Daily 20

Today we’ll be revisiting the Elements of Literature Spinner (…) write 350 words incorporating your fresh picked elements into a delicious new blend.

Elements: Orphan, fairy tales, competitive place, ambiguity

Word count: 389 words

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

The thing about being alone is that you only have your mind for company, and that can get old really quickly. There’s only so many times you can tell yourself to shut up—what’s worse is that it rarely works.

Hanging upside down from the rafters does to wonders to clear your thoughts, though. That’s how he learned about the ball at the king’s palace. To be fair, there’s always a ball at the king’s palace, but the prince would be there too and that meant every lady in the land would be out on the hunt.

(It’s funny, because the prince would inevitably end up marrying some peasant girl who would beguile him with her innocent charm or he’d turn out to be secretly gay, rendering their efforts useless.)

The important part is that a room filled to the brim with rich nobles is prime thieving grounds. You’d think they’d train the security better after losing so many jewels, but balls are still full of thieves. No less than ten different guilds hold actual auditions for who gets the honor of being sent to loot the ball.

“Between the two of us, I think we’ll be able to get a lot more than these losers,” says a whisper next to him, nearly startling him into falling off the rafters. He pulls himself up to find a little slip of a girl crouched on the beam he was hanging from, looking down at the third-rate crew discussing the ball with a grin.

“They’ll be caught three steps into the palace,” he whispers in agreement. “Who are you?”

“Someone who thinks that maybe we should take a shot at crashing the ball together,” she says cheekily.

He snorts quietly. “You would ditch me three steps into the palace. Get lost.”

“Come on,” she whines. “They haven’t noticed either of us, and we’re clearly good enough to keep up with each other. It’s much easier than going alone; I’m too young to blend in like you do.”

“Here’s a word of advice,” he says, making his way out through the roof. “Find someone else. Consider a different career path, even.”

“You know as well as I do that this is it for me,” she shoots back wryly.

He pauses, but he doesn’t look back.

She’ll only leave in the end anyway.

Daily 24

Today, you're going to be retelling a myth, but with your own twist!

Notes: For the record, I'm going off of the version of the myth our physics teacher said on a tangent during class three days ago, albeit greatly exaggerated to make it sound like some sort of cop drama. Very iffy working with myths still part of modern religion, though—apologies if any sensibilities have been offended.

Word count: 457 words

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

“This guy is relentless,” he wheezed, clutching at his side.

“Oh, lovely, something I never would’ve guessed in my millions of years,” came the dry reply. “Any more enlightening, completely obvious facts we want to go over today? Like, I don’t know, how you’re an idiot? Or, and hear me out on this one, that you’re a HUGE idiot?”

“You could be a little more sympathetic, V,” he shot back, annoyed.

“No way,” protested V. “This is all on you, man. If anything, you deserve a lot worse.”

“How was I supposed to know he’d go on an arson spree?”

“He’s an ash demon,” said V incredulously.

“Doesn’t mean he has to go around setting fires everywhere,” he grumbled.

“You gave him the power to turn people to ashes when he touched them! Were you seriously expecting anything different?”

“…yes?”

“I can’t believe you.”

“Fine, don’t. I still need your help in figuring out how to get rid of him; he keeps trying to set me on fire but he’s acting like a creepy ex about it.”

“Is he using the ‘we get along like a house on fire’ line?”

“Worse,” he replied grimly. “Any ideas?”

“Well,” says V, drawing out the word. “There is one thing…”

He stiffens. “I don’t like that tone. Whatever you’re thinking, please think of something else.”

“The missus was going to throw out a bunch of her old clothes but maybe I could repurpose them…”

“You are NOT going to solve this by—”

“—we can solve this by crossdressing!”

“V, don’t—“

“But it’s been so long since I tried seducing someone!” whined V. “Come on. You never let me do anything fun.”

“The last time you were allowed to do something fun, you ended up drinking poison,” he replied. “Your wife had to choke you so it wouldn’t go past your throat, and your neck still looks like a smurf.”

“Best day of my life,” said V dreamily.

“Oh, for the love of—”

“Let me be a girl! Let me live my truth!”

“You can do whatever you like, but I’m trying to be serious here! This guy just won’t leave me alone! And I don’t think crossdressing is going to help me with this!” he rants, sounding increasingly unhinged with every word.

Suddenly, there’s a voice that makes his blood freeze in his veins. The tree he’s standing next to bursts into flames.

“ARSON!” yells the ash demon.

“You know what, V?” he gasps as he dodges the guy’s latest attempts to set him on fire. “I give up. Do whatever you can, just get rid of him for me.” He can feel the smugness radiating through V’s silence, but he’s too wiped out to care.

“Let me be a girl! Let me live my truth!”

“You can do whatever you like, but I’m trying to be serious here! This guy just won’t leave me alone! And I don’t think crossdressing is going to help me with this!” he rants, sounding increasingly unhinged with every word.

Suddenly, there’s a voice that makes his blood freeze in his veins. The tree he’s standing next to bursts into flames.

“ARSON!” yells the ash demon.

