They/she, 30, lazy writer. Here's to sigils in coffee creamer and half read books about magic. I write short stories about subverting destiny and being funnier than the bad guy.
There are swings hanging from the trees. Similar to playground swings, chains and rubber seats and a few rust spots around the rivets holding the two together. Helena can see them swaying deep into the forest when the breeze blows; she can hear the chains rubbing against the bark above.
The swings were not there when she made camp last night.
Helena crawls out of her tent. The triple stand of pines have one swing in the center of them. The felled oak has one hovering over it, the chain suspending it almost invisible in the shadows of the canopy above. Her tent – cheap and plastic and yellow – feels even more like a beacon now than it did last night.
Her mind skips and skitters. There are furrows in the closest branch she can see, as if the chain has worn away at the bark over a period of weeks. Maybe months. The swing arcs toward her slowly. Softly. She tumbles back into the side of her tent, the cold shock of dew against her bare arms and legs making her gasp. Then she is suddenly desperate for air. She draws it in on a long wheeze, forcing herself to pay attention to the sting of her lungs filling beyond capacity. She exhales almost silently.
Two days’ hike left means she can’t afford to leave her tent. Ideally, she’d wait for the afternoon sun to dry it, but ideals are luxuries, and she can’t afford anything better than a fucking yellow tent, so she doesn’t have many of those.
A child laughs. No- it must be a squirrel. A chipmunk. A chittering creature. An animal made that noise. Unbidden, the words of her first ranger mentor come to her.
If you get scared, it’s time to get out of the woods. There’s no coming back from that first flush of fear.
Stubbornly, Helena breathes in. Ow. Breathes out. She tugs the first support pole out of her tent. It teeters from left to right. She pulls the second.
The tent falls, and for a second – just a second – she sees a flash of something running behind the tree that lies behind it. Those weren’t woods’ colors on whatever it was. There was purple in that flash. Red.
A little girl swims to the forefront of her mind and covers her mentor’s warning. Blue eyes. Brown hair. A striped jacket in her favorite colors. Blue and red.
Don’t chase anything in the woods beyond the ravine, her mentor told her. You won’t like what chases you back.
Another curl of laughter slides through the tree trunks. It’s not an animal. Not one she knows.
Helena has a $30,000 reason to go check.
-
This is a writing exercise to see play around with surreal settings starting simply with swings that can’t possibly be this deep in the forest! I do about one of these every day and post the best ones on Patreon a week early if you want to check me out there and support what I do:)
The old hero looks out over the city. Landmarks stained with his blood are now polished clean and refaced. The wails of people in need ring in his head, a cacophony that drowns out the sweet morning silence that envelops the city.
The last few years have been a dog fight. He tastes pavement on his tongue and his eyes are hot with phantom swelling. His hands are cracked and warped into permanent fists, his knees weak from the strain of carrying every civilian out of the line of fire.
He’s lived through pure will alone for the last 37 months. Every tomorrow has been a closed door he has to beat in the moment he turns to face it. His biggest enemy became not the Villain but rather the encroaching sun through the half-closed blinds of his own bedroom.
Now…
He stares at the mask in his hands. The feel of the wind on his bare face makes him feel new. Vulnerable. Reborn. His hands curl around the fabric and he blinks back tears.
“Living becomes possible eventually,” he murmurs.
When he stands, he leaves his mask on the rooftop to blow away the next time the wind changes.
Your workers always ask “Why do you put a self destruct button on your inventions?” Tired of their questioning, you decide to explain why it’s perfectly rational.
“Because,” you explain patiently, “there is a non-zero probability that Hero Force sends a hero with mind control powers after me one day. I’ve trained myself to resist most brainwashing for at least 12 seconds - just enough time to press that button.”
“You trained yourself to resist mind control?” your newest minion asks in awe.
“Every villain does,” you scoff. “As it is, 12 seconds is barely enough time.”
“Every villain tries,” your favorite minion says. He laughs every time you call him your minion which is, frankly, insulting, but he’s so damn effective you can’t bring yourself to care. “None except your boss over there.”
You swivel in you chair to frown at him. He’s leaning against the invention in question - a fairly standard freeze ray, though this one dependent on time manipulation rather than ice - and he isn’t in uniform again. He’s supposed to be wearing the subdued purple or maroon office attire you provide all your minions. Instead he’s wearing clothing very similar to yours - leather and kevlar.
