Fender Bender

Time to write!
While driving to pick up lunch, you accidentally bump into the car in front of you—a light fender bender—that pops open the other car’s trunk. When you get out to assess the damage, you notice that the driver of the other car is none other than your favorite actor. More important, you notice a dead body in the trunk. Who is the actor and what elaborate excuse does he give you to explain the dead body in his trunk?

"Well this is just my luck!" I angrily exclaimed. I was already late for my appointment with Mr. Garber, now had yogurt all over my new dress (that's what you get for eating in the car, people) and now I had to sit and wait for the cops to show up. 

The other car wasn't even damaged, I'd only bumped them really but it was in the middle of an intersection and I knew it was going to create much more of a to-do than it was worth. I shut off my engine and in irritation got out of my car. 

"Hey, I'm sorry about hitting your car," I began as I approached the driver's side window of the silver Mercedes. 

Except when I got to the window I realized that the driver of the car was none other than Orlando Bloom, in all his high-cheek boned glory, so all that really came out was "Hey, I'm sorry about...what the wow...hmm?"

I was beyond surprised to see the famous actor sitting there, right before my eyes.

Several thoughts flitted through my head, in rapid succession, like a madman with a machine gun.

Why is Orlando Bloom in Utah?
Don't celebrities normally drive nicer cars?
Don't celebrities normally have other people drive those nicer cars for them?
Why isn't there some sort of woman with him?
I'm a woman.
And there's yogurt on my dress.
Kill me now.

Only after that last thought flashed through my mind did my mind register the sight I'd seen when walking to the window. The trunk of the car had been open. It must have happened when I, er, gently nosed the back of his car with mine. But the trunk hadn't been vacant. What had looked suspiciously like a dead body- if my years of watching Psych and Criminal Minds could guide me correctly- had been laid in the trunk, and only half covered with a light blue sheet. 

"No need to apologize," Orlando said, smiling in that way that made girls all over America swoon over the man. "But I'm afraid you need to close my trunk, then get in the car, before the police arrive. Think you can manage that?"

Looks

Time to write!

I'm aware that this will hail to the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfield but I still want to write this and am convinced that if I continued I could twist it up. 

In a world where everyone is beautiful, no one really is. When everyone looks the same, physical attraction dies away. A world which once prized individuality is lost, and suddenly the idea of arranged marriages is no longer so archaic.

This is the world I live in. My name is Emma Crane. I have black hair that falls to the bottom of my shoulder blades, cut straight across, with bangs that swoop strongly to the left to hide the fluffy hairs that always want to frizz up on my left temple. My eyes are green and what you would call wide-set. I would not call them wide-set, nor would anyone else in Unisity, because all of our eyes are the same distance apart. My mother's eyes are also green. So are my sister's. Same as the eyes of all my female classmates. And their mothers and sisters. My nose, like everyone else's, is mostly straight but turns up just slightly at the end to appear "perky", and my cheeckbones are high and naturally pink.

I take no pride in my thin physique caused by my naturally high metabolism, and I find no joy in what would be considered "perfect" proportions, because here, "perfect" is simply status quo. In the entire city, there is a weight range of ten pounds and a height range of five inches.

When Unisity's scientists first began doing their genetic engineering experiments on willing participants, outsiders called them mad scientists or unethical cloners. But we are not clones. We are merely all created to look like one another, to form a society of perfect beauty.

I want to write about how the concept of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is no longer relevant, and about Emma's finace and about the plot but I'm too tired to write anymore now. I like the idea we have going here though. 

Elves

Time to write!

So...Thanksgiving break proved to be the nemesis of productive writing. Somehow instead of effectively using my time writing essays and then delving into some complex character organization, I found myself watching several episodes of The Office and taking long naps. BUT. Here I am ready to update, and with every intention of NOT using time so poorly for the next few weeks, which are not only bound but flat out guaranteed to be insane.

It is entertaining, truly, to see what humans think about us. About any of us. If you mention an "elf" to any given person this image could conjure up any number of images.

One person may think of Tolkien's pointy-eared, long-haired, singing archers.

