Exactly 2000 words

to be aware of - probably NFE content warning for somewhat graphic/disturbing imagery, burning, implication of culling. general tone of surreal dystopia/horror. it also is sort of abstractly a metaphor/inspired by the experience of hospitals / psych units etc (?) so basically some dark themes in general aha.




Firesickness



Have you ever watched a human body burn?
I have.

The first time is still etched into the inside of my skull, forever taking the form of crude markings tattooed directly onto wrinkles of my mind.
For what felt like a lifetime afterwards, I tried to scrub it away as hard as I could, but there it remained, just as present and now altogether more raw and red and angry. Eventually I had to let it stay; it settled itself there and I simply did my best to avoid it.

See, I can describe to you what happens to your body when you are burnt.
I can tell you all about the way that the flames peel back the surface layer, simple as skinning a tender peach. Thicker skin shrinking as your soft tissues shrivel, splitting open, fat leaking out, oozing into the fire from torn dermis just to be incinerated. Body falling away like scraped bark from a tree.
The way muscles contract. Long past any flicker of recognition to what once was, your physical vessel continuing to contort — a kind of horrifying undead being, betraying the agency you once possessed over your own movement. Control no longer yours.
The way that everything once so familiar takes on a suddenly alien appearance. Sinks distinctly away from being human as it is licked by flame.
I can make you aware of the blackened, melted creature that you seem to become for several long, long, moments just before you become nothing.
I can go and describe in every excruciating detail exactly what would take place, the decomposition that would happen after you had barely even breathed your last breath – I can tell you these things.

But the putrefying kind of utter illness that makes itself a home in the bottom of your stomach? The hollow feeling that presses against the sides of the vast cavity that, at some point, has opened in your chest, where you are sure you can feel the beginnings of embers starting to sear your organs?
That, I can never describe to you. You will have to watch.

I remember how I couldn't tear my eyes away, in spite of the nauseating horror encompassing me. I remember his noise, the gargling, and then how it ceased. More than anything else, I remember the smell. My nostrils burnt. It was the smell of something no longer human, something unable to be a he anymore. Reduced to flesh. Meat.

I'll remember that time.

I don't remember how many times it has been now. All blurs into one. Now, I feel nothing but faintly empty.

A thought floats vaguely around my head, and I catch it as it rises up: that maybe I should be repulsed by this fact. I should go away and curl into a ball of anguish. I should, in fact, be horribly ashamed and disgusted by the apathy that has come to settle itself in my chest over these years.
I imagine shaking myself out of a sickly stupor, waking up and stepping into lucidity, aghast at what has become of me.
I don't do this.
The thought tugs at my ribs feebly for a few drawn out moments, and then drifts away.
Or maybe I am the one who turns away from it.
The outcome is the same.

I suppose you truly can grow accustomed to anything. Any manner of horrors can worm their way inside your life and slip on a skin of normality.
This is unsettling, in a way, but also strangely comforts me. I like to know that even if I were to find myself in the depths of hell, my mind would at some point gently slip a soft blanket around me, cover my eyes and say, you're okay. this is okay, it's all okay. this is how it is now. and that's fine.

. . .

I’m not a monster.
I say this to myself. Each time.
We burn them because they are sick.
We have to. There’s no other way to stop it from spreading. It is a disease that doesn’t kill, that cannot be killed without bare flame, something that just erases and erases, then keeps piloting an empty vessel. We need to stop the spread, and I remain one of the only immune. So, this is our duty, for as long as it needs to be.

. . .

I'm not sure what time it is. I know only that I have been staring at my blank wall since the light left my room, and that now it is slowly leaking back in again. In the past ten years since it started, I have not left the complex. I fall asleep with the stench of burning in my nostrils, and then I wake up to it. I do this again and again and again.
The day seems bleak already. I peer through the slats in the window to see that the light probing me up seems to be coming not from the sun, but a solid grey mass, and from no particular direction. I fleetingly toy with the idea that maybe the sun is not there anymore at all, such a rare sight it seems to be. Just this great grey diffuser designed to scatter the last remnants of light around. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing these days. Blearily, I splash my face with water and begin to dress. As I ready myself for work I'm struck across my chest with a familiar feeling: the floor opening up into a bottomless abyss beneath me as the uncertainty of what I am even doing this all for makes its way to the forefront of my mind. And then I do it all anyway, because I know above all else, pure habit is what governs me.

. . .

“How many today?”
“Seven.”

Flick, another immune, another worker, is standing at the huge metal doors today. The doors to, according to the letters stamped across the sign above them, the Treatment Room. She stares at me with hollow eyes set deep into her face as I approach. She’s younger, having just made it out of college when we found ourselves here — I think she must be barely 30 now, though none of us really care for calendar dates any longer — but I always listen to her.

We carry out the hideous process, once, twice, three times, four times, before we even stop to breathe.
At least, I feel I haven't taken a breath, although I must have. Maybe I'm becoming an unbreathing mechanism. Slowly transforming into a machine, part of the building. I think I'd prefer that.

“It's time to get going again. What are you looking at?”

I'm staring at the dull metal of the ceiling. Time to work, once again. Flick's voice echoes into my skull. I feel like it has been mere moments since we stopped.

“Oh. No. Not anything. Just, thoughts.”
“About?”
“How much longer there might be, before…” I don’t know what I intend to say: before… things return to normalcy? The sickness is eradicated? We’re all dead? But I don’t need to think of words to finish, she knows what I mean.
She throws her head back and laughs an empty, exhausted laugh.
“Oh, you know the answer to that. Just a few months! Just until it’s under control!” she cries in a mocking tone. That’s what we’ve been told for a decade, after all.
“Yeah.”
“Really, there’s no point, is there. Don't think. We can’t do anything about it.”
“Except keep working,” I say bitterly.
“Except keep working. Well, come on.”

. . .

In a past life, I was a medic. People came to me half-dead and left alive; now they come half-alive and end up dead.

Sometimes I hurt people, and sometimes they would scream, but it had to hurt in order to help them. You'd be rotten at the job if you couldn't handle that. So I developed this sort of a game with myself – I'd pretend it was not a patient screaming in front of me but the ailment itself, perhaps a microbe of bacteria wearing a human disguise, that I was punishing in order to heal the real person that must have been somewhere out of sight. I do this now as I burn the sickness away, deaf to their screams. Pathogens don't scream.

There are very few of us here in the complex. We're the only ones who can do it, the only ones who won't succumb.
We were told it would not be long, we just had to be here until it was dealt with.
It has been so long the memory of Before has almost left me.

. . .

Once the seven sicknesses have been cleansed, I can leave.
Though the smell will follow me and the sounds will echo in my ears all the same.
I leave the same way every day, day after day after day. I go through the same metal doors. There are hundreds of doors, identical rectangles that stretch out like reflections on themselves, but only one set is ever open. These are the ones that let me out of my cage, even though I know in my heart I'm going to find myself in a different cage beyond, so these are what I walk towards each day. There is no reason to pay heed to any of the others, no point in wondering what might be shut away behind them, so I simply focus all of my energy on reaching my illusion of escape.

I don't know why I don't do this today.

I don't know why I stop halfway down the hall.

I don't know why I look around.

A tiny, buried worm in my brain twitches. Embedded deep within, it is writhing and squirming. With blind eyes, it has seen something. And now, I see it too: there is a ridge poking out from the wall, the edge of a door not fully aligned with the rest. A door that has not been closed?

Curiosity which I believed had rotted away many years ago to be replaced with hollow resignation is ignited once more in my lungs.

The metal is cold against my palm.

. . .


Behind the door, a peculiar warmth greets me. Grown accustomed to the most minimal of heating in the complex, it’s almost unnerving.
A small desk waits here, alone. On it is nothing but a pile of papers and a ballpoint pen.

I know I should leave.

It's in a dreamlike state that I find myself leafing through document after document, each one more incomprehensible to me than the last.

My eyes halt on one particular page. A tangled web of hundreds of names and dates, yet, slowly, a sense of understanding is lifting from the paper towards me.

DRUGGING, DETAINMENT, INCINERATION DATES attach themselves to the strings of numbers.

I see the words SELECTION REASONS

Not one of them refers to an affliction with terrifying sickness.

