/lit/ - Literature

Hope to read more stories here. I can't post one tonight but maybe tomorrow.

bump

>>17634848
>Memoir from an FBI agent assigned to monitor CWC
sounds reminiscent of the very first story in the very first /lit/ quarterly. it was comfy

>>17634848
>>A man slips out of his body after a car accident and can't find his way back

(1/2)

He couldn’t remember hearing the crash itself, but he must have awoken in that very instant because the echos were still ringing in his ears. Had he been asleep before? The concept of sleep seemed impossible now, he was taking it all in.

He was standing amid a twisted mass of painted metal, scattered cubes of glass reflecting streetlights in the snow. Judging from the paint colors, this gruesome sculpture was once made of three separate entities. Once, each belonged among the hundreds he hears stampeding past behind him; powerful, brazen and precarious. One beasts must have slipped on the ice, and brought the others down a with it.

He didn’t know why he was put here in the snow, witnessing the wreckage of these three strange creatures. He wore no clothing, and yet he did not feel the late February cold. Or perhaps he did register it, just not as anything particularly unpleasant.

He moved lightly over the snow, circling the mutilated creatures. It was coming back to him now, these were cars! And within each car was a person or two, cozy as nuts in a shell. The one in back - the big red car - was on its side, lights pointing away from the road. Its driver lay still in the front seat, her Home Depot moving boxes spilling their contents into the snow. This was a sad thing, he knew, to see someone’s great adventure ended so arbitrarily.

There were sounds coming from the foremost vehicle, the silver truck. It was the least deformed of the three, but was pointing in entirely the wrong direction. There was a light moving within and a faint voice. At first it sounded like prayer, but as the nude man walked closer he could hear another tinny voice speaking back. The driver was telling the voice he was trapped, asking for aid, describing the spot where the three beasts lost their herd. He was not alone in the cab, there was a woman hidden behind the smashed glass and deflated airbag. She did not seem injured but her wide searching eyes spoke of shock.

He left those two and sought out the nut in the middle shell. This one was small and blue. Its front was entirely folded in where it met the truck. If not for the procession of similar silhouettes screaming past, it would be hard to deduce what it’s initial shape was. The driver of blue was a bit older than the other two, but certainly not yet elderly. He was very badly injured, clearly, but it was not easy to tell exactly how.

The driver let out on occasional grunt or shudder, but there was no indication of wakefulness. The man drew closer to see the blue’s face more clearly. As his finger was about to brush the driver’s hair his whole body suddenly surged with pain and fear and danger. He drew his hand back as if bitten.

(1/2)

>>17638136
(2/2)

The man did not know his purpose, he did not even know his own name, but he knew for a certainty that if he touched this driver all that suffering would become his too. Not just a passing detail like the crisp wind on his back or the glass and snow under his feet, this was a true pain in razor sharp focus. The sort of pain very few creatures feel twice in a life.

He studied the driver from a safe distance. The blood-soaked hand bore a gold ring, this man had someone waiting for him. Perhaps a warm house was mere minutes away, perhaps many miles. The driver did not seem to notice his own pain, his body was fighting to regain its normal rhythm but his mind seemed withdrawn into itself.

The man watched this battle for many long minutes. He watched as the snow was illuminated by a yellow pulse as a new truck appeared. The man with the dazed wife called out and the two spoke indistinctly over the rushing traffic. This was followed by dazzling blue and red strobes which cast wild shadows over the blue drivers face.

More of these frenzied lights arrived and men swarmed each of the cars; peering through doors and windows, shouting to each other. When the driver of the blue was found all converged on him. They were trying to assist his body in its struggle to regain normalcy.

There were a few moments where the driver started to return. The nude man felt this as a wave of pain trying to draw him in. He took one step back, then two. He knew the driver now. He saw pictures in his mind of the driver’s wife as a young woman, as a new mother, as a partner in life, as a light in the dark. He saw their two children as timeless beings, neither old nor young but forever in-between. These three lights danced in his mind. Should this driver die, they would need to find a new dance, one with a new center. He noticed himself touching his own ring, he couldn’t be sure if it had always been there.