“You know what, V?” he gasps as he dodges the guy’s latest attempts to set him on fire. “I give up. Do whatever you can, just get rid of him for me.” He can feel the smugness radiating through V’s silence, but he’s too wiped out to care.

Weekly 4

Total word count: 2018 words

• Part 1: 300 words
  
• Part 2: 300 words
  
• Part 3: 1300 words
  
• Part 4: 118 words
  

Notes: Elements for part three were Kevin (open ending), SWCorld War 1 (genre swap), Gurtle (foreshadowing), Thor (flashback) and Forums Being Down (new conflict).
This is mostly a whole mess of nothing that I speedwrote and somehow deliberately made too nonsensical to handle. Even I can't keep track of what's going on.
Also, yes, that is the actual word count according to my word doc.

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

Part 1

- Takes place through dreams, since those are the most malleable sort of settings you can get. There’s probably a word for this (surrealism?) but I’m too lazy to look for it. A variety of scenes across time and worlds, each one more nonsensical than the last.
- Characters include the main character who will remain an exercise in anonymity—they exist, and they feel, and you don’t really need to know anything else about them. And a companion. Conversation-based plot.
- Probably going to reuse Placeholder and…the main character who I never even named or pronoun-ed. Why do I do this to myself.
- Unfortunately, this means I do need to give them actual lives, hmm. Presumably regular, boring, pedestrian. The dreamscape is an escape from all that.
- How about the subject is GRIEF because that is FUN and DEVASTATING and also I just reread Benedikt’s scenes in Our Violent Ends.
- Slow buildup to a reveal? If I get a plot twist element I can squeeze in something with death and not-death. Haunting and haunted.
- Originally the conflict was that the protagonist wouldn’t let go of Placeholder. They were under the impression that wherever they were jumping was real. What if that’s not the case? What if it’s all a dream? But a messed up one like The Matrix? What if they both exist outside of the shared dreamscape to twist this into exploration of both grief and reality. Buy one existential crisis, get the other one free!
- I realize this is kind of ripping off Severance, which is tragic.
- Since this plot lies solely in conversation, what I really need to do is figure out how the conversation is going to go. Probably same as the original: some nonsense, an argument, a reconciliation.

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

Part 2

You don’t quite understand the mechanisms of it, but when you go to sleep you end up in a completely different world.

It’s not quite a dream, because that would imply that you exist outside of it. You have an entire life outside of this world and you know that the trigger is sleep, but for all intents and purposes, you’re two completely different people depending on whether or not you’re awake.

They call you Placeholder. It makes you feel real, which is impossible, because there is nothing real, nothing tangible about your existence. Even the name feels like an afterthought, a half-baked idea never brought to fruition.

You’ve been to all sorts of places together in some bizarre mockery of a children’s Saturday evening show where the characters go gallivanting off on a new adventure every day. They never answer any of your questions in one go, and you refuse to go along with all the harebrained idea they always come up with, but somehow, you make it work. That’s mostly because you’re good at being annoying and they’re basically in control of everything that isn’t you.

There’s something deeply wrong about them. They feel like more of an idea than a person, despite the fact that you’re the one called Placeholder. You’ve only seen it in two of your catastrophic trips, where they’d shattered the very fabric of reality into pieces. In between the shards, there was an aching, overwhelming loneliness, and then there was nothing.

You talk about a lot of things, but never the important ones. They refuse it every time. So you go hurtling forever onwards through limbo together. The rules are simple and hard-won: same planet, different times, all manifest in ways you could never dream of.

It’s freeing, sure, but always so stifling.

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

Part 3

Two or twenty or two hundred trips from that disastrous empty tent in the middle of the vast grasslands, they stop talking to you.

“Hey,” you say. “Spit it out.”

They don’t reply, mulish and petty as ever.

“I’ll be gone if you don’t talk to me,” you remind them. “Ignore me too much and I stop being real.”

They freeze in the middle of the street, and you would’ve stumbled into them if it weren’t for the fact that your shoes keep sinking in and melding into the ground. It’s an odd sort of technology, but given the fact that the two of you are walking on walls it doesn’t seem too out of place.

“I asked you,” they say tightly, “if any of this was real. You said that it was.”

You struggle to find the right words to placate them. “That’s not—”

They whirl around, glaring angrily. “For the love of everything, Placeholder, can’t you just make up your mind?”

“Why don’t you try it then?” you snap. “We’ve had this argument so many times I could quote it in my sleep—but surprise, surprise, I’m already doing that!”

“You say you’ll stick with me,” they say. “And then you say you’re tired of being dragged along, that it’s my fault we’re in this mess in the first place—”

“Because it is! Because I know you, but you don’t, and every time I mention it you just—”

You break off at their stunned expression.

“It’s okay,” you sigh, bringing up your hands to settle on either side of their face. “You won’t remember any of this later anyway. It’s okay.”

“Placeholder—”

“Come on,” you say with forced cheer, slipping your hand into theirs. “Let’s go see how the fountains work with this gravity.”

