[WP]: Each and every artist is assigned a muse according to their skill and style of art. Having just finished college, you find a gorilla at your door. by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

BLAM.
I didn't wait for a second 'knock' because the first one had already cracked the frame and bent the hinges.
I was wearing home jeans and a t-shirt. Some people got dressed up to meet their muses but this was my muse, I wanted her to see me as I was fresh off the bat. I opened the door envisioning some strong Greek Goddess/Valkyrie/Amazon with a brace of 1970 brass threaded Parker Pens in her hair and a satchel full of Moleskine notebooks, a pocket of Lamy fountain pens, Fürst mechanical clutch-pencils and a 1940s Hermes Baby typewriter under one arm. She'd have a smirk on her face, a crack of wit on her lips and be ready to shoot me up with midnight royal blue Waterman ink using a sharpened Lee Oskar diatonic C major harmonica for a needle.
A gorilla.
I had to land a gorilla. The ink wasn't even dry on my discharge papers from Uni and here was all 200 pounds of hairy muse ready at my door making contented digestion belches as if she'd been recently snacking on saltines and pickled herring.
"Please come in," I said but I was dead inside. I then backed all the way into the living room.
In my rented student studio flat. There was no way we were going to continue the conversation in my 4 square feet of hallway.
Who was I kidding? What conversation?
"Can I get you something to drink? Something to eat?"
The gorilla made another contented belch, it sounded like a cat purring if the cat were sleeping in a tuba.
I heard a beep from my phone and took it out. It was a message from --
"Hey!"
The gorilla, my muse, had broken my phone in half.
I went to my bed and sat down. There's no use arguing with a goril--
"Hey!"
My muse had picked up my bed and broken the frame in half. I was dumped rudely on the floor beside my bag. My muse took the mattress and leaned it against the wall.
"Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot, wanna watch some tv or somethi--"
"Hey!"
My muse had bent my flatscreen in half. Then it picked up the media pc I used for network games and smashed it on the ground repeatedly until it broke like a coconut with all its hdd's spilling out like massive seeds. All my local saved games and top scores were ruined.
The gorilla looked at me.
I sat in a room filled with a symphony of destruction. This was my muse. It's not like I could phone in a complaint about my muse. It would be like calling the police about my cancer.
Then I had an idea. I took my notebook out of my bag, the one I'd carried around all summer and half filled with scribbled lines. I started writing down what had just happened.
The gorilla sat down.
I wrote half a page and still had the notebook and pen in my hands.
I pulled my laptop out of my bag.
The gorilla stood up.
At the desktop I launched Scrivener and typed up the notes I had just written.
The gorilla sat down.
I sighed.
Later that week I felt it was safe to turn on the radio. I made the mistake of turning it on before I started writing.
After I got a new radio, the work proceeded fairly smoothly.
No distraction is survived by my muse. She will destroy anything that gets in the way of my focus.
Endnote: Twenty years after I got my muse, I'm a married man with kids. I was careful to write my priorities down which is how my muse let this happen. I won't bore you with the details of how she chased away anyone who showed any interest in me before I hit on that solution.
My home once again has a television but I never watch it. There is once again a phone in my pocket but I write on it.
I am a published author and my muse is a gorilla.
She destroys anything which distracts me from my mission. She eats my bad drafts.
I am the luckiest writer in the world.
I got a gorilla for a muse.

[WP] Sentient beings populate most worlds, we couldn't see them because they didn't want us to. by steelbro_300 in WritingPrompts