“Your boss too,” you say.
“Are you still on that?” he asks.
“How can I resist brainwashing?” your newest minion asks.
“By being a freak,” he says before you can answer.
You throw a wrench at his head.
So when time loops happen, do the people who aren’t stuck move forward in time or do they freeze?? Do they get a different version of you?? Is it a whole new timeline?? Someone smart come answer these pls
The agent stared at their computer, coffee frozen halfway to their mouth.
“I,” they announced, “fucking hate Mondays.”
Their assistant, standing at their elbow with the newest batch of cases clutched to their chest, frowned. “It’s Thursday.”
“See!” The agent gestured so wildly with their mug that coffee splashed across their lap. They didn’t notice. “That’s it, that’s the answer. It is Thursday for those of the linear persuasion.”
“Are you having an existential crisis over a Tumblr post again,” the assistant said.
“Time happens all at once,” the agent said. They jabbed a finger at their screen. “You think loops are possible? Ha! Only in the sense a knitted sweater has loops! And cables! And buttonholes!”
“Where did you even find that monitor?” The assistant flicked the air and a screen appeared in front of them. “You didn’t requisition a vintage one through me. Did you bring it from home?”
“See this is the problem with humans,” the agent complained. “They’re sensitive. Things have to be easy to access, information has to follow piece by piece. Their brains could organize time in all sorts of ways but they choose the most archaic pattern; linear. Then they want to question the inconsistencies like their system wasn’t designed to glitch all the freaking time.”
The assistant snorted. “Ha. Time. I get it.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
The assistant sighed. “If you’re going to have a crisis in front of me, then you should at least be funny about it.”
“They have to know,” the agent decided and began typing furiously. “All possibilities are already occurring. It’s their broken brain that gets stuck on one little loop. Like a snag in a zipper. Do they need to unzip the jacket? No! They could put it over their head only their obsession with the linear keeps them trapped forever until I come unstick them. They’re creating work is what they’re doing.”
“Don’t tell them that,” the assistant said. “Youre going to send them into a spiral. That’s more work.”
The agent hit Reply. A red light began flashing down the corridor followed by a long, slow siren.
“Mondays,” the agent cursed.
“Thursdays,” the assistant sighed and went to grab the new case files.
I could tell painful stories. I could tell mean stories. A hundred bitter words pile up behind my teeth and I smile with closed lips after Happily Ever After.
If I let them out, I’ll shed my human skin.
Sometimes I imagine all these biting tales slip through the cracks in my work. A meadow with a hungry maw hidden in the grass. A bear trap under the living room carpet that I can only hope the guests skip over. A drop too many of witchbane in the tea I serve at sunrise.
I write stories that I can read without guards. I am a person who longs for spaces without cruelty and so I set myself to the task of creating them. Am I always successful? Cruelty is insidious and temperamental, a snake that I can’t always bring myself to draw back into its tank.
I try. Isn’t that all we can do? I try.
All your life, mythological beings have tried to pick you up. Childhood? Forced adoption. Teenagehood/Adulthood? Marriage. For example, selkies purposefully left their skins where you’d find them; banshees serenade you outside every night. Now at 30, you’ve learned why you attract them all…
A devil rescues you from the thing in the lake.
“They really didn’t mean to scare you,” the devil says, dusting her hands. She squints over the lake, cataloguing the ripples as the thing returns to the depths from which it came. “I think the language barrier got in the way. They didn’t know you don’t have gills.”
You are shaking so hard you can’t speak for a solid minute. You’d been strolling by the lake after your solo dinner when the thing emerged from the shallows. You didn’t expect there to be anything out here this far from any mountains with lore or cities with ghosts. So much for your vacation.
“Hey,” the devil says. She’s dressed in a sundress that’s too exposed for the chill this time of year. She makes sure it covers her knees when she squats next to you. “You okay?”
You burst into tears. “N-no!” Your teeth are chattering from getting drenched. “I don’t— I didn’t do anything to them, did I? To any of them? Why do they— why?” Your sobs steal your breath.
“Oh dear,” the devil says. She gathers you in resisting from the ground into her arms. She is smaller than you but shows no strain as she heads for the front door of your rental cabin. “Come in, let’s get you warmed up.”
