I had to light my candle by touch alone. For a moment, the smoke of the match overpowered the other smells permeating the air.
The relief didn’t last long.
My eyes hurt. Either because of the smell, or because I watched the stars for too long. I watched for hours. When I close my eyes, I can still see the millions of pinpricks spot my vision.
Prompt by: u/AnakinWayneII 2020CE: a group of investigative journalists and rogue intelligence analysts are investigating “wild” claims that 2 secret manned missions to Mars occurred nearly 40 years ago. Things get heated after some of the journalists die in “accidents” and intelligence analysts begin to go “missing”. There have been rumours going around that the space shuttles weren’t the only new space crafts launched in the eighties. Whispers of a project even more ambitious than the International Space Station. Grander than the Moon landings. Wild claims, ridiculous claims. Really, we shouldn’t have even bothered. The fact that we managed to get together such a big team is honestly ridiculous. No one really believed in some secret manned missions to Mars. How could something like that remain a secret? But work had been slow the last year, and this sounded more interesting than the usual slog. It didn’t take long before I was joined by...
Prompt by: u/whizkeylullaby You are the last soldier on earth. Nobody died or anything, war has just been unanimously replaced with virtual reality simulators. Drunk, angry, and out of a job, you say, “Fuck it. I’m taking over the world” While calling it world peace might be a tad overzealous, ever since the creation of the World Wide Virtual Reality Web, nation-wide wars were fought not with bombs and guns and armies, but online. At this point, no nation in the world even had an actual army left. Of course, crime and mobs and even some terrorists still existed, but even the general population was content to move all their violence to the virtual realm. Mackenzie Miller hated it. While the word ‘soldier’ wasn’t quite accurate anymore, what with her not belonging to an army, she was not content to sit around playing video games while her glock was left to gather dust in her attic. Drunk, angry, and out of a job, she finally said, “Fuck it. I’m taking over the...
[01-10-19] Prompt by u/jpeezey: While cleaning, you move a carpet in your basement and find a hidden manhole cover. Curious, you open it with a crowbar, and surprisingly the air coming from it doesn’t smell nasty. Actually, it smells… fresh. Under the carpet was a manhole cover. Eliza had no idea why it was there. The carpet had been there before she moved in. She pried the thing open with the crowbar she’d just found under a shelf. She turned up the brightness of her headlamp. Tiny metal ladder steps lead into a dark abyss. There couldn’t be anything really dangerous under the house right? Her shoes clanged on the rungs of the ladder. One creaked, but it didn’t fall. Finally, she felt the ground again. Now fully engulfed in the darkness, she could actually see by the light of her headlamp. She adjusted her breathing cap. There could be extra dangerous toxins down here. She inhaled. Weird. She breathed again. Could it be? She didn’t take off her cap, she wouldn’t be...