I know there are a lot of pieces here, but I urge you to have a read of them all, as they're absolutely quality literature.
FFM 2014: The HuntedThirteen Months on the run, and Jodi was worn to the bone. She felt rubbed through, sore and so thin she half expected to snap beneath the weight of her backpack. It felt like weeks since they'd had a decent meal, and even longer since she had a full nights sleep, and yet still no end in sight. Not yet.
Strange to think it had been that long since she'd last walked down the icy streets of Chicago, all her hopes and dreams lying stillborn in the snow. Right about now she would have given anything to go back and just be normal again. Given a choice between adventure or a warm bed and a hot slice of Giordano's Pizza, she didn't think she'd even hesitate. Mortal peril had a way of putting things in perspective.
Dawn was coming, or going. She couldn't quite tell. Light did strange things in Naktarra, ebbing and flowing like a tide, spinning around the apex of the sky in strange confusions of darkness and colour that bled to Indigo across the horizon, submerging the lowlands in a perpetual e
Dirk Strauss and the vague fortune cookieDirk cracked open his ORB-issued fortune cookie. The company had gone by many names over the years but this month they were the Occult Regulation Bureau, because it spelled something cool and mystical. In any case, apparently the initialism for Federal Bureau of the Incomprehensible had already been taken by another unrelated organisation.
Unfurling the scroll from within the cookie, Dirk prepared himself to receive the wisdom inscribed upon it.
Maintain a cool head, but cultivate a warm heart, said the fortune. Your lucky number is 31.
The Psychic department had recently been replaced by cookies for budgetary reasons. This intel was far from ideal.
Dirk took a flaming torch from a sconce on the wall and ventured into the crypt. He had no idea what he was walking into, but that was fine because Dirk was incredibly competent; so much so that it regularly strained credulity.
The stone steps were worn with age, but not use. This place was ancient, but it wasn't exactly well
LoveGeneral Pain considered the merits of a bionic gas mask as he swept the fire extinguisher over his bed. But first, he would need to get a new bed. He could not properly cogitate evil science without at least eight hours of sleep each night.
Behind him cowered a hunchbacked figure with tentacles for arms. “Master,” he whimpered. “The experiment is unstable!”
“I realize that, Adolf,” General Pain snapped.
“Even its feces are explosive. One of my clones was killed by the shrapnel of the litterbox!”
They both looked down at the small, furry creature that had ignited the bed. It was now perched on top of a dresser, purring and licking its paw.
“But it’s just so cute,” General Pain sighed. “How do you expect me to put down Heir Fuzzyboots?”
“I will do it, Master,” Adolf said, a little too eagerly. “I can modify a dungeon cell into a gassing chamber. It won’t feel a thing.”
General Pain
The Talking Dead “If you thought it was alright to be a zombie...” Bruce pumped his shotgun for emphasis, “you were dead wrong.”
“Aaah!” yelled the zombie. “Not the face! Not the face!”
Bruce jumped in surprise, accidentally pulling the trigger, but only after he had also made an ungainly flailing motion with the shotgun. The result was that he not only missed the zombie, but the recoil caught him completely by surprise, prompting further flailing. All in all, it didn’t really fit with the badass action hero persona he had been trying to cultivate since the start of the zombie apocalypse.
“Stop! I’m not a zombie!”
Whether or not this was true, the slightly-rotten figure in front of Bruce was cowering, and since he had already ticked “shoot first” off his mental list, this seemed like a good time
I've Really Lost My MindThe young man smiled, with just a touch of embarrassment. “I seem to have lost my mind.”
The female attendant looked at him. “This is a railway ticket office.”
“Yes..?”
“You want the lost property section over there.” She pointed at a counter where a severe-looking man was rearranging misplaced umbrellas.
“Thank you!” The young man nodded politely and headed across to the other section.
The lost property attendant looked up as the young man approached. “Is it an umbrella you want?” He indicated the display.