INFERIOR. INFERIOR. DEFECTIVE.

A terrible feeling spreads through my body like a cancer.

PRIORITY SELECTIONS:

…OBTAINING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION REGARDING NEW POPULATION CONTROL METHODS…

…BRINGING SICKNESS INTO QUESTION AMONG PEERS…

…INCINERATION WORKER DISREGARDING PROTOCOL…

The realisation flutters to me with unfamiliar familiarity. Something which I had always really known but kept buried for my own convenience.

I almost vomit. The world suddenly refuses to stay still, swinging me round and round and round with a violence I have never felt before. The walls scream out that I am not supposed to be here. Time spins away into a dark whirlpool.
Then. Everything ignites.

There are others here. Through the door comes heavy breathing, heartbeats, footsteps.
They don't exist, I scream.
I cannot look at them in case it makes them real.

A lie.
All this time.
I open my mouth. Smoke smothers my voice.
I can already feel the flames beginning to eat my skin. I know I shall die along with all of my questions.

When I finally turn around, they are upon me.

468 wordie words

Critique for the amazing Luna!

Alrighty, hello! Let's start. Yay!!

Apologies if this is a bit rough or anything, I had to go yesterday and I wanted to get it done quickly now, since you said this piece is your fanfic entry for the competition eheh.

So, first of all, I really love this piece, you've done a fantastic job here. You create a really strong voice for the character which made me as a reader really feel like I was experiencing her inner world and the story from her perspective, and the repeating of the yes/no thoughts and dialogue feels really effective for the whole atmosphere of her being unable to control her own story. Also, I really like how you introduced her appearance from a textile point of view rather than in the mirror or anything like that. Running her hands through her hair/across her face is a really interesting way to go about it and I don't know if you intended this but I feel it also provides further separation from the mirror vs her true identity which I interpreted as a theme throughout. You could maybe lean into this a little more? Eg - instead of then describing her “dark, ugly curls” you could say something regarding the feel, like describe a “coarse, repulsive textured”, etc.

You also use some really nice imagery, the “black liquid” in particular that kept being referred to was a powerful image, I really liked it lol.

Aspects that could be improved - the repetition does feel like it veers on being a tad bit overused which lessens the overall impact. Try to use devices like this slightly more sparingly to give it a stronger effect.
I would also say a similar thing about the intensity of the piece: obviously it is intense, but the narrator is *constantly* in distress, despair, panic, crying, screaming, collapsing, etc. Your writing will flow a lot better generally if you have some emotional variation in there and provide some contrast. Create a bit of emotional “space” for your reader to breathe in between dense passages c:
Also, the “voice” of the mirror scans quite similar to the voice of the character, I feel like you have a lot more potential there - maybe you could utilise the scenes as another point of contrast and give it an even more eerie/calm atmosphere when speaking to the mirror / juxtaposition to the drama she's facing?

I like the looping structure, it works well, and how each new situation raises the stakes and the horror of it all. I can see there is probably a lot of symbolism in this that I've been too silly to pick up on too. I would say good luck, but you don't need much luck - you definitely already have SKILL

Emptiness reached out to her with kind fingers
Carved from bone
The marrow leaked, sickly honey
Emptiness holds her, a lung of rot
Pulsates
Black stains her teeth
She will not smile, skeleton on show.
Her skin is sticky, scent like syrup: but she tastes
Of bitter earth
Emptiness will not let her go
While worms, tender
Crawl from cuticles
Bite her arms and bleed.




Poem of 65 words

Daily 2nd March 2026 :]

685 words!

Everything was quiet again.
I dug my hands deep into the wet sand. The world was spinning at a thousand miles per hour as it always was, and I was not moving at all, and I felt as though my heart was going to stop beating.

I did not dare to open my eyes, but somehow, they opened. To my utter surprise, the world around me had not, in fact, ceased to exist since the last time I had seen it; it looked normal, even. I squinted up at the wide open sky. It was exactly the same, except for a sickening sense of unnatural emptiness. My stomach twisted unpleasantly, evil little worms writhing within me.
I kept staring, uneasy, at the sky. I did not look at the beach. I kept my eyes fixed above the horizon. I did not look. I did not look at the beach. I don’t know how I saw it.
I did not look at the beach.
I simply found the sight in front of my eyes.
They were dead. That much was clear.
All around me, a blanket of bodies lay strewn across the ground. Everywhere I looked: dead birds. There were mostly herring gulls, but I could see a cormorant in there too – lapwings, terns, curlews. My eyes darted across the scene of horror and it briefly occurred to me how strange it was that I still couldn’t help but note down in my head each species I spotted, as if it was a perfectly ordinary day, with me birdwatching as I liked to do. A dark, insidious ink slowly seeped into the sand where some of them had fallen, violently plunged out of the sky, but for the most part, they looked quite peaceful. It filled me with an indescribable sense of horror.
They were definitely dead: how exactly they became that way, I was less sure on.
A knot of guilt sat in my lungs.
Cautiously, I dragged myself away from the rocks I was leaning on. I felt limp, and far too heavy - It was an effort to claw my way up from the ground. Like I was digging myself up from my own grave.

Without thinking I reached out and stroked one of the dead birds. There was nothing special about that particular seagull, just that it happened to have fallen the closest to me. It was soft. And cold. I drew my hand back, but the feel of the feathers lingered on my fingers, and I wished it would forever.
As I stared, I found myself getting closer and closer, until the force of my breath rippled through the poor creature's downy feathers. I felt terribly sad. It was so beautiful.
With quite some effort, I stood. Carefully avoiding the little bodies all around me, I turned and began to run. I ran into the direction of the wind. Salt stung my face.

I sat at the table.
They had been scared. They had wondered where I was. I was gone for far too long, they told me through mouthfuls of rage and distress. I couldn't just go off like that to the shore. They had wanted me back, they said, but they seemed horribly upset that now here I was. They cried and shouted. Made as much noise as they could.
Noise.
They were so noisy again. Much too noisy. Noisy noisy noisy like the screaming seabirds. I could not stand it. I put my hands over my ears and cried out for it to stop, as loud as I could: I had to be as loud I could to get the silence to come to me. I had to make the silence hear me. I screamed myself hoarse. And then I stopped.

They lay with their heads resting on the table, as if suddenly dozing in front of me, unsettlingly still. They looked fast asleep at first glance, but ever so slightly wrong. Their bodies were contorted in unnatural positions. It didn't look comfortable.
I didn't know why it happened. But I knew they were dead.

Everything was quiet again.

Weekly 1
Word count - 2,221

Part 1: Character sheet

BASIC INFO
Name: Bronwen
Origin - Welsh name meaning “white/fair raven”
Nicknames: Bun/Bunny
Age: 20

APPEARANCE
Height: Tall, around 5"10
Build: Lanky, slender build. Appears slightly gaunt/emaciated
Hair: Dark brown, short (chin length) hair. Fluffy and loose curls texture. Often very messy and windswept. Heavy fringe
Skin: Pale complexion, many visible veins, freckled. Scarred arms and legs
Facial features: grey eyes, dark red scarred/chewed lips, hooked nose, shadowed undereyes, crooked teeth


LIFESTYLE
She lives alone in an abandoned lighthouse somewhere in North Wales - this is not an entirely legal housing situation, but there's no one around to care. It is on the mainland but on an isolated coastal cliff.
She goes to the town every few weeks (as scarcely as she can possibly get away with) to buy essentials. The people in the market there don't know where she lives and believe she still lives with her mother who is in fact several hours away. Her mother tries to contact her, but Bronwen often ignores these attempts.
She has some money left over from living with her mother but it is slowly running out. She has a basement full of stockpiled foods and sometimes forages in the environment around her, too. Her water comes from storage tanks/a rainwater collection system. There is a generator but she uses virtually no electricity. She has a propane heater for warmth. Most of her belongings were left over from whoever was there before when she started living there. She avoids using her resources as much as she can.

She lists and counts the birds she sees. She creates more and more charcoal drawings of them, and the sea, and also uses thread and needles she found in the lighthouse to gradually embroider all the fabric that she owns with birds and strange patterns.