-

It’s odd, existing in two places at once. You know you’re awake, but some part of the not-real you is also there. You don’t have any control. You barely register what’s going on, but you still exist.

What you do remember is going somewhere and feeling the awake-you drown in the sort of overwhelming loneliness you’ve felt only once before, and it’s strange how something that wasn’t your own feels so familiar—

-

You come to with a jolt. You’re underwater. You seem to be breathing with no equipment, which is bizarre.

“You’re telling me humans evolve to breathe underwater?” you ask, glancing at the crowd milling about you. It’s the most logical conclusion you arrive at.
They roll their eyes beside you. “Look,” they say, tapping at their neck. There’s a colorful mesh of circuitry that perfectly complements the skin.

“Oh,” you say, feeling at your own. “That’s cool.”

“Don’t poke too much,” they reply wryly. “You might suffocate.”

-

Blink, and you’re gone. Well, not gone. Somewhere else, more flabbergasting.

“There is no way we have talking bananas on Earth.”

“We don’t,” they reply.

“There’s no way in past, present or future we get talking bananas.”

“Would you like to try the chicken?” says the waiter. He’s also a banana.

“Placeholder here is a vegetarian,” they lie blatantly.

“Dude,” you hiss. “Eating him counts as being vegetarian.”

Their grin promptly slides off their face. “*. Didn’t think that one through.”

“You never think anything through,” you snark. “It’s why we end up in stupid situations like this.”

“You are so whiny,” they whine. “I’ll see you somewhere else.” They wave their hand dismissively, and you’re gone.

-

You dodge out of the way, narrowly avoiding a bullet.

“WHY ARE WE BEING SHOT AT?” you screech.

“Correction: you’re the only one being shot at,” they say, sounding far too collected and amused. “You must’ve made someone really mad; this isn’t even as bad as the purple sun time.”

“You’re doing this on purpose,” you say accusingly.

“Oh, Placeholder. Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud! Enjoy being the main character in an action flick for once. Look, I think that’s the Pentagon! Maybe you’ll even get to break into it.”

You groan. “I can’t wait to fall asleep somewhere else. I’m not built to be Walmart Tom Cruise.”

-

Somewhere out on a ship in between an endless stretch of blue and an infinite sea of blue, you’d told them that they couldn’t keep doing this without running themselves ragged. You’d told them to stop the madness, to take a second to breathe and look you in the eye and just.

Just.

It came spilling out of you then—so quick and easy that you didn’t even realize you’d told them everything.

Do you remember—?

And then there was the time where—

You told me you felt—

Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. You tried, and you tried, and I stuck by you because I promised you I would, but it didn’t work. I’ve done my part. What happened to your promises, love?

With each word, they went further and further away. When you paused halfway through to take a breath, you realized with dismay that they weren’t even looking at you anymore. It was like they were seeing straight through you, the dead-eyed stare of a cardboard cut-out of a person.

“Are you even listening to me?” you’d asked, desperate. “Look at this! There are cracks in the sky every time you wave away something unpleasant. Love, what did you do to us?”

You’d reached out, but like an elastic band snapping back when released, time kicked back into gear. They’d slapped you. You both stood reeling with the shock, but it was clear that they had no idea what had happened.

“You know—” they’d started, but they couldn’t go any further. “You—”

But they’d had nothing to say, because there was nothing to remember. With a huff, they whirled around and left to go belowdecks. They hadn’t remembered anything of the incident on your next jump. Every time you tried to bring it up, they’d go carefully blank. It didn’t even seem like a conscious decision. Just poof, and they were gone.

-

You’re at a fairground. There are colorful flags and there is cotton candy and it’s a dream out of a children’s storybook.

It’s one of the nicer jumps. You’re not nearly as snippy with each other, and they’re in a pleasant mood, which means everyone’s in a pleasant mood. You win three different stuffed animals and they manage to get cotton candy in exchange for one. You’ve never thought of yourself as someone with a sweet tooth, and yet here you are.

You’re trying out a different strategy now. You ask: “Do you think this is real?”

They shrug. “It’s as real as we make it out to be,” they reply easily, which is true.

“But we know that I’m from somewhere else.”

They tense, narrow their eyes. “Yes,” they say slowly.

“Do you think that maybe you exist in that somewhere else where I’m from too?”

The fairground is a riot of color and sound and light and movement. It’s somehow exactly like the splinterings but still nothing like them at all. You’re tempted to say something, if only to disturb the everything-ness of the place, but you hold your tongue.

“Let’s go on the wheel,” they say, and your heart sinks.

“Sure,” you say, resigned. “Let’s go on the wheel.” You link your arm in theirs, and you get in, and the wheel moves through a whole cycle while they chatter aimlessly. You nod along, too occupied to contribute anything.

On the second round, though, when you just start climbing, they pause in the chatter. “I think you might be right,” they say. “About the somewhere else. If you exist in my somewhere else, then maybe I exist in yours too.”

And it feels like a start after all, and you smile so hard it hurts.

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

Part 4

The joy quickly sours to disappointment by the next jump.