The young man appeared to be tempted for a moment by a purple one decorated with cats and dogs, but then apparently remembered why he was there.
“No,” he said. “I’ve lost my mind. I’m pretty sure here was the last time I used it—I was trying to work out what would be the cheapest ticket to Inverness on a weekday in June, outside peak hours, travelling with my back to the engin
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Mature Content
Butterfly Sketches (FFM Day 1)The mountain air, crisp on the raw skin of his nose, blows errant strands of strawberry-blonde hair across his eyes. A small doe creeps from the thickets, her pupils dilated and her ears twitching. Her white whiskers catch sunlight through the cross-hatched branches overhead; small rosettes of tan and white are sprinkled across her fur. Watching the animal, Kit shifts the drawing pad on his lap and presses a pencil to the page.
CRACK!
The doe, panicking, throws dirt clods at Kit as she crashes back through the foliage. Letting out the breath he'd been holding, Kit glances down at his pad. A long streak of black, accentuated at the end where the lead broke beneath the jerking pressure of his surprise, cuts the butterfly sketch into two jagged halves.
With a sigh, Kit holds the pencil between his fingers and stares at the shattered tip. Hours ago, he'd retreated to his favorite fallen log for inspiration--nature, he'd discovered, offered a solace he co
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FFM1: The Broken BrideI scooped her up before Rani could touch her. It wasn't a clean break. She was in three pieces, her edges jagged at the elbow and the waist. Her white ceramic skirts split in a network of spidery cracks. The lines were rough under my fingertips.
“What's wrong with you?”
Rani wrenched the broken bride from my grasp. She turned the pieces over and over again, as though willing them to knit back together. My face felt hot, and when Rani looked at me, glared at me, I wanted to hit her. The bride had been one of the last things Grandma bought me. Ten years and she hadn't gotten even a scratch. She was mine.
“It wasn't my fault,” I said.
“To hell it wasn't,” she snapped, “You always do this. You're so selfish. God, you never think about anyone but yourself. That was supposed to be my cake topper. I'll never find anything else on such short notice.”
“You should have asked first---”
“I didn't have to ask. Mom said I could have i
Mature Content
Owner's ManualHello, new owner of my body!
If you're reading this, then I've activated the implant. It's attached to my temporal lobe, and there will probably still be some burnt out fragments of it in your skull when you get around to reading this. You can expect headaches caused by stray pieces in there and an elevated chance of cranial hemorrhaging, both of which will go on for the rest of your life if you can't get a good neurosurgeon to help you out. This assumes that it didn't cause a fatal stroke upon activation, in which case, whoever is reading this, destroy all documents on this corpse, now, without reading, for your own safety.
So, why have the implant installed at all? I'm sure you're asking that, if you've retained any of my curiosity. Well, to put things simply, my bosses have a very strict non-disclosure agreement. Only by burning out all explicit memories will my body be allowed to leave.
Yes, I say “my body” will be allowed to leave, not “I” will be allowed t
Pre-inventing the WheelLon was an I.T support worker. He was also a caveman, so perhaps it would be more accurate to call it lowercase ‘t’ support.
“Me rock no right way up,” said Gurp.
Lon looked at Gurp’s rock with an expert eye. “Gurp try drop it pick it back up again?”
Gurp dropped the rock. Then he picked it back up. It was still upside-down.
“Hmn,” said Lon, mulling the problem over. “Try throw it at wall.”
The rock clattered off the wall and landed on the ground the right way up and only slightly chipped.
“Gurp thank Lon,” said Gurp as he resumed aimlessly hitting bits of cave with his rock.
Lon strolled out into the sunshine chewing cloves. Some of his fellow proto-humans were sat a little way down the hill trying to make fire. One in particular seemed to be having trouble.
Krog was waving a single stick in the air furiously, a somewhat perplexed expression on his simian face. “Fire no work,” he complained.