RELATIONS
She meets Gwyllan, a slightly older girl who lives in a cottage as a “researcher” for a project on the wildlife in the area. The two develop a strange and obsessive relationship. She has essentially no other connections. They feel like they are the only ones who can understand each other.
She pushes her mother away despite them being close as she grew up, for reasons which are unclear. Deep down she believes she is a burden on her mother and everyone else she knows, and causes the strained relationship almost on purpose so her mother will care less about her wellbeing, because she believes that is the kindest thing to do.


(MENTAL) HEALTH
She has a very fragile state of mind. As a younger child, she spent much time in hospital, but remembers very little of this (or chooses not to remember). She is prone to hallucinations and delusions. She isolates herself from everyone, and believes there is something fundamentally wrong about her as a person.
She suffers from dissociation and derealisation. Often she can't separate her dreams and imagination from reality. She experiences strange and vivid dreams, which also get worse with the story's progression.
She also suffers from chronic pain and headaches from an unknown cause which flare ups seem to mirror her mental state.


VALUES
She values authenticity and genuineness, yet feels like she is unable to display these things herself: she often feels out of control, like all her actions are predetermined and she's simply a puppet or chess piece.
She thinks she doesn't know how, and believes she doesn't really deserve, to find humour and joy and things, but also craves sincerity. She cannot stand irony and masking exhausts her.
She values kindness very highly, but to other people her concept of what kindness actually is may seem rather warped and unconventional.


Part 2: Character Moodboard



The images of the sea and lighthouse which I chose represent her environment and lifestyle, which strongly influence how she is as a person. She feels extremely connected to the animals of the coast and the coldwater sharks / fish. Her life also heavily revolves around the seabirds that she has essentially as her main sense of company, and so I chose a lot of pictures with bird imagery, and picked out images reflecting that sense of overwhelm that surrounds her. I tried to select dreamlike pictures to get across her experience of living and her uncertainty around reality. I also chose art that I think she could have created such as the smudged paintings, sketches and stitched pieces of the sea/birds. The splintered porcelain face is a representation of how she sees herself and others around her, and how she makes sense of the world through other things like ornaments and sculptures and objects of different kinds.

Part 3: Character Swap

Drops of salty water splattered onto the dry, yellowing grass at his feet. Fading memories of a spring now dragged to its limits by the late summer sun.
Theo blinked violently, and dragged his sleeve across his tear-stained face. He hated crying. Or, rather more accurately, he hated that he just couldn't seem to stop himself from doing it, no matter how hard he tried.
He shouldn't. He wouldn't. It wasn't right, he ought to be better than this. He could stop it, he just needed more willpower, more strength.
It was what he repeated to himself each time, but in truth he simply couldn't change. It was who he was, and he detested that. He wished desperately to be someone else – someone more like the other Woodmoss boys. Someone better.
A branch snapped. Then came the hesitant rustling of leaves. Something was creeping through the turf. It shook him from his spiral of thoughts. It was something from behind him, in the orchard; he leapt up, quiet as he could manage, and spun round.
From between long tufts of grass, almost hidden, two bright black eyes stared back at him. There in the parched greenery, sat a scrawny and dishevelled looking dog. The tears were gone, leaving only sticky shadows of themselves on his cheeks, and Theo's mind was suddenly focused. He instinctively reached out towards it, but it shrunk away, looking scared. As it did so, Theo's stomach dropped. Something was terribly wrong: he had noticed the furious red gash that glistened on its side. A deep open wound.
The dog looked small, but on further inspection must have simply been very young. It looked like an error of engineering, its head far too large for its body, as if it might topple over at any moment. Its legs were tensed, the muscle and veins visible through loose skin, poised and ready to run. Theo froze in place.
“No, no, I'm sorry–” he breathed, frightened to move a muscle in fear of sending the poor creature racing away from him, “please, don't go, come here. I promise it's alright. Really,” The dog in the grass eyed him suspiciously, but didn't go to move away. He waited with bated breath. Even his heartbeat seemed too loud. He couldn't let the poor thing go back to fending for itself, not with that injury.
What seemed like hours passed frozen in place. The dog lifted a paw and, in a kind of slow motion, began to inch closer in his direction. Theo's face broke into a sheepish smile.
“Yes, here, come on love – that's right,” he said softly, crouched down, coaxing it closer and closer into his arms.
He slowly lowered a hand to its side, lightly pressing against its ribs. Its little body felt so fragile, but warm and alive beneath his palm. Its heart was beating far too fast. The sandy brown fur it wore was coarse and matted across its skin. Poor thing.
Now was the time. In one quick motion, he lunged forward and scooped the dog into his arms, holding it tightly to his chest like some priceless treasure.
It yelped out in fear, but was quickly quietened by his hushes and sing-song reassurances – it seemed to trust him. Whimpering softly, it pressed a wet snout hard into the crook of his arm.
“Don't worry. We'll get you sorted out.”

Part 4: Character Meeting

Bronwen stood at the cliff's edge. Sharp rocks jutted out from the precipice at all kinds of strange, threatening angles, but she seemed to not notice them at all. Or perhaps, more likely, she simply did not care for caution.
She leaned out, scarily casual. There was an air of calmness about her, one that was not usually present; she felt somehow comforted by this lingering sense of danger. At any moment the chalky cliffs might give way, she might be taken into the arms of the abyss, and there would be nothing else to do about it. Then nothing would matter at all. Yes. That was good.
The silhouette of her arm, precariously thin, cut across the brooding sky. Rough nails scraping the stormclouds. Fingers outstretched and palm open, ready for something, as if she could grasp the clouds and pull them back towards her. She fixed her eyes into the nothing.
Three.
No, four. There.
Nine.
Now five.
She muttered to herself absently. She was counting the swirling dark specks. The birds. They danced in and out of her fingers and she imagined she could feel them, like flies circling a rotten peach. She swore she could, a little - the breeze on the surface of her skin as they flitted around it. But no, they were far away, and she could not hold them. And really, she did not want to: instead, she wished with all of her heart she was one of them in the sky.

A familiar darkness began to swirl within her head as her gaze fell to the black, wild waters below. The waves crashing against the rocks sounded like words sometimes, another language, or some greater being singing in tongues, and she wished she knew how to speak it.
Something inside told her that if she knew how to speak this language of the darkness, the rest of the noise would go away.
She yearned for silence.

–

The only thing that Theo Woodmoss wanted less in the world than to move away from the Woodmoss estate, away from his family, and to a cold and windy coast to live with an Aunt he had never even heard of, let alone met, was to be labelled ‘difficult’.
And so, even with the physical crushing pain that screamed furiously in his chest, he had accepted it without fuss.
But now he was here.
And good god did he hate it.
He felt ever so alone and unwanted anyway. So misunderstood. But here? He was far from his beloved animals, his friends, his absolutely everything familiar, and much too close to this strange woman who smelt like {cigret} smoke and stale lavender.
It had only been two days so far, but he couldn't take anymore of this.
“Auntie Mags, I'm going out for a walk, if that's alright,”
She didn't look up from her newspaper.
“Kay. Mind the cliffs.”

–

She stared across the mist swept moor behind her, her eyes torn from the birds. Sea winds flicked her hair around her face wildly and flecked her face with salt.
There was a figure out there. It looked lost, wandering the cliffs like a ghost. She felt herself being pulled away from the edge, closer and closer to this other being.

“Are you okay?”

Theo startled as he found himself suddenly being wrapped in a tattered jacket by a complete stranger from out of the fog. A stranger with very cold hands.

“What!?” he pulled away, terrified. He had been well and truly lost in his own thoughts.

“Are you okay?” Bronwen repeated, “you look terribly cold. And like you have no idea what you're doing up here. Where did you come from? What's your name?”

He stared at the owner of the voice and the cold hands, and calmed a little – she didn't look like she would harm him. Maybe she was a little peculiar, he thought, but she had kind eyes.

“I'm just out for a walk, and, well.. yeah, maybe I went too far,” he said, slowly looking around him at the unfamiliar landscape, while scrambling for his words, “I just kind of kept walking I think. I think for a bit too long. And too far. It's alright, though – sorry, my name is Theo. Who are you?”

“Bunny,” she said, and even as the word left her lips, she was confused why it had. Bunny. The name she had as a child affectionately been called, (‘Bronwen’ had somehow morphed into ‘Bun’ and then further mutated). She had found herself unable to escape the identity despite now harbouring bitter feelings towards it. Not that she knew why. It just tasted bitter in her mouth.
Yet she seemed to trust this boy, and Bunny it was.