“What do you think you’re like in my somewhere else?” you ask, all casual. The rainforest is dark and imposing, giving the illusion of privacy.

They only stare blankly at you.

Ah.

You try a different tactic. “Say, have I ever actually told you my name?” you ask.

They scoff. “You’re Placeholder. Why would you need anything else?”

“That’s not really my name,” you say. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“No, you haven’t ever actually told me your name.”

“How about we trade? Mine for yours?”

They don’t agree, but that’s okay. They’ll forget the next time anyway.

And off the two of you go again, trekking through infinity.

Daily 30

Today, put yourself in the shoes of an alive celestial body—a moon, star, planet, asteroid, etc, who lives and thinks—and write 200 words about their life

Notes: So rarely do I indulge in needlessly flowery prose. I wonder why. It's so incredibly satisfying to let loose sometimes.

Word count: 241 words

. ⭑ . ⭒ .

The heavy mass of dark and boring and black is broken only by my cousins hanging a million years away. Occasionally I have the pleasure of seeing one of my neighbours—though it seems wrong to call them that when I do not reside anywhere near them. Acquaintance is, perhaps, the closest term for it. I nod to them and they nod to me in the moments I spend racing across their surface. In a blink, I am gone, and we are strangers once more.

There is not much to do except to race forever onwards, stuck on the same road for an eternity and no time at all, held together with gravity and fueled your own desperate, endless burning. You would never survive it up here, even if you were the loneliest person on the planet. Humans are not built for it, no matter how hard they pretend otherwise. All your actions need an opposite and equal reaction. It’s much easier for me, because my only action is forwards and the rest of the universe is happy to help me along.

Try not to think of me too fondly; the next time I’m here you’ll be gone and I won’t even remember you. This existence is not lonely. There are my Acquaintances, there is the Anchor, there is the faint glow of others made of the same dirt and nothingness as I am. You won't be missed. Fare thee well.

SWC Co-Leader App Writing Excerpt

Link to project

Word count: 247 words

— — —

Spring was endless that year, and it was almost laughable, how eager we were for it to be over. The holidays dawned bright and cheery with the promise of happiness to come, but it wasn’t until the third day that we really believed it.

I’d walked out of the airport, skin cool from the air conditioning but already turning clammy in the heat. My suitcase kept veering off in the opposite direction of where I wanted it to go. I couldn’t tell where you two were despite fifty texts and an ongoing phone call. I was just about to give up when I heard you over the phone—isn’t that her?

I glanced up, rapidly whirling around to see you, with your arm raised like a beacon stretching out for miles. And then I finally saw her too.

She shrieked, I shrieked, and there we were—two longing souls colliding together at last.

We clutched at each other for so long it must’ve worn you out, but when I looked away from her long enough to glance your way, you were only standing there patiently, if a little uncertain.

I held out an arm for you, and she yelled, “Get over here already!”

The heat was unbearable, our skin sweat-slicked. I was still travel-worn and grimy, we were blocking the exit, it was uncomfortable and hot and it was joy like I’d never known. If I could, I would’ve stayed there holding on to you both forever.

Daily 2

Write 500 words of a piece that weaves in the meanings of at least 3 different flowers. This will earn you 500 points

Word count: 508 words

—

If I had to be honest, it was her fault from the very beginning. My Lydia was always like that, getting everyone into trouble and doing absolutely nothing to help anyone out of it. Catastrophe followed her like the breeze follows the heroines in the movies—always striking conveniently when it’d accentuate her beauty best, forgetting the fact that its very nature was to be a nuisance.

She gave me violets before she left, did you know? Came up to me one bright summer morning and said: Listen here now, Wren, I’m going away for a very long while. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I do know it won’t be any time soon. Try not to run away for some other charming lady while I’m gone, won’t you?

Then she’d laughed in the way that showed that she wasn’t very amused at all, and she’d threaded a crown of violets through my hair. It was too short to hold any flowers, but she’d managed to ensnare the stems in those flyaway strands in the end. Always a force of nature, my Lydia.

I left the violets there until I saw her disappear over the horizon in pursuit of her marsh marigolds. The second the sun set over the final trace of her silhouette, I didn’t even have to tug them out. The flowers fell out, one by one, as simply as if there’d never been anything holding them there in the first place. I wasn’t too cut up about it. Lydia had never held onto the violets I gave her anyway.

That summer was the first I’d spent without her in a long while. I can’t even begin to describe how it felt. The whole world seemed so much bigger without her in it.

She was always very fond of daffodils, see. She kept one stuck between her ear, bright shock of yellow against her dark crop of hair. It was the first thing your eyes were drawn to whenever she was around, and she was around me quite a lot. The daffodil seemed to grow bigger and brighter until it was all that filled my view. I never learned to dislike it while she was around, because I’d forgotten what the world looked like without her.

But now Lydia was gone, and she’d taken her daffodils with her, and suddenly there was so much more to see. It was a shock to remember that there were colors other than sickly, obnoxious yellow.

