking figure in the doorway. The figure that had chased us into this abandoned building and run us to ground. Run me to ground. He stood there before me, in no rush to enter the room. Using this moment to intimidate me. Confident in the knowledge that I had nowhere to go. I could no more go through him than through the door that he had replaced.\n“You don’t need to do this,” I repeated these words to him as I pushed myself up to a standing position. No point in remaining on the floor, I wasn’t going to make it easy for either of them.\nIn answer, he brandished the hook he’d slashed at us with when we’d encountered him in the woods. The silent terms of engagement had been established via the sight of that crude and brutal weapon. There was no finesse here, only a clumsy sadism.\n“Chelle,” he said gruffly as he stepped into the room.\n“Dad,” she replied.\n“He’s your dad?” I asked with incredulity. \n“Yes!” she said proudly.\n“Figures,” I said sarcastically.\nShe grimaced at that, but did not deign to respond. She pushed the door closed and bolted it.\n“You’re making a big mistake,” I told her.\nShe flicked a switch and a bare bulb added inadequate illumination to the space we occupied.\n“Mistake?” she said, “you’re the one who made the mistake, and now you’re trapped in here with us.”\nI smiled my best shit-kicker smile. A smile that can mean a great many things, but certainly didn’t fit with the current world view of either of these amateur monsters, “no, you’ve got this badly wrong. You’re trapped in here with me.”\nAn eerie silence crawled into the room and wrapped itself around the both of them, just one of the many devices at my disposal. A piece of punctuation. A noticeable drop to a whole other line in the script. Only this was not in their script and it would take them a while longer to fully understand that this was now my show and they were lucky to have speaking parts. That would of course change presently.\nI stepped into the centre of the room, “I thought we were friends, Chelle?” I said this in a pleading and wheedling sing-song voice.\nChelle only gawped at me, then she had the presence of mind to actually do something. She made the mistake of getting angry.\nI have always marvelled at how limited people make themselves. They have so much going for them, but time and time again, they fuck it all up. Their insecurities and worries are bad enough. They overthink themselves in ever decreasing circles in favour of actually living. They have such wonderful brains and they are capable of creating immense beauty, but far too often they corrupt their own operating systems and limp around in an ugly pastiche of life that is barely an existence.\nAnger is pretty much the worst of it though. Anger is giving up. A mindless emotion that never got anyone anywhere worth going. Faced with any number of viable options, anger is the most ridiculous cop out going.\nWorse still, people fall for anger’s false advertising. Anger is not power. Anger is the relinquishing of everything of value. A degradation to a state that is beneath animalistic. \nI smiled a supercilious smile in the face of Chelle’s anger, just to turn the dial up on her stupidity, “you betrayed me, Chelle,” I said in a mocking baby voice, “how could you?”\n“Kill her, dad!” she hissed, “the bitch is proper mental!”\nHer dad duly obliged. Only for the first time in his murderous career, things didn’t work out the way he had expected them to. He raised his muscular arm in a fine show of power and dominance and he brought it down and around in a majestic killing blow. I have to admit that it was pretty good, right up to the point before the metal met the meat.\nYeah, that was never going to happen. Instead I happened, and I happened quite meaningly to his arm. \nHe screamed.\nYou might think me a little odd, and you are entitled to that viewpoint of yours, but I find certain screams so very satisfying. They speak to me on a musical level and Chelle’s dad’s screams really were music to my ears. For starters, he had a fine pair of bellows on him. In another life he could have been quite an impressive tenor. \nI took a step closer to him, right after his knees buckled. He was cradling the useless part of his arm and trying to understand exactly what it was he was cradling, let alone how it had come to be that his arm had snapped so completely that it only remained a part of him by virtue of the skin that held it there. If he’d let it go, it would have flapped like a meat pendulum, counting the final seconds of his life.\nThrough all his pain and incomprehension he understood that this was the end. His end. He fell silent and he looked up at me. His eyes transformed by the overwhelming sadness of a dawning comprehension. He had seen this look, but never worn it. It was the dumb look a sheep wears and it was a desperate, last ditch plea for mercy and escape. Not once had he shown mercy upon gazing at that look and he wasn’t rendered stupid enough to expect to receive it now. I appreciated that about him.\nThis is the part that an ignorant bystander would misconstrue as my taking a moment, perhaps considering whether I should proceed with the pending bloodshed, or perhaps relishing the fatal violence to come. What most miss is that I am, in this moment, deploying another of my weapons. An invisible knife cutting away all the incomprehension and mental protections so that in their final moments, they not only see it all, but they feel it all too.\n“You bitch! What have you done!?”\nI’d almost forgotten about Chelle. It can get like that. I get very focused at times. I think I might be on a spectrum.\nI looked up at my erstwhile friend. My BFF. The lying cow who wanted me to be her dad’s plaything, “quiet…” I said this softly, but it roared in her mind and she saw something in my eyes. That thing she saw was me. That thing was what I really am. At least I think that’s what I really am, even though I am rarely myself. Mostly I’m your average kind of girl. Well, a little above average if you take into account my grades and all the merit points I get for being really kind and caring. Everyone has two sides to them though, right?\nChelle pissed herself.\nThe girl I usually am nearly did that just a short while ago. That girl would pity Chelle. She would care about her friend, and she would make sure Chelle was OK. She’d even help Chelle to clean herself up and she’d never say a word about Chelle’s little accident to another soul.\nAnd Chelle would hate her for it. Hence Chelle’s current predicament. Her own worst enemy was Chelle, and she was about to learn a harsh lesson and learn it in the hardest of ways. She would also learn that sometimes you come into the possession of knowledge that you will never get the opportunity to use.\n“Not my daughter,” croaked Chelle’s dad.\nI looked down at him and grinned wickedly, “I didn’t think you knew that?” I cocked my head and widened that grin of mine, “and your best mate Pete? What a duplicitous bastard he was! But then, you asked him to look after Tracy when you did your stretch and Pete wasn’t one to pass up that sort of invitation.”\nChelle’s dad looked hurt. Genuinely hurt. \n“You didn’t know?” I shrugged, “oops! I seem to have made you angry…”\nChelle’s dad was rallying himself for a second go at me. Not an act of bravery, more a misjudged angry lunge. Anger gets them every time. I’d had enough fun with him. Time to open his neck up.\nI’ll spare you any lurid details. Suffice to say that I was thirsty and I was done playing games. With him anyway.\nChelle wasn’t lying. She really did like to watch. Naughty voyeur! I revised my assessment of her down from cats. I think she was more a watcher than a doer. Most people are. I blame the internet and box sets. It’s certainly got worse, and the pickings are less rich.\nIt was only as I finished up and was wiping my chin along my sleeve that Chelle had the presence of mind to move. She woke up from the mesmerism of my feeding time at her dad and she spun on her heel and fled.\nThat old fight, flight or freeze response can be hilarious. I swear slapstick comedy was sired by this ancient instinct. We’d had it all this evening, and I do love a variety show. Chelle had been full of fight. Then she’d frozen when I snacked on her dad, and now she was in full flight.\nThe problem with these instinctual reactions is the exact same problem there is with anger. They have no brain. In fact they fully disconnect the brain. Right now, Chelle was a headless chicken, and even headful chickens are not adept at operating doors, less so doors with a big, metal slide bolt. \nChelle was delightful. She didn’t even bother with the door handle. Nor did she bother with her hands. Her arms dangled uselessly at her sides as she accelerated at the door and used her face as a battering ram. That battering ram was not very effective. It made a cracking sound though. Literally. \nShe froze for a moment, then she turned towards me with the most idiotic expression I have ever seen. In the midst of that expression was a very messed up nose. Now I knew what had made that very satisfying cracking sound.\nI could see that she wanted to bestow a look of hatred upon me, but right now, she couldn’t quite remember how.\nI stepped over the prone and very dead lump of her not-father and I took Chelle in my arms and I embraced her in only the way the very best of friends would embrace. I whispered softly in her ear, “this is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.”\nShe screamed.\nShe screamed and that scream made me wonder whether she was his daughter after all. Or maybe nurture really is more powerful than nature.\nShe screamed a lot that night. I took my time. I made her feel everything until she went beyond feeling, but still she screamed. She screamed until her lungs bled and the screams were as much a gurgle as a noisy expression of her pain and anguish.\nI didn’t have to make it hurt. Of course I didn’t. When I’m with my friends I make them feel good, and I can even make it feel really good. Sometimes, it’s the best they’ve ever felt and they always come back for more. I don’t always kill them. I don’t often kill them. Not straight away anyway. After all, there are any number of ways to kill someone and they can be dead well before they ever expel their terminal breath.\nBut Chelle wasn’t my friend. Chelle had betrayed me and there’s a special place in hell for the betrayers, but before they go to my father’s place, I like to have some fun with them. Give them a taste of what is to come…" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Souls in the Sky\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2880\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Zack Kaudjak was crossing the open snow laced fields of the Yukon River with his fourteen dog Iditarod sled team as the sun began to set below the birch tree line at three in the afternoon. The days were short during the first week of March which meant the temperature would be dropping nearly forty degrees below zero. He was prodding the team hoping to make it to the Galena rest stop by dinner time. Wrapped in a thermal body wrap, seal skin gloves, mukluks, his extremities still felt the impact of the cruel wind as his sled dipped and dodged his way along the frozen trail. \nBorn in the small Inuit village of White Mountain on the Seward Peninsula, Zack was a citizen of two worlds, that of his mother’s side of the Inuit and that of his fur trapping father from a Scandinavian heritage. When Zack was just seven years old, his father Bjork fled the village for greener pastures leaving him alone with her mother Ahnah in the small isolated village. While still attending mission school, Zack began raising malamutes and Siberian Huskies. \nBurt Zymuski, his history teacher with a thick Russian accent told Zack, “Do not waste your time with them Huskies. They are strong, but they do not have the temperament for Iditarod.”\n“I do not agree.” He told his teacher even though Bert had run the great race eight times before settling in White Mountain. \n“Hmmph.” He nodded at the veracity of his young student. “Prove me wrong, malchik.”\n“I have a team with six Husky pups.” His brazen bravado impressed the older man.\n“Oh I see.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do you want some help?”\n“Sure.” He smiled up at Burt.\n“I will get them ready.” He winked as Zack walked out of his classroom. \nTrue to his word, Burt Zymuski knocked at Zack’s cabin door on an early Saturday morning as the summer slipped away to the equinox and the Fireweed began to go to seed. The wind from the Bering Sea blew the seeds into the air, covering the land like the snow that would follow in a few weeks. \nAhnah answered the door when he knocked, smiling, she replied, “You must be Mr. Zymuski.”\n“I am and your Russian is well polished.” He bowed his head.\n“He is waiting for you. So excited.” She ushered him inside as the wind already had a harsh bite to it. \nZack took his teacher to his kennel behind the small cabin he and his mother lived in. The dogs were already baying and yelping when they saw both of them enter the crudely built shelter.\n“They do appear to be well-cared for.” He squatted down to pet an affectionate malamute pup. \nWhen his runner hit some ice, it broke away from the sled. Applying the brake, he called out to his team, “Whoa. We have to take a break.” \nHe knew that none of them wanted to stop. The wind was beyond frigid. He pulled his sled into a wide culvert that would shield them from the harshness of the deadly Arctic wind. Retrieving his missing runner, he found it where it had broken off, but he would have to remove his gloves so he could reattach it. Two of the dogs surrounded him so he could do this task without feeling the bite of frostbite which was with them at every bend in the trail. He knew as he reattached his runner that three sled teams were already just hours away from Nome, the red lantern and prize money. Most likely he would not finish the race in the money, but his goal was just to finish. He could brag that a twenty year old was capable of enduring the thousand mile marathon. \nHe managed to run his naked hand across Amak, his lead dog’s mane. “We may have to spend the night here, girl.” \nHe would remove the netting from his sled where he had packed his tarp and sleeping bag. As the temperature dropped to forty below, he would make sure his team and he were sheltered enough to survive the blistering cold wind. \n“Gonna be a really cold one gang.” He began to put up his tarp. “You guys better dig into the snow.”\nMost of his team of a dozen dogs had already dug into the ice to shelter them from the night wind. Without his head lantern, the wilderness would be so dark, he would not be able to see his gloved hand in front of his face. In Galena, which was still about thirty miles due west beyond the mountain pass slowly disappearing in the darkness, he would have a warm place to spend the night and a hot meal and some chow for his team. \nIt did not take long for Zack to fall into a deep sleep.\nHe was sitting in a kayak close to the shore. His head slowly moved to his right. Alka was sitting in his kayak. He had the stock of his Springfield rifle resting on his shoulder with his finger on the trigger. When his grandfather aimed his army issued rifle, he never missed. \nHis grandfather told him that he was issued the rifle when the United States Army was afraid the Japanese were planning to invade Alaska. As it turned out the Japanese did invade Attu and took a whole village prisoners of war before the army sent troops that included some Inuit volunteers like Alta to repel them from Attu in June 1942. The Imperial Japanese Army would never return. \nA few yards ahead was his target, a full grown male seal bobbing in the icy water. \n“Two.” Alta whispered as he took aim. The seal submerged into the brackish slushy water. Zack sat as still as a statue as he had been taught to do by his grandfather.\n“Three.” He said as the seal reappeared. The rifle sounded. There was a splash of water. The seal had been shot right between his black eyes, a quick instant death. “Tulok, get the seal.” \nUsing his Inuit name that means god of the warriors, he pointed to the carcass of the seal now floating in the waves. Always quick to obey his grandfather’s instructions, Zack grabbed the lifeless animal behind the flippers, wrapping his hands around the seal’s corpulent chest and pulled him into his kayak. His Alta removed his knife from his belt and sliced down the center of the seal’s body. White blubber flowed from the opening.\n“Good, plenty of good meat.” He smiled, running his fingers through the warm blubber. “You always count to three before pulling the trigger, because his lungs are full of air. I waited and now we have plenty to eat.” \nHis eyes fluttered open. He had to relieve himself as the wind continued to blow whistling through the dwarf birch trees. The snow had piled up on his tarp making it difficult for him to exit his warm shelter. Three of his dogs had curled up nearby while the rest of them had tunneled in the snow. It was well below zero Zack calculated as he emerged to relieve himself. Cold did not seem adequate enough to describe the biting Arctic wind. \nIt took him about an hour to get his sled packed, but the granola bar did not seem to fill his growling stomach. He scanned the faces of his dog team. “Guys, we will be in Galena in about an hour. They will have breakfast for you.” \nAhead was the mountain pass. The trail through the pass was well known as the difficult part of the trail. But he knew once they got through it, Zack knew the trail would be a lot smoother for the rest of the way even though Nome was still a couple of days away. \nKnown as the Heartbreak Pass, Zack noticed Lusa, one of the team, was struggling to catch her breath. He slowed the team to a stop. Lusa lay immobile in the snow. \n“What’s the matter, girl?” He asked as if she could answer him. He gently ran his hand over her panting chest. Slowly he undid her harness and lifted the female Husky from the snow. Placing her comfortably into the sled would slow them down even more, but at this point it did not matter to him. Tears filled Zack’s eyes. His tears froze to the skin on his cheeks. Lusa panted as he started the team once again. The sled jerked to a start as they began a slow steady climb up Heartbreak Pass. \nHis team was hungry, but Galena was still over an hour away as they climbed the steep pass. \n“If you wish to run your team in The Last Great Race, you must be ready to have your heart broken many times.” Alta told his grandson after Zack told him of his intentions to enter the race. \n“Yes grandfather, I want to enter the race next month.” He answered. \nZack had no idea that his grandfather would pass away just two weeks later. In his grief and mourning for his grandfather, Zack decided to wait a year before entering the Iditarod. Deeply affected by his loss, Zack got out his sled and took Alta to his village according to Inuit tradition. While he was staying with his aunt, the Aurora Borealis appeared above the village. As he watched the emerald green wave overhead, Zack knew that his grandfather had made it to the next world. His aunt affirmed his observation. Even with her gentle assurances, Zack still felt the empty space in his heart his grandfather had left him with. \nShadows were already long when he got to the end of Heartbreak Pass. Stunted birch and pine trees greeted him when they appeared through the mountain pass. Lusa was still struggling. Zack cursed himself for not making it to Galena where he could get care for his young Husky pup. As the darkness began to swallow the scenery, Lusa breathed her last. Zack could not shed any tears at her passing since his tears would freeze to his face. The rest of the team sensed the loss as Amak started to howl. The rest of the surviving team joined in howling, mourning their fallen teammate. \n The wind picked up as its icy grip covered the land. Bursting across the sky, the Northern Lights illuminated the sky. Soon the souls of the dead would dance across the sky like his grandfather used to tell him when he was a boy. \n“Tulok.” He heard someone call him. The voice was familiar to him as he rolled from his sleeping bag, “Tulok!” \n“Grandfather.” Zack’s voice was thick with sleep.\n“I am here.” \n“I need you.” Zack sat up.\n“I am with you always.” \n“I need you. I lost one of my dogs.” Zack felt his eyes gloss over with tears. \n“Do not cry, Tulok. These things happen.” \n“I miss you.” Zack could not stop the flow of tears.\n“Step outside. You will see me.” \n“Alright.” Zack found his way out of his encasement. When he looked to the sky, he saw the familiar emerald wave swirling in the night sky. “Grandfather, are you there?”\n“I am.” \n“I need your help.” He bowed his head.\n“I will guide you.” \n“To Nome?”\n“Is that where you really wish to go? You can end it at Galena. Your team is hungry and exhausted. You too, are in need of some rest.” \n“I did not come here to quit.” He said defiantly.\n“You are not quitting, you are doing what’s best for you and your team. A good leader knows when that time has come to pass.” \n“I want to get to Nome.” Zack stamped his foot into the ice as he used to do as a child.\n“At what cost? You will have other chances to prove yourself.” His voice began to fade with the wind rushing through the canopy of trees. The sky turned emerald green. \nAt what cost? Lusa was one of his favorite pups. He had fed her from the bottle when she still had her eyes closed. She would run through their small house and his mother would tell him to take her outside.\n“It’s too cold.” He would whine.\n“And let you two ruin what little we have here.” She would shake her head.\n“So how is your pups?” Mr. Zymuski asked Zack after class.\n“They are great.” He nodded. Mr.Zymuski helped him acquire some of the pups in his team including Lusa. \n“I knew you’d be a good pack leader.” The teacher clasped Zack on his wide shoulders. “One day you will make me proud.” \nMr. Zymuski was the closest Zack had to a real father and so when the “Mad Russian” as he was known among the rest of the mission school passed away a few months later, Zack vowed to complete the race. \n“I am a failure.” He thought to himself as he got ready for the final leg of the trail to Galena. He sighed deeply since he knew Galena was roughly the halfway point of the Iditarod, but it was apparent that he would not make it to the finish line. As the town of Galena came into view, Zack could not fight this overwhelming feeling of failure. He had let his grandfather down. He had let Mr. Zymuski down as well. \n“Hey kid, I hate to tell you, but three teams have already crossed the finish line.” One of the men from the checkpoint greeted him, “I’m Mr. Tanner from the checkpoint. What is your name?” \n“I’m Zack Kaudjak.” He answered.\n“Got it.” He checked it off on his clipboard. “Well, are you going to continue?”\n“No sir. I lost one of my dog team in the pass.” He shook his head.\n“Happens.” Mr. Tanner put his clipboard down on the table next to him. The small cabin was warm and comfortable, “Does your team need some grub?” \n“Yessir.” Zack nodded.\n“Coming right up.” Mr. Tanner walked into the kitchen area where they stored the dog chow. \n“So you lost one of your dogs, eh?” A woman dressed like one of the men in overalls and flannel shirt, “My name is Marge. I scratched this morning for the same reason.” \n“Sorry.” Zack bowed his head.\n“It’s nothing to be ashamed about, kid.” She sat in one of the chairs at a table. Zack noted she was just about his mother’s age, “Join me.” \nHe sat down in the chair next to hers.\n“What did you learn out there?” She smiled as she sipped her coffee.\n“That it’s harder than I thought it’d be.” He confessed.\n“There are mushers a lot more experienced than you, who still find this one of the most difficult things they’ve ever done.” She laughed. “Including me. I’ve never quit anything. First time for everything.” \n“I’ve let everyone down.” He frowned. \n“No such a thing.” She shook her head, “When you’re out on the trail it’s just you, your team and God. No one else.”\nShe was right. Zack knew it for a fact. When he was burying Lusa in the frozen solid ground in the pass, he said several prayers as he interred her in the earth. He felt a hand on each shoulder. When he looked up he saw his grandfather. “Tulok, I am so very proud of you.” He turned his head and saw Mr. Cyzewski smiling down at him, “You done good, da.” \n“Well, I have to get ready for a flight home to Wyoming.” She sighed. “I’ll give it a shot next year. Whadda about you?” \n“We’ll be here.” He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She made him feel much better about not making it to Nome. “I’ve had a rough time on the trail. I’ll be wiser next time.”\n“Me too.” She stood up, “Gotta go.” \nMr. Tanner said so long to Marge as she walked out and then approached Zack, “Hey kid, we got a transport leaving to White Mountain in the morning.”\n“Sounds great.” He nodded.\n“Good, I’ll put you down for it.” He checked his clipboard as he walked away.\n“Zack, you’re home.” His mother greeted him when he walked in the door, “Did you see that Aurora Borealis last night?”\n“Yes, I did.” He put his bag down.\n“I prayed for you every night.” She hugged him. \n“I know.” He choked back some tears as he felt the warmth, “I lost Lusa.” \n“I heard.” She held him out at arm’s length.\n“I felt horrible about scratching.” He confessed.\n“No one will blame you for what you did out there, no matter what.” She had tears in her eyes. “We are so proud of you. So proud.” \n“”I love you mama.” He kissed her on the cheek, “I have to get my dogs settled in.” \n“You do what you have to, Zack.” She watched him as he walked out the door. \n“Be back in a shake.” He waved as she closed the door. It was really cold out there. \nHe skipped to the kennel in the back of his house. He was greeted warmly by his team with tongues and tails wagging." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Splitting on the Fence\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1056\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is stuck between two opposing sides and can’t decide which one to choose." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The battle cries erupted from both ends of the town square, ripping the still of the night into tatters.\n\nOscar Ware jumped. He still hadn’t chosen. The decision’s weight crushed him until he froze, unable to act. How could you decide on something of this size? There were advantages and disadvantages for both teams. What if he picked it, and it was the wrong choice? What if he experienced buyer’s remorse? He needed to weigh every possible pro and con underneath a magnifying glass. Only then could he decide, and after much deliberation. He’d always been this way and would be until the day he died. He frowned and looked from one side to the other. ‘W-Wait, wait a second,’ he stammered. ‘I still need to choose!’\n\nBut the monsters paid him no mind. They charged across the moonlit no man’s land that was the dead town of Fallgate. They raced towards him from both sides while he stood in the middle – the last human.\n\nHe squeaked. Everybody else in town had picked a side. Some went with the vampires; some went with the werewolves. The decision had split families in half, which showed how important this debate was. But you had to decide. Otherwise, you’d be vulnerable when the fighting started. Fallgate had fallen right between the respective turfs of the two warring factions. He spun around in a complete 360, taking in the people – the creatures – racing towards him. ‘Folks, if you could wait a second, I haven’t yet decided. I’m still not sure what the best possible decision is. The choice is quite complicated!’\n\nThe vampires came from the north end. Some bloodsuckers poofed into bat form and took to the skies. They blotted out the moon’s glow with a flutter of their leathery wings. A shrill screech punctured the air, popping it like a water balloon filled with red dye. Fangs, ready for blood, jutted over lower lips.\n\nOscar whimpered as the noise jabbed his eardrums. He’d spoken with the vampires. One of the older ones, an angular woman named Amaya Gorgophone, had offered him eternal life. Oscar had told her he needed to think about it. Sure, becoming a vampire meant being alive forever, which sounded neat. You could also take a lot of damage and still walk away. Or fly away because vampires could take the form of a bat. How cool would that be? But you had to subside on nothing but human blood. Oscar would never again be able to enjoy the foods he loved so much. And he’d have to take human lives – something he’d thus far avoided in life – to survive. Oh, and he’d never see the sun again. Or his reflection. Choices, choices, choices. Amaya had told him to take his time but not too long because the war was coming.\n\nThe werewolves raced from the south. The paved tiles underfoot vibrated from the thump of their paws. They charged, eyes wild and yellow, foam flying from their mouths. A rumbling roar thundered through the earth, tearing it like claws through paper. Jaws, slaked with saliva, opened wide.\n\nOscar whined as the noise reverberated through his bowels. He’d spoken with the werewolves. The alpha of the pack, a hairy chap named Aldebrand Faerberg, had welcomed him with open arms. Oscar had told him he needed to think about it. Werewolves were a once-a-month type of creature, which meant that his life would be usual most of the time. It wasn’t as big a commitment as vampirism. But the werewolves were quite wild and uncontrollable. You tended to lose all agency once that full moon rose. And he wouldn’t live forever if he chose lycanthropy; werewolves still died of old age. But, as with vampirism, he’d be bloody strong. It would take a silver bullet or something like that to put him down. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Aldebrand had told him to take his time but not too long because the war was coming.\n\nHe wanted the best of both worlds. He wanted to live forever but still enjoy the sunshine. He wished to eat all he wanted but still have self-control. And, most of all, he wanted to be still standing once the bloodshed was all said and done. If he backed the wrong side, that might not happen. Vampires and werewolves were almost invincible. But that didn’t mean there weren’t ways to defeat them. Some of these vampires might carry silver blades. Some of these werewolves might carry wooden stakes. Oscar tapped his lower lip with his finger, his face drawn in a rictus of concentration. ‘One of the many issues is that—’\n\nA vampire flew past him, slicing his neck with its manicured, pointed nails. His head snapped backwards, a second mouth opening across his throat. Blood squirted from the gash in his carotid, spraying over the grey tiles. The crimson rattled to the ground like rain. The impact spun Oscar first one way.\n\n‘GAK!’\n\nA werewolf barrelled into him, tearing a chunk out of his side with its teeth. Ribs and bones cracked and snapped like twigs. Guts and innards plopped out in a jumbled mess of shredded sausage links. The strike sent Oscar spinning in the other direction.\n\n‘GURK!’\n\nAfter the initial dominoes toppled, the rest of the pieces followed. The armies of the werewolves and the vampires swept over him. They crushed him between them like a peanut caught between two cogs in a rumbling machine. They tossed him about like bullies with a nerd’s schoolbag. They paid him the same amount of mind that an elephant does to an insect buzzing around its thudding feet. The wolves and the vamps battered and sliced him and knocked him to the pavement.\n\nOscar squealed through his throatful of blood, sounding like a man underwater. Pain detonated everywhere all at once. Blood exploded from every orifice and out of a hundred fresh wounds. The world became a flurrying snowstorm of claws, teeth, wings, and eyes. He was but collateral damage in this battle. He could have had the chance to live to see another day if he’d sworn allegiance to the werewolves. Or another night if he entered the vampire’s ranks. Oscar finally understood, albeit too late: indecisiveness could tear you apart.\n\nAnd so could vampires and werewolves." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Knife\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2673\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Avery approaches with a kitchen knife in her right hand, wielded like a sword. Kate’s back is turned to her; she is browsing through the contents of the refrigerator. In one hand is a jar of strawberry jelly, in the other is a jar of strawberry jelly. Why two? Kate briefly wonders before plunging the knife into Kate’s back. \nAvery doesn’t drop the knife after she’s done this. For some reason it doesn’t occur to her that she should. Instead she remains very still, staring at the incision (which is much deeper than she imagined it would be), her tight grip causing her hand to shake. Through the handle she can feel the blade rummaging through Kate’s insides; in repulsion she finally lets go. \nShe waits for Kate to fall to the ground and becomes increasingly apprehensive when she only remains as she is. Looking from one jar to the other. Coming to a supposed conclusion that is only knowable to her, Kate closes the refrigerator and hums pleasantly.\nThen it occurs to her to look down, maybe be sure that her feet are still feet and haven’t become, say, hooves. There is a head tilt of surprise. Even though Kate is still facing the other way, in her mind Avery can see the tiny oh Kate’s mouth forms when she is surprised, and the way her eyebrows draw together endearingly.\nShe turns around slowly, hands hovering over her abdomen. Avery starts and covers her mouth to stifle a scream when she sees the blade poking through Kate’s stomach. It was a large blade Avery used; it momentarily astonished her with its largeness when she removed it from the set—now it seems monstrous. The red splotch that is forming around it looks like one of the red poppies patterned on Kate’s otherwise white blouse.\nKate slowly looks up to meet Avery’s horrified gaze. Avery sees the picture she conjured up in her head, a premonition coming to life; lips forming a small oh, eyebrows drawn together (they look like little caterpillars). It is almost uncanny.\n “Oh, Avery,” Kate sighs, tilting her head the way Avery’s mother did when Avery was little and wet the bed. “Why did you do that?”\nAvery waits for Kate to plummet to the floor, for the injury to finally settle in, but that doesn’t happen. Instead Kate remains standing, remains looking at her (with that look). When Avery realizes she isn’t going to collapse, she gasps and backs away. \nShe needn’t have, because Kate isn’t moving. Only her gaze follows Avery as she stumbles around the kitchen, leaning against the counter to keep herself up. She shuffles until she reaches the knife set, grabbing the second largest to wield in front of her. \n“Stay back,” she commands, her voice shaking. \nKate looks at her for a moment longer, very thoughtfully. Then, casually, she walks toward Avery, who brandishes the knife in a way that is meant to be threatening, but Avery backs away the closer Kate approaches. But Kate’s only going for the bread cabinet. \nShe takes out a loaf of sliced honey wheat, then reconsiders and swaps it for a bag of bagels. She glances at Avery out of the corner of her eye, just a brief glance. What she sees is Avery, backed against the counter, knife wielded. She decides it is more worthwhile to give her attention to the bagels. “Don’t be silly.”\nAvery freezes. She nearly drops the knife, so she now holds it with both hands. Like a gun. “What?”\nKate only goes on humming her little tune. They both know Avery can hear perfectly fine, and that she knows perfectly well what Kate said. \nEven so, Avery tries again, “What?”\nKate stops humming abruptly. She sighs, looks at Avery with sober, dissatisfied eyes. Are you really going to make me explain things to you? She sees that the answer is yes. \n“You’re being silly,” Kate says. She nods, satisfied. \nAvery lowers the knife, only slightly. “Just—what are you saying?” she sputters. \nKate frowns, disappointed. Clearly words will not suffice with this one. So she takes a step forward, in Avery’s direction.\nAvery scuttles back. She backs into the kitchen table, which is good, because she probably would have lost her balance otherwise. \nKate halts. “There, Avery. That was silly.” She smiles with her perfect white teeth.\nAvery is breathing hard. She clutches her chest and feels that her heart is beating against it rapidly; it occurs to her that it wants to escape, and it occurs to her that she would be glad to let it. She never takes her eyes off of Kate.\nBut Kate takes her eyes off of Avery. She reaches into the bagel bag, collects two, then laughs when she realizes she’s forgotten to get a plate to set them on. She puts them back in the bag while she goes to find one.\nThe plate’s cabinet is close to the kitchen table, so Kate inevitably comes closer to Avery as she chooses one; Avery shrinks away untrustingly. All of the plates are white and plain, but some are larger and some are smaller and some are smaller than that, strictly for sauces and handfuls of nuts; some are round and some are square and the one Kate decides on takes the shape of a flower, much like the red poppies on her blouse. \nKate sets the plate on the kitchen island. With minimal interest she looks at Avery, finding that her face has grown sickly pale, bordering on gray. Avery recoils under Kate’s dispassionate gaze. \nKate throws her hands up in the air. The yelp Avery lets out would lead you to think Kate had pulled a gun on her.\n“Now, Avery,” she says in the gentle tone one uses with a child adementally convinced that the monster under their bed is only hiding and waiting for the parent to leave to make an appearance. (Everyone knows that monsters strictly reveal themselves to children with disbelieving, stubbornly skeptical parents.) “You’re the one with the knife.”\nAvery looks at the knife in her hands, as though this has only just occurred to her. Then, almost accusatory, she glares at the knife sticking out of Kate’s stomach.\nKate looks down; it’s as though she honestly forgot it was there. Then she puts a hand on her hip and shakes her head endearingly. “Well, I didn’t put that there, now did I?”\nThen she reaches around and pulls it out of her back. It slides out with ease, making a sound like a slurp as it exits. The knife drips a puddle of blood on the tiled floor, leaving a red trail as Kate takes it to the kitchen sink to wash it clean. Then she returns to the plate and begins slicing the bagels. \nAvery watches this all like it's happening in a dream. When she is (almost) convinced it isn’t, she jumps to her feet, pointing the knife at Kate, using it to gesture rather than intimidate (which wasn’t really happening anyway.) “You’re…” she whispers, swallowing, “...you’re crazy!”\nKate pops the bagels into the toaster and hums as she waits. \n“What… how are you not dead?” Avery whispers. She remains fearful, and her guard is very much up, but she is also curious.\nKate looks at Avery. It is a look so genuine, so affectionate, it makes Avery briefly consider plunging the knife into her own stomach. They’d have matching wounds, then: a victim’s style of twin tattoos. Honestly, Avery, who is the victim here? “You aren’t dead, either,” Kate says. \n“Why are you here?” Avery screams. \nAvery is sure she can predict the words that will come out of Kate’s mouth next: Here? You mean, in my own home?\nBut that isn’t what Kate says.\n“Why wouldn’t I be?” \nAvery’s cheeks flush no different than they would on a hot summer day. “Oh, please,” she mutters. She laughs, and then she can’t stop laughing. It brings tears to her eyes.\nKate laughs, too, and only then does Avery stop. “See?” she says. “Isn’t this so silly?” She does a little dance to demonstrate how silly it all is, then the bagels pop out of the toaster and she dashes to retrieve them, plate readily balanced in hand like she’s a waitress, or a vintage housewife.\nKate spreads the jams on the bagel slices, using a different jar for each bagel. When she’s done with one of them, she wipes the knife clean, then sticks it into the other jar. (Again, Avery wonders: why two?) She uses the knife to spread them. It makes a rough, scraping sound against the toasted bread. \nKate returns the jam jars and bag of bagels to their proper respective locations, then carries the plate to the kitchen table. She is bleeding profusely from the gaping wound in her torso; no longer can the stain be confused for a measly poppy. She leaves the knife on the counter, but Avery still shrinks away as Kate slides into a chair. \nShe places the plate in the center of the table. She blinks up at Avery. “Well, take a seat, won’t you?”\nAvery does. “Why?” she wonders, a question directed at both Kate and herself. \nWhy not, she hears Kate respond in her mind, and again she is wrong. \n“It's time to eat,” Kate says. She takes a sliced bagel and bites into it. She chews thoughtfully. Kate is perpetually thoughtful.\nAvery stares at the flower shaped plate and the bagels presented upon it. “I’m not hungry,” she lies. \n“You are,” Kate tells the truth. \n“I don’t like strawberry jam,” Avery tries again.\n“Because you vacationed in the Outer Banks the summer you were seven. The hotel you stayed at served unlimited biscuits and jam all day. You took full advantage of the opportunity and ate two dozen biscuits with strawberry jam the first day there. That midnight you woke up in a cold sweat, pajamas sticking to your perspiring skin, and you ran to the bathroom. Muddy pink globs splattered the walls and floor and practically anywhere that wasn’t the toilet bowl. Now you can’t smell a strawberry without getting queasy. I know.” She points at the two halves of bagels on Avery’s side of the table. “That one has raspberry jam.”\n“I love raspberry jam,” Avery whispers timorously. \n“I know,” Kate smiles politely. “I also know you prefer blackberry jam to any other spread in this whole slim world, but we’re out, so I guess you’ll have to settle.” She winks. Avery has always thought that winking was a ridiculous expression, was sure it only made sense in print and would translate ridiculously in real life, but when Kate does it it translates exquisitely. \nAvery takes one of the half slices and warily bites into it. Crumbs fall down her shirt; somehow she doesn’t notice. Her tongue tingles at the sour-sweet sensation that overtakes it. \nThey eat without speaking. Not quite in silence; the munching of toasted bagels fills that. Kate finishes first (even though she eats so thoughtfully) and waits patiently for Avery to follow suit. \nShe is watching Avery as she takes the last bite. “We should do this again sometime.”\n“Yes,” Avery agrees, savoring the last bite. Then she swallows. “Wait, what?”\nKate sighs and stands up, taking the plate now littered with crumbs with her as returns to the sink. Here we go again. \n“Hey,” Avery says. “Hey!” Avery shouts. She jumps up and shakes the knife in Kate’s direction. Avery is so silly.\n“Yes?” Kate rinses the plate, then slides it into the dishwasher. \n“We aren’t done here,” Avery declares, aiming (again) for intimidation and is (again) only just short of amusing. Like a child trying to be menacing with their scrunched-up pouty face, all pursed lips and squinted adorable eyes. \n“No,” Kate says. “And we won’t ever be, if you don’t stop with all this silliness.”\nAvery is staring at the intestines pouring out of Kate’s stomach. \n“How are you still alive?” Avery exclaims. She begins to cry, unsure why and unsure what else to do. \nKate looks at the wound. She brings a finger to it, pokes it, then brings it to her lips. Thoughtfully, she sucks the blood from her index finger. “Nothing I can’t handle.”\n“You’re hurt,” Avery accuses. “You’re dying.”\n“Oh, Avery.” Kate picks up the knife on the counter, considers it, then sets it back down. “You can’t hurt me. And you certainly can’t kill me.” \n“What are you?” Avery asks. \n“I’m your friend, Avery,” Kate says, returning to her seat at the table. “And I know you, and I love you.”\nAvery looks into Kate’s eyes and sees that this is true.\nShe begins to sob. “Why don’t you hate me?” she wails. “Why are you still here?”\n“Because I’m your friend, Avery,” Kate says gently, reaching across the table to take her hands. “And I know you, and I love you.”\nAvery is inconsolable. She cries harder and harder. Avery is a tremendously ugly crier, and for this reason she never cries in front of anyone, not even a reflective surface. But she feels okay to cry in front of Kate, who keeps hold of her hands and lets her. \nAt some point Kate comes over to Avery’s chair to take her in her arms, cradling her and stroking her hair the way a mother would. At first Avery stiffens at the touch, then she settles into it. She doesn’t even notice Kate’s intestine hanging over her shoulder, or that the blood spilling out of the hole in Kate is seeping into Avery’s clothes. \nAvery thinks she could stay like this forever. She lets go of the knife; it clatters to the floor. Kate’s arms are so loving, so knowing. But they are pulled apart by a set of knocks at the door. \n“Well,” Kate chirps. “Now who could that be?”\nAvery grows increasingly distressed with the distance increasing between them with each step Kate takes away from her. When she is out of sight, answering the door in the same cheery tone, Avery becomes downright terrified. \n“Avery,” Kate calls. “It’s for you.”\nAvery gets up slowly; she approaches the door even slower. Just before rounding the corner, she has the thought, but this is your house. But by then it is too late.\nThe officers are on her before she can think, and by the time she can they’ve successfully cuffed her. One officer holds Avery roughly by the arms; the other goes to check something out in the kitchen. \nAvery’s heart doesn’t sink, it drowns. She shakes her head in disbelief. \n“Why?” she whispers.\nKate blinks. “Really, Avery? You tried to kill me.”\nThe other cop returns. “Bloody mess in there,” he gruffs, shaking his head. “Found the weapon. At least I think. It's probably blood, but hell if it looks a lot like strawberry jam.”\nThe cop ushers Avery out the front door. As she’s taken to the car, she hears Kate explaining to the officer that what he saw was actually raspberry jam.\nKate waves cordially as Avery is pushed into the car, like a loving wife waving to the departing plane her husband is a passenger on. The officer buckles Avery in, then slams the door harshly. The car rattles from the force of it. \nBefore they can leave, Kate jogs to the driver’s side window. She chats with the officer, there’s a little back and forth, and then one of Avery’s barred windows rolls down. From where Avery is sitting, it looks like Kate is the one behind bars; this is not untrue, but Avery is the one they are meant to contain.\nKate smiles down at Avery pityingly, which to Avery is synonymous with degradation. “Couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. Wouldn’t be polite.”\nAvery spits at her. “Backstabbing bitch.”\nImmediately Avery hears Kate’s oh-so-clever response in her mind, and this time it matches what Kate says next. “No, Avery. That would be you.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Polar Night\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2862\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character emerging from hibernation, whether literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Give me that thing”\nChunhui grabs the cigarette from Bobby’s hand. There is a moment where their fingers touch, the warmest feeling in Alaska’s Northern Slope, and then it is gone.\n“No need to get handsy,” Bobby says to her. His voice is a dead whisper against the sweeping brown coastline, but she can hear him. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the dried-out vertebrae of a bowhead whale.\n“You wish, cheechako.” Her lips are around the filter now, pursed in a way he has never seen. Bobby is glad to be under six inches of parka- his boyhood is screaming.\n“What does that mean?” Bobby asks.\nChunhui puts the cigarette in one hand and grabs his red jacket in the other. Their faces are eight inches apart, and she bridges the gap with a long push of tobacco. Then she smiles. “It means you don’t belong here.”\nIt’s like static on his face, the heat traveling across his ruby nose and down to his pants. Her eyes are browner than moleskin. “Is that a bad thing?” Bobby says.\n“Depends. Are you a jerk like all the other guys in this town?”\nIt’s now Bobby’s turn to smile, and he takes the opportunity to show it off, white and gritty. Chunhui laughs and turns out towards the slushy whitewash. The scene is strips of pink and yellow against a descending orb, the sea a million snowy molehills separating the two teens from the Artic tundra. She pulls on the cigarette again.\n“You never forget your last sunset,” Chunhui says.\n“No?”\n“Never. For two months, it’s all you have.” Chunhui’s exhale is silvery, like an invisible fox. He wants to steal it from her. “So you gotta savor it.”\nBobby leans a little closer, his hand moving atop the girls. She doesn’t pull away. One day, Bobby thinks, they will end up like the bones they sit upon. But it won’t be today.\n“Trust me,” Bobby says. “There’s no chance I forget this.”\n---------------------------------------------------------------\nSakari walks up the frosty shore, as far as he can go. He is completely alone for miles. In front of him is a drop off, a collection of tan and black rocks that drift into the sea. It is the northernmost point of the Western Hemisphere- the locals call it “The End of the World.”\nHis long flowing hair bounces to a stop as he saddles five feet from the edge. He slips his hands into his kuspuk and takes a deep breath. Sakari knows the air is different out here, yet today he feels no spark. He lets it out slowly, disappointed.\nThings in Utqiagvik have felt like this for a while- sparkless- and despite the shifting colors above him, he can’t seem to recapture it. The realization had come unexpectedly months prior, on an ice fishing trip with his brother.\nThey were huddled together in a small blue teepee, the wind hard and angry against their tent. Miku, who is two years younger, had thrown white lima beans in the fishing hole, and always enjoyed staring into the blue pit, waiting for the break in color. “Oh! Here one comes!” he said in a whisper, feet doing a little patter like some antsy sled dog.\nThe rod was in Sakari’s hands, and it began to bend, not violently but with delay, as if something was chewing instead of swallowing. Sakari waited a few seconds, then began to reel at the same pace as the fish’s bite. Halfway up, the creature realized its mistake, and began sprinting back in forth, slapping the roof of the ice floor. It only took ten more seconds before the head of the artic char was breaching their little hideout, a beautiful orange 33 incher.\nMiku grabbed the line and pulled the rest of the fish out of the water. “Nice, Sakari! This might be our biggest yet!” Sakari dropped the rod, and Miku handed the fish over.\nSakari was smiling at first- that he remembered. But when that cold slime ran over his fingers, and those orange-spotted muscles began fidgeting and flexing, he felt a sudden drop in temperature within him. Sakari looked into the eye of the fish, an open black hole the size of a dime, and saw there was nothing. A trickle of blood fell from its gill flap and puddled in his frozen palm- that seemed to make it worse. He pushed the fish away, afraid and disgusted by his lack of excitement.\n“Are you OK, Sakari? Did you hear something?”\nHe shook his head, wiping his hands on the ice, but his eyes were locked on the flopping fish, and its cold, dead, upward gaze. They didn’t camp for much longer that day.\nThat was where the stain began. It drifted over everything- the deckhands on his whaling boat, the diner waitresses, his snow-shoveling neighbors- and corrupted them. Where there once was life, and personality, and fulfillment, now reeked of a truth only he seemed to be aware of. That all of this- this frozen, aquatic existence- was just a passive march towards fish eyed emptiness.\nAt the End of The World, Sakari ponders his next move. The dancing kaleidoscope above him is dimming into night, and on his shoulders he can sense the coming of a heavy snowfall. In the morning, he won’t be able to see it- there will be darkness for sixty six days, and for the first time in his life, the idea of a full Polar Night scares him.\nOutside his vision, a bowhead whale breaches the surface. There is a faint sputter of broken water, and a louder pshhhh from its blowhole before things are quiet again. As darkness comes closer, and Sakari turns towards home, he makes a note of the giant mammal, and wonders if he’ll be around when the light can reconnect them.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nNanook wheels Yuka to their living room window. In front of them is a mural they are familiar with- the bright cream hues of an Alaskan sunset- and on ordinary occasions, they would take a stroll out to the beach to celebrate another notch on their long post of revolutions together. Yuka can’t keep her eyes open, though, and her feet are crusty and bloated. So their tradition will have to wait.\n“It never gets less beautiful, does it, Yuka?”\nShe says nothing, but answers via a small squeeze on Nanook’s palm. It is so weak that it feels like a newborns.\nNanook continues to speak in their quiet home, the crackling fireplace his only narrative aid. “Remember the year after we got married, Yuka? The sunset came early, and we were upset we missed it- too busy working in the shop, both of us.” Nanook pauses, as the sun marks its halfway journey beneath the horizon’s maw. “Remember how this one ends?”\nAnother squeeze.\n“We walked outside that night, with our hands coated in that thick motor oil that they always shipped in frozen from Anchorage. A glob of it had stained your cheek, and I remember how it felt to not recognize you. My love, turned into some greased-up motor monkey.”\nThe sun is three quarters gone- a sliver of bright red licks their snowy encampment like raspberry glaze.\n“We were desperate, overworked, exhausted. And then- you remember this, Yuka, as we left that garage? The black sky ignited into neon, right in front of us, with wavy crystal ribbons that intertwined like loose balls of yarn. A cheechako might have mistaken it for the rapture, given how bright those gemstone colors pranced across the stars.”\nYuka squeezes hard, and Nanook feels a pull on his vision.\n“And then I turned to you and grabbed your hand-“ Nanook leaned over and grabbed her other hand, standing behind the chair- “and felt the sticky lock of our fingers in the negative fifty freeze. There was a hundred shades of purple across your face, and this time I failed to recognize you in a different way. You were a goddess, a primitive spirit with no ties to the living. You were up there with those ribbons in that moment, I could tell.”\nNo squeeze, but a small grin across a thousand wrinkles, illuminated by a dying sun. There is morning dew across his cheekbones.\n“And do you remember what I asked you?” Nanook says.\nYuka moves her shriveled lips delicately, each word a raspy, singular effort. “Can… anyone… exist… as… perfectly… as… you… do?”\nThe sun is subsiding off the coastline, leaving a dusty orange residue that is being cleansed by an oncoming storm. Nanook holds Yuka’s hands, tight as he knows possible, and quiets the whimpers in his chest. Together, they look out into the departing sunlight, and wait for harder days to come.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nWhen Randall told his beer friends that he was moving to Alaska, their reactions were mostly the same. “What they got in the Tundra that they don’t got in the South?”\nRandall lined his pool cue up to the ball, the tip compacting on the glossy face as he spewed his holiest dream. “I want to run the sled dogs.”\nBrant, the loudest in their crew, chuckled so hard that the stretched pitbull on his tee shirt began to rumble and growl. “What you know bout’ sledding, boy? The only sledding you done is with your nose down the bar line!” The rest of them, equally obtuse and disgusting, giggled in agreement.\n“I kicked that shit, long time ago. I’m done with the drinking, too.” Randall powered through the last of his frosty Miller. “Starting now.”