She looked at him.

“You look troubled. I can tell.”

“Well, yeah, I know, I'll be fine once–”

“No. Not this, deeper in.”

“Well, maybe, isn't everyone?” Theo replied, feeling somewhat accused, “But so do you, actually. You look… you look like you could use another human being to talk to.”

He grasped her wrist firmly and dragged her down to sit by him. The two sat down on the rocks, overlooking the sea, and they began to talk.

Daily 3rd March - 361 words

Badger worlds.

Lichen stared, bright eyed, into the woods. It was empty of people. He could sense it. And he was glad.
The thing was, people came here to feel animal again – and Lichen simply did not understand it. They did not seem to know that the people-land they were ever so desperate to escape from was a land they themselves had entirely invented. They thought the tangle of noise was an inevitable fact of existence: instead of stopping it, they ran away from it just to keep themselves going, before returning again and again. They, the ones who killed it within, could not survive without the silence that remained outside the people-land.
Well.
It was silent to them, but not to him. The sound washed over him.
Branches caressed each other. Wind trickled through leaves. Twigs snapped. Creatures scurried. Somewhere, distantly, a shallow brook hummed to itself.
Underneath everything else, the forest as a whole seemed to give out a constant comforting noise like television static. Not that he had such a thing to relate it to, but he liked it. He wore the noise around him as a blanket.
He lowered his head into the undergrowth, and inhaled deeply. It was a mosaic of stories, different scents trailing out in every direction, each one bright in his mind. Yet he could not find the only one he wanted: where was his sett?
He pictured it behind closed eyelids, as clear as the scenes in front of him. In his inner world, he could walk himself through each chamber. Each one was filled with hazy memories and times of comfort. He tried to breathe it in, the warmth, but the cold air in his snout dragged him back into reality. The forest. The forest, and the horrible sickening feeling of unfamiliarity that settled in the air.
He looked out into the trees and imagined the subterranean landscape he would rather be a part of. He longed for his tunnels again. His family, and their reassuring scents. The earth felt huge beneath his paws – he knew somewhere beneath him, it lay there, but he no longer knew how to find it.

Word Wars, SWC March ‘26 (full disclosure no i do not type this fast this neatly, i can’t bring myself to post my raw typo-ful word wars lmao but word count is always the same)


4th #2 - 212 words

She circles the drain, a shark in the sink.
Black oozes out of her. She is sickly, she is sickening, she is a sickness. What does she see in the mirror? She does not know. It is a twisted shape. Contorted and wrong. She sees lines and reflections and nothing but objects. Colours and shadows, there is no person there at all. She beats on the surface and it turns to glass. Glass that then shatters, splinters in her palms. It is red. Patterns to join the splinters crawling up her arms. White tattoos dug into her skin. She is an artist perhaps, a master of pencils she finds in bathroom cabinets. Is that who she is? It cannot be. She is no one.
Worms crawl from her ears, her eyes, her mind. They are fat and wet and dark. Disgusting. Revolting. She crushes them under bare feet and part of her dies too. Oh well. Oh well. No matter. Nothing here matters. The walls will shrink and grow and shrink and grow, while she will always stay the same. She is safe here, she will not change. Only slowly decay and mold and become part of the blackness in the cracks of the tiles and the limescale on the steel faucet.


4th - 252 words (lost)

In the presence of ghosts, there was only one thing to do.
Pretend that everything was perfectly OK.
I stared at the empty place at the table opposite me, and sat down. I gazed absently into the distance, trying to see something more than what was there. I passed a set of beautiful silver cutlery across the lace tablecloth – my grandmother's best. She had never used it. She was always saving it for a special occasion: one that never came. Oh well. I used it now, for microwave ready meals and pots of cold rice pudding at the bus stop. She wouldn't mind.
Well, she probably would, actually. I pictured her face, ever so beautiful - something she had not shared with me - always twisted into a tight sneer. But she'd never know. And I couldn't afford a new set of cutlery.
I waited for a moment, rather awkwardly, before starting to tuck into my plate of gourmet sauceless spaghetti. I don't know what for. The other plate I had made sat utterly untouched, half hearted swirls of steam trailing their way into the air around it.
“Well, enjoy,” I said.
I bet he wasn't there at all, but it seemed wrong not to set the table just in case. A breeze came in through the kitchen window, blowing the curtain strangely, and I decided against my better judgement to take it as a sign.
Something was there, anyway, even if only the beginnings of a brewing storm.
“Cheers,” I told the empty room.

521 words - 5th March daily, book review <3

The Secret History - donna tartt. A book review.

To me, the secret history is a book about obsession, and the gruesome insides that come from trying to maintain a perfect exterior. As the book puts it itself: “a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs”.

Set in an elite college in rural Vermont, it begins rather dramatically in its prologue by revealing that one of the main characters we will come to familiarise ourselves with in the rest of the story will already be dead by the end. It's not a whodunnit but more of a why-dunnit. The story begins with our narrator, Richard, who has come from California, starting at this new college. The narrative is set in motion when he happens to show an interest in joining the ancient Greek class. It turns out that the Greek professor, Julian, runs an extremely exclusive class (there are in fact only 5 students) and is reluctant to let him take the class at first, but after happening to make himself known to this clique-like group upon meeting them in the library and butting into their conversation, he is permitted to join.
Julian insists on taking charge of all his students’ other classes if they want to be a part of the Greek class, effectively isolating them. He is very eccentric and old fashioned in many ways, obsessed with aesthetics over anything else and rejecting modernity. He's absorbed not only in ancient languages but the lifestyle of ancients.

The book is split into two acts - the first one leading up to the death, and the second one covering the aftermath. Reading the first part, knowing the death of this character is imminent is so incredibly compelling and interesting. Then, after this, is where the “picturesque” utterly crumbles. The group falls apart and things spiral drastically. The events that unfold in Act II could be likened to a car crash: horrifying, but you can't drag your eyes away from it.

I absolutely urge anyone who is appropriately old enough to read this book! It's somehow a book of over 600 pages and yet it goes by so fast, it's so incredibly enthralling. You will be disturbed, excited, hate the characters as people and yet be unable to stop reading because you NEED to know what happens to them next and what they do as they become more and more unhinged, desperate, and disconnected from reality.

It's also absolutely filled with symbolism and hidden meaning, and even though it was so long, left me genuinely itching to do a reread immediately. It was all that was in my brain for WEEKS, and I couldn't help but come up with so many theories. It also left me questioning how unreliable Richard was as a narrator, and what was hiding in between the lines of this book. Donna Tartt's writing is beautiful and manages to be complex but never at all hard to read or comprehend.

I rated it 5/5 stars, and I truly think that The Secret History will be there in the back of my mind for the rest of my life!

Activities tracking - SWC March 2026

Responsibilities

- Cyberpunk Co-leading
cabin word adding
banners
shop

- Polarbears
weekly intro
workshop

- Memory Book Committee
screenshotting
general designing

- Main Cabin Word Adding

cyber rat plague ;^)

-Dailies-

1 - intro! DONE
2 - writing piece that starts and ends the same, DONE
3 - wildlife day, DONE
4 - word wars, DONE
5 - book review, DONE
6 - critiqiqiqiqqiare, DONE
7 - cabin wars, DONE
8 - roleplay day, DONE
9 - penpalswc, DONE (ongoing) 4 pals, letters see below
10-11 - memoir bidaily, got alternative daily, (3 tropes) DONE
12 - folklore creature, DONE
13 - 5 words from a specific year, DONE
14 - pi day, DONE
15 - playlist, DONE
16 - character interview, DONE
17 - story blurbs, DONE
18 - language, DONE
19 - gift for enemy, DONE
20-21 - poetry bidaily, DONE
22 - cabin wars, DONE
23 - cliche/tropes, DONE
24 - description without sight, DONE
25 - memory lane (previous memory book subtheme) DONE
26 - deleted scene, DONE
27 - fortunately, unfortunately, DONE
28 - interacting with swcers, DONE
29 - background character story, DONE
30 - villain perspective, DONE
31 - thank you letters

-Weeklies-

1 - characters, DONE

2 - short story writing, DONE

3 - scifi worldbuilding DONE

4 - swcea of monsters DONE

-Other activites-

- memory book cover contest entry DONE

- writing competition main entry DONE

- writing competition fanfic entry DONE

word wars: x2

critiques: x2

Penpalswc tracking, March '26!