Folded against a shelf, something detaches itself and moves as if made of overlapping freeze frames. A sinister woman descending stairs in three dimensions. It moves at angles that hurt later. Like sliding your eyes along a straight razor, the damage is done before the pain. It finds a new perch on a lampshade, drawing itself into the pleats surrounding the bulb until it was never there and waits.
Elway stumbled into the living room drunk and groped for the light switch. He did not find it but the floor lamp did just fine. He didn't think he'd woken anyone up, he sat in his own sweat under the light of the lamp. He'd be well enough to bullshit his way out of trouble in the morning if he could only get a few hours in before facing anybody.
"You home?" His wife's voice.
"Yesh."
"Drunk?"
"Yeah honey, sorry."
"I'll take little Frankie to preschool tomorrow."
"No, I said I'd do it."
"Just shut up Elway, get to work tomorrow, can you do that?"
"Yeah, I can do that."
"You're sleeping on the couch by the way."
"I know."
He waited for more but none came. Here was good enough. Elway shut off the lamp with a yank.
Something detached from the lampshade and folded itself around Elway, on his face, into the holes in his head. Penetrated his eyes, his anus, his urethra. Every opening was infiltratred. Elway's heart continued to beat, his breathing grew deep. His fingernails were carefully prized off and their meat scraped clean. He did not move. His teeth were extracted from within the bone of his jaw and skull, he did not sigh. The excretions of his intoxicated curry were examined and catalogued. His stomach was inverted, followed by his heart and finally his brain.
Elway woke in the morning still in his clothes from the night before and winced at the pre dawn light. Like shards of glass behind his eyes. The hangover made him nauseated and disoriented.
In the bathroom, he shit last night's Vindaloo out in a panegyric to all late night drunkenfood.
Showering with hot and cold water brought him halfway back to normalhood. Alka Seltzer and Vitamin C dissolving tablets got him another quarter of the way. Bacon and eggs with buttery burnt toast left little of the hangover but the guilt.
It was ten am and he hadn't seen his son in 24 hours. The house was silent and he was alone.
He went to the kichen bar and started pouring bottles of scotch down the drain, something he'd been meaning to do for years. Then he showered again, because he was sweating, shaved, and got to work.
"I've heard it before, Elway."
"I'm serious this time, I'm quitting as of now."
"Ok I'll bite, what's so different this time?"
It was evening and Elway and Sharon were sitting at the kitchen table.
"Something you said last night, or the way you said it."
"You must have dreamt it, I didn't get up last night."
"Really?"
Sharon got up to see what Frankie was watching in the living room.
She saw that something coming from the screen was taking Frankie apart and putting him back together.
"What's he doing?" said Elway, something from the radio was separating his clavicle from his chest muscles and working its way up to his eyes.
"He's watching tv," said Sharon.
In the halflight of the kitchen, the teeth that sprouted from the pupils of her eyes looked like minature pearls.
"That stuff rots your brain."
"Booze rots your brain too."
"I told you Sharon. I quit. I'm serious."
"We'll see," she said, and her tone was warm and her hug comforting.
They could always try another configuration tomorrow.
The End.

[WP] Lovecraftian horrors on a blind date. by PastaDerpCat in WritingPrompts

Johnny picked up Sally at 6pm. He wore shiny new sneakers. Sally pretended she liked his car, a Spanish hatchback from 1986. Her father made him promise at the door that Sally would be back home by 11. Johnny promised that would happen.
Dinner was two burgers and fries at a local diner followed by rootbeer floats for dessert.
"You're too sweet," said Sally, after Johnny made an awkward stab at spooning a dollop of ice cream into her mouth.
"I'm sweet on you," said Johnny, leaning across the booth to plant a playful peck on Sally's cheek.
They went to see a sneak preview at the drive in, Johnny found a place near the back but Sally wanted to sit a little closer.
"You sure, Sal? We'll have more privacy back here."
"I know but I really want to watch this one, we can watch one, can't we Johnny?"
"Sure Sal, this flick's got you humming, what's it about?"
Johnny moved his spanish hatchback to a spot closer to the screen.
"Oh, it's about a space spider from another dimension with tentacles coming out of it's mouth!" said Sally.
Johnny turned off the engine.
"A what?"
"Space spider, with tentacles."
"Sal?"
Sally was grinning, her grin grew wider and wider, then she coughed and covered her mouth demurely but not before a lone tentacle slipped out between her soft lips.
"Sally?"
The movie was long. Sally ground the gears of the spanish hatchback on the way home.
She was at the door on the stroke of eleven, her boyfriend silently incubating inside her womb.
He really was sweet.
Daddy would be pleased.