I met quite a few new people. Some held on and lingered long after they’d overstayed their welcome. Some breezed through, reminiscent of my own Calamity Jane. No one was ever quite as captivating as her. The violets grew to wither and rot, and though I’d resented them at first, I grew to wonder at the fact that she’d given them to me at all. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, and it bothered me to no end. Perhaps that was why she’d never accepted mine in the first place.

Daily 7

For this daily, you need to choose three genres, any three, and write a story where they carry on into each other.

I have so much lore but so little energy to expand on it. This is some abomination of magical-realism, mystery and a comedy, but you only see it if you squint because I barely show you any of this in the actual piece :>

Word count: 512 words

—

Today, there were six pumpkins beside his door. The week before, there were fifteen. On Monday there was only one, and yesterday there hadn’t been any at all. They kept popping up like fully-grown weeds without roots.

By the end of the month, he’d amassed a small wealth of pumpkins. Despite all his efforts, half of them were rotten. There’s only so much pumpkin pie a person can handle, and he didn’t know any other pumpkin recipes. When he tried making a pumpkin spice latte, Seroyah had thrown up all over his carpet and tried to injure him using his own sword.

The aggressive behavior was rich, coming from her. The last time she’d attempted to tackle the pumpkin crisis, she’d ended up making a carcinogenic-looking substance that had knocked him out for three hours straight. Seroyah had promptly called her mother in a panic, convinced that she’d killed him. Her mother had grounded her for the next few days. No one had quite recovered from the experience unscathed.

He didn’t know where the pumpkins were coming from. He’d tried giving away a few of them between Seroyah’s mother and his two neighbours. They’d reported that the pumpkins had began snapping at their fingers every time they approached it with a knife.

Roivan, the more intellectual of his neighbours, attempted to boil the whole pumpkin in a pot. The result was too garish to speak of. The fact that he was paying for the kitchen repairs had done nothing to get him back into Roivan’s good graces. Worse, Roivan had stopped accepting his extra pumpkin pies, which had so far proved to be the only reliable way to smuggle the pumpkins out of his house.

Seroyah had decided to tackle the matter with a very elaborate bulletin board that involved a lot of haphazardly placed red string. She’d documented every aspect of the pumpkins. There were pictures from every possible angle. There were graphs recording quantity, timing, placement. There were theories. Lots and lots of theories. So far, the reigning one claimed that he was being haunted by a woman who had died craving pumpkins and was determined to save him from a pumpkin-less fate.

Personally, he thought it was more likely that someone with an Affinity that dealt in vegetables had simply decided to play a long-term practical joke on him. Seroyah had booed him out of his own house simply for suggesting something so colossally boring. Then again, it was his own fault for entrusting the mystery to a teenager who read one too many horror novels. If only he’d had friends that were actually his age.

The whole affair came to an end when one day, he simply decided to wake up early for once. The pumpkin donor turned out to be the barista from the coffee shop who always smiled at him with extra teeth to match his extra espresso shot order. Apparently, she’d thought it’d be quite romantic to follow him home and tamper with his every pumpkin-related movement.

Being haunted would’ve been preferable to this, really.

Daily 15

(…) claim someone else’s title to write 500 words (…) of a story for the title you chose.

Title: A Worm Named Bert, as suggested here

Word count: 517 words

Disclaimer: I never actually read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

—

Contrary to popular belief, Bert wasn’t born a worm. He was actually a very respectable accountant, forty-three, hair neatly combed but tie always askew. Odd fellow, Bert. He lived a very solitary life. No one knew him as an accountant, so absolutely no one noticed when he turned into a worm.

How Bert managed to maintain his position in society despite forming no social connections whatsoever remains a statistical outlier worth studying. Unfortunately, since no one knew him as an accountant, this also meant that no researchers knew about him either. A specific subset of nerds is currently lamenting the fact that they have never been able to study an anomaly like Bert the accountant.

Bert wasn’t born a worm, but one day, he simply woke up as one. It was as unceremonious as could be. There was simply nothing to be done. Bert was, at last, free of whatever it is that accountants do. Robbed of all other options, he set off to moisten his skin.

You might wonder why the first thing Bert worried about wasn’t how he’d get to work, like another certain man-turned-bug. The answer is very simple. For one, Bert hadn’t turned into an insect—he’d turned into a worm. The former is an arthropod, the latter is an annelid, and both are therefore expected to show completely different behaviours. For another, a travelling salesman is of an entirely different breed from accountants. Accountants are entirely unconcerned about whether or not they can show up to work. They tend to live in the present.

Bert went off to moisten his skin. He found a conveniently placed puddle of water and flip-flopped around in it for a bit like a beached whale. Then he made his way to the closest patch of soil he could find. The process sounds much easier than it actually is, for Bert had to avoid a great many dangers, such as fishermen. Lucky for him, the nearest water body was so polluted that he needn’t have bothered looking out for fishermen—indeed, there were no fishermen at all because there were no fishes either.