Penpals:

@silverlynx- / Silvi : https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/871278/ x3

@Lyrids- / Lyra : https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/9034602/ x2

@euphoriafall / Hope : https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/871368/ x1

@GentleStorm / Storm : https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/871607/ https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/9051421/ x1

506 words

The Writers’ Black Dog.

March 12 daily based on the myth of the “black shuck”! A spectral black dog of British folklore. Associated with ominous events, and known as a harbinger of death. Sometimes thought to embody the anxieties of the people around it. Interestingly, is also sometimes portrayed as a ‘good’ figure, a spirit of protection. -

They lay there, late at night, protected by blankets and wrapped softly in torchlight. Carefully, carefully, carefully, they are capturing the stories that laugh in their heads. Sentence by sentence the creatures of the dark are contained, pocket lakes of wonder pooling between battered spiral notebooks. Flamelike, they gently lick at their surroundings: fluidly, they wait to seep beneath the next person's skin. TV static thoughts made into ballpoint scrawls, the humming words from outside are claimed as one's own.
An illness of sorts is here between them, carried, passed along.
A shared joy. The gift of peculiar surrealism. Escape from the world of the tangible.
They are tired.
It can smell it.

There, at the door: it breathes.
It would be entirely unseen, yet the heavy pant lingers so viscerally that it is almost visible.

A girl. Part of them, her people.
One such sick soul touches the rest, in the strange way that they can do, through the odd waves of the darkness.
She is alone, but not.
She is just about awake.
Sleep is wrapping its warm arms around her neck. She fights to stay awake. Feels herself falling. Again and again. The words on the tip of her pen jump feebly to the page between bouts of unconsciousness. She is no longer in control; dreams begin to grow on the paper, like a kind of beautiful mold. It is spreading spores of strange magic.

A shift of weight in the dark.
Breath fallen out of time.
Abyss at the door ripples.
Creaks.
It moves.

Her hand on the desk. Unmoving and eerie in the orange lamp light, a thing like a sculpture. Smooth and pale skin, stained dark. Her pen is gently bleeding. It loosens an unseen grasp that it had had around her; it is slowly letting go of the stories she holds and has to tell. They go into the night.
Emptiness beside her. An uneasy space.
Not now.
The dog is there.

Hot breath against her skin, its fur is strange. The dog is warm and smells of rain. Coarse fur rubs the desk, the chair, the walls of this small bedroom, a bedroom in which it is so out of place. Ivory teeth press against her tender flesh. It is not unkind.
In her dreams, she stirrs: deep eyes resting upon her. She cannot see, but somewhere in her soul she has become unsettled.
Something is going to happen, says the presence of the dog.
In reality, it says nothing.

Upon waking, the window is open - she is terribly cold. Nighttime leaks in. She shuts it out, wiping sleep from her eyes. Still dark, she cannot sleep. She begins to write.

The year I chose – 1542 (the year of seagull…)
The five words I chose – dusky, allusion, strained, seagull, quieter

Birds stained the heavens.
They reminded me of flies swarming a fresh hot wound, I thought to myself, as I watched them swirl and swirl in the dusky red of the sky.
Observing closely, I followed them with my eyes as they dived in and out of imaginary patterns; an allusion to stars that were not yet there. Far, far away from me - though it seemed I could have touched it, I swear - the sun sank slowly beneath the surface of the ocean. Orange light leaked across the waves like a spillage of blood.
Every so often came the wild cries of the birds.
Loud.
Not loud enough.
Quieter than it should have been.
There were fewer birds than there should have been.
I looked down at it.
As gently as I could, I picked up the limp body of the seagull that lay still on the grass in front of me. I shook it lightly. The poor wretched thing was cold in my hands. Its eyes were glassy, and absent. Staring intensely into somewhere I could not go, at something I could not see, it remained motionless. How sad and utterly beautiful I found it: I could not leave it be. I stroked it, tracing its outline with my fingers down its side. I could feel each tendon moving under my fingertips, through the flesh of its neck. Each tiny bone of its body under the layers of skin. Such a terribly delicate and carefully formed example of a life.
Above me, its brothers in species had begun to gather, strained screams piercing my ears more and more frequently, with little respite in between. They went at me, with curious or violent intent I could not tell, and pecked at my neck, my hair, my clothes, my frozen ruddy ears. Their beaks were sharp, and the feathers that I found rushing fiercely around my face and body smelt like death. Like dying things. It sent images flashing across my mind of rotting beings. Carcasses. It made me ill to my core.
Hunching over, I brought the creature close to my chest, shielding it from the surrounding chaos of the world. As I grasped it tighter in my trembling hands and drew it quickly towards me, its neck flopped over in an array of different directions most sickeningly.
I stood and turned my back against the cliff's edge. Down the slope I began to hurry. The wind was not kind.
I wailed helplessly as I felt the sting of salt being spat at me, scratching my skin raw.
The birds followed. With a strange surge of dread in my chest, I attempted to scramble down faster than before, but suddenly they grew erratic - desperate, feral. I cried out in pain as one pulled a chunk of skin away from my face, painting a sticky path of red across my cheek. Blood dropped into the dead bird’s soft down. Most trickled away, repelled by its waterproof plume, and simply smeared across its chest, while a little of it began to seep gradually towards the sorry thing’s skin.

It was exactly 3:14 in the afternoon when the shot rang out.
It took until the next morning for them to finally stumble across the body.
The dog got there first — he could not tell them what was wrong, but he certainly made himself clear that something, at least, was. He sniffed the air desperately, and it was quite opaque that he was bothered by something more than just the cold air stinging his nose. Running back and forth back and forth through the dead foliage wildly, he paused and stared back at the group who was now jogging after him looking puzzled and concerned. He cried out back through the trees,a melancholy weeping howl that said: there is no rush after all. You are too late.
There was a satisfying crunch of leaves underfoot as they got there. And then the gasp of horror.
No one spoke.
A gentle breeze rippled through the woods, sending the ceiling of wiry branches dancing. It would have been a peaceful scene if not for the thick layer of dread that hung heavy in the air. It was suffocating. They could not be blamed.
After all, it was a truly sickening sight. A dark sticky liquid oozed happily into the soft moss floor.
The dog was the one to break the silence, again. A soft, drawn out whimper. Almost inaudible. Yet. It was enough to break them.
One of the party standing by the side of the body began to weep. After that, the weeping did not stop. Not even after the flashing lights had brought the body far, far away and they had all been ushered and hurried away, kindly as was possible but sternly. Not as the box was lowered beneath the damp.
Her makeup was done as beautifully as she would have liked it to be. They did not know her well. But it was the best they could manage.
The watch had stopped.
It was exactly 3:14 in the afternoon. For her, it always would be.

Daily 15 568 words

Lyrics I chose:
The Old Witch Sleep and The Good Man Grace - The Amazing Devil: “There’s a fire burning, and I am learning to be so much more than my tiredness.”
No Children - The Mountain Goats: “I am drowning, there is no sign of land. You are coming down with me, hand in unloveable hand.”
Anything - Adrianne Lenker: “Weren’t we the stars in heaven? Weren’t we the salt in the sea?”

Weird surreal I don’t even know what this is about. Or maybe I do.