Again, he felt a great tug pulling him toward the deformed car. The driver was close to regaining himself, but his fool body had no idea what it would mean to wake up in such pain. The driver may survive this night, enduring much suffering, but he had already lost so much of himself...there would never be a return to that warm home.

Home. He remembered now, it was so close!

He left the driver to his struggle, and rushed to rejoin the heard. Blinker on, exit 77 on the right, stop sign, two right turns, small yellow house, no blue car in the driveway.

He may still have time to catch a glimpse of them through the window if he ran fast enough.

>>17634848
another * one for fun and a bump
>a schizophrenic gets lost inside of their own hallucinations

Look at the man, experience him. See the wind pass through his hair, see the snow accumulating therein. He is a stranger, his coat is thin, and he sniffles as he moves through the blizzard. See how his eyes do not stay open, how they waver and close, how the icicles pierce and bite. Still, he moves forward into the alleyway, stepping into potholes and trash in the storm's veil. Closer. Look closer and you will see a fire within his pupils. Tired, he presses on into the nothingness of the night. Shall we follow him?

Empty cars on the street, the sidewalk is empty. Preposterous words fill the man's head until he casts them out. How empty he must feel. Thousands windows lit, not one man contained therein. Alive, he reminds himself, "I am alive." The streetlights are not alive, though they reveal the violent movement of flake.

"Oh me," sings the man. "Oh I am bound elsewhere, to the malingering sun of the south, I will ride the South Platte, I will ride far after that." The wind sang with him, and carried his voice to nobody.

He arrived on the bank of the South Platte, where the edge of Denver meets the cold industrial north. He sets up his tent below the bridge, and sets off to sleep for the night.

A pale woman appears to him in his dreams. She calls him through the meadow, and he follows. When he reaches out for her hand, he grabs the paw of a dog. "No! No, no no. I want the woman..." And there she appears again, this time in the compartment of a Ferris Wheel, reaching the peak of it's ascent. The sun rises over Denver, the Platte flows steady. Cars rush down the streets and boulevards, all going in the same direction. The pale woman smiles. "I'm glad you wanted to see me again, but I must be going."
"You can't go, please don't go." the compartment shakes, and the man feels a swelling. He awakens and rushes out of the tent. Down, down, down, to the river. A twenty-second long stream of piss into the Platte. All is dark but the light below the bridge. The sound of rushing water and moving rocks. Tears swell in the man's eyes. "Oh me," he sings, and stops.
"Who?" asks the pale woman.

>>17639136
thousands of*
yeesh

>>17639136
Bump

>>17639136
You did a great job of capturing that feeling of stepping in and out of a dream. There are road posts for where the real world would be, but time and characters just wash over the character.

Nice stories to read this morning. Good work anons. Both have a haunting quality.

>>17639136
>Preposterous words fill the man's head until he casts them out.
i like this sentence. the ending was good.

Bumping with a story written for another thread last night (cleaned up and expanded this AM)
The prompt was to write a story about the attached image.
>>17637092

Jim Lake was a stubborn man. While it could sometimes came across, to his delight, as shrewdness or cleverness...Jim was, at heart, simply obstinate.

That’s why, when the public works council of the town of Millvale offered to purchase a few feet of his unused land to improve Main Road, Jim became extremely interested in that obscure corner of his land. He gave all sorts of reasons the parcel could not be touched: arcane legal theories, sentimental attachment, rumors of the land being cursed, aesthetic fulfillment, all manner of anomalies geologic and psychic. As was often the case, the town eventually gave in to Jim’s determination. Unfortunately, so forceful was he that the parcel in question was the most unique spot of his whole property, that the town was able to use Jim’s own statements to seize a much larger tract through eminent domain, provided they leave the sacred sliver unmolested.