\nBrant moved from the booth, his knees buckling under his own forgotten weight, and waddled behind Randall, slapping two thick hands on his shoulders. “You’re a fine man, Randall, for an Alabama hick. You should know, though…” Brant brought his lips behind Randall’s ear, his breath an acrid, hair-frying heat.\n“You ain’t ever gonna make it out this town,” he whispered.\nIt wasn’t a moment Randall thought about very often, those nine words in a locals-only backwater saloon. But today, as he pets Kamona’s head in the pale shiver of November, it strikes his mind like the presentation of some great achievement.\nThere was nothing easy about it- the first challenge was finding this town, the coldest gulley in all of Alaska if you account for the onshore wind chill. Then he had to find an elder to learn from, in a language he was not familiar with. That took ages, sweeping bars and online forums, pulling for a lead. Turns out, all he had to do was wait outside and listen.\nA mile from his house was a barking place that set eruption to the empty land. Randall chased the noise one morning, and met twelve leaping huskies, all riled and untethered in the six-inch sleet. It must have been strange for Sitka to witness a redneck being absorbed by the bouncing pelts of his kin. It was why Randall had to answer to Sitka’s glistening bolt-action before they could discuss apprenticeship.\nSitka was a good man, and Randall was a good worker. That was six months ago, and they’d shared a lot of coffee and frostbite since then. On his birthday, Sitka pieced him in on some good news- Kamona, the dog Randall had grown fondest of (every sledder has a favorite), was pregnant. She was due in January.\nUp above him, the sky skims and twirls in a million different arcs, like a boy learning to scribble in his coloring book. The high mountains shiver in gold tinfoil, and a small sneeze leaps from Kamona’s nose. Randall pats her belly slowly, feeling the gurgle and tensity of her chest through his mittens. This is the time of day he feeds the dogs and puts them to rest, but Randall knows that can wait. For a kid from the sticks, this is all he’s been waiting for.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nIt is January 23rd. The town of Utqiagvik is quiet, almost to the point of religious divinity. Snow spreads across the ground like frosting, and on the exposed parts of buildings, a thick layer of white freezer burn rides up the wooden edges.\nThese are not developments anyone can notice. The sun, a shy schoolgirl, has avoided this town for two months. The others make fun of her- the wind screeches laughter on worn-out haunches, the storm clouds dump their misgivings onto those unlucky enough to be below them, the sea continues its eternal bubbling hiss. None of this encourages her to show her face again.\nToday is a new day. It is expected she will be back, recovering a flash of braveness after a dark, lonely hibernation. The townspeople cower to their windows, peeling back the frost using only their breath. Utqiagvik has been patient, patient as a town can be, and they expect to be rewarded.\nHer entrance is grand- she’s always been an agent of class, and today she shows it, warming up the sky like a pot coming to boil. The darkness fades to gray, fades to blue, and then sparks of orange and pink begin to pop between the clouds, hidden kernels against solar heat. It is an articulate dance that she’s curated, and it scares the elements away. There is no more wind, no more churning sea. Only a white canvas for her to perform against.\nThe first civilian makes their way outside. A little girl opens the front door, a slip of red nose peaking from her parka as an offering. The sun takes it, climbing a little higher and shining some hotter rays across the one-story homes, which swim over the rigid mountaintops like unseen ocean tides.\nA bark cracks across the quiet space, and then another. The sled dogs billow out Sitka’s door, their coats downy and hungry for a good shine. Randall follows the crew, and in his arms are two pups, their eyes clipped fingernails, their fur gray as the past. Behind him is Kamona, heavier and milk-laden. She rubs against Randall’s side like a housecat, knowing his smell as closely as her young.\nThe sun continues to stretch and rise, a lump of sourdough set to proof. It ignites Barrow High School, then the Whaling Museum, and finally the town common, where fifty men and women stand within kissing distance. There is heat as the sun arrives, but with the temperature still in the negatives, no one is tempted to stray from the pack.\nThis is good news for Bobby and Chunhui, who stand face to face in the coming light. Bobby’s skin, almost transparent from the lack of Vitamin D, pulls tight against his lips as he sticks a tongue out, the red wet flesh baring small, smoky trails. Chunhui giggles and grabs his hands. It is these little faces, these passing glances, that have taught Chunhui what she’s been missing all her life. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks- she drags him in until his tongue is within her own.\nAnother man hangs inside the crowd- Miku. He is a man now, and the others recognize it, like the horns of a freshly matured elk; only Miku wears it in his grizzled beard, and his creased cheekbones, and his eyes that sing like judgement day. On his shoulders is his brother’s kuspuk. The sleeves are knotted tight against his chest, medallion-like, and in his pocket he chokes a cell phone. He winces constantly at the touch of it, as if it is made of something molten. Except it’s not a physical pain- it’s a spiritual kind that comes from waiting, from not knowing. Miku stares up, into the open blue sky, and lets the heat wash over him like a winter storm. There is a twinge in his eye, and then it comes, unexpected, a forgotten feeling. It is hope, overflowing his long empty cup.\nAway from all this, and the last one to be touched by the glowing sky, is the farthest home on the hemisphere. Inside is a dusty living room- a covered sofa, an old rabbit-eared television, an empty wheelchair. The door is wide open, yet the wind doesn’t catch it, so it stays that way, a bright blue gullet with one man within its lips.\nNanook steps across the beach. Each movement is slow, and as his boots break the skin of the icy soil, there’s a loud crunch. He has never done this walk alone- never dreamed he would have to. But it isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The warm feels good on his joints.\nAs he moves, he holds onto each crunch like he does with everything else- the patter of her eyelashes, the meeting of their noses, the soft sigh as she lowers into bed. And for a moment, it’s as if she’s behind him, walking in his trail, her skin a golden fire and her gaze a neon sky.\nNanook wants to turn around, to catch her in his tracks. He doesn’t. Instead, he moves forward, chasing the unbroken snow in front of him, and blesses the light that shines upon their small, little world." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Mariner of Innsmouth\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1188\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story on a sailboat, large or small, and entirely at the mercy of the winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I write this now from a hospital bed not far from my hometown. Though I am labeled delirious and force-fed medications whose names I cannot pronounce, do not believe that this testament is anything other than truth.\nIt was two days ago, several miles away from the outer shelf reefs from the coast, when I was aboard a sailboat that drifted seemingly aimlessly over the waves. As the setting sun reflected its vibrant hue on the lapping crests, I, the schooner’s sole passenger leaned against a railing as I stared out across the waters. My name is Howard Phillips, and I was out on this solo sailing journey to find a new clarity in life.\n Three days before was my father’s funeral. My relationship with my father was a perplexing one; I looked up to and admired the man but felt like I never really knew him too well. I found myself wondering about the conversations that would never be had, the beers never drank together, the lessons and the stories that would never be taught or told. After the funeral, I had expected to feel some clarity and peace but instead found only distraught and confusion, and I now often wonder about my own life and where it could lead. I was left this small sailboat in the will, and I found it a sign of what to do next, and, without a second thought, put everything else on hold, loaded up the boat, and sailed off into the unknown with the belief that I myself could be known.\n Now with the currents pulling me ever outward from land, I treated this as an autopilot for the craft as I stared in a yearning way into the waters below. I watched as I saw a small school of fish swim by. Though I could not identify their breed, I mused at the occasional scaled adventurer who would jump from the water away from their brethren as they tasted the open air and observed a whole new, alien world. I admired these displays and began to wonder if this was some metaphor from the universe I was meant to see – some natural guidance on my own mission for self-discovery.\n As I watched the fish surface to dance above the cresting waves, I felt I caught a glimpse of something further ahead in the water. It seemed like two orbs of crimson as if two eyes were staring at me from below. But when I scanned the waters to better see these supposed eyes, they were nowhere to be found. I supposed whatever bigger fish they belonged to had swum away; or, more practically, it was a trick of the light of the setting sun as it distortedly emulated back to me.\n I shrugged away from the shimmering vision and turned to face the mast. As I did so, I saw a large onyx storm cloud approaching fast in the distance. I rushed to the wheel yet was too late as the rushing gales moved at a seemingly supernatural speed, enclosing on and whirling the small boat in all directions. As my vessel lurched aggressively to and fro, My only option was to cling to the railing for fear of losing myself to the now crushing waves which hurled against the sides of the sailboat like slapping tentacles of a great Kraken. The schooner broached and was nearly knocked down. As I was raised into the air I looked down at the opposite end of the boat and saw that the mast was nearly parallel to the water. I then peered into what I believed to be the murky depths below – except that, with a flash of thunder, there appeared to be land not far below me. With that quick blaze of light, I witnessed an unending plain of putrid mud amassed with the carcasses of decaying fish and horridly foul, less describable things protruding from the sludge. I thought I would feel relief by knowing there was land not far below should I capsize, but instead an even stronger fear gripped me; a primal fear that whispered in my heart of the unknown horrors hidden beneath the waves, as the unknown, lurking darkness between the spaces of rot and decay beckoned for I to join it in eternity.\n I witnessed and experienced all of this and more in that split second in the boat’s rocking, in that short burst of illumination. But now the ship had leveled out and rode the waves on the merciless winds, whose howls in My ears sounded more like mournful ghosts of all the lost sailors who fell to their watery graves in all the histories of man who came before me.\n On the horizon, I saw once again those dark crimson orbs from before, though now they rose from the waves instead of hiding beneath them. With churning waters to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Those soulless eyes sat as two windows of malice against the face of a towering loathsomeness as it rose to face me. Two monstrous scaly arms rose to cast in my direction.\n I turned my face and cowered in a squat huddle against my forlorn vessel, unable to hold my gaze upon the goliath for fear of losing hold of my sanity. With my eyes squeezed shut and my whole self trembling I prayed for release from the leviathan’s wake.\n The sailboat lurched again, this time with such force that I was knocked into the air and hurdled into the water. I felt the unsettling sensation of the sludged mire below; the masses of decay and putrid remains pouring over and surrounding me as I sunk deeper into the concoction of fetid slime and rotted scales which cut deep in my skin. I felt it seep into my nostrils and under my eyelids, and the groping carcasses felt like an incalculable sum of vengeful hands gripping me, pulling me deeper and deeper still into my shallow grave. My consciousness faded, and all went into nothingness around me.\n That’s when I awoke next in a hospital near the coast. I don’t know how I escaped, or what became of my father’s boat. I only know I was found washed ashore – bruised and littered with abrasions, but I was alive.\n As I lay on my hospital bed, with no company but the memory of that nightmarish storm, I realized I had found the clarity for which I had set sail; though it was a clarity I would wish on no one, and wish only that we all could remain in our blissful ignorance of the truth – the truth that, as men, our place in this world is that of mere play things on a board of cosmic proportions for being far beyond mortal comprehension; that the storm that man finds themselves trapped within is at the whims of those who rise from the deep.\n\n\n((This was a small tribute to one of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft, with heavy inspiration from his short story, \"Dagon.\"))" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Reserved Park\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1681\n\nPrompt:\n\nIt’s the last evening of your vacation and you’re watching the sunset with your friends/partner/family, wishing summer would never end. But just as the sun dips below the horizon, you notice it returning in reverse." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“What’d I tell you, mate? Best fucking sunset in Straya!”\n“Too right, mate. Never seen anything like it. It’s magical.”\n“One hundred ninety-eight feet deep, mate. Do you know that down there in the middle of the crater, there’s acacia and eucalyptus trees twenty-six feet high?”\n“Crikey. That’s deep.”\n“Yeah, nah mate. Deep ain’t even the word. Three hundred thousand years old but wasn’t discovered until nineteen fucking forty-seven! That’s how remote this place is.”\n“Yeah, mate. You could die out here.”\n“You could die anywhere, mate.”\n“Nah, yeah. Fair point.”\n“What’s more, is that this rim we’ve parked the Ute on, is another thirty meters above ground.”\n“Yeah, I was going to mention that, mate. We alright parking here? I mean, it is a National Park. There must be rules.”\n“Fuck that, mate. Who’s gonna tell us to move? Park Rangers? See any around?”\n“Nah, yeah but aren’t we encroaching on local spiritual ground?”\n“The only spirits I’m worried about are the tins of Wild Turkey in the Eski.”\n“Yeah, nah. I’ll stick to beer, mate… Must have been one big fire storm when that meteorite hit.”\n“A fifty-thousand metric tonne piece of rock travelling at fifteen KPS, Whump! Right in the middle, down there. Second biggest crater on the planet.”\n“Wot’s KPS, mate?”\n“Kilometers per second, mate. About as quick as you were on Alice Dutton that night behind our school gymnasium – all those years ago.”\n“Never touched her mate. Nothin’ but a myth.”\n“Not according to Alice Dutton. You never wondered how you got your nickname?”\n“Wot, Speedo? That was on account of that fine I got for going sixty in a school zone, while wearing nothin’ but budgie smugglers; then crashing through the school gates, after I lost control from doing burnouts.”\n“Yeah, nah mate. Think again. Yous were all hyped up that night, coz you just lost your cherry after rooting Alice, then went off on one, like a frog in a sock.”\n“What I lost, was me wheels. Had to settle for me bicycle and rides from you, after I was banned from driving for six months.”\n“Yeah, I remember. You sulked for weeks, like you’d had your favourite toy taken away from you and crushed.”\n“Had to start all over again with L plates.”\n“You always were the reckless one, mate. I reckon if you could have driven a meteorite back then, you’d have crashed it into this place.”\n“Nah, yeah. At 15KPS, I reckon I’d have gone down in history as the first human to have caused a mass extinction of life.”\n“Yeah, mate. You would have been the one responsible for completely wiping out the Kangasaur.”\n“Yeah? Nah… Wot’s a Kangasaur?”\n“A bit like that herpes you caught from Alice Dutton that night.”\n“Wot? Oh, fucking funny, mate. I never kissed her, anyways. That was just a cold sore, mate… Was there really a Kangasaur?”\n“I suspise not.”\n“Wot’s that word?”\n“Suspise?”\n“Yeah.”\n“It means to be suspicious of, when in doubt.”\n“Like the word, Reckon?”\n“I reckon.”\n“Well, I reckon that’s another of your made-up words.”\n“Good one, though, yeah?”\n“Yeah, nah mate.”\n“Wot? That belongs as a permanent entry into the Urban Dictionary.”\n“What’s an urban dictionary?”\n“It’s a book of sayings and words that young cunts make up, trying to change the English language. The official term is called, Crowdsourced.”\n“Fucking Millennials. Why can’t the drongos just leave the English language alone.”\n“Yeah, keep things in the status quo. Don’t change our tongue, mate.”\n“Nah, yeah! Status Quo, mate! Down down, deeper and down.”\n“Get down, deeper and down.”\n“Fucking Coles commercial!”\n“Yeah, nicked that from the annals of great songs, didn’t they.”\n“Yeah, nah. Came out of someone’s arse, that’s defo for sure. I reckon people who write tv commercials have no clue about creativity.”\n“Howzat?”\n“Well, they’re either shouting at you to listen, or they get some Bogan to save money by employing their family members to act in the commercial. Might as well use wooden planks as actors. They’d be more convincing.”\n“Yeah, specially in the hardware store commercials.”\n“Nah, yeah. Put a cap on a two-by-four, draw some eyes, a nose, and lips on it, and film it with someone talking off camera, like We’ve got bargains galore at Bunnings! I Wooden lie, haa!”\n“Yeah, or like, Don’t let the sawdust settle on your barbie, cut yourself another stake.”\n“I reckon you’ve got a future in tv commercials, mate.”\n“Yeah?”\n“Nah!”\n“Time for a little Slim Dusty?”\n“Why not. Got coverage for iTunes?”\n“Yeah, mate. Two bars. Here, listen to this. A pub with no beer.”\n“Classic, maaate!”\n“So, how long till sunset?”\n“You know how to tell?”\n“Yeah, nah.”\n“Lift your hand in front of your eyes and position your index finger at the top of the sun, then count how many fingers down to the horizon. Each finger counts as five minutes. How many can you count?”\n“Half a finger.”\n“Then, it’s almost time to get a cardie and trackie dacks on, mate. Once that orange ball disappears, your apricots between those tender thighs of yours, start to contract; and your donger shrinks. It’s the law of the desert.”\n“What law is that, mate?”\n“The, It gets fucking cold at night, law. Throw us another stubbie before Slim starts singing Waltzing Matilda.”\n“Cheers, mate.”\n“To the end of the day, cheers.”\n“Fuck, it gets dark quick when the sun goes down.”\n“Yeah, nah, the orange glow across the horizon will be our night light for a bit.”\n“To Slim Dusty!”\n“To craters in the sun!”\n“Does the sun have craters?”\n“Nah mate. It’s a hot ball of bubbling gases.”\n“Maate! Is it my imagination, or is that hot ball of bubbling gases returning?”\n“Stop blithering and keep drinking, you clown.”\n“Take a look, mate.”\n“Fuuck me. You’re right!”\n“And does it look like it’s getting brighter and closer, like it’s heading right towards us?”\n“Nah, yeah. What is it?”\n“Dunno. But it’s taken on the colour of the landscape as it moves across the horizon.”\n“Yeah, but it looks like it’s right in front of us.”\n“It seems to be hovering above those Acacia trees in the middle of the crater.”\n“Mate, you hear the sound of a didgeridoo playing somewhere?”\n“Yeah, but it sounds like it’s playing on my phone with Slim Dusty.”\n“He never used didgeridoos, did he?”\n“Dunno, but Slim’s stopped singing. All I can hear is the haunting sound of that didgeridoo.”\n“Mate, look. The sun is dimming, and it looks like a… door is opening on its side?”\n“Yeah, nah mate. It’s a ramp and someone’s walking down it.”\n“Wot’s he look like?”\n“Dunno, the light behind him is too bright for a lengthy sticky beak.”\n“He’s heading towards us. Is he… fucking floating in the air?”\n“I suspise he is, mate. Wait, he’s waving at us, like he wants us to go to him.”\n“What-cher reckon?”\n“I reckon we have no choice. That didge is filling up my head and I can’t think much.”\n“Nah, yeah. I hear it too. Streuth! He’s a…”\n“Nah, yeah mate. That explains why this place is so important to the locals. It must be how they got here in the first place.”\n“Let’s go say G’day.”\n“He says only one of us… me, to be more specific.”\n“How’d he say that. I didn’t see his lips move.”\n“He’s in my head talking between the didge breaths.”\n“How’s that possible?”\n“Dunno, mate, but he says stop talking. You’re upsetting the trees.”\n“They’re all the way down in the crater. How am I upsetting the trees?”\n“He says you’re standing on their roots.”\n“Don’t get too close, mate.”\n“Nah, yeah. It’s okay. He says he has an important message for me to relay to you.”\n“To me?”\n“Yeah, mate… Okay, got it. Will do, mate. I’m coming back.”\n“Where’s he from?”\n“Dunno. I reckon he’s a local.”\n“In a spaceship?”\n“Nah, yeah. He mentioned something about being on patrol. But that’s not what he wanted me to tell you.”\n“So, what did he want me to know?”\n“He said that you can’t park here. It’s reserved for official vehicles only. And that the no parking sign must have been blown down by the wind.”\n“What No Parking sign?”\n“He says, the one that says Alien parking only. Violators will be abducted.”\n“He’s acting a bit of a Galah, ain’t he?”\n“Yeah, nah mate. Says he’s run out of fingers and toes to count the number of times idiots like you park in his spot. Says you’ve got two fingers in which to move your Ute.”\n“Two…? Oh…”\n“Yeah. Ten minutes, mate.”\n“You hear that? The didgeridoo sound is fading.”\n“Yeah, mate. He says his shift is over in ten minutes and you don’t want the next ranger to see someone parked here. Otherwise, it will be abduction and you don’t want that.”\n“How come?”\n“He says, because your clacker will be probed with all kinds of objects. Some, not so smooth that will make your little freckle look like a sore haemorrhoid. He’s gone from my head, now.”\n“Yeah, and his ship is heading back over the horizon. What do we do?”\n“Move the fucking Ute, mate.”\n“Think we should head back to civilisation and tell someone about this?”\n“Yeah, nah mate. Who’d believe us?”\n“We just saw a UFO, mayte!”\n“Yeah, nah. I can see it, now. Scuse me Constable. Where do we report an aboriginal man flying a spaceship in the bush? They’ll drug test us for sure.”\n“Yeah, nah. We don’t want that.”\n“Nah mate.”\n“Okay, fire up the barbie, while I move the Ute. I don’t want to provoke any alien probing me nuggets.”\n“Yeah, nah mate. Another stubbie?”\n“Yeah, nah. I reckon it’s time for the Turkey. Bring any Coke?”\n“Nah, yeah. But the wrong kind.”\n“Well, at least it will keep us awake to watch the sun rise over the crater in the morning.”\n“Too right, mate.”\n“What a night!”\n“Yeah, mate.”\n“Alien parking only. Who’d-a-fucking-thought…?”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Local Tongue\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 3008\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with someone walking into a gas station." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Travel Advice: Colourful language ahead.\n The hot setting sun momentarily perched on the horizon of the Australian Nullarbor Plain, as a sunset admirer raised a silhouetted arm to wave at the darkening sky. Uttering a blessing in his native tongue, he bid a fond farewell to another day and welcomed in the approaching night, while the haunting and captivating sound of a Didgeridoo signalled the not-too-distant presence of a local mob of residents gathering for a spiritual ceremony.\nThe colour of the soil here in the Nullarbor, lends itself to imaginations of how Mars must have looked with bespeckled growths of small bush jutting up from the dry, dusty ground – before it lost its atmosphere. It is a sprawling mass of land covering over two-hundred-thousand square kilometres across South Australia and into neighbouring Western Australia. Its vast, dry bush an indubitable inhospitable environment.\nSeasonally occupied by indigenous Australians for countless generations, the aboriginal people of the Oondiri, The Waterless - as it’s more commonly translated, have an affinity with the land. They know its history, its temperament, and its weather patterns. Here, the intense heat of the latest Australian summer wins each day, while only offering short respite at night from its scorching heat. To the indigenous people, it is life. To those unprepared for the extremes of the bush, it can signal death.\nFour times the size of Belgium, the recommended mode of transport for travel off the beaten path, is a four-wheel-drive vehicle equipped with satellite phone, drinking water, food rations, extra fuel, a Roo Bar, and an alert mind. Night driving is hazardous with the abundance of animals that freeze in the glare of headlights, then randomly leap in front of your transport. The last thing you need driving the Nullarbor, is to be stranded with your vehicle beyond working order. So, if you don’t need to drive at night, then don’t, mate!\nThe small silhouetted compact car currently kicking up a trail of dust along a bush trail, obviously missed that warning. Erratically speeding up then slowing down to stop, its dramatic behaviour broadcast a driver lost in the bush. Struggling with an old paper map of multiple folds that for some reason, can never be returned to its original presentation, he crudely flailed his arms around in exasperated obscene gestures.\nWith mobile phone coverage out here limited, a map is a lost travellers only friend, but convincing this displaced driver of the merits of paper directions, would be like trying to sell oil to a Texan.\nFrustrated, tired, and with the fuel gauge at almost empty, the driver angrily scrunched the map into a ball, rolled down his driver-side window, but at the point of tossing the indecipherable publication to the elements, a twinkle of light in the evening’s dusk caught his attention. Without hesitation, he kicked the accelerator pedal as far as it could go, causing his rear wheels to spin furiously. The resultant cloud of dust, stone, and a trail of industrial ants unfortunate to have been marching across the very spot the car had stopped at, flew into the air.\nFurther along this stretch of Martian-like soil – where the twinkle of that distant light shone as a bright streetlamp, a flurry of emerging nighttime bugs frantically encircled its hypnotic beam. It is into this setting of searing summer solstice that we introduce to you, Cobber Petey Cooper, the proprietor of Cobber’s Canteen - a local one-stop shop for grocery necessities. The canteen intimation is somewhat misleading, as no diner, bar, coffee shop, or much else - other than the basic minimart supplies, are sold within its stone walls sheltered by a rusting tin roof.\nOutside the little shop, stands two old fuel pumps belonging to another era. The type that emits a dinging sound as they tick over each litre of fuel dispensed. No modern tech since the onslaught of 1980s digital watches has ever visited Cobber Petey’s part of the world. There’s no need, anyway. Time has forgotten this stretch of track off the Nullarbor Plain. In fact, the term Nullarbor Highway suggests some form of transitory path, but the only transient nature Petey knows of is the rising of the sun each morning and the dimming of the sun each night.\nBusily refilling his glass-doored drinks cooler in the small “Servo,” Petey restocked the shop with snack food, eggs, long-life milk, days-old bread, and other necessities that satisfy hunger pangs and attacks of the munchies. It is the nearest thing the locals have that resembles a microcosmic supermarket. The next nearest shop is a large superstore, but some ninety kilometres away.\nBeing close to several indigenous communities, Petey cannot legally stock alcohol, because of local council prohibitions to curb rampant alcoholism sweeping through the area. So, fizzy drinks, bottled water, and flavoured cordials are the only legit thirst quenchers he stocks. However, a small hidden supply of “Stubbies” is available for those desperate for a secret taste of beer out of a can.\nSupplies arrive on a weekly basis, but fuel is delivered once every three months. Today’s resupply was just the necessities of basic food and drink, but the fuel tanker’s arrival to replenish the empty underground storage tank, was still a day off.\nThe canteen’s name hanging from the outside pergola – erected to one side of the building, was personally painted by Petey’s artistic hand. Although misleading as to the type of establishment within, Petey liked the catchy name; however, the swinging sign is a constant reminder to Petey of impoverished ambition preventing any actual progress being made toward accomplishing his dream of being a restauranteur. All things aside, he eventually accepted his limitations and has learned to live his life comfortable in the knowledge that he provides a much-needed service for those too weary for long road trips into town.\nPlacing the final litre bottle of cola onto the fridge shelf, the sudden appearance of a small compact car skidding to a dusty halt out in the courtyard, startled Petey.\n“FUCK DUCK!” His surprised exclamation rang out in response to the plastic bottle dropping to the ground and bursting its side. Pumping sticky cola across the recently mopped tile floor, the spill distracted him from seeing who had caused his nerves to jump. Straining to look between the painted writings of store specials on the large shop window, Petey waited for the dust to settle, and could only make out a driver hunched forward – either in contemplative thought or asleep. Then - as if abruptly jolted to life - the driver’s head started to repeatedly bang against the car horn on the steering wheel, intensely annoying Petey.\n“Fucking tourist, Prick!”\nPetey’s dialectal selections and body language could easily be misinterpreted as unfriendly and unwelcoming; however, one of the advantages of being a lone operator on the vast expanse of the Nullarbor, is that it suited him just right, as Petey suffers from Tourette Syndrome – the affliction mostly associated with involuntary facial tics and jerky body movements.\nPetey’s condition is the more vocal of Tourette tics. More specifically, the swearing variation of Tourette’s called Coprolalia. Being remote and out of earshot of his customers, Petey normally has no need to restrain his tics, nor be worried by undue stress. Two things that make most Tourette sufferers lose control of their tic suppressions. In fact, his customers are so used to his colourful language, because humorously enough, it’s a linguistic variation not too dissimilar to their own limited mastery of the English language. The difference being that when Cobber Petey starts up, the faint-hearted need to extradite themselves from his immediate company. Medicine helps but Petey doesn’t feel the need to spend his small income on expensive pills, opting instead for the practice of self-restraint, plus the abstinence from alcohol - a Tourette’s fuel.\n“Sit there, sit there, you wanker! Yup, Whoop! Fuck, mate! You arse wank!”\nFrom the driver’s perspective – looking over toward the lone figure in the shop convulsing like a popping dance expert and mouthing words unable to escape through the thick insulated walls, Petey displayed a strange and beguiling figure. It wasn’t difficult to lip read the repeated F-word and the unmistakeable C one. It was the dramatically delivered Wah-Wah movement of Petey’s mouth and an accompanying forward jerk of his head, that tweaked the driver’s curiosity. Trying to decipher the second syllable or word, led him to believe Petey was saying the word, “Car” – a probable announcement of his arrival maybe? Or, an astonishment relating to his sudden appearance. “What!? Car! What!? Car!” Was the driver’s distant interpretation.\nExpecting some form of personal service, the driver intentionally beeped his car horn several times, soliciting a quick retort from inside the shop.\n“Dickhead! Whoop! Stick that horn up your arse!” Came Petey’s Tourette reply.\nHeading back to the cash register, he produced a bendy table microphone from behind a box of unpacked potato chips, then pressing a button on its base, he calmly spoke into it.\n“This is a self-servo, mate. No subservient behaviour is practiced on this property.”\nWatching through the window for a sign of acknowledgement, Petey failed to notice any discernible response emanating from the driver, fidgetily sat in his car. Gently releasing his finger from the talk button, Petey listened for any sound coming from the pump microphone; however, instead of any recognisable reply, several blip sounds broke the static interference followed by something sounding like a smacking together of lips. Dismissing it as electro-charged air particles messing with his communications, Petey ignored the potential customer and continued to re-stock some shelves, before cleaning up the cola spill.\nAfter rinsing out the mop and bucket, Petey returned to his station and sat on a high bar stool, looking out to the forecourt for movement. About to switch off the forecourt light to indicate his impatience, Petey noticed the driver exiting his car, unscrewing his fuel cap, unhooking the pump nozzle, sticking it into the side of the vehicle, then squeezing the nozzle trigger.\n“Did you not see the sign, mate?” Petey rhetorically asked through the intercom.\nUndeterred, the driver looked over to Petey and defiantly shrugged his shoulders, while his flailing arms wildly reached for the night sky.\n“Diesel only, mate.” Petey’s amplified voice trailed off into the darkness of the warm night. “Unleaded is out. Refill is arriving tomorrow.”\nThrowing a daggered look at Petey, the driver hugged the fuel pump and imitated a sex act on it, while slapping its metal housing. Then, pulling the fuel nozzle from his car, he returned it to the pump – after angrily banging it a few times against the pump’s housing.\n“Knock it off, you clown,” Petey’s concerned response broadcast from the intercom. “You break it, you pay for it.”\nHis stress level rising, Petey grappled to control a building outburst of displeasure at the driver’s actions. However, still incensed, the driver decided to confront Petey face-to-face, but stopped in mid stride at the sudden appearance of approximately fifteen young Emu chicks casually passing through the forecourt - pecking at anything worth eating. In the frustration of being blocked in, the driver kicked a gentle leg out at a few of the young birds to move them out of his path.\n“Yeah. Nah, mate. You don’t wanna do that,” the intercom bellowed. “Dad’s not gonna be too happy with yous.”\nRaising a defiant middle finger toward Petey, the driver dismissed the friendly warning. Then, catching movement in the corner of his left eye, he raced around his car and locked himself inside, just before a very large Emu menacingly charged at him.\n“That’s Dad, mate.” Petey explained through the intercom. “You’ve pissed him off now, you Fuckwit. Best wait it out till they all move on.”\nShouting something unintelligible, the driver’s response was completely lost on Petey, but its overall message was loud and clear, so Petey decided to assist.\n“There’s a microphone on the pump, mate. You’ll need to roll your window down to talk to me, but I wouldn’t recommend it, coz Dad’s got a long neck and hammer-like beak. He’ll be crackin’ the shits for a while. I reckon you’re safer where yous are. Hang tight a minute.”\nTaking a long sip of water from a plastic bottle, Petey attempted to tune in any radio station he could find on the AM dial. Then smiling, he positioned the radio next to the microphone, pressed the talk button and flooded the courtyard with music from ACDC.\n“Accadacca, mate. Highway to hell. Very appropriate tonight. The Emus hate loud sounds.”\nNo sooner had the song started wailing through the fuel pump intercom, the Emu dad decided to trot off into the evening bush with chicks in pursuit.\n“We’re on a highway to hell, fuck, whoop!” Petey’s explosive vocal tic via the intercom assaulted the emptiness outside.\nChecking for the all-clear, the driver quickly exited his car, then ran toward the shop door, creating the bell above it to ring loudly, as he barged headlong through it.\n“Cocksucker!” The driver exclaimed - banging his elbow on the door frame. “Asshole! Jackoff!”\n“Whoa there, mate! I’m supposed to be the only one licensed to swear in here, but…”\n“Dickwad!”\n“Yeah, nah. Not heard that one before, mate. What’s that accent I hear?”\n“New York! Apple Apple, bite me!” The driver blurted out while moving his right index finger in a piston-like motion through his left index finger and thumb shaped like the letter O.\n“Suck me sav, ya Septic!” Petey responded.\n“Cock!” The driver added.\n“Arse!” Petey replied.\n“Stop! I’m not cussing at you, man! I’ve got Tourette Syndrome. When I’m stressed, I…”\n“You fucking wanker!”\n“Goddammit! I’m trying to explain to you.”\nTaking a couple of deep breaths, Petey managed to compose himself enough to explain his own plight.\n“…Cock snap.”\n“What?”\n“I do, too.”\n“You got Tourette’s?”\n“Fucking right, whoop!”\n“Go figure. What are the odds on that?”\n“Fucking ginormous, mate! Like tits on a bull.”\n“Man, I thought I was in Jurassic Park, just now.”\n“Whoop! Cunting Emu highway, mate. Don’t suppose you have any of those in New York, Doop!”\n“Stick a dongle up my ass…! No, we… Sorry. I’m trying to control this…”\nThe driver’s words trailed off as he stuck a middle finger in the air with one hand, while simultaneously acting out a self-pleasuring charade with the other.\n“Sorry sorry. I also have what’s called copropraxia. An uncontrollable need to perform obscene gestures.”\n“Fuck!”\n“Yeah.”\n“No, I meant that fuck like an exclamation fuck and not a blurted-out Tourette’s fuck.”\n“Yeah, I get that too. Even my friends can’t tell when I’m swearing just for the sake of it.”\n“Bit far from home, aren’t you, mate?” Petey inquisitively pointed out.\n“I got lost. Supposed to be heading West through the Nullarbor.”\n“There’s only one road, mate, so you get the fuckwit navigator award for that. Need a map?”\nPetey offered one of the neatly folded maps sitting in a small cardboard display on his counter.”\n“Got one, but it’s so versatile, I’m saving it for toilet paper,” was the sarcastic reply.\n“Nah, yeah. Know what you mean. It’s shit in the dark.”\n“It is without a light. Where am I?”\n“Cobber’s Canteen.”\n“I don’t see no kitchen.”\n“Microwave on the back wall, mate. Pasties are in the fridge next to it.”\n“I’m not hungry. I just need gas.”\n“Petrol, you wanker! Sorry, that was a trigger.”\nScrunching his face and raising both middle fingers, the driver returned his own triggered gesture, just as the bell above the door jingled again. Repressing any further outpourings of tics, Petey and the driver silently watched a young woman enter the shop.\n“G’day Ruby,” greeted Petey.\n“Fuggin nice to me, today, are ya, you foul-mouthed dickhead?” Ruby replied. “Got a customer you’re trying to impress, are ya? Who’s this eyeballin’ wanker, then? Gis us a box of choccy biccies and a slab of those illegal tinnies.”\nPetey passed a box of chocolate biscuits to Ruby, then pointed at the hidden stash of beer in the corner.\n“Put ‘em on me fuggin account, ya mongrel.”\nSurprised by the driver opening the door for her, Ruby paused – looking him up and down.\n“Tryin ta get rid of me, are you? What’s goin’ on between yous two pooftahs, then? A little hairy fairy action, is it?”\nThe two men averted any eye contact, as they bit their lips trying to suppress the urge to let their tics loose on Ruby.\n“Fuck me dead. I ain’t got all night,” she impatiently censured them - before giving them both a middle finger, while backing out of the shop and disappearing into the night.\n“Bitch face, slapper,” the driver blurted out after shutting the door - while thrusting his hips in a forward obscene manner.\n“Stiffie bait!” Petey’s uninhibited response embarrassingly shouted out.\n“She got Tourette’s too?” The driver inquisitively asked.\n“Yeah, nah mate. She’s a local. They all talk like that.”\n“You picked the perfect spot for work, then. Look, is it okay if I sleep out there in my car tonight?”\n“Whoop! Nah, yeah, mate. No dramas. Just roll up your windows unless you want the mozzies to feed on you all night. You sure you don’t want a pastie?”\n“I’m good.”\n“Petrol truck’s here in the morn, so you’ll be right, then.”\n“Good on ya.”\n“Crikey, five minutes at Cobber’s Canteen and you’re talking like a local.”\n“Yeah… Nah!” The driver imitated the oxymoron response.\nAs the driver returned to his car, Petey chuckled to himself watching the New Yorker acting out an involuntary humping motion on the edge of his car door. Then, with a final wave, he got into his car and closed himself off to the rest of the night.”\n“Poor bugger,” Petey sympathetically commented out loud while switching off the forecourt light. “I thought I had it bad, but he’s got it all over. Fuck! Yep! Whoop! Ya Gronk!”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Never Follow the Lights\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1684\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone going on a life-changing journey." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Deidre from accounting is going on a year long tour of Europe. The boss made everyone squeeze into the break room to toast pale, flabby Deidre goodbye on her last day. Everyone raised their plastic cup of warm fizzy wine while Deidre clutched a supermarket bouquet of carnations and smiled.\n\nBack at your desk you snap your laptop shut, slide it into your satchel and grant yourself an Irish goodbye. You don’t particularly like anyone at this company that you’ve been working at for 8 years now. You walk to the underground station, descend the stairs and ride a crowded train home. So much for thank god it’s Friday.\n\nOn Sunday, you visit your mum’s place, for tea.\n\n“Do you want another cuppa love?” Your mum asks.\n\nYou stare out the kitchen window and watch as the wind whips drying tea towels that hang from the hills hoist. You used to swing around on that hills hoist when you were a kid and the mum who is now offering you tea, used to yell at you.\n\n“What’s up love?” Your mum asks, “what’s on your mind?”\nShe lights one of the burners on her stove and places down a pan.\n“Is sausages okay?” \nYou nod, and sigh, and think about chubby happy Deidre having more of a life than you do.\n\nAt the table, over sausages and mash, your mum starts talking about some train that takes you right across Australia, across the Nullabour Plain. \n“Apparently it’s incredible out there, it’s not JUST a desert like you think it is. I think it would be fun. What do you think love?”\n“What do you mean it’s not just a desert?”\n“Oh, according to the article I read, the center of Australia has all kinds of things going on”\n“Like what?”\n“I don’t know love, that’s why you should go, to see”\n“Me?” You ask, “I thought you wanted to go”\n“Love, you need to get out of your rut a bit. Your father, god bless him, would say so as well. You’re too young to be spending all your time with your old mum. Go on, I’ll get the article”\n\nYour mum sends you home with a plate of leftovers and last weeks Sunday Supplement. There, you thumb through to the page about the Nullabour, and read a story about a travel writer’s envious adventures Out Back. You’re so jealous, your toes curl. You’re always the bloody bridesmaid and never the bloody bride. You remember Deidre’s pathetic smile and it makes you angrier. Goddamit! You think to yourself, I’m doing it.\n\nThe rest of the office raises their plastic cups of warm fizzy wine while you hold a teddy bear with the words “miss you already” embroidered onto its stomach. You smile while the boss says a few trite words about your contribution to the culture of the terrible organization you work….check that…USED to work for. Back at your desk you snap your laptop closed, bin the polyester Teddy and practically glide down the stairs with joy. You’re going to cross the Nullabour.\n\nInstead of the train your mum suggested, you’re going to drive. Just you, your Jeep and the out back road. A one man Bourke and Wills. It’s a bright and windy Saturday morning, and you feel high and free; turning onto the on-ramp, pressing the accelerator down a little further. You imagine the empty road, the endless space, the Stary nights. It’s calling you.\n\nAll at once it seems, the wide expanse around you opens to the reddest earth you’ve ever imagined. The highway becomes two, dead straight lanes- one lane forward, one lane back. The road shimmers under the brutal Australian sun.\n\nUp ahead you see a building, like a shed. A hand painted sign by the highway declares “the last pub before Ullaru” and you swerve off the road to park your Jeep out front. \nReal outback Aussies you think, despite being an Aussie yourself. The long drive has made you romanticize a harsh and stunning landscape.\nInside the pub is almost black until your eye’s adjust. You see the humped backs of bushmen sitting at the bar, you hear a staticy radio playing a song you don’t recognize, you smell sticky, piss stained carpet, you feel the light breeze of the ceiling fan.\n\n“Gday love” screetches out the bar mistress. “Get you a beer?”\n\nA couple of the humped backs twist slightly, glancing at you from under the brims of Acubras.\n\n“Ahh, yes. Yes thanks” you say.\n\n“Come on love, come sit up here by me”. She taps the bar with her beefy hands and you walk up to lean on the sticky wooden ledge.\n\nShe puts a glass of beer in front of you, frosty, straight from the keg. Condensation immediately beads all over it. You take a sip and she smiles at you and says “now, what’s a city slicker like you doing out here?”\n\nYou take another sip. “I’m crossing the Nullabour in my Jeep” you reply.\n\nThe humpbacks laugh.\n\n“Is that so?”\n\n“Yeah. I’ve come all the way from Sydney”\n\n“All the way from Sydney ay? You hear this boys?” She says. “This one’s come all the way from Sydney”\n\nThe humpbacks laugh at you again.\n\n“What do you know about the Nullabour plain?” You ask her. And what’s so funny you think.\n\nThe bar mistress leans in close, so close you can see the widened pores across her nose.\n\n“Never follow the lights”.\n\n“Never follow the lights?” you ask, “what do you mean?”\n\nBut she has turned away and is pouring another beer.\n\nThe humpback beside you croaks out “she mean’s don’t follow them lights. You’d be best minding her you hear”\n\n“Yes, of course. Never follow the lights. Right. Well, thanks for the beer” you leave your money on the bar and leave. What a weird place you think. Freaks. You steer yourself back onto the highway lane going forward.\n\nAs the sun starts to set you pull off the road and set up camp for the night. You light a small fire and pump your air mattress to life. You lie on it and stare into the sky. There exists nothing between you and the Milky Way.\n\nNever follow the lights\n\nBut you did\nAnd now\nYour body is pulled downwards\nYour lungs burn\nThe light\nThat damned light twinkles across the surface of the pool.\nSuch a non descriptive word for its fetid murderous truth\nYou have never seen light on water from the underside before \nInto the darkness, \ndown, \ndrowning tugs your ankles\nYou hair tangles in the water, as it floats from your scalp like weeds\n Never follow the lights\nIt made no sense how bleary sun stroked men\nWho had scars like earthquake fissures \nCarved into them\nTheir trophies from the daily fight with fearlessness \nWarned you \nA low voice at the outback pub repeating\nNever follow the lights\nBut you did\nAt first it seemed as though a single head light from a motorbike \nWhich was ridden with no sound \nA ghost ride\nComing towards you and your fire and your Jeep \nThen that headlight rose up above you from the ground \nIt was in the sky\nAnd suddenly multiplied \nYou have no idea how many lights had been called to find you but \nThey changed and danced with you.\nWhile you threw your hands up to greet them, or moved whenever the lights seemed to touch the land.\nNothing had ever filled the lust in you- just you, the lights, and silence \nNever follow the lights\nThe ancient mistress serving beers had told you \nShe had braless tits which lay like flaps\nHer upper arms gelatinous \nYou preferred to take your chances \nWith dancing lights\nThat made the stars behind them\nLook like cheap glitter \nSpilt carelessly behind diamonds \nYour face turned up towards the lights \nA premonition of you now\nYou stood and took the worst step of your remaining minutes alive, you were only going to see what the big deal was about \nNever follow the lights\nAs your body decends deeper \nInto the pool of water which is killing you\nYour brain still fires thoughts \nYou had hoped would have more meaning\nInstead your final moments kicking\nThe last thing you are thinking\nIs of the lights\nAnd how they led you to the water\nTo watch you drown \nWhile twinkling above you\nWhy on earth can’t I follow them now?\nThem lights’ll kill you said the beery pub wench\nBefore they do\nYou see the last glimpses \nOf the lights\nThat you followed \nLike they are magnetic \n\nYou refuse to die like this.\n\nAs you break through the surface of the water you gasp, loudly, splashing your way back to life. Your blood has been replaced with terror, pulsing through your kicking legs and flailing arms, swimming towards the bank. You pull yourself out into the cold night air and lay, chest heaving as it draws oxygen back into your body.\n\nThe lights are gone.\n\nOnly a billion stars shine above you, watching you pass out, uselessly, from far far away.\n\nThe world turns slowly, revealing the sun, which brings the light and warmth that wakes you, on the bank beside a small, shallow pond. On hands and knees you look into it, wondering how something so shallow could be so deep. You feel the bright desert sun start to burn the back of your neck so you stand and begin to search for your abandoned campsite and Jeep.\n\nIt doesn’t take long to find them, not as long as the dance to follow the lights felt. You drink from your canteen and kick desert dust onto the last embers of your forgotten fire. Once seated in your Jeep you turn the wheel towards the one lane going back. \n\nAt the last pub before ulluru, you stop and walk inside again. It feels like de ja vous- the same grimy floor, the same scarred bushmen, the same fat mistress. \n\n“Gday love” she cries out. “You look like you followed some lights”." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Michael J. Fox Killed My Hamster\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1554\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is convinced they’re going to be betrayed." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Run, Caesar, run!\nThe little guy sure could get that wheel spinning.\nMy shrink says I have a pretty active imagination because I free associate a lot. See, when I let my mind drift I lose my focus. It doesn’t mean I’m stupid or anything, and it doesn’t mean I’m mental either. It’s like I float away somewhere and then all this confusing shit inside my head happens. He tells me I’m only imagining all these terrible things people are thinking about me but I’m not so sure.\nI pretend to listen when my therapist talks but I don’t always because, like I told you, I sometimes wander. Besides, you can’t be too careful about who you trust. Wait! I mean whom you trust, object of the preposition ‘about.’ I learned that stuff in tenth grade, although I think teachers teach you this crap to keep your mind off sex. I used to think about getting laid all the time, especially whenever I saw Sandy Cutler at the 7-11 check-out. Watching out for prepositions can’t make you stop thinking dirty thoughts about a girl like Sandy.\nAnyway, the point I was making is, most of the time you really can’t trust anyone. Look at what happened to Julius Caesar, after whom I named my hamster. (See? I didn’t end that sentence with a preposition, did I?) I used to spend hours studying Caesar (my hamster, not the emperor). He would run ‘round and ‘round on that squeaking wheel inside his cage, and I’d be thinking how we’re all so much like the little guy, the way we just run ourselves ragged on our own little wheels. It’s amazing what you can learn just watching a rodent, but it makes me sad to think how Caesar (again, my hamster) came to his end.\nRun, Caesar, run!\nAnyway, people never say what they mean, or mean what they say. I know that sounds like double talk but it makes sense when you think about it. You trust someone who lies or cheats, then you’re like Caesar running on that damned wheel, wasting a lot of energy but going nowhere. Or like that other Caesar (the emperor) trusting his pals and getting stabbed about a million times.\nTake tonight when I went to the 7-11. I just wanted a newspaper, maybe a pack of gum because I gave up cigarettes and you can’t get cancer from a stick of Juicy Fruit. Of course you can get cavities, and a shitload of germs can spread through your system and then hit your brain, so maybe you could die of brain cancer if you chewed enough of the stuff, now that I think about it. I believe in playing it safe because there are a lot of things that will hurt you if you’re not careful, even a lousy stick of chewing gum. It’s more important than watching out for prepositions every minute, something only a fool would be concerned with. Of course you shouldn’t end a sentence with ‘with,’ which is the preposition I just ended my last sentence with. Damn, I did it again! You can’t go around being ungrammatical all the time or you’re liable to start thinking about sex. So maybe it isn’t so foolish after all, watching out for prepositions and chewing gum, I mean.\nAnyway, I’m in the 7-11 and I’m pretty sure it’s Sandy’s shift tonight. I would feel good if she smiled in my direction the way she sometimes did. Sure enough she’s there, and she’s ringing up someone else’s purchases when I’m readying to hand her my fifty cents at the check-out. I’m kind of shy and wind up looking at her throat instead of her eyes.\nHer neck is very white and so delicate, and I decide against buying the gum with the newspaper because a guy can’t be too careful. I make sure I have the exact change for Sandy because I don’t want to put her to any unnecessary trouble having to fumble through the cash register for a couple of stupid quarters. You can never tell when crooks are just waiting for someone to keep their cash register open an extra few seconds so they can shoot everybody in the store because killing someone is so easy to do just because I didn’t have the correct change for a paper. Like I told you, you can’t be too careful. It isn’t like I’m afraid to step on the sidewalk cracks or anything crazy like that. Hell, I couldn’t care less about the cracks in the sidewalk. I never even think about them, and sometimes I purposely step right on top of them. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back, right? Well, my mother’s back is just fine, thank you.\nOh, I know what people say about guys who get fixated on their mothers, but I’m not one of those. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with loving your mother and it’s not like I don’t think about having sex with guys sometimes although my mother has nothing to do with my thinking about that stuff and I would never actually do it. It’s Sandy I’m interested in, like I told you, even if she never noticed me unless I was in line with money to spend.\nWell, I’m a customer and I’m thinking she can’t ignore me because the customer is always right and she has to worry about keeping her job selling Big Gulps, so she’s supposed to be nice although I would rather she was pleasant because she wanted to be and not because she had to be. I hate when people act nice just because they have to.