There’s a fire burning, and I am learning to be so much more than my tiredness.
I feel watched. The moon is misty red, and full of eyes. I am sure.
My head has never felt so heavy. I kneel by the flames, my head hovering quite precariously above them. In my half awake, dreamlike state, I can see creatures dancing amidst the burning. They are tiny men caught in a forest fire. They make me terribly sad. The dark creeps around the edges of my vision, until all I can see is the dancing people. Well, what looks like a dance. But no, not that, not really at all: they are screaming, running, writhing in peculiar motions. The rest of the world has faded away. The dark tries to smother me completely.
I began to fall into a deep sleep.
Dark tendrils are taking me far, far away.
The fire is what wakes me up. I open my eyes, shook out of my haze by a strange fizzing on my skin and find it suddenly very close. Ah! I can feel the gentle but alarming sensation of searing skin on my face, as the fire licks the side of my cheek and grasps for locks of my hair. Rather terrified and bewildered at first, I lean back and am quickly able to come to my senses. I have to clear my head of all the thoughts and remind myself - I go through it in my head til I am settled. No one is burning me, after all, not yet. I intended this. I am glad to be woken up. This is why I am so close to the fire.
I cannot fall asleep tonight.
Nor ever again.
I shift my eyes up to the stars. Refusing to appear at first, they slowly make their way out from the vast sheet of nothingness above me. I am waiting for something I have been waiting for since you left.
A ball of anger burns in my chest.
Weren’t we the stars in heaven? Weren’t we the salt in the sea?
Did you miss it, being everything at once?
I know I do.
I try to remember it: the foam that crashed on the rocks, the dew in the morning cobwebs, the sunlight in soft feathers. The tears, blood, skin, bone, the wastelands of debris.
Then, there it is in the sky. And I reach out an unearthly hand and grab it tight in my cold palm. A bright and burning meteor.
I feel myself burning up, every atom of me fading out, becoming infinite. I am a bird high above myself, I am a tree and a ray of light, a newborn infant and a last exhale. The whole universe washes over me.
I am drowning, there is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me.
Hand in unloveable hand.

696 words - daily 16

The interview.

I don't think I have ever seen someone look both so unsettled and so unsettling at the same time.
I smile, as warmly as I can.
“It's great to have you here,” I say, stretching out a hand towards the pale girl who is stumbling wildly around in front of me. It's meant to be a gesture of reassurance, something to say, ‘It’s okay, I don’t bite!’ ‘We come in peace! Ha, ha,’ but she instantly recoils, staring at my open palm the way one might stare at a venomous snake. Well. Fair enough. I have rather ambushed her, here, to be completely fair.
“Woah, woah, don’t worry – it’s not poisonous!” I say, waving my hand around, “At least not last time I checked,” I grin, still valiantly attempting to lighten the mood. It is clearly not having the desired effect.
Finally, she seems to have regained control of her muscles. She feebly manages to form the words in her mouth, and spits them - in my humble opinion - quite violently towards me.
“Who. Are you?”
Ahem. I clear my throat, and give my (very best) jacket a quick brush down, before taking a deep breath.
“Of course, how rude of me! You must be very confused, and don’t worry, it’s quite understandable. But I’ll explain everything to you. So. I’m Terese, and I’m an agent from the Fictional Character Advocate Association. We do all sorts of stuff over there, providing help services to abused comfort OCs and such, you know how it is – but my job is to conduct interviews with characters just like you from all different kinds of stories, and just get an idea of how life is for you.” I beam, “Would you be up for that?”
She blinks at me, in that specific way I’m very used to. She doesn’t say anything for a moment. And then she says, “What?”
Okay. One of these. That’s fine.
“Don’t be concerned if it doesn’t make sense just now, that’s totally normal.”
Smiling, I pull out a small medicine bottle filled with a pale pink liquid from my back pocket, unscrew the top and hand it to her. I press it firmly into her palm. “Take this.”
Looking rather dazed and suspicious, she stares at the bottle. But after a moment’s hesitation lifts it to her lips and drinks. There we go! They always do.
A second passes, and her face begins to change. A spark of recognition lights up in her eyes, as if she has suddenly remembered something very important, or just woken from a dream. I wait patiently for a minute.
“So – you up for taking a few minutes to be interviewed?”
She looks at me blankly again for a second, but then swiftly brightens and says, “Oh - yes, alright. That seems fine. I’m so sorry, I was really out of it for a moment there! I was completely somewhere else…”
“No worries. It’s surprisingly common. Please, take a seat.”
We sit opposite each other on the bright green armchairs that have seemingly come out of nowhere, but that must have been there unnoticed all along, and I draw up the notepad and pen that must originate from the same place.
“So, tell me… Bronwen? Is that right?”
“Mhm,” she nods.
“Fab! So, tell me, Bronwen, how do you feel about the current story you’re in?"
She winces a little, “Well, it’s alright. I’m fine with it really… I mean, yes, things can be… tricky. But it’s not really the story I’m in, I don’t think. That’s more on me. I don’t know what else I’d ask for my situation.”
“I see. Is it not difficult being in such a lonely setting?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. At times, I guess so, but…” she furrows her brow, “That’s a choice I’ve made, I think. Maybe not consciously but I don’t know if I can blame anything else. Yeah, it’s the setting, but it’s not like I’m not given the opportunity to get out of it and be somewhere else. There’s just something, I suppose, stopping me from ever taking it.”
“I see.” I scribble some notes down onto my notepad.

Daily 17 - 484 words

An intro to one of my stories - it’s called The Mosslands. One day, we will all die. That’s one thing we know for sure. Where we go, on the other hand, is one of life’s greatest mysteries - the final journey: uncharted territory. Well, the time finally comes, and you feel yourself taken in by the warm embrace of death: while you’re of course somewhat aching with grief, you’re also filled with an overwhelming curiosity for what’s next, and then… then, there’s… nothing. You lie there, still. You feel absolutely nothing happening around you. You suddenly feel extremely aware of your own body, how it’s still there, how it’s still thinking, still feeling. There’s a chill up your back, a deep ache in your bones, and the sound of blood pounding in your head. Slightly fearful, you open your eyes to find the room exactly as you last saw it. Wait. What’s going on? Have you even died at all? What’s happened? Are you a ghost? The concept seems terrifying. Then you notice it: it’s not exactly the same, after all. Yes, it’s very similar, granted, but the windows are smashed in places, cracks rippling through the glass like cobwebs. Moss is clinging to every surface, growing happily. The air smells like damp. You step away from yourself, from the place your life ended, and you begin to explore. As you wander this new world, you discover a place just like the world you left, except that everything is… abandoned. Devoid of human presence. There’s a thick layer of fog blanketing the streets, and swirling mists that hide in every crevice of this world. Everything is overgrown, covered in moss and lichen, reclaimed by nature. It seems like all of the buildings here have been empty for a long, long time. Roots burst through wooden floorboards, taking back their own, perhaps. You walk a long time on the desolate road, into the fog. You’re not sure where you’re going. You didn’t quite expect death to be like this, you see. Not that you really had any idea what you did expect - well, how could you? - you just know that this isn’t like anything you had imagined. You suppose you thought it would be more… final. It’s more like a limbo here than anything. A thought crosses your mind, that, well, maybe you’re in… the bad place. Some sort of purgatory, at least? Where did you go wrong?
But it’s kind of peaceful here. You sit down on the tarmac in the middle of the road, and you know no cars will ever see this neck of the woods again, as it were. You breathe in the mist.
Something shifts between the trees behind you.
You’re not the only being here, after all. Just the only human. It occurs to you, just then, that actually.. You don’t feel particularly human yourself anymore.
Welcome to the Mosslands.

weekly 2

(part 1 and 2 switched around the order but all parts are here dw)

part 2 - story
(1793 words)

The cliffs are louder than my thoughts. This is why I come here, again and again, staring down at the waves that break themselves endlessly into white noise. My bones are weak, and so i must plead with the stretched grey sky that has room for things that don’t fit inside a skull. If I stand close enough to the edge, I can narrow the world into wind and chalk and salt corroded edges. It’s a kind of comfort that no other place can offer.
This is why I come here.
I am not tempted by the drop. I must remind myself.

The birds circle, eerie, in the pale open skies, and I watch them as I always do. I sit with my hands buried in the grass and my feet hanging, suspended above the cold-water abyss, but I’m careful. Despite myself, I have always been careful. They are all far away, screaming and laughing into the white void, except for one. Perched up upon a narrow jut of rock a few feet away, one of the birds is looking straight at me. I find myself staring back at it, an oddly unafraid creature. Not a Bonaparte’s, as I had first thought, but a little kittiwake. Maybe it sees inside me, and all the inhuman-ness of me, and knows I will not hurt it.
Like a sudden warm pool of sunshine spilling through the canopy of a woodland, an inexplicable sense of understanding washes over me, the sense of being seen. There’s something so odd about this bird. Its unnerving stillness, the way it is watching me a little too deliberately. I want to reach out to it and hold it between my palms, though I know it’ll fly away.