Another may imagine Santa Claus's little helpers, complete with round bellies, strange names, jingle-belled hats and rather often fluffy beards.

Then you have the Elves and the Shoemaker elves, which obviously were small enough to fit inside a shoe but fast enough sewers to complete multiple pairs of shoes several times their size in a single night.

There have been more modern interpretations, making elves strange colors, or possessing strange diets.

Some elves are peaceful and wise, others are silly and uninvolved, yet others are violent and veer on gruesome.

What would you do if someone told you that elves are actually very real, and that they're all around you?

You most likely would not believe them. This is because you can't see us. Because elves aren't any of those things which humans have worked to portray us as. Elves are invisible to all humans but the Seers, and sometimes generations pass between those.

Indeed, almost four hundred years passed during which time the Elvin League had almost adapted to a life without human interference when we were discovered by three Seers at once, an anomaly which tells us that not only are times changing, but something dark is coming.

On File

Time to write!

Name: Reagan Willis
Age: 16 years, 2 months, 3 days
Height: 5' 5''
Weight: 119 lbs
GPA: 3.25

Underneath the information were small blue arrows, one pointing right, the other pointing left. By looking to one side or the other and blinking twice for confirmation the words would scroll in the direction indicated and display a new sheet of information.

Parents: Janice Copland, Bill Willis
Siblings: Gareth (18), Sears (14), Trillith (8)
Occupation: Waitress
Relationship Status: Single

It was like having your social network page on file for everyone to see. Literally everyone. There was no "friends" or even "friends of friends" option.

You also couldn't limit what was there. You couldn't "untag" yourself, so to speak, or choose to keep your middle name or birthday private. If you were in a relationship that you didn't want your mother to know about, that was just too bad. She knew. Within minutes of you walking in the door after holding hands for the first time. So what if it wasn't official? It was on file.

They floated a few inches above the head. You could choose not to see them, if you avoided looking directly at them. Rumors say that once, back when technology was so obsolete that you hold to actually hold or touch devices in order to use them, when you were first introduced to someone it was customary to look them in the eye. Now you only looked a person in the eye if you were already good friends and you knew their data sheets by heart, and even then it was more than normal to glance back up to see if anything had changed since the last time you'd talked.

Paddington Academy

Time to write!

Sorry, I know I've missed a couple days. I've been ill and sleeping every spare minute. I just now got up to use the loo and decided to do a quick five minute-r so that I don't get in the bad habit of not updating (sorry mom-literally five minutes!)

Cherise was under no delusion that her first day at Paddington Academy was going to be normal. She knew it was a school for those with "special talents". Special enough that they weren't appreciated by normal society. From an extremely optimistic point of view, Cherise supposed that one could look at it as a school for Superheroes. Unfortunately, the more common way of approaching Paddington Academy was resigning yourself as an outcast- an alumnus at a school for freaks.

Going to Paddington Academy wasn't a choice. It wasn't something "gifted" children looked forward to, or that "gifted" parents hoped their kids would one day attend.

Paddington Academy was an institution. It's stone walls, barred windows, heavy wooden doors with triple enforced locks, and special detainment facilities awaited only those whom the government deemed unfit to be around civilian people.

You were sent to Paddington Academy not because anyone really believed you were special, or talented, or gifted. You were sent because someone believed you were dangerous. A threat. A menace. You weren't placed in the rolls of Paddington Academy because somebody hoped you would someday save the world. Rather that you might someday endanger it.

Just Say It

Time to write!

Write an all dialogue story-nothing can be said beside what the characters are saying. 

Her dialogue will be written in black!
His dialogue will be written in green.
What a colorful page this will be!!

