Gimme Something to Do

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I'm listening to music and mulling over posts and replying to a few things being really bored and humdrum. Then it dawned on me. I used to write. I'd like to write again. You, intrepid viewer of this thread, will give me a topic to base a short story on. Since my motivation is a dried up husk and my writing style has atrophied to the point of banality please note rule number two especially. I'm not aiming high here.

Rules:

1. Your topic can be about anything. Leave specific instructions if you wish.
2. My story will be 1-2 pages long.
3. If more than 1 respondent, stories will be made in order.
4. I will let you all know in advance if my mind has overheated and crashed.

Thank you.

Demanding as hell.
Say "please."

Okay... make a 1 page story of how to invent a death clock.

Last edited by PastFixations on 01 Jul 2012, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hell is as Demanding as you Please

My father once said that in Hell there is no one to save your misbegotten soul from the eternal damnation you've forced upon yourself. He would always be demanding me to behave, sit straight, wake up two hours early and eat a big breakfast because the paper wasn't going to route itself across the neighborhood, even if the angels and holy Moses himself came down to wish it so. My father had a flair for the dramatic I suppose but that day something within him snapped.

It was four in the morning. Bleary eyed I struggled to wake into my morning routine but that summer I was growing into my teenage years faster than a lonely snail hunkers down in an old bean can. My growth was spurting higher than Jack's beanstalk and I knew as the years went by there would be no golden goose at the end of that journey; probably just a creaky old rocking chair and an old vinyl record, bent out of shape and dusty with abandonment. As I yawned and scratched whatever infernal itch poked me my father burst into the room with reckless haste and jump started my heart into a frenzy.

“Son! Get outside! It has begun! Quick!” He yelled, stomping away as quickly as he had come. A dawning anticipation had begun to creep its way past my heart and into my brain as I began to piece together what had happened. I was still in my pajamas as I slumped outside only to witness the apocalypse. My father was rolling around in the dirt and using a black magic marker to write the number of the beast all over his chest and head. His eyes were rolled back in his head and his tongue was undulating with satanic incantations. My mouth became a doorway from which horror sprang forth, uninterrupted by the flying imps that circled overhead.

“What's happening!” I screamed. My body had become a damp noodle, waving uncertainly in the hot new wind, every swirl of air licking my cheeks with the devil's stench. “Father, please! We need to get out of here!” I desperately shook him, willing with all my strength that his senses come back to him. Alas, they had more than likely evaporated with the last vestiges of sanity this world had clung to. There was nothing I could do. My father continued to roll around on the ground as I stepped forward to meet my new reality as lucidly as I could.

As I walked the hissing streets, as I watched the lampposts melt and droop over me I wondered what was in store for me in this new existence. Suddenly, a grand demon materialized in a volcanic eruption in front of me, the flames searing off my eyebrows. I could no longer punctuate my surprise. He was an overseer, he told me in a raspy voice. And he had a task for me.

“Please, I'll do anything!” I cried. The overseer smiled. “What is it you will me to do?”

“From henceforth ye shall be the paperboy of Hell, riding on a crippled Cerberus and ensuring our denizens have plenty of distressing news to digest. LITERALLY!” He opened his maw to let loose a laugh I still remember to this day.

And so here I am, paperboy to every demon and tortured soul in a twenty-five mile radius, as happy as you please. If only I could get those hideous yellow faces of the damned away from my mind's eye...constantly mocking, laughing, their teeth seemingly just a solid block of impenetrable white.

The End.

Well, i didn't see that coming.
Write on!

o, wait, another topic....something about a grilled cheese sandwich.

The Death Clock

Johnathan had always found comfort in the fine craftsmanship of clocks. Ever since his stint in Paris during the Big One he had collected clocks from all around the world, their reliable constant ticking a reminder that no matter what happened in his life he could look at any one of them and feel weighted down again, head firmly placed in leveled reality. He didn't quite fancy those newfangled digital clocks those youth down the street were sporting and he certainly didn't appreciate clocks shaped like power rangers. They beeped and booped in a horrifying screech. No sir, the steady tick tick tick was all Johnathan needed.

Sadly, his wife had passed away from a nasty case of the gout five years ago and Johnathan was an awfully lonely man. He knew as sure as the hands counting down each minute did that his days were numbered. He would spend hours cleaning his collection, listening to each tick, and realized something. It all made sense to him now, as clear as the gong from his favorite grandfather clock. The next door neighbors were secret Nazis.