I call to it, and when it blinks at me, I feel the flutter of my own eyelids somewhere else, high above the cliffs.

The ground seems to shift beneath me, and i am filled with a feeling i have never felt before. I can’t name it. But I am instantly drawn in. Again, I close my eyes. I think of nothing but the bird. And for a moment, I am sitting on the cliff no longer.

Far, far below me is the fathomless sea. I see myself too, a tiny figure too close to the edge. From up here I can see everything, i can follow the coast until it curves around into the mist like a thin white scar.
Yes, maybe this is not real, maybe an imagination, but it is euphoric.

–

I am under ten thousand tons of dark water. Down here it is cold in a way much deeper than the familiar chill of a desolate moorland. It is a cold that has worked itself deep into my veins and that I don’t think I will ever be able to get out. Silvery fish with human eyes glide past me, and dark shapes grow and shrink on all sides of me. Something vast, older than the earth, makes its way toward me…

I wake with the taste of salt thick on my tongue, my throat raw. Maybe screaming, or swallowing the sea.

The ‘nightmares’ began a week ago.

Every night feels heavier, increasingly confused. Something more. Today is the first morning i notice the blood.

My sheets are damp, clinging to my skin. I barely register it - i’ve given up changing them. My hair feels horribly coarse and falls in thick ropes around my face, skin sticky with salt.

I check the windows again, convinced once again that the sea has crept inside somehow, and soaked into my things.
It’s tight. The glass is cold and dry beneath my fingertips.

I see it then. It’s only a little, but there is an unmistakable dark smear now seeping through my pillowcase. Aware all of sudden of the metallic tang on my tongue, i lift a hand to my mouth and when i draw it away again, it comes back bloodstained. My lips are split, and my gums ache dreadfully.

My hands, too - i see it when i hold the doorframe, and leave it eerily handprinted. they are oozing little beads of red, from tiny cuts all along my palms and my knuckles, as if i have scraped them across something rough.

Still, I prefer these dreams to the ones which they replaced.

–

I go to the birds - the bird - every day. I can stay in the daydream of sorts for longer and longer each time. It’s so vivid, so real. I can’t stop.
I’ve noticed when i return to my own eyes, things are darker and blurrier. Sounds are distorted too. that’s okay. I trust that i can always see again once i reach the cliffs.

–

It is the early morning when she calls me. The light has only just begun to leak in from behind the horizon, and everything looks soft to the touch. All the colours of the surroundings are peculiar, as if I have stepped into a polaroid photograph.
The noise entangled with my dreams, it takes me a while to brush them away and pick up the phone. It doesn’t help that for the first few long moments, I can do nothing but sit and stare at it. I watch it. Ringing.

“Hello?” my mother’s voice comes crackling through the screen.
“Hello,” I croak, and the word comes out sounding strange. A primitive sound, that is not a word at all. I realise I have not heard my own voice for weeks. I’ve had no reason to use it.
She breathes in sharply, and when she breathes out it is a stream of consciousness entering my ears, “Oh my god, I’ve been so worried. Why haven’t you been answering me? What’s going on? Please, I just wanted you to let me know you’re okay. I was getting desperate, I was about to call the authorities. The hospital. I was so scared, you know, you can’t do this. Please tell me what’s going on–”
She pauses for breath, but she doesn’t start again.
“Nothing, mum. I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are.”
Pause.
“I am.”
“Why didn’t you answer me?” her voice is slower, softer now.
I look at the little red symbol on the screen, that tells me i have ignored what my mother has tried to say fifty-seven times now. Have i heard these already, late in the kitchen at night, staring up at the ceiling? Maybe. Memories swim around my brain. No. I don’t remember that.
“I did, now.”
She sighs. I can see her face in my mind. Bitten lower lip, dark beneath her eyes.
“I could come up,” she says, “just for a little.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think that maybe it is.”
“I’m just tired.”
There is a silence from the other end of the line.
“You’ve been ‘just tired’ before.” she says, quietly.
The words land heavier than they should; I feel a twist of sickness and anger in my chest.
“I’m not.. It’s different.”
“I want to come and see you. You’re not in the right place to be alone right now.”
“No. I’m not letting you come.”
“Please,” her voice sounds gentle and calm, but i can sense the layers of anxiety rippling out from underneath.
“I said no.” I hang up without awaiting a reply. I switch off my phone and put it back down on the side. I stare at it for a long while, feeling ill. I listen to the ringing until it stops.

The cottage feels smaller after that.

–
Flying into white darkness, diving beneath a black field. For a moment, I’m not sure if I am watching it or remembering it as my own experience.
–
I’ve stacked the books in front of all the mirrors.
Dust hangs in the air, but at least it's got them off the floor. Ignoring the feeling of dread and despair sitting deep in my core, I gaze around me. Still, more clutter than i knew i owned gathers in the corners of every room. The clothes I’m wearing feel like part of my flesh now. Dishes pile up in the sink, but I don’t remember the last time I ate. It’s fine - i’ve simply not needed to. Vague impressions of hunger linger round me at times, but they are gone before i remember what i am supposed to do about them. Besides, last time i looked, all the food in the fridge was covered in an ominous grey mold.

At least i won’t have to see my reflection anymore, i think. I caught sight of it hours ago, the first instance in a long time, and the sickening feeling hasn’t left me yet: there was something terribly wrong with it. Someone else stared back behind the glass, their skin pale, flesh carved hollow like the cliffs carved by years of cruel sea, eyes dark and deep and mournful.

I will calm myself, later, I will go to the only place i feel i belong.

–

On first waking, i thought i had sleepwalked here up onto the cliffs.
But i don’t think i had ever returned to the cottage at all. Not from last time. The air is biting cold, below zero even - i’ve been out here all night, my body should be close to giving up. Yet, somehow I am unbothered. It won’t matter for long, something tells me.

It is a tremendous effort to even raise my head. Indeed, i have grown weaker and weaker than ever these weeks gone by. I stumble to my feet, feet that are no longer my own, dragging myself up through what feels like thick tar hanging in the atmosphere.

The bird is there. Behind me, it gives a melancholy cry. Its eyes flash briefly in the dusky light, bright and human. Across the moor is a pin-p/ick of light, the lights left on and scattered through the front glass window of my lighthouse of the land. Somehow, somewhere deep inside me, i know i will not see inside those stone walls again.

In the other direction are the churning dark waves and the step into nothingness.

I need to go back, I know that. But I can’t help it. I want to feel it again.
I try to recall what it felt like to be entirely inside my own body, but the memory has already thinned, like a dream dissolving in daylight.
With the last of my energy, I close my eyes and prepare myself, readying my decaying muscles. I run wildly into the dark grey sky - I am unsure whether it’s day or night - and I am not careful.

I am weightless. Far below me, a tiny dark figure is consumed by waves. It is not my concern.



part 1 - original outline
(463 words)

Note: when I actually wrote the story it changed quite a lot from my og outline

Premise is a short piece about a girl who discovers that she can “inhabit” the life of another animal - a seabird, a kittiwake. She slowly loses her own senses.
Possible interpretations/metaphors I wanted to capture – addiction/coping mechanisms, derealisation/depersonalisation, dissociation/escape.
Birds can symbolise freedom, but this is a dangerous kind of freedom.

An extended metaphor for mental illness, and chronic illness/pain.

Attempting to speak on topics of dissociation, addiction, obsession, transformation, the desire to disappear.

Act 1 - She has come to the cliffs for some respite from life and to clear her noisy mind. Stands/sits dangerously close to the edge. Watching the birds, she notices one of them seems strange, it’s oddly unafraid of her presence. Feels herself ‘inside’ the bird, high above the clifftops. It’s a much welcome escape from her life: she feels euphoric.

Act 2 - She begins to wake from vivid dreams/nightmares about the sea, finding her hands and gums bleeding, her hair damp and her skin sticky with salt. Some allusion to her troubles in her real life but never outright mentions/describes them, and how she dissociates from them. She’s spending a significant amount of time ‘as the bird’. She’s starting to feel disconnected from her own memories. She has trouble remembering things. She sees/hears/feels/smells things that aren’t really there. I.e. the flutter of wings. She is having vision and hearing loss and concerning symptoms but dismisses them.