Don't touch me.
I wouldn't want to anyway! Now that I know what you are.
Riiiight. Like I'm the freak. Like I'm the one that needs to be avoided.
What? Aren't you?
I knew we were different from the start! I didn't push you away! I didn't treat you like scum, just because I knew our lives would always be different!
Well maybe you should've!
Maybe.
Does it bother you Enda?
The fact that I fell in love with a complete moron? Yes.
No. The fact that you live a lie. 
I don't live a lie! I'm comfortable with who I am! I know who I am! I accept who I am! It's you that lives in this constant state of denial-too afraid to trust who you are or to trust your own feelings.
You want to talk about trust now? You want to talk about trust? How about the fact that I trusted you? Were you planning on telling me your little secret? To letting me in on the joke? 
It isn't a joke! And yes, I was planning on telling you, but I wanted to wait until it was the right time.
How about from the beginning?
Ha! Clearly wouldn't have been the right time. That's kind of clear from your reaction right now!
What makes you think that dragging out this lie any longer would somehow make it better later?
Because it isn't a lie. It's a shield, maybe, but it's still me. It was always me.
Maybe then, but not anymore.
What do you mean?
It was always you. But it never will be you again.

BUT WHAT IS SHE??

Hypothetically Speaking...

Time to write!

Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if somewhere every supposition we ever made actually came true?
If that was the case, then I would have just doomed a whole new world into being. This world would be a parallel universe where every time anyone supposes anything, then that supposing actually becomes reality.
So if Moses supposed that his toes were roses, then in Supposition land, I guess Moses would suddenly have roses toes.

This all sounds rather silly, but there are alternate worlds. I know, because I accidentally thought myself into one, when making a careless statement kind of like the one I made just a moment ago.

All I did was utter the phrase, "hypothetically, what if every hypothetical question actually got answered somewhere else? and what would someone do if they were forced to answer those hypothetical questions?"

I had meant no harm by it, but the transition had happened just that fast. Part of that was because security sure was low this weekend, due to the war and the Stargates being down and the Commander being otherwise engaged. You see, they normally like to prevent people from entering Hypothralsia. For when Hypothetical assumptions become reality, things get messy, pretty darn fast.

Deletion

Time to write!

When we arrived in the dormitories, everything seemed perfectly ordinary. There were twenty two rooms in our hallway, twelve on the right side and ten on the left. The left side also had the bathrooms which we were all to share. All of the doors were  painted black, and were made of cold, unfeeling metal. They were strong doors, not doors which could easily be kicked in, nor doors which could slam when one of the girls was in her mood.

The hallway was stark and crisp, just like the rest of the Academy. There was no frou-frou, no bricabrac, no hodgepodge to be found. In fact words such as those were just the kind that would not be tolerated at the Academy. While other boarding schools likely had posters on the walls or at least a bulletin board for announcements, the dormitory hallways at St. Rosen's Academy were fresh-piece-of-paper white, uninterrupted by anything but the dove gray molding which framed those heavy black doors. There were, however, forty-four small spots of color in that hallway. On each of the doors were nametags, in a variety of different colors. There were red, blue, purple, and green name cards, all of these colors in dark tones. The red was more of a burgundy, the blue a navy more than anything else, the purple was nothing short of eggplant and the shade of green is one that could only be described as the love child of emerald and forest green.

Forty-four flashes of color in a black and white hallway. The colors made those name placards easily noticeable, but none of us anticipated how important they actually were, that is, until they started disappearing.

Chocolate and Ponies

Time to write!

Who decided that it's ok to make bunnies and Santas out of chocolate? Why not ponies?

And why do we eat gummy worms? That's disgusting. Worms are for nasty!

Who chose to name oreos "oreos"?

I have so many questions.

Questions that bubble up inside my head.

They play and frolic between each other, bumping into one another, merging and meshing to form new questions and new problems and new things for me to think about.

I wish I could find the answers, but when I try to ask my dad he always tells me, "What a great question. Why don't you do some research and write an essay on that?"

When he says this, a new question always rises to the surface of my mind. That question is: "Who the heck even wants to do that?"

Internet Problems

Time to write!

They say you can find anything on the internet.

That's what they say, but I don't believe it.

Why, just today, I was trying to do my homework, and the internet was not exactly what I'd call "helpful". All  I wanted to do was find a well-written article on why Spiderman is the best superhero of all time. Know what I got? A lot of reviews, and lists of the best superhero movies ever. That isn't what I wanted. That wasn't going to help me for my homework assignment at all.