Now, there is also the question of why Bert turned into a worm in the first place. The simplest answer is that it is narratively convenient. The more complex one is that he was unnoticed, unloved, unknown. People turning into worms is by no means a common occurrence, but it also occurs more frequently than you’d think. You just don’t ever realize it. It’s why the question “would you still love me if I was a worm?” is pointless—simply having someone to ask is enough to ensure that you won’t ever turn into a worm.

Bert, this accountant-turned-worm…well, he still lives a solitary life. But people who turn into worms have a way of finding each other in the end. They don’t ever interact, but they occupy neighboring spaces and lead parallel existences. They don’t nod at each other in the soil, because worms have poor eyesight, but they acknowledge each other’s presence. It’s all a worm named Bert could hope for, really.

Daily 17

Take your idea and write a recipe of at least 150 words (…) No one's checking if your recipe needs 50 eggs or an extinct plant, channel your inner baker and go wild

Word count: 326 words

Notes: For the record, I'm still uncertain about whether they have any stray deciduous trees at the equator. Yes, it's very embarrassing.

—

SPIRIT:
Close your eyes, listen, and commit this to memory. You will only hear this once, and we do not allow this to be recorded in any form.

MIDI M.:
What if I summoned someone who wasn’t you and got them to tell me again, huh? What then?

SPIRIT:
Do not mock our ways. We hold far greater power than you imagine.

MIDI M.:
Well I hold far weaker power than you imagine—I’ll probably forget it in three seconds.

SPIRIT:
It is not so tedious to remember. Now cease your yammering and listen. First, you must gather the red from the leaves of an autumnal branch—

MIDI M.:
We are literally living on the equator. There is no autumn here.

SPIRIT:
Find yourself a deciduous tree. Next, you mix cinnamon, nutmeg and pumpkin powder in a bowl in rapid succession—

MIDI M.:
(scribbling on paper) Cinnamon…nutmeg…wait, is pumpkin powder even a thin—? HEY!

SPIRIT:
No records. Having mixed the powders together, pour the red from the leaves into a gallon of water to dilute it. Then, dump the gallon of water into another gallon of water to dilute it further—

MIDI M.:
(muttering) This is just a waste of water.

SPIRIT:
—and from the final solution, gather exactly one teaspoon of diluted autumn red to dump into your powder mixture. Chant some ominous-sounding hocus pocus—

MIDI M.:
Ominous sounding hocus—you actually have no idea how to make this either, do you?

SPIRIT:
(awkward silence)

MIDI M.:
(pointed silence, featuring intense glaring)

SPIRIT:
(explosively) YES, FINE! I lived on the equator my whole life too, you clown-faced toad. How am I supposed to know how to make anything autumnal anyway? Communing with the dead? Don’t make me laugh. Just look it up on the internet, geez.

MIDI M.:
How do you know what the internet is? Weren’t you born when the dinosaurs were alive or something?

SPIRIT:
(pause) I’m never answering a summoning again.

Daily 27

For today's daily, write a letter from one of your characters' perspectives of at least 250 words

Word count: 276 words

—

Dearest,
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Not that I’m complaining. I’m glad we haven’t needed to write in so long. If I never had to write a letter to you again, I’d be grateful—so long as we get to keep what we have now.

I thought about not showing this to you, because it’s dumb and sentimental. But you never got any of my older ones, and I—well. I don’t know. I thought it’d be rude to keep another from you. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t get any of yours either.

Maybe that wasn’t as comforting as it should’ve been.

We were bickering about the tea shelf at the grocery store today. The same old argument. “Too many” against “not that much”. “We don’t need all this” against “you’re right, we need more”.

It wasn’t until we got back and I saw you arranging everything in the cupboards that I thought, oh. That’s something we can do again. I can talk to you without being resigned to the fact that you won’t respond. Better yet, I can talk to you and hear what you say instead of having to reconstruct the intricacies of your speech in my head—trying to remember the places where your accent stretched out the a’s and wobbled around the t’s.

You’ll find this tomorrow before I wake up. I hope you don’t bother writing out a reply, because I’ll always prefer hearing your voice. But if you do end up writing back, I don’t think I’d mind so much. It doesn’t need to cross an ocean and a landmass to reach me anymore.

Love,

Weekly 4

Total word count: 2076 words

—

B: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder —write about what your character finds beautiful for 200 words.

Word count: 210 words

“You know,” he says. “I’ve lived a very long time. Far longer than you can imagine.”

(“He’s monologuing again,” groans a henchman.

“Noooooo,” whines another. “I had plans for an early dinner!”)

“I’ve seen many beautiful faces in my lifetime,” he continues. “I’ve loved many women—”

(“Liar,” snorts the first. “He’s been hung up on the same one for the past three thousand years.”)

“—but there are few who have had eyes as stunning as yours.”

(“He’s going to pluck them out and preserve them, isn’t he?”

“Eh, it’s a fifty-fifty chance. If she dies of natural causes, sure. If she does manage to get him the flowers, though, he’ll probably spend the next…twenty-six days trying to sketch them out properly.”)