In 1946 Johnathan had returned from the war and had saved up enough money to move in with his girlfriend into the suburban dream they've always wanted to be a part of. The clean cut lawns, the neat little houses, the bulbous weird looking cars. Back then Johnathan always wondered why they couldn't put some fins on those suckers, maybe elongate them so they'd drive like a boat on wheels. Johnathan liked boats, but not as much as clocks.

Johnathan snapped to. He was dozing off again. His old age was getting the best of him but his mind was as sharp as ever. Peering through his kitchen window he saw the family of secret Nazi conspirators enjoying a macaroni casserole. Wiping off his glasses Johnathan could see it was in the shape of a cross! The evil kind! This madness had to stop! He was foaming at the mouth now, itching to give them a taste of Old Glory. Unfortunately, Johnathan had sold his M1A1 Thompson for an M1A1 Thompson-shaped clock and was in a sorely vulnerable position. He needed to defend his homeland somehow!

He looked around his living room. And then it dawned on him. He would just throw clocks at the neighbors until they either died or ran away. Cackling with glee he gathered up as many as he could and started lobbing them at the anti-American household.

* * *

Hans Gugenluzt was enjoying a lovely dinner with his Christian family and scarfing down his wife's specialty: a macaroni casserole shaped in the cross Our Lord and Savior Died on, Amen. He smiled at his two kids, who despite having seven shades of polio and third degree under-bites were nearly honor students. He ruffled his son's balding head and patted his daughter's humped back. He pecked his wife with a smooch. Everything was perfect. And then the crashes started. Slams and explosions of cogs and gears, tiny metal hands and chimes breaking the windows, the siding and front porch. It was the old man. He told his family to get to the safety of the attic. He assured them that because of the man's advanced age he wouldn't be able to throw that high.

When his family was secured he braved the front yard and ran up to the man.

“VAT ARE YOU DOENG YOU LUNATIC!” Hans screamed.

The old man was wild eyed and spittle flowed freely through his mouth. “Saving my country from the German menace!” As he raised his arms above his head to throw a 19th century cuckoo clock at the house, Hans wrapped his arms around Johnathan and gave him a warm hug.

“Everyzing est alright. Ze war est over. You are just a crazy old man.” Hans said. Tears were welling up in both their eyes.

Johnathan opened his mouth to speak. “I've been blinded by hatred all this time. My love of clocks is the only thing that kept me going...and now I feel complete.”

Hans was confused. “Vy est zat?”

Johnathan's wrinkled face opened into a wide grin. “Because I've been replacing my parts piece by piece, to create the ultimate clock. A clock made of human hatred and anger. A clock full of regret and tempered by time. A clock that SEEKS YOUR DEATH!”

The old man ripped his chest open to reveal a network of cogs and moldy revolvers. There were little mice in his metallic ribcage running at full speed, attempting to work the mechanism that would fire them off. Hans was so stunned that for the first time he resorted to violence. Giving a mighty push he tipped the old man over and the mice broke out of their cages, skittering away in the dark of the night. Johnathan's heart was failing now, the bits and pieces that ran his clockwork body springing away.

“I'm sorry...all this time I built myself into a death clock...I should have built myself into a love clock. So that I could appreciate the things around me.” Before Hans could tell him that it was alright, that he was at peace with his clockmaker, Johnathan gave out a mournful CUCKOO! and died.

Hans went back home to tell his family everything was alright. He couldn't help but wonder whether Johnathan was always a death clock...or did the terrible things in his life shape him into such a mechanical and precise creation...wound up by hatred and misunderstandings. No matter, Hans thought.

He had switched to digital clocks years ago.

The End.

(Until next time folks, I'm done for the day. Thank you for occupying my time. I'll check back tomorrow God willing and the creek don't rise.)

Okay, here is my idea for your story:
It is about a princess who is exiled to a forgotten island by her parents because they are under an evil curse and they want to spare her. Her best friend is a 100 year old sea turtle on the island. But then pirates sail onto her island and tell her that the world of people that she vaguely remembers has become evil and corrupt (and this is coming from pirates so you know it must be pretty bad) so she doesn't want to leave her island and has to decide to stay or go. Possible twist- she has the power to turn people into puppets but she never has used it and isn't sure if she even should or not.

I'm patient, I will wait until your brain is thawed out again!