[WP] A rare coma experience allowed one man to think for "a million years", though only one day passed on earth. He just woke up. by Jaypown in WritingPrompts

"He's awake?"
"Yes Mrs. Holt."
"So why can't I see him?"
"We have him under observation."
"Is he in danger? I thought you said he was stable."
"Mrs. Holt, we don't want to draw any conclusions as of yet."
"Spit it out, what's wrong with him?"
"I can't say."
"So let me see him."
"Please Mrs. Holt, just give us a day with him, okay?"
"You said the worst is over, is it?"
"...yes Mrs. Holt. It is."
He returns. There are 100 ways to kill him with one of his own pens.
"Mr. Holt?"
"..."
"Mr. Holt?"
"Yes."
"Let's go over this again."
"Yes."
"Do you understand you were in a coma for only a day?"
"Yes."
"When you woke up you were combative."
"Yes."
"You said you were somewhere else."
"I screamed it, yes."
"You said you spent one million years there."
"Again, I screamed, but yes."
"Can you tell us any more?"
"It's gone, temporary psychosis, nonsense, surely you didn't believe me."
"We believed you believed it, you sounded sincere."
"A coma is a coma, whether for a day or a million years, it doesn't matter."
"Your wife was here."
"Can I see her now?"
"I asked her to come back tomorrow. Let me get you a tissue."
"Thank you. May I have a shower? I'd like to get cleaned up before she sees me."
"Well, you seem lucid, I'll ask an orderly to remove the restraints. He'll have to watch you shower, I'm sorry but it's hospital policy."
"Yes."
There should be a word for streetlamps overgrown with tree branches. The shadows they make recall the horde in battle.
"Frank?"
"Sal"
"Oof! You'll crack my ribs hugging me so tight."
"I missed you Sal. You can't know how much."
"Got any tissues? This hospital issue is sandpaper."
"Sure you big lug, plenty for us both."
I fought from the pits to god emperor once. It appears I must do so again. A man must build. I have built so very much. I don't know how else to exist.
"What are these notes?"
"Scribbles, just fun."
"Fun with foreign languages?"
"Nonsense, made up."
"They're beautiful Frank, what do they say?"
"How beautiful you are and how much I love you."
"Frank! Ouch! Your hands are like claws!"
"Sorry Sally."
The first rule is to be feared and loved but not hated.
Perhaps I will find a way to spare the hospital. They laid hands on me. They also saved me. A delicate question of response to meditate upon. I have time. The gate is permanent.
A day here is a day.
Every night, I return to my kingdoms for another million years. Sometimes naked, sometimes mad, sometimes the wise man, often the fool, sometimes emperor, sometimes otherwise.
Across these chasms, my love for my wife remains, time is whatever I say it is.
I'm glad I awake each morning earlier than her. I watch the rise and fall of her breathing chest through blurred vision.
So far, she has not seen my tears.

[WP] Similar to dogs, human females go into heat once every 6 months for 10 days. by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

I used this link for my research:

http://www.vetwest.com.au/pet-library/reproduction-in-dogs-season-heat-oestrus-pregnancy-tests

This is the outline:
A young couple have been dating for some time. The boy has never dated a girl around her heat. He doesn't know what to expect. What he gets, according to the article, is vulvular licking, becoming highly attractive to the opposite sex for the first 7 days, vulvular bleeding, and finally being receptive to sex in the last three days. In a token to the sex perverts, the final act lasts for three days and the young man must use a walker for a fortnight afterwards because he probably broke his penis.
this is the story:

THE HEAT

It was their first time. Alice and Jordan had dated other boys and girls since they were kids but when they met and started dating, they knew it was serious because Alice was around the age girls got their first heat.
Jordan thought about his mom and dad, who locked themselves in their rooms twice a year. While Grandma and Grandpa came over to watch him and his sisters and brothers.
He'd had 'the talk' with his dad many times. Recently, he'd had a most embarassing conversation with Hank, Alice's dad.
"When she starts licking her vulva, you don't pay that no mind, she'll be hotter than a barn on fire but you got to wait about another week before she'll be ready for you, hell, you got to keep her away from all the corndogs that'll be out looking to cage a sneaky."
His conversation with Alice was harder, she found the whole idea disgusting and was reluctant to make plans.
They didn't know when it would start exactly, but it tended to be around the same time in the same family.
He was over at her house one day and caught sight of her mom, Fabrice, watering her houseplants. She was twenty years his senior but she'd kept herself in excellent shape. Her long legs beneath her pale sundress caught the light and silhouetted her thights all the way up to the round rump of her pert ass. He realized he was salivating and swallowed reflexively. When she bent over slightly to water the floor plants, he imagined bending her over further and slipping past her engorged vulva and into her dripping moist hot rocket oven of a vagina.
He shook his head. What was he thinking? Then his stomach clenched. Jordan realized Fabrice must be going into heat and he, Jordan, had noticed, kids don't notice such things. With underwhelming lack of fanfare, Jordan had woken up a prepubescent adolescent but he was now a sexually mature post puberty male.
Which meant Alice was going into heat, might already be in heat. Alice came down the stairs and called out.
"Hey Jord!" she said, and raised her hand hesitantly.
Jordan stared at her. From his vantage point, her firm smooth thighs seemed longer than life. Everything about her was in high definition. Her gentle breathing raised and lowered her breasts in time with her descent to lend them an extra bouncy freshness, her lips were half open in an easy smile to reveal pearls of teeth and her eyes seemed huge, the pupils were black holes.
"Ali, we have to go." he gulped.
"I know" she said, and giggled. He saw she was sweating. When he took her hand it was shaking.
"It's going to be fine, we stick to the plan," he said.
He drove them out of the city with the windows rolled up, aside from a few catcalls by pedestrian males who caught a whiff of her pheromones, they made it to the cabin with clothes, toiletries and 20 frozen whole chickens.
It was his dad's cabin. Armoured up for the heat. His mom had had her first heat here. Hank had offered his nuclear bunker in the backyard but Jordan had politely declined, citing history. Hank had nodded.
If he lived, he'd be marrying Alice next spring.
Alice and Jordon walked into the cabin holding hands and locked the doors and windows shut.
For the first 7 days, as Alice entered the heat in full, she began licking her vulva almost constantly except when she ordered Jordon to do it for her but she wouldn't let him touch her in any other way and that was the hardest part of all. There he'd be, down between her creamy, silky thighs, up to his nose in bloody honey flavoured pussy juice, drinking his fill with his hands cupping her ass up to meet his mouth so her back was arched and she was clenching her own breasts in frustrated agony, unable to orgasm but edging all the time. It was exhausting.
He wanted to orgasm too but knew he'd better save it for when she was ready to receive him.
After a week of gorging on her, his mouth was cramped and sore, the bed was a bloody mess and Alice was eating a whole roast chicken to herself every day that Jordan had to remember to take out of the freezer, thaw and cook on time because heaven help him if he was late with her food.
On the seventh day, her discharge was less bloody. She shoved his mouth away from her vulva.
"Gne,,,now, j-j-jord."
He jumped up and dove in between her swollen and throbbing vulvular lips, into her burning hot vagina and began thrusting quickly, soon his penis locked and she screamed and thrashed as he gnashed at her ears to bring her under control, she locked her legs around his ass and pumped so hard he thought she'd snap his back in half, they fell off the bed and continued to thrust at each other and clutch at each other, she bit into his shoulder and took a piece off and clawed at his back and continued to thrust with his locked-in penis and their gyrations on the floor bucked them into the corner where he picked her up and slammed her repeatedly into the wall with his penis driving ever deeper inside her. She bellowed that he keep going. He slammed her again and again, her ass compressing against his hands.
"Ohaggha,..ah...ahh...ahhhhh...aieeeeeee!" sceamed Alice.
They collapsed in a heap.
The moment his penis unlocked and he slipped out of her. Alice turned to look at Jordon. Her eyes were the size of black holes.
"Again." she said.
So it went. For three days. Alice didn't land so much as bruise, like all women today her ability to regenerate depends entirely on food and Jordon kept her well feed.
Jordon needed medical attention and walked with crutches for a fortnight.
Alice got pregnant. They got married. They now have 5 girls and 3 boys.
Everyone said it was a good match.
The End

/U/nimmthejigsaw [WP] [WP] You run into an old dear friend and say hello. Unfortunately you are a time traveler and this point in time is way before you first met them.

It's not that hard to fake.

I lived in this city most of my life.

Downtown hasn't changed that much. At least the buildings won't change that much. More people now. Not so many later. Not so many then? Upwhen?

English sucks with tenses for time travel. We haven't even got a proper future tense. All future in English is constructed from present tenses and modal verbs. Newspeak is so much more presysnosc.