“It’s a bit like looking at the Abyss near the surface, really. Have you ever been? It’s very lovely. The darkness is still oppressive, but if you squint, you can see the ever-so-faint hints of lightness. You can never tell when you’ve crossed the line out of the Abyss, of course, but you can always tell when you’re close. And—”

(“…he does realize that most people don’t appreciate being compared to the Abyss?” says the other henchman.

The first one shrugs. “He’s always had odd tastes.”)

—

C: Invent an original curse and write a 200 word scene of someone suffering from it.

Word count: 212 words

“Hey, nice work man!” says Nothingburger, far too cheerily for the occasion. He reaches out to slap your back, and you duck away before he can make contact. The very tips of his fingers manage to brush against your skin, and it burns.

“It’s nothing,” you tell him firmly, rubbing it out. “I’ve got it under control. Go.”

“Dude,” he says.

“It’s fine,” you retort.

It really is. Inconvenient, perhaps, but it could always be worse. You think of the ones who get locked up and the ones who only die long enough to come back wrong, over and over again. Foregoing human contact is a paltry thing in comparison; it can always be dealt with.

Full sleeves have evidently fallen short of your needs. You start getting turtlenecks and reluctantly invest in gloves. It’s not a fashion statement, but you’ll make it into one if you have to. You switch to hoodies and are baffled at why it took so long for the idea to occur to you in the first place. Winters are the most tolerable, because you can move onto scarves and coats and mittens.

Through it all you are stuffy and uncomfortable at best, and sweltering at worst. Still, anything is better than the flames, so you endure.

—

H: Hope is a powerful thing. Write 200 words where your character experiences hope.

Word count: 209 words

Those last crucial few days were a blur of anticipation and solemn waiting. I don’t know how I managed to get anything done, let alone function like a regular person. Life and fate are not in the habit of making anything easy. Experience teaches you to keep your expectations low, to pretend you don’t care as if you can—by some twisted logic—convince the universe that you never wanted any of it in the first place. Anything to keep the loss from stinging so much.

And still I felt that treacherous crawling up my throat. It had a chokehold on me. Do you know how uncomfortable it was? Whoever said it was the thing with feathers was a downright liar. It was like walking around with a frog swimming up and down my oesophagus—gross and slimy and sickening. There was nothing as fluttersome as feathers about it.

But the worst of it was in the last three minutes—I don’t think I could forget them if I tried. Every sensation was magnified in slick-sharp clarity. I shouldn’t have worked. I knew it couldn’t have worked. There was no universe where it worked and yet still—

Still that awful, bursting feeling. What a thing it was, to dare.

—

K: Write 200 words about your character doing an act of kindness.

Word count: 212 words

You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have even thought about it. You consider running away. Let him think it was a ding-dong-ditch, some sort of prank, all you have to unstick your feet and—

The door swings open, only to immediately swing closed the second he sees your face.

Why does your foot hurt?

“Will you stop blocking the door?” he grits out.

Oh. “No,” you say reflexively. His face shutters instantly, and he starts pushing the door more insistently.

“No, wait—”

“Thank you for darkening my door, don’t ever do it aga—”

“Please,” you say quietly. “Please. I need someone who won’t—” you falter, trailing off.

“You shouldn’t have come here, then,” he sneered.

“Just this once,” you beg. Apparently, you’re not above that now. “You won’t have to see me again.”

He looks you over, then sighs. “So you’ve said,” he mutters, scowling. But he pulls the door open ever so slightly more, and you take that as your cue to slip inside.

You smell coffee, which is odd, because he never drinks it. There’s some steaming in what used to be your favourite mug.

You glance at him, and he only crosses his arms defensively. Still, you feel the smallest smile creeping over your face.

—

L: Time for a setting swap! Write 200 words featuring your character in a new location.

Word count: 212 words

He hadn’t done anything unusual last night. He changed into his pyjamas and double-checked all the locks, same as usual. The window was closed, but he was always paranoid that it hadn’t closed all the way, so he opened and shut it all over again. This too was routine. Then he crawled into bed, read the next three chapters of his book, and tried to go to sleep only to wake up and read another seven chapters because he couldn’t stop thinking about the plot. When he was finally satisfied, he flicked off the nightlamp on his bedside table and drifted off to sleep.

Mundane. Normal. It was what he always did.

Why, then, is he waking up in the middle of a field with no explanation as to how he got there? A primal, intense fear grips him then. He has nowhere to go. He doesn’t even have a suitable survival outfit. Whatever forces dropped him here left him in his pyjamas. How is he supposed to survive in only his pyjamas? These weren’t even his comfiest pair! He’d just bought the set and he was nowhere near attached enough for it to provide emotional support.
He stares at the endless grass, dismayed. What is he even supposed to do now?

—

N: Dear SWCers… Switch up the form of your story! Write 200 words of a note sent by one of your characters.

Word count: 200 words

(scrawled on a page torn from a notebook, written in a hurried hand)

Things have been quiet. Don’t take stock in it. Reinforce your boundaries, double your vigilance. There will be time to rest and recuperate, but as much as it pains me to admit it, that is not now. It’s tempting to take advantage of the lull, but we don’t know how long it’ll last. I don’t want us to be caught unawares. You know this as well as I do.

