DnD

An innocent game of Dungeons and Dragons is being played. Lets listen in for a bit...

"Roll d20 to see if you hit that kobold Marcus Leuteus." Devon said.

"Alright, here goes. Oh crap, I rolled a one!"

"Critical FAILURE." the dungeon master says with an evil glitter in his eyes. "Unfortunately, Marcus misses the kobold and instead stabs himself in the foot. Please take 4 damage."

"What! Sigh."

"I told you we shouldn't have been attacking these kobolds Marcus. They didn't do anything to us and you run in and attack without thought. I'm pretty sure that was an evil thing."

"Evil? They are kobolds. Kobolds are evil therefore killing them is a good action."

Meanwhile elsewhere.

"Alright Josh. Roll d20 to see what your character will do next."

"Ok. Oh crap. I rolled a one!"

"Critical FAILURE! Your characters break out in a fight over alignment. They waste at least twenty minutes of their precious time."

"What! Sigh."

Our entire lives may be nothing more than rolls on some higher beings dice....

The Fly

It's fun being a fly. Flitting here, and there. Not much care in the world but where my next meal will come from. MEAT! Yup. Pretty simple existence. Not much to worry about. SUGAR! Flying from meal to meal. Enjoying a sunny day like all the other flies. CARCASS! Ok. So it may not be all its cut out to be, but hey. I can fly. Can you?

Of course. There is always more to it than that. Sometimes.. Oh crap. ANGRY HUMAN! You know, thankfully, my eyes see everything, and I can turn on a dime in a millisecond. HAND! Wow. Close call, but hey I'm pretty hard to catch after all. SWATTER! Ok. Now this is annoying. FRUIT! Yum. I love...

SPLAT!

Shut up!

"Look, you can't just go in there and slay whatever is lurking in the darkness."

"Yes I can, it's practically my job."

"Your job? Hah! The only way you are getting paid is if the beasty is carrying something useful that you can sell."

"Look, can you shut up and do YOUR job?"

"My job? You can't tell me what my job is. I'm a sentient being with my own mind!"

"Right. First you need a body to have a mind. Now shush or the 'beasty' will flee the dark hole!"

"Fine... No, no I won't shut up. I refuse to shut up and I refuse to help you in slaying whatever is in that hole!"

"Fine."

I stick the sword in it's scabbard and pull out a dagger.

"Mmmph. Mmmm. Mph.. Fstsbp!"

"Shut up!"

As it turns out magic sentient swords aren't all that great to have around. At least mine isn't!

3 Seconds

"Mark, can you grab the mail please?" she shouted up the stairs.

That's my Mom. She loves to demand menial tasks from me. "Ok Mom." I shouted back.

I have a secret though. It's something that developed a few days ago. It turns out that I only have to think of what I want to do and three seconds later it's done. "It's on the kitchen table Mom." I shouted.

"You didn't even come down the stairs!" she yelled back.

"You missed me somehow Mom." I called out. I grin in the mirror at my little joke. Mom hasn't figured it out yet, and probably I shouldn't mess with her head that much. But now and then it is entertaining.

"How did you do that!" she called up.

"Magic of course." I responded. I hear her grumbling moving back down the stairs.

"You keep up the jokes and you'll end up in an early grave.." she said glibly.

I can do many things with my new found powers. I can get to school, come home at the end of the day. Basically I can travel anywhere in the world it seems. I haven't found a place I couldn't go yet. I can even think myself full of food, clean from a shower, hair brushed, clothes cleaned. You name it, and three seconds later, POOF!

As super powers go it's pretty decent.

I had never thought of death though. It was pretty unfortunate my mothers statement. Death isn't all that fun, and it's too late to think of a way out...

Life always finds a way

We are out of water. The oceans have dried up. The springs have turned to sand. Lakes? No more of those either. Ships have been roaming the solar system, gathering water where they could for generations now. Most of the outer planets moons have been mined to dust. The asteroids have also been cleared of what little water they had.

There was hope though. Deep space exploration units had found a unique spacial anomaly. Water clouds in space. We just had to get there. The ships we created for the job were things of beauty. Giant automated cylinders for the trip there and back. Once there, collector wings, thousands of miles wide, were deployed to collect the water vapors. The cylinders themselves were capable of storing enough water to flood the planet ten times over.

The entire trip took hundreds of years. We had calculated that they would return just in time. We were wrong. The ships returned to orbit around a barren, lifeless earth. The entire solar system had been abandoned. Nobody remained.

Four millennia later we returned for our ships, desperate as water became scarce once again. We returned hoping beyond hope that the ships would be there, ready to save mankind. What we found instead can not be properly explained with words.