There should be a change in the verb. I met you, I meet you, I meeet you. Not a chance. So I try not to think about it. I keep my speech to standard English, no doubleplus goodspeak. No anglo-ibero-latino slang.

Der hombre liese die Bàozhǐ. The man reads the newspaper.

I shake my head, memories of English classes fade.  I've been downwhen for 6 months. Still hard to think in standard English.

It was embarassing to have to learn it. I was born in this century, after all. But then I got old, terribly old. Ancient in fact, I've forgotten more than I can remember. I didn't want to come.

There wasn't anybody left from this era to send.

I told myself old friends wouldn't have met me yet. I moved here a few years upwhen ago. Didn't have too many friends to start with. For a long time it was just me and Frank.

If I met him, I told myself it would be like looking at an old image. No movement or sound. Just a flat, still, image.

There are a lot of bottlenecks involved. Most of my present self was leftl back upwhen, running this city. Until I left at which point it all vanished. What I contained was multitudes. What this body contains is but a fragment. Once this was all of me but that was so long ago.

I insisted on decoupling before taking the classes. it wasn't enough to learn English again, I decided I had to learn using all the old systems that I had not made use of since long before my age struck its fourth digit. I wrote words with target century tools on target century devices. I pushed ink around on crushed tree bark. I pushed keys on slabs of plastic. No casual matter, time travel.

My civilization would be erased as a consequence of my journey. All time journeys are one trip.

One passenger. Once.

We had no idea how many times we had reached the juncture we faced. We only knew what our options were: Be destroyed or be destroyed.

In that second destruction we hoped the seeds of our salvation were planted.

Monoculture is dangerous. Transpecies migration of pathogens is rare. One blight wiped out commercial bananas twice. Three plagues at once wiped out half of old Europe.

Our civilization was the greatest monoculture the world had ever seen.

So I was here. The last remaining memory of my people. Here to start it all over again. Limited. Painfully so. The way would be long and dangerous.

I did not want to go it alone.

My resume got me an interview. Frank met me at reception.

I shook his hand warmly. He smiled and invited me into the office.

I would join this company a few years from now. Only now I wouldn't.

Frank was my immediate manager. He would be again. Just a little sooner.

In a few years. We'd have an office party.

He'd slip out when no one was noticing and try to drive home.

Frank would kill four people and injure several others when his car hit the bus shelter.

His fiance would leave him.

He'd lose his job.

Four years into his sentence, he'd hang himself.

I'd be promoted to replace him.

He shakes my hand.

The meeting is over.

I have been offered the job.

I get to work.

Two years from now, I'll drive Frank home.

I can't predict the future any better than he can.

I have a mission and I have the weight of my entire civilization on my back.

I have the technical expertise to raise funds, drive research and beat a problem that may never manifest if I do my job.

But I hope I won't have to go it alone.

The future is an empty stage, there are no players. There is no sound, no fury. Nothing.

There's no justice.

Just us.

THE END.

/U/Alekosen [TT] After many years, a woman is finally freed from the sex slave trade. (Potentially NSFW, although I would like people to try to keep it SFW).

A cup of hot coffee and a warm, safe, armchair. Silence. Solitude. Safety.

All I've ever wanted.

I keep my eyes open. Nothing good to see when they close.

There is a gentle knock at the door of my flat. I told her not to ring.

Bells. Alarms. Any kind of loud ringing. I can't take it.

She respects that. She respects me. she knocks.

I get up slowly and look through the peephole carefully. She is alone.

I unlock the locks. One by one. I take my time.

It's easier not to take my life if I do everything slowly. Rash actions can't always be undone.

This is my first week living on my own in my entire life.

I open the door and step back.

"Thank you Ilona, may I come in?"

I nod yes.

She is short and a little fat. She said she was like me once. I don't believe it but I don't say so.

She takes her coat off and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door. She takes off her shoes.

"Your flat is so clean."

she says this every time she visits.

It is clean because I clean it. With gloves and bleach and detergents and sprays and brooms and mops.

Sanitized.

I will never sleep in filth again.

I return to my coffee and comfortable armchair. She sits on a stool across from me. The chair is only for me. No one else. She asks me questions. I return one-word answers.

There are many pages to read and sign. I do not read them. I sign them.

Then pictures. Photographs. I stare at their faces. three men and two women.