As the years passed, Main Road grew to wind around Jim’s Lake (as it was called). Jim had sons, and those sons had sons, and the legend of Jim Lake’s trolling became a family legend.

The deed to the land was passed to Joe Lake in 1992. Joe was 20 at the time, and the passing of the deed was treated almost as a joke within the family. The hallowed ground Joe inherited was now just a serpentine grass median which apparently exists only to prevent Main Road from running straight. His duties as custodian of the Lake consisted of paying a boy to risk life and limb to mow it during the summer months, destroying and curbs the town attempted to construct around it, and to file complaints against the town whenever plowed snow was ‘illegally dumped’ onto the median. It was a responsibility Joe took very seriously.

(1/2)

>>17641763

(2/2)

Each year a few out-of-town drivers would inevitably fail to anticipate the nonsensical obstacle and end up bringing their business to Millvale’s only tow service and auto shop, owned by Joe’s cousin.

In 2001, Jim’s Lake became the center of a new controversy when a car drove through the median into oncoming traffic, killing the driver of one car and a passenger of the other. With public support on their side, the town presented Joe Lake with two options: either allow the town to purchase the land and finally finish the road, or to install safety signage to warn motorists of the turn.

Joe, the true intellectual heir of his esteemed great-grandfather, told the town he would sooner lay down his life than surrender the land generations of Lakes have sworn to defend. That being said, he assured the town that he was a reasonable man who respected the lives of even the stupidest of motorists. He would install the signage.

He asked Millvale’s department of public works for their recommendation. A few weeks passed as the town worked with a contractor to determine the best signage and safety barriers to prevent a recurrence of the recent tragedy. When they eventually presented Joe with the reflective yellow signs and metal rails, Joe rejected it outright as an infringement on both his first amendment right and good taste.

The town was used to the Lake’s behavior by now, and told Joe that he is free to install anything he liked, at his own expense, provided it succeeded in alerting drivers of the obstacle. They should have realized their mistake when Joe smiled back. “Anything I like?”

###

The dragon of Jim’s Lake - based on a concept sketch by Jack Lake, Joe’s then 6 year old son - became a state-wide tourist attraction, it has been featured in many travel articles. The Millvale High School athletics department now wears the distinctive Blue Dragon as their mascot. And Jack, the new deed holder, is making a decent income selling souvenirs and suing anyone who uses the dragon’s likeness. There have been no fatal accidents since it’s installation, largely because traffic has been slowed to a crawl due to out-of-towners slowing down to gaze and take photos. Minor collisions have soared enough for Lake’s towing to buy a second truck. The development that would have pleased Jim Lake the most, however, was the plaque at the base of the garish dragon designating the spot as a protected historic landmark.

>>17641768
nice

>>17634848
Is it okay to post in another language?

>>17641911
Who’ll stop you?

Write an internal monologue about a man who knows death is imminent, in then becomes apparent he brought it about himself, it then becomes apparent the narrator is Bomberman, and he's just blocked himself in with a bomb by mistake.

>>17642112
Brilliant!

>>17641982
maybe you...
also I guess we're not forced to choose from an already proposed prompt?

>>17642338
I won't judge you if you write in another language. As long as you like the story you wrote, you should feel free to post it.
>>17641763
>>17641768
This story is straight out of ancapistan and I love it.
>>17638136
>>17638141
Very well written. Captures a lot of good feelings with a lot of good images. The story itself is actually very moving. Great job.

>>17642338
Not at all. The prompts are there to be helpful. And if you did write from a prompt, you wouldn't even need to follow it. It's just a starting off point, to give you ideas.

>>17643050
The prompts do help to ensure that what is shared was created for the thread, and not some short fiction you wrote years ago. It’s fun to see how each anon can put their own style onto a prompt, In an unprompted story it’s harder to see what was done for the style and what was done for the plot (like trying to judge an item of clothing when it’s already being worn).