\nSo anyway, I’m thinking tonight how I ought to give Sandy the right change and that she’ll smile at me if I smile first at her, and maybe this time she might figure out that I came in just to see her. But she was joking with this other guy standing in front of me, and he was taking his sweet time talking to her like maybe he was thinking about asking her out and Sandy, she seemed to like it. Then just before it came my turn in line she took her break. Didn’t say a word, just walked off when the other girl told her to take a few minutes. I have to admit I didn’t feel too good about that.\nAll right, maybe Sandy didn’t think she had to be nice to me. Maybe she needed that smoking break like I’ve seen her take a million times behind the 7-11. But she could have noticed that I’d been standing there waiting just for her to smile. She saw me standing there and could have decided right then not to take her goddamned break.\n[I knew you were smoking alone in the dark near the back parking lot, Sandy. You go maybe four or five times a night to the loading zone just to satisfy your urge, don’t you? Didn’t your mother teach you how bad cigarettes are for you? If you were my girl I wouldn’t ever let you smoke.]\nShe wouldn’t have listened anyway. Why would she trust my opinion? I was only another shopper waiting in line, no different than some shriveled prune buying a carton of skim milk. So why did I waste my time thinking about her when there are so many other important things to think about - no, I mean about which to think - like keeping yourself healthy and clean because it’s so easy to come down with something, you know?\nI have this long file I always carry in my pocket to make sure my nails are clean because no one likes a guy with dirty nails. I know it sounds really queer but the file folds out like a pocket knife and I was cleaning my nails when I walked outside and decided to take a stroll behind the store. See, I figured Sandy would notice me if I stood right in front of her when it was just the two of us there. Maybe I’d even get a smile out of her.\nShe noticed me, all right, but she kept right on smoking and never said a word, just looked at me then looked away.\nHer throat was so white, her neck so delicate.\nSee these nails, Officer? Clean, right? And I made sure I carried the correct change just for her. I smiled until my face felt like it was going to crack. All for nothing.\nI was the guy she should be with.\n[Damn it! Ended that with another preposition!]\nThings can hurt you if you’re not careful, and your mother isn’t always around to keep that from happening.\nThere’s nothing wrong with loving your mother, is there?\n[No one loves a little boy with dirty thoughts or dirty nails.]\nI’m a customer, and a real man doesn’t give a crap about the cracks in the sidewalk if he steps right on them, and clean nails are important, they really are.\nHer neck. So white. So delicate.\nSo very easy to do.\nI keep it sharp. My nail file, I mean. Really sharp.\n[Our own little wheels.]\nAnyway, I was telling you about what happened to my hamster ...\n ####" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Valley of the Dead\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2648\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in an eerie, surreal setting." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Lake Sis was beautiful during the day. Clear, cool waters situated in a modest valley between peaks of an unassuming mountain range. During the winter the lake and mountaintops became inaccessible, covered in thick quilts of snow; but in spring the snowmelt would swell the lake, forcing the shoreline of the pebbled beach back under the wooden pier. By summertime the water had warmed, and the broadleaf trees had regrown their full foliage, covering the trails and campground in dappled sunshine. When the sun was out it shone off the still waters of the lake, preserving the daylight by reflecting it back like a mirrored lens. But the steady diffusion of light played tricks on our minds. Each night the sun seemed to slip past the western peak without warning and, as if a stopper had been pulled, the pall of nighttime would burble up, filling the basin with dense midnight. Within minutes the sound of rustling animals would cease, replaced by the cicada’s nightly liturgy.\n The other counselors and I would often repeat the cautious tautology “You have plenty of time – until you don’t,” to warn the campers that unless they paid attention, they would be caught unawares in the dark. We would tell stories, passed down through generations of camp goers – about reckless campers who were caught in the pitch-black night. The stories varied. Some said campers saw the sun go down and then found themselves transported to another part of the valley, far from where they started and with their legs and palms covered in gashes, the sun rising over the eastern mountainside. Others told of hapless victims who wandered the woods all night, taunted by firelight and the calls of friends always just out of reach. The most chilling ones were accounts of survivors – campers who swore when the sun disappeared, so too did their friends, swept away in an instant by the shadows of trees. It was during this brief twilight, as we raced down Crescent Trail, ignoring the rushes that whipped at our legs and skipping over the high roots, that we heard another scream.\n It came from the far edge of the lake, directly across from the main campgrounds, where a wide arc of forest gave way to the pebbled beach. Sadie kept a tenacious pace, bounding with long strides across the trail, flitting easily over the soft loam. She hardly seemed human at that moment, reminding me of one of the birds that hopped from reed to reed on the lake front. They were so light they hardly bent the cattails they perched on and so focused on the water below them, hunting for their next meal, that I wondered how they knew where to put their feet. If she wasn’t in front of me, showing me where it was safe to step and what patches of roots to avoid, I would have tripped a long time ago.\n Another scream sounded, twisting across the surface of the lake. It was close now, reaching a furious crescendo just as we ran onto the beach, loose stones skittering under our tennis shoes. I looked around frantically, not sure what I might find. My search yielded nothing in the dying light.\n “There!” Sadie pointed.\n I turned to see she was gesturing to a figure in the lake, far past the end of the pier. It was clearly one of our campers, but they were too far away, and it was too dim to identify them. Their head bobbed above the water, strangely silent now that we had arrived. The water around them roiled, as if teeming with eels.\n “They must be panicking,” I thought, trying to remember the procedure for drowning incidents.\n “I’m going in.” I said after a moment. “Go to the shed and get a life buoy and then follow me in – don’t get too close or we may get overwhelmed.”\n Sadie looked at me with wide eyes but nodded her assent. I tore down the beach, sprinting to the end of the pier and diving into the water without removing my clothing. The water was still warm from the day’s light and I swam quickly, keeping my head above water and eyes on the camper. Soon I could see who it was, Jason Vargas, a third-year who was set to become a counselor himself next year. I slowed my approach and tried to talk to him.\n “Jason are you OK? How long have you been out here?” He stared past me, eyes locked on the beach. Despite his irregular treading, his head bobbed well above the waterline. He didn’t seem to be in danger of drowning at all.\n “Jason,” I called again, “look at me. What happened? Why are you out here so late?” The only sign he registered my question was quick glance in my direction. He seemed to acknowledge that I was there to help but was focusing his energy on the shore, keeping watch of something I had not seen.\n “We’re going to get you out of here. Just hang tight.” I decided my questions could wait until later and getting him to shore was my priority. I circled around him until I was facing his back. Approaching slowly, I hooked one arm under his and across his chest. I kicked upwards, pulling his weight against me until we were both nearly horizontal. Jason had stopped flailing now, relaxing in my grip and allowing himself to be towed. He kept his eyes fixed on the shore even as I pivoted us so I could kick us to shore. He seemed to relax when he saw Sadie emerge from behind the shed, buoy in hand. It had taken her some time to find it.\n We made our way slowly to the shore. Sadie helped me haul Jason from the water. He was fully dressed as well, I noted, though he was missing a shoe, likely from treading water so erratically. I lay on the beach beside him, panting from exertion.\n Jason was the first to speak.\n “We need to get back to camp. There’s no more light.”\n He was right. The valley was dark now and my eyes hadn’t had a chance to adjust. Sadie’s head seemed to hover in the air above between dark tee and raven hair.\n “Don’t worry,” Sadie said, “I’m here now, nothing’s going to hurt us.”\n I was a little offended to be left out of her reassurance. Clearly, I had done the lion’s share of the work tonight. But I decided not to push for recognition for my heroics.\n We got Jason back to the camp, Sadie leading the way again. He grew steadier and more talkative with each step but couldn’t remember why he was in the lake in the first place. According to him he was at the edge of the woods, making his way to camp when the sun began to set. The next thing he remembers was me, hauling him out of the water. Sadie and I agreed not to press him for answers, we would have time tomorrow to get a full account. We got him changed and into his bunk without incident. He seemed grateful and remarkably unconcerned with the night’s ordeal.\n Sadie and I sat alone by the campfire and watched the flames leisurely consume its fuel. I wore only my boxers while Jason and my clothes dried nearby. I luxuriated in the heat against my bare skin and the feeling of warmth penetrating my bones. The anticlimax of Jason’s ordeal, the feeling of adrenaline draining from mt muscles, made me feel exceptionally calm. I looked up and pondered Sadie. We had worked together for four summers in a row, but she was still a mystery to me. No one knew where or if she went to school and she was famously reticent about her family. She was cheerful, hardworking, and had a kind of steady energy I had come to depend on during our summers together.\n “You know there’s some truth to those stories.” Sadie said, breaking the silence.\n “I believe it,” I responded. “After what happened tonight, I’m sure there must be something in the water.”\n She nodded but didn’t look at me. “Before you and I started working here, a camper or a hiker would go missing every year. Some people say there must be an undiscovered cave system in the mountains. If you slipped into a crevasse - that’s it. There’s no way a search party could find you and no way for you to get out, assuming you had survived. That’s the levelheaded explanation anyway.” She flashed a pained smile, “The superstitious one is that wendigos hunt in these woods.”\n “Wendigos?” I tried to inject some levity to the conversation, inflecting my tone upward. “You mean those antlered things? I thought they were supposed to be from New Jersey.”\n Sadie gave a small, cheerless laugh. “That’s the Jersey devil,” she said. “I don’t know when they started getting those confused. Wendigos never had antlers, or deer skulls for heads for that matter. They were humans, suffering an eternal torment for violating a taboo.” She leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees and looking with deep concentration into the fire.\n “The original myths said after someone committed cannibalism – no matter how desperate and hungry they might have been, mind you – they would never lose their taste for it. Their appetite forced them to wander the woods in search of new victims, for eternity.”\n “That’s awfully dark,” I temporized, “I’m surprised you haven’t told that story around the campfire.” I wasn’t sure what to say; I had never seen Sadie so grim. She was staring down at her hands now, black tresses obscuring her face.\n “That’s not the sort of thing I like to tell others,” she said. I wondered what she meant by that. I had heard her tell plenty of ghost stories before. Before I could ask what she meant, she cleared her throat and looked up, brushing her hair from her face.\n “Do you know what the full name of this lake is?”\n I was glad for the change in topic, and that Sadie seemed to have dropped her somber attitude.\n “No, though I always thought it was an odd name,” I said.\n “Well, it’s odd because it’s incomplete. The full name is Lake Sisyphus, like the Greek myth,” Sadie said, taking on the effect of a university lecturer. “You see when this little slice of paradise was being developed, roads paved and foundations poured, the owner decided he wanted a pebble beach, something to make this place the getaway it is today.” Sadie spoke at a measured cadence, laying out each sentence like a track before her, stepping across it to place the next.\n “So, he had a freight load of pebbles trucked up the mountain and dumped along the shoreline; the same one we pulled Jason up tonight.” She stared directly at me, making sure I was paying attention. “But the very next year the pebbles were all but gone, washed away in the fall rains or buried under the snow and carried into the lake by the melt. He had to dump another freight load that year, and the year after that. Even now the stones have to be replenished every few years.” Sadie paused for breath.\n “The owner wasn’t daunted though and had a wry sense of humor. So, to memorialize his ongoing war with precipitation, he rechristened the lake – the original Algonquin name was unpronounceable to him anyway. Sisyphus, the man doomed to push a stone up a mountain, only for it to roll back down just before he reaches the peak, over and over for all eternity.”\n She stopped and seemed to collect her thoughts. I took the opportunity to interject. “I can’t believe I never heard the story after all these years working here,” I said.\n Sadie didn’t acknowledge my comment pressed on, gaining momentum. “Do you know what great sin Sisyphus committed to earn his suffering?” She didn’t wait for an answer, “He cheated death. He locked a god away in his cellar so he wouldn’t be taken to the underworld. He obeyed our shared instinct – our HUMAN instinct – to live on no matter the cost.” Her voice had become shrill with emotion, and words poured out in a frenzied staccato. “Wouldn’t you do the same? If push comes to shove, we prioritize our lives over all else. If you’re drowning you cling to what’s near and pull yourself up; If you’re attacked you fight back; and if you’re starving you eat!” She nearly screamed the last word. The fire cast unnatural shadows across her face. Her pupils seemed to have grown preternaturally large and her skin looked waxy and pale.\n “Sadie you’re freaking me out. And I’m not sure I entirely agree with you,” I demurred, turning my body to the side.\n “And just how would you know?” She snapped. “You haven’t dealt with anything worse than a scraped knee in your life!” Her voice rattled inside the hollows of my skull. Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and the calm I felt earlier was replaced with a surge of unease.\n “You’ve never felt the gnawing of your stomach after a week without food! You never saw friends and family die one by one because they had more pride than food!” Her voice crescendoed and I felt air rush from my lungs as if I had been punched in the gut. I tried to stand but found I couldn’t balance on my feet.\n Sadie stood and advanced on me. “It’s been four years, right? Ever since I started working here not a single camper has been harmed. Four years I’ve worked so hard and asked for nothing in return. I’ve been paying penance for so long now, protecting these fat stupid kids from the others, pushing my boulder up the hill without rest.”\n In my addled state I wondered who she meant by “others”. She was close now and I could see there was no trick of light. Her skin had shrunk back across her face; it was pulled tight across her high cheekbones and made craters at her cheeks and temples. Her eyes bulged and teeth jutted forward, gnashing at the air when she spoke. She looked like a starving wolf, and I was paralyzed in front of her.\n “This is better, isn’t it?” She spoke softly now, crooning. Her body was inches from mine, a gaunt silhouette against the light from the fire. “So much less sacrifice. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I need a break eventually. The boulder has to roll down the hill before I can push it up again. Well, we’ve reached the peak now, nowhere to go but down.”\n She stepped forward again, straddling my lap. She sat slowly, pinning me to the seat and bringing her head to rest on my shoulder. I tried to move but couldn’t control my own body. Her arms wrapped around me, keeping me upright and pressing my chest to hers. Her skin felt like cool earth, like laying in the undergrowth of the woods just as the sun begins to rise. I breathed in the heavy scent of peat and plant matter. I couldn’t feel the heat of the fire anymore.\n She cradled the back of my head with one hand and whispered into the crook of my neck, “It’s ok to let go,” She hushed, “I’ll stay here. I’ll keep the kids safe. You don’t have to worry anymore. Your work is done.”\n I managed one last delirious thought.\n “That’s good,” I mused. “I’m so glad you’ll be here to watch over them.” I felt a warm calm spring from my neck and flush through me. It rolled down my chest and arms, warming me to my bones." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Empty Roads.\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1615\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in an eerie, surreal setting." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The streets were suspiciously empty.\nAl-Khalil was an incredibly old city with incredibly proud residents, but they were not acting so tough now that there was fighting rather than just strong words.\nMusa walked along in broad daylight carrying his black market M-16 in his arms and his shemagh hid his face. There was a warrant out for his arrest in another city but it simply didn’t matter. The wide road he was trudging on was usually loud with slow-moving traffic honking at each other and pedestrians going every which way. Musa could still hear some stray shots fired in the distance, but the fighting going on actually was not anything to speak of, just the routine feuding between clans and governments except this time a mob was hyped up the other day calling this the final battle for the survival of this city. That day these streets were mobbed with so many people Musa thought the whole county had shown up for the fight, but now they were all nowhere to be found.\nAll those people, soldiers, civilians, ghazis, revolutionaries, clan militias, women, and children alike were all undoubtedly hiding inside the drab shops and houses Musa walked past in the scorching desert sun. Musa wanted no part in the clans vs government battle either because he was genuinely unsure who was fighting who. Some said the Jabari clan was making their final move against the Awiwi clan in revenge for an earlier murder and/or to seize control of government office buildings in al-Khalil. Others said the conflict was national, and that al-Aqsa was moving against the Commerce Bureau. However, everyone was contradicting each other about which clan was affiliated with which party. In any case, people in this city were only affiliated with armed parties in the loosest way possible. Others said that all or most of some clans were foreign settler infiltrators, an allegation that persisted against all the clans in the city and an allegation that Musa disregarded. What was known was starting the previous night a mix of government forces and armed men in civilian clothes went through towns arresting everyone with the last name Awiwi calling them all spies.\nMusa turned onto a narrower street and thought of his own enemies and the many other suspicious characters hiding in the buildings on every side of him. At any given time he was undoubtedly only a few feet away from hostiles, but yet Musa knew the danger was minimal even if his heart rate and sweaty hands acted otherwise. Musa was no one of importance despite his late grandfather’s status as a Mukhtar, but all that left Musa was an inheritance of a big house his mother could not collect and no help from their neighbors even when they missed meals. People simply assumed Musa’s family was loaded with money since his grandfather pretended to have all these friends in high places, but Musa knew better. All his grandfather’s wastas (connections) had done for Musa was to put a stolen M-16 in his hands that he dare not show in public and didn’t even know how to use correctly.\nLouder sounds echoed out, an explosion as a mortar or a grenade. They stopped Musa for a moment but realized it was far away and continued his march. That may have been a suicide bomber, a landmine, or some idiot wasting ammunition firing at nothing. It was often hard to tell even when there were news reports on the matter, but it was far more interesting when everyone simply ignored it. It was better for Musa to stick to the narrower streets, as it was easier to hide from possible roaming soldiers.\nMusa looked at the doors on the beige buildings of cheap stone as he passed, so uninviting as if it were a crime to knock upon them. Behind each door was either a scared family, or men with reason to fight, and it was often hard to tell which was which. Everywhere he passed there were graffiti and posters claiming the area as the territory of this party, that politician, this clan, or that family. Those signs were as empty as the pledges to fight made just the other days, and now everyone hid in their homes as if besieged by invisible armies.\nThose armies would become very real in the press later. Before leaving, Musa saw on television a report speaking of entire brigades fighting in the streets of the city battling over every block, and that was Musa’s clue that the fighting was being deliberately exaggerated for show. How many were fighting and how many had been killed Musa did not know, but Musa knew that most bullets were wasted in street battles like this with men firing into the air or firing blindly at suspected targets. Since only the occasional distant shot was heard now, Musa judged it was safe enough to do his business.\nMusa rounded a corner, then jumped backward hiding in the side street. He saw his first real danger of the afternoon: Some uniformed soldiers blocking a crossroads about 50 yards away. The street corner had a pile of gravel and other rubbish so Musa could peek and look at the soldiers unseen. Musa adjusted his shemagh to ensure it concealed his face and saw the soldiers were not even paying attention. Two he saw in the truck looking at their hands (probably on their phones) while another leaned on a wall smoking while one last guy sat on a security barrier looking the other way. Apparently, these men knew it was a whole lot of nothing and were eager for their long day in the sun to be over.\nMusa considered his stealth options. He did not need to pass through the checkpoint, as he could simply go around by narrow streets, but he would still need to cross the wide street and Musa would be in plain sight of the soldiers. He could not simply make like a civilian and walk by as he had no way to hide the M-16 and the soldiers were likely paranoid enough to detain a random bystander just for being there. Running would generate noise, and even if he wanted to Musa could not stealthily take down a whole squad of soldiers unseen because that only happened in the movies. A mad dash would likewise make noise and attract attention.\nMusa simply reminded himself he should never overestimate the competency of people in this city. He stood up and walked across the street as if the soldiers weren’t even there. After passing the danger area he hid behind a dumpster and listened, but the soldiers didn’t notice a thing. Typical.\nThe final leg of the journey was upon him, as it was just in the next neighborhood over. He was near where his uncle and his family lived and he was the object of his journey. Musa finally arrived at a house slightly taller than the rest with a modestly decorated courtyard. Musa went to the familiar door and did not knock as he knew it was unlocked, he simply undid his shemagh exposing his face and open the door. He gripped his gun tightly as he looked around the front room, his first cousin was a baby sitting in a car seat and he ignored him. Musa walked to the open kitchen door and found his uncle and his wife making dinner.\nThe uncle spoke first and was surprised and angry: “What do you think you are-“\n“Shut up!” Musa yelled. “You know what’s up, gather your things and go.”\n“You have no right-“\n“Go or I will shoot you and say the Awiwi did it!”\nTheir faces became gravely serious and muted as they stared at him comprehending his intentions. Musa’s grandfather (the uncle’s father) had let them stay in his house for many weeks before his death and now they were refusing to let Musa’s mother live there despite the uncle being specifically disinherited.\nThey continued staring at each other, and Musa took a bag off the floor and tossed it at his uncle. They did not have much to pack up, and silently and contemptuously they gathered their stuff. After a few minutes of gathering with Musa looking on they had everything with the wife carrying the baby and a tote bag and his uncle carrying a backpack and many grocery bags and a basket. They filed out silently, but both looked back at Musa with intent. Musa knew he would be hearing from them and their friends later.\nMusa pulled the cheap phone out of his pocket and called his mother telling her what he had done. She didn’t understand how he even managed to get through the streets in one piece. After a lot of arguing, she agreed she’d start gathering her things and come after the streets were back to normal. As if normal streets were somehow safer, given all the muggers and street hecklers around these parts.\nNow Musa really was besieged in this house, knowing that at any time his relatives could come back to wreak their vengeance. It was also not lost on Musa that he had simply solved his family's problems by passing them onto someone else, but his enemies were doing the same to him. Musa kept his weapon close and stayed out of sight in his new home, his own little kingdom that he had conquered.\nAl-Khalil was an ironic name for a city, as it meant “the Friend.” An ancient and strange name, where strangely deserted streets and fighting over empty houses and office buildings were just business as usual." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: House of wolves\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1056\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Lashing winds raged around the lighthouse and the monsters' eyes glowed in the darkness. The howls and growls were deafening. Their traces were everywhere: on the walls, on the floors, on their bodies. Some ran as if the devil himself was chasing them; some fought with each other, so fast that their silhouettes blurred, a single, tangled ball of fur and teeth, ready to tear each other to pieces; others lay in a dark corner, whimpering, twitching, ignored.\nCamilla backed away until her back hit the door. Although she knew it was futile, her hand pressed down on the handle, but the door remained locked. She was paralysed; how could she move, how could she turn her back on these beasts? And yet she knew she had to run. One of the monsters caught her gaze; yellow eyes pierced into blue ones, and she took off, racing, up the spiral staircase, racing as fast as her legs would carry her, pushing past the pain when her sides began to sting. On every floor, the same horrible howls, the same blazing eyes. The monsters were everywhere. But Camilla kept running until she reached the bottom of the stairs and found herself in a narrow corridor.\nAt the end of the corridor was a door, and gathering the last of her strength, she ran towards it. She wrenched the door open and stood in a small chamber. From the wide open windows, a gust of wind hit her. The floorboards in front of the windows were wet from the rain. Camilla approached the window and tried to catch her breath. Raindrops splashed on her face and the wind blew through her hair. The sea was in turmoil. The reflection of the moon trembled on the pitch-black waves. Lightning bolts lit up the darkness. If she hadn't been so afraid, she might have been able to marvel at the natural spectacle, the forces of nature. For a brief, desperate moment, she envisioned turning round and running down the spiral staircase, only this time the door of the lighthouse miraculously opened for her and fell into the lock behind her, leaving the wicked creatures locked inside the lighthouse... but that was nothing more than a fantasy. There was no escape. How much time did Camilla have before the monsters would find her hiding place? It was clear they had been here before. The destruction had not spared this chamber. The wallpaper hanging in tatters on the wall, the long scratches across the floor and the smell that still lingered in the air despite the open window gave it away. Camilla slumped down in a corner of the chamber. She didn't know how long she sat there in the dark, listening. At some point she noticed how tired her limbs were, how her eyelids became heavier, and although she couldn't have believed she could fall asleep, the exhaustion finally won and she drifted off into a restless sleep. She dreamt of the monsters, yellow eyes, sharp teeth and steaming breath.\nWhen Camilla woke up, the storm had subsided. There was a wet flannel on her forehead and a blanket draped over her curled-up body. She sat up and saw her mother sitting opposite her in the other corner, leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, a steaming bowl in her hands. As Camilla moved, her mother stirred too. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at her daughter.\n\"You're awake,\" she said, \"how do you feel?\" \nThe memories of last night came flooding back: the panic, the running, the horror.\n\"The monsters,\" Camilla whispered; she was hoarse.\n\"Are they gone?\"\nHer mum looked at her. She stood up and went to Camilla. \"Drink,\" she said and handed her the bowl. Camilla put the bowl to her lips.\n\"You split your mind. You couldn't understand what was happening to you... the potion will help you remember.\"\nAnd no sooner had she finished the sentence than other memories suddenly came flooding back to Camilla. Memories of pain, of incredible, stabbing pain in all her limbs, waves of pain rolling over her as she lay whimpering on the floor of that chamber, fur beginning to sprout on her skin, her hands deforming... wood splintering beneath her hands, no, her paws, ... she was with her friends, they had chased through the lighthouse together, out of their minds with pain, driven by a single desire to shred, to tear, to destroy, willing to do anything to release the pain ...\n\"No\", Camilla whispered. She stared at her hands holding the empty bowl, normal, human hands, and suddenly noticed bluish spots shimmering on her knuckles. \"It can't be...\"\n\"I'm not a wolf ... I'm just a girl.\"\n\"The girl in you was afraid,\" Mother said. She stroked Camilla's head. \"She hid in this chamber and repressed your memory of the wolf.\"\nThey were both silent for a while after that. The open window let in a light breeze and drew morning sunbeams on the grain of the wood.\n\"Will it always be like this? The pain and ...\"\nCamilla's gaze travelled over the torn wallpaper and her voice trailed off.\n\"Look at me...\"\nFor the first time, Camilla recognised the wolf in her mother's eyes.\n\"It's not me you have to ask,\" her mother said.\nCamilla blinked. She put the bowl down beside her. The blanket slipped off her shoulders as she stood up. Slowly, she walked to the window. She closed her eyes, opened up and searched for the wolf.\nShe stood naked in the morning sun, feeling the mild sunshine on her skin, the dried blood between her legs. She had been afraid last night... but she had never felt such a fire raging inside her before. She had been afraid that the flames would burn her alive. That power was still there. It flowed through her veins and warmed her. She stood naked in the morning sun, feeling the mild sunshine on her skin, the dried blood between her legs. But now she knew that the flames would not devour her. The wolf did not have to smother the girl and the girl did not have to smother the wolf to live. She was not torn, she was whole, and as she took a deep breath, a wolfish smile spread across her lips." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Rite of Passage\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1992\n\nPrompt:\n\nMake your protagonist go through a rite of passage." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A tranquil Navajo village is in a forest clearing near a cold mountain stream. Wayra loves fishing and playing with his friends. He lives with his mother and grandfather. Wayra's father died when Wayra was three. Sadly, he was killed by a grizzly bear while on a hunting trip. \n His grandfather is wise and teaches Wayra the ways of the warrior. Wayra's name means \"gust of wind.\" His grandfather's name is Hashke'-Dilwo'ii, meaning \"running warrior.\"\nOne day Hashke'-Dilwo'ii walks down to the river's edge to watch the boys swimming.\n\"Grandfather! Come play with us!\" yells Wayra. His friends, Alo, Mato, and Kali, all plead for the old man to join them.\nHashke'-Dilwo'ii waves them off while shaking his old gray head and chuckles. \"It's too cold!\" he shouts. He goes and sits on a tree stump turning his old weather brown face to the sun. While his grandfather sits sunning himself with eyes closed, Wayra whispers an idea to his pals. The boys all giggle and agree. The four of them quietly sneak up on Hashke'-Dilwo'ii and surround him. Without warning, they start to shake their wet hair all over him. Screeching, Hashke'-Dilwo'ii jumps up and tries to capture the naughty foursome. He stops and reprimands the laughing boys. \"You think you're funny, don't you? He turns and points up to a steep mountain. \"You must run there to the top of that mountain for punishment! And don't stop until you reach the top!\" \nThis is not just a punishment but also a form of exercise that grandfather is teaching Wayra to prepare him to be a man. When a boy reaches the age of twelve, they undergo a ritual to prove they are ready to cross over into manhood.\nThe four boys continue to laugh as they set off running. Hashke'-Dilwo'ii smiles, thinking how they look like a young herd of deer running and playing in the forest. \"Somehow,\" he thinks,\" it doesn't look like a punishment.\"\nWayra and the other boys are all close to the same age, about a few months apart. Wayra and Mato are the same age and will perform the ceremony at the same time. As they trot up the side of the mountain, Mato asks Wayra if he is scared of their upcoming ordeal. Wayra does not want to show Mato that he is nervous because that would show weakness, but just the same, he is a little scared of meeting the spirit guides.\n Balling his hands, Wayra proclaims, \"I'm not afraid! Grandfather has told me many tales of the forest and the spirit guides that live here. I'm looking forward to meeting them.\"\n\"I don't know,\" Mato replies. \"The Spirit Guides are gods, after all. Aren't you afraid to meet a god?\"\n\"Mato, so long as we've been good, the gods won't harm us.\" Still, it was a grizzly bear that had killed his father. \"Did Father do something bad?\" Wayra asks himself.\n …\nThat night Wayra has a dream in which the Coyote Spirit comes to him and tells him to be wary of the Bear Spirit. \"He ate your father, so perhaps he'll eat you too!\"\nSoon it is the day of his ordeal. Grandfather calls Wayra, \"Come, it is time to talk of your coming journey.\" They enter Grandfather's tipi. Grandfather squats on his deer skin hide and lights his pipe.\nWayra tells his grandfather about his strange dream. Grandfather laughs. \"That old Coyote Spirit is trying to scare you, Wayra. He is quite the trickster. I'll bet Mato had the same dream too!\" \n Grandfather leans toward Wayra, \"Wayra, today I will bring you to a place deep in the forest where you will be alone. No one can speak or be with you for seven days. The only thing you can bring with you is a knife. There is a stream nearby for water. You need to fast. You may have just a small amount of honey if you feel weak. It is best to be alone so your mind will forget your old memories and be free for new ideas and impressions. You may not see them, but there will be many spirits in the forest helping you. Most important is not to be afraid. Build yourself a small shelter of sticks and moss. Make only small fires by which to meditate and pray.\" Hashke'-Dilwo'ii takes a pouch from his shoulder and places it next to Wayra.\n\"On your last night, you will apply the paints in this pouch in the order I've left for you. Then eat the medicine there to help the Spirit Guide find you. When he sees you, he will give you a message for you alone. You mustn't ever tell the message to anyone, not even me or your mother. Remember, do not be afraid. I'll be back for you on the morning of the eighth day, and you will be a man, no, a warrior.\" Before he leaves, Hashle'-Dilwo'ii places his hand on his grandson's shoulder and squeezes it.\nWayra watches as his grandfather disappears down the forest trail. He feels alone until he starts hearing the sounds of the woods. He hears birds chirping and chipmunks barking. He can even hear the sound of twigs snapping beneath the elegant hooves of the deer. \"Uh!\" he thinks. \"Grandfather said I'd be alone, but that doesn't seem true. Friends surround me.\"\nWayra hangs the pouch from a broken limb of a nearby tree. Hearing the sound of rushing water, he goes and searches for it. It's a shallow little stream slipping over stones and flowing past lilypads. He bends down and drinks. The water is satisfyingly cold and fresh. On a second look, Wayra sees a crayfish and is about to grab it when he remembers he is supposed to fast. Shaking his finger, \"Ah! Just you wait, crayfish. I'll be back someday and eat you then!\" Laughing, he heads back to the clearing.\nWayra looks around and spies a small pine. He takes his knife and cuts off a branch to use as a broom. He sweeps away all the old pine needles, cones, fallen branches, and twigs. He sweeps until he has bare ground. Using his fingers, he digs a shallow hole in the dirt and places stones around it. Next, he collects dry pine needles and moss to place in the bottom of the pit. Wayra stacks up a pile of sticks, twigs, and some branches to use as firewood. Before starting a fire, Wayra notices that the sun is already beginning to set, so he gets busy making a lean-to to sleep in that night. Wayra starts to feel hungry and remembers that Grandfather said he could have a little honey. He eagerly opens the pouch only to discover that the only things there are paint and medicine. \"What! No honey?\" Wayra slides down the pine tree and pouts.\nWhile his stomach rumbles, he watches the dust motes floating in the sunbeams. What's he supposed to do now? He sits pondering his fate. Then he hears a familiar sound. A buzzing. \"Bees! Honey bees!\" Wayra hops to his feet and studies the sunbeams until he sees a bee swirling through the dust motes. He runs to it and follows its flight back to its hive. Thankfully it is small and hanging from a low branch. Wayra removes his tunic and ties all the openings closed. Then, gently sliding it over the hive, he removes it from the tree and cinches his tunic closed. Wayra runs as fast as he can to the stream, submerging the hive and tunic. After about an hour, Wayra returns to his camp and gingerly opens the package. All is quiet. Wayra removes the hive and cuts it open, \"Ah! Honey! Sweet, sweet honey! Thank you, Bee Spirits!\"\nThe hour has grown late, and Wayra's tunic is soaking wet. He turns the tunic inside out and shakes out all the dead bees. He then makes two forked sticks for each end of the firepit and drapes his tunic over the rack he has made. The little crackling fire occasionally hisses to the drips of water but is drying his tunic nicely.\nNight invades the forest, filling it full of darkness. The happy, friendly sounds of the forest have left and are replaced with hoots, howls, and cries of the predator's of the night. Wayra sits crossed-legged and tries to meditate, but his eyes keep snapping open at every sound. Wide eyes strain to see what manner of evil lurks just outside the glow of Wayra's little campfire. Giving up on trying to meditate, Wayra lifts his arms out to the side with palms up and prays to the forest to protect him until dawn. After a while, the strange noises subside, and Wayra feels more at rest. He crawls into his lean-to and sleeps until the trilling of the first morning birds. Wayra leaves the lean-to and stretches. He is thirsty and heads down to the stream.\nWayra bends down to drink and wash his face and sees that the crayfish is still there and looking a little fatter. Frowning, he shakes his finger, \"Just you wait!\" he scolds.\nThe rest of the week goes by with Wayra learning the ways of the forest and its inhabitants. He follows deer trails and finds them gathered in meadows and fields. He watches sparrows collect tuffs of fur stuck to branches to build their nests. One day Wayra finds three hawk feathers and braids them into his hair. The hawk lands on a nearby branch and squawks. \"So you approve of my hair decoration, do you?\" The hawk responds with another squawk before flying away.\nIt is now the evening of the last day. Wayra builds his fire and takes down Grandfather's buckskin pouch. His breathing is shallow as he opens the bag. Grandfather has drawn a diagram of how to paint his face. Fingers shaking, he proceeds but then stops. He fears he'll make a mistake.\"\n\"Grandfather told me not to be afraid,\" Wayra says this repeatedly until the job is done. Next, he removes a root from the pouch. This is the medicine that will help him see the guides. He sits crossed-legged in front of the fire and chews it.\nAfter a moment or two, the air thickens, causing Wayra's breathing to be labored. From the corners of his eyes, he notices that the forest starts to vibrate. Looking down the forest trail before him, he sees a small whirlwind form. His jaw hangs open as the whirlwind fades, leaving three animal spirits behind. A crow, an eagle, and a bear. The bear steps forward and speaks.\n\"Wayra, son of Ahiga, we are here because you seek an Animal Spirit. I tell you you have obtained three. \nCrow is intelligent and wise. He will show you all the correct decisions for your tribe.\nEagle sees from a broader perspective and always leads you down the true path.\nAnd I Bear will give the courage to lead and follow. For you, Wayra are destined to be a great medicine man. Your journey is complete. Go and sleep.\"\nWayra's eyes grew so heavy that he barely reached his lean-to. In the morning, he awakens to find his grandfather sitting beside him.\n\"I can tell from the light in your eyes that you have finished your task. Let us break camp and return to the tribe.\" \nWayra goes to the stream to clean and drink. He looks everywhere for the crayfish but can't find him. \"You clever crayfish, you know that my fasting is over.\"\nWhile cleaning up the site, Wayra finds a crow's feather, an eagle's feather, and a bear's claw by his firepit. He picks them up and places them in Grandfather's buckskin pouch, then slips the pouch around his neck.\nWayra looks at the forest one last time and smiles. \"Come, Grandfather, let's go home.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Source of the River\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1980\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone seeking revenge for a past wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There are two wolves fighting inside all of us. One is evil, one is good. Which one will you feed?\n\nThose are my father's words. Chief Long Branch. He was a wise man. Wisdom is of the future, he used to say, knowledge is of the past. It is better to be wise, River Walker.\nI hear his voice as clear as ever now, as I watch Mama weave a blanket on the loom under the big tree, just as she did every day before I was born and each day after. My father told me stories of me watching her as an infant, her little girl peering up at her from beneath the lid of the basket, staring at the threads being woven end to end. He used to watch her too, sometimes for hours. It's as though he were still here.\nHe would never have let them take her. There is no death, only a change of worlds, I can hear him say. And I bet Mama would quote him if I approached her now. I won't. I'll pull my kayak onto the grass and sit here until I am ready to tell her: tell her where I've been the past few days; explain why I left right after Papa was killed and the tribe was without a chieftain; why I abandoned her during her hour of grief.\nI lay here in the grass, my poncho sank at the edges of my frame, with my spine propped against the kayak and my head hovering above, trying not to nod off into a deep sleep. Both feathers hang from my loosened braids and brush against the kayak as though it were ticklish. I hear flutes in mourning, sorrow creeping through the air like a scent on a misty afternoon. They got what they deserved.\nNot every sweet root gives birth to sweet grass.\n\nThe drums of days before resonate in my mind. The galloping horseshoes of metal wielders coming to take our land: to steal our women and kill our men; take the food we harvested from the great mother. Walk lightly in the spring, Papa would say, Mother Earth is pregnant.\nPapa was a good chieftain. He protected his wife and daughter with his last breath. They took Little Lake and beat her father to death when he tried to save her. Many of our men were slain that night and many more in the days that followed. I will stand and claim command of this tribe, anyone who does not agree because I'm a girl or because I'm too young, to hell with them. They can side with Wandering Dagger but where was he when I brought justice to what was done here? I will wear that headdress and return honour to my family.\nThe drums bang with vengeance as whispers of nights before come to the front of my mind. They flash behind my eyelids as I rest against the kayak. Whistles and screams collide in the desert air as firelight flickers on the side of tents. \nI watch from a distance, crouched on a rock overhead. The men laugh and joke about how they would drink more than the other. They shoot their boomsticks in the air while they flounder around in their undergarments, bottles of liqueur swooshing in their grasps. Little Lake is there, her hands tied behind her back, thick rope knotted around her bony ankles, her body awkwardly strewn against a log at a slant. One of the men talks of what he'll do to her while gripping her face in his filthy hands—I'll kill him first—another laughs and jeers him on while pissing into the sand. \nWhen a man moves away from nature, his heart becomes hard.\nI am crawling down from the rock as the devils sleep by the fire, its light dwindling away in the breeze that drifts across the stars. The sand compresses under the pressure of my moccasins while I near the sleeping city walkers, the waft of hard liquor still on their breaths is intensified by the heat of hot embers. The blade of my tomahawk shimmers with a dusty-orange glaze and I emerge from around the corner of a tent. My poncho crawls over the tent strings like a dead fish—still wet—being laid upon a rock for gutting. Two of the men snore with sticky-tobacco throats and another kicks his leg in a dream-struck burst that decepates to a porch-dog slumber.\nI throw down my tomahawk in rage and it crunches through the ankle of the nearest man, I pass him before he can sit up and scream through his tobacco-sludge saliva and his frenzy wakes the camp. By the time the others realise what’s happening I am already on the next man, straddling his lower back with his neck in the fold of my arm. It snaps like kindling.\nIt is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hands.\nA fourth man comes out from a tent and shoots his boomstick into the nightwind. I leap from the dead man's back and hunch behind the fire, scarpering into the desert grass. He throws thunder in my direction but I disappear behind a high rock and into the dark abyss.\nThe darkness swirls into a spiralling sprawl of textures and whizzes towards my eyes before they shoot open. I realise I'm still laying against my kayak under the evening light. \n\nWhere is Mama?\nShe has made great progress on the blanket, I see it's beginning to take shape upon the loom. The mournful cry of a duct flute returns to my ears as I get up and walk toward the centre of camp. \nWandering Dagger is standing by the washboard sharpening his knife. He stands with the stature of someone who sees himself as the new chieftain. The zing of his knife being dragged across a stone brings me back to the previous day. \nDeerskin drums being slammed with open palms rise in crescendo as the images flood back to me: the metal-wielders in the heat of the horizon; the sheep skull housing a scorpion on the desert floor; Little Lake's sun-tortured body laying lifeless under a swarm of flies; my determined reflection in a murky spring puddle.\nIt does not require many words to speak the truth. \nTruth is these men must die. And they will by my hand.\nMemories flood into my consciousness, Mama telling me of how I would sit—wrapped up in one of her blankets—at the back of Papa's horse on the planks of the travois. I can picture him sitting proud on his stallion, the many great feathers of his headdress rising into the clouds.\n\nWisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the creator intended for you.\nWas this the life meant for me? To wrestle the headdress from competitors' hands and lead a Tribe dominated by women after we were ripped apart by men of greed?\nThe zing of Wandering Dagger's blade stops abruptly and I realise I've been standing outside Mamas tipi for what must be an eternity to an unknowing onlooker.\nAs I brush aside the buffalo skin flap and step inside, I see her silhouette through plumes of rising steam. \nShe speaks without turning to face me. \"Your children are not your own, but lent to you by the creator.\" Her jet-black, unmoving hair, appears in the darkness of the tipi, slicked along the sides of her head and down her back..\n\"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today,\" she says, turning to face me as I stand in the doorway. The wrinkles on her face seemed to have grown.\n\"Today brings forth tomorrow,\" I reply, shifting my gaze to the ground.\nThe sand that finds itself sprinkled on the carpet shimmers under the light of a pine-knot torch. Apache fiddles join heartbeat drums and my temple burns. I'm starting to feel faint and my body is falling under the pressure of malnourishment and grief. Mama catches me with her blanket and lowers me to the ground. I drift into a blaze of stars.\n\nWhat is life?\nIt is a flash of a firefly in the Night.\nIt is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.\nIt is like the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.\n\nI sink into a dream of madness where I'm crouching behind horses, mist leaking from their nostrils as they neigh. My hands are damp with the blood of killers; the blood of slavers and rapists, contaminated with liqueur and lead.\nTake only what you need and leave the land as you found it, Papa would say as he showed me the land and taught me to hunt.\nNow I use his teachings on the metal-wielders. These devils of other lands. \nAs I pass the horses, I find a devil smoking by the stream, dragonflies and fireflies float above the water. He coughs and spits a shock of saliva and it bursts through the surface into the dense water below, swirling in the current as it flows around the rocks. I put my hand over his mouth and drag his torso down, shoving the corner of my tomahawk blade between his ribs. I make three further cuts along the side of his gut and pull his limp body into the tall grass along the water's edge. Next is the wrangler. I remember seeing the scraps of food in his beard as I watched him tear Little Lake away from her mother's arms while she was kicking and screaming. He died fast—a blow to the head—an injustice to justice.\nListen or your tongue will make you deaf.\nThe final city-walker appears from a barn that's long been abandoned. I see his muskrat-eyes peering from beneath the shadow of his hat. I can't hold on to Papa's words. I scream and beckon the devil to join me in the grass. He stares at me, as though wondering who dares raise their voice at him while wearing female skin.\nBeware of the man that does not talk and the dog that does not bark.\nI sprint at him and he stands his ground, as Papa did when they entered ours. This will end in a similar fashion, only victory will be on our side. The man reaches for his boomsticks strapped to his waist at either side, I veer off my path and duck behind a cart. The city-walker throws his thunder and it blasts wood from a barrel at the side of the cart. Oil leaks from the hole and another blast hits the cart. I crawl onto my stomach, using the tips of my fingers and toes to stay above the oil that's pooling around me. The city-walker approaches, aiming his boomstick at the growing puddle but before the metal clicks, I rapidly crawl up the slanted cart with my tomahawk between my teeth and spring to my feet at the midway point, thrusting my body into the air. \nThe expression of surprise on the metal-wielder's face will stay with me forever, but not before long that expression was wiped away with the crunch of my airborne tomahawk slamming into his skull, taking a slice of his weathered brown hat with it. The eruption of flames carries me into the grass and I lay there as everything burns around me.\nOnly when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught and the last stream poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.\n\nI swim to the surface of my mind and bounce up into the heat of Mama's soup as she holds it out in front of me. I take my arms from beneath her blanket and throw them around her.\n\nI fed the wrong wolf." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Open House\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1054\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin your story with the sensation of a breeze brushing against a character's skin." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "‘We’re leaving this house over my dead body without a contract in hand,’ Ruby said. She turned to face the Australian westerly zephyr head-on. Though stifling, the result was still cooling and therapeutic against her flushed sweaty cheeks. She ran her palms over her ginger hair in a less effective attempt to fight the rising humidity, which usually peaked around midday in the sugar cane district.\n‘At this price you won’t be the only willing human sacrifice today,’ Nate replied and winked beneath dripping brow. He laced his clammy fingers through Ruby’s.\n‘Ready to buy another house?’ he asked.\n‘Do or die, baby,’ Ruby replied with a grin.\nAn open house was an exciting concept for the townsfolk of Drownbridge that summer. Despite the morbidity in its name, people were born, grew old and died in Drownbridge. At least, up until that time they did. It had appeared as if people were suddenly leaving in droves. Some said the recent drought was to blame, others Mayor Darcy’s abandonment when the people needed him most. Whatever the cause, the old northern Queensland region was fast becoming a ghost town.\nIt was around that time Collective Realty emerged as the leading brokerage in Drownbridge. The trending desertion had increased supply and reduced demand, resulting in a house affordability not seen in decades. The remaining residents flocked to opens in the hopes of obtaining their dream starter, an upsize, or even a second home - a previously inconceivable notion for most. Those were indeed unsettling yet rousing times for the lingering community.