Mature Content
Colony LifeEd had tried everything to get the fleas off Fido. Poisons, shaving, the works. But still they came back, and each time, they seemed to be dug in deeper. The dog didn’t seem to be suffering, but no one wanted to be around him or Ed. But contamination was always a concern in an offworld colony. Everyone was rigorously screened for just about everything before being allowed onto the rockets. But to be human is to err; every now and then, something slipped through. Still, why’d it have to happen to him (or rather, his dog)?
Ed had never had to deal with fleas before, but he knew it shouldn’t have been this hard. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Ed was just about to head to the labs to procure some nanobots which would be programmed to hunt down and exterminate every last flee on Fido’s body. But he was developing a sneaking suspicion—perhaps it was his paranoia, but he half expected the fleas at this point to somehow reprogram the nanobots and t
The Superfluous Adventures of Captain Redundancy “Sorry,” the robber adjusted the tights he had pulled over his head as a disguise, “who are you supposed to be?”
“I’m Captain Redundancy!” boomed the hero. “The vengeful masked avenger!”
“Okay then.”
“And this is my sidekick, Tautology Boy!”
“We already know who you are,” added Tautology Boy, pointing a gloved hand at the criminal.
“Y-you do?”
“Yes! You are a bank robber, because you are robbing a bank!”
The robber glanced nervously up at a security camera. “But you don’t know my identity, right?”
“No,” admitted Tautology Boy. “Your identity is disguised due to your disguise.”
The robber breathed
FFM '14.02 Scary Stories to Tell in the DarkThe light clicked off, and Bea snuggled under her covers as her mom closed the door. Just as she was about to fall asleep, the bed started shaking, creaking softly as pieces of the wooden frame rubbed against each other.
Bea sat bolt upright, heart in her mouth, scanning her bedroom in the dim blue glow of her night-light. Nothing seemed out of place: the toy trunk’s open lid at the foot of her bed cast a huge shadow on the opposite wall, but when she crept forward to push it closed, nothing frightening was revealed. Bea held very still for what seemed like forever, preparing herself to peek under the bed.
Carefully, so carefully, she lowered her head over the side of the bed, until her hair was a silver-blue pool on the ground and she could see underneath the frame. For a moment, she couldn’t see anything, then a pair of glowing, red eyes opened, and she sat up so fast that her head hurt.
At that moment, the bed stopped shaking. Deciding to see if she had imagined the eyes
Seeking the futureThe pilgrimage has been long and fraught with many hazards. The seekers of wisdom have travelled many days to get to this place.
The journey has been made yet more arduous because the Satnav has acquired a kind of occult glitch and the only roads it locates are high, winding fairy roads which are only accessible on a Wednesday, or narrow rutted cart tracks which have been unused since the fourteenth century. There is a map, of course, but none of the roads are on it and so the seekers of wisdom must have faith that the Satnav will, after many tests, deliver them safe unto their destination.
After many days; many lunches in deserted service stations and washes in petrol station toilets at the edge of ghost towns, the faithful are rewarded.
“Turn right,” the Satnav proclaims, “and after fifty yards, you will reach your destination.”
The seekers of wisdom are filled with silent anticipation.
In the appointed place there is a portal emblazoned wit
eugenics in bulkBy the time she was twelve they had already decided she would marry a man who could run a five minute mile and speak seven languages. They chose her a husband the same way they had chosen her eyes and her legs and the pale freckles that interrupted her nose - the same way their parents had designed their children and arranged their marriages, strategic.
Her father called her petite reine. He owned an antique chess board carved from ebony wood and maple. Some days she'd sneak into the library, pry open the old chequered box and pick out one of the queens, and she'd turn it round and round, searching for imperfections. It was a plain, ugly thing, huge and fat in her tiny grasp. She had wondered if he thought of her this way.
She wondered the same now.
Her hands were not her own. A businessman in a white coat had grown them slender and strong, built her carbon fiber bones and nails like arrowheads. Her mother reminded her of this when the