Speaking of prompts...let’s get a few new ones going:
>A monster dad explains to his son not to be afraid of the bright
>someone dresses as a literary character for a Halloween party and refuses to break character
>a story from the perspective of a duck/goose battling for thrown bread

>>17642112
I’ll be dead in five seconds. I’m not afraid, five seconds is an eternity. There will be plenty of time for fear once I’ve taken care of the more pressing matters like… going through the motions, yes that is an important one. I have to try and move the bomb in front of me and when that doesn’t work I’ll throw myself pointlessly against the three walls boxing me in with my death. I have to go through these motions or I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of eternity and that won’t do. There we go, as I knew, completely immovable. It was a well-documented fact after all that bombs once placed do not move. It seems so absurd now that I really have the time to sit down and think about it but the evidence is right there in front of me, ticking away.

Four seconds? It’s easier to gauge the time when you’re not the one who dies at the end of the count. I should spare a moment for self-recrimination. This situation is my fault after all. I should have known better. If I had just placed my bomb one tile over then I would’ve had more freedom than I’d know what to do with. I got desperate, I wanted to melt that fucker. I practically dropped the bomb at my own feet and now I’m the one about to be melted. A rookie mistake but I’m supposed to be a veteran. I wonder if they’ll use this story to train future rookies; my life relegated to an educational anecdote about pride and overconfidence.

Three seconds. Deja vu. What? No, I’m not mistaken. It’s there. Deju vu. I feel like I’ve been here before. In this exact situation. Innumerable times. That can’t be possible of course but it’s an overwhelming feeling. Perhaps this is a panicky protestation of the mind in the moments before its imminent end. I have memories of a lifetime running through narrow hallways, placing bombs around corners, chased by flames and screams. Too many memories for one lifetime. This feeling… it’s almost enough to make me afr- No! It’s not time for fear yet! I still have so much time.

Two seconds. This will sting but it’s time to embrace amusement. It’s a fact that I’ve seen this happen before to countless others and… and I laughed. Screams of frustration and cries of help only purchase mirth. I am not inclined to scream but I will make the effort out of consideration for the others. It must have worked. In fact I can hear the asshole out there cackling like a demon possessed madman through a burnt dry, ragged throat, oh, wait, that’s me.

One second. Fuck. I guess it is time for fea-

>>17643449
>I have to go through these motions or I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of eternity and that won’t do
Mm-hmmm...I recall doing that every time. Bomber man’ shot to observe the conventions!

Btw, I like the structure of the countdown. I noticed he didn’t spare a second to repent for his life of violence and terrorism...his ideology is a pure one, and he will go to his grave believing that he is on the side of righteousness.

>>17642535
I decided to go for a translation as another exercice for myself and because I wasn't too happy with the style of the original but I liked the story. Hopefully there isn't too many mistakes.

"Stand straight !" His mother always told him. But he was constantly rocking his great body back and forth from night to morning and despite his best efforts, he couldn't find his center of gravity. His legs were frail and barely supported his body, which was disfigured by a huge bump in the back. At the slightest impulse, his upper body was launched into large movements like those of a pendulum that his feet had to constantly compensate. Seeing him one thought of those impatient drunks trying to light their last cigarette. His natural idiocy and the unintelligibility of his words completed the impression.
If at least he stood up straight, his mother told herself, maybe his bump would disappear between his shoulders. He would then just have to shut up so that we thought we had a good boy like the others and she would no longer be the target of the pitying looks that her neighbors were giving her. But the poor boy's body was still arched so much that it would have been fairer to speak of his circumference rather than of his height. Sometimes he would hear his mother cry in his kitchen, and he would curse his bump, his legs, and the gravity that made fun of him.
Comics were his only passion. To read them, he went to isolate himself in the garage where he felt comfortable among all these very useful tools as it should be, factory calibrated to the millimeter and without an unnecessary curve. He had long admired the colorful designs of knights, vigilantes and detectives who warded off evil and wiped away the tears of Justice. Reading was difficult for him, but he tried to decode everything with his finger. He liked to see his finger browse these pages, its commander's rigidity reassured him.