\nNumber eighteen Alarum Street was the latest offering. Prospective purchasers trudged purposefully toward the house ahead of Nate and Ruby, who hastened their steps in response.\nOpposite the house, a heat blaze blanketed the cane field and merged with the mirage rising from the bitumen. The cane stalks resembled disjointed limbs in the crisp static air and Ruby stopped to admire the illusion.\n‘It’s like we’re standing in a house of mirrors,’ she said.\n‘Come on,’ Nate said as he pulled Ruby up the drive. ‘You can stare at it all day long after we’ve bought the place.’\nThe dilapidated porch stairs groaned in protest with every step that took them closer to the door. They crossed the threshold into a grimly quiet house. Light prints flashed before their eyes each time they blinked from the contrast between the post-noon sun and the dank dimness inside.\n‘Everyone must be outside looking at the backyard. I wonder where the realtor is?’ Ruby asked.\n‘Collective represents every house on the market in Drownbridge,’ Nate said. ‘For each sold they list another dozen, so don’t expect too much attention.’\nA towering, gangly man with cheeks pocked like the moon sidled up beside them.\n‘Quite the contrary,’ the man said in an old-worldly foreign accent never before spoken or heard in the town’s history.\n‘Collective ensures absolutely everyone receives the attention they deserve. My name is Reuben,’ he continued with his clipped tone.\nReuben’s pinstripe suit was inappropriate for the climate yet he appeared immune to the oppressive heat. Nate glanced at Ruby, communicating his commitment to impersonating Reuben for entertainment in private later on.\n‘Please fill in the visitor profile before inspecting the property,’ Reuben said as he held out a clipboard with talon nails.\nRuby eyed the form. ‘Is it necessary to provide our current address and homeowner status?’ she asked.\n‘It is Collective’s protocol that potential buyers extend the courtesy in exchange for entering sellers’ properties.’ Reuben’s black expressionless stare forced Ruby to avert her own eyes back to the clipboard. She scrawled down their address on Mill Street and an immediately jubilant Reuben waved them down the hall.\n‘You simply must inspect the parlour at the end of the hallway, it is exquisite!’ he called out as the pair made their way down the corridor, which seemed impossibly darker than the entrance.\n‘Since when do houses in Drownbridge have parlours?’ Ruby whispered.\n‘Since Count Dracula started selling them!’ Nate snorted loudly.\n‘Shhh!’ Ruby hushed and glared at Nate futilely in the dark.\nRuby reached for the light switch she could barely make out on the wall and flicked the button down and back up again.\n‘Looks like they’ve already disconnected the power,’ she said.\nThey both came to a halt when their noses met what was presumedly the door to the highly anticipated parlour. Ruby sniffed and her head recoiled. It reminded her of the smell of a dead kangaroo they had passed roadside on the way to the open house.\n‘Do you smell that?’ she asked.\nNate pushed the door open and its hinges moaned. They stepped into the pitch-black room.\n‘What kind of parlour doesn’t even have a window—'\nA long agonising squeal announced the door slamming shut behind them. Ruby’s ears rang with a deafening silence as she stood in utter darkness, the air suffocatingly thick. The hair prickled on her arms and her mouth salivated against tingling teeth.\n‘Nate,’ Ruby whimpered.\nHe did not respond.\n‘Nate!’ she cried more urgently. ‘Stop mucking around. Answer me!’\nNothing.\nRuby flailed her arms around blindly in an attempt to feel Nate standing close by. She sighed with relief when her hands found an arm.\n‘Not funny at all, jerk,’ she said and lifted her hand to slap the back of Nate’s head playfully.\nRuby’s blood turned cold as her fingers slid against a sweaty, bald scalp instead of Nate’s thick black mop. There was no time to scream before a hand, rancid with the smell of rotten meat, clasped Ruby’s mouth shut.\n#\nA van emblazoned with Collective Realty reversed along the road and the driver stepped out to collect the sandwich board outside number eighteen Alarum Street. The van reversed higher up the drive as Reuben locked the door and skulked down the steps. He straightened his tie before opening the van door.\n‘Successful open?’ the driver asked.\n‘Yes, sir,’ Reuben replied.\n‘Numbers?’\n‘Twelve groups, sir.’\n‘The number of new listings obtained?’\n‘Nine, sir.’\nThe driver raised his eyebrows.\n‘The remaining were renting, sir.’\nThe driver stared vacantly ahead.\n‘And the location of the next open this afternoon?’ he asked.\nReuben reached into his satchel for the clipboard and scanned the form.\n‘We will now be heading to number six Mill Street, sir.’" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Last (Human) Lightkeeper\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1454\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The storm continues to rage unnaturally. My hope of dawn as a respite from the chaos has yielded only a slight brightening of the nearly opaque, torrential sky. With the storm shutters closed and bolted on every window, the living quarters of the offshore lighthouse feel timeless. The room is so black that day and night have no meaning. I am blinded by the blackness of unpredictability and without means to adapt. Eyeless, the sounds of the storm become ever more acute and more intense. Waves slam the pylons, rain assaults the metal roof, and the sustained gale-force winds tear at the siding. Each gust of wind is like a banshee digging her fingernails into my skin, searching for a weak-spot to tear open my flesh. Only the greasy, dim light of my oil lamp keeps my depraved thoughts at bay as I suffer involuntary solitary confinement.\n“I better have a hazard pay check coming my way for this,” I grumble to myself as I take a swallow from the last bottle of wine.\nMy partner and I work the lighthouse in rotating shifts. Two weeks offshore, two weeks in the mainland communication office. I have been in the lighthouse for eighteen days - the water taxi is four days overdue without explanation. The electricity is still operational, and I continue to dutifully keep the lighthouse bulb in continuous use around the clock due to the storm. What has me puzzled is that I have not seen a boat or ship in days. This lighthouse guards a heavily trafficked channel for both pleasure and commercial vessels. To not see any traffic for an hour is unprecedented - for days is catastrophic.\nThere is a door on the leeward side of the lighthouse. This door faces the mainland. I have rigged a rope around the door handle and lashed it to a heavy chair to prevent the door from being ripped open by the wind. I test the rope system by cracking the door just enough to peak out. Pale, anemic light-of-dawn pierces the uniformity of the otherwise black room. A wilder sight I can neither remember nor imagine. It is as if the ocean is filled with hot tub jets, and the sky is a dome of violence. Through the small crack in the open door, I position the spotting telescope and look through the lens. The beach is devoid of people which is not surprising given the storm.\n“Even if someone was on the beach, would they see my flare gun from this distance?”\nI look down through the floor grate of the catwalk and watch hopelessly as frothy waves relentlessly pound the lighthouse piers. The lifeboat has been at the mainland marina dock for months awaiting repairs. We never needed it before, and never thought we would. A moot point not worth considering, because to attempt a lifeboat launch in this hell-inspired wash would be certain death. Above me, the lighthouse bulb soldiers on flawlessly.\nDarkness once again envelopes me as I close and bolt the door. Returning to my oil lamp, I decide to try the phones again. First the land line - five rings and then the lighthouse office voice-mail system.\n“Jim. It’s Tom again. What the hell is going on over there? I’m still at the lighthouse. Call me back ay-sap!”\nThe satellite phone has strong reception, but the battery will fade quickly if the lighthouse loses electricity. I only know one phone number by heart. My mom’s house in Omaha, Nebraska. I light a cigarette and puff it slowly and deliberately as the line rings incessantly for two minutes. I end the call and cut the satellite connection. In the flickering light of the oil lamp, I look at the cigarette between my fingers and notice that my hand is quivering. My hand never quivers. When the wind gusts, it’s as if the air inside of the room shifts as an invisible block. The tobacco smoke curls around my nervous fingers. I drop the cigarette butt into the empty wine bottle. There is enough food and water in the lighthouse kitchen to last a month at least, but cigarettes and wine…\n“Why didn’t we stock cigarettes and wine? What a blunder.”\nI take a book from the shelf and look at the cover. A book of famous quotes - a birthday gift from my ex-wife. \n“I probably still had hair when she gave this to me.”\nI thumb to a random page and read:\n\nThe more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God. - Louis Pasteur\n\n“Well, Louis old boy. I guess you’re right. This storm has brought me nearer to God in all the wrong ways.”\nThe intensifying moaning of antique bolts under barrage by crashing waves jolts me upright. I hold my watch up to the oil lamp.\n“5:30pm. I slept all day. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. The sun will be setting soon.”\nI crack the leeward door and peek out. The storm is more intense than ever, and the tide is unusually high. Two waves collide and the explosion of foam nearly reaches the bottom of the catwalk. Dusk is rapidly descending upon me. I once again poke the spotting telescope through the crack in the door and train it on the beach. A person! There is a person on the beach! I load a shell into the flare gun and fire, returning immediately to the spotting scope desperately hoping to see the person’s waving his arms in recognition of my flare.\n“Wait. Is he…naked?”\nIt is a man on the beach, and he is naked. His medium length hair whips wildly about his head, and he is completely naked. His posture is odd. One shoulder is hunched downward, as if dislocated. He stands motionless as if lost in thought. He is not looking at me, but rather, his gaze is fixated up the beach. I load a second shell into the flare gun.\n“Why do they only put three shells in the gun box?”\nThere is a second man now.\nAnd a third!\nJust as I am preparing to fire the second flare, I realize that the third man is crawling rather than walking. I focus the spotting scope intently on him. He is wearing some sort of white jumpsuit like a scientist would wear.\n“Is that a gas mask dangling around his neck?”\nOne of his arms is missing, and his leg is broken so badly that I can see that the fractured has torn a large hole in the jumpsuit.\n“I have to try. I don’t have a choice.”\nThe second flare rips a burning jet of flame through the rapidly darkening sky.\n“They still don’t see me. They are too focused on something else.”\nA horse is walking slowly down the beach. It is still bridled and saddled. Its head droops low and its gait is tired and defeated. The banshee wind tosses the horse’s tail, and strands of wet hair stick to its back and haunches. The men move toward the oncoming horse. They are walking not as a man normally would, but in a broken, slouching, labored sort of foot-dragging walk. The crawling man is slow to catch up, but the three men manage to awkwardly take hold of the horse.\n“My God. Are they biting the horse’s throat?”\nThe horse collapses in the sandy wash of the beach rollers, and the three men plunge their faces into the horse’s belly. The beach rollers pound the horse’s panicked, flailing body. The horse’s intestines dangle greedily from the mens’ mouths as they slurp bloody guts like a plate of Sunday spaghetti. A wave crashes atop the equine scene. and in the melee, a chunk flesh sloughs away from the crawling man’s chest and hangs down over his lap as he eats.\nThe whirring of the rotating lighthouse gearing system suddenly goes silent. The lighthouse bulb fades to black. The lighthouse has a dedicated power line running directly to the main power plant in town. If the lighthouse is off-line, then the entire grid is off-line. I close and bolt to door, then slump down in the chair beside the oil lamp and rock back and forth nervously. I absentmindedly thumb back the hammer of the flare gun, then release the hammer to the safe position. The wind gusts so hard that it manages to blow out the oil lamp, regardless of the window shutters protection. I continue to thumb the hammer of the flare gun over and over as I stare blankly into the blackness of the room.\nI don’t bother to relight the oil lamp." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: God of Frozen Things\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2570\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who develops a special ritual to cope with something." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Given the name Siku at his birth in a small village a few miles south of Barrow (Utqiagvik) fifteen years ago, Raffie Torngarsuk was educated in a small St. Germaine, a small missionary school in Wainwright, Alaska where he learned to read and write English and worship a God that had not come to save his people. \nSince his teachers had difficulty saying his name, with permission from his parents Ida and Petuwaq, they changed his name to Raffie Skye. Since Torngarsuk was the Inuit god of the sky, Sister Yolinda told him as he was processing to enroll in St. Germaine Mission School in Wainwright, “Our God is the God of all that is.” \nHe frowned as she told him this, but the school was filled with children from the villages north of the Arctic Circle where sometimes the world did not make sense. While most people knew of the division of night and day, up here that division came to a halt at the end of November when the sunset and didn’t come up over the horizon until late February. \nAccording to his Uncle Apaata, his father’s oldest brother and the unofficial shaman of the small fishing village, “Do not trouble yourself with the ways of white skinned people. To most of them, this land is nothing but ice and Eskimos. But to me, it is a step away from heaven. They do not hear the chorus of voices when the Aurora Borealis is floating overhead. ” \nEskimo was the name given to the Inuit. They had been tagged with this name like Christopher Columbus' misunderstanding of where he was in the world, calling the indigenous people he saw, Indians. Speaking Inuktitut, the Inuit translation of this name meant “the people.” Instead Eskimo, a mistranslation from the fur trappers, was the name they had been stuck with for nearly two hundred years. \nThe important thing, his uncle told him, was to show reverence and respect to all who called this land home. He would have special rituals and ceremonies to commemorate all the creatures who lived in the ice and snow including Brother Polar Bear and Brother Arctic Fox. He loved his uncle, because he would call Raffie by his Inuit name of Siku and let him assist with the rituals.\n“Your uncle is not a well man.” His mother Ida would tell him as she filet the seal his father had hunted on the ice floes. “He tells stories about gods that do not exist. He fills your head with things that just aren’t true.” \nYes and that is why I love spending time with him, Raffie thinks to himself. \n“Siku, listen to what the ice is saying.” His uncle sat by the frozen river.\n“The ice? Ice doesn’t speak, uncle.” He chuckled.\n“Shhh, listen, Siku.” He shushed his nephew. \nSiku did as he was told and was silent.\n“What did you hear?” His uncle asked him. \n“Nothing.” Siku was perplexed.\n“You must be very still. The ice does not speak in a big voice. You must be very still. Those who came to take the fur of the small animals of the ice, never heard when the ice would talk to them.” He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Listen.” \nSiku did the same and then he heard it. Warm winds blew across the Tundra and the ice began to groan. It was an indiscernible sound, but as he sat there next to his uncle he heard it. He actually heard it.\n“What is he saying uncle?” Siku asked.\n“He speaks of the coming of the summer when he will disappear and the waters will flow free once again.” His uncle spoke without opening his eyes. \n“Where does the voice come from?” He asked.\n“From the god of frozen things.” His uncle’s answer came. “You see that light from the east when the sun broke over the horizon?” \n“Yes.” He nodded.\n“He lives in his ice castle allowing our people to survive and flourish where life is hard.” His uncle opened his eyes. The deep black color of his eyes seemed to sparkle and dance as he spoke. \nHis uncle told him of the ritual the people used to do in celebration of the short summer that would be coming. Siku raptly listened to him as he described the dance.\n“Around the fire they would dance.” He waved his hand in a circle to illustrate, “Everyone would have bells and feathers. And they would sing a song in one voice.” \nSiku closed his eyes trying his best to imagine what this festive celebration must’ve looked like. Then in his small voice, he asked his uncle, “Why don’t we do that dance anymore.” \n“I heard they made it illegal.” He coughed.\n“Illegal?” Siku echoed.\n“Against the law, like our Inuktitut language our ancestors used to speak.” He sighed.\n“Yeah, one of the girls at our school had to spend the day in the secluded room.” Siku said this as if it was accepted practice.\n“Secluded room?” His uncle shrugged.\n“It’s where you are put when you say something wrong.” Siku answered.\n“There is nothing wrong with speaking the language of our ancestors.” His face darkened a bit as it did on the rare occasion when he got angry or impatient. “Never be ashamed of speaking Inuktitut.”\n“If I do, they will put me in that room.” Siku shook his head.\n“What did you tell your uncle about the school?” His father Petuwaq asked when Raffie came home from school one afternoon. It was rare that Petuwaq would be home when he walked in the front door after school. \n“Nothing.” He did not remember telling his uncle about the secluded room.\n“He was quite upset with me when we went hunting on the river this morning.” His father had dark and heavy facial features unlike his older brother who resembled their mother. “He said that no student should be punished for speaking Inuktitut.”\nThe lightbulb went off in his head. Raffie did not want to tell his father who was already cross about what he had told his uncle. \n“He told me about this ceremony of the ice. I swear if I did not know him better, I’d swear he was drinking again.” Petuwaq shook his head, “Last time he went on a binge, he fell on the ice and nearly froze to death. It was over fifty degrees below zero.”\n“Calm down, Pete.” Ida said as she wiped her hands on her apron. \n“Ida, I am upset with him because he tells Raffie all these things that are not true.” Petuwaq snapped.\n“They are true. I heard it. I heard the ice speak.” Raffie shot back.\n“Do you see? Do you see what I’m talking about?” He pointed as Raffie went running into his room and slammed the door. \nWhen he started high school at St. Germaine’s when he turned fourteen, there was a birthday celebration. His uncle was invited, which was rare since the rift had formed between Apaata and Petuwaq when they were younger. Raffie had never heard the exact reason for the fallout, but accepted his parents’ reasons for not inviting Apaata to the house very often. \nApaata lived out in the marshy lands beyond the village where caribou herds would run during the coldest part of the winter when the area seemed like a tomb with constant night enveloping the land. Armed with a Springfield rifle and snowshoes strapped to his mukluks, Apaata would build a small shelter out of ice and snow and wait for the herd to migrate on the ice. \nHe would usually bag one or two young males. Using the knives from his knapsack, he would butcher the animal where it lay in the snow. It was a time consuming process, but he was adept at the task after many years of practice. He promised Siku that one day he would take him, but Ida and Petuwaq forbade it. He would also take his sled dogs by the village and leave his younger brother some of the spoils of his hunt. Petuwaq loved fresh caribou meat as did Raffie. \nWhen he walked into math class on his first day of high school, he insisted on being called Siku, but his teacher, Sarah O’Connell would not, insisting on using Raffie instead. \n“Hey there Eskimo boy.” One of his classmates teased him, “Let’s go out and hunt us some meat.” \nThe laughter from the other students made him want to run out of the classroom, but he bit his lip and did not say anything else for the rest of the class. \n“Hey.” Ahnah said as she approached his table at lunch. Raffie was sitting by himself avoiding looking at any of his classmates. \n“Hey.” He sighed. \n“Are you alright?” She was pretty with her olive skin and her long black hair.\n“Yeah.” \n“I’m not convinced.” She put her tray down next to his. “I heard about what happened in math. Miss O’Connell will never get us. She’s from back east where they take this religious stuff seriously.” \n“I just get tired of no one taking me seriously.” He drummed his fingers on the table. \n“I understand.” She said as she sipped on the straw of her soda. “We get into arguments about our culture at our house.”\n“We don’t. It’s taboo in our home.” He was on the verge of tears.\n“We will always be who we are.” She put her hand on his. His heartbeat accelerated a bit. \nJust before Christmas break, Raffie got the news that Uncle Apaata had passed away.\n“My brother had cancer.” Petuwaq explained to Raffie. “He was given the option to go to Anchorage for treatment, but he refused. I’m sorry.” \nThe embrace seemed fake to Suki as if his father was trying to placate him. It did not. \n“Call me Suki.” He asked his father with his eyes glistening with tears.\n“No, your name is Raffie.” His father shook his head.\n“I want to be called by my Inuit name.” He said with a little more force.\n“No, no, it would be too much trouble. We’d have to go to Barrow and have them legally change it.” He continued to shake his head.\n“Why? That was my name. It was my name before I started school. It’s what he called me.” Raffie protested.\n“Yes, I know, but my brother was a sick man. When he was a boy there was an accident when he fell off the roof of our house. He was in a coma for several days. My parents thought he’d never recover, but he did. When he started talking about being native and having ceremonies, everyone thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. He would talk to things that weren’t there and saying all kinds of crazy stuff.” \nLike listening to the ice? \n“We got into a big fight when I graduated from the mission school about going off and living like our ancestors.” He folded his hands on the table as Ida stroked his hair. “I am sorry he passed away. He loved you very much. He left you his rifle and his snowshoes.”\n“Call me by my name.” He said in a controlled tone with an angry undertone like a polar bear growl. \n“Raffie.” Ida said putting her hand on his like Ahnah had done, but he pulled it away.\n“Suki…my name is Suki.” He turned his head away from his parents. \n“We have a lot to be thankful for.” Ida said.\n“Like what? A school that insists we give up our heritage? A town that does not accept our ancient ways. Makes us into good Christians instead of the savages we once were?” Raffie stood up and walked to his room.\n“What are we going to do with him, Pete?” Ida put her head on her husband’s shoulder.\n“Pray things will turn out for the best.” He put his hands around his coffee cup.\n“We are gathered here to honor the life of Adam Shiffareff.” Reverend Tomanzick spoke to the half empty chapel with Apaata’s simple pine coffin resting on supports in the front of the tiny chapel. \n“His name was Apaata.” Raffie mumbled as both of his parents tried to ignore him.\n“In his life he helped build this church and the docks down at the shore. He was a good man and it is the opinion of most who knew him that he is with Jesus today.” Reverend Tomanzick Continued. “While the ground is too frozen to dig on this day, we will wait for the spring winds to come this way so we can properly intern his body to the earth. In the meantime we will keep his remains in an outdoor shelter. May the lord receive the soul of his faithful servant on this day, amen.”\nEveryone mumbled, “Amen.”\n“Let us go in peace.” Reverend Tomanzick raised the Bible and made the sign of the cross.\nThe two police officers were called by Reverend Tomanzick when the coffin with the body of Adam Shiffareff was removed from the shelter where it had been stored. They followed the tracks in the ice and snow until the trail ended abruptly.\nOfficer Kjalama looked at his partner Officer Rzcanamanche and both shrugged in unison. \n“What do you suppose happened?” Officer Kjalama asked his partner.\n“I don’t have the foggiest.” Officer Rzcanamanche responded. \n“How are we going to put this in our report?” Officer Kjalama scratched his head. \n“Guess we’ll just say it’s a mystery.” Officer Rzcanamanche answered. \n“Suppose whoever done this fell below the ice?” Officer Kjalama proposed. \n“Yeah, but we won’t know that until spring.” Officer Rzcanamanche pointed to the frozen over lake.\n“Good point.” \nWhat did happen was Suki stole his father’s snowmobile, attached his uncle's coffin to the hitch and drove out to his uncle’s house. Placing the coffin in the living room, Suki doused the outside with gasoline. With a match his lit the gasoline soaked cloth which acted like a fuse snaking its way to the house which exploded into flames. Tears ran down Suki’s face as he took the bells and fathers from the pockets of his parka and began to dance.\nSpeaking out in Inuktitut his uncle had taught him, he said, (and I translate), “Come speak to me the god of frozen things. Speak to me of the things you hold in the palm of your hands. I offer you my uncle Apaata who taught me the ways of my people.” \nHe raised his bells and feathers into the pitch black sky as the flames illuminated the frozen earth surrounding his uncle’s blazing home.\n“I come to you as one of the people, the Inuit who lived in this harsh land of the ice and heard you speak to us in the quiet moments of our lives. I speak to you now and ask you to take him with you. He did not believe in Jesus. He did not enter the chapel until the day he died. He knew how to hunt the caribou and give thanks to the spirit for feeding him while he was here. I wish to thank you, too. I, Suki Torngarsuk, wish him a safe journey.”\nAs the fire continued to burn, Suki danced around the pyre as a final ritual to his Uncle Apaata whom he loved very much." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: A Cruel Wind Blows\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2908\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Timothy lay languishing in his own putrid expulsions of blood, vomit and faeces.\nHe rolled over to turn his face skyward and it was smeared and sticky, coated in the brown tarry mixture of foul liquid he had been laying in all night. Some had entered his nostrils, the choking smell had knocked him awake.\n\n“EEUUUGGHH, WHERE IS…… I” Timothy gargled.\n\n“You’ve fallen down the goddamn middle of the stair, you daft drunken fool, you’ve cursed yourself and no one else to blame” Donald the lighthouse keeper shouted down the endless chasm. “You’ve been up here drinking the night, and you’ve took yourself down the short way, you stupid little… ”\n\n“THE WIND” Timothy choked “IT SHOOK ME DOWN”\n\n“The wind nothing, you’re a drunk and a masturbator and a selfish bastard” Donald spat “I knew you’d be hurtin yourself one way or another if I left thee alone, and after just 3 months on the job. I’ve been on this lighthouse most of my life and most of that alone in this godforsaken wilderness with nothing but the sea and the weather fer company. And you can’t stomach it for 3 measly months o’ winter”\n\nDonald grabbed a rope and started feeding it down to Timothy through his gnarled leathery hands.\n\n++++++++++++\n\nTimothy came to, with the sound of creaking rope and an agonising tightness gripping his waist just above his kidneys, as he pulled back consciousness, the pain in his skull, jaw, shoulders, hips and legs awoke.\n\n“WHAT…. ER…… YA…… DOIN…… TO…… ME…… YER……. OLD…….. B’STARD” Timothy stumbled over every word as the rope lurched him upward. “I… THINK ….ME….. LEGS…. ARE….. BROKENNN””\n\n“Saving yer worthless pig hide yer foul smelling urchin” Donald shouted up from the bottom, letting his grip on the rope slip a little as a warning, “And saving meself a lot of bother”\n\n“YER’VE PUSHED ME AVEN’T YA, YA OLD CRACKED MINDED CRONE” Timothy tried to shout but it came out as a breathless, weak jumbled mess of noise.\n\n“Stop tryin to speak ya daft child, you’ve broken yer jaw, I’d’ve thought even with a brain as mushed as old porridge as yours is now youd’ve noticed that.” Donald cruelly exclaimed.\n\nOnce Donald had hauled Timothy to the top of the lighthouse he set about dragging him up to a sitting position, this must’ve caused Timothy some agony as he wailed out with every movement.\n\n“Stop yer foul whining yer smell like a piece of long dead rectum.” Donald griped “And so do I now yer filth is all over me.”\n\nDonald set a chair out against the wall and heaved Timothy into it.\n“Now you’ll just sit here and wait for yer replacement, and while you’re at it you can watch fer oncoming ships, and pull the blower cord if any get too close,” Donald said “Can ya understand me, boy, have ya lost ya faculties all together or were ya always this stupid?”\n\n“The wiiinnndddd” Timothy squeaked.\n\n“Shut yer hole about no damn wind, this lighthouse is solid as the day twas built, yer the only thing full of wind here, too drunk to make it down the spiral staircase and too stupid to even know ye shouldn’t ave been drinking on the job” Donald shook Timothy as he spoke, “I’ve been keeping this lighthouse in good order against the elements fer 35 years and you’ve no cause to question me handy work. Now ya sit ere and watch fer ships, if yer eyes are still workin.”\n\n++++++++++++++\n\n“Good morning Mr Caimbeul, I’m Mr Williams, I’ve been sent by Trinity House to relieve Mr Dawson from his duties. Your letter explained there had been… a misfortune, will he need to use my skiff to get back to shore or have arrangements been made?”\n\nPeter Williams stood in his Trinity House company attire, a thick hard-edged Jacket which hung too largely around his shoulders and an unworn navy esque cap with a lighthouse emblem sown into it. A calm breeze blew around him.\n\n“Nice day for it,” Peter said\n\n“Englishman Aye? Calm before the storm! You’ve had much experience on these remote lighthouses?” Donald said shooting a glare at the young well-dressed man who was standing before him.\n\n“The company sent me as they were quite concerned by your message and they wanted a company man to make his way up here and assess the situation and carry out an inspection of the building. I may look young Mr Caimbeul but I can assure you my credentials are all in order, but to answer your question no I haven’t spent much time in a live-in lighthouse, especially one this remote and this far offshore. Now to get back to my question will Mr. Dawson be requiring the use of my skiff and will he be able to make it to shore unaided?” Peter Williams said maintaining as friendly yet official tone he could muster.\n\n“Nae, nae he’s fine, come you must be tired from yer travels” Donald said pulling Peter into the lighthouse “Now will ye be requiring any food before I show you up to meet Mr Dawson?”\n\n“You’ve got him up at the bulb Mr Caimbeul?” Peter asked concerned\n\n“Aye, he still working injury or no. He can’t be slovenly resting while we awaited your arrival.” Donald said as they made their way up the rickety metal spiral staircase.\n\n++++++++++++++++\n\nPeter arrived at the top of the lighthouse and looked out at the wild haunting view of the North Sea, the jutting rocks and spray pluming off as the wind carried the waves crashing into them, the bitter cold that seeped in through every unsealed gap of each pane of glass.\n\n“EEEUUGH”\n\nPeter swung around in shock as the noise came out of the shadows of the back wall.\n\n“The Wiiinnndd”\n\nHe heard coming from a crumpled emaciated figure propped up on a chair behind him, his face was a twisted shrivelled mess with an agonized grimace painted permanently across it. The smell coming from the creature was one of excrement and putrefied necrotic decay.\n\n“The Wiiinnndd” it croaked again.\n\n“Afraid that’s all the conversation you’ll get out of poor Timothy now Mr Williams, since his tumble he hasn’t been quite himself,” Donald said breathlessly reaching the top of the rickety metal spiral staircase.\n\n“You mean to say you’ve kept him here, in this condition, without any medical attention!?” Peter said shocked “How long has he been like this?”.\n\n“Aye well you see he still has the power of sight and his arm is still working well enough to tug the warning horn rope if he sees anything get too close, so I thought the company would prefer that he’d stay here and fulfil his contract, fer as long as is practical. I sent the letter a month or so after the fall, but the mail is not quick to reach anybody from here, the supply boats only come once a month you see. The radio’s been blown out for a while, since the last big storm so we rely on our wits out here” Donald said without a glimmer of guilt. “He’s a more useful man now than he was when he was ‘well’” Donald said smirking.\n\n“Sir, where is your humanity, he looks close to death,” Peter said concerned\n\n“Aye he’s been looking like that fer a while now, and he’s smelling worse, I’ve cut a hole in the chair he sits on so I can at least catch his leavins and toss them out to sea” Donald said “I thought if the companies payin fer his recovery they’d be wantin to get their moneys worth out of him.”\n\n“Mr Caimbeul!” Peter exclaimed\n\n“He be fine I say” Donald pushed “He was never the brightest as he was, he’s simply less trouble now”\n\n“There will be legal actions taken Mr Caimbeul, if he dies his family will be seeking retributions from the company” Peter insisted “Not to mention the ethical matter!”\n\n“I be feedin him, everyday, enough to be keepin him alive anyway” Donald said defensively “It’s not easy pokin porridge down that mangled gullet of his, you know”\n\nPeter knelt down to look into Timothy's face, his jaw had healed in a grotesque protracted off-kilter manner, and a large infected lump had formed on his forehead, Peter refrained from further examination of his crumpled body. He looked into his eyes, the young man looked back at him pleadingly, he could recognise the tortured intelligence that was still there behind his dark blue pupils desperately seeking salvation or release.\n\nPeter turned to make his way back down the staircase, as he did a gale-force gust struck the lighthouse, and the metal staircase leading down shook with a deafening thunderous rattle.\n\n“Mr Caimbeul, I believe some of the holding bolts on the staircase have rusted through and have not been replaced this is a serious matter of safety,” Peter said in an angry officious tone “You have been solely responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of this structure for the past 35 years I believe?”\n\n“Aye that’s right, solely responsible and what help do I get some nit-witted drunkard, who can't be trusted to make his way down the stairs.” Donald protested “I’ve been dragging my old bones up and down those stairs without a slip or fall for the best part of my life!”\nAs Donald spoke a deafening wind was picking up making him hard to hear.\n\n“We really must be getting down from here Mr Caimbeul” Peter shouted back to him in a panicked screech which exposed his youth. “This storm is going to make the stairs unsafe if we wait much longer.”\n\n“You think I’d listen to you, fresh off o’ yer mothers teet and telling ME what’s safe! You’re nothin but a Puffin Chick in yer daft wee suit chest plumped out like yer mean something, the wind can’t hear ye it listens to no man, it won’t listen to a boy, who thinks himself a company man. It preys on folk like ye who spout their righteous arrogance over all who’ll listen. Well, I won’t hear ye and the wind won't hear YE either!............”\n\nDonald's voice grew louder and fiercer as the wind increased in power, the guttural chanting of his outrage still barely perceptible over the thunderous roar that was growing outside.\n\n“157 Souls I’ve saved in my 35 years 157 and 9 ships., all without the company help or aid or recognition. And ye come here to tell me I’ve wronged, YE are wronged. Ye fill out yer forms and use them to wipe Timothy’s stench while yer at it.”\nSpittle sprayed from Donald's mouth as he raved.\n\n“The wiiinnnnddd” Timothy croaked.\n\nDonald fetched a bottle from a storage area underneath the lamp, turned and sat cross-legged facing the North Sea view and started swigging. Peter looked at Timothy despairingly.\n\n“The Wiinnndd d d d d” he continued.\n\n“Mr Caimbeul, our records have shown no such ships in need of rescue over the time you’ve been here. Now we really must be getting down from here the storm is only set to grow stronger” Peter shouted.\n\n“Your records\" Donald hissed , \"I’ll wait it out,” Donald said tiredly.\nPeter's mind raced through his possible options, he considered the practicality of winching Timothy's broken body down from his position during a raging storm and winced at the thought of the pain this would cause him. Peter looked down the rattling stairway and watched as bolts shook free and hit the floor with a clang. He wondered whether he would make it down himself.\n\n“Mr Cambeul!” Peter shouted with immediacy.\n\n“I’ll Wait it out!!” Donald roared back.\n\n“If the stairway breaks free you’ll be stranded up here!” Peter insisted\n\nDonald took another long swig from his bottle.\n\n++++++++++++\n\nPeter tentatively put some weight on the first step and felt it shudder up through his leg, he looked down through the seemingly endless distance of shaking metal stairs. The effect gave him a horrifying feeling of vertigo.\n\nAs he stood staring down, he could hear an intermittent scraping coming from behind him, timothy was using his one good leg to try to push his chair over to Peter, Peter watched in horror as Timothy's broken body forced with all its remaining strength to scrape itself and the chair across the floor. His face twisted in pain Scrape… Scrape… Scrape. Slowly he was making his grim progress towards Peter at the top of the stairs. Peter used one hand to steady himself on the smooth concrete wall and braced himself to face the descent. Shakily he began, small steps at first as the metal stairway shifted under his weight and quivered with each gust of wind. He pictured himself a crumpled mess at the bottom but pushed on. With each step, he could hear the Scrape… Scrape…. Scrape of Timothy's chair, and in the background Donald maniacally muttering to himself.\n\n+++++++++++\n\n2/3rds of the way down the slow and cautious descent, a stair was missing, Peter saw the metal sheet lying on the ground at least 30 feet below him. He turned to look back up wondering if he should turn back and think of another solution. Timothy's head was peering down at him from the top of the stairs.\n\n“The wiiiinnnd d d d” He cried, his eyes welling with tears.\n\nPeter bravely hopped the missing step and landed on the next with as little weight as he could manage, it flexed disturbingly as he did so., he clung to the wall trying to find any recess to get a fingertip into, but it was smooth and damp.\n\nPeter heard a tremendous metallic crashing from behind, Timothy's body flew past him down the middle of the stairs and hit the ground with a hard crunch.\n\n“Wait it out!” He heard Donald's voice call down the stairs chuckling to himself.\n\nPeter threw caution to the wind and skipped step after step in a hurry to meet Timothy at the bottom.\n\nHe found Timothy laying among the broken pieces of chair and metal pieces of stair. He was breathing, but barely, with each breath a gurgling suction as though he was drawing air through a clogged wet tube. His eyes were trying to open, but the eyelids merely flickered with the effort.\n\n“Can you hear me, sir?” Peter said directly into his ear.\n\nDonald had started a nimble descent rappelling down the rope he had pulled Timothy up with.\n\n“Well ye’ve done fer him noo” Donald said reaching the bottom.\nPeter eyes filled with rage.\n\n“Me! If he’s dead it’s on your hands! Donald, you left him stranded up here, slowly decaying for weeks with no hope” Peter shouted.\n“Hope! Hope twas what killed him, you gave him a vision of hope where none was coming” Donald sternly responded.\n\nPeter rushed outside into the storm, his mind in a frantic panic searching for a solution, he looked out across the water to see his skiff smashed against the rocks. He looked into the sky and released an ungodly wail of frustration and anger screaming into the storm until his throat was raw. He turned and made his way back into the shelter of the lighthouse.\n\nDonald was standing over Timothy's body, “well he’s done fer noo” Donald said calmly. Peter saw that one of Donald's boots was covered in blood, and Timothy's face and head were pulped.\n\n“Noooo!” Peter screamed furiously, voice breaking as he did.\n\n“I’ve done him a kindness” Donald said “It’s what he’s been wantin”\n\n“You’ll hang for this” Peter wailed.\n\n“Stop yer whining and lets get to repairin these stairs” Donald said with ease.\n\n“Where’s the radio?” Peter shouted\n\n“Up yonder stairs” Donald said pointing back up at what steps remained “but I told ye it’s not been workin since the last storm.”\n\nPeter rushed for the rope and started hauling himself up..\n\n“You’ll no git it workin laddie, We’re to deal with one problem at a time, I’ve dealt with Timothy, noo you get to fixing these stairs”\nDonald called up after him.\n\n“I have some training in radio repair, it’s standard procedure these days for new employees to have some training in small electronic repair” Peter shouted down.\n\nDonald looked scared.\n\n“And what will ye be telling the company if yer get a signal?” Donald said sheepishly.\n\nPeter pulls himself up onto the top floor of the lighthouse, as he looks back down the chasm he can see Timothy’s broken body pooling blood around it, Donald has moved to the wall and is pulling on a cable that extends up the length of the lighthouse wall, he pulls a knife from his back pocket and begins to saw at it. Peter stared at Donald, a mixture of horror and exhaustion etched on his face. He lays back breathlessly watching as the light rotates around the room, the storm still blowing outside, and surrenders hope. He reaches up to find where the rope is tied to the top beam of the lighthouse roof and begins untying it. He lets the rope fall making a soft rippling thud that alerts Donald to look up at him.\n\nThey meet each others stare for a long time as a clap of thunder echoes around the lighthouse and lightning illuminates both their faces frozen in an ambivalent expression of glee and fear.\n\nThe end" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Go and Do Likewise\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2522\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone undertaking a long, dangerous journey." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Content warning for depictions of racism.\nGo and do Likewise \nI had all that a man could want while I rode those dusty roads. I don’t know why they hired me as a railroad bull, but there wasn’t much to it in the end. Lean your rifle over your shoulder, look mean, and if some no-good hooligan tries taking a free ride, you throw ‘em onto the tracks. Simple as that. Mostly the passengers were afraid of an attack from them wild Apache. I never seen none, but I know damn well I would have blown their heads off if I did. It was still fifteen bucks a head during the war – if you could find the right lawman – and the extra cash woulda been nice. \nBut I didn’t need extra cash. Bulls were paid well. So after we landed in Albuquerque, I bought myself a young appaloosa stallion, yellow like butter with spots of white. I got some nice duds – a leather vest and some snakeskin boots – and a Colt Navy Revolver like them army boys got. I was riding down to San Pedro armed, clothed, and with a full purse when it all went to hell. \nI heard horses stamping around, loud as thunder. Damn Apache, I thought. They weren’t supposed to come close to government roads. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by six men and their horses under them, but it weren’t no Apache.\n“Mornin’ Partner. The name’s Rotten Tom,” said a greasy-haired man who earned the name. He smiled wide. “Fine day, ain’t it?”\n“What can I do for you, Rotten Tom?” \n“We was just admirin’ your fine pair of snakeskins, weren’t we boys?” The group of men laughed and nodded. \nI tried to keep cool. “I do appreciate your interest, but they are not for sale. Now I think you best be on your way and I’ll be on mine.” I patted down my holster to make sure they understood my meaning. I held Rotten Tom’s gaze. I knew I couldn’t out-gun six men, but putting the fear of God into the leader is the best chance I had of coming out with my boots on my feet. \n“Now, now,” said Rotten Tom. “Let’s not come to blows. Jus’ take ‘em off and leave ‘em on the ground and you can keep on a-ridin’.”\n“I know all about you lot,” I replied. “You’re no real outlaws. Just a gang of dirty, stupid bandits is what you–”\nRotten Tom drew out his gun, and before I could draw mine, he fired a shot that hit my shoulder. My stallion reared up and threw me off, and I heard my leg crunch as I fell. My gun landed a few feet away, and as I crawled to get it, one of Rotten Tom’s men dismounted his horse and picked up my pistol, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. \n“Nice piece,” the man said in a nasally drawl. “I think I’ll keep this one.”\n“Well I want the vest!” said an old man with a scraggly gray beard and no teeth to speak of. \nSoon the group of men were on me. I covered up my face but the blows came fast and hard. Someone hit me in my shoulder where I was shot and pain came up through my whole body, and the edges of my vision went black. I yelled something horrible, and that’s the last I remember of Rotten Tom and his gang of degenerate bastards. \nI woke up to a blazing sun. It was hotter than hell at high noon. My lips were dry and I looked for my water but the gang left nothing. I was naked as a jaybird and I could see my skin turning pink. Goddamn, I’m gonna die here. I tried to get up on my feet, but my left ankle felt like it was being stabbed with a hundred knives. My foot was an ugly purple-yellow and the size of a melon. My shoulder was covered in blood that was dry and flaking off, though more oozed wet and thick as I moved around. I noticed blood underneath me as well, and I knew the bullet went straight through. I couldn’t move. I had no food, no water, and no hope. I knew there was only one thing to be done. \n“Dear Lord,” I said aloud. “I know I haven’t always been your most faithful servant. I have sinned against you time and again. Just now, I had every intention of getting to San Pedro to do some whorin’, drinkin’, and card-playin’. I ask now that you cleanse my evil heart and show me your bountiful forgiveness. And if you are truly merciful Lord, I ask that you spare me, and send me a–”\nJust then I could hear the sound of hooves along the dusty road and a horses snort. \nI began to cry, though I thought I had no water left in me. “Thank you Lord, thank you, thank you! Soon as I get back, I’ll be your servant forever and a day. Thank you and amen!”\nA man in a black coat, with a black hat and a black horse came riding by. I was worried it was death riding by me ‘till I saw his white collar. \n“Down here Reverend!” I rasped. I could barely talk. But providence intervened, and the man of God looked down to me. He was tall, lean and had an expensive haircut with a carefully trimmed beard. He looked as all respectful men should look.\n“Afternoon,” the man said as his horse came to a stop. “This is the work of the Apache, ain’t it? Oh, I know it is. ‘As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.’ Yep, Apache work to me, though it’s a wonder you still got your scalp.”\n“No, just some goddamn bandits.” \nHe clicked his tongue. “You oughta’ watch your mouth there, son. ‘You shall not take the name of your Lord God in vain.’”\n“Yes Reverand. Sorry, but–”\n“No ‘buts!’ No sir, if the Lord didn’t intend for us to follow it, he wouldn’t have writ it in his Good Book. If it’s important to the Lord, you can be sure it’s important to Reverend John Michaels III. And if it’s important to me, then son, I think it ought to be important to you too.” \n“Yes sir. Of course. Could you please help me to San Pedro?”\n“Son, let me ask you a question. Are you a child of God? Have you been washed in the blood of our savior Jesus Christ? Have you prayed the sinner’s prayer?”\n“Yessum,” I replied. I’d been baptized anyways, back as a boy. I wasn’t sure about all the rest and I felt bad that I could be lying to a man of the cloth.\n‘Well then I’ll be on my way.” He said, and spurred on his horse.\n“Wait!” I shouted, and burned my throat. “Please!”\nHe turned his horse around. “Look here sir. I’ve got to preach in San Pedro ‘fore the sun sets. There are many unsaved souls in that debaucherous city. A natural Sodom, and yet the Lord has called me there in my dreams as I sleep. Now what do you think the Lord would have me do? There is one saved man, who by tonight will sit in glory beside the Lord if what you say is true. Or there is a group of depraved men, who, if not for the Word of God, could die tonight and spend eternity in damning hellfire. Now, if you’re a man of God, what would you have me do?”\n“Please…” I whispered.\nHe spurred on his horse. “I suggest you spend your final hours thinking on your selfishness. ‘Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.’ May the Lord have mercy on your soul, and deliver you from these trails as he did Job before you.” His horse kicked up dust and the man vanished into the horizon. \nSeveral hours blended together in wakefulness and sleep. The pain was immense, but the hunger was harder and the thirst harder yet. The world spun around me. I thought on what the Reverend said, and if I really would be washed in glory come sunset. I knew for a fact I deserved endless torment.\nThat is why I could not believe my ears when I heard another horse coming down the way. I woke up and the sky was soaked in blood as the sun westered over the mountains. My head felt like it would burst, and yet the rest of me was cold. \n“Help,” I managed to whisper. Once again, the Lord intervened and I was spotted. \n“Well who have we got here, eh?” It was a fat man dressed in colorful threads of red and blue. He sat atop a cart that was being pulled on the largest Clydesdale I had ever seen. On the side of the cart, painted in yellow, was written a wavy and elegant James McClellan’s Cures. “A naked cowboy down on his luck,” he said, “losing it all on gambling and whoring I’ll bet. Sir, that is not the enterprising mindset one must have if you’re to make it in Ulysses S. Grant’s America.”\n“Help me,” I mouthed. \n“Help you, eh? Well what ails you? Ah, let’s see. Well I can see you’ve got a purple foot. McClellan’s Soothing Linnaments oughta have that right as rain after just two applications. Nasty wound on your shoulder… hmm… well I’d start with washing it out with my famous bitters, and then rub McClellan Cream on it every day after that for two weeks. How’s your toilet? Perhaps McClellan’s Twice-a-Day Fibers could do you some good. And for your general health and wellbeing, I always recommend an orange pill in the morning, and a purple pill before night. You’ll keep that hair of yours, and never need a dentist even in your old age. That’s the McClellan Guarantee.”\n“I… just…”\n“Now I charge fifty cents for most bottles, and seventy-five for my bitters. But for you, how’s the whole set for two dollars sound?”\nMy head fell back into the hot dirt. \n“Well of course you ain’t got a purse on you!” the man said. “I am sorry, but with my schedule I simply cannot accept credit. I’m on my way to Rancher’s Cove after this. Of course every man will say, ‘well I’m headed there myself, why don’t I take your bottles now and we’ll square up when I’m there?’ Bah! Never happens. To accept those terms is the attitude of someone who does charity. Do I look like a nun to you? No, I’m a businessman, and James McClellan did not make his fortune doing bad business. So off I ride, and if you’re still interested, you come with cash next time we meet.” Just as he was about to ride off, he looked back down on me. “Ah well, you are a sorry soul, and I do have a soft heart beating in my chest. Here, the rest of this one is on the house.” He tossed down half a bottle of something that landed beside me. I did not have the strength to pick it up. He rode off, and I slipped into sleep.\nIt was dark and freezing when I awoke. A dark shadow loomed down the road. At first I thought it might be Michael, the Archangel, come to take me home. But the shadow, the coldness, the blackness, and the fear. It was the devil. I saw horns coming from the rider, and a tail from the back. \nThe rider approached and it was something worse than the devil. It was an Apache woman riding a spotted mustang, and a young boy, likely her spawn, up front. \n“Leave me,” I groaned. “Leave me! Leave me!” I had suffered enough. I didn’t need to be tortured at the end. But that wasn’t true of course. I had never lived an honest day. I harbored nothing but hate for the Apache though they’d never done ill to me or mine, and if they had I daresay it was deserved. If they wanted to get back at me before I died, it was their right. She lifted me in her arms, and I thought I died as once again all went dark. \nI woke up, leaning on the neck of the mustang. The boy held my steady from the back. He said something in Indian-speech, and the woman turned to me, stopped the horse, and took out a leather water-skin. She poured it in my mouth. I hesitated. What was this? Poison? Blood from a child sacrifice? But thirst gave out, and whatever it was, it was sweeter than honey. It dripped down my chin, and I smiled, and drifted off into darkness. \nI came in and out of this world. I’d open my eyes and the sun would shine from out of a tent. The woman would come to me, and pour something in my mouth. I’d wake up again and it would be dark and there would be some sort of sweet cornbread at my side. I’d crumble some and eat it, and choke, and eat some more. \nFinally I woke up in earnest. It was cold, but I was covered in blankets. I sat up, and my shoulder had rabbit skin over the wound. The Apache woman entered my tent and smiled. She undid my shoulder wrap, and took some greens she had in a bowl and sprinkled it on before covering my shoulder back up. She said something I couldn’t understand, and motioned in ways that seemed exciting to her but had no meaning to me. Finally she left the tent, and an old, squat, sun beaten Apache woman came and sat in front of me. \n“You are awake.” she said.\n“Yes,” I said stupidly. \n“How do you feel?”\n“I feel good. Thank you ma’am.”\n“We prayed many days that your body would be healed.”\n“Thank you. But… why?”\n“Because your body needed healing.”\n“Yes, I know. But… why did you pick me up? I am an enemy to the Apache.”\nThe old woman smiled warmly. “Your body needed healing, but your spirit also needed healing. Apache know how to heal spirit. Come.”\nShe led me out of the tent to a clear, cool evening. There was a circle of Apache around a fire, wearing coats and colorful blankets. She led me to a spot beside the woman that picked me up, and I sat. \nI don’t know how to describe that night, but the old lady was right. They started singing, and some started dancing and playing drums, and the children were playing, and they started smoking something sweet and delicious. I don’t know what else to say other than that my spirit was healed, just like she said." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Harriet and the Haunted Swing\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1018\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin your story with the sensation of a breeze brushing against a character's skin." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A slight breeze grazed Harriet’s face and made her hair dance in the warm sunlight that shone through the cover of trees surrounding the park. It was a clear, spring day, and birds chirped their happy songs as she walked her bike across a footbridge at the lake. The water was full of geese floating along the shore and the grass was booming with families having picnics under the freshly blossoming trees. \n\nAs she made her way along the bridge, a strange mist rose from the lake and crept along the shoreline. The bird songs seemed further away the closer she drew toward the other side of the bridge. She could no longer see or hear the people convening on the park lawn. The previously clear sky was now overcast and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. A faint squeaking noise pierced the silence that the fog had created. The wind picked up as old, decomposing leaves that were left behind from fall were lifted from their once final resting place and whirled around her. The squeaking became louder as she slowly came upon an old, rusty swing set nestled between two old oak trees. The fog wound its way up the bank, thickly surrounding it. Its seat was moving, although there was no indication that anything had been around to disturb it. On the seat seemed to sit the faint outline of a small child. “Hello?” Harriet squinted her eyes, hoping the silhouette would magically become easier to view. Just then, a huge, gale force wind whipped Harriet’s hair around in front of her face making it almost impossible to see; and as quickly as it arrived, the wind drifted off through the park taking the strange, phantom mist with it. The overcast skies cleared and the sun shone as brightly as it did on the other side of the bridge, bringing the temperature back up to normal. The bird songs slowly crescendoed back into existence, chirping as happily as they did before. Squeals of excitement entered her ears as children laughed and played with each other, making new friends and protesting when they had to leave. The swing sat there, still, vines grasped at its legs, while moss covered the seat where the childlike apparition sat. Harriet quickly hopped on her bike and pedaled as fast as she could all the way home. \n\nShe told her parents what happened, excitedly explaining every detail while their faces stared at her in earnest. Their captivation faded, though, with the mention of a ghost child, and her story was then met with skepticism. They chalked it up to her imagination running wild, and all conversation surrounding the incident at the park was squashed. Harriet laid awake that night, replaying the whole scene through her mind over and over. She could still feel the mist tingling her skin and the breeze tickling her arm hairs. Maybe she did imagine the whole thing…\n…or maybe not.\n\nThe next day, Harriet went to the library to do some research about the park. She seemingly hit the jackpot when she found old pictures in the newspaper archives that suggested that it was part of a playground set that, at one time, was a bustling park accessory. She couldn’t find anything amiss and had all but given up when, suddenly, one headline in particular grabbed her attention. GIRL KILLED AFTER FALL FROM LOCAL SWINGSET. The article was surprisingly brief for such a shocking headline. It merely explained that the unnamed girl fell and was pronounced dead on the scene, passing away from a traumatic brain injury after hitting her head on a large rock located behind the swingset. Harriet asked the librarian to make a copy of the article, and, before leaving, she inquired about the girl. The librarian explained that the little girl wasn’t from the area. She was taken to the hospital, but no one ever claimed the body, and she was never identified. She was buried in the local cemetery that sits adjacent to the park. \n\nHarriet decided to make her way back out to the old swing, hoping to get a glimpse of the child again. She sat down on an old bench, laying her bike down in the grass beside her. This time there were no other onlookers. Everybody must have had their fill of excitement yesterday. She counted the ducks on the lake and tried to identify as many bird songs as she could. She pulled out the old newspaper article and reread it to pass some time. After about an hour of waiting, she picked up her bike and turned to head toward home. Then, it happened again. Clouds once again filled the clear, sunny sky as the temperature dropped. The mist slowly rolled off the lake along the shoreline. It wrapped its translucent tendrils around the figure of the little girl sitting on the swing. The seat began swaying back and forth, higher and more vigorous with each pass. Finally, the figure let out an ear-piercing shriek as it fell off the back; riding the wind that blasted Harriet in the face with the force of a rocket ship’s exhaust and with a cold that shot invisible icicles through every pore on her face. The newspaper article was ripped from her grasp and carried away with that burst of air. Harriet was thrown back onto the grass amongst the rotting leaves that repeatedly swirled around her and the swing. The breeze settled and the mist lifted once again, while the sun pierced through the dense cloud cover, revealing the rusty swing set covered in moss and old vines. \n\nHarriet lifted herself up off the ground and calmly brushed her clothes off with her hands. “Finally,” she said. Her eyes narrowed while the rest of her face relaxed. The corners of her mouth curled up into a devious smile as she made her way back to that swing. She examined the seat and chains that suspended it in the air. She blissfully sat down and began to swing; continuing where that little phantom girl left off." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Jistu's Way\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 3017\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone seeking revenge for a past wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Many Content Warnings.\nPlease Read my Afterword in the Comments.\n\nTwenty-six stars sewn into a blue field alongside a cage of red and white hung listlessly from a guidon.\nGrungy, sweat-stained, and hungover, the standard bearer leaned precariously in his saddle as he escorted a column of three hundred indigenous captives across an arid, nameless wasteland.\nThe sun had baked the soil to clay, trampled to dust by their passing.\nFarthest to the rear, Nazshoni’s skin burned.\nHer every parched breath inhaled the land of her people. She resolved to take it with her, the dust; it seeped into her blood; it became mud in her veins.\nAddled by the heat, dehydration, and fatigue, Nazshoni hallucinated and felt dewy grass between her blistered soles and a cool breeze on her neck, but memories of her grandmother - rocking, weaving strips of white oak and river cane before a campfire, humming songs of remorse and sorrow - interceeded to deny all comfort.\nEncumbered, Nazshoni dragged her heels, her footfalls crushing the land’s brittle surface, before her toe, trapped, pitched her forward.\n“Gettup!” the soldier growled, grappling Nazshoni’s shoulders to shove her and send her sprawling.\nCold water, rinsing her hair.\n“Redskin bitch,” he said before planting his boot in her gut. Her breath stolen, the land there was taken from her, too.\nHer father, packing snowballs, laughing.\n“Mr. Calhoun,” said a commanding voice from somewhere behind him. “You will refrain from injurin’ the woman.”\nThe officer’s unwanted attention only infuriated Private Calhoun further. “I said, get up!”\nSweaty, groping hands - once more taking what he hadn’t any right to - lifted Nazshoni only to thrust her forward. Weak and breathless, the weight of her pack sent her reeling. Nazshoni careened to the ground. \nAutumn, braiding her younger sister’s hair.\nBeside her, Rayetayah, Nazshoni’s seventeen-year-old son, lunged to tackle Private Calhoun.\n“Great Jesus,” groaned the rider from behind, spurring his horse forward.\nFirst on his feet, Calhoun kicked at Rayetayah, who dodged to land a limp-wristed belly punch. Calhoun countered with a left hook to the young Cherokee’s jaw, forcing Rayetayah to drop his guard. Grasping the boy’s hair, Calhoun delivered a heavy right cross to break Rayetayah’s nose and spin him clockwise over his mother.\nSecond Lt. Marcus Thompson rode up from behind. “Mr. Calhoun-”\nThe sun glinted off the lake. Nursing her infant son, Nazshoni smiled at her lover, fishing. \nEnraged, Rayetayah scrambled to his legs, yelled a brave challenge, and charged.\nA gunshot spewed a slurry of blood, brain, and bone, and Rayetayah stilled, fell to his knees, and collapsed, face-forward.\nWide-eyed, Nazshoni’s consciousness boiled to the surface - her blood no longer mud but ice - and deep, deep down came a withering howl, the horrific voice of every woman to witness the tragic death of a son.\nNazshoni frantically crawled over Rayetayah’s body. \n“Mr. Calhoun,” Lt. Thompson said, holstering his weapon, and reining his horse around the obstacle. “Again, you will refrain.”\n“Yessir,” Private Calhoun replied. Scowling at Nazshoni in disgust, he spat to the ground and lumbered on behind his commanding officer.\nThey left Nazshoni sobbing, leaning over Rayetayah, in a pool of blood given in sacrifice to the dry earth.\nPassing, four supply wagons and three mounted second officers ignored Nazshoni as she cradled her lifeless son in the dirt.\nAlone, Nazshoni suffered for hours. She mumbled, rocked, and swayed. She wailed aside the memories of her grandmother. And as the sun fell and the daytime gave way to twilight, she whispered a sleepy lullaby to her baby boy. Holding him close, she vowed never to let him go.\nNazshoni awoke under a black sky’s blanket of stars.\nGili'uyvsgi, a ribbon of soft white and purple, arced across the clear night sky like a celestial path connecting at the horizon.\nNazshoni stirred to lift herself from Rayetayah. Her dress was soaked in blood. Her body ached; her head throbbed; her throat was dry as sand. Her breath came in wheezes.\nAround her, the land appeared alien and strange. It glowed, made vivid by thread-like reeds of yellow, teal, and blue wound tightly about rocks, knitted into shrubs, and draped over desert plants. It imparted luminous definition to distant buttes. Nazshoni recognized patterns born from her grandmother’s weaves and twining.\nResting quietly in nearby weeds, Nazshoni spotted a hare. Like the land, it was painted in brushstrokes of vivid blue and teal and had black eyes of starlight. Translucent, the hare had ancient symbols written on its back. Nazshoni knew those symbols as they were drawn alongside fire stories she heard as a child.\nThe hare craned its neck and flared its nostrils at Nazshoni, watching her with interest. \nNazshoni was numb. All her pain seemed wrung out of her. She no longer felt the sunburn. The blisters on her feet had fallen silent. Her dry, peeling arms and hands tremored, and, touching her bruised ribs, she could no longer feel the swelling. She felt nothing save a terrible, longing thirst.\n“Follow me,” the hare said. “I will take you to water.”\n“I won’t,” she rasped, clutching Rayetayah, her voice as the wind blowing over sun-bleached bone. “I know you! You are Jistu! I will not leave my boy.”\nJistu regarded the body with beady cosmic eyes. “Rayetayah has crossed Elatsoe Tsunegv. He waits for you there, beyond the great river. He is not thirsty. He wants for nothing. You are different.”\nAn expression of panic overcame her.\n“Then I am …?”\n“Yes,” the hare confirmed, twisting its head. “We are in Aniyvwiya, the spirit world.”\nNazshoni lowered her head to her son and sobbed.\nIts ears erect, Jistu the hare looked at her curiously. “Why do you cry?”\n“The great river!” Nazshoni wailed, flailing an arm at Jistu. “I am here, trapped, kept from my mothers, my son-”\n“This is not true,” Jistu interrupted. “They are no more distant than I am from you. You are separated by will.”\nNazshoni glanced up at the hare, confused.\nJistu hopped from the weeds to smell her. “You are not ready. A desire burns in you, a need, yes … a blood vendetta. It fills you with purpose. It anchors you here.”\nNazshoni embraced the body. “Rayetayah was young! He was only protecting me! He did not deserve to die!”\n“Oh, of course not,” the hare agreed, and its ears lowered; it almost smiled. Jistu gestured with its head. “Come. Drink. And I will aid your revenge.”\n“Trickster, if I’m a spirit,” Nazshoni reasoned, “then why water?”\n“You are in between, a visitor,” Jistu explained, its starlight eyes staring through her. “You walk Aniyvwiya yet remain mortal. Please. Let me lead you to water.”\nReluctantly lifting herself from Rayetayah to stand, Nazshoni leaned to one side, wobbled, and nearly toppled over.\n“Release your burden,” the hare encouraged. “Those things are not needed here.”\nShe untied her shoulder straps and dropped her pack. Her center of gravity changed, Nazshoni leaned as if the earth itself was slanted. Leaving Rayetayah face-down on the road, Nazshoni followed the hare into the brush. \n“It’s not far,” Jistu said, bounding before her.\nAnd, as Jistu’s backside runes ignited into a blinding white light, the world unraveled.\nFeeling both pulled and dragged, Nazshoni stumbled into a blurred landscape. Neon-colored twine twisted and stretched, uncoiled and compressed; knots came undone; buttes along the horizon unstitched; yet the sky - the stars, the path of the Gili'uyvsgi - remained absolutely still. Nazshoni saw the rocks, cracked clay, sand, and brush pass swiftly underneath, for her every step was hundreds of yards at once. Wobbling, her arms outstretched, tangled in teal, yellow, and blue whisps of twine, she arrived at a colony of sycamore trees to collapse against the bank of a slow-moving river. All around her, the threads interlaced and tightened into a weave, and the land - from the river to the sky - assumed more familiar, static patterns.\n“Drink,” Jistu insisted.\nNazshoni crawled to dunk her hands in the river. Cool water spilled between her fingers. She gulped, threatening to take all the river in. It felt good in her belly, and the water was oddly sweet, laced with honeysuckle. She splashed her face, soaked her head, and ran water across her arms.\nAnd the blue and teal hare sat on its hind legs, waiting for her, patiently, with endless eyes.\nWhen Nazshoni had her fill, she sat on her knees and bundled her hair to the side to wrench it free of water. She glared sullenly at the sky’s reflection on the river’s surface.\n“Utsunati come, and they take and take,” Jistu muttered behind her.\nNazshoni’s shoulders slumped; her chin dipped. Exhausted, still dizzy from the walk, she fell to her hip and braced her arm against the sand. \n“White man’s greed is a hunger,” the hare whispered, slowly circling Nazshoni. “He is insatiable. He steals more than he can use. He hoards simply to deny others.”\n“Utsunati are cruel,” she agreed, looking to Jistu as it circled her.\n“Utsunati are pigs!” Jistu hissed, then, resting on its haunches, soothed, “Rayetayah’s murder was unjust. He was young. Inexperienced. He was not a warrior.”\n“His first hunt was only the last snow,” Nazshoni whispered, wiping her hand absently over her bloodied dress.\nJistu came closer. “Your boy was brave, but he died a man.”\n“Rayetayah would bring me flowers,” she remembered, gazing out over the river. “Every spring. He was kind and thoughtful. His mind was full of butterflies and color, not spears and knives.”\nJistu’s eyes narrowed, its voice licking like a serpent’s tongue. “What right did Utsunati have? To murder? For protecting his mother, no less?”\nThe taste of honeysuckle lingered in Nazshoni’s mouth. \n“He was my boy,” Nazshoni scowled.\n“More! He was Tsalagi!” Jistu purred. “He was the blood of your mothers! He was the bravery of your fathers! He was heir to the land of many caves!”\nNazshoni wavered. Her eyes fluttered into her skull, and she repeated, “Heir to the land…”\nThe hare’s gaze turned to the river’s shallow waters, where a hatchet appeared. Submerged, it had a cold steel blade with a long, curved bit, a haft made of carved oak, and was decorated with beads and an owl’s feather.\nJistu crouched on all fours beside her. “Your blood was taken-”\nReaching out, Nazshoni plunged her hand to seize its haft. She withdrew it from the water. Her eyes, too, were black and filled with starlight.\n“-so I will take theirs,” Nazshoni snarled, gritting her teeth.\n“Yes,” encouraged Jistu the hare, hopping around Nazshoni’s backside. “Blood for blood. An eye for an eye.”\n“It is our way,” Nazshoni breathed.\nJistu said, “Yes. It is our way. It is just. It is right.”\nStanding, Nazshoni gripped the hatchet tightly and glared at it with intention. “It is my purpose.”\n“Look there!” Jistu said, jumping along the shoreline. “Do you see? The smoke rising from Utsunati fire? They camp by the river. The white man drinks your water. He eats your food. He celebrates Rayetayah’s death.”\n“Utsunati takes and takes and takes,” she sneered, pounding the neck of the hatchet in her hand in time with her words. Nazshoni took an unstable step forward. Another, then another. She let the hatchet fall limp at her side. Her front was blood-stained, and she felt the cool sand between her toes and honeysuckle sweetness on her lips. Her sight was the same as Jistu’s, seeing all of creation as faded reeds and twine woven by her ancestors.\n“They are relentless-” Jistu said, turning to her.\n“-unyielding,” they said in unison.\n“It is my purpose,” they repeated.\nThe waning moon escaped from behind a cloud to bathe the valley in hazy moonlight. Nazshoni stiffly walked the river's shore, numb, step by step, led by Jistu the hare. With her every step, anger welled within, and Jistu circled her, excited for what Nazshoni’s rage might bring.\nIt was then Waya the wolf appeared to block their path. A spirit like Jistu, the wolf had fur of white brushstrokes and eyes of smeared yellow paint. It lowered its head and growled. “You play tricks, young fool.”\n“Yes, for they are mine to play,” Jistu replied gleefully, hopping forward to greet the wolf before rearing up on its back legs. “Begone, ancient wanderer. Clear our path.”\n“I will not,” the wolf said, assuming a defensive crouch. It bared its teeth.\nNazshoni paused, entranced, swaying - her eyes that of the nighttime sky - and vengeance waited, gripped in her hand.\n“It is because of your tolerance the Tsalagi suffer!” Jistu accused. “Do something! You are old! Weak and useless! You are the rotting seed that gifts stunted fruit! Behold!”\nJistu’s sight traveled to see the sleeping, hungry masses of Cherokee nearby, their bodies broken and burned, worn from the day’s journey. Hungry, they slept fitfully; terrified, they clung to each other; a people, they remained connected, even in sleep.\n“Acknowledge their suffering, Waya, and finally see their misery. We must end this! Nazshoni is Nûñnë'hï - she walks between! A mortal, but also an untouchable spirit, she will slaughter Utsunati soldiers and free her people. Allow her passage!”\nThe wolf snarled, raising his hackles. Symbols ignited on his back. “Blind rage is unproductive. You weaponize her grief. Return Nazshoni her agency, Jistu. Hers is another purpose.”\nJistu entrenched and dug into the sand.\nTurning its head to Nazshoni, Jistu commanded, “Away! Avenge Rayetayah!”\nNazshoni smiled wickedly and raised her hatchet before her with both hands. She unraveled and disappeared.\nWaya was the first to strike.\nAs a brush laden with paint, white smeared across the Aniyvwiya, slamming into the hare. With its teeth at Jistu’s neck, Waya dragged the hare across the ground and whipped it right and left.\nJistu blurred, becoming a teal streak that wrapped around Waya to rake the wolf with its claws; blotches of red splattered against the canvas of the spirit world.\nNazshoni arrived at the outskirts of the camp and marched directly toward a sentry, nodding off near a campfire. The young soldier’s rifle lay limp in his arms. Unaware of her presence, the boy snored, far away in a dream. Steady and unwavering, filled with vengeful purpose, Nazshoni clutched the hatchet’s haft and brought it to bear on her side.\n“Release her!” Waya demanded.\nJistu - who was faster - raced around the wolf. Jistu’s quick, leaping movements were like bounding arcs of teal paint. “No! Nazshoni’s wrath will free the Tsalagi!”\nTiming its attack, leaping, the wolf pounced to trap the hare between its paws. It crushed Jistu, forcing its body into the earth to remain still, and snarled, “You are short-sighted. The Nûñnë'hï’s actions will invite more suffering, more murder-”\n“Genocide deserves no better!” Jistu screamed and viciously bit deep into Waya’s throat. Blood burst from the wolf’s white breast.\nAt the camp, Nazshoni slowed and murderously raised the hatchet, creeping up on the sleeping soldier. She felt nothing but the instrument of her revenge, gripped in her palms.\nWaya howled and rolled to its back, bringing the hare with it. Waya snapped, ripped, and tore, peeling strings of crimson muscle and teal flesh from Jistu’s bones. It flipped to its feet and cast the hare out to flop listlessly, broken, on the river’s edge. Jistu, defeated, lay twitching, breathing rapidly.\n“But I am right,” Jistu gurgled, on the verge of death.\n“I agree. But you are so right, you are wrong,” Waya grumbled and turned its head toward the camp. “Nazshoni.”\nClosing on the soldier, lording over him with her hatchet, poised to strike, the nighttime stars faded away, and her brown eyes returned. A streak of yellow paint appeared across Nazshoni’s eyes. Startled, she stopped to look toward the river.\n“Go to your people now,” Waya said, its mouth dripping with Jistu’s blood. “Sleep, and by tomorrow’s sunset, you will discover a new purpose.”\n“Purpose,” Nazshoni mumbled, lowering the weapon. It fell to the ground with a thud. Her head and shoulders slumped. Turning, she took slow, heavy steps to where the Cherokee were gathered. Sleeping, the Utsunati soldier remained unaware of the death he nearly faced. \nNear the water, Waya gripped the scruff of Jistu’s neck with its teeth to carry the hare away into the sycamore trees. “Come, young one,” the wolf said, “and we will talk of happier times.”\nNazshoni’s hatchet unraveled and disappeared.\nThe next day, the Cherokee were woken as cattle - with gunshots to the air and angry men on horseback - and as before, the day was hot and grueling.\nIn a daze induced by her trauma, Nazshoni, hallucinating, continued to remember places and people of her past, but also about Aniyvwiya and Elatsoe Tsunegv. Mumbling, she insisted she needed to meet her son, waiting for her across the great river.\nA cold winter’s night, nestled with her baby and lover.\nAround midday, a younger Cherokee woman collapsed from heat exhaustion and died. Her son, a boy of seven, wailed at her side. As Nazshoni wandered close, her haze lifted to see the boy as he was, there, scared and alone. In sharing his grief, Nazshoni extended her hand to his, and in taking it, they shuffled along together behind the other captive Cherokee, forced to march their Trail of Tears.\nA boy who brought flowers and dreamed of butterflies.\nThat night, as the sun set along the horizon, the camp’s cook prepared a stew in the officer’s mess. Eating, Second Lt. Marcus Thompson seized. He fell to his knees, then collapsed, writhing, unable to breathe, gagging, hacking, and retching, clutching at his throat, until his body stilled, and his eyes locked skyward, heaven bound.\nBeside him, chewing a bite of his own, another officer lazily crouched to feel Lt. Thompson’s throat, running his fingers along the windpipe.\nHe nodded then spit out the contents of his mouth before closing the corpse’s eyelids.\n“Y’all be careful with that stew,” he grunted to the others, gesturing to the simmering pot over the fire. “Rabbit bone.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Our Bones Are In The Inglenook\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2076\n\nPrompt:\n\nA crumpled piece of paper holding an unexpected message is carried by the wind. Where did it come from, and where is it going?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "TRIGGER WARNINGS - MURDER AND SUICIDE.\n\nEmma brushed damp hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears again, but within moments it was back, whipping her eyes and sneaking blonde curls into the corners of her dry mouth. It was pointless to try to stay tidy, or even comfortable, in this weather. She thrust her hands back into the deep pockets of her wax jacket and dragged her green wellies through the muddy puddles on the dirt track. The farm couldn’t be much further now.\n\nEmma stopped for a moment and looked back at her Land Rover Defender. Its headlights, now switched off, still caught a slight glint of the sinking yellow sun, as if taunting her, pretending the vehicle was still road worthy. Two punctured tires in as many miles since she turned off the country lane. The last sign of tarmac was far behind her, out of sight, and the dirt track had proven treacherous. If the weather had been better, she might have at least attempted a quick fix of one of them, but with the storm coming in it made more sense to walk the last few hundred meters. Surely the farmhouse would have a landline she could use. Her mobile had had no signal for over half an hour.\n\nShe trudged on. The gate at the top end of the farmland was in sight and, if Aunt Mary’s directions were correct, the house was just down the path on the other side. Aunt Mary. How did a woman in her late seventies still manage a farm by herself? This place would either be spectacularly well kept or a complete shit hole. Emma’s money was on the latter.\n\nThe gate was stiff and creaky. It took several attempts to get it latched again and Emma was on the final downhill stretch. Light flickered in an upstairs window, as if provided by a lantern on a draughty sill.\n\nOh God, is that why she wrote to me longhand? No electricity? No phone?? Or perhaps the storm has knocked out the power from further away and candles are a temporary measure. I can hope.\n\nThe dimly illuminated window flung open and caught a current of air. It banged shut and blew open again several times as Emma approached the stone house.\n\nThe horseshoe knocker made three satisfying clanks against its strike plate. Loud enough to barge their way through the howling wind and meet the ears of Aunt Mary, just as a scrunched-up piece of paper escaped from the open bedroom window and danced downward in the moving air. Emma instinctively grabbed at the paper as it drew level with her head, it took a few tries to catch it, but it was safely in her jeans pocket and out of the rain before Aunt Mary appeared at the front door.\n\n“Emma! Oh, it is you! Come in out of all that weather. You look just like your pictures, only slightly wetter.”\n\nEmma hadn’t seen any recent pictures of Aunt Mary. Her letters had apologised for her lack of a camera to take any with but had included written descriptions of herself. The woman in the hallway was indeed short, stocky, and bespectacled. Her greying hair was pulled back into a loose bun from which wavy tendrils escaped, forming a kind of wispy fuzz around the outline of her face. She had the ruddy cheeks usually associated with a life spent outdoors. Her green, multipocketed utility trousers were topped off with an oversized cable-knit jumper, and her stocking feet left slightly damp marks on the terracotta floor tiles.\n\nThe hallway was warmer than expected. The kitchen door was open and the snaps of a log fire greeted Emma as she removed her gloves and boots. She hung her waterproof jacket, rain beading off it, on the tall wooden coat stand, and offered Aunt Mary a stiff hug.\n\n“Come through. I’ll put the kettle on. You must be frozen half to death. Take a seat by the inglenook fire, you’ll soon be warm.”\n\nEmma sat on the seat on the right of the fire alcove while her aunt boiled the kettle and found some mugs. She idly picked up the poker and pushed it into the flames. There were several red-hot logs surrounded by charred bits of wood and thick, grey ash. But the poker hit something chalky, too. As the metal scraped against it a white tinge was revealed for a moment.\n\n“Please don’t disturb the logs, Love.” Aunt Mary approached carrying two steaming mugs of Horlicks. “Takes a while to get them properly stacked up. How was your journey?”\n\n“Oh, you know, wet, windy, full of mud and flat tires.” Emma returned the poker to its stand. “Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you have a phone I could use please? My mobile hasn’t had any signal since I left the tarmac roads and Mark will be worried sick.” \n\n“That’s right, your husband. No, Love, I’m sorry. No phone for a while now, the lines came down on Tuesday and I had to drive into Hopton last night to get the vet out to my ram. I can take you into the village tomorrow morning. I’m sure you can get a signal on your mobile there and make as many calls as you need.”\n\n“Thanks Mary, that would be great. The other thing is that I left my luggage in my car, in my hurry to get out of the rain. I’ll have to nip back and grab it.”\n\n“Oh no, not tonight, Love. You’ll catch your death. I can lend you some pyjamas for now. There’s an iron and ironing board in your room you could use to warm them up. How does that sound?”\n\nAn hour of small talk later and Emma climbed the stairs. Aunt Mary showed her to the guest room, handing her a set of blue paisley PJs. Emma made a stop off in the bathroom and then said good night to her hostess.\n\nOnce in her room, which had a faint scent of lemons, Emma flicked on the light and glanced out of the window. Surely this must be the window which had been banging earlier, but there was no sign of a candle or lantern on the sill, and the window itself was now firmly shut. Neither Emma nor Mary had been up to see to it.\n\nIs there someone else in the house?\nDon’t be silly, I must be mistaken.\n\nEmma pulled back the bedclothes and ran a hand over the flannel sheets, they were soft but pretty chilly. Then she plugged the iron in and switched it on, before fishing her phone out of her jeans pocket to check one last time for a signal. Her fingers met the ball of crumpled paper she’d stuffed in there earlier. She pulled the paper out and teased it back into a flattish square, which she smoothed out with her hands on the ironing board. There was that smell of lemons again.\n\nIt was the same type of writing paper that Aunt Mary sent her letters on when she was a child, before she fell out with Emma’s mother, Claire, and stopped writing. In the last few months, when Mary had got back in touch following Claire’s death, the letters had been on feint-lined A4, exactly the kind of paper she had once told Emma never to use. She claimed it stifled creativity and made every letter look the same. Her letters to Emma as a child had always been on beautiful tinted writing paper, often with floral borders or watermark animals. This particular piece was duck-egg blue with a small robin in the top right hand corner. Emma's favourite bird. Also back then, Mary would write secret messages in lemon juice at the bottom. They could only be seen by heating the paper. It was a kind of game they played, exchanging little jokes and riddles.\n\nThe red light on the iron pinged itself off. Emma pushed the pjs to one side and lifted the iron over the pale blue paper instead. She carefully ran the hot metal across the page from side to side, flattening the creases out of it and watching as the invisible lemon-ink turned brown.\n\nThe writing was familiar, if a little distorted from having been scrunched up. But a message became clear quite quickly:\n\nDearest Emma,\nThe woman at the farm is an imposter. Don’t be fooled. She put tire bursting stingers on the track to stop you escaping. She wants the farm, and she wants you dead for the inheritance now your mother has passed. She locked me in my room until I damn near starved. I jumped out of the window and broke my neck. Don’t come to Hopton Farm. Send the police. They’ll find my bones in the inglenook. Do not come to Hopton Farm.\nPlease stay safe, late Aunt Mary x\n\nEmma’s breath caught in her throat and her hands shook. She folded up the letter, pushed it back into her pocket and tiptoed to the door. The handle refused to turn, she rattled the door in its frame. Locked.\n\n*\n\nMark had driven out to Hopton farm several times since he reported Emma missing, but every time, her aging Aunt Mary told him the same thing through her wavering sobs. Emma had never arrived there and her letters had stopped. The police had visited, much to Mary's dismay, but found no reason to search the place.\n\nOn day seventeen after Emma had vanished, a letter arrived at the marital home. It was in a plain white envelope, postmarked Edinburgh, and Mark's name and address were shakily hand written on the front. To his knowledge, Emma had never been to Scotland. Mark ripped the flap of the envelope and pulled the letter out. It was on unremarkable feint-lined A4 paper:\n\nMy Darling Mark,\n\nI hope you understand my impossible decision. I have resolved to end my life. The grief I suffer for the loss of my mother is overwhelming. I couldn't bring myself to visit Aunt Mary after all. I never went to Hopton. There was too much risk that she would remind me of Mum and make matters even worse. I feel terrible for leaving you like this, but I think you will understand, in time. Poor Aunt Mary will be beside herself. To try to make her life a little easier I ask you to please ensure that she inherits a substantial proportion of what I leave behind. I know she isn't named in my will, but I trust that you will do the right thing by me, and by her.\n\nI cannot say sorry enough.\n\nWith all my love,\nEmma xxx\n\n*\n\nMark folded the letter into his inside pocket, grabbed his car keys and dashed out of the house. Wiping tears from his eyes as he drove, he made the three hour journey to Hopton Farm. Arriving in the murky dusk, he hammered on Aunt Mary's door and shouted her name.\n\nThe door didn't open, but a window banged above him and a crumpled piece of paper fell out of it and drifted towards the ground. Mark managed to catch it before it hit the driveway. It was pale blue writing paper, but on smoothing it out he found no words, just a small robin in the top right corner. It smelled faintly of lemons. Emma had told him stories of her secret communications with Mary as a child. This fitted the description of one of her letters.\n\nHe turned the door knob and the door creaked open.\n\n\"Mary?\" he shouted through the hall, but there was no answer.\n\nThe flames were dwindling in the kitchen inglenook and Mark let himself through to sit in the alcove. He held the piece of blue paper near the embers and writing appeared as if by some kind of magic.\n\nMark,\n\nIt's safe for you now, but it's too late for Mary and me.\nAn imposter killed us both. The woman at the farm is not my aunt at all. We have taken our revenge and quite literally frightened her to death.\nThe farm is yours, if you want it.\nOur bones are in the inglenook. Please lay them to rest.\nHer bones are hanging in the barn, along with the rest of her. Do with them what you will.\n\nLove always,\nEmma xxx" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Golden Girl\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1801\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a stranger coming to town and shaking up the order of things." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Every day is the same in this town. The sun comes up, people go to work or school, and some just sit around smoking packs all day. Always seeing the same faces, the same run-down buildings, and the same view of rocks and country going on for miles and miles. The dull browns and reds of my desert home make it all the more mundane. My family has lived on this reservation, of what is now southern Utah, for generations now. My grandfather started his own horse ranch so our poverty-stricken community would have a place to keep their beloved animals. He also set it up as a way for his lineage to have a source of income. I grew up riding horses with my mom, who took over the business after my grandfather passed away. There’s not much to do around here, so most weekends are used for exploring. I’m someone who could be described as cold. Pretty ironic for someone who lives in a place where it’s normally well over 100 degrees. But riding is the time when I can let loose. I love the feeling of the wind against my skin and as it courses through my thick black hair. Like mother nature herself is running her hands through it. I liked my life, sure I’ve thought about having more, but I knew “more” wasn’t realistic for me. We can barely keep the ranch open, so college was out of the picture, I never really liked school anyway. So I rarely ever truly yearned for anything more than this small town, knowing I could never escape its grasp. Little did I know someone would come in and shake this town to its core forever.\nI was in the stables, brushing my horse, Ginny, her thick black mane resisting the pull from the brush. We both equally hated this task, my black and white spotted horse grunting as I tugged at the bristled hairs. Eventually, I finished, and I walked her outside the stable getting ready to mount her, and that’s when I saw her. She came riding up on her golden stallion, she halted, got off the saddle, and looked at me. Who is this girl? I thought. She had thick golden hair, just like her horse, that stopped at her shoulders. Tan skin that glistened against the heat waves. She wore a belt that had an oval-shaped turquoise gem as the buckle, that was the same color as her bright blue eyes. She walked over to me, and it felt like the sun's rays that were beating down on me got a lot more intense. \n“Hey.” She said, bringing her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.\nI stood there, feeling like all the air got knocked out of my body.\n“Uhm, hey,” I said back\n“Do you know if the owner is around? I just moved here and was wondering if I could keep my boy here.” She gestured to her horse and it stood patiently waiting for her.\n“Oh, well actually I’m the owner- or I mean technically it’s my mom, but I’m the only one here right now.”\nWow. Real smooth Chayton. The girl giggled and stepped closer.\n“Well in that case, nice to meet you, I’m Jackie.” She extended her hand towards me, the one she was using to shield her face.\n“I’m Chayton,” I said sheepishly, and put my hand to hers. The moment we touched it, it was like a colony of monarch butterflies effortlessly flew through my whole body. And the best part is, I think she felt this was too. We stared deeply into each other’s eyes, the contrasting blue and black swirling into one moment that felt like an eternity. \n“This town might actually be better than I thought.” She said, with our hands entwined together.\nThree Weeks Later\n“You’re so slow!” She exclaimed as I came riding in the stable right behind her.\n“Hey, it’s not like you were the one who ran, I blame Ginny.” I joked and rubbed her black spotted ear with my hand while pulling the hair out of my face with the other.\nIt was getting late and the sun was just starting to set. Jackie and I had spent the past couple of weeks riding together every day. She says she just moved here from somewhere in Texas. She was living with her mom and also just graduated high school. She wanted a fresh start so she moved here, where her dad is living. Jackie got off and lead her horse, who I learned name is Chester, to his stable. I did the same with mine and as I walked out and closed the gate, I could feel Jackie’s hands run along my sides. She put her chin on my shoulder and then spun me around.\n“I had fun today, cowgirl.” She said and bit her lip, still holding onto me. She pulled me into her and started kissing my neck.\n“Jackie! Stop you know my mom could catch us.” I didn’t actually want her to stop but I didn’t want my mom to see us even more.\n“Don’t worry so much, if she comes in I’ll just say I was giving you mouth to mouth….standing up.”\nI grinned and let out a small laugh.\n“Wow, I didn’t think you could smile.”\nA comment like this typically would instantly cause me to scowl, but coming from her I can’t help but smile more. \n“Hey, if you ever decide to take a break from this place, you should meet me at Mosco’s tomorrow night.”\n“But that’s a bar? Neither of us can get in.”\n“Not with that attitude.” She winks and lets me go, walking out of the barn, not even looking back at me as she skips away.\nI stand there, breathless, completely flustered, and terrified by this girl.\nThe next night, around 11 when I hear my mom turn off her TV, I slowly open my window and jump as lightly as possible onto the cement below. This isn’t my first time sneaking out, but it’s usually just to walk to the gas station around the block to get a late-night snack. Never to a place I don’t want my mom to find out about. The bar isn’t too far from my house, but the stale heat even so late at night, and my nerves, make me sweat like crazy. As I approach the entrance, I rub my wet hands on my dark blue flared jeans. The obnoxiously large beer-shaped neon sign above the door shines harshly onto me, as I look around for Jackie when suddenly I feel a hand grab my shoulder and tug me back into the alleyway at the side of the bar.\n“AH!” I shrieked and fumble backward. The hand lets go and I quickly turn around, ready to fight with my fists up.\n“Oh my god, it’s just me”, Jackie snickers, “Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you so badly.”\nI sigh in relief, and relax my body, lowering my defenses.\n“I wasn’t scared, just surprised,” I say embarrassingly..\nI then notice how gorgeous she looks. Her hair had the same hue and brightness, even in the dingy lamp lighting. She had bright pink eyeshadow which made her eyes pop even more, along with having glossy pink lips. She wore a frilled tan jacket, and a mini denim skirt, with her signature turquoise belt and white cowgirl boots. Without even thinking I mutter, “God, you’re beautiful.” She steps closer to me and looks up since I’m a bit taller.\n“You’re not too bad yourself.” I blush and she grins. I apparently can’t conceal flattery as well as she can, and she loves to see me get flustered.\nShe takes my hand and pulls me toward the back of the alley, where I can see a door. As we approach I can see the fire escape warning taped along its metal frame. \n“See, we can’t get in this will set off an alarm.”\nJackie glares at me with her devilish eyes, “Watch this.”\nBefore I can stop her she swings open the door. Nothing happens.\n“Ta-Da.” She says proudly and holds the door open for me to come in. \nWe spent that night dancing, drinking, and we couldn't get enough of each other. It was a dream. I honestly don’t remember much, but I can remember her wrapped in my arms, and then walking over to the jukebox to put on Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac. As she danced to the music, I realized how entranced I am by her, like she has put me under some kind of spell. I marveled at how completely free she is, or at least she seems. Then I remember walking home, drunkenly stumbling my way back home during the early hours of the morning, not being able to contain my joy. Little did I know that would be the last time I’d ever see her.\nA couple of days passed and I hadn’t heard anything from her. My mind started to race with thoughts like what if I said something stupid? I was so drunk anything could have happened. The more time that passed, the more I thought of the worst. This is a small town, people talk. What if her dad heard about us being together that night. I didn’t think anyone would care, but I shouldn’t have been so negligent. \n“Chay, can you come here? I need to talk to you about something.” My mom exclaimed from the kitchen.\nMy stomach drops, and I timidly walked to the dining room from my bed. She knows, she knows, I kept thinking to myself. What if I get kicked out? Before I even reach the kitchen, I have to fight to keep my tears back. But, as I see my mom sitting at the table, she doesn’t look upset, I can’t really read her face or what she might be feeling. \n“Honey, will you sit down.” She says and gestures to the seat across from her.\nI carefully sit myself down, staring into her eyes to get any sort of message of what’s about to happen. \n“Do you know a girl named Jacqueline Nez? I think she’s been bringing her horse to our ranch recently?”\nI don’t know how to respond. I never lie to my Mom, but my gut is telling me to just shake my head no. I end up sitting there looking at her, trying not to look suspicious but eventually saying,\n“Oh, I think I’ve seen her around before, why?” My heartbeat quickens and I quietly rub my hands on my cotton pajama bottoms. \nShe sighs and finally looks me in the eye. “They found her body out in the mountains this morning.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Not the Brightest Bulb\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 1723\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The light panned over the coast, gutting the night like a blade through a fish’s belly.\n\nEmerson Leighe sighed. From experience, he knew the storm would be raging well into the next day. But he’d be safe here; this lighthouse had weathered many storms before this one. And it would weather many more after, too. It had stood here since before he was born, and it would stand long after he was dead, which wouldn’t be long now, he reasoned. He raised his metal cup to the windows, which looked out onto the frothing midnight ocean. He offered the night his cheers, then sipped his neat rum.\n\nLightning lit up the abyss, burning his retinas white for one faltering heartbeat. The wind whipped and whooped around the edges of the lighthouse. The rumble of thunder came three seconds later, reverberating through his bones.\n\nEmerson blinked. The ocean was a cruel mistress, sometimes. He knew that more than anybody. He’d spent much of his life aboard fishing vessels, at sea for months. He felt more at home on the open sea than on dry land. That was why he’d taken on the task of lighthousekeeper after retirement. But it seemed that people had lost their respect for the water. Kids rode inflatable beds out on riptides and needed rescuing. Rich yuppies took their boats out in unsafe conditions and needed rescuing. Partying youngsters went for midnight swims whilst inebriated. They drew the attention of the sea beasts, which they then hunted for revenge. And thus, the creatures needed rescuing due to their dwindling numbers. Companies dumped their foul excretions into the blue, so the sea needed rescuing, too. Emerson growled and scowled out.\n\nThe thunder and lightning lashed from the heavens once again. The rain pelted sideways at the window, rattling against the glass. The gale screamed like a dying creature wounded by a harpoon. Another sound chimed throughout the lighthouse. But this had nothing to do with thunder.\n\nHe grunted. Somebody had rung the lighthouse’s doorbell. Who on earth could that be? The lighthouse clung to a rocky piece of coast that jutted out into the ocean. It was far from any town or village, as Emerson liked it. The only company he usually had came in the form of passing boats and hungry seagulls. Emerson took another swig of rum and set his cup on the table. The wood bore the marks of a million condensation rings from the rum mugs of history. He grumbled to himself and passed through the door to the spiral staircase.\n\nThe doorbell rang again as he descended, with care, the final treacherous steps. He threw the door open to the howling wind. ‘Yarr, I’m coming, I’m coming! Hold your seahorses.’\n\nOn the stoop, two kids huddled together, no older than eighteen. They clung to one another as the wind whipped at them, and the storm soaked them to their bones. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the boy, raising his voice over the gale, ‘but our car broke down and we’re stranded. Can we please hold up with you until the storm has passed?’\n\nEmerson was not a people person. But he was also not a heartless monster, either. He opened the door to the boy and the girl and guided them up the staircases. ‘Yarr, come in, come in! Yer wetter than water! I got some blankies upstairs. Come, let’s get you and your lass dry. Me name’s Emerson.’\n\nThe boy smiled and offered his hand despite the chill that shook him. ‘Thanks, man! You’re the best. Harry. And this is Skyla.’\n\nEmerson led them up the winding staircase to the lighthouse’s upper room, lit by the beacon. He got some dry towels – stale and motheaten, but dry – and put the kettle on for warm tea. ‘Arr! You must be pretty frightened! What with you stranded in the dark and the rain while the sea beats her chest like King Kong! She can be mighty fierce.’\n\nThe boy pulled a face and shook his head. He wrapped a towel around Skyla’s shoulders before he tended to himself. ‘Err, no. Inconvenienced. And uncomfortable. But not scared.’\n\nEmerson frowned but bit his tongue. He guided the youngsters to his couch – it wouldn’t be the first time it got wet – and handed them mugs of steeping tea. He sighed and sat down opposite them on his old rickety chair. ‘And what, if you don’t mind me askin’, were you two doin’ out here this late at night?’\n\nThe boy and the girl blushed. Harry started to say something, but then Skyla interrupted. She shoved her left hand into Emerson’s face. A diamond glinted on her ring finger. ‘Harry proposed to me tonight! As the sun set over the water, staining it red. The colour of love! Isn’t that romantic?’\n\nTo Emerson, red was the colour of blood once you’d chummed the waters to lure in the big fish, but he didn’t say this. ‘Yarr, it do warm this old sea dog’s heart to see young love in bloom. Why, my Bathilde and I, we shared quite a torrid love affair, we did! But she’s been sleeping with the fishes for longer’n you been alive. I still carry her picture in this old locket here, which I wear around me neck at all times. Here! Take a look at this beauty, lad. But don’t lose yer eye for the young lass, now, aye?’\n\nThe boy blinked at the picture in the sea-air-rusted locket. He did a double-take. He seemed to struggle for words; his eyebrows knotted together like a bowline. ‘Sir… that’s a manatee.’\n\nEmerson recoiled. ‘Arr! You youngsters and your unrealistic Hollywood beauty standards! You shouldn’t perpetuate such unhealthy attitudes towards appearances. It only fosters anxiety and insecurity. Yarr! You might be young and lovely now, but see how pretty yer look in sixty years. Let’s see how yer are once the sea’s done rusted yer lungs, and yer legs been took by an orca and a great white workin’ in cahoots!’\n\nThe girl reached over and rapped a knuckle on his shin. A smirk touched the corners of her lips. ‘But sir, both your legs are still attached.’\n\nEmerson yelped and tucked his legs back under his chair. ‘I jumped into the blood-stained brine, I did! Wrestled me legs back from the bellies of the respective beasts at the same time. Fought them both off. Using nothing but me bare hands. I sewed them back on, I did! Using nothing but a bit of old gut fishing line. I cleaned the wounds by spitting on ‘em, then patched meself back up. It hurt fer a while, but it didn’t affect me well-trained balance on the deck. Yarr, at sea you needs good sea legs. Especially whilst Poseidon’s throwin’ you about like a dusty old rug that yer mama’s trying to clean!’\n\nThe kids exchanged a glance and snickered. ‘That didn’t happen, did it, sir?’ asked the boy. ‘You’re having us on.’\n\nEmerson bit his lip. He knew how to get through to these young’uns, to teach them the proper respect they ought to have for the ocean. Emerson had seen waves taller than buildings and fish bigger than elephants. He’d seen currents sweep sailors to their doom in seconds. Emerson had seen men sink into the abyss as waves pummelled them like a boxer in a match with no referee to ring the bell. These kids had been on dry land, but the ocean was hungry. She could reach out and snatch you from the shore if she wanted. They had gotten lucky the midnight tide hadn’t pulled them out to see whilst the boy popped the question. Emerson got to his feet and slipped out the door to the spiral staircase. ‘I ‘ave somethin’ ter show yer. You wait right here, my lovelies.’\n\nConfused whispers came from behind him. Outside, the storm continued to rage. The wind screamed, and the rain lashed. The ocean roared and threw itself against the lighthouse’s base. The foundations shuddered.\n\nEmerson found the switch – covered in warning stickers – and flicked it.\n\nThe lighthouse went dark. A small shriek came from above.\n\nHe ascended in shadow, grinning at the panicked voices. He barged through the door and clicked the torch on. He illuminated his haggard face from below and bellowed. ‘IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT!’\n\nHarry and Skyla screamed and clung to each other; their faces pulled in a rictus of terror in the torch’s beam. ‘What the hell—’ began the boy, but Emerson cut him off.\n\n‘THE OCEAN WAS RAGING! THE NIGHT WAS BLACK! YOU COULDN’T TELL WHERE THE SKY ENDED AND THE WATER BEGAN! AND WE ALL KNEW THAT SHE, THE CREATURE, WAS OUT THERE HUNTING US! THE HUNTERS HAD BECOME THE HUNTED! WE—’\n\nA foghorn shattered the tension, deafening them all. Harry jumped up, knocking his chair over backwards. Skyla shrieked and threw her hands up to her face. A flick of a fish’s tail later, the lighthouse shook around them. A great, wrenching metallic crunch rocked the world.\n\nIce froze his limbs. He broke through the paralysis and staggered to the window. He shined his flashlight onto the rocks below. ‘Good God,’ whispered Emerson.\n\nThe jagged stones had acted like a shark’s teeth, puncturing the ship’s hull. It leaned, like a drunken sailor, 45 degrees to the side. On top, seamen clung to the rails whilst others tried to scramble about the rain-wet deck. Baffled shouts punctured the storm’s wailing. Boxes of cargo crashed into the surf. Some sailors tossed life rings into the brine to rescue men overboard.\n\nEmerson whimpered. This lighthouse had not had a single accident for almost a hundred years. And now, in one swift hour, he’d caused a disaster. He should never have exaggerated the truth to impress these kids. The ocean was scary and beautiful enough as it was. It didn’t need cheapening with manufactured myths and legends. But he’d tried to scare them into respecting the fierce hand of nature, tried and failed. They thought he was an old coot who’d messed up on the job. And they wouldn’t exactly be wrong, now, would they? He’d forgotten the very lesson he’d been trying to teach. His shoulders slumped.\n\n‘Yarr, I’m not the brightest bulb, methinks.’" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Flight to Freedom\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2908\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone undertaking a long, dangerous journey." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Flight to Freedom (based on a true story)\nNovember 1898\nChills ran down Bluebird’s spine as she heard distant rifle fire. The sound of death and destruction seemed to come from the direction of her village.\nTheir grandfather had heard talk that the soldiers were destroying all spotted horses, considering them a symbol of Native culture. Wisely, he’d urged Raven and Bluebird to spirit their small herd of Appaloosas to a hidden canyon with rich grass and a spring-fed stream trickling through it. A rock overhang and tree-covered walls protected it from the north wind.\nBluebird and Raven had made a shelter under the overhang, lest they got caught in bad weather, since it was late in the fall. They had gathered dry wood for a fire and stashed pemican and dried meat.\nBluebird whistled a warning to Raven, who was at the far end of the canyon, reinforcing the brush barrier to keep their horses inside.\nAt thirteen, Raven was already taller than Bluebird. He was whipcord thin, fast on his feet and an accurate shot with rifle or bow and arrow. He had eyes so dark brown they looked black, just like his grandfather.\nBluebird was petite like her grandmother, with eyes the color of black coffee. She was an equally good hunter. Between them, they kept the stew pot filled for their grandparents.