Facebook Status Updates: August 2017

August 2017

Angie dreamed gelato dreams, her only cohesive memory of a five month whirlwind tour of Europe.

The dog walking service printed ads claiming they were a god walking service by mistake.

It did not prevent them from getting clients.

I handed the god what change I could spare. “For a meal.”

“I’m always hungry.”

“Your kind always are. But there was only so much we could feed you.”

“What will you be without us?”

“We don’t know yet. It will be interesting to see what we can become without guilt imprisoning us.”

“There is more to us than that,” the god said, but even he did not believe.

“I asked Jay about times he’d been hurt because power doesn’t prevent you from being hurt. It might give more options in how you deal and respond to it. He told me about losing his sight. About this Honcho leaving him. How do you not have PTSD, I wondered. Hah. You don’t have that, not when you are the trauma. Not that he’d ever see that. Not that he’d ever understand that.”

“All Mr. Pickles knows is that something weird has happened here, and Oscars Bend is outside his territory as a magician. So that leaves us to find out what it is and deal with it. Somehow. And we’re going into it blind.”

The other two both nod. I wonder if this is a test, or if Mr. Pickles hates us. It’s hard to tell with cats normally, and when the cat is a magician it’s probably impossible.

The psychic war was simple: one attack, and every spy in the nation forgot every secret password they knew.

Oscars Bend had been a semi-permanent logging camp for Hoster Logging for almost thirty years. When the company folded, the town remained: a crossroads dreaming of other things, a sadness etched into the world. Four homes, a motel, a small store, all off any major road. Only a drunk satnav got you here but somehow it felt like it would be more sad if everything was gone. People had remained, despite everything. I wasn’t sure if that was admirable or not, but I was sure I had no basis for judgement. Every house was run-down. Even the shadows seemed made of different shades.

You can’t have horror here, because there was nothing left to be taken away. And yet despite the thought, here we were.

You said there was a way through pain to the other side, held up the knife in one hand, three puppies in the other, the grimoire in your lap.

“Only three?” I asked, thinking you were making some meta joke.

You haven’t spoke to me in weeks.

It took me days to realize just how hard it would be to easily hold three puppies in a single hand.

The secret Joe never told anyone was that his computer had the best antivirus software on the market. Every virus it acquired was a result of Joe having unprotected sex. He didn’t understand it, but he was more than foolish enough to consider it a blessing.

Until a Trojan virus got through the software and infected him in turn.

“You can’t arrest me! I said I wanted protein. Not that I was - wait, how does pro teen count as being pro pedophiles in the first place?”

“Merry me,” I said and I laughed and I laughed.

He wept as the aliens probed him, kinder than any human had ever been.

I made a joke. You called it a wound as though that was not the same thing entirely.

You told me you were from the future. And I could do was weep in joy that there was one at all, no matter that you’d come back in time to kill me.

The press rated Amy as barely average as a serial killer. Incensed, she hunted down the journalist who made the original claim and in the resulting confusion of torture she ended up to calling herself the Litotes Killer.

She quit even being a serial killer due to the resulting social media backlash and being turned into a meme. Twice.

I was so tired of being called a monster, but not tired enough to cease being one.

You told me relationships had best before dates and I laughed thinking you were making a joke. But then you went off.

If Uri Geller can bend metal with his mind, is it just spoons? If not, what happens when you try and stab him?

I ignored the call to adventure in favour of the call to nap.

I am pretty sure that means I’m not a hero.

“We’re going to be sued if we film a wheelchair ramp.” Wilbur rubs the bridge of his nose. “I’m starting to wonder about this town. If the Outsider active around here has infected them somehow, or if it even needs to.”

“It’s not that bad,” Noah offers softly. We both look over. “They probably all have guns here, and no one has tried to kill us yet?”

“Yet,” I repeat.

“The woman who saw my talent was terrified. The man who opened the door to his home was waiting for someone, and angry and scared at the same time.” Noah shrugs. “There might be weirdness going on here that’s just a small town of twenty people?”

“That is about the size of a classroom. And they are pretty weird.” No one has come out of the largest house yet, so I nod to the oldest house in Oscar’s Bend. “Now to door number three. It can’t be any worse than the last two.”

“Do the two of you want to tempt fate?” Wilbur demands. I think he’s joking, but I’m not certain.

Everyone told me that you were a flawed diamond. But the jeweller called you worthless.