1/2

>>17644365
This morning he was reading the adventures of Christopher Columbus, who had the genius to be daring to act in a society sclerotic by its principles. These seas and ships, storms and sailors, were his country, his faith, his history and his people. Columbus guiding the Santa Maria through the Sargassum was well worth a Red Sea. Never did a man read the Gospel with more faith, he discovered America with the Genoese.
It came to the story of the egg. At a dinner party the sailor is criticized, his supposed genius is laughed at, they tell him "he just had to think about it". Columbus does not give way, he challenges the guests to make a hard-boiled egg stand upright on the table. Everyone tries and everyone fails. Then Columbus breaks the butt of the egg which is now flattened and can stand like a small dolmen. “You just had to think about it,” he says.
The story pleased the boy, who frantically absorbed himself in re-reading it and going through all the pictures in order to understand it better.

His mother had called him to diner over ten minutes ago and he still wasn't here. She walked to the garage as she knew how her son could get caught up in his reading. What was her surprise when she came in to see her son standing upright on the workbench! He still had in his hand the saw with which he had cut his legs and was leaning against the wall with its bump. Tears came to the eyes of his mother who, throwing herself on him, covered him with kisses, saying: “Oh my love! You just had to think about it! "

2/2

>>17644365
Your English is great! Heck, you made me have to google ‘dolmen’ (great word)

Grammar is a bit confusing in a couple spots:
>He would then just have to shut up so that we thought we had a good boy like the others and she would no longer be the target of the pitying looks that her neighbors were giving her.
^looks like two sentences got tangled up in each other. ‘We’ and ‘she’ seem to both be referring to his mother.

> the saw with which he had cut his legs
‘cut his legs’ = he is injured/ bleeding
‘cut off his legs’ = amputation
I assume you mean to say the second one.

Also, I can’t tell if the mother is pleased or saddened. Her reaction is a bit ambiguous/strange in this situation.

What made you think to write this story? I know there’s not a prompt, but it would be interesting to hear where the idea came from.

I asked a friend for a prompt, as I found no footing in the ones above.

> A Man Smiles at the Moon, and the Moon Smiles Back

It’s a cold winter evening, in the late of February. He paces along the stone paved streets of the modern metropolis, his mind empty from the uninterrupted haste of being. As he passes the well-dressed gentlemen of his locale, busy arguing about the unjust righteousness his partner has bestowed upon herself, he looks up to the celestial body enlightening his current, yet temporary home. The moon is bright, and seems more detailed than ever, the longer his gaze is fixed upon it.

Many nights he’s spent pondering the infinite insignificance of his existence in relation to the ever expanding, unattainable vastness of the universe. The books carried on his daily commute upon his back, have left an imprint – They do not weigh him down, yet they retain him within the mundane mold that is his life. He’s chosen a path and pursues the favor of his desire, yet he is so utterly disappointed in how little influence he has attained. No matter his dedication and perseverance, no matter his will or how successful he’ll be, the ability to change the course of the Earth’s revolution will never be within his grasp.

Despite the evening city’s bustling crowd, he stands utterly still, as if rooted upon the side of a mountain, his feet buried in the snow that is his ever-present thoughts. From this vantagepoint of his, the moon seems dwelling within a realm expanding over his horizon. Despite its immense mass, it seems almost weightless, as it hangs from the ceiling of his world. He knows this observation well, as he’s made it so many times, when coming upon a silverfish in his bathroom. The seemingly unmeasurable difference in dimension between him and the arthropod has been brought to the moon, while he’s adopted the role of the nocturnal insect.