I didn't with mine either.
Okay...After those ones I do have a better story.
The Bride's Dark Secret
It's a secret that's called out on the day that is so soul-smashing to the husband that he breaks down into hysteria.
Also has the devil spawn telling his own form of comedy which ultimately gives the Bride a choice, either to go back in time to stop the secret from ever happening or ends up alone with no family and takes her life from guilt.

Order is as follows:
1) Grilled Cheese Sandwich (singularity)
2) Princess (glasstoria idea)
3) The Bride's Dark Secret (me)
Also the way she kills herself if she chooses the other path is by drinking a bottle of poison.

"...the flames searing off my eyebrows. I could no longer punctuate my surprise."

That made me laugh out loud. Impressive stories!

A Short History of Grilled Cheese

The grilled cheese sandwich is an ingenious combination of both bread and cheese, generally heated with butter on a frying pan. In ancient times when bread was plentiful and the mysterious seas produced milk in gallons, civilization saw no need to make nature's own delicious treats palatable. Indeed, despite the voracious appetite of dinosaurs there were so many bread forests on Earth that even after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event many animals thrived under the sustenance of the prime grain. Coupled with freshly caught cheese wheels which roamed in small packs of two to four all of life began to flourish again. All thanks to the glorious sacrifice of these two lesser life forms, whom needed neither sunlight nor nourishment to survive.

A famous scientist would later surmise that if a fully matured cheese wheel was better equipped to take care of its young cheese wedge offspring, “life on earth would be more rare than a pair of good tits in 1854. Honestly, have you seen my wife? She's twenty-six years old and she looks like she's been chopping wood with her bare hands for the past twenty of them.” -Charles Darwin. He went on to explain “the bread forests and cheese wheels of this world are the most resilient non-sentient lifeforms ever created, which is a stark comparison to the Dodo bird. The Dodo waddles around, refuses to fly and frequently walks into several sprays of buckshot in a lackadaisical suicide march that I simply can't explain. But look at them. Just knowing they're alive makes me mad. Someone get me my gun, I need to wipe those beaks off their face.”

Darwin died two years before it was discovered the Dodo had a gluten allergy and was lactose-intolerant. The wild cheese wheel was becoming more sparse by the time industrialization began and had moved away from its native beach habitat into the thick aromatic bread forests of North America and Central Asia. As filthy, soot covered British orphans died by the droves to turn a cog in some random machine that helped puff up a Victorian era lady's fancy skirt, people began noticing that surviving cheese wheels were becoming moldy and reeked of a thick scent that was reminiscent of France. It was a desolate wasteland where the water had turned to expensive wine and every living thing had developed a fatalistic and languid outlook on life. As steam ships and factories clogged up the atmosphere, outlooks began turning grim.

In 1908, almost entirely green from advanced mold and teetering back and forth in a vain attempt to roll one last time, the final cheese wheel gave a Parmesan poot and expired, forever leaving the world cheeseless. It was a dark time. Citizenry began eating coal and nails to supplement their diet and the streets ran red with blood due to unrelated reasons this lesson won't cover. Scientists scrambled to find a nutritious solution to the world's food shortage while the bread forests shrank so rapidly that soon the only loaves of bread available were subterranean pumpernickel. It was well known the only people who ever ate pumpernickel bread were serial killers and lumberjacks. Unable to recreate a wild piece of cheese, scientists settled on an unholy mixture of sawdust, glue and horse urine. (To give it that tangy taste and yellow color.)

Initially the taste was unbearable. In 1937, just about everyone was dead because an all bread diet had made them so fluffy they flew up into the sky and became clouds. Their tears would later serve to revitalize the fledgling bread forests remaining on Earth. The horse urine processed cheese never caught on and scientists began destroying the product by burning it. When put to the flame the mixture melted and a curious colleague dipped a bony finger into the gloop to try it out. Excitedly, he found that the taste was bearable and news soon spread that processed cheese was tolerable when its chemical composition combusted.

With the world no longer dying from starvation many adventurous individuals tried various things with the cheese such as rolling it around in gravel for a crunchy treat. In 1942, a famed chef preparing a platter of cheese and bread for a table of dignitaries accidentally placed several slices of bread on the grill. Shocked that the bread didn't even need to be scraped off he tried a piece. Then he tried the cheese. Then he combined the two. It was magnificent.

Thus, the grilled cheese sandwich was born.

Thank you, Decorequiem! That was awesome! I loved the roaming packs of cheese wheels. My appetite for a grilled cheese sandwich has been curtailed, however.