My traffickers, my jailers, my pimps, my masters.

They shuffled me around the unlit world and grew rich off my back.

She asks me how I am. I nod. I say I just want to be left alone. Rest and peace is all I ask.

She nods and asks if she can come back tomorrow.

I nod.

My coffee is cold.

After she leaves I make a fresh cup of coffee.

I keep my eyes open.

Nothing good to see when they close.

THE END.

/u/Kibbly [WP] You get turned into your favorite character by a rift in the universe but nobody notices the difference.

Insert_delete 1 point 5 minutes ago*
I can feel the streets through my boots. every cobble, every divot, every pothole.

I do not know these streets.

Remain calm. I tell myself. You've cheated death so often he won't let you play at his table. You've been more-than-half drowned. Electrocuted. Barbecued and still you managed to make it home to read your son his bedtime storybook.

I do not know these streets.

Those two men in the blue uniforms, they have the easy lift-and-swing of beat coppers. Grit yer teeth Sam.

"Good evening officers, I'm a bit los--"

"Convention's at the Cheswick Grange this year, isn't it?"

"Yeah, walk down to the river and run a right, it's the old manor house looking building, can't miss it."

"Great costume."

"...Thank you officers."

They walk on. I didn't catch half of their jibber jabber. But I walk in the direction the shorter one pointed and sure enough, I reach a river. turning left, I'm soon in front of a manor.

I do not know these streets. I do not know these strange machines. My jaw is sore from clenching.

I walk towards the building.

I do not know these streets.

I do know my own face. The poster is so lifelike it must have been painted from an iconograph.

Only Otto could have taken that shot of me on the train through the pouring rain and the dark.

I square my shoulders and adjust my armour.

I do not know these streets by the banks of this river called Avon with water that actually runs and doesn't just melt your socks off.

Someone here knows who I am.

I've solved mysteries with less.

THE END.

/u/J4ckrh [WP] After you die you're showed every argument you've had from a third person perspective

I'm dead. It's the third time this week. From the perspective of creation,. everything is happening this week. All of it. Everything. Not quite all at once but still spectacular. Outside of time but not without duration. I watch.

I watch myself. Doesn't matter who I've been or when I've been.

I'm everybody, every time.

Watching every argument I've ever had. Each one with myself.

I don't yet know why I put myself through this but at the end of the week when I merge with my greater self I imagine I'll know. Until them, I'm in the awkward position of a raindrop hurtling down to the ocean. there's a lot to see but most of it feels like a rerun.

A lot of excuses. A lot of explaining. There's really no difference. Hundreds of languages, epochs, bodies, reasons.

Lies, from the perspective they're all lies. They distract from the essental truth.

I swear, if I get reincarnated again I'm going to do two things.

I'll hear no excuses or explanations from anyone.

I'll make no excuses or explanations to anyone.

I will never say I'm sorry. Instead, I will say it is my fault when it is or I made a mistake when it isn't.

Or I'll say nothing.

So many of my arguments were petty inconsequential issues that did nothing but waste time.

I could manifest a heart so that it might ache. I am aghast at how much precious time I wasted.

"No, you didn't ask me in time."
"You should have thought of that before."
"I had too much to do."
"It's not my fault you scheduled the appointment in the middle of rush hour."
"I don't see your name written on it."

And so on, all the way back to primary school. So many times over. If I weren't approaching transcendence, I think I'd manifest a stomach and digestive tract just so I could puke.

I'm nearing the ocean. Just another drop of me. My perspective begins to shift, I consume and I am consumed by the waters of the deep.

I gasp.

Where are words for this fierce obliterating love?

I AM.

/u/Ask_If_Im_A_Cat [WP] Write a story containing the words : cat , doritos and Leonardo dicaprio

I was sitting on my horse out alone in the middle of the night. I like to watch the stars and have no use for company. My horse was old, a gift of the rancher I worked for. I called her White Elephant in private although I knew her name was Lenore.

A single car bisected the darkness on the distant blacktop that cut through the valley. a sprinkling of electric lights and over the horizon, the glow of Butte.

"Nice night for stargazing," he said.

White Elephant whinneyed and pawed the grass. but I recognized the voice.

He was eating something crunchy.