You don’t fight even though you know her for what she is. As scared as you are, devils are the least frightening of what comes after you. They, at least, need your consent before they change the course of your life forever.
The devil sets you up with a steaming cup of tea and then busies herself warming the bath. “Should have been obvious of course,” she says as she works. “I can’t believe they’ve never seen a human before. I’m sure they’ll want to apologize before we leave. Maybe in the morning.”
Before we leave. The fire you’re sitting by is hot, but you’re still shivering when you ask, “We?”
As a hero’s apprentice you knew that the training would be grueling, but you didn’t expect the hero to be actively trying to kill you during your drills. After sixteen months of torturous training you’ve finally snapped and have decided to kill the hero however you can.
It’s not fair.
You swing again at the practice dummy. Your hands are throbbing along the dense wood of your practice sword. You’d like nothing else but to stop. You can’t.
The hero is always watching.
You were a farmer before this, or were supposed to be. Your parents taught you to work the plow and warned you to take breaks whenever your hands or arms ached too badly. Hurting yourself was a cardinal sin. Better to plow too little one day than not be able to plow anything before the sowing season began.
That’s what makes you realize that you’re not supposed to survive this. That the hero’s attacks aren’t just part of your training and that the endless list of exercises aren’t to make you a hero. If they wanted you to save the world, they’d make sure your hands are bandaged at the end of the day and that the hero doesn’t draw too much blood.
Instead you are swaying, your body screaming at you to lay down, while your ears strain for the telltale rustle of the hero sneaking up on you. Your sword is wood, but theirs isn’t. It never is.
So when the hero flings themself out of the trees, an insane grin on their lips and blade arcing at your head, you grit your teeth and meet them with your training sword held high. Their blade takes a chunk out of the wood, but you’re strong enough to throw them off of you before it takes more.
“Finally started listening,” the hero croons, landing on their feet. They aren’t winded at all and there’s bloodlust in their eyes. “Pity. I wanted to add another scar to my collection.”
Your back throbs under the layers of bandages you put on yourself. Your lips thin. Before, you would’ve yelled at their words. Maybe cried or protested or shouted. That was when you thought the hero wanted you to survive this.
Now you know better.
You ease back towards the dummy. The first series of exercises had you whipping daggers at its chest. Usually you’d remove them after you finished. Not today. Today you…forgot. There are three in a cluster right in the center of its chest.
“No words?” The hero lifts their sword lazily. They don’t expect a fight. They expect you to block and never attack seriously. “Good. I was getting tired of your whiny voice.”
You once killed a rabid dog. The moment the creature met your eyes it sprang, no memory of the years you had fed and watered and loved it in its feverish head. Because you loved it, you made it quick.
The hero reminds you of that dog. They wind towards you with their chin lowered, waiting. Waiting for you to lower your guard. Waiting for you to beg.
There’s no point in arguing with something rabid. You wait with your practice sword at your side, your other hand behind your back.
The hero loses patience first.
They spring without warning, blade thrusting towards your chest. This is also how you know they’re trying to kill you. A slash can be blocked or dodged. A thrust is a more vicious blow with less openings.
Unfortunately they’ve trained you well. You know exactly what to do.
You lunge and swing at the same time, your heavy wooden sword missing their blade entirely. The tip of their sword gouges a line in your arm, but misses your chest. The hero is snarling that you’re an idiot, you’re incompetent, you let them inside your guard by swinging over their head—
They duck under your practice sword and surge into your space. There’s madness in their eyes as they flip the grip on their sword. They’re going to cut you open from navel to chin, they’re going to enjoy watching your insides fall out, they’re going to love the taste of your blood—
You draw the dagger from the dummy with the hand behind your back. As the hero changes their grip, so do you, flipping the blade to better suit your needs. You both swing.
You’re faster.
The dagger pierces the back of the hero’s neck, driving them down onto their knees. They stare at you blankly and their sword dips before falling to the wet earth.
They choke. You can see they want to talk. To say their last taunts or threats. You made sure they couldn’t. Blood drips from their lips. They mouth the words, hero… see…
The hero dies.
The ship rocks.
Leona stares out over the choppy sea without emotion. A wisp of memory: the way she screamed and laughed her first day at sea. She wore yellow that day and she remembers the shock of her shirt against the endless blue of the sky.
