You’re the first one to the show. You slide down the row of plush chairs and sit
The curtain rises.
On the stage is a row of a plush chairs. A masked figure is sitting there. Someone is standing behind them.
He’s got a knife
“I love this part.” Whispers the person behind you
@ctrlcreep The proctor consult a notecard suspiciously. He pulls a lever.
He pulls a lever.
He pulls a lever.
Someone taps on the glass. He consults the notecard again, and grudgingly gestures to the enameled door.
His mower churns endlessly across the suburban sargasso. Nine blades wielded to fight a foe that wanted him to cut everything, knowing only it would be replenished, spared, cultivated.
He worked in the sun, and he hated the Emperor Grass
“I love you.”
In the mirror at the end of the hallway, you can see the velociraptor, turning its head and listening.
It tries the imitation again: “I love you!”
“It’s the headless horseman!”
She fixed her glasses. “That’s no headless horseman!”
“He hasn’t got a head!”
“Sure he has! It’s right there, he’s holding it in his hand.”
The head glanced to the body, who shrugged. It was glad she didn’t think this was a prank show.
Something struck the first deputy between the eyes. The second deputy held up a coin. “It—it’s gold!”
Another coin whizzed past his ear, striking the unfortunate first deputy as he was trying to climb to his feet.
The deputies all turned to see the leprechaun, slingshot in hand
The skeleton known as Broth lives in a cookpot on the stove. Technically he’s not a skeleton, since he’s made up of whatever ham hocks, turkey legs and spareribs were available.
He doesn’t talk much—guests are often put off when the appetizer soliloquies.
The witches are experimenting with new instrumentation. Altimeters made from the ghosts of voles carried off by owls. Compasses made from undelivered love notes. Maps.
They were suspicious of the last one. They don’t like the map knowing where they are better than they do
Grandpa was a good man. We all depending on him, more than any of us realized.
Why, just today, we didn’t have enough people, so we asked him to be a pall bearer at his own funeral
The most satisfying thing that could happen to The Office is a reboot where Jim becomes the boss and realizes to his horror he is inevitably becoming Michael Scott and it’s the only way to get his employees to do their jobs
@ctrlcreep Singing in breach happens when a leviathan mermaid sings with her head above and diaphragm below the water. Sound travels more quickly through water than air, and so they sing complex arias in two time signatures,
She felt the scar where her ring had once been. Devils liked making deals for the power they granted.
She’d been traded in one such deal.
Her divorce had been extremely final. She’d given him the finger and he’d kept it.
But at least now she was free.
Due to polluted waters in their narrow channel homes, Scylla is thought to be dead.
Unchallenged for resources, the Charybdis is growing. Poisoned by the same pollution, it grows ever angrier, more violent and temperamental, and the strait is no longer passable
“Victor! I don’t think we can be friends any more.”
Victor lowered the brain, stunned. He didn’t know his Assistant thought they were friends. Or that Igor might even be capable of having a friend.
He realized with shame that he did not really even consider the man to be human.
You’re in the store and your husband is talking and for a moment an unforgivable thought crosses your mind. But it’s just a thought. Unvoiced, harmless.
A man is watching you, and you can tell he heard you.
But he winks. He’s heard worse.
@ctrlcreep There are the Unknown Deaths, stages of decay in the dark and depth, in the crushing places beyond eye or breath even of the mightiest divers.
Meat-Death. Bone-Death.
And then, in the rising warm waters, in reincarnation, is the Krill-Death