"Howdy Leo," I said

"Howdy Gerry," He said.

i watched the stars some more.

"Doritos?" he said. Extending the crinkly foil bag.

I take off a glove.

"Don't mind if I do, thanks Leo, where's your horse?"

"I walked up, didn't expect to walk this far."

I waited. Nobody, not even a greenhorn rancher like my new neighbour here walked out this far, not without being pushed.

"It's Howard."

"Howard Hughes? Your cat?"

Leo sighs. It's a long sigh.

"Howard was an old cat and it was his time," he said flatly.

Meanwhile I think about how long it must have taken him to get up here, in the dark. through the tall grass, the rough ground, the soft patches, the holes.

I rubbed White Elephant absentmindedly with one hand. Thinking I'd be walking up here sometime soon myself.

I couldn't see 'em but his boots were surely soaked. Grief takes strange shapes in Montana. It's big sky country, room for strange shapes.

I point White Elephant at the road but I don't have to, she knows the way.

"Want a ride back to your ranch?" I offered. Passing him back the bag.

He takes it. I hear him take a handful and crunch them in his mouth.

I put my glove back on.

"Nah Gerry, it's a fine night for stargazing."

"Sure?" I said.

"Yeah."

"Goodnight Leo, sorry about Howard."

"Goodnight Gerry, excuse my interrupting."

Not at all, I was just heading back.*

"Hey Gerry, think I might take you up on that ride? I'm tired all of a sudden."

"Sure Leo."

THE END

/u/voltaireAltair [WP] You wake up one day and everyone thinks it's your birthday. This continues forever; every day is your birthday.

It's my birhday.

Shit.

It's still my birthday.

Every time, I think I'll wake up and it'll be over.

The first time was the worst.

I hardly said a word to my buddies until I said yes to a taxi home.

Time drags on. It doesn't matter what I say or do.

"It's not my birthday," I say. I yell. I scream.

They don't remember the details. someone or something is neatly snipping that intel out of their memories.

they just remember I disappointed them somehow. They remember the hurt.

I've tried quitting. Only makes it worse. My wife surprises me with a party at home.

I've tried moving. The new house continues to fill up with gifts I cannot return fast enough.

My bank account swells with gift card refunds and returns of gifts I've been given a hundred tmes over.

My friends and family continue to have their accounts depleted by their spending.

"Stop celebrating my birthday," I say, I yell, I scream.

They don't remember the details, just the hurt.

I take my family on vacation. *It's my birthday on the plane, it's my birthday at the hotel.

Every day is my birthday.

My family and friends declare bankrupcy one by one.

We move to New York. I rent a storage locker and buy a street vendor's license.

It's still my birthday.

Every fucking day.

Only now it's random strangers, visiting foreign nationals and once, the president of the united states of america bringing me presents.

I accept them graciously. I smile. I embrace the suck.

"How much for that flatscreen TV?" says a customer.
"I dunno, how much you want to pay?"

He gives me a number, I always take the first offer. It's about volume. If he doesn't get away fast enough he's liable to turn around and give it right back to me as a present.

My wife, my friends, my family, everyone who has ever touched my life has been financially harmed by their association with me. All I can do is keep the cash circulating.

By my rough calculations, my problem is getting worse. I've stopped trying to run from it. Unless I die, I've tried and something always goes wrong, the knife slips, improbably, my fall is arrested. I appear unable to harm myself or cause myself to come to harm.

Someday soon, the wealth of the world will be passing through me.

There is nothing I can do to stop it. There is no way I can benefit either. My wife, my friends, my family, they all have friends and family too. Everyone who gifts me knows someone I know. Sucked into the whirlwind, spending themselves on me into bankrupcy.

Every day at noon. I run to the post office and mail off money orders. I donate to charities, I TRY to give it all back. I threw the cash into the air once but it only caused a riot.

One morning, the I.R.S. picked me up for money laundering.

They dropped me off an hour later with a sizeable tax return.

I didn't bother asking for an explanation. I would have gotten some mumbo-jumbo about an auditing error in my favour.

Their eyes were glassy with contented adoration. I was an old friend now, a constant companion, someone they'd been through childhood with and fought beside.

I don't even remeber my own  name.

Today is my birthday, but you know that old buddy.

Is there something you wanted to give me?