She leans against the center mast, head tilting up. The sails are tattered ghosts against the steel-grey sky and there are scorch marks marching along the wood. When she tied the crew to the mast, she made sure to take their daggers and pocketknives. She didn’t think they’d be so desperate as to burn themselves free.
The sun hasn’t shown its face in five days. What little light peeked through the clouds disappears as it slips further and further away. Leona closes her eyes against the encroaching darkness. She knows what comes next.
“Darling.”
It’s not a voice Leona knows. That’s why she’s the last one standing. An orphan with only one love in her heart her entire life is stronger than someone who left a family behind on distant shores. A cruel and callous statement, but true.
“Darling, please. For me. For us. For what can be.”
Leona grits her teeth and opens her eyes. The craggy mountains that have locked her ship in pace rise like blades into the sky. Dark and imposing, jutting out of the sea like teeth. Blue lights glimmer in their crevices and along their shores, little flames of ethereal light that promise more warmth than can be found on a shipwrecked ship.
“You’re different. Please, let me show you how different.”
Different. Leona scoffs even as she feels something give deep inside. She’s an orphan from an town filled with them. They’re not different. Even her love for the sea isn’t unique. The men and women she sailed with held the same love in their hearts.
And now they belong to the watery grave below.
So Leona holds no illusions when she steps away from the mast. Even as a part of her heart sings, Different, I’m different, Ill be different, she doesn’t smile like her crew mates did. She’s falling for the lie, sure.
But she won’t go down smiling.
“Darling, I promise it’s not what you think. Come here, come here.”
Leona falls from her ship and into waiting arms.
The castle’s ramparts formed a cold line against the fiery sky. The sun rose on blood-slicked walls and fields muddled with death.
A girl stood at the great doors, mouth set hard against the early winter cold, her dress streaked with soot and golden rays of sunlight. She raised her hand, curled her battered fingers into the red on her palms, and knocked.
Tap, tap, tap
The knight in charge of opening the doors covered his mouth to catch the sob. He slumped against the cold stone and did not reach for the pulley system that could heave the giant wood doors open. “Please, go back. Go back, your highness.”
“That’s hardly fair,” the girl said. She shielded her eyes against the sun and looked over the battlefield. There were not many who were able to return her gaze and those that could didn’t. “I won.”
The knight shook so hard that his armor clattered together at the joints. When the king agreed to let the throne go to the victor of the coup, no one expected this. Neither the Crown Prince nor the young Duke returned from battle.
Only the Princess.
“The people will rejoice,” the princess said. A girl of only sixteen summers and her voice was as smooth as the most seasoned negotiator. “The kind princess who gave so generously to the orphanage ended the battle before it spread to the country. She did it for the people. Isn’t it right she rule now?”
“I s-saw you,” the knight stuttered. He was keeping watch in the ramparts at midnight when the moon hung full overhead. He saw the princess jump over the wall. He saw what she changed into. “Y-you’re not the princess.”
There was a long pause. “Ah.” The princess sighed. “You’ve only made this harder for yourself, you realize? The result remains the same. I will be queen.”
The knight felt all his breath flee from his lungs as shadows writhed underneath the door. No. He drew breath to scream, but it was too late. The shadows crawled over his face.
The last thing he heard was a familiar groan as the castle doors opened.
“It’s the start of Nanowrimo,” the writer said.
The character looked up from their phone for a moment. They wiggled their socked feet hanging off the edge of the couch. “So?”
“So get up, get dressed, get out there,” the writer said. They reached over the back of the couch and plucked the phone from the character’s grip. They frowned. “Are you texting your rival?”
“Not my rival until you set the circumstances,” the character said. They brought their arms over their head in a stretch. “Until then they’re just hot.”
The writer couldn’t deny it. The rival was very hot. “I need you to get up for me to set the circumstances.”
The character grinned. “You didn’t do any Nano prep, did you?”
They did not.
“I just need you to sort of stand next to them,” the writer said defensively. “It’ll come to me then.”
“Sure, sure,” the character said in a sing-song voice. They slunk towards the door. “Maybe it won’t be enough for me to stand next to them. Maybe I’ll need to hold their hand to inspire you.”
The writer swallowed. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary—“
“Maybe we should kiss.”
“No, that’s—“
“Be right back,” the character called, disappearing down the hall. “Gonna go kiss my hot rival!”
“No!” The writer booked it after them. “No, no kissing!”
The character laughed.