Reports have been unreliable and shifty. Less people are willing to let things drop. Prices are becoming steeper, suppliers more paranoid. Information itself has become a currency we are sorely lacking in. All I have are my contacts, and very few of them are the sort that will take kindly to being given a larger clientele. These people are such curious sorts. Why bother trading at all if you’re reluctant to accept more business? If the risk outweighs the rewards, why indulge in the game at all? Desperation leads a man to many things, but surely there are more avenues.

Ah, I’ve gotten philosophical again. Don’t worry too much about me, and stay safe. I’ll see you soon.

—

P: Write 200 words about a time your character made a promise to someone.

Word count: 203 words

I slam the door shut angrily, then whirl around to sink to the floor with my back against it. Tears well up in the corner of my eyes. Exasperating.

I bury my head in my arms, breathing slowly. I can’t quite keep it from hitching every time I hear more yelling behind the door, but the tears recede, so it’ll have to do.

“Rei?”

I stand up, swiping at my face and striding around the room with a confidence I don’t feel. I snatch up my phone, then shove at my sister until she makes more space for me on the bed.

“Rei—”

“Shut up,” I say brusquely. “We’re watching that dumb show you like.”

She only rolls her eyes. “It’s not like you don’t watch it too.”

We throw a blanket over ourselves and huddle over the screen together. The intro is loud and jangly and almost drowns out the rest of the noise.

“I’ll get us out of here,” I tell her quietly, halfway into the episode. “I promise.”

“Not if I do it first,” she says. “Pinkie swear?”

I link my pinkie against hers. We stare mindlessly against the screen and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

—

S: Write 200 words in which a character in your story steals something of chosen value. …After all, everything is free if you take it as so, hmm?

Word count: 207 words

It was a horrible day for Specta when the butcher dropped dead during the middle of the day. Not that Specta was a particularly avid devourer of meat. In fact, Specta’s horrible day had nothing to do with the butcher at all. It was only coincidence that the man would choose to shuffle off the mortal coil on the same day a bunch of spectacularly bad things happened to Specta in rapid succession.

It was all Cull’s fault, really. Specta didn’t have any proof of it, but it was a truth universally acknowledged that Cull could be held accountable for any disaster, mishap, misdemeanour, or catastrophe within a ten-mile radius.

He’d only caught a brief glimpse of Cull earlier in the day—just long enough for her to toss something in his direction and tell him to “be a dear and look after that, won’t you?” before she went gallivanting off the opposite way.

As it turned out, the something was a money purse with a cheque large enough to buy a small house—one that definitely did not belong to Cull. Specta cursed his horrible luck and resolved to never talk to the madwoman again, if only to avoid getting arrested for larceny he never committed.

—

X: Xylophones is the first x-letter word I could think of. Write 200 words where your character picks up an instrument they've never tried before.

Word counts: 203 words

It took a certain amount of hubris to determine that his rudimentary piano skills were enough to help him through mastering the trumpet. No one had quite figured out how exactly he had made the leap in logic—least of all himself. If he had a better memory, he could’ve told you that he’d watched a single jazz band perform live once, found himself enamoured with the trumpet solo, and had subconsciously decided to dedicate the rest of his life to mastering the instrument. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten every detail about this incident and if you were to ask him, he would only shrug guilelessly.

That he could stumble his way through Hot Cross Buns on the piano was not very reassuring for his shiny-new brass career. By some miracle, though, what took him fifteen tries to master on the piano he managed in roughly two on the trumpet. Though his finger work begged more finesse, his breath control would have made a professional jealous. Perhaps it was the gift of the gab that helped him. Indeed, his lungs had grown quite tough and flexible with all the nonstop talking that he did—he could hold enough air to play through sixteen measures straight.

—

Y: Some people just love yapping away, don't they? Write 200 words of mostly dialogue in between your characters.

Word count: 208 words

“There’s a fly on the wall.”

“Go squash it, then.”

“I couldn’t possibly do that!”

“Why not? You have no problem swatting at me every time I do something even a little annoying. Are you really saying that respect a fly more than m—OW! What was that for?”

“For being mildly irritating—”

“—that hit was way too bad for mildly irritating—”

“—and obviously I’d have a bigger problem squashing a fly than I’d have squashing you. A fly would get viscera everywhere. At least the biggest mess you make is a puddle of tears. Inconvenient, perhaps, but only temporarily so. It’ll all evaporate away in the end.”

“Well, that hurt.”

“My infinite apologies for bruising your fragile little heart. I’m sure these feelings are a novel experience for you.”

“Okay, first of all, I was talking about the punch. Second of all, I have definitely experienced a feeling before.”

“…was that meant to inspire confidence in your capacity to experience emotions?”

“Yes? Obviously? Why else would I say that?”

“…sometimes I wonder how you managed to survive as long as you have.”

“Oh, your fly’s gone, by the way.”

“Out of the window, I hope.”

“Nah, I ate it.”

“You did what—"