Category: Modern Day

The Day I Died

Write your superhero origin story.

Original

It was an ordinary day, other than the explosion. I ground through the paperwork, filling office supplies and costs into each line. I entered manufacturer information and item numbers.  I checked little boxes.  It was a commercial supplier.  It was under contract.  It was a green purchase.  I submitted the paperwork to our financial officer, I got it back.  I submitted it our authorizing official, I got it back. Finally, I logged into a website and bought six hundred boxes of paper clips.

Then the bomb went off.

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Timid Reaper

You run a night school for assassins. The other professional assassins loathe you for turning customers into self-sufficient killers. You would get frustrated by their constant attempts on your life, if they didn’t make for such good lessons for your students…

Original

I strode across to the podium, before the diagram of the human skeleton and circulatory system. The class was small, ten people. I found it to be my optimum class size. Any more and my students began to look like a forest, not trees. Any less, and I might have trouble with my payments.

“Well? Anybody?”

One tentative hand rose up. She was a slip of a girl. Her demeanor was timid, her hand trembling in the air. None of her classmates took her seriously. They were new, yet. Not all of them quite realized that I wasn’t here to teach them how to fight, but how to kill. Ellen’s ‘fragile flower’ act would serve her well.

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Sensei

A housecat’s human learning to hunt, from the cat’s point of view.

Original

“CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” My human whipped out a strange device before my shocked eyes, and slammed it down, piercing his prey’s tin hide. He closed the device – like teeth – and it began to chew.

“O! PEN! ER!”

With each syllable, he twisted the device, mauling his prey’s hide further, then he peeled back the tin skin. He hefted the can into the air and slammed it down over my food dish. He snapped his wrist back, leaving behind the prey’s flesh. He tipped his head back and screamed in victory.

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Deadly Lens

A psychopathic serial killer falls in love with a beautiful, sexy mind reader

Original

Soon I would have to struggle home from work. It was the hardest part, the walk home. My job kept me alone in front of a dozen monitors, watching empty halls at night. It was a lonely job, but it kept me safe, insulated from the abrasive buzzing of humanity.

There were my coworkers, of course. My relief would arrive soon.  Funny word, that.  ‘Relief’. Those hours alone, they were the purest, most relaxing hours of my day. Then Josh showed up.  His mind was full of whatever woman he was wooing at the time. Lust whined constantly, and his pride was like the squeak of a thumb on a clean plate, never ending. He’d made progress with someone if it was this loud.

He’d never actually told me of his conquests. He was actually something of a gentleman in that regard.  It should seem odd that someone so consumed with sex and the pursuit of sex should be a gentleman in any way, but I knew human nature too intimately to be surprised.  When you understood people well enough, you came to realize that the contradictions within a human are what made them…human.

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Grim Avatar

Original

I looked over the world with a heavy heart.

I didn’t really, of course. Out of the eyes of every insect, every bird and squirrel, and even every human, I saw nearly everything. Secrets weren’t safe from me unless they were safe from life itself. Or . . . unlife.

I looked out from the eyes of the zombies as well. Oceans of mindless undead. Something had to be done. It would break millennia of nonintervention, but the human race was at risk. And as unpleasant as that species could be, I had plans for them.

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Believe in Me

A bank robber takes off his ski mask and hails a cab, stowing his pistol in his back pocket. Suddenly, lights begin to flash around him. “Welcome to the Cash Cab!…”

Original

I stepped out of the lights and music of the Cash Cab, four hundred dollars richer. The frigid rain spat down at me, and the wind tried to throw my hair into my face.  Shame and self-loathing were furrowing my brow and tying a knot in my stomach.  I felt like I was going to be physically sick.  I had never been so ashamed of myself.

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