\nRaven arrived silently on moccasin feet. Seeing Bluebird’s worried look, he asked, “What’s wrong, Sister?”\n“I heard rifles from the direction of our village. I’m frightened, Raven.”\nHe lost his usual easy-going smile, and his eyes shone with fear. “Let’s go back, staying inside the trees so we won’t be seen,” he said.\nThey set off through the forest, anxious to know everything was all right. It was eerily quiet, no squirrels’ chatter nor birds’ song. The silence was unnatural, making Bluebird shiver with dread.\n“I hope I’m mistaken, but I feel danger and death in the air,” she told him.\n“Don’t borrow trouble, as Grandmother would say,” Raven cautioned.\nShe knew he was trying to relieve her fears.\nThey smelled the smoke before they got near, burning their noses and making Bluebird’s stomach churn. It hung over the village like an evil blanket.\nTo their horror the teepees were all gone. The village’s entire horse herd was missing. Piles of smoldering ashes and dead bodies littered the ground. There was nothing left; everyone they knew and everything they’d had was gone.\nIt made Bluebird’s heart sick. These had been kind people who wanted only to live in peace.\nThey made their way to where their grandparents’ teepee had been. Like the rest, it was a charred ruin. Their grandfather was lying beside it in a pool of blood, but Bluebird suddenly saw that blood was still oozing from his wounds, which meant he was alive!\nHardly able to breathe with excitement, she knelt beside him and carefully examined the shallow furrow above his left ear. The blood was mostly coming from a bullet wound in his shoulder.\n“Grandfather!” She cried. When he moaned, tears of joy came to her eyes!\nRaven and Bluebird carefully turned him over. To their delight, Grandmother was underneath him. He had fallen on her to protect her.\nBeing such a tiny person, she’d been hidden underneath his body. They had been left there for dead.\nBluebird could see that the bullet had gone right through, leaving a large hole in the front of his shoulder. It appeared to have missed the bone. She tore a strip of material from her grandmother’s long skirt to make bandages, first putting a patch on the entry and exit wounds, then wrapping his shoulder.\nRaven salvaged enough material from the burned teepees to make a litter to carry their grandfather. Grandmother was bruised from when she’d fallen, but said she was okay, so they carefully lifted Grandfather onto the litter.\nWith Raven on one end and Bluebird on the other, Grandmother walking beside them, they slowly made their way to their hidden canyon, stopping to rest several times, gathering moss for their grandfather’s wounds. Grandmother feared her medicine bag had burned in the teepee.\n“I will search for anything of value,” Raven promised, “but first we go to our shelter.”\nIt was almost dark when they arrived. They quickly cut spruce branches to make a bed large enough for all four of them to sleep together, so their body heat would keep them warm. It was the ‘Moon of Cruel Winds,’ also known as the ‘Beaver Moon’, when the hair grows long and cold weather arrives. The days had been warm, but the nights were already bitter cold.\nRaven slipped away at daybreak, to bring whatever he could salvage from the ruined village. Bluebird she set out with a bow and arrows to find meat for supper. Good fortune was with her; she brought back a large jack rabbit. The fur would line winter moccasins, and the meat would make a tasty stew. The rabbit’s fur was almost all white.\n“This means we will have snow very soon,” Grandfather said. “The animals know when to change color to hide from predators. We are living on borrowed time, Granddaughter.”\n It had been unseasonably warm, but Grandfather’s weather predictions always came true. They had only what was on their backs; all their belongings had been destroyed.\nBluebird and Raven would hunt, and their grandmother would tan the hides to make clothing, but it was late in the season. She feared they would not have enough to survive.\nRaven returned with some charred pots, pieces of blankets and Grandmother’s medicine bag. It was singed, but the contents were intact, as was her stash of tanned hides which had been stored underneath it.\nShe immediately tended Grandfather’s wounds, then set to work lacing pieces of blanket together, her nimble fingers working quickly. She too believed Grandfather’s warning that cold weather was upon them.\nOvernight, the winds changed from south to east, and then to northeast. There was a skiff of snow on the ground by morning, and heavy clouds hung dark and threatening. Raven and Bluebird hurried to hunt for meat, before more snow fell and game became harder to find.\nRaven checked his rabbit snares first, while Bluebird followed the tracks of a large buck deer. She found him near the edge of the forest.\nHer arrow went true, and the deer ran but a short distance before falling. Bluebird hurriedly cleaned him. Raven would help her drag it back to camp.\nShe worked with her back to the northeast, protecting her face from the driving ice pellets. The wind made such a roaring in the trees that at first, she didn’t hear the approaching team of horses pulling a wagon. When she turned and saw them bearing down on her, terror filled Bluebird’s heart.\nShe left the buck half-cleaned and raced for the cover of the forest. Before she could reach the trees, they overtook her. One of the men jumped down, knocking Bluebird to the ground, hollering to his partner with a fiendish laugh. She couldn’t understand his coarse words, but their meaning was clear.\nThe huge, bearded man reeked like he hadn’t bathed in years. Weighing twice as much as Bluebird, he pinned her down. She struggled, gagging at the smell of him, as he groped her, holding her hands in one big fist. Her heart raced and she fought to get her breath as terror overcame her.\nBluebird managed to get one hand free and reached out to stab her attacker, only to find that her skinning knife had flown from her hand when he landed on her. She saw it in the snow, just out of reach. She kicked and fought for her life.\nHis partner then joined him, jerking Bluebird’s arms over her head and laughing at her struggles. She screamed in fear, trying to bite at the first man’s wrist while his partner held her arms. In retaliation, he punched her on the side of her head. Everything went black.\nRaven was near the edge of the forest when he heard his sister’s screams. He told her afterwards that when he’d seen what was happening, he quickly sent an arrow flying into the throat of the man who was trying to pull her tunic up. Before the other man could react, he’d received an arrow through his heart.\nBluebird regained consciousness to find Raven pulling the men off her, one at a time. She was dazed and her head was spinning from the blow and she was shaking too much at first to help her brother.\nRaven took charge, saying, “We must get rid of the bodies; nobody would believe an Indian against a White man, that we acted in self defense.”\nHe stripped the heavy winter coats off both men and tossed them onto the wagon, then removed the rest of their smelly clothes, throwing them aside. “We will burn all but the heavy coats.\nMethodically, Raven ripped the arrows from the men’s bodies. “We must hide the evidence,” he told her. Together they dragged the nude bodies to the riverbank, one at a time, and pushed them off the steep bank into the swiftly moving water and watched them float away.\n “The water will carry them for miles,” Raven assured her, “what’s left won’t be found until spring. Without clothes and bloated from the water, they won’t be identified. Nobody knows we survived; we must keep it that way.”\nThe ice pellets turned to snow, driving sideways with the wind. It was so thick they could hardly see the partially skinned deer. Raven threw the carcass onto the wagon and drove the team to their shelter. The wagon was loaded with food, tools, clothing and blankets. It was the long overdue supplies for their village, according to the treaty.\nGrandfather looked up from his bed. Raven and Bluebird told him and Grandmother what had happened. “When the men and the wagon fail to arrive at the fort, the Army will send out a patrol to find them,” Grandfather said.\n“Our only hope is to make that wagon into a sled and escape into Canada, like Sitting Bull and his followers did. They found refuge there; we can, too. \n“They won’t send out patrols in a blizzard. By the time it lets up, our tracks will be completely hidden.” He told Raven and Bluebird how to attach curved branches with rawhide to the wheels to make runners, so the wagon would glide on the snow.\nThey tied several of their Appaloosas to the back of the sled; the rest would follow. Bluebird and Raven rearranged the supplies, making a sheltered nest for their grandparents. They donned the heavy wolf-hide coats that had belonged to the men, since they would be walking and driving the team. By dark, they were many miles away, keeping to forested areas for protection from the wind.\nBluebird hoped Grandfather’s plan worked. If found, they would be killed for sure. They would not have survived the winter without the food and supplies that were destroyed in their village.\nThey stopped every few miles to rest. Raven and Bluebird took turns driving the sled and walking beside the horses to wipe snow from their faces. Without that team of horses, they would all perish in the blizzard.\nGrandmother could see that Bluebird was worried. “What is troubling my brave granddaughter?” Bluebird reluctantly admitted her fear about punishment for killing the men.\n“What do you suppose those men would have done to you, Bluebird? They would have taken their pleasure and then killed you. It is not murder when you are defending your life. Your brother is right; they would never believe an Indian over their own people.\n“Besides, they think the whole village was wiped out. They don’t know there were any survivors. Grandmother’s wise words eased Bluebird’s mind, but she still wished they were miles away.\nThey raided the food supplies, enjoying beans and peaches to supplement the deer meat. With grateful hearts and full bellies, they crawled under the blankets and slept.\nAt daylight, they were on the trail again, heading straight north. Grandfather said that another day’s travel would bring them to the Canadian border, where they’d be safe.\nTwilight came early. They were exhausted from traveling, and glad to stop for the night in a small clearing in the forest. Grandfather said it was safe to make a small fire to keep warm. Bluebird huddled over the flames, roasting deer meat and heating beans from the supplies on the sled. They enjoyed the luxury of hot food and warmth. Grandmother dug in the snow and found some “Indian Tea” leaves.\nWhen she put them into hot water and let them steep, the familiar aroma warmed and cheered the family from the inside out, giving Bluebird hope that they would make it to safety. They had their herd of Appaloosas, a strong team of huge draft horses, and a sled full of supplies. If they could just get across the border, they would survive.\nGrandfather Gray Wolf dozed, remembering the days when he was young and strong. He thought of the time he and Little Flower and their baby daughter had escaped from the combined forces of General Howard and Colonel Miles.\nThe proud Nez Perce nation had been fleeing toward Canada to avoid being forced onto a reservation. Chief Joseph and his peaceful tribe had been chased relentlessly. Many men, women and children had been slaughtered by the Army.\nNow they were in a valley, with all escape routes blocked. Worn from the thirteen-hundred-mile chase, many were weak and sick from hunger and cold.\nChief Joseph, realizing that his people could go no further, had decided to surrender. He summoned the few surviving young men. “Choose your best horses. Under cover of darkness and the snowstorm tonight, wrap blankets around you, your wives and your children. Silently slip into the forest, between the two armies who are closing in on this valley, and ride away.\n“They will find only this chief with his weak, old and sick survivors. It is the only chance I see for a remnant of our proud people and our beautiful horses to survive.\nGo swiftly and silently. May the Great Spirit guide you and keep you safe. May your families grow and prosper. We will rest easier in confinement, knowing that some of our people remain free.”\nThe snow had soon covered their tracks. By morning there was no trace of the small group of escapees. Gray Wolf smiled to himself, thinking of the good lives they had carved out in their new home for many years, until the massacre when their grandchildren were young. They had indeed been a village of peaceful people.\nOver the years, they had traded and inter-married with White Bear’s Blackfoot village a few miles away, and that is where they had fled for help when their homes were destroyed.\nNow White Bear’s village too, was gone and they were fleeing again. Would they ever find peace?\nHe prayed to the Great Spirit for help. Physically unable to fight like a warrior this time, Gray Wolf feared for Little Flower and Bluebird and Raven. He needed more than his own powers now. He relaxed, giving his burden to the Great Spirit, and dozed again.\nGrandmother Little Flower’s husband was healing and gaining strength. He was fifty-six summers now, but he was a strong man and he would recover. She continued tanning rabbit hides while her grandchildren drove the big horses. \nIt was a blessing that the hides Little Flower had been saving had not burned in the teepee. She finished making fur-lined moccasins and mittens for everyone. With warm hands and feet, they would survive the cold. She began lacing rabbit hides together, alternating the brown and gray ones with white hides. The variety of colors in the furs made a pleasing patch work design. As they travelled, grandmother continued lacing hides together to make a quilt.\nFrom the many bolts of cotton material on the supply sled, she chose a blue one with white flowers for the quilt backing. The rabbit fur blanket would make a warm but light weight covering for her granddaughter’s bed. She stitched the layers together with thread where each hide joined, and hemmed it on all sides.\nAgain, they took shelter for the night in dense forest, where the wind was broken by the trees. The storm was less fierce in the lee of the wind, and they slept together, safe and warm.\nIn the morning, there were patches of blue sky and less snow was falling. The wind still blew, but the trees blocked the worst of it. They started on their way again with high hopes that the storm was calming. By mid day the sky had cleared and the sun was shining, turning the open areas into a sparkling sea of white.\nWhen the sun was hanging on the western horizon, they came out of the forest into a sheltered valley with tree-covered slopes on either side. It stretched a mile long and half a mile wide, with snow barely ankle-deep. Most of the storm had missed this valley. Grandfather said it was a good place to stop. To Bluebird’s relief, he assured them that they were finally in Canada, and could settle here in this lush, beautiful valley." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Devil's Advocate\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2859\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes the line “my lips are sealed.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Ignorance is bliss, that’s why I’m always sad.” ~ Pinto’s Words of Wisdom\n\n~~~\n\nElder Pinto takes his position in the tribe very seriously. So much that he gave himself the title ‘Elder’. At 24 years old he quickly became one of the most respected members of the Faba tribe. Truth be told, no one knows if that is his birth-given name nor do they know what his name could be if not that one. The protector of elephants, a stressful job that anyone would be proud to do. What happens when the threat of elephant poachers increase? Will he be able to keep the elephants safe? Or will he cave into the promise of riches, abandoning everything he ever believed in?\n\n~~~\n\nElder Pinto wiped the sweat from his forehead as he shoveled the dung of his best friends. It would take him all day, but the tribe relies on these droppings for many things. With the wheel barrel full, he chucked his shovel to the side and began the long journey back to the Faba Tribe.\n\nThe first stop he made was at the warriors’ training ground. He gave them enough for their families. Ahe walked up to him and slapped his shoulder in a brotherly way. “Elder Pinto! I’m glad to catch you today. I plan to leave for my old village next week and would love to have some extra for my journey.” Pinto grinned, “Ahh, of course. Your love awaits you. Next week, you will have enough for your journey.” Lucero approached as Ahe mumbled, “We can only hope.” Pinto tried his best to disguise his pity and turned towards Lucero.\n\n“How’s the trainee life? I don’t even understand how you’re still a trainee after you won that battle nearly by yourself.” Lucero shrugged, “Age, tribe rules. You know how Katoka is.” Pinto chuckled, he did know how she was. Katoka spent her whole life waiting to be the tribe’s leader. Now that she was, she took her job just as seriously as he took his.\n\nWith the sun starting to set he bid the warriors goodbye and continued on his route for the day. Ajulo, the tribe’s blacksmith was next and Pinto made small talk. He asked him about his last travels and where he planned to go next. He even asked him how he became such a good blacksmith. “When I joined this tribe they told me, ‘To wield a sword perfectly, you must know how to create one beautifully.’” Ajulo smiled softly to himself as he recalled a fond memory. They said their farewells and once again Pinto was on his way.\n\nDelivering to the farmers was Pinto’s second favorite part of the day. Zahra, the head farmer, was also one of the best female warriors. She always fought for what she believed in and never asked for anything in return. The two had been close friends ever since he was welcomed into the tribe. \n\nShe turned around as if she felt him enter the field. “Pinto! Umm, hi.” Zahra hated that she was extremely awkward whenever she spoke to him. Inwardly, she cursed herself. “Zahra, here’s this week’s fecal, be sure to use it tonight.” She looked at him confused. What’s so special about tonight? Noticing her confusion he quickly explained, “The temperatures are supposed to be dropping, you need to make sure to stay warm.” She stiffly nodded and turned to continue her work, cheeks blazing. He chuckled; he loved how awkward she was when he caught her off guard.\n\nThe healer’s tent came into view and he sighed in relief. The day was almost over. Uchenna was the oldest member of the tribe and the best healer he had ever seen. In the corner of his eye, he saw something move. Apate stood with the wind blowing through her hair. She was laughing with some of the other tribe members. He shook his head to clear her from his thoughts and entered the tent. \n\n“Elder,” she bobbed her head, “how has work been today? You must be glad to be at your last stop.” Her voice was rough, but soft, showing her age. “It was fine. Everyone seems to be doing well.” “Everyone including Apate? You know I’ve never trusted that girl.” Her eyes glared toward him, and for a second he forgot she was blind. “There’s nothing wrong with Apate, she’s just been dealt a hard time.” Uchenna scoffed, “A hard time. You make sure not to get too close, that young lady is nothing but trouble.” Pinto turned on his heel, and without another word, he left. He struggled to understand why Uchenna held so much hate towards Apate. The entire tribe loved her, except for the old healer.\n\nThat night the Faba Tribe celebrated the birth of a new elephant. A large fire was in the middle of everyone as they drank and danced the night away. Pinto sat on a log, watching everyone have a good time. He was very excited just like everyone else, but he was also worried. Their tribe had been stuck in a war longer than he had been a member. The birth of a new calf would surely bring poachers, he just didn’t know when. From a distance, Zahra studies him. She can tell something is bothering him. As she gets closer she notices that he is staring at the other side of the fire. She followed his gaze and was disheartened to see that he only had eyes for Apate. Zahra turned and went the other way.\n\nEverything about her drew him in. He admired her through the flames. He saw the way she laughed and danced with the tribe’s children. He looked around taking in the joyous scenery before him, when his eyes found the spot Apate once danced, he was startled to see that she was not there. Almost immediately, he spotted her walking deep into the trees. He jogged to catch up with her. \n\n“Apate!” She spun around as soon as she heard her name being called. Heart pounding, she said, “Elder Pinto! You startled me. I was just taking a break from the festivities.” He laughed, “Yeah, they can get a little rowdy sometimes, especially the kids.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, “You saw that, huh?” “I always see you,” his reply was simple, but he really did mean it. Apate looked shocked, but her expression quickly changed to one of excitement. “All this time I’ve been waiting for you to ask for my hand. I’m starting to think you never will.” Pinto was surprised to hear that she felt that way, but there was no way he would let this moment pass. \n\n“Marry me!” He shouted so loud that she flinched backward. “What? Are you sure?” Pinto grabbed her hands and held them in his. “Of course I’m sure! Marry me!” Apate laughed deeply, removing her hands from his to hold her stomach. “Okay! Okay, let’s do it. Let’s get married!” Pinto pulled her into his warm embrace, grinning like a fool. He could not believe this was happening. The couple decided to wait to tell the rest of the tribe until the next morning. Instead, they went back to Pinto’s hut and talked the night away. “I think we should at least have three kids,” Apate said in a serious but loving voice. “We can build a house near the elephants and protect them together and I can have a garden in the yard to have beautiful flowers all year round.” He enjoyed listening to her idea of their future together, he only spoke up every once in a while to make sure she knew he was listening. Before they went to sleep they decided their wedding would be in two days time.\n\nApate thought she woke before Pinto, she tried to make her movements as limited as possible. Once she reached the door she turned around only to find that he was not there. She huffed, having been careful for no reason, and bolted through the door. “In a rush this morning, my wife?” Pinto wakes earlier than the tribe every morning to make sure the elephants have good food at the watering hole. He does a head count of the herd to make sure they are all there, but the most important and favorite part of his day is just sitting and talking to them. “I’m not your wife yet, Elder.” Apate smirked and Pinto was almost frozen in time. He’d do anything to keep that look on her face. “It’s time to tell the tribe,” she added, “do you think they will accept and perform the ceremony tomorrow? Do you think it’s too soon?” Worry covered her face and his heart plummeted. “All will be fine, anyone who does not wish us married is no friend nor family of ours.” \n\nIn the center of the tribe, they made their announcement and were responded with applause, congratulations, and about 15 too many requests for babies. At the time when they were large at war, no one had time to conceive children. Apate had been in the tribe for 3 years and during that time the battles ceased. Due to that, there were a generous amount of little toddlers running around. It was a time when the Faba tribe couldn’t be happier.\n\nWord of the engagement spread quickly in their little village, and almost everyone started to prepare immediately. Uchenna was outraged to learn that Elder Pinto did not heed her warning. Why did he have to be so stubborn? She left her tent in a hurry, her age slowing her down more than her blindness. Soon, she was at the farm. She stood tall, using her cane as support. Everyone around her knew what she was there for. It was confirmed when she said, “Zahra and Elder Pinto, come here.” Her tone was full of authority, firm, and clear, but not loud in the slightest. \n\nNo one could assume how she knew that he would be there to buy flowers for his soon-to-be wife, but she did. The two of them hurriedly walked over to the healer. Zahra was grateful to have anyone interrupt the conversation they were having. “Yes, Uchenna?” Zahra’s voice was soft and a little distraught. It was enough for Uchenna to notice, “Ahh, I see you do not approve of this either, Zahra.” The young woman gulped, shifting her eyes to Pinto and when she saw he was looking at her, she looked away immediately. “I have already congratulated Elder Pinto on his good news.” She had not once called him ‘Elder’ since he had been there. He looked at her with a strange face and she ignored him. That’s all he could be now, someone within the tribe with an important position. Someone who will be married tomorrow.\n\n“You cannot marry the deceiver. You all may have fallen at the hands of her, but I see her for who she really is. I bet she doesn't look at you the same way you look at her, I don't need eyes to see that. Elder Pinto, do not marry her.” Uchenna’s voice was low and urgent, it grew more slow and pitiful as she turned towards Zahra. “You would allow him to wed her? Talk some sense into this boy, he is bewitched.” Zahra looked over her shoulder briefly, wishing to be anywhere, but there. “It is not my place to decide who Elder Pinto marries,” she looked in the direction of Pinto, not meeting his eyes, “I will have the flowers arranged in time for the wedding tomorrow, congratulations again.” As she walked away, Pinto tried to lighten the mood, he joked, “Did she just call me ‘Elder’?” Uchenna shook her head in disbelief, “For someone called ‘Elder’, you truly are a fool.” She walked back to her tent shaking her head the entire time.\n\n“It’s just a little farther up ahead.” Pinto encouraged Apate to keep going, although she was walking ahead of him. As they burst through the clearing of the watering hole, a smile broke out over both of their faces. While the other members were preparing for the wedding, Pinto wanted to give her a wedding present. It was her being the first of the Faba tribe, besides him, to see the newborn calf. He walked to the elephants gently petting them and beckoned her to come closer. As she stepped towards him, the elephants formed a large semi-circle in front of him and the calf. She stilled, “They seem on edge, maybe we can come back later.” From behind the elephant walls, he laughed, “Yes, maybe you are right.”\n\nElder Pinto was sweating buckets standing in front of the Faba tribe. Apate was late for their wedding and he feared she may never show. Katoka was there to complete the ritual and she was growing very frustrated. “Zahra, go and find Apate. Bring her here and see that she has everything she needs.” Zahra nodded and quickly fled in search of the very late bride. She found her on the edge of the village speaking with a man and woman. Quickly she hid herself to listen. \n\n“They will all be too busy cleaning up the wedding. No one will be prepared to defend the elephants.” Apate spoke with the fierceness of a warrior. The man clapped her back and proudly stated, “Three years, and finally, you have set up the perfect scenario. You have done well my child.” Zahra held a hand over her mouth to keep from gasping. “You will tell the protector that you will not marry him. Run to the elephants after our group will be waiting to begin.” Apate shook her head. “He will follow me, I am sure of it.” The woman chuckled darkly, “Maybe that is what we are counting on my daughter. With no one to protect the elephants, our riches will double or even triple. Do what you must do - so you can come home.” Zahra had heard enough. She ran to her farm to prepare for war. Lucero’s mother was sent to warn the warriors and anyone who was strong enough to fight.\n\nBack at the wedding, Pinto felt relief as he saw Apate running towards him. “Elder Pinto, protector of elephants, I will not be marrying you today.” Everyone gasped, except Uchenna, she had been expecting this much, she did not, however, expect Apate to come back at all. Just as Apate predicted, Pinto chased after her into the trees. He could not fathom what would cause her to change her mind; until she picked up a hidden spear and started running in the direction of the watering hole. Heartbroken, he no longer chased after her. He could only watch as her figure disappeared within the trees. The Faba members that were able to fight, arrived only to see the elephants struggling against the poachers. Katoka led the warriors onward and the battle began.\n\nPinto snapped out of his daze when he caught sight of Apate chasing the calf into the woods. He found them in a clearing, the calf was backed onto the edge of a cliff. Apate had her spear in her hand ready to charge. “Apate stop!” Pinto made himself noticed. “How could you kill an innocent creature? Our job is to protect them, not bring them harm!” He was nervous, it was his job to keep them safe. Apate corrected her aim toward Pinto, giving him her full attention. “We could be rich,” she shouted suddenly. “Don’t you want to be rich?” He had never seen her appear so crazily. “We would have lots of money for our kids; do you not remember our plans?” They circle each other until Apate is by the cliff's end. For a split second, Pinto saw their future crumble to ash. Before he could respond, the calf rushed towards Apate, shoving her to her death. She screamed the whole way down until they were met with silence.\n\nHe let out a breath he did not realize he was holding, and turned towards the calf. “My lips are sealed if yours are.” The calf swung his trunk around and began walking the way they came. By the time they reached the battlefield, the poachers who survived were bound by rope. The Faba tribe, thankfully outnumbered the poachers, making this battle a quick one. One by one the elephants ran towards the baby using their trunks and made sure he was okay. Pinto smiled gently at the scene before him. \n\nFrom across the way, Zahra marched to Pinto and stood firmly before him. Once she was there she lost her courage, fiddling with her hair. “I want you to know,” he braced himself for a lecture, “that I like you, deeply. You can find me when you are ready to respond.” She quickly got out of his way and went to help Uchenna care for the wounded. His eyes never left her as she walked away and despite everything, he laughed loudly, “This was some wedding day.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Car Sickness\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1010\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who returns home changed by someone they met on a trip." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "[content: death]\n\nFrom her position in the back seat, face pressed indifferently against a box of Krishna figurines, Emily watched the sky cut in and out between the dark concrete serpents of the interstate. She had always hated snakes and highway snakes were the worst: sleek and fat, doubled back on themselves, swallowing their tails. Emily thought, what if I swallowed one too, and suddenly she could feel it writhing cold and alive from her navel up through the back of her tongue. \n\n“You’re just car sick.” The frame of her father’s glasses flashed in the rear-view mirror. “Good to lie down.” He thumped the wheel with unnecessary cheerfulness, jostling the heap of stuffed garbage bags riding shotgun. “You’ll feel better when we get there.” \n\nBut Emily knew the truth — that there was no there to get to. Knew it and knew that her father knew it. Maybe everybody knew it. \n\nOnce she’d thought there might be rural North Carolina. After Pamela (that was the third divorce), her father tried his hand at religion and discovered that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness had a village near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Emily had never lived anywhere like it. There were hills blanketed in pine needles, teeming with deer and foxes; lakes too numerous to possess names, haunted by the cries of waterfowl; houses few, and those few dignified and archaic, the retired plantations and farmsteads of a foreign generation. In the summer the air thickened with humidity and mosquitoes. Emily walked under the pines, first alone, then (after Cynthia, the fourth) with two little stepbrothers. Their limbs swelled under the continuous influence of bloodsuckers and poison ivy, drenched in the waterfall of sweat which started close on the heels of Easter and lasted till Halloween. \n\n“Hear that?” Emily crouched near the tow-colored heads. Their eyes, blue and solemn, followed the skinny brown slope of her hand toward the crackcrackcrack and sudden flash of red. “Woodpecker.” They watched silently, mouths formed in round reverent O’s. When Emily looked at them her chest grew tight, as if something had sprouted inside and outgrown its cage. Please God, she found herself praying. She had been a devout agnostic since birth, and though she looked on her father’s apostasy as a kind of scandal, still she prayed: Let me stay. \n\nEmily had carefully compartmentalized her thirteen-year history into epochs like they did in science textbooks. The “Early Years” were spent on the Muscogee Creek Reservation in Oklahoma and included a mother she didn’t remember well (Michie, the first). Then there was, for a very short time, Spain, where she had picked up the language much faster than her traveling salesman father and served as his interpreter. This was her “Professional Start.” London was longer, the “Troubles,” so-called after an evil stepmother (Tonya, the second) and a baby sister she’d never been allowed to touch. But Miami was the worst, dull and slow and painful, the “Dark Days” notwithstanding Pamela’s relative agreeableness and apparent sterility. At the time Emily didn’t think she liked kids much. But North Carolina, with its clean wind and shadowy mountains and blond toddlers, had begun to change her mind. That was what falling in love did to you. Those were the “Good Times,” until — \n\n“The highway looks like water moccasins.” \n\nShe had surprised herself by speaking. The car swerved slightly. \n\nAfter a minute her father said, “You’re not still thinking about that, are you?” He reached a hand back to find hers. She took it as she would a stone. “Sweetheart, I love you. Cynthia loves you. The boys love — Emmy, it’s not your fault. And we didn’t leave because of … Em. The chant. Always remember the chant. Okay?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna …” The snake wiggled in her esophagus. Emily screwed her eyes shut. \n\nOn the other side of the lids she watched the scene unfold, passive. \n\nShe led the boys down an incline slick and crumbly with moisture. The damp smell of bog and rotten vegetation rose in palpable waves. One of the nameless lakes, or rather swamps, squatted brown and motionless below. She heard the repetitive call of a song sparrow in the cattails. “Let’s try to see one up close,” she suggested in a stage whisper. The boys shivered with delight; Keshava, the elder by a year and a half, on her left, and Dami on her right. Their hands fit soft and smooth in hers. Electric shocks of equal parts pain and pleasure shot through her. \n\n“Hare Hare Hare Rama …” \n\n“Do you see them yet?” She was so busy with the reeds and her ecstasies that she ignored the movement of grass at their feet. She did not see the scales undulating in the wobbly sunlight, the evil triangular head until the infinite half-moment of paralysis before little Dami’s shriek of fear and anguish. The average water moccassin, Emily would later learn from reporters reeking of sympathy and barely disguised eagerness, would not exceed four feet in length; but this viper had been longer than she was tall. \n\n“Hare Rama, Rama Rama …” \n\nOf course it wasn’t her fault. If it had been her fault there might be something to be done, some reparation she could make. Instead nothing was her fault. Nothing was anyone’s fault. All was accident. It was like learning, while hanging upside down with her stomach dropped somewhere beneath her, that the carnival ride was completely uncontrolled. But the terror had gone stale for Emily. She’d left it with Cynthia and Keshava, blond and blue and round and reverent and silent. With Dami, the empty discolored stare and the open coffin and the ashes poured hastily over the Eno River. Behind. It was the road again. \n\n“Hare Hare. Looky there, squirt.” Her father’s head indicated the passenger window. “Exit 129. Okeechobee Road. Mee-am-ee. Almost home.” \n\nExit. Home. What a joke. You couldn’t ever get off the interstate. Emily rolled over, moaned, and vomited onto the car mat." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Dreams of their Ancestors\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1945\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The elders of the Native American tribe gathered around the newly constructed casino, marveling at its grandeur.\n\"It's been a long time coming,\" said Chief Running Elk. \"But it was worth it.\"\n\"Aye, that it was,\" agreed Medicine Woman White Feather.\nThe younger members of the tribe were excited to see their dreams come to fruition, but the elders remembered the struggles of the past.\n\"Remember when we started this venture thirty years ago?\" asked Running Elk. \"There were so many obstacles in our way, but we never gave up.\"\n\"Aye, we may not have built Rome in a day, but we built this casino through hard work and determination,\" said White Feather.\nThe casino represented more than just a means of income for the tribe. It was a symbol of their resilience in the face of adversity.\n\"We did this for our ancestors,\" said Running Elk. \"They dreamed of a better future for us, and we've made it happen.\"\n\"I hope that the members of this tribe never find out how we made this happen,\" said White Feather. She continued, \"If they find out that we bribed local government officials, we could go to jail.\"\nRunning Elk's face fell at White Feather's confession. \"We couldn't have built this casino without the bribes,\" he said. \"But it goes against the very principles of our people.\"\n\"We did it for the greater good,\" argued White Feather. \"And besides, it's too late to turn back now.\"\nRunning Elk shook his head. \"We must tell the tribe the truth,\" he said firmly. \"We cannot continue to live with this secret.\"\nWhite Feather looked at him with a mix of fear and respect. \"You're right,\" she said. \"But we must find the right way to do it. We cannot risk losing everything we've worked for.\"\nTogether, they made a plan to reveal the truth to the tribe, but only after they had secured their future. It was a difficult decision to make, but they knew it was the right thing to do. The casino would remain a symbol of their hard work and determination, but it would also be a reminder of the consequences of compromising their values.\nAs they walked away from the casino, they both felt a weight lift off their shoulders. They were ready to face whatever came their way, knowing that they had each other's support.\nLittle did they know, their secret was already in danger of being exposed. A group of investigative journalists had been digging into the construction of the casino and were on the verge of publishing their findings.\nWith time running out, Running Elk and White Feather knew they had to act fast. They called an emergency meeting of the tribal council and prepared to tell the truth to their people.\nAs they approached the tribal offices for the meeting, they saw a figure on the ground outside of the entrance doors. The figure was not standing up but slouched over against the doors. It was Chief Running Elk and he was dead. White Feather gasped in shock as she approached Running Elk's lifeless body. Tears streamed down her face as she realized that their plan to reveal the truth had been cut short.\nThe tribal council members gathered around, their faces etched with grief and confusion. They looked to White Feather for answers, but she had none.\n\"I don't understand,\" said one of the council members. \"Who could have done this?\"\nWhite Feather shook her head. \"I don't know,\" she said. \"But we can't let Running Elk's death be in vain. We must still tell the truth about the casino.\"\nThe council members nodded in agreement, but they knew it would be a difficult task without Running Elk's leadership.\nAs they prepared for the funeral, White Feather couldn't help but feel a sense of dread. She knew that they were running out of time to reveal the truth, and that whoever had killed Running Elk was still out there.\nAs she stood by Running Elk's grave, White Feather made a vow to her fallen comrade. She promised that she would bring justice to his killer and reveal the truth about the casino, no matter what the consequences.\nWith a heavy heart, White Feather returned to the council chamber to face the tribe. She knew that this would be the most difficult task of her life, but she was determined to see it through. A glass pitcher of water was on the podium with two dark glasses. White Feather poured a drink and drank the entire cup. She was extremely anxious and was sweating. All of a sudden, she fell down on the ground and gasped for air. The council stood in shook and horror as they could tell that White Feather was not breathing. A member of the council ran up to the podium and pronounced her dead. How could this be they all thought. Chief Running Elk and White Feather dead.\nThe tribe was thrown into chaos as they tried to make sense of what had happened. The atmosphere was tense, and accusations were being thrown around as they struggled to come to terms with the sudden loss of their leaders.\nIt wasn't long before rumors started to spread about foul play. Some whispered that the construction of the casino was to blame, while others pointed fingers at rival tribes who might have wanted to prevent the casino from succeeding.\nThe tribal council knew they had to act quickly to quell the unrest before it turned into violence. They met in emergency session to discuss the situation and came to the decision to hire a private investigator to look into the deaths of Running Elk and White Feather.\nThe investigator, Lucinda Geddis, was a seasoned professional, and she wasted no time in getting to work. She interviewed everyone who had been present at the meetings and at the casino, and she scoured the scene for any clues that might lead her to the killer.\nIt wasn't long before she found her first lead. A security guard at the casino had seen a suspicious figure lurking around the building on the night of Chief Running Elk's death. The guard described the figure as tall and wearing dark clothing.\nLucinda knew that this could be a crucial piece of information, and she set out to find the suspect. She combed through security footage from the casino and surrounding areas, looking for any sign of the tall figure.\nDays turned into weeks, and Lucinda was beginning to lose hope. But then, she caught a break. A blurry figure matching the description of the suspect had been captured on a nearby store's security camera.\nLucinda traced the footage back to the suspect's car and was able to track them down. The suspect was a local man named Harry Bright. Harry was a small time criminal that had no connections to the tribe or the casino. From what Lucinda could tell, he had never stepped foot in the casino. This was even more confusing as she could not figure out the motive that Harry had to kill Running Elk and White Feather. Lucinda dug deeper into Harry's past and found that he had a history of violence and had been in and out of prison for most of his adult life. She suspected that he might have been hired by someone to carry out the murders.\nAs Lucinda tried to connect the dots, she received an anonymous phone call from a man claiming to have information about the casino and the deaths of Running Elk and White Feather. The man refused to identify himself but promised to meet Lucinda in person and reveal everything he knew.\nLucinda was cautious but also desperate for answers. She arranged to meet the man in a deserted parking lot on the outskirts of town.\nWhen she arrived, she saw a figure standing in the shadows. It was impossible to make out his face, but she could tell that he was holding something in his hand.\n\"Who are you?\" she asked, her hand hovering over her gun.\n\"I'm the one who can give you the truth,\" said the man, stepping forward into the light. .\nAs he approached, Lucinda noticed a small piece of paper in his hand. It looked like a note.\n\"The truth about what?\" asked Lucinda, her heart pounding in her chest.\n\"The truth about the casino, and what really happened to Running Elk and White Feather,\" said the man, handing her the note. \"Read this.\"\nLucinda took the note and read it quickly. It was a confession from someone who had been involved in the construction of the casino. They admitted to cutting corners on safety measures and using subpar building materials in order to save money. They also admitted to sending bribes to a particular government official to help approve the construction of the casino.\nBut the most shocking revelation was that they had hired Harry Bright to kill Running Elk and White Feather in order to prevent them from revealing the truth.\nLucinda's hands shook as she read the note. This was the evidence she had been searching for. She looked up at the man, but he had already vanished into the night. There was one name on the confession, Mike Turnoil. Mike Turnoil was a local council man who was struggling financially. He knew that if the casino was approved and he could get a piece of the revenues, he would be set for the rest of his life. All he wanted was 2% of the revenue, which doesn't seem like a lot but in the long run would have made him a millionaire over night. Lucinda knew what she had to do. She gathered all the evidence she had and presented it to the tribal council.\nThe council was stunned by the revelations, and they knew that they had to take action. They immediately issued a statement denouncing the casino and calling for an investigation into its construction. They also called for a special election to replace the corrupt council members and ensure that nothing like this would ever happen again.\nMike Turnoil was arrested and charged with multiple crimes, and the other corrupt council members were forced to resign. The casino was shut down, and the land was returned to the tribe.\nThe deaths of Running Elk and White Feather had been tragic, but their sacrifice had brought about change. The tribe was united once again, and they were determined to build a future that was based on transparency and honesty.\nLucinda felt a sense of satisfaction as she watched the new council take their seats. She knew that justice had been served, and that Running Elk and White Feather's legacy would live on. She couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration for the two fallen leaders, who had given their lives to protect their tribe and their beliefs.\nAs she left the council chamber, Lucinda noticed a small group of people gathered around Running Elk's grave. They were singing a traditional song, and their voices carried on the wind.\nLucinda knew that the tribe had a long road ahead of them, but she also knew that they were strong enough to overcome any obstacle. She felt honored to have been a part of their journey, and she knew that she would always carry their story with her.\nAs she walked away, she couldn't help but smile. She knew that Running Elk and White Feather were watching over their tribe, proud of what they had accomplished. And she knew that their legacy would live on, for generations to come." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Brodir Bear and the Grumble\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1232\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a fable inspired by a relatable life experience (explaining the moral before or after the story, if you’d like)." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When I was young, we told stories around the fire, beneath the sky, seated in the lap of the Earth Mother. The cold wind teased our backs, but the warmth of the embers kissed our noses, and there was nothing else but the fire, and the story. In the darkness of the night, the voices carried a new magic that brought Brodir Bear, and Sastyr Mouse to life.\n\nBrodir Bear was big and strong. Brodir could find the sweetest berries, catch the quickest salmon, and fight the Snow Spirits with his long, dark claws. And when he stood back on his feet, and lifted himself up, there was no other creature in the forest as tall and mighty. But he was not always so clever. That made me like him. I have never trusted something too clever. \n\nOne morning, Brodir rose from the warmth and darkness of his den, and made his way to the forest. The day was sunny, and bright. As he moved to scratch his back against one of the pines, Brodir could hear the Mockingbirds in the branches above him.\n\n“This sun! So bright!”\n\n“Yes, yes, much too bright!”\n\n“I cannot even look into the sky!”\n\nAnd as he listened, Brodir began to feel a grumble. It started in his stomach, where it always did, and rumbled up through his chest, and all the way to his head, till it rested on his eyes. And the grumble made his eyes squint against the too bright light of the sun, and his lips curled down in a frown.\n\n“Bright,” he growled.\n\nAnd he left the tree, and continued into the forest. Even if the day was too bright, Brodir was hungry, and still needed food.\n\nJust beyond the thick pines was the river. It swelled with mountain snow, melting in the light of the too bright sun, rushing along the pebbled bank and stirring the micah within the sandy bottom so that each churn and curl of the water glittered. Brodir stepped into the edge of the river, his strong arms holding him steady against the swift current. The water swished and swashed around him as he waded deeper, until his belly touched the stream, and then he began to wait.\n\nIf he waited long enough, he knew a fish would happen by. And since Brodir was so quick, he would snatch the fish right out of the stream for his breakfast. As he waited, on the far side of the river, he saw the Racoons crawl out from inside their tree. The cousins came to the edge of the water, and dipped their paws inside.\n\n“Brrrrrr! Too cold!”\n\n“Yes, yes! Much too cold!”\n\n“I cannot even snatch a turtle!”\n\nAnd as he listened, another grumble came. It started in his stomach, where it always did, and rumbled up through his chest, and then down his shoulders till it stretched all across his spine. And the grumble made Brodir shudder against the chill of the too cold water, and his lips curled down into a frown.\n\n“Cold,” he growled.\n\nAnd Brodir waded out of the stream without any breakfast, and continued deeper into the forest. Even if the day was too bright, and the river was too cold, there was still the berry grove. He could smell the sweet blackberries there, and lay in the soft grass.\n\nThe grove was small, but Brodir didn’t mind. He lumbered his way through the thick leaves of the bushes until he had pushed his way through. The aroma of the sweet grass and the tart berries were a familiar comfort. Brodir rolled onto his back, and stretched out his arms and legs until he was as big as he could be. He inhaled deeply. \n\nThen, from their burrow in the ground, the Gopher and her daughter popped their heads out. They also took a deep breath.\n\n“Too smelly!”\n\n“Yes, yes, much too smelly!”\n\n“I don’t even want to leave the burrow!”\n\nAnd as he listened, another grumble came. It started in his stomach, where it always did, and rumbled up through his chest, and into his nose till it formed a disgruntled sneeze. \n\n“Chooooooooooo!” he growled.\n\nAnd Brodir sat up. And his eyes squinted against the too bright sun, and his spine shivered at the thought of the too cold river, and his nose wrinkled against the smelly grove, and his lips turned down into the biggest frown yet.\n\nThen, someone new appeared. It was Sastyr Mouse. She was small, and gentle. She could find her way through the dark using only her whiskers, her sharp teeth could chew through even the toughest wood, and her tiny claws could dig deep through even the toughest ground. Sastyr was clever, but not too clever. She was still kind, and did not try to trick her friends. So I liked her too.\n\nSastyr scampered over to Brodir, and smiled up at him.\n\n“Isn’t it a beautiful day, Brodir?”\n\n“Too bright.”\n\n“Oh. Well. How was your breakfast? Did you catch a nice yummy fish?”\n\n“No fish. River too cold.”\n\n“Oh. Well. At least you came to your favorite grove! Have you been enjoying the grass?”\n\n“Too smelly.”\n\nSastyr was very confused. This did not sound like the Brodir she knew at all! Brodir loved the warm sunlight. And going to the river to catch his breakfast. And laying in the grove to smell the sweetgrass and the blackberries.\n\nSo she asked, “Who says it’s too bright?”\n\nAnd Brodir paused, and thought for a moment. \n\n“Mockingbirds.”\n\n“Maybe too bright for them, but they are never happy! It can be sunny, it can be cloudy, it can rain and rain and rain! Doesn’t matter! Not too bright for you!” she inched closer. “Who says it’s too cold?”\n\n“Racoons.”\n\n“Maybe too cold for them. But they have small, naked hands. Look at your thick warm fur! Not too cold for you!” she pointed out. “Who says it’s too smelly?”\n\n“Gophers.”\n\n“Maybe too smelly for them! But you love the smell of the grass!”\n\nSastyr scurried over to a big, plump blackberry and plucked it from the vine, handing it carefully to Brodir.\n\n“And I know you love this!”\n\nBrodir took the berry. He sniffed it for a moment. It was ripe and juicy, and smelled deliciously tart. He popped the berry into his mouth, and let the fruit roll over his tongue.\n\nAnd the grumbles that had been sitting on his eyes and back and nose began to fade away.\n\nAnd he looked up at the gentle sunlight pushing its way through the leaves, warming the cold from his spine. He took another breath, and the smells of the grove were welcoming once again.\n\n“Not too bright,” he said. “Or cold. Or smelly.”\n\nAnd Sastyr smiled proudly as she curled up on the grass next to him. “Not at all.”\n\nAnd Brodir smiled back. \"Beautiful day.\"\n\nThe night has a way of whispering secrets, wrapped in stories, told around fires beneath star filled skies. Reminding you to be careful whose voices you listen to. Whose magic you allow to be cast over your life. Voices who babble of sunlight that is too bright, and rivers that are too cold, and groves of berries that are too smelly. \n\nOr the voice within you that is grateful to greet the sun. Wade into the waters. And smell the sweet Earth." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Frayed Edges\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2994\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story where the laws of time and space begin to dissolve." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Monday, 6.50 p.m.\n\nSitting hunched over the scratched, wooden surface of the desk in the corner of his room, Hideo Nakamura froze mid-brush stroke and stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck rising up in response to the sudden, inexplicable certainty that he was being watched.\nHe was home alone, had been for days, the house was deathly quiet and the night was still. He’d been buried so deep in silent concentration while he practiced his kanji that he could have heard a moth flap its wings or a spider scuttle across the floor. Nobody, not a living, breathing soul, could have come down the hall, slid open his door or entered his room without him noticing.\nNot a living, breathing soul.\nAnd yet now he spun on his stool expecting to find one.\nHis breath caught in his throat as he came around and rose, arm up in readiness of defence, calligraphy brush brandished like a weapon.\nNobody was there, but the sensation of being watched didn’t leave him.