(1/2)

He stands now in front of a choice. To sit idly by as the gravity of the moon’s permanence in contrast to his own, will squash his fragile body with time, with no yield from his residence on Earth – or to follow the path of the silverfish, and seize his idle and ineffectual pondering, take the mantle of his future and search for substance through his own measures.

Every child has been faced with the decision of whether taking a life insignificant to their own existence can be justified in the name of assuagement. To judge the value of something that does not belong to them and decide upon its fate. The train of thought that lead them to consider the motives of the bug’s wandering across the walkway, and the motivation this creature finds to move on among the feet of giants. “Where does it go, and why does it go there?”; the juvenile reflects upon this thought. To some, ignorance truly must be a blessing.

As he considers this dead being, looking down upon him in the midst of his life’s simple surroundings, it seems it’s presenting to him its soul. When his ruminative thoughts halt, his perspective has changed. He makes out the protrusions and trenches of this suddenly friendlier surface and observes the glaring halo that surrounds it. Above the profile of Luna stands a crown, its radiance insuring him that she means well.

Loosened from the thoughtful prison he had locked himself within, he starts elevating his feet once again. The streetlights move quickly by, and he compares their luminosity to that of this floating universal being. “She does shine brightest this evening”. He smiles at the moon, excited to mention her stature to his spouse. Knowing his scruples are for naught, he can once again resume his pacing down the alley. As he turns a corner, the moon smiles back.

(2/2)

>>17644502
A shit I fucked up two of the most important moment. Yeah he definitely cut off his legs and his mom is crying of joy. Thanks a lot for the corrections anon! (as for dolmen it's the same word in my language ahah)

>What made you think to write this story?
As a kid I read a lot of Franco-Belgian comics, including one about Colomb where the story of the egg of Colomb is told. I've always liked this story and I thought I would inspire myself from it (no idea why though, haven't read a comics in year). At first I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of the egg with its mother telling him to stand straight and something would happen with Colomb. I researched the story again and turns out I had forgotten the Colomb crushed a little bit the egg before making it stand straight. It didn't really work anymore for what I wanted to say, but I really liked this idea of a mother telling her "egg" son to stand straight. Then I guess my literary influences kicked in and the story came quite naturally (not the style though, I'm probably going to rework on the original).

>>17644836
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I find that non-native English speakers often phrase things in more creative and poetic ways, and use words (like dolmen) I would not usually encounter.

Now that I think of it, your description of the boy makes him sound like an egg. It reminds me of the Pixar short ‘Bao’ where a woman has a son who is a Chinese steamed bun.

Great job, anon, looking forward to seeing the next version!

New prompt:
>hero bumps thread when it gets to page 8

Lets’s see a few people try this one out

>>17643449
Posted the suggestion half as a joke and forgot about the thread, really impressed how it turned out actually and that an anon was able to have fun with it. The countdown is nice, I like the different points made in each second.

>a man thinks he’s Jesus, only he’s Winston Churchill at the peak of WWII
>a metaphysically lost dog
>a man rapes himself
>a city infested with rats decides to teach them about Ratatouille
>a sleepwalker goes around the world

>>17647883
>>a man thinks he’s Jesus, only he’s Winston Churchill at the peak of WWII

Lol, working on this one

>>17648553

It is natural for fathers and sons to find themselves quite often in opposition. This fact requires any civilization to most vigorously defend the institution of filial devotion, lest they be racked by civil wars with the succession of every new generation. While the practice of extreme ‘filial piety’ is ascendant in the East, here in the Cradle of Civilization we say only ‘honor thy father’. You would think, then, that I would be held to a much lower standard than the sons of the Orient...and you would think wrong. You see, I am bound to obey my father not only by the fifth commandment, but also by the four that precede it.