Act 3 - Her mother has been attempting to visit/call her and is growing increasingly worried. At one point tries to bring up/mentions her past struggles. Wants her to return home, saying she’s not mentally in the right place to live alone anymore. She denies the time she spends at the cliffs being a problem. However, her cottage has become an utter mess. She’s barely eating, and has been wearing the same clothes for weeks. When navigating her normal life she’s beginning to become distressed/distracted and feels out of control of her own body. She stays at the cliffs as the bird for longer and longer and it’s the only thing she lives for. Her reflection in the mirror looks unfamiliar. perception of everything is off-kilter.

Act 4 - One night she doesn’t even return home, and falls up asleep on the cliffs. It’s gone nearly below freezing overnight but she’s unbothered. She dreams of watching herself step off the cliff. When she wakes, the bird appears more and more eerie, with human-like eyes. She realises she cannot stop it anymore, it’s no longer her choice (the inhabiting of the bird), but that she does not care. Weak, and frail, she knows if she does not leave she’ll never feel human again. She stays. She becomes the bird again.


part 3 - critique
(193 words)

Hello! This is my lil short critique of summer’s piece ( https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/870044/?page=1#post-9042475) , let’s get into it!

We’ll start with the positives! This is a really awesome piece of writing, and I especially love the descriptions, that’s something you’re clearly very skilled at. I love the phrase ‘the dark habitat of rain in the city’, especially, i feel like that builds a really nice and vivid atmosphere of the environment/setting.

In terms of improvements - the tonality of the piece is a bit strange. I’m not quite sure how we’re supposed to feel as readers. It jumps very fast from her first scenes to being in the hospital to dying and there isn’t a lot of emotion really lol, like i feel the ending could be read as trying to be somewhat uplifting, tragic, or even kind of dryly humorous? Whatever tone you’re going for in a piece is perfectly valid of course, but i would recommend having a bit of a stronger idea of what that actually is you’re aiming for!

Anyway, this piece is pretty fabulous in my humble opinion, and thank you so much for allowing me to critique it

*edited after sunmission to add link

Daily 18 - languages (611 words)

Nia stood at the doorway. She did not look at the gaggle of kids - lanky teenage boys to be specific - who were loitering off-puttingly about her house. Instead, she stared directly into the sun.

To her, it appeared to be that they were trying their very best to seem intimidating, but were in fact a little (quite a lot, really, as became apparent) scared themselves. For whatever reason, she did not know – but she was quite happy with it anyhow. They had slowly drawn closer over a fairly significant span of time, as each pushed each other up along the road and dared one another to get closer and closer. Like snails, slowly making their way up a plant pot.
Well.
Tá na bláthanna clúdaithe le salann, she thought wretchedly.

It wasn't the most appreciated. Their behaviour once they got there was even less so.

They began to heckle her;

“Hey! Hey! You, weird witch girl,” One called out, “Why don't you speak English?”

“Yeah, you're in England now. You know we all don't want you here anyway, but you're not even no use if you've not even bothered to talk like us folks. Us civilised folks! If you're not use at all, we might as well feed yer to the dogs.”

“Hey, shut up, you'll confuse her! She's too simple to know about all that stuff,” another one said, butting in. In a way, he was almost taking a kind of backhanded defense of her, but then they all snickered, and he went on; “that feeding business, that would be cannibalism. I've heard they're like dogs. You know, in terms of their intelligence and stuff. They're like, half feral, you know.”

“Really? That's it, huh? Well, this one looks full feral to me!” and “Oh, get away, she doesn't know what we're saying anyway. We can say whatever we like!”

It wasn't that funny, and actually, they all seemed to be painfully aware of this, but they fell about with cruel laughter nonetheless.

She did, in fact, speak English. She spoke it perfectly well. But that was something she was going to keep to herself. Her little secret. Rúnda. Ní bheadh a fhios ag aon duine eile. Ní hea, scriosfadh sé sin an spraoi.

Eyes burning red, she pulled her gaze away from the sun, and stepped out onto the lawn.

The group froze slightly.

“Bás agus droch-ádh ort.” She glared at them with the sharpest daggers she could summon in her eyes. If she was a weird witch girl? Well then, she'd be a weird witch girl.

“What?” one of them said

She took a deep breath.

“Tá súil agam go bhfaighidh tú bás. Gach duine agaibh. Bás daoibh go léir. Tá súil agam go mbáfá i bhfarraige na hÉireann, tá súil agam go ngoillfidh an t-iasc thú, go n-itheann tú do fheoil agus go mbainfidh tú taitneamh as, agus go dtiocfaidh na héin anuas agus go bpiocann siad do chnámha glan. Tá súil agam go gcothaíonn sé a dteaghlaigh ar feadh seachtainí. Ní bhfaighidh siad do chorp damanta dia. Riamh. Bí i do scéal taibhse.”

“What the hell?” One of them whispered, looking very afraid of her, attempting as best he could to plaster his face with a stern and threatening expression, “What are you saying? I demand you tell us right now, you can't go around like that just–”

“Ceart go leor buachaill beag scanraithe. Maybe you need to learn,” she said plainly.

Eyes widening, they turned on their heels and began to head swiftly in the opposite direction.
Returning inside, she hoped they would not come back to the house.
She needn't have hoped–they did not.

Daily 19: gift for enemy (359 words)

Dear Hairy Snails: here i present to you a wondrous gift expressing our love from the cyber rats <3

Oh hairy snails, dearest hairy snails..
The ones we know as “fairy tales”
From your friends the cyber rat crew
Please, take this ode we wrote for you..

Fairies? I think not
I see no magic in this lot
And the only tale I ever knew
Is how we love to laugh at you.
Yes, we laugh so hard, we almost die,
Laugh day and night at all your fails!
How we love to send you wars
So gleeful as we watch you cry,
Losing all your hard earned scores…

How we watch and call you names
Beat you fools at your own games
How we pray on your downfall
Building brick by brick the wall
To stand and plan our great attacks
And plot to steal, snatch and thieve
The last of all your snaily snacks!

We say these nasty things to you
And fuel our ever raging feud
But you fight back with equal flame
So,
Who's to say you're not to blame?

Us rats fight like dogs and cats
Every day, domestic spats
You snails leave a sticky horrid path
Don't worry though, you'll feel our wrath
Snails slime on everything
Ew, we say, so rocks we sling!
Yes, rocks we throw all over you,
It's definitely not rat poo

All this anger, competition!
But is this truly our great mission?
It seems so, yes…
Our actions, it all clearly shows
That the fury grows and grows and grows

With all this filth and all this hate
That simply won’t alleviate
You'd really think we loathe you so
Well then,
The truth might be quite strange to know

See.. deep within, we care for you.
We really don’t want you to go
It pains us to admit, maybe
But it is the truth, that must be free
For, truly, behind all the words,
All the insults at you nerds
Cyber rats are fond of snails
And we like to hear their silly tales
Really, we love them tons and tons,
And guess what?
Especially the hairy ones.

259 words bidaily 20 (part 1)


deep sleep alone, a wild sea of flowers
dreams of a harbour, the pier, the ship
I cannot breathe in the heat here, nor the fog, nor the showers
my lungs, their decay, fall on the coin i flip.
hold together my bones only layers of mortar
gapes in my flesh, on my skull a stark chip
don't know if i'm whole - think i'm only a quarter
out of my spine and my mind, memories drip
brains hazy, i walk, i am next to the border
a reality that slowly falls from my grip


memory she thought (hoped) she'd forgotten
tearing through the surface, it's vast and dark and cosmic
words on my arms, scars ill-begotten
a birthday spent in darkness. no candlewick
i give all up, my own identity impawned
the garden is plastic, the grass rarely trodden
do not perceive me. i hope all are anosmic
for in my ribcage something smells rotten
‘flat’ ‘withdrawn’ ‘she appears euthymic’
walls not my own and i do not remember what it looks like beyond


she flies with oil laden wings
pain searing. her veins are threaded with strings
above her the wood frame of a puppet
below her a kitchen, a mop and a bucket
too heavy, but she tries. her bones ache
the snap of a branch, a body. she will break
it's not important, she's crushed like a fly
though this is not how she wished to die
she yearns to lie elsewhere, the heart of the wood
she would be nowhere at all if she could