You see, we have to bring an article to class tomorrow which demonstrates great writing technique and style, but is on a topic we don't actually agree with.

And Spiderman clearly isn't the best superhero of all time. What do you think Batman is doing here for? Being the best, obviously.

The internet has other problems too.

Like half the time when you want to find a perfectly normal picture of something and type "cute rabbit", for example, you don't get what you were looking for at all.

I don't know about you, but when I type "cute rabbit" I'm looking for a cute rabbit. Not a next-to-naked girl with bunny ears and a little cotton ball tail!

Ew.

They say you can find anything on the internet. Well maybe it's all there, but someone needs to redefine the search system, because this is getting ridiculous.

Time to write!

Use these words: hypocrite, cookie jar, ice water, and soap.

The hypocrite's hands were soapy. She had told her brother repeatedly not to get into the cookie jar, because that was wrong to do. However, when he wasn't there she would snitch cookies. Normally she just blamed the stolen cookies on her brother, for his fondness for the things was well known. This usually worked out just fine, only this time Paul had laid a trap. Paul had smeared the inside of the cookie jar- after emptying it first of course- with goopy congealed honey and Elmer's glue. Now Hillary's hands were sticky and coated and she couldn't get all of the sap like mixture off. She'd tried using hot water, cold water, warm water, practically lava water, and even ice water to loosen the stuff, but nothing was working.

Rush Write

Time to write!

Just write without stopping for five minutes. Begin with the word "cheese".

Cheese was a power source for the Balondians. They needed it to fuel their cars, light their cities, and play their music. Without cheese, Balondian society would cease to exist. Cheese wasn't just fuel, it wasn't just power. Cheese was life. Where there was life there was Cheese. Where one did not exist, it was likely that the other did not as well. The Balondians needed so much cheese that to them the term "holy cow" could hardly be more literal. Cows were their main cheese producers. While yaks and goats could get the job done as well, they produced a cheese which didn't quite "cut the mustard" so to speak. I guess you could say it was "low-grade". As a result, dairy farms, referred to as power plants of course, were located all over the land of Balondia. On one such farm lived a girl named Russe, said like Roos and not like Russ and perhaps most of all like ruse. She was tiny, oh so tiny, especially when compared to the large cows she spent her hours with. Day in and day out, Russe was among the cows.

While the thought of having a city run on cheese and a tiny girl living among the cows might seem fantastic to you, I must assure you, there were stranger things happening in Balondia. Stranger things, like coins disappearing from the royal treasury, and cheese going bad before it was used. Oddly enough, these strange occurrences didn't begin happening until the arrival of Orlock the Warlock.

A Twist in the Tale

Time to write!

Paranormal romance is all the rage. Girls everywhere are falling in love with vampires and werewolves and dragons. Even zombies are being romanticized. We've had females swooning over ghosts for ages, which has been exceedingly complicated, due to the whole intangible thing. However, the female population have proved themselves loyal fangirls time and time again, as they've overcome fangs, claws, fur, and who knows what else, in order to stay committed to their, in many cases, undead lover.

Well I think vampires are kind of cute myself. Maybe that's because I was in love with one once. He loved me too, and we were very happy for a long time. Of course, that was almost one hundred and fifty years ago, and the rest of the clan is telling me to move on. But things aren't easy for female vampires, because no one falls in love with us.

***

Alexei and I were the epitome of the gothic romance. He was a vampire, crazed with bloodlust, and I was an unsuspecting, completely sensible English young woman. Despite the stories and the unexplained disappearances, I did not believe there were really vampires in London. I told myself there had to be a more logical explanation right up till that night I was walking home from a social at Lady Marian's. Normally, for such a walk, I would've had an escort, but I had ditched mine, finding his company rather unfavorable. I had been not a block from the inn where I rented my rooms, a respectable establishment, though not the most posh place on the street, when he had swooped down, literally, from the rooftops above me.