The other side of the road is like a different town. Both homes are neater, despite one being a frankenhome affair. There are no fences in Oscars Bend but there are empty lots between the homes that used to have houses. Past the frankenhome is the one local store that, from here, looks to be in decent shape as well. There are tracks in Rivercomb, even if our town hasn’t seen a train in years, and even now you can divide the town up by them in certain ways.

That you can do the same for a town with four homes in it is almost depressing.

“That playlist you gave me didn’t include a single love song?”

“Why did you think none of those songs were about love?”

“I don’t know; I did think it was odd?”

“I thought it might be better if we made our own with the music of flesh and bone, the music of sound and touch. There is a music in your eyes that no song can ever match.”

“Oh!”

“Worst case scenario would get us famous. There’s nothing in the world that would make fame worth its cost.”

“I thought you were wise enough to avoid making waves until you were certain you could swim.”

I wanted to be a poet, but every door I opened was a sadness eventually a sameness. The world is littered with enough darkness without assholes like me trying to make it pretty. Unable to find another topic within it out, I settled for silence.

Some days it fits me too well.

Some people had bonsai plants. Not Tom. Tom had a bonsai life.

“I said I had a talent for pain. That’s not just feeling when people are in pain,or pains they’ve experienced.” Mark doubles over, unable to even scream. “It means I can cause pain. Especially when I’m in a bad mood.” I pause as he struggles to breathe. “I’m not even there yet.”

“Anya,” Wilbur says behind me, his presence even larger than he is.

I let my talent relax; Mark McTavish staggers and throws up violently to my left. He shaking and can’t seem to stop. I should probably feel bad for doing this. I don’t.

Co-worker (to manager): You know me: I'm always the first one to laugh at myself!

Me: Actually, that's not true.

During an online discussion where I argued that Shakespeare can be problematic for his era since he can overshadow many other contemporary writers, etc. who lose out on readers and exposure, I explained how Shakespeare is Buffy, and without Buffy you’d still have an entirely watchable show.

I am perhaps too proud of this terrible analogy :)

“He could have had a gun,” Noah says. “He will next time?”

“Because I used a talent.”

“I don’t think so? You hurt his pride?”

I look over at Noah. “You think Mark might try and shoot me not because I did weird shit, but because I hurt his pride?”

“You act like it’s not all some people have,” he says, soft as usual, but meets my gaze directly.

“Aram teach you that?”

“No.” The no is quiet; I let it be final and just walk.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but everything is wrong,” she says, filling the silence with a stumble of words.

Every story about fairies gives them wings as if we could hobble them as we do angels.

The Homeopath turned out be be one of the least effective superheroes

Prompt: An intergalactic outlaw is finally captured and sent into exile in one of the most hostile regions of the galaxy. Years later, a ship on patrol crash lands there and finds the outlaw still alive.

“He’s not only still alive, he’s the president.”

Honesty should be a tax on politicians.

Seeker After Truth accepts the gold. “We are mostly scholars, dealers in knowledge. I am more a warrior than most of my fellows, by inclination as well as need, Sometimes knowledge needs the sword as much as the pen, though we pretend otherwise.”

The lucky are worked to the bone. The rest have souls slough off, clothed against nakedness with eyes burning with a futility their masters mistake for energy.

Prompt: The cookbook contained no recipes

Cooking the cookbook in a broth produces a new taste that improves the taste and smell of any food.

Except ice cream. No one knows why.

Once upon a time there was a monster who was just a monster, without any tragic backstory at all.

“I can’t shake the feeling we’re missing something, mostly because we’ve been here for several hours and nothing has tried to kill us yet.”

Too often I pretend to be asleep when you call.

Co-worker: *watches me put on the third band aid* “You must lead a charmed life to still be alive after all these years.”

“Will you need gloves? The till has a lot of metal in it.”

“No.”

I stare at him. “Are you miserly with words on purpose? Metal hurts the fae.”

“Gloves draw attention. To be noticed would hurt more. For the humans.”

Sometimes all the magic in the world can just hold a scream into a whisper.

“I am afraid not,” the spy said gently. “I flirt, yes, but I will not seduce. There are skills one must never use, precisely because one is so very adept at them. There are lines one should never cross, not even for your country and the safety of the world.”

Prompt: A group of adventurers attempt to plunder a tomb where a bored lich has gotten creative with his horde of skeletons.

“…. The Skeletal Centipede.”

“None of us are going to make our Will Saves, are we?”