My familial circumstance is an extraordinary one. I could say that I possess two fathers, and that I possess none. Joseph has raised me well, though I do suspect he harbors some resentment toward his role as history’s most celebrated cuckold. The Almighty, my true progenitor - a full family tree unto himself - has ever been distant, inscrutable and at times quite cruel. Though I must trust that he acts with the best of motives, he does not always feel it necessary to share his confidences with me. I say, too, that I have no father at all, since my true sire could also be claimed by every son on earth and yet they only enumerate one “Papa” and it is not Him. And so, my pedigree both exceeds that of mighty kings, and is the equal of any bastard son or orphan beggar - a point which has outraged the former group and has pleased the latter.

(1/2)

>>17649317

(2/2)

I have done by level best to maintain an outward sense of peace and composure as I navigated all these contradictions. I acted as I felt an embodiment of salvation should: equal measures grace, wisdom, and humility (with a dash of righteousness as a nod to my divine parenthood). And, if the number and quality of my friends and followers was any yard-stick, I feel I’ve been doing a decent job of it. Often, I asked my Father to make clear my role in all this. As is his way, I would receive either no reply or one so cryptic - such as my newfound ability to change water to wine - it was even more perplexing than the silence. Thus, I was left more-or-less rudderless the whole of my young life. I would not go as far as to say I was making it all up - divine inspiration certainly did come to me, and I had a firm grasp of the broad arc of my life - but I was quite often required to fill in the blanks. I can’t say for sure if the Devil was in the details, but I can absolutely attest that God shows no interest at all in them.

It was in one of these moments of improvisation that I struck on a theme I rather liked. I turned and polished it my head, inspected every facet, and it made the best sense. While I was the son of God, I must also be - in at least some aspect - God himself. I imagined how generations of men would be as confused by all this as I had been, and I saw the battles, schisms, and crusades that must follow from such ambiguity. My Father made it known in the Babel incident that he does not trust man to have a universal tongue, but I for saw the necessity to arrange some common conventions around prayer and doctrine. The number 39 comes to mind. Perhaps there would need to be some bureaucratic structure in place to keep everyone on message, nothing as heavy-handed as as theocracy, but maybe a dotted-line connection between the keepers of law and the keepers of faith.

Once I had every last detail worked out, I rose my arms to the heavens and called out to the paternal aspect of myself, I was sure this time I could reason with The Old Boy.

“Jesus was an Anglican!”

All eyes in the room shifted from their maps and charts to look at the speaker, who all assumed to be asleep for the last 20 minutes.

“I’m sorry sir, what did you just say?” Cripps was sore at being interrupted by such a non sequitur, but he had resigned himself to such outbursts. If Britain was to endure assaults by the Luftwaffe and U-boats, he should have the good humor to entertain this old man in a homberg rambling about...what was it again?

“Jesus Christ was a goddamn Anglican, I am certain of it. Britain is sure to...” he was starting to deflate again “...prevail with the...countrymen must have faith...”

And he was out.

The room paused for a moment to be sure the Prime Minister had fully completed his thought, and then resumed their long night of strategizing.

>>17646076
Bump

>>17649331
Forgot to add a new prompt:
>A skeptic encounters undeniable magic
>Hunter S Thompson reports from COVID quarrantine

>>17649331
Lmao nice ending. Comic relief is done well.

>>17649331
Well written and funny.

Here’s the full list of active prompts:
>A man is forced to keep a very cursed item
>A singer discovers they can hypnotise people with their voice
>A shark discovers shark fin soup
>A Venetian art collector considers his or her paintings as the villa is flooding
>Memoir from an FBI agent assigned to monitor CWC
>A monster dad explains to his son not to be afraid of the bright
>someone dresses as a literary character for a Halloween party and refuses to break character
>a story from the perspective of a duck/goose battling for thrown bread
>a metaphysically lost dog
>a man rapes himself
>a city infested with rats decides to teach them about Ratatouille
>a sleepwalker goes around the world
>A skeptic encounters undeniable magic
>Hunter S Thompson reports from COVID quarantine

>>17653396
>>A shark discovers shark fin soup

The great white was soon quite remorseful,
After eating a delightful morsel.
The soup tasted just right
When paired with a bite
Of his unfortunate brother’s first dorsel.


