Tag Archive | prompt: WritingPrompts

Three and a Half Oaks

Sep22

Based on a prompt found here.

🌳

Between the blink of an eye, in a heartbeat, in a breath, in things that stopped mattering, the world stopped – or at least we did.

People froze. I froze. Animals froze. Insects froze, I think. 

It was – when I thought about it clinically, it was fascinating.  My body didn’t hunger, didn’t ache, didn’t have any needs.  My eyes didn’t dry out.  I’d been sitting in the park.  The others in the park seemed the same – stuck in a single moment.  They didn’t fall over, even if in mid-jog.  The squirrel hung in mid-climb.  The ducks stopped in mid-nibble. 

Nothing moved.  Nothing but plants.  Nothing died, nothing rotted, nothing breathed, nothing but plants.  Continue reading →

Train Rolls On….

Aug13

From writing prompt found here.  

🚂

“Did you give me this note?”

The train was rumbling on into night time, so I’d been getting settled into “my” sleeper room when the woman came in wielding a note on a lined index card. 

I took it from her carefully, using two fingers on the corner, and gave it a glance. 

Whatever you do, don’t get off this train until it arrives at the final stop. Continue reading →

All the Worthy People

Jul17

From writing prompt found here.  Um, warning, discusses the violent end of the world. 

🚀

“You don’t understand!  I’m just an orderly.  There are plenty of doctors, plenty of scientists, plenty of people who can do a lot of good-”

They didn’t sedate me.  I didn’t argue with the point at the time, because if I was only restrained, maybe I could get out somehow, but they had gotten me trussed up really good and they were dragging me onto the ship.

All around me – separated by a very tall fence of chain-link and razor wire – people were shouting that they’d take my place.  I kept adding to their shouts.   Let them go instead of me

They were in a hurry; I understood that.  They were working against a literal doomsday clock; in less than 2 hours, the world was going to end. Continue reading →

150

Jul11

Prompt from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/hopquy/wp_a_recent_scientific_breakthrough_has_led_to/

Content warning: Um.  vague philosophical horror, also discussion of end of life.

~*~

The Arenoraan Treatment was supposed to be the best new thing in the world, or rather, it had been  supposed to be the best new thing ten years ago .  Ten years before that, ten years before that – scientists had been inching the lifespan longer a little at a time.

The Arenoraan Treatment, it was supposed to be the best; it was supposed to let people live happily at least to their two-century mark, if not long beyond.  The assumption was, of course, that while people who were now around 135, 140 were enjoying their extended lives, scientists would have time to figure out the next step in immortality.

I was only 90 at the time, but I was looking forward to it.  Only ninety still sounded amazing to me, because at fifty-five, I’d been starting to fall apart.  Now here I was, ninety, and nothing ached and nothing creaked and I was down to one pill a day, and that was a multivitamin supplement. Continue reading →

Me, Myself, and Only I

Nov30

The headline reads 100,000th “Multiple” Power registered. ​

I hadn’t realized I’d let myself get so big.  I might have to pull things in a bit.

***

I always wanted to be a shape-changer. I guess, in a way, I have, even if all I can change into was myself.

It was the Golden Age of Superheros, back then, when the comet hit and many of us turned into something a bit different.

Me? I turned into several of me.  Four, at first.  There’s still a few stories of that first me around, The Quartet.

We sang four-part harmony pretty well.

But then I figured out how to replicate – or not – changes done to my body when I multiplied.  And I figured out how to choose where the damage went.

The Quartet died.  They died kind of old, and rather heroic.

I lived.  Dyed hair and a change of costume.  People don’t look too deeply.

There was Multiple Man – that one was a trick.  Then there was Quantum Lass.

I can get old.  But aging is damage, and there are ten of me in a nursing home, cheerfully playing cribbage with each other.

I wonder who was number 100,000.  What was her name?  Her schtick?

I’ve lost track, you see.  I don’t even think I’m the original anymore.

And if I called them all back into me, I don’t even know what would happen.

But that’s all right.  Because three of me are billionaires, and I can live in comfortable semi-retirement as Plurality, playing chess with myself and

never

ever

alone.

 

Written to WritingPrompts’s prompt:

In a universe of superheroes and sidekicks, Multiples are one of the most common powers, with roughly 100,000 individuals in possession. But the truth is, there has only ever been one Multiple. You.