One of our blessed ships had crashed to the planet, slowly releasing the liquids within. What was truely unexpected was the tree. Enormous doesn't cover how large it was. It had grown over top of the crashed cylinder. As it's water supply slowly drained it grew. And grew. And grew. Then it grew even more. Eventually it found more water. In orbit.

Yes. This tree grew right into orbit, eventually surrounding the remaining ships. Roots found their way in and are to this day using up that water. Slowly. Absorbing the life giving fluids and returning it to the planet far below.

We had not found the water we expected. We had found something more. We had found life renewed. Life thriving in the new order of things. Life owing its entire existence to one single tree. Life that would sustain us once again.

Chills in the night.

Chuck turns to Bill. "Do you feel like someone is following us?"

I chuckle softly, and quickly hide over the crest when Bill looks in my direction, startled.

"Uhm, yeah." Bill replies with a slight quaver of fear in his voice.

The boys hurry on down the path and enter the house. I chuckle softly again and move down the street, looking in on the lives of so many different people. Laughing. Praying. Loving. Everyone doing their own thing in the "privacy" of their homes. Nobody really the wiser for my presence.

I hear some whispering at the next home and I quickly hide in the shadows.

"Did you hear that?" one voice speaks.

"No, what are you going on about?" another voice says.

Moments later, I hear some scuffing sounds and two adults emerge from the shadows nearby. One is looking in my direction nervously, the other is walking on confidently.

As they pass by I am energized by the nervous ones anxiety. As they move down the street I follow over the rooftops. Making barely any noise. Just enough to make them wonder if I'm there or not. Soon enough even the confident one is looking over his shoulders, wondering.

I am that which makes everyone nervous in the darkness. That which feeds off anxiety, and chuckles in the darkness as you run away from something you can never see.

I am the thing on the roof. The think in your basement. The thing in the dark alley.

Watching. Following. Gliding softly from shadow to shadow. Hinting at my presence but never coming into the open.

Have a good night!

Writing

As I sit here in my office, gazing out of the nearby window into the back yard, I try to come up with something new and interesting. Unfortunately my great enemies fear and writer's block have come to town. They took this moment to pounce upon my mind, bearing down with a weight slightly more than a full cement truck.

I cringe as the fear of peoples laughter sets in. Laughter at my attempts at writing decent and interesting stories. Fear of rejection. Fear of non-constructive critique. Fear of non-acceptance.

Writer's block sinks deep into my soul. Blocking out the light of creativity. Blocking out the poetry of words. Blocking out the glimmer of hope at writing something before the sun sets.

What fear and writer's block couldn't know is that just prior to them arriving, I managed to come up with an idea. An idea that spawned into something that just might be interesting enough to write and share.

As the idea takes hold, fear and writer's block are shattered. They can't fight a story written about them trying to stop a story written about them trying to stop a story!

Writing always wins, proving that the pen (or in this case the blog) is mightier than fear itself (and writer's block).

The Greatest Antagonist

Every story has a great antagonist. Every person has a story. We each fight our personal antagonist daily, whether we think about it or not. Each day, every minute we fight with all we have. Nearly all of our energy is put into keeping it away. We push at it, we dodge it, we hide around corners trying to avoid it. We even sometimes beckon it closer, teasing it into thinking it's finally got us.

On the opposite side of things, our antagonist tries with all of it's power to catch us unaware. It stalks us at every moment. It fakes us in one direction while actually waiting in another. It teases us into thinking it won't get us, then it does. We never really know when this greatest of all antagonists will perform it's final pounce.

But inevitably Death will win.

The sickness

It started with a sneeze. It started with a fever. It started with a sore throat. It started.

Nobody knows exactly how it started, but it started with me. That fateful day. I don't remember all of it. It comes and goes as conscious thought.

I thought I had a flu. I thought I had a cold. I thought I was simply sick. I thought.

I went to work that day anyhow. I met and spoke with co-workers. I sat at a desk. I worked. I left for home. I slept fitfully. I woke.

All was a red haze. I thought I was hungry. Food wasn't interesting. I stumbled to work. I slumped at a desk. I stared blankly at a screen. I may have bit a co-worker who surprised me. I went home. I laid in bed.

I hungered for food. I hungered for meat. I hungered for flesh. I hungered.

I shambled out doors. I hunted for something unknown to me. I stumbled around blindly. Someone grabbed my arm in concern, and got bitten for their trouble. It seemed like a natural response, although the concerned party didn't seem impressed. There were angry sounds and screaming.

I was angry. I was furious. I was out of control. I was so very hungry.

I was zombie!