\nHis room was small, just eight tatami mats in size, and from where he stood to the wardrobe ahead was only a couple of paces. To his right, next to his desk and flush against the wall, was a thin, uncomfortable mattress, which lay, without a base, flat on the floor. Three of the bedroom walls, those to his left and right and the one that held a curtained window behind him, were made of brick and plywood. The one ahead, which separated his room from the corridor, was a two-panel traditional shoji, a latticework of bamboo in a wooden frame, covered with sheets of translucent paper. The outermost panel was on a track so it could slide, but it was closed now, the way he’d left it after entering the room.\nA bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, illuminating the room sufficiently. Apart from a few boxes full of textbooks and a rack on which sat some pairs of shoes, there was nothing in the room behind which anything that shouldn’t have been there could have hidden. The only place any such thing could have been concealed was inside the wardrobe, which was built into the wall and sealed by another sliding door.\nIt was this door that captured Hideo’s attention, a second after he stood. Or, more specifically, it was the almond-shaped tear in the centre-most paper panel and the blackness beyond that his eyes came to rest on.\nThe tear had been made a few days prior, when his feet got caught in the blankets as he hopped out of bed, causing him to stumble and plunge his thumb through the delicate paper. Ordinarily, this would have been a cause of concern for Hideo, but with his father away, there had been no need to panic. What his father didn’t know couldn’t turn him into that wrecking ball of rage Hideo had become all too familiar with since the passing of his mother, so it was a blessing he wasn’t there to discover the damage. As minor as it was, it would have pushed him over the edge, the way every slight inconvenience seemed to these days.\nHis father’s unpredictability had been growing steadily these past months, along with his dependency on alcohol, and Hideo could no longer anticipate when or where he might snap. They didn’t speak much anymore, not even by text, and he had no idea how long this latest ‘business trip’ might last. It might be days like the last one, or weeks like the one the time before. Whatever the case, he really did need to find time to re-paper that shoji. For all he knew, his father could return that very evening, and that would mean trouble, and bruises. If only he could fit it in around studying for his exams, practising for the upcoming calligraphy contest his school had put him forward for and training for the baseball league finals, all would be good.\nOr at least as good as it could be, while walking on eggshells.\nAn unexpected flicker of motion in the darkness behind the tear made Hideo jump and he staggered, bumping into his seat and knocking it over. He didn’t know what he’d seen, but he didn’t hesitate in dropping his brush and snatching up the wooden stool in panic.\nTurning back towards the wardrobe, he half expected to find the door sliding open, or something hideous wriggling out through the hole. Instead, he found there was no longer darkness behind the tear, and he thought he could see the sleeve of his jacket. He creased his brow and took a step closer, squinting to peer through the hole. Yes, that was it, his white and blue baseball jacket, hanging where it always hung, in silence.\nAnd with that realisation, he no longer felt he was being watched.\nJust my imagination, he thought, lowering the stool to the floor and catching his breath. Studying too hard, too much time alone in this empty house.\nWhatever he’d felt, whatever he’d thought, it was just a con of the senses, his mind playing tricks, telling him it was time to take a break. Deciding to do just that, Hideo picked up his brush, put it back on the desk, then made his way out of the room, heading down the hall to a lonely kitchen.\n\n\n\nTuesday, 5.45 a.m.\n\nAn hour before his phone alarm blared, he came alert, woken not by hunger pangs, nightmares about his father or fears of being late for an exam, but by the horrible, goose-bump raising sensation of once again being intensely watched.\nIn the dark, he fumbled on the floor for his phone, snatched it up when he found it and jabbed it out into the room. The screen lit up with the press of a button and he scanned it around, searching for anything out of the ordinary. His surroundings were illuminated only slightly, but it was enough for him to see that all looked normal. His door was shut, his curtains drawn, the light bulb dangled darkly. His desk, his stool, his boxes of books and his shoes. Everything exactly as it should be.\nHis hand stopped moving when the glow from his phone found the tear in the closed wardrobe shoji. There was a darkness beyond that was darker than that of his room and seemed to throb. Panic seized his chest and he jumped up, casting off his blankets and the textbooks he’d fallen asleep with and stepping forward, free hand searching for a cord above his head, tugging it when he found it to ignite the bulb.\n“Is somebody there?” he asked, dropping his phone on the mattress and advancing in his shorts towards the wardrobe. Don’t be stupid, he thought. Of course nobody’s there, how could anyone be there, it’s just the wardrobe!\nHe was at the door in a second, reaching out with one hand, slipping his fingers around the edge of the panel’s wooden frame to slide it open. The light from the bulb rushed in, proving at once what he already knew, that there was nothing to discover within except dangling clothes, the smell of mothballs, and towers of folded blankets on the floor.\nThe darkness, if it had been there to begin with, was gone now the door had been opened and Hideo stared in bewilderment. The wardrobe was void of evil, peeping entities and he no longer sensed any presence.\nWhat is wrong with me? he wondered, wiping sweat from his brow as he slid the door shut. Why am I so on edge?\nTelling himself it had to be exam stress, performance anxiety, exhaustion, looming deadlines, (fear of his father), grief over the loss of his mother, or some kind of mind-warping, paranoia-inducing combination of it all, he slid the door shut and returned to his mattress, switching off the light as he passed beneath it and crawling under the blankets to get more sleep.\n\n\n\nWednesday, 7.58 p.m.\n\nThe second he entered the room, sweaty in his mud-stained baseball uniform, aluminium bat resting lightly on one shoulder, he could sense the presence watching him again.\nStopped in his tracks in mid-yawn, he spun to glare at the tear in the brittle square of paper. His ceiling light was on, as he’d left it, and though earlier it had shone into the hole, allowing him a glimpse of the clothes within, all he could see there now was darkness.\nHis face flushed as his eyes probed the black-as-pitch nothing, which seemed to be staring at him. His blood ran cold, his heart thumped loud, a lump stuck firmly in his throat.\n“Who’s there?” he said, voice trembling, fully convinced now someone was hiding in the wardrobe. “Whoever you are, you better come out! I’ve a baseball bat and I’ll use it!”\nNot a sound came back in response, not a whisper, not a giggle, not a growl. If it was a ghost or a demon or something otherworldly, haunting him and spying from beyond, it didn’t play its tricks to established rules. If it was human or a thing of flesh and bone, it didn’t care a jot it had been rumbled.\nMaybe it was because he’d just come home from training and his body was pumped full of adrenalin. Maybe it was because the baseball bat felt powerful in his hands. Maybe it was just that he was sick of being weak and quaking before others like a baby. Whatever it was, Hideo forced down the lump in his throat and strode to the door, slamming it back and stepping through, brandishing his weapon in both hands.\nAs before, there was nothing out of the ordinary to be found, and nothing to be seen other than undisturbed clothes on metal hangers and neatly folded blankets on the floor. He jabbed his bat forward into his shirts, slid them aside, checked every inch of the back wall.\nThere was nothing. There was no one. It was empty.\n“This doesn’t make sense,” Hideo said, lowering his bat. He was inside the wardrobe fully, in the space between threshold and clothes. He decided he should examine the torn paper panel from this side, in case there was something he was missing, so he took hold of the sliding door and pulled it shut.\nAlmost at once a chill seemed to descend, and he felt like he’d entered a vaccuum. It could only have been his imagination again, brought on by the uneasiness of the moment, so he forced the notion from his mind and told himself it wasn’t as cold as he thought.\n“Is it you?” he asked, craning his neck to examine the frayed edges of the tear. “Are you mad because I ripped you? Are you trying to drive me insane?”\nThere was no logical thought behind his words. A shoji panel couldn’t feel anger, nor did it have the ability to haunt or stare, regardless of how old it might have been. And old it was, which was clear from its brittleness and discolouration. Who knew how many people had slept in this room and used this wardrobe? Who knew what this door might have seen had it only had eyes? Logic didn’t seem to factor into the current situation, so Hideo thought nothing of it when it occurred to him the tear did look like an eye, and he suddenly had the urge to peer out through it.\nSlowly, carefully, he moved his face closer and positioned himself right behind the hole. Squeezing one eye shut, he squinted to see out through it, only to be punched in the gut by the shock of seeing someone on his stool, hunched over his desk, apparently writing.\nTerrified, Hideo spat the air from his lungs and fell back, dropping to crouch amongst the blankets.\nWhat the Hell? his mind raced, trying to process what he’d seen. What the Hell was that?\nStarting to question his sanity and clutching his bat in both hands, he straightened back up and returned his eye to the hole. He had to have been mistaken, he couldn’t have seen what he thought, it was impossible.\nAs impossible as the fact it was now somehow dark inside the room.\nSomeone had switched off the light. The person who’d been sitting on his stool? He couldn’t see much, but he could tell right away that person was gone. He could make out shapes in the darkness, like the stool and the desk, and the mattress lying flat against the wall. There was something else too, a large mound on the bed, and just as he realised what that was, a light blazed into life, a rectangular light he knew came from a phone.\nHe was frozen, captivated by what he saw, unable to look away. He watched the rectangle of light rise and bob acround the room like a ghostly lantern. He knew, before it happened, the ceiling light was going to come on, like he knew who’d be beneath it when it did.\n“Is somebody there?” he saw himself ask, before jerking his head away and shuffling back, burying himself deep in shirts and jackets.\nNo no no no, he panicked, pressing himself back against the wall and clutching the bat to his chest. Eyes shut, he thought he heard the familiar swooshing sound of the shoji door opening.\nImpossible, he thought, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut he felt they would burst. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, it can’t be.\nSwoosh, again, then bang and his eyes jerked open.\nHad the door opened and closed? Had someone peered inside?\nNo. I’m imagining it. This can’t be happening. It can't.\nThe first time he’d felt like he was being watched, he’d been sitting at his desk drawing kanji. The second time he’d felt it he’d been lying in bed, disturbed from a restless slumber. The third time had been just a few minutes before, when he’d entered his room and sensed the presence.\nAnd what had he done then?\nAs completely immersed in this nightmare as he was, Hideo didn’t believe the door would open (again?) until it did. Nor did he believe a version of himself, a doppelgänger, a demon, would step across the threshold and enter the wardrobe.\nBut. It. Did.\nIt was dressed like him, it carried a baseball bat like him, it was dirty from sliding in mud like him, but it wasn’t him, because he was there, shrinking back into the corner, watching it prod its bat into the clothes to sweep them aside.\nSteel hangers screeched along a tarnished metal rail like witches shrieking, and the noise cut right to his core. Just a minute ago he’d done the same thing, examining the back of the wardrobe and finding nothing. This one wouldn’t come away so empty-handed. This one was going to find him. And with that thought, that fear, that panic-inducing, life-threatening realisation, Hideo acted.\nThe scream surged from the depths of his being and he pushed himself up and lunged forward, swinging his bat as he did, striking the shocked-looking doppelgänger square in the face and knocking it out of the wardrobe.\nHe didn’t stop. The adrenaline coursing through his veins was electrifying, it made his body burn and flooded him with rage. This was a fight for survival, a battle to retain his place in the world, to protect his identity, and he couldn’t let this phoney Hideo hurt him.\nAnd so he hit it as it fell to the floor, again and again on the head, pounding it into submission, pummelling it brutally until the feeble, desperate cries it made fell silent and its spasming, copycat limbs lay deathly still.\nHe stood over it then, panting, wheezing, sweat dripping off his brow, blood dripping off his bat. He stared at the demon’s battered face, found he was unable to focus on it, didn’t want to. Instead, he examined the blood splatter that decorated the tatami mats around it. The patterns looked like kanji characters painted in thick, red ink.\n“Hideo! I’m home! Come say hello to your father!”\nThe shout that seemed to come from the kitchen at the bottom of the hall startled him, and he jerked his head to stare at the bedroom door. His father was home? Since when? He hadn’t heard him enter. Had he been there all along? If so, what had he heard? And what would he say about the torn paper shoji, let alone the monster on the floor?\nWincing, afraid to see the mess he’d made and the demon’s caved-in face, he looked back down. There was nothing there. No doppelgänger. No splatter. No kanji characters sketched in crimson blood.\n“Hideo! Get your ass out here, boy!”\nConfused, panicked, Hideo caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shiny, polished surface of his bat and shuddered when he didn’t recognise it. It was his face, of that there was no doubt, but something was different, something had changed, something seemed missing from his eyes.\nThat’s when he noticed the bat wasn’t covered in blood.\nBut he knew that it could be.\n“I’m hungry, Hideo! Come and cook something! Don’t make me go in and get you!”\n“There’s no food in the house,” he muttered, too quiet to be heard by anyone other than himself. “There’s nothing in this house at all.”\n“Hideo!”\nHe knew what it was now.\n“Hideo!”\nHe knew what was missing from his eyes.\n“Hideo!”\nIt was fear, and worry, and sorrow; grief, and loneliness, and hate. All of it gone, as if it had drained out of him, leaving just the one thing he had left.\nAnger.\n“Coming!” he shouted back, then he went out of his room to greet his father.\n\n\n\n\n\n“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”\nEdgar Allen Poe" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Something Valuable\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2893\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone finding a treasure in an unexpected place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Something valuable\nThe Ritz Paris\nIngor I lost my watch, you must go and try and find it, its a matter of live and death...hat’s an order. First go the police and retraces our steps of where we went today.\nParis 9th district earlier that day\nOn our stroll back home from a restaurant luncheon I was leading the way in front of my son and his girlfriend. We were walking through the interesting passages in the 9th district. I stopped for a minute to glance at a very elegant wrist watch that somebody had let fall from her wrist;it was definitely a woman’s watch. It was placed on the edge of a flower pot. In passing I thought how decent of somebody to pick it up and place it there\nI had walked on a few paces when I heard my son ask me if I saw the watch. “Yes,” I replied. It looked extremely elegant. I told him I thought it was a fake. By this time he and his girlfriend were having a discussion of whether to go back and have another look. Their conversation ended in them returning to re-examine the watch. I was a little baffled by their decision. Were they intending to pocket the watch?\nTo my astonishment they returned with the watch declaring it was a Hermes. There was no doubt as the watch’s face had Hermes beautifully engraved for all to see. I immediately saw the wrist strap was broken, no doubt, the reason the owner did not at first notice it had dropped to the floor. It was beautifully made, and definitely had a rather special air about its beauty. My instant remark was. “It is a remarkable fake. Will wait for you while you take it back.”\nMy son looked at me, his face light with a slight smile. “Finders, keepers.”\n“You can't be serious.” I turned to his girlfriend. “What do you think?”\nShe was a pretty young woman with an engaging smile that now spread across her face. “We should probably take it to the police, but if you think it is a fake they will just laugh at us. Maybe we should keep it and examine it more closely.”\nThat evening the three of us, over dinner, examined the watch. I had to admit it was truly beautifully made. My son had done some research on Hermes website and found a similar watch they made costing north of 10,000$. Towards the end of the evening there were two camps….. fake or genuine. I suggested as they were in Paris they should go to the Hermes store and ask them to repair the bracelet.. Sometimes an occasional repair or replacement of a bracelet is included in the original price.\nTwo days later they found themselves passing Hermes. Why not go in and spend a moment enquiring about a bracelet.? The watch was in his pocket. They had never entered the sanctuary of the house of Hermes with its luxurious selection of merchandise. Most people enter to only admire the craftsmanship, to actually possess an article with a Hermes signature would be a dream, something beyond their reach.\nMy son, later in the day, related to me the Hermes experience. The moment they stepped into the store they were greeted by a charming young woman asking if she could help them. They declared they were interested in a bracelet..She personally took them over to the watch counter. This was staffed by a serious looking man with a mesh of hair flopping over his forehead. He wore a large pair of stylish glass giving one the impression of a wise old owl. Their conversation ensued as follows:-\n”What can I do for you young people.” It was said in a manner indicating he was about to waste his time. It was as if he had had years of experience dealing with casual dressed young people that came into the store out of curiosity with no wish to buy anything.\nMy son asked if they repaired Hermes bracelets.\nIn the same superior tone of complete disinterest he replied. “Yes we do but I will need to see the watch and bracelet.”My son produced the watch and bracelet. He placed it on the counter.There was a look of complete surprise on the owl’s face. “Is this your watch?” Not waiting for an answer the young man had picked up the watch and examined it closely. He turned to my son and said, “I am fairly sure this is an extremely rare piece. Only four watches were made, all being by special order. It is of great value. Just a minute I will fetch my manager.”\nAt this point my son and girlfriend started to get nervous about how they were going to explain their possession of the watch. In the temporary absence of the owl man they quickly decided to leave the store taking the watch with them. Once in the street they decided at speed to get away from the Hermes store.\nBack at the store, the owl man returned to the watch department with his manager. Surprised not to see the two young people he called for Emma.\n“ Emma, have you seen those young people.”\n“Yes, they left about two minutes ago.”\n“I knew it. They must have stolen the valuable watch without knowing the real value.”\nThe manager, a man in his late fifties with a healthy head of white hair and a dapper pencil mustache that did justice to his fine featured visage. Spoke. “Hubert, are you sure it was one of the four signature watches?”\n“Yes, sir, I would stake my monthly salary on it.”\n“In that case we should contact the four people who purchased the watch and find out whether theirs is missing. Of course that is assuming they still own them, but given its value and rarity I would imagine the watch is still in their possession. If a watch is found missing we will at that stage contact the police. Should all owners of the watch tell us all is well, then Hubert you have mistaken a well copied example for the original. Incidentally you should check our surveillance cameras to give the police a record of the two young people should we be face with robbery.”\nRecords of sales for watches of a rarity and value of this nature were religiously kept. The management made the calls and it was on the third call they found the wife of a Russian oligarchy was enjoying a shopping spree in Paris. According to her husband, who was found to be in London, told them her wife was distorted and he was extremely angry. It appeared bracelet on the watch two mornings ago was causing trouble and, no doubt, the watch had fallen off during the day. She apparently had not noticed the missing watch until earlier that evening. She was staying at the Ritz and had already reported the missing watch to the police and sent somebody to look for it.\nAt the evening meal that night my son, supported by his girlfriend, detailed to me all the details of their visit to Hermes. Their conclusion was that they might have found a rare and extremely valuable watch. In fact, according to the man they called owl only four were made. In an agitated manner my son posed the question of what should they do?\nI replied. If Mr.Owl is correct it means the owner of the watch is extremely wealthy and no doubt has already informed the police of the loss. I also think if your intention was to sell it I would suggest that is a non starter as it would be extremely difficult to find a buyer. My suggestion is that you go to the police first thing in the morning. I think a good night's rest will convince you of my reasons.\nThe next morning they went to the police. They did not tell me the events of the day until they arrived back that evening with an envelope containing a handsome reward.\nTheir history was that at the police station they told the officer in charge that they had found the watch in the passages of the ninth district three days ago. The next day they had planned a day of visiting the Louis Vuitton museum with friends. Yesterday they went to the Hermes store. They told the police that they were attended to by a rather superior individual that had very little time of the day for them. But they did learn that the watch might be of great value. While the snotty man rushed off to find his manager they left the store.\nAt this stage the police officer asked them a few questions.\n“Why did you not report it immediately”.\n“We thought it was fake of little value therefore why waste the police’s time.\n“Well you will be interested to know that the loss was reported by the owner with Hermes reporting the possible thief of a very valuable watch. They also wish to question two young people that were in their store yesterday. Go and sit over there I have to make a couple of calls”.\nApparently my son and his girlfriend waited about twenty minutes before the officer returned.\n“The owner of the watch is apparently ecstatic with the news and she has asked you both to come to the Ritz at 11.30 this morning with the watch. She would like to thank you. Her name is Inessa Babanin. She is Russian. Hermes is also delighted they have solved the problem.\nAt 11.35 two young people were ushered into the magnificent suite of Madame Babinin by her personal maid. The maid told them to be seated Madame will be with them. The meeting at the Ritz was discussed at dinner that night.\nThe room was quite large and most elegantly furnished with a handsomely designed carpet over a parquet floor that highlighted the beauty of the craftsmen work on the furniture. There were several beautiful subdued lit table lamps scattered throughout the room. The atmosphere was of tasteful uncompromising luxury, daunting to those not habituated to this stand of living.\nOne of the double doors opened and in walked Madame. Both my son and his girl tried to hide their surprise. In front of them was truly a beautiful woman. She must have been in her mid thirties with a body profile that had spent many hours in the gym. She had long blond hair cascading over her shoulder, perfectly groomed. She wore what were obversely diamond earrings matched by a diamond choker. Her fingers were covered with several rings and on her wrist they were a few, no doubt, gold bracelets. Her dress was definitely by some well known designer's creation. She actually apologizes for her appearance but she was meeting her husband for lunch and he always insisted on her showing off as much jewelry as possible. She added “ It proved to his friends of his wealth and that he had good taste.”\nWhen she spoke her voice was soft and charming, demonstrating a perfect knowledge of the English language dominated by a slight accent.\n“You two delightful young people did not come to see a fashion show but, with my profound thanks, but to return my watch. I suggest, if you wish, we have a cup of coffee and you tell me how you found it.”\nThe coffee was ordered and they told her the story of the watch including their visit to Hermes and the police.\nShe seemed totally delighted with our story, in fact she started laughing with a sound of pure joy. We found it difficult to understand this outburst of captivating humor.\nAfter the laughter came her soft and silky voice.”I feel an extraordinary urge to tell you my secret. I don’t know you and will most likely never meet you again, but I owe you a deep note of gratitude. You look like a very nice human beings. I would imagine a little in love. I think we are roughly in the same age bracket.”\nShe paused, went over the window and looked out on the Place Vendome for about a minute. As she turned back to take her place on the couch she said.\n“I will tell you my story. I come for a small village about 200 miles from Moscow. My father is Mayor of the village. A few years ago an influential man from the central government, (as he informed us), came to have talks with my father. At that time his age was probably around forty. I was only 16 when he first met me and I remember I thought of him as old and not a very attractive man; he seemed aggressive and selfish. I was one six children my poor mother spent her time in the kitchen and washing clothes. We live on a farm just outside the village, In fact it was one of the largest holdings in the region. We lived a live where every penny counted. There seemed never to be enough money to satisfy everybody’s needs. To make matters worst one of my brothers feel ill with a disease that need a complicated operation. The family budget got tighter.\nBy the time I was eighteen this governmental man had acquired or leased most of the farmland of the region and was in the process of constructing an oil and gas business on the property. I learned he had used my father as an introduction to the area. I also learned that the lands contained vast amounts of fossil reserves. During that period, foreigners from the region were often in our house. I was totally surprised shortly after my eighteenth birth, with the blessing of my father, he proposed marriage to me. I asked him for twenty four hours of reflection. My original impression of him still held but over the period of constantly seeing him they had mellowed slightly in his favor. He was rich, ambitious and seemed to appreciate our family. When he was not with us he lived in his own house in Moscow. I was a mediocre student without any particular talents, trying to get a scholarship at a university, I knew my parents could not afford to send me. Although I sensed our family finances were improving as we had sold most of our land to Boris, that was the name of the man who proposed to me. When I tried to look into the future all I saw was struggle to survive with little chance of finding a young handsome prince to carry me off my feet. I married him three days later in a lovely village wedding. My first night with him I knew was nothing to do with love, but he was gentle and kind.\nWithin days I found myself in Moscow in a house I had only occasionally seen in society magazines. What was disturbing was he had nothing to do with the government, but he had many friends close to the central powers. He was also surrounded by a large family of aunties, uncles and nephews that depended on him. I soon realized my role in life was to be his trophy wife always dressed in the latest fashion with magnificent jewelry. In this area of clothes, jewelry, makeup and hair dressing, no amount of money was spared. He often took me to dinners, receptions and official functions. In the early part of our marriage this glorification of me was both extraordinary and rather flattering. I had never experienced anything like it before it felt like living in a fairy book wonderland. Apart from his devotion to my beauty he made very few demands on me. It must have been in the sixth year of our marriage he fell ill with a serious bout of pneumonia, his age was beginning to tell. During this period I found a document stating that on his death I was to return to my family in the village of my birth with a modest annual pension. The rest of his assets were to be divided up amongst his various family members including all the gifts of jewelry he had given me. I was shocked. He slowly, with difficulties, recovered from his illness but it left him weakened and under regular doctor orders. I was left searching on how I could extract enough wealth from his fortune to be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life. Through one of my brothers, now involved in the jewelry trade, I found a little genius who could copy the most complicated jewelry creations. Now for my new found friends my secret.\nThe large majority of my dear husband’s gifts of jewelry are fakes. In my own right I am quite a wealthy woman. Now you know why I was so anxious to find the watch. To thank you for the last time….. here is a little gift”. She then handed over an envelope, no doubt, containing money. “Now I really must go to the luncheon appointment. I hope it will not be long before I fly from my golden cage. Please be my guest and have another coffee. The maid will let out." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Hoai and the Holy Fox\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2682\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a fox spirit (a gumiho, jiǔwěihú, kitsune, or hồ ly tinh), inspired by, e.g. Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese folklore." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was 8031 BCE. Cáo was the youngest of four kits. He struggled for recognition within the fox family, but when his mother soothed him at night in their den, she would always say, “One day Cáo, one day. If you work hard at your magic, even you may write your story into the stars.”\n\n\nIt was 1420, and Emperor Lê Thái Tổ was racing through Lam Sơn, his bitter enemy, Marquis Li Bin of the Ming army, hot on his heels. His men had moved off at an angle to divert the pursuing enemy while the emperor moved off alone, to the protests of his personal guard. Perhaps they’d been right. Shortly after they’d parted ways, the emperor had heard the war horns of the Ming army off in the distance, and although it was difficult to judge, he estimated that the diversion had not been entirely successful. Then his horse stumbled in a deceptively deep hole in the grass, and became lame. The emperor left her and raced on, now on foot. The river on his right was widening, but also getting deeper and more powerful. There was no escape that way. And the thicket on his left now seemed to curve in towards the river…\n\n\nIt was 1958. Hoai was born after a very long delivery. His umbilical cord was cut and tied, and he was placed on his mother’s chest. But he was silent and unbreathing. His mother was exhausted, and in pain. And increasingly desperate, though the midwife was now gone, rushed off to another birth. But, miraculously, after two minutes that seemed like centuries to her, he suddenly jolted, breathed in, and to his mother’s almost unbearable relief, began to cry. His parents, honourable though poor, brought him from their small rural village where they were both employed in a brick works, north to Buôn Ma Thuột, where a comparatively wealthy old aunt lived, (all four of their parents having been killed in the first year of the war.) After a few weeks, it was decided Hoai’s parents would go back to their village and their jobs, and little Hoai would stay with his aunt for the first three years of his life.\n\nThe plan changed when, after a couple of happy years, his aunt, surprisingly for her age, got engaged. This meant she would have to move far away, up north to Vinh. Hoai’s parents made the trip back up to Buôn Ma Thuột to collect their little boy, but bandits attacked and killed them on their journey, and they never arrived. His aunt, deeply saddened by the loss of her brother and sister-in-law, told the little Hoai that he would be coming with her up to Vinh, just like he’d wanted, but it soon turned out that her new fiancé wouldn’t have it. To his aunt’s horror, he was left at the local Trần Nhân Tông shrine. Just left and abandoned there at the age of just over two. His aunt wailed tragically that he would surely die, but her fiancé merely shrugged and mumbled, “That’s good,” and whipped the horse whose traces held the trap the two of them were sitting in. It moved on.\n\nBy age five, living with a local teacher who’d lost her son in the war, Hoai had grown into a happy, healthy and helpful little boy. He brought her joy. The teacher was very kind to him, although she could be bossy and outspoken sometimes. When she was caught teaching the folk religion of Đạo Lương to her class and her boy, she was warned, but that wouldn’t stop her. Her fate was sealed not so much by the teaching of forbidden religion, but by her domineering attitude, in a time and place where women were still seen as second-class citizens. She was beaten to death by the authorities. People muttered that this was going too far, but they were all scared about being made the next example of disobedience to authority…\n\nA family who was friendly to the victim took Hoai in, but although he got along well with the mother and one of the sons, the father and other son took a dislike to him. The son got into a fight with Hoai, who barely fought back, though he evaded most of the other’s kicks and punches most infuriatingly. It was then that the father walked him down to the local police station and bribed the sergeant to do something with the boy. As they walked down there Hoai had asked what he’d done to offend him. The man clipped his ears. The boy asked what would happen to him. The man said that he could die for all he cared. How would that help him, the boy questioned, his already high-pitched voice rising. But that just earned him another clip.\n\nThe sergeant arranged to have Hoai shipped up to an orphanage in Thanh Hóa. Unfortunately Hoai’s cycle of moving north, and to steadily larger towns and then cities seemed to work against him. He was bullied at the orphanage, although he had one good friend, a little girl called Nhung. By the age of eight, most of the staff at the orphanage, though generally tolerant and even appreciative of the boy and his amiable and helpful attitude, even in diversity, agreed that he was an unsettling influence and arranged to have him moved. They struggled to find a place for him though, and ended up shipping him even further north to an even bigger city, Nam Định. Nhung insisted on coming with him. The new orphanage was very overcrowded, and a weird keep-to-yourself culture made the place grim. A tall and skinny man who was secretly a monk, and who administered the orphanage, appreciated Hoai. He tried to keep an eye on him, but the young boy just had a way of innocently annoying many of the people around him. He managed to get in the bad books of a gang of big kids who were insulted that he refused to be dominated by them. They waited until he was alone, then jumped out at him, and surrounded him. After saying they were going to kill him, and Hoai asking with genuine bewilderment how his death would help them, they started hitting and kicking him. Hard. Nhung had been coming to meet him though, and when she saw from a distance what was happening, she ran up and threw herself furiously at the boys. Who accidentally killed her, then raced off. Despite his injuries clearly supporting their side of the story, the Thanh Hóa judicial system was extremely corrupt, and Hoai himself was accused of her murder!\n\nThe boy was locked in a police cell for months and months, subsisting on extremely bare rations. He got skinnier and skinnier. Though he never complained, eventually the genuine smile, that had been his default facial expression all his life, faded. After the better part of a year they moved him to a jail, north, in Haiphong. Hoai spent his first day in the cells reflecting on the fact it was his eleventh birthday, and he had no freedom to celebrate it, and, now that Nhung was dead, no-one to celebrate it with anyway. He sat on his bed, back to the wall, knees up and those dreadfully skinny arms around his bony ankles. He looked up through the bars at the night sky.\n\nOne evening he was looking through the bars as usual, and all the noises around him seemed to fade. The guard’s toilet cistern, with its broken ballcock, filling and filling and spilling and spilling. The guards’ snores. The man in the cell over from his wanking repeatedly. The gravelly call of the occasional bulbul, up in the teak trees outside the jail. They were still semi-active, even though it was now night-time. The burbling snuffles of one of the men heroically failing to hide his sobs, and the wailing of a fifteen-year-old boy in another cell, who wasn’t even trying to hide his personal grief. The bicycle bells from out on the road, along with the heavy tyres of trucks bumping through the potholes and over debris. And, always, in the background, the sound of the war – gunfire and explosions out on the edge of the city, and sometimes within it.\nAll sounds had disappeared other than Hoai’s own heartbeat. He still stared through the bars up at the night sky. There were a few clouds, but he could see the stars most of the time. They were coming for him tomorrow. He’d been rotting in a cell for what seemed like most of his life now, but somehow he knew it. He would be executed tomorrow.\n\nAlthough his eyes were well-adjusted to the dark now, soon even his vision seemed to fade. The walls of his cell. The floor. The ceiling. The corridor outside the barred wall of the cell, and then the bars too. He lifted an arm slowly in front of his face. Nothing. Back outside the window though, he could still see the night. The stars. He just hung there in space. A heartbeat and stars. It was then that he remembered Linh, the teacher who’d once taken him in. She was the most loving mother figure he could remember. At the end of the day, when he’d lain peacefully on his mattress under his warm blanket, she would read to him from a book with words on the cover he didn’t then understand: Lĩnh Nam chích quái. He’d thought first it was a book about her, as the first word looked like her name. The book had marvellous stories. He most enjoyed hearing about hồ ly tinh, the foxes with magical powers. Especially the cửu vĩ thiên hồ, the nine-tailed celestial fox. Linh would read until the little boy fell asleep, pull the blanket up for him, and leave him dreaming the stories of Vietnam’s spirit.\nHoai’s body was still in the same position on the bed as 3am came and went, and yet he was not aching or stiff-necked. His knees and his back felt fine. He was still looking out the small high-up barred window in complete silence. And complete darkness, except for the piercing beauty of the stars. Suddenly he felt a jolt intrude on his inner calm. There! Two eyes at the window! The heartbeat started racing. Eyes. Whiskers. A long snout. Large triangular ears. The fox wriggled impossibly through the narrow bars, and leapt down onto Hoai’s bed. His senses of hearing and sight returned, and he looked out through the bars to the corridor to see if anyone was observing him, but it was 3am, and everything seemed quiet. He looked back, and although most of his facial expression didn’t change, his eyes went very wide. The fox had nine tails! This was a hồ ly tinh! It walked around him on the bed, found a soft-ish spot, and lay down, splaying out the tails so he could easily count them. The boy was awed. This celestial fox was at least ten-thousand years old. It would have been practicing its magic at least five thousand years before the first Vietnamese dynasty! It was the most worthy-of-respect being he’d ever been near, and yet he couldn’t help softly stroking its muzzle, head and back.\n\nA slightly unsettling mental bond formed between them. It seemed to need his help. It seemed to need his… his death. How could his death help anything? Hoai asked that question that he’d struggled with on many occasions throughout his life. The bond between them deepened, and suddenly he understood. Though a brick-maker may die, the bricks they have made remain. Vietnam was a sacred temple, and each course of bricks in its many walls were the legacy of it people over the ages. And although war had eaten away at the strength of some parts of the structure, the calm, cheerful, intelligent, and brave spirit of the country had, on the whole, strengthened and beautified it more and more with time. Through the way he'd lived his life, Hoai had contributed many bricks. And he now understood. With his death he could remove a source of contamination of those bricks, especially around one of the most precious parts of the building.\n\nThe bond between boy and fox broke. They looked at each other and had true understanding and appreciation. The fox leapt back up towards the windowsill, and Hoai lay down on his prison bed. And for just a glimmer of a second he thought he saw the ghostly shape of Nhung, riding on the back of the hồ ly tinh!\n\n\nThe magic of the cửu vĩ thiên hồ was strong, but not enough to leap back in time that far. But, with the sacrifice of the two special children he’d hunted for so long, he could do it. The next day, as they boy died, his body riddled with firing squad bullets, his soul pushed at the cửu vĩ thiên hồ, and Cáo was flung back into the past.\n\n\nEmperor Lê Thái Tổ heard the thunder of horses’ hooves far behind him, but catching up. He ran on desperately. Suddenly there was a flash of white, close over the waters of the river. He looked over and saw the body of a young girl in a white dress floating on the waters, her expression quite calm, although she was obviously dead. The emperor took off his armour and waded into the freezing churning waters. He grabbed the body of the child, and, when they were out of the river, he picked up his armour, and the child – though waterlogged she was very light – and carried her over towards the thicket. There was a small opening just there! Although he suffered many painful scratches from the prickly thicket leaves, he managed to walk through about ten steps until he found a small clearing. There he dug a hole, and buried the girl, saying prayerful words over her grave when he was done. There he hid, knowing it was only a matter of time until his enemy found him.\n\nMarquis Li Bin knew he had his hated rival in his grasp now. He could see the impenetrable thicket on his left getting closer and closer to the river. Yes! The fool had walked into a trap! This evening he would be burning the emperor’s tongue to ashes, and storing them until he got home in order to graffiti a rebuke to Lê Thái Tổ, and his pathetic kingdom, right on the Li Bin stronghold gate. That would teach this peasant realm to mind their manners.\nSuddenly, from the direction they were headed, came a white fox. With many tails? It darted this way and that, and the marquis, who knew he was in control of the situation, decided he could take his time, and follow it. As they got closer and closer though, the lure of the chase of the animal seemed to take him over. Several times he thought he had it, but by the end of the day it had eluded him. Each day after that he would start his army searching for the wretched creature earlier and earlier, and they would find it. But it would elude them! Each day he pushed the men harder and for longer. The chase occupied him completely. Then, finally, after a month’s chase, they caught it!\n\nMarquis Li Bin reached his stronghold, and paused. The remainder of his army – after a long and incredibly wearying five-month journey – trudged wearily forward into the compound, towards their lodgings. Li Bin had no ashes to adorn his stronghold’s gate with. The fox’s tail-of-nine-tails would have to do.\n\n\nAnd, through Cáo, a new story was added to the holy pages of the Lĩnh Nam chích quái, and the temple that was Vietnam rested more calmly, more beautifully, and more assuredly on its foundation of ages. With the two heavenly children on his back, Cáo leapt unblinking up towards the stars." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Please Don't Touch The Art\n\nGenre: horror\n\nWord Count: 2292\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about an artist whose work has magical properties." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The last rays of sunlight sliced through the sweltering Bornean rainforest. The buzzsaw sound of cicadas, the flute-song of the barbet and the bark of an orangutan heralded the tropical dusk. Beth stumbled around in the swamp, hardly knowing which way to turn, or where to point her camera. So much to see, so little time.\n“Madam, we should go”, said Awang, the local guide, looking around nervously, “it will be dark soon”.\n“Just a couple more minutes, please”, said Beth, angling her camera lens into the mouth of the giant carrion flower. The maroon and yellow arabesque seemed to draw Beth closer and closer, and…\n“Madam, be careful!” Awang sprang from the massive buttress-root that he’d been sitting on, “we must go” he said, he demanded.\nHeavy gray clouds, framed by massive Keruing trees, skidded across the barely visible sky; the forest canopy pressed downward, the palms leaned inwards, the jeweled orchids and fire-red gingers turned drab in the glooming grove. The mud sucked at their shoes, and roots entrapped their feet. \n“Awang, I’m perfectly fine” said Beth, though the fetid corpse flowers were starting to make her nauseous. She wanted to stay a while longer, but Awang insisted that they leave at once. The sun descended behind the hulking mass of Mount Kinabalu, shadow and light blurred in the steamy undergrowth. \nThey trekked back down to Kampong Balabakan, the nearest village.\n“You must not tell anyone, nor show anyone”, said Awang. The swamp was a secret place, a sacred place, occupied by the spirits of the forest.\n“I promise not to tell”, said Beth. \n+++\nCold light reflected off the snowy field, illuminating the studio in the old barn. Six giant canvasses, primed brilliant white, hanging on white-washed walls, stared at her, accused her, demanded things of her. Beth Whitmore could delay no longer; it was time to start work. \nShe spread the photos out on a desk, manipulated the images on her iPad; the compositions and color palettes came easily. The secrets of Kinabalu spilled from her, unfiltered and uncensored. A rare and strange prehistoric beauty, a heritage to be shared, celebrated, not concealed. The promise to Awang seemed a silly and distant thing. \nBeth arranged the brushes, tubes of paint, rags, and other instruments in neat rows on her work bench, waist high, within easy reach, the orderliness threatened only by Boris, her little black cat. She grabbed a two-inch brush and blocked out the shape of a huge pitcher plant on the first canvas, a giant Venus flytrap on a second… and a colossal inflorescent corpse plant, the Amorphophallus Titanum, grew skyward on the largest canvas, ten feet tall, six feet wide. \nBoris yawned and stretched out in the winter sunlight. Beth tickled his tummy.\n+++\nBlake Weir phoned Beth. The paintings had already been placed with collectors, important collectors, sold, sight unseen. It was unprecedented. The corpse plant would hang in the lobby of the new Wexler contemporary art gallery in Miami. It was a fabulous coup for Blake, the upstart Gallerist, and for Beth, the sparkly new insurgent in the world of art.\n“I can sell the next hundred paintings too”, said Blake, “there’s insatiable appetite for works in the tradition of Kahlo and O’Keefe, exploring queer ecology …”\nBeth hated the comparisons; they felt burdensome and horribly premature, but Blake knew his business. \n“When will you need the paintings?” she said, flatly, interrupting his practiced monologue.\nBlake was taken aback. “I thought you’d be excited. You stand to make at least $200,000 from this one show, not to mention the exposure”, he said.\n“Blake, I am so grateful for everything. It’s just that…” and then Beth went quiet; how could she possibly explain? “Things are a bit strange at the moment…. and I lost Boris”, she said.\n“Boris? The cat?”, said Blake, “I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved that little fellow”. \nIt wasn’t the only thing that Beth had lost. \n“I need you to collect the paintings… as soon as possible”, she said.\n+++\nIt started when she began detailing the various plants, when she revealed their identities on the canvasses. It started with a tug and twist on the brush, a spasm that rendered a palm frond in a single stroke. Had her wrist cramped? \nThe heel of her hand slipped into wet oil, smudging the paint into the impression of rotting tree bark; corruption and decay in one chance mishap. \nA brush slipped completely from her fingers. Had it dropped on the floor? Was it caught in a fold in her clothing? Had it pierced the canvas and fallen into the painting itself? \nWas it lying on the rainforest floor?\nBeth needed a break.\nAnother brush disappeared, tubes of paint, her iPhone. Boris was lazing on a cushion in front of the pitcher plant…\nBeth searched everywhere for the little cat; the house, the barn, she even searched the paintings…\nThe plants stiffened in her presence, as if poised to jump at her, grab and snap at her, impale her. They were sentinels waiting and watching. \nShe needed them gone!\n Beth was losing sleep, haunted nightly by a recurring nightmare in which camera-toting tourists trampled knee-deep through the Kinabalu swamp, and Boris, the little black cat, wailed, lost and lonely in the rainforest. Awang was always there at the end of the dream, disappointed.\n+++\nA tow-headed boy, six years old, sat cross-legged beneath a painting of aerial vines suspended from the mossy limbs of ancient fig trees. He was in a quiet corner of the gallery on Madison Avenue. Ignored by the adults, uninterested in the spooky flower paintings; he was playing a game of Angry Birds on his iPhone. He was on level two, and still had one life left.\nA root, a tendril, something organic, crept from the painting, down the wall, behind his head, and looped around the back of his neck.\n+++\n“Oh, how sexy” said a little old lady in a croaky voice, “but how grotesque”, said her identical companion, dressed in matching sensible clothes. They were contemplating a deadly carpet of hinged lips, spiney teeth, in the center of which, a giant Venus flytrap, large enough to consume a small mammal, seemed to pulsate, raw and fleshy, inviting to the touch. \n+++\nThe opening-night crowd gathered in the gallery on Madison Avenue.\n“Beth Whitmore’s Plant Life, a collection of paintings inspired by her recent trip to Borneo”, said Blake. “Queer, sensual, seductive, expressing strangeness and separation, fluidity and adaption, and some ancient wisdom in nature…” Blake entertained the upper east-siders with allusions to the challenges Beth had faced, he conveyed a sense of the struggle that lay at the heart of her creative process, but vaguely; Beth was a genius, an enigma, not fully understood and not fully understandable. It was an important part of the brand.\nBeth stood behind Blake, gaunt and pale, playing the part of the grateful young artist, but she felt neither pride nor authorship in the paintings; they’d long since ceased to be her creations. They were independent, sentient things. \nThe crowd was being tugged at, gravitating into clusters around the paintings. Closer and closer. \n++++\n“Have you seen a small boy, my son?” said the blond-haired woman in the ankle length coat. \nThe receptionist, Kelly, fresh out of college, was not entirely clear about her role at Blake Weir’s gallery. Mainly it consisted of sitting around looking pretty, which she did with an untroubled, vacant mind, dutifully rising to the demands of an occasional query or instruction when called upon. Yes, she’d seen the boy earlier, over there. Kelly pointed at the vines hanging down from the forest canopy, like ropes suspended from gallows. The mother seemed more annoyed than worried. \n+++\nA giant yellow phallus emerging from a green and purple inflorescence, against a backdrop of the dank rainforest; ten feet high, the canvass stretched from floor to ceiling. The Titan Arum towered above Muriel Wexler, the famous socialite, all skin and bone and drippy jewelry. \n“Well, it’s very striking dear”, said Herb, her husband, a bald man with furrowed brow, “but must we have it on permanent display in the lobby?” Herb was troubled by the artwork, repelled by it. He was not a prude, but the painting felt just a little bit… lewd.\n“Oh, the Miami crowd will just love it!” said Muriel, which he did not doubt knowing something of their lurid tastes. Muriel extended her skeletal, veiny hand out, fingers reaching toward the canvass, “apparently, they bloom only once every seven years, and they emit a terrible stench. Perhaps we can get a photo of the artist next to her painting?” Muriel’s fingers brushed the yellow paintwork. The thrill of flesh against flesh pulsed through her body, she quivered.\n“Excuse me, have you seen a little boy anywhere?” said a blond-haired lady in a long black coat. She seemed flustered. Herb hadn’t seen the boy. When he turned back to the painting, his wife had vanished.\n+++\n“My sister, I’m looking for my sister,” said the small mousy woman in the sensible clothing. \nEverybody is looking for someone, lamented Kelly, who recognized the elderly woman. She had an identical twin sister; they dressed in identical clothing, sensible clothing. They were the Adams Sisters. They often came into the gallery, croaking away like little toad-people. Blake was always very nice to them; they lived in a penthouse on 79th Street, apparently. \n+++\nBlake was troubled. His gallery seemed to be shrinking, the paintings were crowding inwards. Something was wrong, Beth had hinted at it, but she’d been so evasive. He discovered her standing in front of the gaping maw of the man-sized pitcher plant. The painting had charmed him with its saturated colors and exotic otherworldliness, but it now felt to him like the entrance to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. \nA dark object nestled in the hollow of the pitcher, a moving thing, the shadow of a small creature through the translucent membrane. Beth was awfully close to the canvas, leaning into the painting, leaning over the mouth of the pitcher. Beth suddenly went white as a sheet, her eyes rolled up into her head, she fainted in shock, and collapsed in a heap on the gallery floor. Blake rushed to her.