Not flash fiction, but when I discovered the rhyme I couldn’t resist...

>>17634848
Are these at least being saved in a bin or something?

>>17655666
I'll save them.

Cover anon, are you still around?

Annanananan

>>17634848
(A schizo...)

I cannot readily describe what I have seen save by referring back to what I have seen, or rather overheard and read before, for am blind. I am not one of those who have been blind since birth, mine is the result of self-inflicted injury, yes injury, not willful mutilation, but self-injury all the same. This injury was inflicted gradually, and was never noticeable nor perceived until the very end, that is until it had become irreversible and self-perpetuating, no longer requiring of me any action and thus removing from me even the title of actor in my own destruction. Yes, destruction. I insist on the application of this dramatic, even epic-evoking word in describing my condition not with the aim of achieving the theatrical, but rather in pursuit of the confessional. For I mean to tell all who would deign to glance upon these pages the many truths that injury, loss, and pain have made known to me, but also the injury, loss, and pain that knowledge of certain truths has given me; agony and sorrow, and what the French call chagrin, these are the universal and eternal coins by which these truths, these pieces of truth, circulate. Truth and pain for me have become equivalent and inseparable, yet not identical. Before becoming blind I had felt pain, and of course understood to differentiate between different types of pain: the pain of falling and scraping my knees, the pain of sickness, the pain of jealousy, the pain of attachment, of intimidation and humiliation, the pain of shame and self-loathing, the pain of obsession, the pain of pleasures. Yet, I only began to understand the complexity and intricacy, or rather the omnipresent quality of pain when I became blind, for from then on pain became for me a way of thinking, and I found it to be a quite necessary way of thinking if I was ever to face the truth of my own spiritually moribund condition. Pleasure, which I blindly pursued before as an escape from pain and which gradually become for me an obsession and hence a source of previously unimaginable forms of pain, has ironically compelled me to seek new sources of light and to be ever wary of new pits of darkness. And though whichever way I turn, I can expect only pain, the forms of pain offered to me are qualitatively as different as night is from day; I confirm to myself everyday that I choose the pain of truth, which once discovered is supremely difficult to keep, and exists in constant yet tenuous opposition to the pain of falsity or deception, which regardless of how hard one labors to avoid is peerlessly adept at convincing one of its pretended innocence and naturalness, it seduces one into believing that it is at the essence of life by deceiving one into equating life with pleasure, i.e. with the avoidance of pain, when in truth its pursuit quickly becomes a perpetual but unconsummated intercourse with death, wherein the soul experiences in ever growing degrees the torments of its own recurring death. --M Coromine

New prompt:
>A TV gameshow takes place in three rounds, in which the players compete for the grand prize, an atomic bomb.

>>17656903
Yessir

Watch Family Guy, the writers for that show revolutionized fiction whether you like Beter or not.

>>17657312
Did the Lulu cover template come through? Any issues?

>>17657950
Received!
I’m traveling today w/o my laptop, but I’ll have the file ready tomorrow evening

>>17658108
Ahh, got it. Thanks, I was wondering!

>>17656937
Fantastic writing, Anon!

This sounds almost like a lost letter from the 1800s, did you have any particular model in mind as you were writing this?

>>17659471
It's a pastiche of different styles, but this right here is basically what I had in mind (from a text on philosophy)

"The relationship of dialect to paradox is elucidated by means of a phenomenological analysis of self-consciousness."

>>17659548
I really like the idea of using a prompt (kid sorts) for the writing style and not the plot. Would be fun challenge to try to mix a style with a prompt.

Any ideas for a list of styles?
>1800s Letter
>News Article
>Contemporary Romance Novel
>Children’s Book