Running, especially given the shoes and the skirt which were popular during that time period, was futile. He overtook me in a moment. I got one quick look at his deep black eyes and his marble white skin before his lips were on my neck, his teeth piercing the skin just above my collar.

After my transformation Alexei never left my side. Neither he nor I were able to truly come to a conclusion, as to why he stayed with me. It isn't the way vampires typically treat their victims. To be sure, we took thousands of humans together for years afterwards, but none of them, even those who made it all the way to transformation, ever stayed with us. The best we could conclude was that we were supposed to be together, or Alexei wouldn't have waited in the street while I changed. He had leaned over me, letting his black cape conceal my shuddering, changing form. The first sight I glimpsed as I opened my newly changed eyes, now a midnight black and with much keener vision than I'd previously known, was his face. His hand was resting on my cheek and the expression he wore was not that of the hunter I had looked at just moments ago. Instead he looked excited and tender, all at once.

Alexei and I were happy. True, we were soulless, careless killers, preying on the innocent and the not-so-innocent with no care for which was which. True, we lived on the run, attacking a city until the inhabitants were ready to hire an expert or chase us out with stakes themselves. It was not a "good" life, but it was exciting and we were always together. That is, we were always together until the purge. That's the day Alexei, our entire clan, and even our child were destroyed, and I was given the worst gift a vampire can be given: a conscious.

A Little Inspiration

Time to write!

"Names are powerful," Thran Zilfenridge said with all solemnity. "It's not wise to let someone like that know your name."
"But how do you know who can know and who cannot?" asked Belrow. "After all, you know my name. Does that mean you could use my name against me?"
"Yes," Thran replied seriously. "Names imply familiarity. They imply trust. Do you think I'm going to hurt you, Belrow Quillstock?"
The question hung in the air between them.
"No." Belrow said suddenly, shaking his head perhaps a bit too vigorously. "I'm sure you'd never betray the oath you made to Ivlet to protect me."
That unsettling smile pulled at the corner of Thran's mouth. The elf, tall even be elvish standards, stood and checked his sword at his side, but did not reply.
"Well," said Belrow. "Should we get going?"
"Lead the way," Thran replied, gesturing with a sweep of his arm and a slight bow.
Belrow couldn't quite say what is was that tickled his suspicions about Thran Zilfenridge. Thran didn't inspire the chill and the horror that the Cor-Morin had brought, but something about him made Belrow feel like he needed to be continually on his guard. Still, Ivlet trusted him, and if Belrow couldn't trust in Ivlet, well, who could he trust?

I realllllllllll liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike.

Haunted House

Time to write!


May I first just say I adore the included definition on this prompt? It cracks me up. On the real. Second of all, Happy Halloween to you all! All five of you. :)

Well this was stupid. I always told myself I wasn't going to be that girl. You know the one I'm talking about, right? The dumb one! The stupid girl who gets talked into going into a haunted house, because some guy thought it would be romantic in the most messed up way. So much for always considering myself to be an intellectual.

This wasn't the first dumb thing I'd done. It was the second. The first dumb thing that I'd allowed to happen, that I'd vowed would never happen, was that I let myself like Mark Rommers. Mark was that boy. There's one at every school. He's cute and kind of goofy, and extremely irritating and yet everyone likes him. Like it doesn't matter who you are. If you're female and straight, no intellectual thought process is going to keep you from having at least an inkling of feeling towards Mark Rommers.

And while I'd love to get you truly caught up on the fascinating backstory, the truth is I have bigger problems to deal with right now. I'm stuck inside a house which I can't get out of. There's nowhere to hide because the house can feel us, it can feel our weight on the floor and it can feel the anxiety and stress that's causing us to hunch our shoulders and stick our necks out like wary chickens.

Sure, this house is haunted. I mean there's ghosts and everything. But the house also is haunted. Like the house itself is practically a ghost. Its a moving, reasoning, thinking being but it's not actually alive. And I'm afraid. True and honest afraid. Not that knee shaking sensation I sometimes get right before I stand up to make a rebuttal in a debate, but so afraid that when Mark Rommers reached out to take my hand I felt nothing new. All I felt was fear.