\n+++\n“Have you seen…”\nKelly was getting tired of this. A man called Simon with very white teeth was standing in front of her. His boyfriend was missing. \n“How do you spell Tanza?” said Kelly, scribbling the boyfriend’s name into her notepad.\n This job was getting very intense and wasn’t much fun.\n+++\nHerb Wexler stared at the painting. A woman was wrapped in a sensuous embrace around the giant yellow protuberance, the face expressing a vaguely familiar ecstasy. The line that divided pornography from art suddenly seemed clearer to Herb. How had he not noticed this before? How strange the resemblance to his wife…\nA woman screamed. It was the blond-haired woman in the long black coat, she was pointing at the painting in the corner of the gallery, opposite the reception desk. She was pointing at a wide-eyed, unblinking, terrified thing suspended beneath the rainforest canopy, caught in aerial roots like an insect suspended in a spider’s web. \nAn Adams twin gawped in horror at a pair of legs and sensible shoes that poked from the clenched jaws of the Venus flytrap.\nThe shadow of Kinabalu fell over Madison Avenue. The forest canopy pressed overhead, insects buzzed, birds whistled and trilled, the stench of carrion wafted in the air, and from far away, from out of emerald darkness, the voice of souls and spirits, ancient and new, joined together in a cacophony of woes.\nKelly put on her coat, packed her small bag, abandoned the reception desk, and fled the gallery. She’d be home in New Jersey within the hour. They could take this job.\n+++\nAwang was not pleased to see Beth. \nThings had changed in Kampong Balabakan and on the slopes of Kinabalu. Sinister forces roamed the trails, foreign objects lay like trash in the undergrowth, and tormented souls babbled in the sacred swamp. A Kampong elder had seen a female orangutan dancing seductively in the grove of carrion plants. A young girl, senseless with fear, reported that she’d seen a small boy hanging from vines, helpless, in the sky. The villagers pointed accusing fingers at the young men foraging, at the old men hunting, at the tourist guides in their new polo shirts, at Awang. Someone had awakened the spirits of the Mountain; someone had wronged the dead.\nAwang really wasn’t pleased to see Beth.\n“But you must take me back up there, Awang” she insisted, she pleaded. “I promise, I will never say anything, do anything to betray your trust”. She was begging him.\nBeth looked pale and sweaty, dark rings around sunken eyes, desperate.\nAwang went into his small dwelling, a bright blue cinderblock hut with a rusting corrugated tin roof, and he returned with an odd assortment of objects in his outstretched hands. Mud-encrusted brushes, half empty tubes of oil paint, a battered and broken iPhone. He handed these things to Beth, “do you know about this?” he said.\nShe did. \nAwang seemed disgusted that she would care about these useless objects. “Is this what you are looking for?” he said. \nNo, it wasn’t what she was looking for.\nMount Kinabalu loomed in the distance, vast, remote, and eternal, surrounded by impenetrable jungle. Beth glimpsed spirits in the trees, she smelt faint odors of death, she heard the simian chatter of the great apes. For a moment she thought she could hear the sad wailing of a small cat." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Surprise Gifts From the Forest\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1045\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character being led somewhere by a stray cat." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Mother nature has more surprises in her bag of tricks than we give her credit for. I interviewed Mike for a school assignment after he'd received an eagle (a dead one) which is a high honor to use in ceremonies. Mike is a Chippewa who helped me use nature as a form of therapy.\nI walk a short distance on our country road and into the woods each morning. I stand quietly in the same spot, and wait, as Mike taught me how nature would help and present me with a gift of knowledge or sometimes a surprise. My gifts included watching a herd of deer relax under the pines, baby bunnies frolicking in a wild raspberry thicket, and a long Blue Racer sunbathing on a rock. Once a beautiful hawk feather fluttered to my feet! I left it, as it's against the law to take them, but I'd come to recognize my 'gifts' from nature.\nThis day was the most meaningful, but instead of standing, I sat on a large hollow log because worrisome family issues and health problems pushed me down like a heavy, calloused hand, sapping the energy right out of me like a dry sponge. I began to throw myself a pity party as a sound from behind grabbed my attention. Something rustled around in the leaves and made quite a commotion. As Mike taught me, I slowly turned so I wouldn't scare my 'gift' away.\nA small leaf pile rustled around as if it had a life of its own! Next, a tiny black animal popped out, followed by two more. They were kittens! I was used to seeing black squirrels, they belonged in the wild, but kittens did not. I sat on the soft, mossy log and waited. It didn't take long for them to notice me and stare back. One sat on his haunches like a lemur, and I couldn't help but laugh, which sent them racing back to their leaves. I remained quiet, and eventually, they returned and moved near me. One climbed up the leg of my jeans and sat on my knee! The other two were close by.\n\"Where's your Mama, little ones?\"\nA second kitten climbed me, and the third rested against my boot. I stayed still and asked for guidance while counting to one hundred to help me remain calm and figure out what to do. Mike taught me this natural relaxation technique because I am not a patient or calm person.\nThe kittens stayed when Mama came out from behind a tree. She meowed louder, then almost growled, and they ran to her! I was sure someone dumped them because they weren't afraid of humans. I returned home with a live trap and two cans of food. Gato was our latest porch kitty, so I had plenty.\nThe little family was where I'd left them. I watched them play and tumble on the log where we'd met. Mama lay stretched out, sunning herself in a patch of grass nearby. I sat on the ground a couple yards away and put an open can between us. As my Gran used to say, the kittens\" were on it faster than ticks on a hound dog!\"\nAnother sound came from the pines, and I tilted my head and listened, but it didn't repeat.\nThe kittens played in and around the empty can. I knew they'd die out here as they wouldn't know how to find food or escape predators like feral cats. I held the trapdoor open using a string. I wanted them all inside before I closed it. Mama went in, sniffed, drank the water I'd poured into an empty can, then laid down. The kittens followed. I let go of the string, and the door closed, which didn't phase them.\nAs I listened for that sound again, a fourth black kitten came out of the leaf pile! I tried to pick him up, but he hissed and ran into the trees. I followed, keeping him in sight, and again heard the sound. It was a person, and I recognized the voice!\n“Margie! Help. Margie! Over here!”\nIt was my elderly neighbor, Angela! I saw her red blouse as she lay on the ground! I ran to her, forgetting about the fourth kitten.\n\"Angela! What on earth are you doing out here? Are you hurt?\"\nShe said,\" My hip hurts, but mostly I'm just embarrassed, like that woman on the commercial, 'I've fallen and can't get up!' \"\n\"Don't move. You may be injured and not feel it yet. I dialed 911,\"\n\"Margie, I pulled my car over and tried to catch a kitten by the road. I couldn't let the baby out here alone! But I tripped, and down I went. I'm so glad you are here!\"\n\"Me too! Here, take a sip of water.\"\nShe scrunched up her sweet apple doll face and said, \"Cooties,\" which made me laugh as she took a sip.\"\n\"No Cooties, silly! This is a spare bottle for my other rescues.\"\n\"Other? \"\n\"There's a mom and four kittens! One led me to you!\"\n\"Oh, that's so great. I was so worried about that kitten. Poor babies.\"\nI have to say that our township has the best fire and rescue in the state and has awards to prove it. Several camping areas are near us, so we have the equipment and experience for our four-thousand permanent residents. The ambulance arrived within minutes, and two EMTs checked Angela's vitals and helped her onto a gurney. One asked, \"Why, Miss Angela, have you been frolicking alone in the woods again?\"\n\"Why yes, I have!\" she said, making us all laugh. She's in her late seventies and very active in the community, still living in the house where she was born in the 1930s.\nI waved goodbye, then returned to the cats, where the fourth kitten waited for me on top of the cage! Our vet told me they were all in good shape, only a bit dehydrated.\nAngela was up and around in no time. She promised to get a cell phone and never go into the woods alone again.\n\nThat day, my gift was learning how quickly you forget about your own troubles when busy helping someone else!" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: THE CAT CALLS\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2238\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character being led somewhere by a stray cat." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Noemi was always a loner. Growing up, she loved animals, and her best friend was a little cat she named Timmy. Timmy the Tabby. He was a beautiful, bright, spirited tabby kitten she adored. Usually, her parents were strictly against stray animals coming into the house. But they never saw Noemi so open and playful, so they allowed it, this once. Years passed, and the two were inseparable. Timmy followed her to elementary school most days and was at the front door with a welcome home happy kitty greeting whenever she returned. Sometimes her mother swore she heard voices from Noemi's room but then shrugged it off. Maybe her imagination was playing tricks. \"Cats can't talk.\" She chuckled. Then one day, Timmy disappeared. Everyone helped with the search. Her parents, the neighbors, the pastor's son, most of their family, even her cousins, second and third removed.\nNo one ever saw the cat again. No one except Noemi, that is. There he was after Sunday service, in the church garden sleeping. The tabby cat woke up, lifted its head, got up, and walked toward the back of the church. He purred and squeaked out a soft meow as if beckoning her to follow. She started to follow him, then church members began to fill the streets, rushing to their cars, hoping to catch the football game after the late afternoon service. Noemi's parents called out to her. She looked away momentarily, but when she turned around. The cat was gone. His tail disappeared into the shadows of a nearby alleyway. Downtown, at the shopping mall with her parents, she saw him licking his paws by the corner barbershop. Noemi turned for a second to tug on her mom's jacket coat sleeve, \"Mom did you see him? It's Timmy again\" when her mom finally paid attention, he was gone.\" Honey that was probably another stray cat that looked like Timmy.\" \nAll the sightings of her estranged cat began to take a toll on little Noemi. She was scared and confused, doubting reality, slipping into a fantasy world. They called her the dreamer. Noemi was in another world at home, in classes, and even on the playground during recess. She cried off and on for a week when the sightings stopped. But then the nightmares began. Night terrors and the feeling she was fastened to the floor and couldn't move. No one could hear her screaming in the darkness. Other times she heard voices in her room, so many frightened tormented souls in her dreams. When she woke, there were a pair of red eyes in the shadows of the moonlight that shone through her window. Noemi was only 8, frustrated, frantic, and inconsolable. she was helpless until she wasn't.\nEventually, Grandma Dweeta took matters into her own hands. One evening, she tucked Noemi in bed and sang a sweet melody that sounded like \"I love you, my precious\" and \"sleep tight, little one.\" She spoke kind words and made warm milk and honey before bedtime. Noemi called her \"Sweething\" because she knew how to make everyone feel better. As for Noemi, Sweething made the moonrise and the sunset with her smile. Her Grandmother's big bear hugs made her feel safe and comforted, keeping the night terrors at bay. Sweething often read Noemi traditional tales at night about the Adina and Hopewell Indians and the ancient circles encompassing their small town. \nShe told stories of terrifying and wondrous creatures like the Red-haired Giants or the Sky people who came down to Earth and taught them many new skills and advancements. Sweething spoke of falling stars that took the form of men and the war between the gods and the giants that resulted in a great flood. The dreamwalker, who fought in the great rebellion against the Giants thousands of years ago, was a powerful magical being who could travel into dreams and nightmares to slay any monster that frightened people in their sleep. Grandma Dweeta told her that these were special people who could shift into the astral planes, enter the sleep realms, stave off evil attacks, and help to heal those who suffered terrible nightmares, monstrous visions, and difficulties in their sleep life. The children were often the most affected by some evil spirit terrorizing a village. The parents would tell them how to recognize a dreamwalker, so they would know who to trust in the sleep world. \"Look for the mark of power, glowing magic symbols that appear on their hands.\" Sweething believed with practice and training, most people could learn to shift their dreams, but only a few chosen ones of each generation would bare the mark of power. After a few years, Noemi could control the horrific scenes in her dream world. She learned to shift her dreams, change nightmares' outcomes, and break the invisible chains of night terrors. However, some of her cousins, first, second, and third removed, swore that Noemi appeared in their dreams, doing God knows what because they would wake up feeling rested but never remembered what happened. \nLife was perfect, as time passed with joys, sorrows, many lessons learned, and so much more to know. Noemi was excited when she arrived at the most famous international University in Ohio but not emotionally prepared for how small one feels amongst thousands of students. Her hometown, Circleville, named for the mysterious circular earthworks of the Native people known as the Hopewell tribe, was not very exciting at all, except for the Fall Pumpkin festival each year. There was pumpkin spice everything; pumpkin-flavored foods like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin fudge, and pumpkin spice lattes which were Noemi's favorite treats. People came from near and far for Circleville's pumpkin delights. Then the festival was over, and the only highlight of her week was taking short road trips around southern Ohio to see the sights with her dad. He would usually stop by the Amish bakery on the way to Chillicothe for the best apple strudel you have ever tasted. He almost popped a vein in his neck several times when impatiently driving behind an old-fashioned horse and buggy in the hills and dales of the small Ohio towns. Now that she was in Columbus, Noemi was a big city slicker that stayed to herself most of the time studying, reading, watching TV, or dancing to her playlist while singing with her toothbrush microphone in PJs before going to bed. \nShe needed to prepare for the early morning treks to the south campus cafeteria for coffee. There were so many new places and faces of students walking, talking, laughing, running, back and forth pacing, fraternity boys rushing about kind of days. Being blindsided by a classmate late for her next class, bumping into each other, books falling to the ground as her papers fly up into the sky scattered in the winds, kind of days. She was often at a loss, feeling swallowed up, and daydreaming was her out. \nShe imagined returning home with her mom and dad, getting ready for their yearly road trip to the Oklahoma intertribal Powwow, a welcomed tradition. She always enjoyed discovering more about her maternal great-grandmothers and her indigenous ancestry. Most of all, Noemi missed visiting her favorite uncle Will, Sweetthing's youngest brother, at his farm in Gahanna, Ohio. They used to make dinner together, picking fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes, squash, greens of varied sorts, and granny smith apples. Uncle Will made the most delicious dishes. She could smell the faint sweetness of stewed tomatoes, candied sweet potatoes, hominy grits, and the hardy robustness of chicken frying in a black cast iron skillet and apple pie. The piece de resistance was his signature dish, her maternal Grandmother's family recipe for \"Msickquatash,\" originally a Narragansett Indigenous word for the Thee sisters' meal known to us as succotash. Noemi didn't have the heart to tell uncle Will that Sweething spilled all her recipe secret ingredients to her aunties before passing away, leaving poor uncle Will in the cold. But Noemi figured she would tell him to dice up red peppers, throw in some okra and add it to the green beans, onions, squash, and corn mixture. Now everyone in the family thinks uncle will is a cooking genius, and she prepares \"fry bread\" and \"hot water cornbread\" at family gatherings.\nNoemi was hungry, daydreaming about all that good food. I Better go to the grocery store. She promised not to be a \"basic\" freshman, ordering pizza all the time. She gathered her wallet and her smartphone and headed to the store. Noemi's nose was buried in her phone, surfing through her doodle diary app as she walked home. Noemi was in the zone and hardly noticed a scrappy-looking tabby following her home from the store. When she reached the front door of the apartment complex, It meowed loudly, an all too familiar meow. Startled, she looked up and down, shaken out of her reverie. The cutest tabby cat looked up at her with bright green eyes. \"Timmy?\" \"No, no, it can't be, can it?\" The little orange fur ball was persistent, weaving between her legs and meowing until Noemi relented and poured some cream into a small cat bowl left from the last stray cat she hosted. She laughed, \"My neighbors will think I'm running a cat Hostel.\" \n\"Kitty boy, here, kitty-kitty. Who's a pretty kitty? Huh? Who's a purrrty kiddy? Cats seem to like that, or at least cat people like it. The Tabby reemerged from, wait, from where did he come? He drank a bit of the heavy cream and ran into a narrow alleyway, meowing. Noemi followed the cat and walked through the small alley beside her home into a small park she had never noticed before. She couldn't believe she had missed it, with its overgrown weeds and neglected bushes. But the cat seemed to know the way, leading her deeper into the park until they reached a small, rundown house.\n\"Yes, Noemi, it's me, Timmy.\" \" I regret it's been such a long time, but I had to go.\" \n\"There was no other choice. You have no idea what's coming.\" \n\"You see that? Said the cat, pointing its paw toward the house. \nNoemi stared blank-faced, and hesitantly, she muttered, \n\"The big ugly house over there?\" \n\"No, girl, what's inside the big ugly house over there.\" \nNoemi strained to see through the window into the darkness of the house. She saw a flicker when suddenly a light flashed, and pulsating white light brightened. Noemi hesitated momentarily, wondering what it was, but then felt a strange, inexplicable pull. She reached out and turned the doorknob. The house was dank and musty, with cobwebs clinging to the corners, dust covering the furniture, and the odd smell of rotten eggs. But as Noemi walked further into the room, a light emanated from a small, locked chest. She approached the chest, her heart pounding, tightening, and gently lifted the lid. Inside, she found an old, leather-bound book filled with ancient-looking, arcane symbols. Glowing lights danced over the writing, a runic text or some Enochian calls, which seemed oddly familiar. Noemi did watch a lot of Sci-Fi films. Noemi flipped through the book and ran her fingers over the empty pages, feeling like she had stumbled upon something magical and mysterious. Suddenly words appeared like Enochian calls, lights emanated from the book's pages, and runic markings appeared on the top of each hand. What are these symbols? She asked. He answered, \"they are cat calls, an ancient language the Angels of Heaven gave to cats.\"\nThe low-pitched voice from below said, \"Clench up, hold your arms and hands firmly against your body and your legs tightly together at your ankles. Trust me, go flailing around, and you might lose a limb or two.\" \n\"Why would I do that?\" \"You're kind of slow, aren't you.\" \"No need to be rude, cat,\" she huffed. \"You're about to go on a little trip to another dimension\" Whoosh! Like falling stars exploding in the night sky, vibrant lights flashed around her. Noemi vacuumed into the tunnel and propelled forward at great speed. Screaming at the top of her lungs as she swooshed deeper into the whirling depths of the wormhole. But remembering Timmy's advice, Noemi kept her body tight, hands to her sides and ankles firmly together, just as the cat advised. Then as suddenly as it all began, she fell with a thud onto her living room floor, back in her apartment again; She couldn't shake the feeling that the cat was testing her. Timmy, the Tabby, was preparing her for something unimaginable. This road trip was the best, a journey to discover powerful magic that would change her life forever. \"Well, that was pretty good for a newbie. First-time dimension jumps can go wrong. Kiddo, we got a lot to do.\" Today This is just the tip of the dimensional iceberg. Noemi stared in disbelief at the glowing light tattoos on her hands. She looked over to respond to the cat. It was gone! She couldn't wait to return to her laptop and start researching the book she had found. But now, thanks to the cat, she discovered something even more magical that would take her on a journey beyond her wildest dreams. And for that, she was grateful to the little cat that led her astray." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Little Glutton\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1267\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a cat shelter." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Thanks for coming in, it’s way easier to do this in person than over the phone” Lisa had been stopping by sporadically for the three months I had been assigned to oversee the final stages of construction on the new cat shelter and veterinary clinic here on The Rez. A City Indian myself, living at the casino hotel and commuting daily to the facility in a little work-provided sedan with the big words \"Animal Humane Society\" plastered along the side, I had already been quite the oddity in town. But she was always kind and wise, happy to help me where she could.\n“Ehhh, this is becoming like my second home,” she said with a smile that squinted her little black eyes to get even smaller behind her round, tanned cheeks. Her silver hair was pulled back in a quick braid, like she wasn’t planning to come into town today, but did it for me.\n“I need to order the door signs, and the boss just last-minute agreed to get them in both English and Ojibwe per your suggestion last week. But,” I paused for dramatic effect, playfully smiling because, of course, there was a catch for her getting her suggestion approved, “we need someone who knows both words to tell us what to write. I don’t trust Google to give me the best translations, or at least not as good as you can.”\n“Oh geez,” the long O really emphasized her heavy northern Minnesota Native accent, “I can help with the words, but yer gonna hafta spell check fer me with that Google machine of yers,” She wasn’t as technology inept as she pretended to be, especially for an elder. She was the one that got the Twin Cities Humane Society’s attention to The Rez in the first place. She had started an email chain with other animal rescues of neighboring reservations to seek out help for all the strays she was caring for on her property. She had even applied for, and received, a grant for the hay shelter her husband built on the side of her house. She didn’t like the internet, but she knew how to make it work for her.\n“Deal,” I quickly agreed, “You talk, I’ll write and proof it as we go.” My Google machine skills were top-notch, and I had been learning Ojibwe during the construction downtime, “OK, obviously, our first sign should say Welcome! That’s AH-neen, and spelled A-A-N-I-I-N, right?”\n“Eya’! You got it,” she was always pleasantly surprised at the words I knew, even though she’s the one who taught me half of them.\n“OK, next is Clinic since the hall to the left will be the medical side, and to the right is the shelter where we’ll house the strays.”\n“AH-ko-zee. It means ‘they are sick.’ You remember from yer lessons that Ojibwe is a verb language. We don’t talk in places and things like just clinic, we talk in actions.”\n“I remember. And I already found it in the Ojibwe dictionary: aakozi,” I was Googling and listening, getting everything into one place at once, “Then the next word should be Shelter.”\n“DA-zhay. That means ‘the animal lives in a certain place.’ Like how we’d point to a foxhole or a beaver den. The animals are here in this certain place, for their purpose of getting adopted.” Lisa was a storyteller, so there would never be a short answer with her. It was in her nature to explain and expound, to share all the knowledge she kept inside. It’s part of why I loved asking for her help.\n“Dazhe. Found it, perfect word. Now, the clinic will take all animals combined, but the shelter will have one side for cats and another for dogs. Let’s start with the word for cats.”\n“GA-zha-GAIN-suk. I love that word. It actually means Little Glutton,” she almost couldn’t get the definition out as she started getting the giggles, ”I just imagine the first ancestor to see a white man’s cat, after only knowing hardworking animals like the horse or skinny animals like the fox. They probably called it a little glutton as a joke and it just stuck. But I guess that’s what they are, eh?”\n“I think it fits them perfectly,” I smiled, thinking of my sister’s chonky cats that matched the description, “Gaazhagensag. Got it. Now dogs?”\n“on-ee-moo-SHUG. They were our first companions as the wolves came to trust our great-grandparents. We used to be grateful to the animals. We believed they chose us, to serve and comfort us. So in return, we would protect and care for them. We had a spiritual bond with animoshag before the settlers came. That was before we believed we owned them and instead when we lived alongside them.”\n“But if we truly believed it’s our job to care for them, why are there so many sick and sad strays? Why have so many been starving and dying in the streets until you stepped up and now until we came in?” I had always wondered how a culture so tied to the animal world had moved so far from it.\n“‘Cause of the poverty. We can’t afford to feed our own humans, how could we feed the dogs? And the stories of how they came to trust us died with my elders. When the boarding schools came to The Rez, they said it was against God to talk about the spiritual connections with the natural world. The nuns said they were just dumb mutts, and we had to believe them or risk getting our knuckles smacked. Our bond with the animal world has been broken but this place will restore our promise to care and they can go back to being our spirit guides and partners on the land.” \nThat’s why she had given all of her time and most of her money to caring for strays. She was trying to restore the balance of all spirits on The Rez. Maybe she believed that if we could care for the animals better, we could care for each other again, too. \n“Makes sense. I’m sorry, sometimes my ignorance might come across as accusatory or flippant. I know our little shelter is just a band-aid on much bigger issues up here.”\n“Yer more than a band-aid, ma-KOONZ,” Makoons meant Little Bear and it’s what she called me as a term of endearment and emphasis. She had told me how the bears taught us how to live a balanced life, to find time for work and for play. I worked too much and I needed to learn balance more, so I wasn’t a makwa, a full-grown bear. I was makoons. “You came back. Sure, you never lived here, but yer grandmother did. Her spirit called you to fill yer heart with a want to help and yer brain with figuring out how. And then you brought it all back to us. Together, we can change the culture. We can be the proud people we were only a century ago. Yer little shelter is helping remind us who we are, thank you.”\n“It was all you, Lisa,” I have never been good at taking compliments, especially not from someone who deserved them more than I did, “Well, you’ve helped me get a good start on these signs. Let me play around with the formatting and design stuff tonight and we’ll figure out what else we need to say tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel?”\n“Eya’, see you then, my girl,” she nodded and as quickly as she came, which wasn’t quick at all, she left." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Dining Room Table\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1641\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story entirely of dialogue. Nothing but dialogue. No attributives (he said, she said, etc.). No descriptions of scenes or gestures or movements (unless these things are presented in the dialogue). Just words between quotation marks. Pure, beautiful, untainted dialogue." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“You think I WANTED to come here? I had nowhere else to go, Kenny. Trust me, I’m here for our children, not for you.”\n“You could hide out anywhere in the world and you pick MY cabin. Bullshit, Ashley. I’m sure you’re banging some new guy by now that could take you in.”\n“No one has a space like you have and you know that. Most people don’t do the whole Grizzly Adams survivalist thing on the rez like you. In fact, I think it was your total need for solitude that contributed to our divorce. Oh wait, you weren’t in solitude, you had…someone else.”\n“I’m right here, Ashley, don’t pretend like I don’t have a name. Ken and I aren’t trying to be petty, we’re trying to figure out what to do next; for all the kids, for all of us. This isn’t ideal for me either, but you got here last, you’re the ones we’re trying to fit into the puzzle.”\n“His children and their mother are not just pieces of a puzzle, we’re the whole picture, girly.”\n“I’m his fiancee, not girly, thanks. And I actually love his Grizzly Adams vibe and I helped him build this place up to even be able to support ANY of us now that the world has gone to shit. My kids consider him their dad, we’re a team, and you’ve been the enemy since we got together. But we’re willing to bring you in if you can at least TRY to be fucking nice and maybe a tiny bit grateful.”\n“Enemy is a funny way to say wife, but whatever, fine. Kenny, what do you have in mind to fit us all in this little puzzle of yours?”\n“We can stay at the cabin for now. I’ve got four bunks to fit all four of the older boys tonight. Ashley, you can stay in our room with Little Man, and Kallie and I will sleep on the couches for now. I made a stockpile run to Walmart the day before it got raided, so we have enough food, but I need to set traps and start hunting this week, too. In the meantime, you girls need to establish housing. There are a few customer cabins around the lake I don’t think the owners will come back to. I’ll let you pick where you want to ride this shit out and we’ll strip the rest for supplies.”\n“You want us to leave too, Ken? Why can’t we just stay here? At your place?”\n“I just think it would be better to have a neutral home base where I can work and prep. I need to get all my guns out and ready, I need space to ration, vacuum seal, and can the food. You can both keep the kids safe somewhere else.”\n“Yeah, but what if it reaches us up here? What if it’s not even the actual shit, but the burglars and rapists and looters that get to us first? I came here because you said you’d protect us, not kick us across the lake to fend for ourselves”\n“I realize that Dear, but the situation has changed. I can’t protect all of you here alone. Give me some space to figure this out, but I promise I’m still protecting you.”\n“OK, so who are you protecting first, Kenny? Your flesh and blood children or this homewrecking whore and the kids that just call you dad?”\n“I’ve already asked you to be kind, can you not accelerate to name-calling me and trying to act like the lives of your children are so much more valuable than mine? Honestly, you’re lucky we didn’t just take the boys in and leave you at the goddamn gate, so AGAIN, a tiny bit of gratitude would be cool.”\n“Oops, sorry.Thank you SO much for screwing my husband for the last six months of our marriage. Thanks for putting our kids in a custody battle that dragged out for ANOTHER six months just so you could have him all to yourself. Thanks for ruining what we had for twenty years because you couldn’t find a single guy in all of Minnesota who would date you.”\n“Ashley, you know that what we had went bad a long time ago. Kallie wasn’t a homewrecker, our home was wrecked halfway into that twenty. Let’s not dig back to the past, I’m sorry, but it’s been three years since the divorce. We’ve got other shit to focus on now.”\n“Whatever you say, Kenny…And for my contribution, I think we should go to Steve’s cabin. Or is it still Steve’s? I haven’t been here in a few years, I suppose. That four-bed at the end of the lake?”\n“Yeah, Steve still owns it, and I don’t think he’ll come back for it, he’s out in Cali, he won’t mind. We’re gonna raid that one, not stay in it. We gotta pick places people aren’t gonna go. That cabin is too accessible from all sides, too many people know it, that’s not the kind of place I want to put you all up in. We need to think of secluded, remote, or hard to get to. We might have to split up. Kallie, I’m thinking of putting you and your two boys over on the island.”\n“The island? When I wanted to AirBNB there last summer, you said it was a pain in the ass to get to.”\n“Yeah, it’s a pain to go back and forth, but that means it’s hard for anyone else to get to. If I load you all up with what you need from week to week, then ‘pain in the ass to get to’ is exactly where I want you to be. And your boys can help with the heavy lifting and rowing to get there and back. I think you can handle it better.”\n“The hell is that supposed to mean, Kenny? You think some city chick can handle up north better than ME? Remember, I spent weekends up here for a decade with you. I grew up in farm country. I can handle anything as good as, or better than, she can.”\n“I’m not worried about YOU, I’m worried about Little Man. He’s only eight, and still a liability, someone who needs more protecting than they can help protect. All our older boys can be put to work. Which, speaking of work, BOTH of you gotta back me up when I make 'em work, none of that soft mommy shit you two do.”\n“It’s not being a soft mommy, Kenny, it’s called loving your kids. Maybe try it sometime.”\n“What do you think I’m doing here, Ashley? This - THIS - is how I love. I protect. I defend. I teach. I feed. I provide. I ain’t doin' all this just for me, we should ALL be doing everything we can for the boys. For all of them equally. So if you think you can handle it, if you can act like we’re all on the same team, then we can all go to the island for now. Together.” \n“OK, Honey, I’m on your team. What do you need from us?”\n“We’re going to get ready for the morning. I need you to leave the oldest boys here. They know how to drive the trucks, and they can help collect gas and ammo and raid the cabins I tell them to. Take the younger three with you to load up the cars and get a first run of stuff down to the lake. The ice is still thick enough to drive on, but not for much longer. I got an extra set of house keys from when I did the tree work there last summer, but then I gotta come back here and keep prepping the food and guns to figure out what’s gonna go there and what’s gonna stay for reserves. I want to get as much done as I can before more people head north and think of doing what we’re doing.”\n“So you’re expecting me to live in some messed up Brady Bunch on Gilligan’s Island while you keep playing Davy Crockett back here? That’s not what I asked for when I came up, Kenny.”\n“You asked for my help. And I didn’t ask you if you’re ok with how I do that. You can take it or leave it and try making plans on your own. The boys know Kallie and her kids, they trust her, and they’re staying or else they won’t survive out there if it’s as bad as you both told me. I suggest you get on the team, or you can leave and figure it out alone.”\n“Fine. We’ll go to the island. But I want ground rules. There’s no sex with all the kids there. In fact, I don’t think you two should sleep in the same room while we’re all there.”\n“Ken and I are fine with that. But then MY rule suggestion is none of this name-calling snarky shit anymore in front of the kids. I’m willing to be friendly if you are.”\n“Fine. And I should get more stuff than her, Kenny. Like food and guns kind of stuff. I have three of your kids, she has two of her own.”\n“Everything will be split fairly, Ash. Leave that up to me to figure out, but if we do this right, no one should run out and everyone will have more than enough of what they need. That’s my rule to myself for all of us. No fucking. No fighting. No failure. Can we all start there?”\n“I’m in.”\n“Fine.”\n“OK, then let’s get some sleep for now. I’ll button up the cabin, and make sure the perimeter cameras are working. Tell the boys to get ready. We work in the morning.”" } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Back to the Stars\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 1101\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who doesn’t know how to let go." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I land in the new pod like a feather. Softly. After gathering stardust, air bubbles, and dirt on my way. At my core, yet tightening like a coil, are memories of me; gathering, entering and ejecting from the pod, a million times before this.\nI know it is only a matter of weeks before my mind begins to form and the memories from before get pressed against its wall. Deep into the subconscious. The way to which will be heavily guarded afterwards. With that, I will forever lose access to the lifetimes I roamed on this mud ball.\nMy new mind will not mind it though. The first gush of affection by the person whose womb I am in now will wash over it thoroughly. Forming new pathways to let the tentacles of this lifetime take root.\nAnd add to the baggage I carry at my core.\nWithin months, a pattern will form, not very different from the previous ones. It will make me choose my tendencies, biases, pleasures and fears. A tiny bit of it is modified by the memories of my ancestors my new blood carries. By the time I finish tunnelling my way out and cry lustily in a brightly lit room, my life energy is a freshly squeezed sponge.\nEager to soak and store more.\nThe first roll, the first crawl, the first waddle into the arms of my rapt parent; nothing comes to me as easily as I make it look. But I have the exuberance of a new life. And I bob through the hurdles set by well-meaning adults. Joyously.\nWith every touch, smell, sight, taste and sound, my pattern collects more pieces to tighten itself. With every pat, knock, hug, hurt, hunger or feast, it grows stronger, adding more weight to my core.\n\nThen comes the hurricane; intoxicating and scary at once. My limbs grow all gangly and begin to fill out awkwardly. To add to the already unbearable condition, the hormones are liberally sprinkled into my system. A slow poison, blurring the lines, heightening the sensations. There is no way I can get a handle on what is happening with my outer shell, inner core be damned!\n\nMy senses inform me I have my needs, and my mind guides me into ways in which they can be fulfilled. My parents have knocked some good sense into me before the hormones knock half of them right out. So, I, who have gathered accessories of ego, personality and status manage to forge allegiances to family, government and nation and make socially respectable choices when under observation. And am proud of them. I experience moments of weightless flight when I take my little ones out on a hike, give them a hug or watch them chase the butterflies in the park. But feel pulled down at other times. I wonder why, but don’t dwell too much on it. Who has the time?\n\nMy midriff has more mass than my shoulders. And I drag myself through my routine. My little ones have moved away and have their own little ones now. My partner and I are in an amicable cohabitation. But the sparks are long gone. Truth be told, I can feel the poison in our bloodstreams that brought us together slowly leaving us. I have more time on my hands and less energy in my legs.\nSo, I look inwards. I don’t know where to look. And when I do, all I see is a dark, scary blob.\nAfter years of seeking answers, I can vaguely see the baggage at my core. Like hot tar metalled into crushed stones. How do I get rid of it? The more I think about it, the bigger it grows. I am horrified.\nEven my midriff has shrivelled. I know my present outing on this mud ball is limited, and drawing close to an end. I am yet to figure out how to leave my baggage behind, with my ashes. I don’t want to keep coming back and go through the same loop a million more times.\nI don’t want to go up and gather the stardust to come back, again. I want to be the stardust.\nI wander in the wilderness, go on pilgrimages, give back to the world, and cry my heart out to my God. But the tar is still stuck to me.\nOne fine morning my partner doesn’t wake up. They have gone to the stars. My heart is heavy for years. Then I choose to forgive them. I feel lighter than before.\nI no longer go out seeking nirvana. That doesn’t mean I have given up. I am just preparing myself from within. Turning me into a vessel open to grace- one conscious breath at a time.\nMy joints are getting weaker by the day. When I sit still, shutting up all the noises, I can see the baggage at the core clearly now, not as tightly bound as before, but still holding on to the centre. Will I be able to pull the pin out from the centre and make the entire structure collapse before I draw my last breath?\nA visit to the doctor confirms I needn’t suffer these questions for too long. So, it is either now or not in this lifetime.\nI decide to drop the first shiny robe I gathered here, my personality. This time, for good.\nI float a little. Just enough to see me from a distance.\nThe next thing I do is pick a thing I really dislike and do it joyfully. It is easier now since I don’t have me standing in my way. But it still takes effort.\nI begin to see the creator in all his creations. Well, most of them.\nI float a little higher. But I am still without a jet pack. Nothing to jettison me to the space where I can become stardust.\nMonths drag by. On one full moon night, I feel the pull. I know it is only a matter of days now, if not hours or minutes.\nThis is the moment. My last moment of wakefulness. When I must surrender unquestioningly, wholly and irrevocably; if my baggage has to fall by the wayside as I become one with the cosmos.\nI grow buoyant and weave my way out of the maze of memories. I nearly make it. I am almost not me. But a block in the loosened pattern latches on tightly to the core and refuses to let go. And I have no energy or time left to work on it.\nThis lifetime went by too fast." } ]
[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Cursed Hitchhiker\n\nGenre: indigenous\n\nWord Count: 2325\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who is cursed to always say the opposite of what they mean." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I’m fine.”\n“You don’t look fine.”\nShe looked like she should have been walking on the Malibu boardwalk; cut-off shorts, sandals, white tank top.\n“No,” she paused, and then, with her voice quivering, added, “I’m fine.”\n“My name’s Carl.” He removed his hat with one hand and with the other wiped the dust and sweat off his weathered face with a red bandana. “Probably not another car in fifty miles,” he said looking down the road.\nShe dropped to her knees and face, sobbing. Her dirty blond hair came over her head revealing the pale skin on her neckline.\n“Please, let me get you to town. I promise I don’t bite.”\nThe woman shook her head but stood up and he helped her limp to the truck.\n“I can’t believe you were out here in the middle of nowhere.” He closed the door and passing behind the truck he looked out over the desert and said to himself, “And dressed like that; must be crazy.”\nAs they got up to speed, the woman adjusted the air vent and cranked the window closed.\nCarl apologized, “This old truck is a classic, but the air conditioning gave it up years ago.”\nAfter cranking the window back down, she removed her sandals and began massaging her feet.\nThe old man winced to himself as he noticed her blistered and dirty feet. “What were you doing out here?”\nShe nodded her head. “How much longer to get to town?” she asked.\n“We got about thirty minutes,” he said shaking his head. “You must be thirsty. It’s warm but there’s a jug of water on the floor behind your seat. I keep it for the radiator, but …”\n“… No thanks,” she said as flipped her seat down, grabbed the jug, and turned the jug upside-down swallowing gulps of water. \n“Easy there young lady. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”\nShe brought the jug down, the front of her chest soaked. She came up for breath and burped.\n“I told you! Slow down.”\nShe shook her head. “I need … I need ….” She resumed sobbing.\n“What! What do you need?”\n“I know!”\n“Well, if ya know, just say it!”\n“I can!”\n“Ok, then say it!”\nShe turned and pointed back, shaking her head.\nCarl steered the truck off the shoulder stopping in a cloud of dust.\n“Now listen hear young lady. The sun has gotten to your head. What do you need?”\nShe pointed back where they came from more violently than before.\n“You want to go back?”\nShe shook her head and said, “No,” but continued to point back crying.\n“You’re delirious. I’ve got to get you to the hospital,” he said putting the truck in gear and accelerating toward town.\nBut the lady grabbed the wheel and tried turning the truck around.\n“What the …”\nHe brought the truck off the road facing the opposite direction and stopped again.\n“Do we need to go back for something?”\nThis time the girl just pointed, gritting her teeth, and looked straight ahead.\nThey traveled away from the setting sun away from the city.\n“We’re heading back into Indian land. It always seems spooky to me.” \nThis caused her to point forward excitedly again.\n“We’re gittin' close to where I found ya,” Carl said slowing down.\nShe touched his arm and leaned forward, straining to see. She already had her sandals on. Suddenly she squeezed Carl’s arm and pointed out her window. Carl had not stopped the truck when she had the door open and was stepping out. She ran around the back of the truck and crossed the empty road.\nSince she had downed about half the gallon of water, Carl thought she needed to go pee, but she kept going.\nShe was forty yards into the desert before Carl was out of the truck. Before going after her Carl turned and grabbed the plastic jug. Taking a quick look at the girl, he wiped the mouth of the jug and took a few quick gulps then replaced the lid and put the jug back on the passenger’s floorboard.\n“Wait up! I’m coming!” then to himself, “These old legs. I gotta be careful not to turn an ankle.”\nWhen he finally caught up with her she was walking in circles scanning the desert around her. Rubbing her head and looking around, she looked perplexed. “It’s here,” she said.\n“What is?”\nShe was flapping her arms as she continued to look around.\n“I’m not sorry!” she shouted. Then she said it again louder as if she was shouting at the sky.\n“I think I’m sorry that I stopped for you,” Carl said laughing. He looked back at the truck now about a hundred yards away. There were no cars on the highway, but the sun was starting to set.\n“I didn’t bring the flashlight, but if you want I can …”\nShe grabbed his arm with her finger to her mouth. She was listening.\nThen she started walking back west, stumbling in the shadows.\n“What is it?”\nShe had stopped again and had her finger to her mouth again.\nThis time they both heard whining and walked another fifteen yards.\nShe knelt next to a young eagle on the ground. It looked dead, but Carl thought he saw it move.\n“I’m sorry,” she said reaching for it slowly.\n“Mind that beak, miss,” Carl warned.\nShe scooped it up and wrapped it into the bottom of her tank top. Carl saw her smile for the first time and she said, “Let’s get her to a hospital.”\n“If that don’t beat all,” Carl said pointing the way back to the truck.\nAt the truck, Carl dug a blanket from behind the seat and laid it on the girl. She kept the young eagle on her lap with the blanket over both of them. The bird peaked out eying Carl when he looked at it. At first, the cooler air felt good, but they both cranked up their windows as the desert night continued to cool. The girl slouched and the eagle appeared to be sleeping.\nCarl marveled at the events and shook his head. “If that don’t beat all.”\nIn a dozen miles Carl stopped at an isolated gas station. While his Falcon was topping off, he used the restroom and returned to the truck with a bag of fruit. The girl had her eyes open as he settled into his seat. She accepted a banana but declined a bathroom break.\nCarl started the car and said, “The cashier said there’s a vet in a town twenty miles away, but it’s probably not open. She said there’s an old Hualapai woman up on the mountain. She’s got a reputation of fixin' up hawks. You want to take your friend to her?”\n The girl nodded her head quietly. After a few miles, they turned off the paved road and drove slowly on another gravel road five miles up the mountain. After the banana she started on the apple, giving small pieces to the eagle.\nCarl hoped the small cabin ahead was the right place. His headlights moved across what looked like a woman sitting on the porch. She was edging down the three steps as Carl stepped out of the truck. “Are you Mrs. Whitefeather?”\nThe woman clasped his hand with both of her gnarled hands, “I’m Sincerity Whitefeather”. Carl guessed she was at least eighty years old, but her smile made her look younger. Her gray hair was in a bun and she was wrapped in a quilt. She shuffled next to Carl on the passenger’s side.\n“This young eagle is too weak to fly,” the girl said.\n“I think that you are both too weak to fly,” the old lady said. “Please help them into my house,” she said to Carl as she shuffled ahead.\nCarl helped the girl out and steadied her as she climbed the steps to the front porch the older lady opened the screen door. \nTo say the house was simple inside was an understatement. The house was smoky but warm. There were only two rooms. The main room served as a kitchen, dining room, and living area. There was a small fridge next to a sink with a pump handle and some cabinets to make up a kitchen. Sincerity was putting a kettle of water on the potbelly wood stove that was next to a small table and two chairs in the dining area.\nShe motioned for the girl to lay on the couch with the eaglet. Carl stood aimlessly until Sincerity pointed at the wood stove, “Can you prod that fire some and see if you resurrect a flame? Maybe add some wood.”\nSincerity brought a jar lid with water to the eaglet who was looking up from her covers at the lady's movement. She held it down and the eaglet drank, repeatedly tilting her head back.\n“There you go, girl,” she said putting the lid away. “Don’t want to give her too much, or she’ll make a mess on you,” she said giggling. You two need to share each other’s warmth a little longer.\n“What’s your name young lady?” Whitefeather asked settling into the rocking chair.\n“Elsa,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happened to me.”\nCarl used some old receipts from his wallet to revive the flames. Satisfied, he eventually stopped poking the stove. He pulled a chair from the table next to the rocker.\n“I just came out of the big city for the day. My friend told me about this great overlook then bailed out. Then my car overheated, no cell service, so I started walking to the main road. I took a shortcut and guess I got lost.”\nBoth of the older folks looked at each other, then Carl said, “Welcome to the club.”\n“Then I started seeing these eagles flying around me. They were like buzzards waiting for me to die. I got scared and threw a rock at one and I guess I hit it.” She looked down at the bird and petted it. “Sorry, little girl.” \n“You were all confused when I found you,” Carl said. “You’d say one thing and do another.”\n“I know. I couldn’t help it.”\n“Lucky for that little bird there that you were able to find it.”\nAfter a long silence, the lady rocked and spoke quietly. “My people tell stories about the curse of the eagle. The eagle is our symbol of truth. If someone harms one, they can’t tell a lie from the truth.”\n“Seemed to me that after we went back and you found her, you were all right. What made you want to do that?”\n“I felt bad about what I did and I just knew I needed to make it right.”\nAfter more silence, Sincerity rose and patted the girl on the arm. “Sounds like you saved you and your friend.”\nThe tea kettle started to whistle and Sincerity rose. She looked at Carl and motioned him to the kitchen with her head. She took the kettle from the stove and poured some in a wash tub. Then she filled two soup bowls and said, “Now, don’t judge me,” she said taking out two packages of chicken flavored Ramen noodles. “I hope you know how to make these,” she said adding two spoons to the bowls.\nCarl smiled crushing up the Ramen packages. “Thank you so much. I’m sure this will hit the spot.”\n“Let it soak in good,” she said patting him on the arm.\nTaking a cloth and the wash tub to Elsa, she began to clean her feet. Elsa jumped in surprise, also causing the eagle to raise its head. Then she held it closer and relaxed.\nAfter she was done, Carl set the noodles on the end table near Sincerity who handed her the wash tub with dirty water.\n“I think it’s time for me to take a look at your friend,” Sincerity said putting on a pair of leather gloves. She took the eagle gently and set it in a box behind the couch.\nCarl handed Elsa the bowl of noodles with a hot pot under it. “Don’t burn yourself on this.”\nThe two blew on their spoons full of broth and slurped while they listened to Sincerity talk to the baby eagle as she examined it. \nCircling back to the rocker, she said, “I’ve seen birds recover from worse. I think she’ll be flying soon, maybe in a week or so.” \nElsa smiled behind her bowl as she began to turn it up to drink the last bit.\nCarl stood and collected the bowls. “Sincerity, thank you again. I have a sleeping bag in my trunk. I hope it’s okay for Elsa to spend the night inside.”\n“I wouldn’t have it otherwise,” Sincerity said throwing the quilt from her shoulders over top of Elsa.\nBefore he left, Sincerity warned him, “Grab one of those hiking sticks next to the door in case that mountain lion comes around for my hens again.”\nCarl found his way back to the truck and laid the stick across the floor. With the windows cracked he fell asleep without any trouble. He woke up to doves cooing just as the sun was rising and carried the stick to the outhouse with him. Then he sat on the porch with his sleeping bag over his shoulders, enjoying the sunrise.\nAfter a few minutes, Sincerity appeared inside the screen door. “Well, well, look who’s up. The sooner you light this stove fire, the sooner we can cook up breakfast.”\nElsa said her final goodbye to Sincerity and turned to the eagle. It ignored her. She felt like it still resented her for hurting it. She whispered to it, “Sorry, girl. I’ll see you around.”\n“Elsa, are you ready to go?” Carl asked.\nShe shook her head and said, “Yes”.\nCarl cocked his head and looked at her.\n“Let’s go, Carl.”" } ]

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